The 56th annual Daytona 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race will be held on Sunday, February 23, 2014 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, FL, and who better to be on hand for this most American of sporting events than Captain America himself?

Chris Evans, best known for playing Marvel Comics’ legendary star-spangled superhero in Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, as well as the upcoming Captain America: The Winter Soldier, will serve as Grand Marshal for the race. In addition to participating in pre-race ceremonies and riding in one of the Grand Marshal cars during the pace laps prior to the green flag of the Daytona 500, Evans has been granted the honor of beginning the race with the proclamation “Drivers, start your engines.”

Paul Bettany has been a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the beginning, voicing J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony Stark’s AI butler and suit assistant in the Iron Man movies. Now the man behind the voice is about the receive one major upgrade as Bettany goes from voicing a AI butler to pivotal Avengers character, at least comic book fans hope.

The Playlist says the always reliable Daily Mail is reporting that Bettany will voice The Vision in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. The Vision, Ultron’s robotic creation, originated as a villain who eventually turns on his creator and joins the Avengers. This isn’t the first time the actor has been attached to play the character. There were rumors that J.A.R.V.I.S. would help Iron Man in a larger capacity by being upgraded to The Vision.

The deal of the day over at Things From Another World today is the Marvel’s Avengers: The Art Of The Avengers hardcover for $30.00 (that’s 40% off the list price of $49.99).

Note – this deal is only for today, Thursday, January 23, 2014, until 11:59pm PST while supplies last (and at TFAW, supplies don’t last so grab this now if you want it at a discounted price).

If/when the deal runs out, you can still get Avengers: The Art Of The Avengers hardcover edition for the slightly discounted price of $44.99 at Amazon.

Edgar Wright, who will be directing and co-writing the upcoming Ant-Man movie for Marvel for a 2015 release, made a quick blog post this morning featuring a single word and image that is sure to cause some major conversation over where the plot of the movie will be going and which character we may see don the Ant-Man costume.

While Paul Rudd has been officially cast as Ant-Man, there has been no official announcement as to which man-behind-the-mask Rudd will play. IMDB currently has Rudd tagged as “Hank Pym / Ant-Man,” and most news sites have also attributed Rudd as playing Pym, but Wright’s update may just change that.

When it comes to building cohesive “shared” comic book universes on the big screen, there can be only one. Very likely, it will always be Marvel Studios. They got there first, taking a gaggle of second-tier superhero characters whose movie rights they battled and bribed to reattain and turning them into a veritable mint that breathes, eats, and craps out lackluster imitators. Phase One had its share of troubling moments: Iron Man 2 had vast amounts of potential, but Marvel’s shaky long-term strategy and its sudden rush to get the sequel in front of the cameras — even if it meant starting without a completed script — resulted in what could have been a superior franchise installment devolving into an uninspired bit of wheel spinning.

The first Thor felt too earthbound and the side business with S.H.I.E.L.D. was obviously shoehorned into a narrative that would have worked much better without it. The studio took a major gamble with their first four movies and when The Avengers premiered in May of last year it paid off handsomely in ways few could have ever thought possible. The success of that film paved the way in grand fashion for Phase Two to take Marvel’s blockbuster bullpen of celluloid superheroes into bold and creatively rewarding territory and allow for characters like Ant-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy to get their own big-budget movie adventures coming our way sooner than we think.