sara pichelli

Before there were heroes, there were monsters. Or at least that's how the story of Marvel Comics goes, with the Jack Kirby-driven success of the publisher's monster comics leading to a superheroic renaissance in the early 1960s. The Monsters Unleashed event, which launches with Monsters Unleashed #1 on January 18 2017, promises to bring back those monsters of primordial Marvel and pit them against the current crop of superheroes. To promote the series, Marvel has just unveiled some of the "Monster Versus Marvel Hero" variant covers that will be available for each issue. Each cover is by a standout artist, and each depicts a single Marvel hero facing off against a Marvel monster.

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 January solicitations, it's all about the big returns, with some fan favorite heroes and villains showing up, a critically acclaimed character getting a second chance, and love in the air in the Spider-Verse.

Brian K. Vaughan, Adrian Alphona and Christina Strain's Runaways has been an obvious choice for live action adaptation since it first debuted in the early 2000s. The tale of a group of teens who discover their parents are supervillains and go on the run has the potential to be a huge hit, and this week it was announced that Hulu has ordered the Marvel property to series under the supervision of the creators of Gossip Girl. But who are The Runaways? They haven't been a team in comics for quite some time, and haven't had an ongoing series in even longer. We've put together a Crash Course to make you a Runaways expert in no-time.

Darth Vader, by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca, is coming to an end with issue #25. To mark the occasion, Marvel is releasing the issue with 12 different covers. The main cover is by Juan Gimenez, and looks like it could be the poster for a Darth Vader movie. Adi Granov offers a similarly cinematic cover, which also features Doctor Aphra, BT-1, and 0-0-0, the supporting cast of the series. They appear on a few of the other covers, while the rest focus on the Dark Lord of the Sith himself.

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.

Being Spider-Man can be great for self-esteem, but it's not always best for your academic performance. This Wednesday's Spider-Man #1 finds Miles Morales, the younger of Marvel's two Spider-Men, learning that lesson the hard way. He hasn't done his homework due to Spider-business, and now he has to escape from the classroom to be Spider-Man again, even though his teacher is already angry at him.

Marvel's most important Spider-Man, Miles Morales, returns to his own title on February 3 in Spider-Man #1, by the character's co-creators Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli. Miles is bound to have a lot to adjust to, now that he's living in a whole different universe and serving as an active member of the Avengers. The unlettered preview doesn't give much away, but it does reveal one important thing: Miles Morales still has parents and a best friend. However Secret Wars ends, at least we know that MIles doesn't arrive in the 616 as a lonely refugee.

If you needed any further proof that Marvel is now fully a part of the Walt Disney Company family, look no further than a new collaboration with ESPN (also a subsidiary of Disney). A group of Marvel artists --- Alex Maleev, Sara Pichelli, Emanuela Lupacchino, Lenil Francis Yu, Frank Cho, Russell Dauterman, Mike Deodato, Jim Cheung and Greg Land --- have contributed original art of Daredevil, Captain Marvel, Medusa, Luke Cage, She-Hulk, Iron Fist, Iron Man, The Hulk and Ant-Man to a "superhero edition" of ESPN Magazine's famous "Body Issue," an annual celebration of athletic physiques (with lots of pictures of naked people).

Starting this fall in the Marvel comic book universe, Spider-Man will be a half-black, half-Latino teenager. Starring in the character’s flagship series by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, Miles Morales has given a new generation of comic book readers a superhero that reflects our diverse culture. But fans also learned recently that the newest iteration of the web-slinger on the big screen will once again be Peter Parker, as British actor Tom Holland, the third white actor to play the character since 2002, was announced as the new Spidey.

The New York Daily News revealed on Sunday that Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli will launch a new ongoing Marvel series starring Miles Morales in the wake of Secret Wars — with the twist that this will be the first series starring Miles to be set in the main Marvel Universe rather than the Ultimate Universe. (Two major universes entered Secret Wars; one will leave.) While previous Miles Morales titles bore the names Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man and Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, this book will unsurprisingly forego the now defunct 'Ultimate' branding. More surprisingly, it won't pick up a new adjective in its place. The new Miles Morales title is simply called Spider-Man.