The Scottish Sunday Herald isn't one of the usual sources for news about major comic book projects, but this story's about local hero Mark Millar and his latest Marvel project, which sounds like a digitally-enhanced fotonovela:

"Marvel's team has scouted for locations, built sets, created superhero costumes and monster models and hired almost 100 actors, including fire-suited stuntmen to be set alight. The storyboard is drawn up and actors photographed in position, then combined with the storyboard with the help of computer artists, creating a succession of what will look like film stills."

Arts correspondent Senay Boztas claims the series (titled 1985, because that's when it's set) will be costing Marvel "millions of dollars," but there's two problems with that. One, Boztas has a habit of overhyping Millar's accomplishments. Two, Millar set the record straight for a Newsarama reporter: "No, this isn't costing millions. It's costing a lot of money and, as far as I'm aware, this six issue series will probably be the most expensive and ambitious thing Marvel has ever tried. But we've tried to be clever about this and the art team have managed to do the most amazing things within a sensible budget."

Meanwhile, details are emerging about another of Marvel's big plans for next year. Writer Keith Giffen talks to Newsarama about Annihilation, a sci-fi-themed series that will split off into four more limited series, which will then loop back into the main storyline. "Over the course of the entire series," he says, "there are going to be very few cosmic characters that aren't touched on in one way or another." Left unspoken by the interviewer are some of the most obvious criticisms, namely that the structure and scope of Annihilation are highly evocative of Infinite Crisis, the big event from Marvel's main competitor, DC Comics. Marvel's editor-in-chief did confront the issue in last Friday's weekly chat with Newsarama, however: "People seem to forget that these types of projects are decades old," he observed. "But hey, if that's what they want to fight about, god bless. The important thing is that they're talking about it."