death of wolverine

Marvel really likes to spread its announcements around at San Diego Comic-Con, and that's never more evident than at the publisher's final panel of the weekend, which it calls 'Next Big Thing', possibly because Columbo has a prior claim on using the phrase, 'One More Thing,' just as you're getting ready to leave. The major new announcement out of the Next Big Thing panel is that Marvel is finally going to publish a new S.H.I.E.L.D. book (which I'll henceforth refer to as SHIELD, because no-one has time for that much punctuation). Mark Waid will write the new series, with Carlos Pacheco on issue one and a rotating team of artists thereafter. Agent Phil "Cheese" Coulson will be the book's lead, and each issue will tell a self-contained story.

Wolverine, he dead. Almost. Soon. Soon. In a shock headline-grab, the folks at Marvel have announced that the big hand and the little hand have ticked all the way back around to "kill off a major character" o'clock, and the name they picked out of the hat this time was "James Howlett". And after asking around the office someone confirmed that they're pretty sure that's Wolverin