The big news this weekend: Spider-Man 3 topped the box office, raking in $148 million!

Hitting that high mark means the ol' Web-Head reigns supreme over Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (and Aquaman), reclaiming the spot for best opening weekend.

Love it or hate it, Spidey's No. 1!

What happens when comics and bowling collide? Awesomeness, obviously.

Hence Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #20, which features United States Bowling Congress Queens champion Kelly Kulick.

It's a cool tip of the hat to bowling fans and Bowl.com has a cool story on how Kulick got involved with Spider-Man.

It may not be as cool of a backstory as how the ending of Civil War came about, but what is?

So I found this sketch on C.B. Cebulski's desk the other day. Well, in his desk. Why I was going through his stuff is a story for another day.

I'm not quite sure who this chick is, so I decided to hit up Mr. Cebulski and throw three good guesses his way.

Agent M: So, I found this sketch lying on the floor yesterday. Who is it?

Cebulski: "The floor", you say? You're a man of many mysteries, Agent M, but no matter how you say you "acquired" that image, the cat is out of the bag now... that's our new mystery character who we'll be introducing in LONERS #5. Or RE-introducing would be more appropriate, I guess, as this is someone who's been around the Marvel U. for decades now. The character has been pretty much unused for a number of years though, until Karl Moline and I dug her out for revival in LONERS.

Agent M: Wait, what? You're not even going to tell me. Fine, fine. Lemme get three guesses.

Cebulski: Take your best shot then, M, but keep in mind... looks can be deceiving!

Agent M: Is it Jubilee?

Cebulski: I love Jubilee and think she would make an ideal addition to LONERS as she was definitely a power junkie. But I think Jubes would rather be out there finding a way to get her powers back than be in therapy talking about having lost them. So no, that's not Miss Jubilation Lee.

Agent M: I half believe you. How about Sister Grimm (Nico Minoru from Runaways)?

Cebulski: Ah, I see where you're going with this. I'm writing the MYSTIC ARCANA: SISTER GRIMM one-shot so you think I can just write her into my book when I'm done, right? It's a plan I'd love to put into motion, but current Runaways scribe Joss Whedon might sic an army of vampire slayers on my ass! So Nico is out. One guess to go...

Agent M: Hmm. I'm going back a bit on this one...Silhouette (of the New Warriors)?

Cebulski: She would make sense wouldn't she, given her past assocations with some of the Loners already, eh? But sadly, no, it's not Silhouette. The mystery character has no past associations with any of the current members of Loners actually...but now I've just said too much.

Agent M: You have?! Ugh, well, I give up. Enjoy your mysteries, Cebulski.


So I couldn't figure it out. Can you? Post your guess below.

One of my spies (yes, spies have spies--if it works for Fury, it works for me) snapped this photo yesterday.

Marvel E-I-C Joe Quesada was getting dussied up for a cool project that involved cameras and talking. Little more has been unearthed at this time, but you can never have too many photos of Joe in makeup.

So Marvel's putting out this book called Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. It's based on, and expands upon, Stephen King's Dark Tower series of novels. Maybe you've heard of them, yes?

Well, to celebrate the launch of the book, stores throughout the country held midnight opening events. Stores opened up for fans to pick up copies of the book early, and in some cases, meet the talent behind the first issue. I was lucky enough to get in on the action at Midtown Comics, location of the big New York City midnight launch where artist Jae Lee and co-writer Peter David were signing.

I got to the store at about 11:15 and there were easily 50 people on line in the store. Add to that number another 30 or so folks from Marvel, Midtown employees, reporters and camera crews from various media outlets and customers browsing before getting on line, and the store was busy!

There was genuine excitement and energy in the air. It was nearing midnight and though some fans had been waiting for over an hour, everyone was pumped. By the time Jae and Peter sat down to sign, the line was easily 100 deep with more coming in every few minutes. All in all, it was a great night and seems to have been a success throughout. Check out Dark Tower editor Nicole Boose's report here (with a bunch more photos!) and here's what Peter David had to say about the event in NYC.

