AHHHH!: Redditor ozLebowski shares a sonogram of he and his wife's unborn child, who may or may not be an alien symbiote. [TDW]

Movies: The Wolverine has an official release date: July 26, 2013. [SHH]

Manga: Nook and Nook Color users now have access to essentially up-to-date runs of several Viz series including One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Bakuman and more. [B&N]

As we head towards Valentine's Day, ComicsAlliance is offering up a daily tribute to love, as depicted in the somewhat dubious world of Romance Comics! Today's entry: Girl Confessions #13's "I Can't Get Married!"

It's been said in the past that in comics, the artist does the job of a dozen people on a film. The acting, the set design, the angles of the shots, the props -- it all comes down to choices made by artists when they're laying out a page, and when you've got that much going on, it's easy to make a mistake. Fortunately, help has arrived in the form of a seven-page Comic Artist's Toolkit!

Created by Disney artist Carson Van Osten and given to the web by animator Mark Kennedy, the Toolkit is a handy guide to common problems of perspective, staging, character design and even lettering comics, along with tips on how to solve or avoid them. It's also a beautiful example of Van Osten's work as he walks artists through page construction using his own expressive versions of the Disney characters, making it a must-read for anyone interested in how to make comics. Check out a few of the tips after the cut!

"Space tourism." That's the neat way writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa establishes new context for his take on the origin of the Fantastic Four. The FF spaceflight is one of those richly crazy Silver Age ideas that need to be pitched just right to get past modern audiences. In an age when private enterprise really is funding space travel, putting the Fantastic Four on a trial flight for a space tourism operation makes it a touch more plausible than having the world's smartest man fly a bunch of amateurs into a cosmic storm on an unauthorized rocket ship. Not entirely plausible, of course, but you can't completely sober up the Silver Age.

That superhero origin stories are important, and that they are often intimately tied to storytelling, aesthetics and ideas that seem dated and hokey to modern audiences, is a challenge for selling superheroes to new readers. It's a challenge that Marvel's new "Season One" line of graphic novels is designed to address by bringing the origins of several characters up-to-date.

Fantastic Four: Season One, by Aguirre-Sacasa and artist David Marquez, is the first of the line to reach stores. Future volumes will cover Spider-Man, Daredevil, the X-Men, Hulk, Ant-Man and Dr Strange. These books not only provide a fresh coat of paint to stories in need of refurbishment; they also provide readers with a single point of entry. These books are not reboots or alternate realities. These are new first chapters for the current continuity.

It may feel a little early to start thinking about Halloween, but considering the recent release of new footage from The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man movies, the timing of Costume Craze's recent blog posts revealing the film's licensed costumes should suit fans just fine. The Avengers line consists of updated costumes for characters that got previous costumes based on The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, joined by first timers at the licensed costume corral, Hawkeye and Nick Fury. Spidey's Amazing suit is also brand new, and sports its signature texture, plus mechanical web-shooters (but no silver slippers). The costumes and accessories aren't available for pre-order just yet, so there's no pricing info. If you've shelled out for a licensed superhero costume before, though, I imagine you've got an idea of how much to budget come October. See what you think of the upcoming Avengers and Amazing Spider-Man movie Halloween costumes after the cut.

Everyone knows that Spider-Man got his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. I'm beginning to wonder if maybe he wasn't also bitten by a radioactive clotheshorse, given the frequency of his costume changes. From the look of the teasers released by Marvel Comics, the latest Spider-Man costume will debut this spring in the Amazing Spider-Man story arc "Ends of The Earth."

I was not allowed to decorate my room as a child. Whenever I asked, my mother would mutter something about the resale value of our home and walk away. She suspected, quite rightly, that left to my own design whims, I would cover my walls in paintings of dragons. The twin daughters of artist Mark Rodriguez, however, have very different tastes: one likes flowers and butterflies while the other loves Superman. Much like the mom who created an amazing Princess Batman Halloween costume, Rodriguez told them they didn't have to choose, and created a gorgeous dual-decorated bedroom to suit each girl's particular passions. See more photos of the his amazing decorating work below the cut.

Last week, I wrote about the Kickstarter drive at Order of the Stick that shattered records by raising $250,000 in just 8 days in order to get the collections of the stick-figure fantasy webcomic back into print. In the week since that article went up, the amount of money raised has doubled to over half a million dollars, raising enough money to reprint the entire OOTS library and securing its place as the most funded creative work in Kickstarter history. It's nothing short of a phenomenon, which is why we spoke to OOTS creator Rich Burlew about his incredible success.

ComicsAlliance: You originally started the Kickstarter drive to raise money to reprint a single book. How did you expect it to play out?

Rich Burlew: I thought there were three basic scenarios that could play out. One, nobody pledged a thing and it failed miserably, but at least I would have something to tell people when they asked me why it wasn't in print anymore.

Australian fashion brand Black Milk Clothing released their latest collection this morning, which included Tetris leggings, a comic book skirt, and muscle leggings that resemble life-sized anatomy charts. Known for their previous catalog of Star Wars swimsuits and Game Boy dresses, Black Milk Clothing utilizes digital printing to create unique apparel that is frequently pop-culture-friendly, often limited edition, and always fashion forward. While their designs may not be suitable for the stylishly subtle, Black Milk produces some great statement pieces that are bound to please both geeks and fashionistas.

Check out some of the fashionably geeky threads that Black Milk Clothing currently has to offer!

Reading Comics author Douglas Wolk runs down the hottest comics and graphic novels coming out this week.

KEY:
* Sharps
^ Flats
% Naturals

* CONAN THE BARBARIAN #1
Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan relaunch the durable barbarian franchise with an adaptation of Robert E. Howard's "Queen of the Black Coast." Which has, in fact, been adapted into comics before--twice! The '70s Marvel Conan the Barbarian series took it on during the Roy Thomas/John Buscema run: it's in #58 and #100 (with the intervening issues devoted to stuff that happens between paragraphs of Howard's story). There's also a version by Petri Hiltunen from about 10 years ago. Anything by the Demo/Channel Zero team of Wood and Cloonan is worth a look, though.

Artist Sean Anderson describes himself as a "a Neo-Romantic-Semi-Surreal-Crystal-Construct-Funkified-Deco-Pop-Cubist," but perhaps more simply, you could classify him as "awesome." The creator of the urban fairytale series Skyscraper, Anderson's multi-faceted approach to constructing superheroic scenes is something fans of any art style can enjoy with ease. Whether you've always wanted to see Wonder Woman take down a Maleficent-like dragon, Storm rain down some contemporary '80s colors or Wolverine explode out of a rising sun to swipe at a shining Silver Samurai, Anderson's layered pieces have you covered. See a selection of his superhero pieces after the jump.