What a week, huh? Disney bought Marvel and everyone’s wondering how this will finally address their pet Marvel peeve. Before you get all fan-ish with what this means now and will mean in the future - they own the Ultraverse! They own Crossgen! They have to do this! They have to do that! They can hire Alan Moore! They’ll clean up Marvel! They’ll rollback prices!  You should run over and read Steven Grant’s very perceptive take on the buyout in his Permanent Damage column. He’s a sharp guy and he makes excellent points.

In the meantime, there was other stuff for avid lurkers to check out and peruse in their spare time. Let’s take a look:

Chris Claremont & Sovereign Seven: Just in case you’re one of the few who doesn’t read the Robot 6 blog over at Comic Book Resources, here’s something you might’ve missed: Tom Bondurant takes a look at the complete run of Sovereign Seven, the creator-owned DC Universe title from Chris Claremont. Tom re-read all 36+ issues in a couple of days and takes a trip down his own memory lane. Here’s a taste: “Re-reading it now also makes the various Claremontisms—and there are a lot of them—much easier to spot. At various points in the series, Cascade and Power Girl were each possessed by an evil spirit which favored very skimpy outfits. Similarly, “Dark Network” stripped Cascade nude and dressed her and Conor in harem-slave outfits complete with chains. Snowball fights and training sessions got several pages each… the dialogue was so arch it was practically St. Louis.“ Plenty more like that at the link.

Jim Starlin’s Captain Marvel: Not the Marvel Comics one that you’re thinking of, but the DC/Fawcett one with Billy Batson. Starlin was going to do a relaunch of it, but it never happened. Dan Best at Oh Danny Boy has the story, and he’s also got some incredible pages from the never-published project.

Trevor Von Eeden: Over at See Below, Phil Nugent tackles the Ayn Randian artist behind Thriller and the webcomic The Original Johnson, over comments he made in an interview in The Comics Journal.

Monte Schulz: The son of Charles Schulz (the creator of Peanuts) has a novel out, This Side of Jordan, just published by Fantagraphics Books. Bookgasm has a nice review of it.

Cyclops: Wherever you go, whatever you do, don’t piss off Cyclops. There’s a reason that he’s still in charge of the X-Men. Proteus Lives has all the deets.

Simon Pegg: That guy from Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, oh, and a little thing called Star Trek, has a new movie that should’ve wrapped principal shooting right about now. It’s called Paul and it’s, well, it’s about Comic Con International and how the journey there turns into the adventure of a lifetime. I missed this earlier, but Geek Tyrant is there for me.

The Man Called A-X: It may sound like a 1960s-era tough-guy crime novel but The Man Called A-X is really a cool comic book created and written by Marv Wolfman (that Teen Titans guy, and yeah, I know he’s done a million other cool things, but his legacy is going to be “that Teen Titans guy”) and illustrated by Shawn McManus. I should know - my buddy Dave Olbrich published it under the Bravura imprint of Malibu Comics. Marv would like everyone to know that it’s now available for the iPhone. Says Marv, “Just search The Man Called A-X in the iTunes App store. Issue one is free. Issue 2 on are 99-cents.” Marv won’t stop plugging it until every digital copy is sold, and I believe him. If you need some free Marv occasionally, check out his blog.

The Silver Surfer: There’s a lost Silver Surfer novel floating around somewhere. Marv Wolfman (that’s right, him again) hired William Rotsler to write it and it was never published. Paul Kupperburg uncovers this and much more in an interview with Marv at Bookgasm.

Watchmen: What if Rorschach’s Journal was more like a tween’s diary? You had to ask and Rock, Paper, Cynic has that answer. One of the ads may be a little NSFW, so caution is advised. Hurm.

Edmond Hamilton: For years, Hamilton was a regular writer for DC Comics, starting in the 1940s writing Superman, and later writing a ton of Legion of Super-Heroes stories. Before joining DC Comics as an editor, Julie Schwartz was a literary agent; his first sale was a story by his client, Edmond Hamilton (see how the world works?). Hamilton was also married to Leigh Brackett, who wrote her own sci-fi and fantasy stuff, and is best known in geekdom for writing the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. Now Haffner Press is releasing some of Hamilton’s classic pulp sci-fi stuff (pre comics), and it’s worth a look.
[thanks, Ed Gorman!]

Batman And Robin: They’re worried about their tans, and they like to sit around Wayne Manor with nothing on but a smile. Comics Make No Sense tries to make sense of it all. (Hint: You might have to scroll down to see the Batman panel in question, but it’s all worth it.)

That’s the internet for now. Sleep tight and hurry back!

[Artwork: Cover to The Man Called A-X, © Marv Wolfman and Shawn McManus]