Avid comic readers know there’s one undeniable truth to any crossover or event featuring Marvel’s merry mutants: prepare yourself for the worst and hope for the best. For every Age of Apocalypse there’s a Utopia, Necrosha or Schism just waiting to drag you down. Tentatively, I dove into last year’s X-Men: Battle of the Atom crossover to see which side of the fence I fell on; the initial fan feedback was divisive, to say the least.

A 10-chapter arc weaving through X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men and All-New X-Men and bookended by two one-shots; Battle of the Atom starts with the original, time-displaced team of X-Men deciding (arguing) whether or not they should leave the present day and return to their era. But why settle on past and present when you can have not one but two different X-Men teams from the future join in?

It’s one of those things you would have figured would be a bigger deal but two weeks later and there hasn’t been a peep heard about it. Maybe I am running in the wrong circles or it really is telling of the popularity of Disney Infinity (or lack there of) but this should have been bigger news to the gaming and geek worlds.

Marvel has unleashed a trailer on their YouTube channel that gives a pretty good indication of a certain star spangled super hero making his way alongside the cast of Disney Infinity. Without getting tacky and talking about the “infinite” possibilities, it is pretty cool to hear this as one of the more public facing interactions between Disney and Marvel since the acquisition.

For those who don’t know, Disney Infinity is a video game that uses smart toy technology similar to that of Skylanders where players place figures on an e-reader stand which causes the character to appear in game as well. This upcoming expansion of characters will be one of the first times where a player can have Marvel characters interacting with those of Disney in Disney worlds as well.

So far, Pirates of the Caribbean, Monsters University and The Incredibles are all a part of Disney Infinity but now we are waiting for the moment where we can have Captain America go head to head with Darth Vader. Come on Disney. You own it all. There is no reason not to make it happen. It is literally the option to print money…

‘Tis the season and we at The Flickcast along with the Whiskey and Waffles team want to point everyone in the direction of one of our top gift recommendations. Every month, WallE and I get a Loot Crate shipped to our HQ and proceed to compete over the items inside. The reason we can’t share is because the stuff inside is just too cool to spread the wealth.

What we recommend is that people make sure to buy each of their loved ones a subscription which starts at $13.37 a month (yes, their price is “LEET” so you know these guys know what they are doing). If you head to www.lootcrate.com/whiskeyandwaffles and use the code “whiskeyandwaffles” you’ll get a 10% discount.

As mentioned, WallE and I cannot share. So that lead us to create the Loot Crate War. Last month, we competed for zombie related swag. November was all about celebration between the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who and the birth of a new console generation with the PlayStation 4 and XBox One launching.

The Avengers has come and gone, and now we get to see Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) dealing with the trauma he apparently experienced in New York. He has insomnia, and it strains both his work on the latest Iron Man suit as well as his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). His bodyguard Happy (Jon Favreau) is now head of security for Stark Industries. And, all around the world, there’s broadcasts from a strange terrorist figure named “The Mandarin” (Ben Kingsley).

The movie opens with Stark recounting a New Year’s Eve party way back in 1999. He’s at a conference in Bern, trying to bed a buxom botantist, Maya (Rebecca Hall) before the year’s turnover. He’s interrupted by pimply geek Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who’s trying to start a think tank and wants Stark’s help. Stark blows him off, and if the use of Guy Pearce didn’t already suggest it, Stark states outright that it was the beginning of trouble.

Thirteen years later, Aldrich shows up at Stark Industries, again seeking support, though he does seem more interested in rubbing everyone’s nose in his success. He has created a new whatsit kind of technology called “Extremis” that allows the brain to regenerate tissue…and, somehow, make the patients melt things with their hands. (Dr. Curt Conners from the latest Spiderman films is going to be smacking his head with his tail when the inevitable crossover comes.)

Along with all the other cool stuff like movies, TV shows and new, geeky gadgets we get to talk about here at The Flickcast, comics are another one of our favorites. So, when a new, interesting comic preview is availbale for us to bring to you, we do just that.

This time that comic preview is from Marvel and it’s their upcoming book Marvel NOW! – X-MEN #1. In the comic:

“Storm, Rogue, Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Rachel Grey, Rogue & Psylocke redefine what it means to be a Child of the Atom when an old enemy shows up at the X-Men’s door, seeking asylum from an ancient evil come back to Earth. Meanwhile, Jubilee has come home, and she’s brought with her an orphaned baby who might hold the key to the Earth’s survival…or its destruction!

With an imminent alien invasion and an eons-spanning war between brother and sister around the corner, Storm steps up and puts together a team to protect the child and stop a new threat that could destroy all life in the Marvel Universe!”

