Marvel-Inspired Pet Toys, Apparel and Accessories to Debut Exclusively at PetSmart®

Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a global character-based entertainment company, announced today that is it expanding into the pet category for the first time with a Super Hero inspired pet program. Through a new licensing agreement with Fetch…for cool pets!, a unique line of Marvel Super Hero inspired pet toys, apparel and accessories will be unleashed at PetSmart®, the largest pet specialty retailer, beginning this week.

The line will feature a wide array of Marvel-themed pet products for dogs including toys and apparel. Additionally, a wide assortment of aquatic products will follow shortly after and all will be available in PetSmart stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico as well as online at www.PetSmart.com.

PetSmart, Marvel and Fetch...for cool pets! will support the Marvel Super Hero pet program with an impactful marketing campaign. Highlighting the campaign will be in-store signage, online promotions and a sweepstakes exclusively for PetSmart Facebook fans on www.facebook.com/petsmart.com.

“Marvel Super Heroes are a family affair and therefore, should include the family pet,” said Jamie Kampel, Director of Licensing, Marvel Entertainment. “As we continue to look to expand the presence of the Marvel brand to new product and retail venues, the pet category is a natural extension. Fetch has developed a truly unique line, and having PetSmart on board as our premiere retail partner will enable us to make a huge statement for the Marvel brand in the pet category.”

Steven Shweky, President of Fetch…for cool pets! added, "Fetch is approaching licensing from a different direction. Instead of using brands that would typically only appeal to children, Fetch has licensed brands that resonate with the ‘pet parent.’ Marvel is the perfect brand to reflect our approach.”

About Marvel Entertainment, LLC: Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is one of the world's most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of over 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media over seventy years. Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing and publishing. For more information visit www.marvel.com.

About Fetch…for cool pets!: Fetch…for cool pets! is the manufacturer of a variety of innovative dog and cat products. Pet Head™ is their most widely distributed specialty grooming brand sold in pet specialty stores, pet shops, and beauty salons all across America, Europe, Australia, Asia & the Middle East. Fetch has expanded into the pet oral care, aquarium accessories, as well as several other pet categories. Founded in 1982, Fetch…for cool pets! will continue to innovate with new product lines & brands as well as push the envelope on market reach. To learn more about Fetch please visit www.pethead.com.

About PetSmart : PetSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ: PETM) is the largest specialty pet retailer of services and solutions for the lifetime needs of pets. The company employs approximately 50,000 associates and operates more than 1,210 pet stores in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, over 189 in-store PetSmart® PetsHotel® dog and cat boarding facilities and is a leading online provider of pet supplies and pet care information (http://www.petsmart.com). PetSmart provides a broad range of competitively priced pet food and pet products; and offers dog training, pet grooming, pet boarding, PetSmart Doggie Day CampSM day care services and pet adoption services. Since 1994, PetSmart Charities, Inc., an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit animal welfare organization and the largest funder of animal welfare efforts in North America, has provided more than $134 million in grants and programs benefiting animal welfare organizations. Through its in-store pet adoption partnership with PetSmart Charities®, PetSmart has helped save the lives of more than 4.7 million pets.

Cosmic Book News loves The Owl #1!  Read the review from the link below! http://comics.cosmicbooknews.com/content/advanced-review-owl-1-4

Gail Simone’s Red Sonja #1 gets a stellar review at Comic Vine!

http://www.comicvine.com/articles/early-review-gail-simone-s-red-sonja-1/1100-146593/

Here’s a look at commentary of Miss Fury #1 from Rob Thomas!

Enjoy!

PG 1

"Everyone is doing themselves a weak and cowardly disservice if they don’t ask themselves this question… What are YOU angry about?” Start a storyline with the controlling idea front and centre. It's on the nose, yes, but it's effective. And this was the key question for Miss Fury when I approached the book. She's called 'fury' yet she’s a super rich Manhattan socialite who’s incredibly good looking. What’s she got to be angry about? Over the course of the first arc – that’s the core question. And we open in 1943. The world’s at war. America’s at war. Millions dying and suffering. Yet Marla Drake’s life is all roses. She hasn’t found herself yet.

“Anger is an energy,” was something I wrote in the pitch, stealing from John Lydon.

And that telegram in panel 3 is a flashback, by the way. To a key moment in her journey towards her own anger. We’ll find out more as we go.

PG 2

My first draft of the script I started things further on with some character-setting dialogue, but then I decided this was an issue one, we probably needed some action straight out of the blocks.

More punching. And kicking. This is a superhero book.

We’re establishing here that a) Miss Fury is a fearsome, superhumanly quick fighter (she twists an assailant around in time to get his body to take the bullets meant for her – that’s quick). And b) she’s not a squeaky clean, morally black and white figure. She’s slashing and drawing blood here.

Also: Jack Herbert, our seriously impressive artist, is establishing that he can draw an action sequence really, REALLY well.

PG 3

She catches a knife in mid-air and returns it at the thrower, getting him right between the eyes!

You know, for kids!

When I saw these pages in B&W I was delighted. I hadn’t worked with Jack before but there’s a real fluidity to the action here, and Miss Fury looks terrific in panel 4. Lots of swagger there. The colours are wonderful too. Ivan Nunes did a killer job on the book. Really talented colourist.

