Comic book video game news ...

Sega has picked up additional Marvel licenses for video game treatment beyond the already announced Iron Man (set to coincide with the 2008 film).

Added to the roster are The Incredible Hulk (taken away from Vivendi Games, who did a great last entry in the franchise), also set to release next summer with the Edward Norton-starring Hulk movie sequel.

Then there's Thor, who's currently dead, but given just-released solicitations for July comics from Marvel (which include Thor #1) he evidently doesn't stay that way (does any comic character, really?). This is set to coincide with the tentative 2009 film.

Most exciting to me (of course), is the acquisition of the Captain America license. Cap is my lifetime favorite character, and I am so looking forward to a respectful video game treatment that I pray doesn't suck. This game will likely (all together now) also coincide with the film, which will likely be 2009 or 2010. The movie is being written by David "Road to Perdition" Self (who's also tapped for Deathlok, probably my third or fourth favorite comic character; he's behind Beta Ray Bill and probably ties with Moon Knight).

I want a Captain America game with a Harker-like fighting system. Seriously, Sega, if you're not developing the title in-house, give the license to some superstar dev team like The Collective; make it an Indiana Jones-ish WWII actioner, and have some classic Cap bddy like Baron Blood as the baddie. While we're at, Collective, how about you scrap Harker, and roll all that work onto the Captain America game? Great mechanics, style, depth and play, with a license deserving of all of that.

(Says the guy with no pull whatsoever.)

As a fanboy and film industry watcher, however, I am a bit nervous about all of these license / video game / movie announcements. There's a lot of Marvel glut scheduled in the 2008-2009 window, and that's a lot of time for the comic book cycle to wear off (Hollywood is wicked cyclical), and it only takes a Batman & Robin to offset the genre for 8 years. And though Marvel's in an inarguable upswing, they've got a couple of Captain America movies, the Dolph Lundgren Punisher, (shuddder) Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (also set for a resurrection in 2008), etc. that give me more than enough concern about license treatment.

But Kevin Feige on the Marvel licensing side looks to be a rockstar, so that mitigates a bunch of my concern.

Regardless, the announcements are exciting...

UPDATED: Check out a really funny lead-in to this press release over at Kotaku.com. Fellow geeks, deys my peeps ...