I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but here in the U.S., comic book fans have received Pavlovian conditioning that starts them drooling once the clock rolls over from Tuesday to Wednesday. Wednesday is when the new comic books arrive, making it a fitting day for Sony to launch its digital comics service for the PSP. Of course there's still no sign of DC Comics, but Marvel and Disney fans are sure to be pleased.

I've been a Marvel reader for most of my life, but with Green Lantern Blackest Night event going on and my recent love affair with Vertigo's Fables series, I'm not sure I'll be putting down my DC books long enough to purchase digital Marvel comics anytime soon.

The comic store goes live at 5PM GMT in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. North America will get it when they get it - which is noon West Coast time, according to the PlayStation Comics Twitter.

Digital Comics Service Launches Today [PlayStation Blog Europe]

The package will deliver five new characters - one of whom is Black Panther, it was just announced. He joins Cable, Psylocke, Carnage and a player to be named later.

You also get more boosts and simulator missions. In Xbox Live currency, it'll set you back 800 points. On PSN, it's $9.99. Additionally, Juggernaut will be available separately on the same dates (for both services). He's 160 points and $1.99, respectively.

DLC Date and Pricing Announced [Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Forums]

"If I were young now and I wanted to do stories," Lee told The Guardian, "I would very much want to get into the videogame business because it's the most exciting."

While Marvel has licensed its characters out to developers for game development, Lee's involvement seems largely hands-off.

"Videogames and movies are the most exciting forms of entertainment," he continues. "But a videogame in a way is more imaginative, it has more variety. In a movie you stick to the plotline, in a videogame you go in a million different directions. I have no idea how they're able to do that. It's like a miracle."

Know what's an even bigger miracle? When they make good games.

Stan Lee: 'I have no idea how games are made – it's a miracle' [Guardian] [Pic]

"On the video game front, (Marvel) have some smart licensing agreements with some of the best video game manufacturers in the business," said Bob Iger, Disney's CEO. "While we have been steadily moving in the direction of video game integration, we don't rule out the blend of licensing and self-produced and distributed video games.

"As these licensing deals expire we have the luxury of considering what's best for the company and the products."

Earlier today, Disney announced that they were buying Marvel for $4 billion in cash and stock. The deal would give Disney ownership of Marvel's 5,000 characters. Currently both Activision and Sega publish games based on Marvel properties.

Under current deals with Marvel, Activision, Sega, Gazillion and THQ all have different licensing deals to make video games based on the comic company's characters.

Activision's deal with Marvel, which includes the Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Wolverine games, expires in 2017. Gazillion Entertainment's deal with Marvel, which includes several massively multiplayer online games, expires in 2019. Sega's deal with Marvel, which includes games based on Marvel movies, is described multi-year. The same is true of THQ's deal with Marvel, which includes video games based on Marvel's Super Hero Squad.

While video games are certainly an important part of Disney's acquisition of Marvel, there are plenty of other opportunities for both companies, including comics, toys and movies.

Speaking more generally Tom Staggs, Disney's senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, noted that Disney is well aware of Marvel's great potential and that Disney is looking into future potential characters that can be turned into other things, including movies and video games.

"As the current agreements in place sunset we will look to exploit the library of characters more broadly," Staggs said. "This is a big library of properties and we think there is real opportunity.We plan to evaluate where those opportunities are greatest and how we can leverage those across both Marvel and Disney."

Does that mean we're going to see future video games with Marvel and Disney characters in one title? I suspect not, with perhaps one major exception. But would involve getting Square Enix on board as well.

We have calls into all of the publishers with licensing contracts with Disney and will update as we hear back.

What games would you love or hate to see come out of this deal?

"The good news is that everyone in the known universe told us what was wrong with the first game," said Kyle Brink, creative director at Sega Studios San Francisco, the team working on Iron Man 2: The Video Game. Sega Studios San Francisco is the re-branded Secret Level, the team that worked on the original Iron Man and Golden Axe: Beast Rider for Sega.

