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As with all company wide crossover events, there tends to be a number of spin-offs and crossovers and it’s usually difficult to tell what’s actually necessary to understand the full scope of the main plot. Maybe you bought Final Crisis: Revelations thinking you might need it to understand Final Crisis when you probably should have picked up Superman Beyond instead. Maybe you bought all the crossovers to Civil War only to find out you could have done fine reading the main event and only a couple others. Usually, you end up dropping a crap load of cash and in this economy that’s the last thing you’ll want to be doing. So here’s a little guide on what books you can probably live without and which ones are more important then you might think. The number grade at the end isn’t actually for the quality of the story, but for the relevance of the book. Read more

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This was first featured on the Marvel Kids site about a year ago, and for some reason has been taken down since then. It's actually pretty fun with some nice animation. Read more

If you happen to live in the Seattle area, you really need to do yourself a favor and check out Alecto, Issue #1 playing at the Annex Theatre. If you're a fan of the Mystery Men, The Specials, or just good quirky super-hero comedy then you'll have no trouble getting into this production. Great acting, fun scripting, an interesting plot, and innovative special effects and choreography make this a fantastic viewing and one of the best productions I’ve seen in a while. Read more

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Don't look too long into the cold dead eyes of Betty Brant at 2:24

Writer/Artist: Yukito Kishiro

Publisher: Viz, $9.95 for the new editions, $15.95-$16.95 for the old editions with a larger trim size

I haven’t been reading as much manga as I used to, so I felt like brushing up on a few favorite series of mine starting with Battle Angle Alita. I also wanted to catch up with Alita because of the fact that James Cameron has had his name attached to the adaptation for something like a decade now. The trick is, the technology necessary to translate the world of Alita just hasn’t been up to the task until now. With the advances in special effects developed for Avatar, Cameron now has the capabilities to bring the world created by Yukito Kishiro to life. Read more

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Writer/Artist: Dave Gibbons, Lee Weeks, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby

Publisher: Marvel, $12.99 (out of print)

If you just want a really fun self contained Captain America story done in a What If?’ style, then you should try and hunt down the Cap Lives arc. Originally published in Captain America (Vol4) #17-20, the story starts with Captain America being found frozen in the North Atlantic in 1964. Except this time it’s by a German submarine that takes him back to an occupied New York renamed New Berlin. The Nazis won WWII and are cementing their hold over the world, and the return of Captain America to see everything he fought for gone is the icing on the cake for the Red Skull who is still alive and attempting to find a way to conquer space and time now. Read more