I honestly don't know how Mattel's DC Universe figures will do. I mean, unlike Marvel, after the JLA, DC doesn't have the stars that Marvel does. But I do know if DCU tanks, it won't be for lack of trying—these figures look great, thanks to the amazing He-Man sculptors the Four Horsemen, and the character selections are awesome (for now). I'll be picking up a Harley Quinn as soon as I find her, and even though I'm not a Firestorm or Black Manta fan, they both look so good I'm actually considered picking them up as well. And frankly, I love that Mattel had the balls to put Superman Red n' Blue in this second wave. That kind of chutzpah should be rewarded with sale; you can buy the whole set from Entertainment Earth right here, if you don't want to stalk the toy shelves.
There aren’t a lot of moms in comic books, probably for the same reason that not many moms survive the first reel of Disney movies. Moms provide comfort, safety, a shoulder to lean on—all things that work against the dramatic structure of the building of a hero. Face it, most heroes have already lost one or both of their parents. That’s the basis for Batman's entire schtick: his mother's broken strand of pearls, lying in a puddle of Gotham gutter water.
Thankfully, there are some comic book Moms that have not only survived, but thrive. Some are supporting characters, some are heroes in their own right, but all of them deserve a card, some flowers, maybe some brunch. Here are seven comic book Moms of note.
As Newsarama's always wonderful blog points out, when Batman #676 arrives next Wednesday—the first issue of the "Batman R.I.P." storyarc—he's getting a new Batmobile, seen above. It looks reasonably slick, I think. But it's suddenly dawned on me—why the hell does Batman have little Bat-symbols on his rims?
I can't imagine the Bat-rims are part of his intimidating criminals and so forth, because frankly, they're ridiculous. All custom rims are ridiculous. No decent criminal would think a man driving a car with custom rims should be feared; they'd think he's a douchebag. If I saw a car whose rims all said "Steve" on them, I'd assume a guy named Steve drove the car, and that Steve was a huge dick.
So is Batman feeling his age? Is he trying to get down with the kids? Is this Robin's fault? Was he minutes away from putting neon underneath the car, and decided on the rims instead? Or was he afraid someone might not recognize the all-black, no-door supercar being driving by a man dressed as a bat as Batman's, and thus put his little bats on the rims so we'd all say, "Hey, nice ride! I wonder's car that is--oh, never mind"?
Frankly, I don't know the answer. But I do know, based on the above picture, Batman spent extra time making those Bat-symbols stay perfectly level, as opposed to rotating with the rims. Which is probably time he should have spent stopping crime, or something.
Dark Horse's MySpace thingie has a two-page Milk & Cheese comic from Evan Dorkin, where the two take on (cue trumpet fanfare) Furries. I was going to post that they seem like an easy target, even for two hyper-violent dairy products, but then I remembered I write a weekly post called Fan Fiction Fridays, which is like shooting highly perverted fish in a depressingly large barrel. Milk has the best line: "We'd hit Mom." Read it here. (Via Newsarama)
Well, if you can stand five pages of slightly bad weather and absolutely nothing interesting happening, the answer is probably yes. Head over to Entertainment Weekly to taste the adventure.
I said some pretty harsh stuff about Wolverine and the X-Men when it was first announced, mainly because I hate when Wolverine gets put in charge, because it's obvious that it's because he's popular, and not because of any kind of storytelling. Well, I still hate that (the animators do attempt a cop-out by having Professor X's ghost demand Wolverine take charge to avoid a dark future), but it seems everything else in this trailer looks good. There's Emma Frost, Kitty Pride, Cyclops and no Jean Grey (which is about the only time he's interesting), Sentinels, Domino, Mojo, Gambit—shit, it's like the '90s cartoon all over again, but with slightly better animation. I don't know if kids'll dig it, but it seems like X-Men comic fans should be masturbating furiously in joy.
Theoretically loyal TR reader Joe emailed me this clip of Canadian comedy group Loading.Ready.Run's Iron Man trailer parody. As it was a welcome change from invites to make my penis larger (I can do that myself, thanks!) I'm showing it here. So I'm sucker for people wearing cardboard. Sue me.
