As of a couple of weeks ago, I'm regularly co-hosting The Comic Shack podcast on 5by5. On last Friday's show ("Concatenation of Severed Heads"), I talked with host "Captain" Jim Metzendorf about how Captain Marvel #1 made me cry, X-treme X-Men threatens to make Dazzler awesome, and how terribly behind I am on The Defenders, which I caught up on last night. Jim also gave a crash course in comics grading and storage technology. Yes, it qualifies as technology.

Regarding "Season One", Marvel is retelling the origin stories of many signature characters in graphic novels that are around the length of five issues of comics. I'm shocked they didn't do one for their new highest-profile team in advance of The Avengers hitting theatres.

I wasn't really aware of these until Greg Pak announced he was doing one for Doctor Strange. For the record, Strange is my favorite Marvel character. You'll hear more about him from me, rest assured.

I picked up the X-Men and Ant Man ones the other day at the comic shop. They're clean, crisp quality hardbound trades that include a digital copy slip. This is the future of how to make money on printed books. Give it to us at a reasonable cover price and bundle digital at no additional cost. I just ordered Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil. I'll get around to pre-ordering Hulk and Doctor Strange soon.