Yeah, I know.

But Brink says that there has been some personnel turnover at the studio, plus new faces—including his own hiring as the studio's creative director. The Iron Man team is listening to complaints, things like having to half-pull a trigger on the Xbox 360 or PS3 to make Iron Man hover.

"The controls were a big issue in the first one, so we completely revised the controls here," told us during an interview at Comic-Con. "They're based on the top 20 games out there, so they should be immediately familiar to people and they're consistent across all movement modes out there."

"We also brought the range in tighter, because in the first you were hunting pixels," he adds, addressing one of our own gripes about the original.

Brink says that adding in diverse enemies, diverse environments—both indoors and outdoors—will alleviate some of the repetition that plagued the first Iron Man.

T.Q. Jefferson, director of games at Marvel, touched on some of the changes that have been implemented on the Marvel side to make the company's games stay "suck free." That includes the recently established Marvel Creative Committee, which is focusing on using in-house Marvel talent—like Invincible Iron Man comic book writer Matt Fraction—on games based on the comic book publisher's properties.

Jefferson says that one of the new Marvel games tenets is that "movie games don't have to be movie games," abandoning the strict limitations of a movie's plot, characters and set pieces. Instead, Marvel games will be "original stories set in the movie universe" making it more feasible to release a game alongside the film, with input from folks like Fraction.

Even though Iron Man 2: The Video Game isn't due out until April 2010, Marvel and Sega were showing off a playable (by Sega staff only) demo of the game at Comic-Con. It looked impressively polished for a game still 8 or more months out, hopefully a good example of Marvel's change in strategy for games.

We'll have more from our interview with Kyle Brink and Matt Fraction shortly.

Marvel showed off three concept renders of Sackboys that may be coming to the PlayStation 3 exclusive, but did not offer dates for the costumes, nor confirm that this would be the extent of the Marvel characters that would be licensed for LittleBigPlanet use.

Considering Marvel has Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 and Marvel Super Hero Squad coming this year, don't be surprised if you see Captain America, Iron Man and Wolverine on your PS3 soon.

Penance, formerly the teenage superhero Speedball, transformed himself after taking on the full responsibility for the nuclear incident that kicked off the whole Civil War series and left most of his New Warriors team dead. His transformation is a key point in the series, both punctuating the event and reflecting the change in the Marvel Universe as a whole, from something bright and innocent to something dark and more mature, so his addition to the Civil War-themed game just makes sense.

Of course, there are other reasons as well, as explained by game director Dan Tanguay.

Gameplay-wise he's going to make for very good fusions. Beyond that, we wanted to have some new characters to be excited by, and finally...he just looks kinda cool.

The most tragic thing about Penance? There never was a full 3D, free-roaming Speedball game.

Aside from Penance, it was stated during the Q&A session following the panel that two more characters are left to be revealed, with one more that will "never be revealed", meaning they're going to be quiet until the game hits store shelves. After that, we can expect more characters via DLC in the near future.

The game, debuting at San Diego Comic-Con in the Sega and Marvel booths, will include enemies not seen in the movie, like Crimson Dynamo, and have a greater focus on hand-to-hand combat as well as a redesigned control scheme.

"Iron Man has an undeniably huge fan base, and we really wanted to give them the game they have been waiting for. We spent a lot of time incorporating their concerns and feedback from the first game, as well as coming up with new ideas to take this game to a whole new level," said Sean Ratcliffe, Vice President of Marketing, SEGA of America. "Creating a new story with renowned comic book writer Matt Fraction is a huge part of making that happen, and we are incredibly excited to bring fans the game we know they want with Iron Man 2."

Fraction, whose work at Marvel includes The Invincible Iron Man, The Uncanny X-Men and The Immortal Iron Fist, will be on hand to sign stuff at Comic-Con this week.

Brevik - who not only helped found Blizzard North but also helped create the Diablo series - will take up the role of studio director at Gargantuan, the San Mateo-based crew currently working on Marvel Universe.