You're looking at the cover of Manga Messiah, a manga-ized version of the Gospels for those crazy kids who love the manga but haven't quite understood they're going to hell. There's so much comedy here that my brain has partially shut down, so please excuse these random thoughts:
1) Manga Messiah publisher Tyndale House plans on selling this thing in Japan. Don't they know there's already a manga Jesus in Japan, and she has huge breasts? I think this this non-hottie Jesus is going to be a tough sell.
2) Tyndale says that this was drawn by "Japan's hottest Christian manga artists," which, while cracking me up, is kind of hard to believe. This cover has OEL all over it. Isn't lying a sin?
3) See that tagline up top? "Has he come to save the world or destroy it?" I thought Christians had figured out the answer to that question about 2,000 years ago or so.
4) Manga Messiah is only the first in a biblically themed manga line; look for Manga Mutiny (Genesis through Exodus) and Manga Metamorphosis (Acts and Epistles) later this year, and after that Manga Melech, mostly about David. If there's one thing kids love, it's manga, and if there are two things kids love, it's manga and old Hebrew terms. You're looking at the hottest seller of 2009 right here.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out how I'll be spending my time in hell. I'm planning on 80% screaming in agony, and 20% sobbing in repentance.
As we've noted, Marvel's feeling pretty good today. And amidst doing rails of cocaine down rows of dozens of prostitutes (all lined up), Marvel took a moment to discuss their future plans. You can read the full press release here, but it's pretty boring and I've got the important news below:
• There will not only be an Iron Man sequel in 2010, but a Thor movie as well
• In 2011, there will be an "Avengers-themed two-picture project," including Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers
If this news has made you shit your ants, rest assured you're in good company (mine). The only sad part of the Iron Man movie for me was seeing the Sam Jackson/Nick Fury cameo and knowing it was just a huge tease, since there was no Avengers film in sight. Admittedly, there's no way to know what the movie will be, if Jackson or Downey or anyone will star in it, or it'll actually get made, but it's nice to think it might.
But I wouldn't be a nerd if I didn't find something to criticize, so here goes: I think Thor is going to flop. I don't think there's possibly a way to make a Thor movie accessible to modern movie-goers without taking away everything the comic fans love, just because of his weird mythological origins and all that. Thor has no alter-ego to speak of (don't talk to me about Donald Blake), and thus there's nothing for mainstream audiences to wrap their heads around. And I'm worried that if a Thor movie tanks, it could fuck up an Avengers movie, which strikes fear even into my cold, shriveled, black heart.
Likewise, I think it'd be a mistake to make a Captain America solo movie before an Avengers movie. Partially because Captain America's origin is 100% tied up in the Avengers, and I'm a bitter nerd who would cry if they changed it. But mostly I think given the heat of Iron Man (and potentially the Incredible Hulk), the Avengers is a sure bet right now, and a solo Cap movie would have more to gain after an Avengers movie introduced him, and not have to deal with the origin stuff. Additionally, I think you could introduce Thor in an Avengers movie, see how audiences dig Thor, and then judge if a solo movie could work.
Last but not least, I also feel that The Ultimates is pretty much the best Avengers story ever, and Marvel would be fools not to use it as a template for an Avengers movie. I'm sure they want to take out some of the dark stuff like the Wasp/Giant-Man domestic dispute, but the evil Nazi aliens storyline is gold. And it would be easy to sub in the movie Iron Man and Hulk into it. And it would serve as the perfect intro for mass audiences to Cap, which would lead naturally to a solo Cap movie.
Stay tuned for more "Enormous Nerd Rants I Come Up with When I Can't Go to Sleep" on Topless Robot. (Via Newsarama)
Because it's actually a direct-feed video, and you can tell what the hell is going on. It looks good, but after Iron Man, The Dark Knight is now the underdog in this fight. Incidentally, don't bother sending me a link to the direct-feed video of the "Jokerized" version of the trailer, because I still think it's really stupid and I hate it and I won't post it anyways. So there.
So...how did your weekend go? I finally got around to doing the laundry. Iron Man, on the other hand, earned over $100 million in three days.