Oh, did I mention it's all on tape? I brought along a camera, linked up with editor Nick Lowe (Uncanny X-Men, Runaways, Astonishing X-Men and more) and mixed it up with the crowd. Check out some stills from the event and keep your eyes peeled for video of the event on Marvel.com.

Ah, don't you just love the holidays? Merriment and gift-giving followed by weeks and weeks of just doing nothing but playing games ("Gears of War" and anything Wii, 'natch) and reading comics (Powers: The Definitive Collection Vol. 1 and New X-Men Omnibus--I could kiss you!). At least, that's how the holidays went for me. I'm just now waking up from that eggnog haze and will get back to blogging ASAP.

As in right now. No interview this time out, but I was able to sneak into two cool meetings this week.

Well, one meeting and one class. Artist extraordinaire Klaus Janson made his way back to Marvel to teach another class (see Tom Brevoort's original post) to the editorial staff this week and it was very cool.

Klaus teaches at SVA in New York City and I'm more than just a bit envious of his students. In this class, Klaus taught us about all the different shots (camera angles, if you will) used in comics, what each is most effective in conveying and which are most important. We also looked at and critiqued some published work. Going the critical route definitely changes the way you look at a comic and the artist.

Oh and Klaus finds some, if not all, mullets to be disconcerting. I find them to be a bit mysterious, myself, but all in all I learned a helluva lot.

The meeting I sat in on was another big Editorial jamboree. The editors get along well and there's always plenty of ribbing and interplay between the staff. The coolest part of the meeting was hearing pitches for new comics and everyone's reactions. Some got the thumbs up, some didn't.

That's about it for now. Enjoy the Immortal Iron Fist #3 preview I got from IIF editors Warren Simons and Alejandro Arbona!

So, with a little slight of hand and a few stealthy maneuvers, I got into the big Licensing Show in NYC this week. Unfortunately, I was only able to finish up all my other missions and get to the Javits Center late in the afternoon on Thursday. To my surprise, the show was wrapping up early (slackers!), so I only had a little while to get in there, scope out the situation and grab what I could.

Obviously, the Marvel booth was pretty sweet, with HUGE Iron Man and Incredible Hulk posters hanging on all sides. I do believe I caught a glimpse of something top-secret (not while I was at the Licensing Show, though) and so extremely cool. Maybe special people got to see it? I hope so, 'cuz it's totally boss.

While I was there during the wind-down (and break-down) portion of the show, I did see some other cool stuff. Lots of big movie properties, a giant Ugly Doll booth, toys, manga, some awesome Transformers stuff like the 15-foot tall (or so) Optimus or the Bumblebee (I think?).

Unfortunately, with time winding down, I was only able to use my extremely advanced thieving skills to walk out of the show with the following:
-1 brownie (cakey, not especially moist or delicious, ingested immediately)
-1 can of Coke (just below room temperature, used for energy boost on my super-secret walk back east on 35th street)
-1 can of Jolt energy drink (pictured; not yet consumed--not sure if even my highly trained stomach can stand up to the rigors of an energy drink of that magnitude)
-1 package of Lemonheads (pictured; fully enjoyed by myself and Mrs. Agent M)
-1 pen (pictured; a gift for Mrs. Agent M which she promptly used to write my name on my leg)
-1 take-out box from media property Kung-Fu Panda (pictured; wary of its contents, I only snagged one; I was delighted to find that the white carton of doom in fact housed two chocolate-dipped fortune cookies--one dipped in milk chocolate and one in white chocolate; the fortunes were forgettable, but the cookies were remarkable)

Enjoy the photos and watch out--I'm hitting San Diego in a month.

Your Spy in the House of Ideas rocks San Diego Comic-Con this year and I thought it'd be a neat idea if I Twittered throughout the show.

What's Twittering? It's basically short-form blogging that you can do anywhere, anytime. I'll mostly be updating via cell phone while in San Diego, posting about what I see, who I meet, etc. All my Twitter updates will be posted right on this blog, but the full archive can be found here.

