Mike Costa

The current Venom series has been a bit of an enigma. It doesn't quite explain what happened to Flash Thompson, and has flipped the roles a bit to the point that the new host, Lee Price, is a bad egg who wants to do crimes, and the symbiote is the angel on his shoulder, trying to convince him not to. However everything changes next month as the original Venom, Eddie Brock, returns to the comic, and potentially returns to the role. Check out a first look at Mike Costa and Gerardo Sandoval's Venom #6.

Every month, comic publishers release their solicitation announcements to provide information to readers and retailers on comics that are coming out in three months’ time, but there’s so much information dropped at once that a lot can slip through the cracks. This month in Marvel's April solicitations, some long lost character make big leading role returns, Marvel gambles big on the success of its latest event, and Jubilee goes to the mall.

The inevitable happens in Venom #5, by Mike Costa and Gerardo Sandoval, when the symbiote and its host get into a knock-down drag-out fight with the guy the symbiote has never forgiven for rejecting it, the Spider-Man known as Peter Parker. And Marvel is observing the event throughout the month of March with Venomized Variant covers that depict the heroes of the Marvel Universe overtaken by the Venom symbiote.

In recent years, the symbiote monster known as Venom has been under the control of Flash Thompson, who has mastered and tamed the menace and harnessed its powers as a force for good. However, in the upcoming Venom #1 by Mike Costa and Gerardo Sandoval, there's a new symbiote host, and it seems they have every intention of returning Venom to his his villainous ways. Ahead of its release next month, Marvel has provided us with an unlettered preview of the first issue.

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.

AMC’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Vertigo series Preacher is proving to be very popular with audiences, despite the many tweaks and changes that the television series has made to the original comic’s story. The tale of Jesse Custer, Tulip O’Hare, and Cassidy has proven to be more adaptable and malleable than many fans may have thought, and the new approach to the show’s core concept opens up different avenues to update the classic Western tale. If you love Preacher and you already know the comic from cover to cover, we’ve got five of the best independent comics for you to try next that tackle similar themes of cowboys, vampires, and how humanity relates when faced with a god.

If you went to Comixology yesterday to check out the week's new releases, you wouldn't have seen a GI Joe sale featured on the main page, but there's one going on right now that features a whole lot of great comics. The main attraction here is probably the six issues of Tom Scioli and John Barber's senses-shattering Transformers vs. GI Joe on sale for a buck each, but let's be real with each other: If you are the kind of person who takes this site's recommendations on what comics to buy, there's a good chance that you've already got those. What you might have missed, though, is one of the best Joe stories in recent memory: Mike Costa and Paolo Villanelli's Snake Eyes: Agent of Cobra. It's compelling, character driven, features one of the best fight scenes of the year, and, perhaps most importantly, it has Destro and Snake Eyes teaming up to take on the world. If you haven't read it, you should pick it up - even if you've never been a fan of GI Joe.

Listen, there was no way that Snake Eyes: Agent of Cobra wasn't going to be my favorite comic of the week. I mean, my love of G.I. Joe has been chronicled pretty extensively here at ComicsAlliance, and the two parts of that franchise that I love with an almost overwhelming fervor are Destro and Snake Eyes, the two characters who take the spotlight in this issue. The only way it could be closer to what I wanted out of a comic would be that if it involved Batman and pro wrestling, and since DC already put one of those out last month, it's as close as we're going to get. But while I've been in the tank for this series since it came out, I can tell you that it's great for reasons that go beyond the starring characters. It's the continuation of a smart, slick take on the G.I. Joe franchise that kicks off with a premise that's inherently exciting. It just happens to also involve two of the best characters ever.

Marvel's Spider-Verse panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Friday saw the announcement of two new mini series spinning out of the multi-dimensional event. In Scarlet Spiders, a trio of spider-clones come together for a potential suicide mission, while Spider-Verse Team Up features multiple Spider-Men from multiple Spider-Man creators.

Baked Goods: Clutzygeek transforms the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into delicious (and turtle-free) pancakes. Digital: Select Marvel graphic novels are now available in the Amazon Kindle store. Upcoming: She-Ra is getting a Masters of the Universe digital one-shot from DC by Mike Costa and Drew Edward Johnson...