It would be safe to say that the folks at Marvel Studios—who took the risk to make Iron Man on their own, as opposed to letting another studio spend the cash and reap the rewards—are thigh-deep in high-class prostitutes and mounds of cocaine at the moment. They've earned it, as here's what Iron Man has done:
• The 10th best 3-day opening ever
• The 10th movie to make $100 million in three days
• The second highest grossing non-sequel movie ever (#1 is Spider-man)
• Also made $97 million overseas, for a total of $200 million world wide..in three goddamn days
I think it's probably safe to say we'll be getting a sequel. For the TR take, I think it's the best comic movie I've ever seen. Usually origin movies are pretty clunky, just because they have to set everything up, but Iron Man is massively entertaining from start to finish. I think that's mostly to do with Robert Downey Jr., who is just a massively entertaining guy, My wife, no comic book fan, told me she would have happily watched a movie of Tony Stark drinking and womanizing pre-Iron Man, and I would have too. Go see it.
Remember that bootleg Dark Knight trailer from a few days ago that I told you not to watch? Well, don't watch this one either. Partially because it's still filmed by an epileptic in back-left of the theater on a '92 Sony Camcorder, and partially because it's the "Joker-ized" version of the same trailer—where the Joker got his hands on the trailer and did his thing to it. It sounds like a cool concept, and it is a cool concept, but if you watch it—AND YOU SHOULDN'T, GODDAMMIT LISTEN TO ME—it's execution is crap. Basically, all the Joker does is scribble over everything, draw clown faces on Bruce Wayne, arrows pointing to the Joker, glasses on Alfred (the horror!) and a bunch of bullshit scribbles everywhere else. Clever and intriguing, it is not, unless you're a second grader who also likes scribbling in the margins of things.
Michael Rosenbaum is leaving Smallville. Forgive me if I'm not more broken up, but I never really got into Smallville. I tried, honestly, but then saw an episode where there's an illegal street racing subculture in Smallville that Clark had never heard of despite living in Smallville his entire life, and I decided that was the stupidest thing ever.
Anyways, there are two important things to note about Rosenbaum/Luthor's departure; the first is that Entertainment Weekly says he will be replaced by two villains, Doomsday—the guy who killed Supes in the '90s—and an unnamed female. In the comics, Doomsday looks like this:
Since this is The CW, I assume the Smallville version of Doomsday will look like this:
The second things is that Rosenbaum wants to start "the next chapter of his life and career." Is there a spec script for Sorority Boys 2 that I'm unaware of? More importantly, wouldn't it suck if Michael Rosenbaum couldn't grow hair anymore? I think he'd be bitter as hell.
Iron Man might look to be a pretty good flick, what with the special effects, Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, and Robert Downey Jr.'s experience with playing (or being) a brilliant but drug-addled egotist. But in terms of the comics, Iron Man has long been considered by many to be a first-string character with a decidedly second-string rogues gallery. If a hero is defined by his villains, then Iron Man has been in trouble for some time, starting with his first appearance in 1963's Tales of Suspense #39. Once writers hit on Iron Man's corporate enemies, his personal battle with the bottle, and eventually his recent government stooge-ness in the events of Civil War, things got more interesting for Tony Stark and his shellhead alter ego. Before that, though, Iron Man was a concept largely rusting away, for lack of decent foes to punch in the face. Here are his 10 villains that won't be seeing any of that sweet Hollywood box office any time soon.
Free Comic Book Day happens to be this Saturday, and comic lovers and cheap bastards alike are mighty excited. You would think Topless Robot would have a list of the Worst Freebie Comics of All Time to celebrate the occasion, but as it turns out, we're kind of dumb, and ran that list a few months ago.
So we decided to celebrate the "gateway drug" nature of the event—that comic makers hope kids get hooked into buying the harder, full-priced stuff—by ranking those comics that were similarly designed to get kids to spend money on toys. Back when kids actually purchased comics, toymakers could hawk their wares in a discrete fashion without worrying about violating silly old broadcast regulations. Many rose above the mundane task and created characters and plots more complicated than backyard play; more often than not, though, most crapped out a thinly disguised shill piece crafted by what seemed like a group of hung-over people on the last day of their deadline. So take a gander at the five best and worst toy tie-in comics of all time; it'll pass the time until you get those free comics on Saturday (you cheap bastard).
