Marvel Comics superheroes have never had a higher profile than they have this summer. 'Captain America: The First Avenger' is about to hit theaters Friday, joining releases of 'Thor' and 'X-Men: First Class' from earlier this year, a popular 'Iron Man' series, and an upcoming 'Spider-man' reboot. 'The Early Show' (weekdays, 7AM on CBS) caught up with Axel Alonso, named editor-in-chief of Marvel in January, to talk about Marvel and the future of comics.

They began in a comic book shop, where Alonso handed anchor Jeff Glor a few books. "These are all little pieces of history you hold in your hands," he said. Captain America, it was noted, debuted in the spring of 1941. At that time, no one could have imagined such a full-color, live action, CGI-enhanced version of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's creation coming to the big screen.

Somebody tell Kenneth Branagh he needs to go back for re-shoots on 'Thor.' With Chris Hemsworth as his guest, George Lopez decided to challenge his hammer prowess on 'Lopez Tonight' (Weeknights, 12AM ET on TBS).

"I want to challenge Thor, the God of Thunder to see if he can beat me at a game of Whac-a-Mole," Lopez said.

Complete with viking hats for "safety," as Hemsworth indicated, it was a brutal challenge. Sure, Hemsworth and Lopez spent as much time hitting one another with their mallets as they did the moles in the game, but in the end there could be only one.

When 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' (Weeknights, 12AM ET on ABC) started, there was something different on the set. Being the astute detective that he is, Jimmy Kimmel deduced right away that Guillermo had been replaced by a cardboard cutout. So he went in search of him.

Apparently, Guillermo had decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo rather than do the show. "I cannot come tonight," he told Jimmy. "I'm sick."

When Jimmy told him there were guests and a show to do and he needed security, Guillermo insisted he had a guest, too. Then, Chris Hemsworth joined him in the celebration.

"That's not your guest," Kimmel said. "That's my guest."

After Rene Russo's appearance on 'The Tonight Show' (Weeknights, 11:35PM on NBC), there's a whole new reason to go to theaters and see 'Thor' when it comes out May 6, 2011. Apparently, Russo struggled in a certain way to play the role of the title character's mother, Frigga.

"The guy looks like he eats superheroes for breakfast," she told Jay Leno's audience. She was so enraptured with talking about how yummy Chris Hemsworth was, she ignored the host and didn't seem to realize the film had come out yet, asking the audience if they'd seen him in that yet.

"Where's the love scene?" she asked.

Pop Culture and television icon Joss Whedon might be the director on the upcoming Marvel Comics superhero movie, 'The Avengers.' This isn't one of those cartoon movies either.

If he gets the job, it's a lot of pressure on Joss. 'The Avengers' is the intended target movie of all these superhero movies that Marvel is pumping out, including 'Iron Man,' 'Captain America,' 'Thor,' and 'The Incredible Hulk.' Even worse, with Disney in the mix Joss would have to answer to a lot of corporate suits (which is rumored to be the reason that he walked away from the 'Wonder Woman' movie).

Also, Joss' last movie was 'Serenity,' which was a cult hit and a good movie but not a box office smash. For 'The Avengers' movie to work, it must make major cash. While my heart sings at the possibility of Joss getting into the franchise, experience tells me that this is no more than a pipe dream.

One question I've had with the Disney acquisition of Marvel is how the House of the Mouse is going to deal with certain un-P.C. franchises. The one which came to mind was the comic series Marvel Zombies, which deals with an alternate Earth in which all superheroes were turned into flesh-eating undead and consumed the rest of the world's populace.

While I don't think I"ll be getting my answer anytime soon (perhaps the zombies will simply get locked in the Disney vault), some animator decided to redo the introductions to the 1960's Marvel Comics television cartoons in the zombie style. The original cartoons were essentially stop-motion comics of the original Lee/Kirby works. It's rather impressive how accurately the animator duplicates and parodies the original intros.

These videos can either be taken with humor or disgust as Zombie Captain America decapitates several soldiers and the heads of Norse Gods are thrown around. I leave it to you to judge for yourself. The videos are after the jump.

[via Topless Robot]

While this news doesn't only affect television, it does affect the industry enough to warrant a mention since both companies have historically had a television presence. Disney has purchased Marvel Entertainment for about $4 billion.

So does this mean we'll be seeing Spider-Mickey cartoons in the near future? Beats me. There are certainly benefits to Disney's acquisition. Marvel is predominately known as a comic book company and that market has been shrinking. However, the visibility of its characters has been growing due to the myriad of Marvel movies out there.

I'm sure words like 'synergy' and 'downsizing' are going to be used when describing this situation in the future. Will there be layoffs at Marvel? Should editor-in-chief Joe Quesada fear for his job?

My biggest concern is content interference on the part of Disney and the "toning down" of the more adult storylines and characters at Marvel in an effort to maintain the corporate image of its new parent. One can only hope that Disney lets Marvel be Marvel.

• TV Land has a Third Rock from the Sun marathon all night.
• At 8, Food Network has Easter Unwrapped.
• Nickelodeon has a new iCarly at 8, followed by new episodes of True Jackson, VIP and The Naked Brothers Band.
• At 8:30, FOX has a new Cops, then a new America's Most Wanted.
• At 9, CNBC has a new Suze Orman Show.
• Lifetime has the movie Nora Roberts' Tribute at 9.
• Sci-Fi has the movie Thor: Hammer of the Gods at 9.
• Also at 9: Hallmark has the movie Love Finds a Home.
• At 10, BBC America has a new Graham Norton Show.
• At 11, FOX has a new Mad TV.
• At 11:30, NBC has a new Saturday Night Live, with Zac Efron.
• At 1AM, Cartoon Network has a new Bleach.

Check your local TV listings for more.

After the Thor movie is released in 2010, Marvel will be doing a follow-up by releasing an animated Thor series on television. The series doesn't yet have a channel where it will be broadcast, but given the big Marvel hoopla nowadays, it probably won't be a problem to find one.

Granted, Thor isn't one of Marvel's top tier, like Spider-Man or the X-Men, but he's easily in the second tier. Given Marvel's current strategy of a shared universe of movies leading to The Avengers movie, the character will only get more popular over time.

To me, the classic Marvel cartoon remains the Spider-Man one from the 60's, but Marvel had a bunch of other cartoons in the 60's of the original Avengers characters, including Thor, based on the Kirby comics of the time. They each had some memorable, albeit brief, opening jingles. After the jump, I've included the one for Thor. Sing it! "Cross the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard..."

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a writer and supervising producer for Lost, is really expanding his horizons. On top of co-writing two episodes this season, Orientation and Collision, he also hosts a regular Lost video podcast and regularly posts updates on The Fuselage. He's also been writing an indie-comic called The Middleman, which apparently got him noticed by Marvel Comics. He's working on the Super-Skrull miniseries, an old school villian who once battled The Fantastic Four, Thor and Captain Marvel. Grillo-Marxuach is re-working Super-Skrull, to transform him from a villian to a hero. There will be four issues, starting in March.

Grillo-Marxuach said, "It's nice to do The Middleman, which is my own thing, but it's really cool, much in the same way as my work on Lost, that I get to be part of something much bigger."