If you're wondering why they hired a former Diablo guy, and not a former WoW guy, Brevik left Blizzard in 2003 to go work for Flagship (Hellgate), and when that went bust, Turbine (Lord of the Rings Online), so he knows his way around an MMO or two.

Diablo Creator to Lead Marvel MMO Development for Gazillion [IndustryGamers]

Marvel might have been a bit off when they suggested a June 29th release for Marvel VS Capcom 2, but they were pretty damn close. The actual release date for the Xbox Live Arcade version of the beloved brawler is July 29th, so really they were only off by two letters. The game is being released as part of Microsoft's Summer of Arcade promotion, which groups together Xbox Live Arcade games of particular merit, which must make the developers of games released in a normal fashion feel like crap. "of Arcade" titles generally cost more than usual as well, with MvC2's 1200 point price tag right in line with the trend.

No official word on the PlayStation Network release yet, but we can probably assume that it will fall somewhere around the 29th as well.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that the Capcom Europe page has the PlayStation 3 release listed as July 29th as well. So I was right...halfway. Sort of.

Tsui was at this week's IGDA demo night in Chicago, Tsui showed off the board controller to the crowd, explaining how the original prototype design set the company back abot $3,000 to make. After getting Activision on board (harhar), Tony Hawk started helping out with product testing, eventually cracking an early prototype trying to perform an ollie.

The most interesting thing to come out of the presentation, it seems was not that Tsui envisions the skateboard being used for other games, we reported that a month or so back, but which types of games it might be used for.

Tsui mentioned that there are plenty of no-brainers, like surfing and snowboarding, but that there are also opportunities for Silver Surfer and Hobgoblin games in the future.

[Thanks news ninja AJ]

Activision seems to have a knack for passing their Marvel properties on to developers in love with the characters, though as was the case with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, that doesn't always work out. As my only exposure to the new Wolverine video game so far has been this particular video and a few screenshots, I'd say the game is looking pretty good, though that voice at the end spouting Logan's little catch phrase grated on me a bit.

Still, not going to get my hopes up. I learned a valuable lesson last time I got excited about a superhero video game being released on my birthday.

Simon Phillips, who is Marvel's president of worldwide consumer products, floated 2012 as a possible date to MTV's Splash Page (then picked up by Stephen Totilo at Multiplayer). The date seems somewhat firm, too, as he immediately defended it as being not too far off, really.

It sounds like a long way away, but it's not. We've got to create, together with [game publisher] Gazillion, that environment that is going to be a totally immersive experience and a perpetual storytelling experience as well.

Think you're getting any juicy teaser details about what to expect more than THREE WHOLE YEARS from now? Think again. "At this moment in time we haven't identified exactly what the end game is going to be," Phillips said. "We're still working on the different variations that are potentially possible."

Not to be outdone, Ripten offered a list of all the things that will have taken place by the time the Marvel MMO joins us in the real world. Some excerpts.

• Duke Nukem Forever will have been delayed… 7 times.
• GameSpot will go out of business once a suspicious 10/10 review is posted for Imagine: Bloggerz 2.
• Activision will have run out of ideas, and begin selling games via digital distribution. Their first attempt is Guitar Hero: The Best of Oasis. The setlist is empty.
• The National Funk Congress will have finally settled the Get Up/Get Down dilemma.

Marvel Targeting 2012 For New MMO, Leading Out Of ‘Avengers' Movie [MTV Multiplayer via Ripten, thanks Lupich] [Picture by Hellseeker, at PencilJack forums]

Steven Nelson (Senior Animator), Bryan Shutt (Art Director), Dave Phillips (Concept Artist) talk about how they settled on the look for the siren in the game.

Songbird's in-game look will be fashioned off of some of Marko Djurdjevic's cover art from the Thunderbolts, the trio said. In particular, cover 115, seen above, was a big influence.

Check out the full discussion for more details on the design and look of Songbird.