Touché, DC. Touché. As soon as I say you've got nothing going on, you resurrect Barry Allen, a.k.a The Flash (well, a Flash, at any rate), the one who died in Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the mid-'80s. We can blame Grant Morrison for this, as it's his doing as shown in today's 50-cent DC Universe release.
I could go on a huge tirade about how this is pretty much the last comic death to have meant something, and now every future comic death will lack any sort of legitimacy (in fact, I think the only hero who's currently dead with any kind significance is Captain America, like he won't come back), but I doubt any of you were thinking otherwise, Barry Allen notwithstanding.
I will say with this—after bringing back Supergirl, Earth-2 Superman, Alex Luthor, and all those parallel universes—DC has now totally destroyed everything they managed to accomplish with Crisis on Infinite Earths. Well done!
Entertainment Weekly has revealed an exclusive look at Venom's new design above, and says that he's going to be called Anti-Venom. I have no feelings about this, but EW also has a collage of pics for Spidey's "New Ways to Die" summer storyarc, which includes a pic of someone standing over Kraven the Hunter's grave, which makes me think he's getting resurrected and makes me throw up in my mouth a little. Hey, sorry for three days of Marvel news in a row—I'm not trying to pimp them or shit on them, I just never hear any DC news, and thus never know what the hell is going on there.
Also, Entertainment Weekly—what the hell is up with all these comic book news exclusives recently? Why you gotta take this shit away from us? We nerd sites need something for our own, since you guys get all the comic movie news too. Kindly back the fuck off. Or hire me. One of the two.
...and that's turning their Marvel heroes in the goofiest of all horror villains, mummies, which I've learned of that to a tip from dapper TR commenter Steve Banes. It's not a stand alone project, but actually a copy of Marvel Adventures #13, where the Hulk returns to Earth and finds "Earth's Mightiest Mummies."
The reason this is cool and Marvel Apes is not—well, besides the fact that DC did J.L.Ape a decade ago—is that mummies are so goddamned ridiculous, with their wrappings and ancient Egyptian-ness. I love the idea that someone went out of their way to kill, embalm and bandage up the Marvel heroes in the present day, then someone disturbed their sarcophagi and awoke their terrible curse. That sounds like a great read.
However, far be it from me to see something wonderful and not find a way to poop all over it. Sure, Marvel Zombies was great, and this looks like an even more fun version of that. But if it's any kind of success, you know Marvel won't stop—we'll have a mediocre Marvel Vampires next year, followed by an absolutely terrible Marvel Werewolves, and finally, Creatures from the Marvel Lagoon, which will make me kill myself in despair.
There's a new Iron Man clip out today, but I've decided to show the above video instead, because jetpacks are the among few items that are cooler than everything else. This gent has dressed himself up in Iron Man team colors (yeah, it looks like a real outfit when he's flying around, but it's more like a cheap, homemade Halloween costume) and flew around Austin for a few seconds, and it's totally awesome and I'm jealous. Well done, sir. Well done indeed. (Via FilmDrunk)
As your favorite news nerd, I feel duty bound to post this bootleg version of the Dark Knight trailer, for however long it might be around (not long, I'm guessing). But I honestly ask you not to watch it—it looks like it was filmed by an epileptic holding a camcorder from 1984, transferred to a cellphone, transferred back to the camcorder and then dunked underwater for good measure. The point is it looks like shit, and a hi-res version of the trailer will be coming on Sunday at the latest when it's officially released. I'll post it, I swear. But don't spoil it by watching it in the worst conditions possible. (Via WWTDD)
I can't thank Newsarama's blog for reminding me of this, but yeah...I heard about this around NYCC, but I promptly blocked it out of my mind because it's so depressing. That image above is Marvel Apes, which—you'd best be sitting down, because is pretty wacky—imagines of Marvel Superheroes...were apes! Isn't that hilarious? Because instead of Spider-man, it's Spider-monkey! And instead of Iron Man, it's Iron Ape! (Or maybe Iron Ape is Iron Fist. I kind of refuse to find out.) I mean, it was funny when D.C. did it as J.L.Ape back in 1999 (!), so it should be extra funny now, a decade later, right?! Right?
