Sean Ryan

This week saw the last issue of the current volume of Sean Ryan, Cory Smith, Andres Mossa and Albert Deschesne's Nova, which over the course of eleven issues has been a real coming-of-age story for Sam Alexander, who has grown into confident and worthy successor to the Nova name. In the final issue, Sam finally got answers about where his powers come from, but along the way he set in motion events that returned an iconic Marvel hero to the spotlight.

The Prowler made a big comeback this year as Spider-Man's right hand man at Parker Industries, filling in for him in the red-and-blues whenever Spidey had to be in the same room as Peter Parker. However, recent events may change that working relationship, as Hobie Brown gets his first solo series in over twenty years. Ahead of its release in December, Marvel has provided an unlettered preview of Prowler #1 by Sean Ryan, Jamal Campbell and Javier Saltares.

Marvel’s reveal of its Marvel NOW line of comics set for release in the wake of Civil War II has taken the form of a steady drip of announcements over the past week and a half, but now news is flooding in, and not all from official sources. Leaked scans of this week's Marvel NOW Previews magazine revealing the publisher's line-up for October and beyond have hit the internet via sites such as Reddit and 4chan. We’ve rounded up all the information we could find to give you a sense of the new landscape of the Marvel Universe this fall.

It was only last month that Marvel revealed a set of anti-bullying variant covers designed to get kids to stop being complete jerks to each other, but apparently, it seems that an image of Gamorra offering to space-murder a group of mean children wasn't enough to solve all the problems. As a result, Marvel has taken the next logical step: A full-length anti-bullying comic featuring the Avengers, Spider-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy, all teaming up to try to put an end to bullying once and for all.

When DC Comics launched its "New 52" Universe a few years back, Suicide Squad was pretty much the bottom of a barrel that wasn't really in good shape to begin with. Despite being an attempt to revive one of the best, most elegantly crafted and thought-provoking superhero books of the 1980s, the New 52 version was a noisy, soulless mess that ended up doing almost irreparable damage to characters like Harley Quinn in the name of making something more extreme, in a true late '90s Juggalo sense of the word. When the series was finally canceled and relaunched, I honestly wasn't expecting it to get any better, especially since the new lineup included the addition of one of the worst new DC characters of the past several years. But we're two issues into what writer Sean Ryan (and about 27 artists so far) is doing with the re-relaunched title, New Suicide Squad, and while I'm not sure, I think it might actually be the smartest team book DC's putting out.

This week, Chris and Matt are oddly surprised by the (possible?) commentary found in New Suicide Squad #1 by Sean Ryan and Jeremy Roberts. Then they like how Armor Hunters #1 by Robert Venditti and Doug Braithwaite hits the big event-comic notes without being contrived. And finally, they discuss a couple of DC's digital-comic offerings: Scooby Doo Team-Up #5 by Sholly Fisch and Dario Brizuela, and Bat-Manga #1 by Jiro Kuwata.

Flashpoint is DC Comics' summer event of 2011 that promises to change the DC Universe unrecognizably until the event's climactic finale, when the DC Universe will instead be left changed somewhat recognizably. In support of the event, DC is releasing 60+ issues of comic books across 22 titles in just three months...