Now that they've introduced Songbird into video games, when can we expect Dazzler? She better be wearing skates too.

Finding Her Voice: The Making of Songbird in MUA2 [Marvel Ultimate Alliance]

Reports announcing the formation of ambitious start-up company Gazillion Entertainment reveal that the publisher has four development studios working on massively multiplayer games. One is NetDevil, who as we already know, are working on LEGO Universe. A second is Amazing Society, who are working on the Super Hero Squad MMO due in 2010. The third is Slipgate Ironworks (John Romero's new company), who are developing an "unannounced original MMO".

The fourth? Gargantuan, located in San Mateo, California, who are working on "Marvel Universe", an MMO for the PC and "consoles" (360 & PS3, presumably). Marvel Universe, eh? Interesting. Especially when you consider this all-new project (since the guts of the last, cancelled game went on to become Cryptic's Champions Online) is being worked on by former developers yanked from Blizzard, Sony Online Entertainment, Cryptic and NCsoft.

This new being very new, there's no accompanying screenshots or further details or anything like that, so the fact it's a Marvel MMO for the PC and consoles is going to have to suffice for now.

Feature: Gazillion Entertainment CEO on Marvel MMO projects Two [Big Download]
Gazillion to launch series of major online games with Marvel Comics characters [VentureBeat]

Having tried once - and failed - to get an MMO based on their characters off the ground, Marvel have now turned to Gazillion to develop a number of MMOs over a ten year period, with the first game, based off Marvel's Super Hero Squad, due next year.

The deal covers all Marvel characters (think Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man, etc) and in no way affects other deals currently in place with other publishers, like Sega and Activision, for singleplayer titles. Interestingly, the WSJ piece also says that Gazillion - who we, nor Google, have ever heard of - are publishing Netdevil's LEGO Universe.

Further information - on both the deal and, we hope, Gazillion themselves - is expected to be revealed when the deal is officially announced tomorrow.

UPDATE - OK, we have information on Gazillion. They're a highly ambitious start-up, with over 300 people already employed across multiple studios. Netdevil, who are working on the LEGO MMO, are one of them.

Marvel Reaches Deal for Multiplayer Online Games [WSJ]

Sega continues its existing partnership with Marvel Entertainment with the announcement of Iron Man 2, due out in 2010 alongside the sequel to the blockbuster hit of 2008. The new title is currently in production at Sega Studios San Francisco, and will more than likely produce some amazing trailers and screenshots before ultimately delivering a mediocre gaming experience.

“We are thrilled to build on the success of the Iron Man phenomenon and work with Marvel and Paramount on another epic project,” says Simon Jeffery, President of SEGA of America, Inc. “SEGA and Marvel are collaborating closely to ensure we deliver an authentic Iron Man experience.”

Sega and Marvel also collaborated closely on last year's Iron Man video game, which if you recall, was a complete mess, so I am keeping my hopes way low this time around. I just hope we at least get another dance party video out of this one.

1UP says we're looking at Wolverine's in-game model, illustrating just how expertly someone at Raven can render a bulging vein. Do make sure to check out the Hugh-mungous hi-res version to see the little details.

What scant details 1UP provides — Sentinel boss fights, ultra-violence, "a new approach to seamless cinematic in-game cut-scenes" — certainly have us interested. Hopefully our upcoming issue of EGM is already well on its way to Kotaku Towers West. Until then, we'll just ogle that single screen.

First Screenshot and Info For X-Men Origins: Wolverine [1UP]

Marvel's video game blog The Danger Room, in one of its very infrequent updates, teases "Feel free to speculate" in regard to the image of The Punisher taking on a slew of wannabes. That's all the info they provide.

THQ and Volition were responsible for the previous Punisher game, which hit the Xbox, PC and PlayStation 2. Marvel and THQ are still somewhat cozy, but we don't have any knowledge of the two announcing such a project was in the works.

Feel Free to Speculate... [The Danger Room via 4CR]