Intriguingly, while I instantly hate the comic Marvel Apes, I kind of like the idea of Marvel Apes action figures. I'm complicated like that.
McFarlane Toy revealed its San Diego Comic Con exclusives, and I'll be darned if it isn't a kind of cool Spawn figure. Well, really it's a Halo 3 Spartan figure, painted in Spawn colors, and called a Hell Spartan. Hey, it made me pay attention, and I haven't thought about Spawn figures in at least five years. It's going to be sold with one of those lame "active camoflage" Spartans, which just means cheap clear plastic, and there'll be no separating the two when you get 'em at SDCC. Hope you don't mind.
You'd think with the Joker running around Gotham City that Batman would have better things to do than set elaborate, bat-shaped fires on the sides of buildings, but as this new Dark Knight poster shows, apparently not. I think this is setting up for a major fight between Batman and Smokey the Bear in the next movie, though.
Christopher Nolan's reboot of the Batman franchise has proved successful with his genius casting of fanboy-approved Christian Bale as the titular hero. With Cillian Murphy as the Scarecrow in Batman Begins and the late Heath Ledger's spine-tingling turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight (slated for a July 18 release), Batman's villains are getting better and better. Below, Topless Robot shares some other casting suggestions for future Batman characters, both good and bad. We'd hate to see the franchise take a sharp turn towards WTF (cough*Spider-man*cough), so we've thought long and hard to come up with actors adequate to suit up in Gotham City.
Turns out even DC's mightiest heroes couldn't stop the evil triumvirate of a terrible script, the delay caused by the writer's strike and Australia's unwillingness to give them tax breaks. Given how stupid the script was supposed to have been, we should probably all send the forces of evil a thank you card. (Via IESB)
Remember Marvel's Mangaverse, the Kia Asamiya X-Men run, or any of the other times Marvel has tried to siphon off some of the huge manga audience for it's American superhero books? Yes? No? Doesn't matter, because none of those ideas worked. Well, Marvel has had the same idea yet again, and this time time they're going to make Del Rey do it. Del Rey will co-publish manga-style versions of Wolverine (that's Wolvie above) and the X-Men in 2009, in manga format and all that. No Japanese artists will be used or harmed in the making of these books. And yet again, the regular comics fans won't buy them because they'd rather just buy the regular comics, and manga fans won't buy them because they'd rather buy popular manga. Although I do appreciate that the X-Men artist has drawn the Beast exactly like Totoro.
There are more pics of Kitty Pride (looking like Yuffie from FFVII), Iceman (bishonen) and Nightcrawer (furry bishonen) and some Wolverine characters I've never heard of here.
One of the big NYCC announcements from this past weekend was that Lee will be making a new superhero universe" for Richard Branson's Virgin Comics, which I had totally forgotten existed until this news. So why didn't I bother to post on this yesterday? Well, because I'm reasonably confident Lee's new superheroes will be totally lame.
I'm not ragging on Stan Lee. The dude is awesome. There's a reason Marvel is beating DC, and it's all Lee's superheroes. But I think the dude is finished; his biggest work in the last decade has been Stripperella, and none of his comic stuff has been interesting at all. That's fine—he's done more than enough already—but just listen to this quote from Lee about his new work:
"What a dream assignment!" enthused the always-ebullient Lee. "I can't wait to start pitting my newest, most exciting superheroes against comicdom's most powerful, diabolical super villains and then have the fun of tossing them into far-out, thrill-a-minute adventures to challenge the readers' imagination! And who better to share in the fun, creating wondrous new worlds without limit, than the incredibly talented and dedicated guys at Virgin Comics!"
That quote is not from someone with his best work ahead of him. It's fine, Stan; we all love you. Just relax.
Seriously, no sober man should have to watch the above video, which is—I am shitting you not—some kind of Bollywood movie musical starring "Superman" and a "woman in a Spider-man outfit" dancing and romancing for five long, batshit insane minutes. There's dancing and flying and dancing and rescuing a couple and dancing and throwing people into the atmosphere and dancing and oh god, I'm going to have to have scotch for breakfast.