Sounds cool, right? Click through for some preview pages for the comic. Look for X-Men #1, written by Brian Wood with art by Olivier Coipel, to arrive in comic shops on May 29.

One thing you can be sure of, Iron Man 3 is gonna be at least pretty good and, more to the point, make a lot of money. In fact, our prediction is it will make a killing, mostly due to pent up demand for another tase of The Avengers.

That’s not to say Iron Man 3 won’t be able to stand on its own, it’s just that The Avengers was so awesome, fans are hungry for more and will take a bit of Iron Man 3 and, when it hits, the Captain America sequel, until Avengers 2 arrives.

Turing our full attention to Iron Man 3, though, we’ve got another trailer for it to share with you today. It actually came out a couple day sago and yes, we missed it. Sorry about that. We have no excuse.

In this one you get a bit more info on just who The Mandarin really is and what he has in store for our iron-clad hero. Check out the trailer after the break and look for Iron Man 3 in theaters on May 3rd.

Do you love comics from Marvel and prefer them in digital format? Are you a current or future Marvel Unlimited subscriber? Have an iPad or iPhone?

Well, if you fit the quickly expanding segment of the population who can say “Yes” to these questions, Marvel has a new iOS app just for you. That’s right, today Marvel released its new “Marvel Unlimited” app for iPad and iPhone.

The free app allows subscribers of Marvel’s digital comics subscription service to access their comics from their iOS device, even when not connected to the internet. Non-members can also use the app, but they are limited to accessing free comics and previews of other issues in Marvel’s digital collection.

Heck, that’s pretty cool. Get the app right here in iTunes.

Look at the stack of comics in your room, the long boxes you have in storage or the trades sitting on your bookshelf. Think hard before you answer. Who is the one character you have felt the most genuine emotional connection to since the first time you picked up an issue off the spinner rack all those years ago?

Now we know this isn’t going to apply to everyone. Some readers may have shared a similar tragedy or suffered a similar injustice to a particular character. But, for the most part, a character that has shared more moments with the reader than any other is Spider-Man. But why is that?

For older readers, Peter Parker is one of the most identifiable because we have grown up with him. Whether you started reading Spider-Man in high school days, his Empire State University days, or his young adulthood, writers have given us the chance to see a character grow and mature as he comes of age. Thor has always been an ageless god.

Captain America has always been the guy who was from World War II who just hasn’t physically aged. But not Peter Parker. Peter had to balance a social and scholastic life in addition to being a hero. He had to worry about finding a job and paying rent. He didn’t get to just sit back in a mansion with the Avengers in the early part of his career.

If there’s one thing Marvel has proven over the last several years it’s that Iron Man is as popular as ever. With the character’s succes in movies come a renewed level of interest in his comic book exploits as well.

Fortunately, Marvel isn’t resting on its laurels and keeps turing out great stories for its major characters, Iron Man included. Now, with things heating up in the Marvel U and Tony Stark having problems, a new Iron Man is coming to take matters into his (or her) own hands.

That’s the story in Marvel’s upcoming Invincible Iron Man #518. The story, from writer Matt Fraction and artist Salvador Larroca, concerns “the Spymaster’s rampage within Stark Resilient and that incident’s bloody end. The Mandarin is throwing everything he’s got at Tony Stark including amped up super villains. With a big target painted on his back, can Tony Stark make it out alive? Can the new Iron Man save him in time?”

I guess we’ll see when Invincible Iron Man #518 hits comic shops, the Marvel Comics app, and Marvel Digital Comic Shop on June 6. In the meantime, check out some previews for the comic after the break.

In salute of this weekend’s debut of Marvel Comic’s The Avengers, it’s time to rediscover another Marvel character who’s had three different film versions and hopefully one of these days, they’ll get it right. Dolph Lundgren stars in the first adaptation of The Punisher (1989).

The Punisher was always my favorite Marvel character because he didn’t have superhuman strength, he couldn’t shoot webs out of his wrists, or defeat evildoers with a metal alloy suit; he was nothing more than a badass vigilante who went out and wasted criminal scumbags left and right. He was one of the darkest characters that ever came out of the Marvel universe. So with this first film version, the writers decided to take some extra crappy liberties and change the story around.

In the comics, Captain Frank Castle was a decorated U.S. Marine whose family was killed by gangsters. Broken, disillusioned by the corrupt justice system, Castle decided to take the law into his own hands and became the Punisher who over the years forged some uneasy alliances with other Marvel heroes like Spiderman, Daredevil, and many others.