One of the coolest things about Twitter, though, is that anyone can follow along and know what I know, as soon as it happens.
All you have to do (aside from checking out this page) is text follow Agent_M to 40404. Literally send a text message that says "follow agent_M" (without the quotes) to the number 40404. That'll set you up to get updates on your phone whenever I post a message. And don't worry, you can easily turn it off.

Oh and if you're in Canada, the number to text is 21212. If you're pretty much anywhere else in the world, the number is 447624801423.

I'll also post some photos in here when I get the chance. Should be a fun show. Enjoy!




Remember, even if you don't decide to follow along with my Twitter, this blog post will be updated all weekend long with updates. You can't go wrong!

So lemme give it to you straight. Michael Agrusso sent this video to me a few weeks ago. But with battling hordes of the undead in San Diego and Chicago, I just haven't had time to give it its proper due.

Until now. And Michael was awesome enough to prove his undying geektitude by answering a few questions. Enjoy!

Agent M: Who do you think's had it tougher: Spider-Man or that dark knight fella?
Michael Agrusso: Ouch. Hmmmm...well...they've both had it...pretty bad...y'know...they're both pretty...uh...Ugh. I'm sorry. It's Batman.
Not to say that Spidey hasn't had his own set of troubles (They don't call him the hard-luck-hero for nothin'). From dealing with feeling responsible for his parents leaving him to his aunt and uncle (and then dying) to feeling responsible for his uncle's murder to losing Gwen Stacy to being broke, being hated by the Bugle, not to mention all of the troubles he's facing now...

Okay, but enough justifying. Yes, Bruce Wayne has more money than Peter Parker will ever see in his lifetime. But it will never be enough to take away the memory of being an eight-year-old boy witnessing his parents being gunned down in cold blood while all he could do was watch and then sit with their bodies until the police found them. Peter never actually witnessed his uncle's death, and it could be argued that that might actually be worse...but, in the end, I believe it is telling that Spidey has managed to hold on to his sense of humor through it all, while Batman has not. We love Spider-Man for his ability to always be ready with a quip no matter how thick it gets. It's one of the things that makes us relate to him more than any other character. Batman, on the other hand, will never be able to see anything else other than the events of that tragic night. The motivation from that image is what has gotten him to the point of holding his own with the big guns, despite having no super powers of his own. We love Spidey for putting on a smile, no matter how much it hurts...but, we respect Batman for keeping his pain so private. Because, to him, NO ONE will ever understand it but him.

Now, if you're talkin' Bruce Wayne or Frank Castle...that's a whole other story...

Agent M: How do you feel about dark 'n gritty characters versus the bouncy, quip-tastic and more lighthearted ones? Which would you rather read/watch?
Michael Agrusso: It all depends on your mood. Both offer escapism, but from completely different perspectives. We can see ourselves as Spider-Man, but there are times when we wish we could be the Punisher or Batman or Ghost Rider, and so we get it out of our systems through reading about/watching them. Me? I'll read anything...God, I'm such a geek...



Come back tomorrow for another "I'm a Marvel, I'm a DC" video...and something else pretty special.

Written and filmed by Michael Agrusso.

So when word came in that 7-Eleven had enlisted Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer to adorn the visage of its summertime staple--the Slurpee--I had to have a look at the new cups.

But I'm a busy man. So much spying to do, so little time. Luckily, we have interns. And oh my interns are a hardy lot. To get them in shape for next weekend's Wizard World Philadelphia escapades, I sent Jason and Nick off onto the mean streets of NYC to wrangle a few cups so we could properly introduce them to the world on Marvel.com.

Little did we know they'd scour the city and come back with but one cup. Like Apocalypse demanding the strong rise above the weak, my two interns battled it out to stand as the one who'd bring me the fabled cup.

Jason (hailing from Erie, PA) turned the 7-Eleven upside down to bring back the only FF: RotSS cup in store back for me. Poor Nick (he comes from Saugerties, which is odd town to spell out) couldn't handle Jason's fury and had only this to say. "It was so scary. He's like a moose."

Yes, he is. And now the blood-stained cup forever has a place at Marvel.