Love the ‘Thunk!’ sound effect there too. Nice job by Simon Bowland, our letterer, throughout.

PG 6

The idea here was, on a kind of suggestive level, that Miss Fury doesn’t just fall through the skylight into the Nazi’s time machine, but the time machine rather pulls her through. It wants her. None of this is established in text, and to have her saying “It almost feels like it… wants me,” would’ve been plain bad writing. A bit of ambiguity here and there isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I think. Let readers fill in the blanks as long as the narrative us clear. Even if no one gets what the intention was, she still falls into the time machine so the plot is serviced.

The whole idea of Miss Fury’s time travel in the arc is so personal to her. It’s meant to be ambiguous to an extent. Is she really travelling through time or is she still in 1943 and insane?

PG 9

Jack drew this to be a real highlight of the issue. And it’s completely different from the script and what I imagined. But who cares when it looks this amazing.

The script called for a side-on shot of an art deco bath, which sits in the middle of a huge room in Miss Fury’s Manhattan apartment. The idea being that this room is enormous but she’s kind of so emotionally empty that there’s nothing in it, just a luxury bath. Jack changed the angle, the sense of this huge room with just a small bath in it. But she’s still wearing the gloves in the bath (that’s not for 'cool and sexy' aesthetic reasons, we’ll reveal why later). She’s reading the ’43 newspaper, and the contradiction of the salubrious image and the dialogue “there’s a war on, you know. It’s a terrible business” is still there. I don’t mind an artist changing what I’ve asked for as long as the narrative point is served. It is here.

And it looks fantastic. So shut up Mr. Writer.

PG 13

Miss Fury’s new origin. Her voice is more than a little tongue-in-cheek here. “The implicit local hallucinogenic…” “he may have just been trying it on.” The humour hopefully lifts this scene beyond being the typical superhero origin. And I liked the fact that she isn’t 100% sure if she has superpowers. It’s, again, a little ambiguous.

PG 14

Sex Panther! It stings the nostrils.

Is the panther real? She doesn’t know.

Although, she is covered in blood during sex in the final panel, so there’s a hint. She’s a dark one, eh? I wanted to show her as being in control here. She drives the action. Titillating? Yes. But true to her character. These are all little snapshots of Marla Drake. The entire initial arc is something of a jigsaw puzzle for her and, hopefully, by the end of the first storyline, you have something of a three-dimensional woman. And who among us can say that we haven’t had sex with a Masai tribesman while under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen and covered in the blood of a MASSIVE jungle cat that we’ve just killed in hand-to-paw combat? I know I have.

PG 18

Who’s this bloke then? Badly burnt face? He’s a super-villain, surely.

This is Captain Chandler. Who’ll make a big difference in Marla Drake’s life. A key figure in her journey.

Great faces in the crowd scene behind Captain Chandler. Jack does great faces.

And there’s that telegram again in panel three. If it repeats like this, it’s a key moment.

PG 21

And suddenly we’re in a scene from Modern Warfare. Tanks, guns, jet fighters, a street scene where Manhattan’s been turned into Chechnya. Romance is very much over and Miss Fury’s suddenly thrust into war. Her war.

And something big overhead is blocking out the sun. That can’t be good.

The script, by the way, asked for her to be carrying a ‘Sienkiewicz rifle’, as in Bill. I used the same phrase in an issue of Daken: Dark Wolverine and it’s become shorthand for an impossibly large and deadly weapon. The language of comics… I’m going to keep using it.

Contest for Vampirella "Tooned Up" Statue from Sideshow Collectables!

Go to the link below for a chance to win a free Brand-New Vampirella "Tooned Up" Statue from Sideshow Collectables!  Enter for a chance to WIN!

http://tinyurl.com/l7pr6qg

Both the Chris Eliopoulos "Cute" cover for Battlestar Galactica #1 and Jonathan Lau's cover to Mark Waid's Green Hornet #2 made the best Covers of the Week from Comic Vine!  Congrats to both Chris and Jonathan!!!

http://www.comicvine.com/articles/best-comic-covers-of-the-week-5-17-13/1100-146583/

Alex Ross The Shadow #13 cover made in Top Covers with Cammy’s cover of the week on Bleeding Cool!

Cammy had this to say about Alex’ cover.

“Speaking of contrasts, major props to Ross for this bloody masterpiece. It brings chills seeing the Shadow in the reflection, for it looks as if he’s trapped in a doomed city of some kind. The lady in white doesn’t look all that innocent for no matter who you are, everyone has someone’s blood on their hands (including her). Ross always succeeds with the angelic glow technique, for just from looking at this cover you’re lead to believe that she must be innocent in all.”

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/05/18/cammys-covers-fatale-to-wonder-woman/

Craig Cermak has been nominated for a 2013 Russ Manning award for his amazing art work on Dynamite's Voltron: Year One, to be given out at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. Read more about this on the press release below and congrats to Craig!

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=45438

Click the below link to download the Damsels: Mermaids Free Comic Book Day comic from Dynamite!

http://www.dynamicforces.com/upfiles/FCBDMermaids0FullIssues.zip

Click the below link to download the Grimm Free Comic Book Day comic from Dynamite!

http://www.dynamicforces.com/upfiles/FCBDGrimm0FullIssue.zip

Title says it all: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=45086