by Mike Collins

Cup O' Joe

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada opened the panel by welcoming everyone and talking about how happy he was to finally have a large scale show in NYC. With that he dove right into the topics of the morning.

Quesada announced a partnership with Top Cow which will allow Marvel to use some of their artists on Marvel properties. He showed several slides done by Tyler Kirkham who will be working on Spider-Man.

The announcement that Marc Silvestri would be penciling a Marvel book later in 2006 drew loud applause from the crowd in attendance.

Quesada then talked about the work being done by Ed Brubaker on both Captain America and Daredevil. He feels both titles are some of the best things being written for Marvel currently.

The new creative team on Iron Man are HBO Carnivale writer Daniel Knauf and outgoing Cable and Deadpool artist Patrick Zircher. Quesada promised that with the new team the book will once again ship monthly.

The 2006 Free Comic Book Day offering from Marvel will be a Runaways/Wolverine book drawn by Skottie Young.

Quesada took a few minutes to joke about the outrage over the seeming demise of both Alpha Flight and the New Warriors.

Next John Romita Jr. was introduced to announce his re-signing exclusively with Marvel as well as his new assignment, The Eternals written by Neil Gaiman which will debut in June.

Stephen King's Dark Tower will begin to ship in 2007 and artist Jae Lee is currently working on the book.

Skottie Young was announced as the replacement for the recently deceased Seth Fisher on the next Fantastic Four limited series Fisher was scheduled to work on. Quesada spoke eloquently about losing such a talented artist at a young age.

Ultimates 3 will ship sometime this fall. Quesada mentioned how happy he was to have lured superstar artist Joe Madureira back into comics.

Peter David is writing a new Wonder Man mini series as well as continuing to write X-Factor.

Finishing up the announcement part of the presentation, Quesada announced that Ron Zimmerman was currently working on a pitch for a new Rawhide Kid mini-series and that fans will see more of the Inhumans later this year.

X-Men X-Changes

This panel featured Joe Quesada, Mike Marts and Chris Claremont among others. The focus was on the coming changes to the X-Men lineups and some new titles.

Joss Whedon and John Cassaday will take Astonishing X-Men monthly as of September.

John Watson was announced as a new cover artist for some of the X-Men titles including Ed Brubaker's Uncanny X-Men run.

Wolverine: Origins will follow Logan's search to uncover all of his memories. Marts spoke of how impressed they were with the stories Daniel Way has been handing in.

Marvel will release an Uncanny X-Men annual this year featuring Storm. It is written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Clayton Henry who Quesada said will be doing more work for Marvel in the coming months.

Dennis Callero was announced as the new artist on X-Factor replacing Ryan Sook. Callero will remain on the title through at least issue #6 to keep the book on a monthly schedule.

C. B. Cebulski is writing a new series titled X-Men: Fairytales, which seems aimed at younger readers.

Chris Claremont takes over the writing duties on Exiles with issue #84. He is bringing Psylocke along with him. The current artist will remain on the title.

Claremont will also be writing GeNext, a title chosen by fans in a poll. Claremont said the idea for the book is "What if the X-Men aged in real time?". The book will follow what he called the fifth generation of X-Men characters. The title debuts in June.

Simone Bianchi will be doing some painted covers for selected X-Men titles.

Chris Bachalo's character designs for his upcoming run on X-Men were shown. Aside from Rouge and Mystique, the rest of the characters shown were all new.

Marvel's Civil War

This panel was attended by Joe Quesada, Brian Bendis, Editor Tom Breevort, artists Steve McNiven, Ramon Bachs and Dexter Vine. She Hulk writer Dan Slott was also on the panel.

The presentation began with a rough cut of a trailer for Civil War that will be seen online shortly. It gave a brief view of what is to come in the book and was very well received.

Quesada said that Civil War kicks off with the current issue of Amazing Spider-Man featuring the debut of the controversial new Iron Spider-Man suit.

Bendis said that the soon to be released Illuminati special lays the groundwork for much of the story.

Dan Slott announced that worried fans of the New Warriors should pick up She Hulk #8 to find out what's next for that team. He also mentioned that the issue is a huge change to the character's status quo. Fan favorite artist Paul Smith will be the new ongoing artist on the title.

Quesada and Bendis both stressed that Civil War will have long lasting impact to the Marvel Universe and that the shockwaves will be felt for a long time. The current team in New Avengers will change. Bendis said "no book will be more seismically changed than New Avengers when the series concludes.

New Avengers will have an arc called "New Avengers: Disassembled". It will run five issues following a different character through Civil War. Each issue will be drawn by a different artist.

Captain America: Howard Chaykin

Luke Cage: Leinil Yu

Spider-Woman - Adi Granov

Sentry - Oliver Copiel

Iron Man - Jimmy Cheung

Young Avengers goes on hiatus during Civil War. It will be replaced by the Skottie Young penciled "Runaways/Young Avengers".

Civil War: Frontline is a ten issue series shipping bi-weekly. The creative team is Paul Jenkins and Ramon Bachs. Quesada called the title a "travelouge to Civil War". This title will cover events throughout the Marvel Universe that aren't covered in the Civil War limited series.

Quesada promised readers that the story will be editorially balanced and will not favor either side in the conflict but show the struggle both sides will have to deal with.

The Civil War will leave the X-Men titles largely untouched but will have their own four issue mini series that follows the storyline from their perspective.

Bendis teased readers that they will see a return of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye.

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