Also, I'm almost positive Luke Cage is one of the background dancers in the song's finale (look for him around 5:30). Sweet Christmas indeed. (Via Gorilla Mask and Have You Seen This)
There's a lot of comic news from NYCC that aren't quite post-worthy on their own, so I'm going to save those for tomorrow, but leave you with one semi-interesting tidbit: Marvel's going to adapt Ender's Game into a comic, along with its total-grab-for-cash companion novel Ender's Shadow. Also recently announced as a video game (and a movie that will never come out, ever), Ender's Game is a sci-fi classic by Orson Scott Card, who's been working for Marvel on comics like Ultimate Iron Man for a while now.
Okay, I don't really get most comic adaptations. I don't understand who buys comic adaptations of movies, because there's obviously already a perfectly good—and generally more exciting, thanks to the medium—movie to see. Novels make a bit more sense when it's a rich fantastical world that's hard to visualize, like Marvel's recent and pretty damn successful Dark Tower comics. But Ender's Game? It's a big psychodrama that's like 95% about young boys playing war games, running around and shooting at each other and sweating and showering together--
Yes, that insane announcement from last week is all true; the savagely retarded fighters of Mortal Kombat will tussle with the often near-omnipotent heroes of the DC Universe. In the above clip, Sub-Zero trades punches with Batman, and it seems all right, possibly because of Batman's large experience with fighting ice-based people. But just imagine Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Hawkman in Batman's place, and it's just goes straight to the goofy hell.
I have one suggestion on how to save this—just own the goofiness, and have DC-related fatalities. If I could play as Wonder Woman, wrap my lasso around Scorpion's neck, and pull his head and spinal column out? Well, that'd be a game worth playing.
Although I'm white and wasn't allowed to read the Black Panther comics, I always liked him as a superhero—I mean, he was an African king who was smart and a badass and took care of Africa and supervillains and joined the Avengers and stuff, unlike The Phantom, who just kind of patronizingly wandered around Africa with no real powers other than being in charge of the continent because of his sense of manifest destiny. Anyways, I think it's super cool that BET has announced that it's going to have a Black Panther cartoon premiering in early 2009. One can only hope he tussles with racist superheroes like the Supremacists (why don't white superheroes ever fight white racist superheroes? Weird).
There's too much info for me to be cute with it, so here's the run-down:
MARVEL LEGENDS (Hasbro) Hulk Wave: Savage She-Hulk, Wendigo, Hulk - The End, Scar - Son of Hulk, World War Hulk - King Hulk, Grey Hulk, Doc Sampson, and Absorbing Man. These will be released as two waves, one in August and one in October, and the build-a-figure will be the 15-inch Fin Fang Foom.
??? Wave: Red Hulk, Spiral, Adam Warlock, Union Jack, Silver Savage, Black Spider-Man and Wolverine Black. They'll be out in September and will be a Target exclusive wave.
Nemesis Wave: Nova, Black Bolt, Tigra, Tim Bradstreet Punisher with camo variant, and Yellow Daredevil with red variant, and Astonishing X-Men Beast. The build-a-figure will be Nemesis, natch. This wave is now a Wal-Mart exclusive, and due in December.
Two-packs: Elektra/Ronin, Ultimate Classic Cap/Ultimate Fury, SHIELD Agent/Red Hand Ninja, Forge/Wolverine, Skrull/Kree and three others.
DC UNIVERSE CLASSICS (Mattel) Wave 4: Cyborg, Batman Beyond, Captain Atom (with gold variant), Wonder Woman (with Artemis variant) and Ares. The build-a-figure is Despero, and the wave will be out in the summer.
Wave 5: Amazo, Atom, Riddler (in his business suit), Eradicator and Black Lightning. The build-a-figure is Metallo. This wave is a Wal-Mart exclusive, due in the fall.
Wave 6: Hawkman, Black suit n' mullet Superman, Mr. Miracle and more. Due in the fall.
Two-packs: Batgirl/Azreal and Light Ray/Orion are Toys "R" Us exclusives, out in August.
Before we get into the New York Comic Con coverage, let's watch this Spirit teaser trailer. Think of it as the pickled ginger before the sushi of news arrives. Do you think Frank Miller realizes that there's an appreciable difference between movies and comic books? Because in the trailer above, I saw a lot of scenes and heard dialog that would make for a decent comic, but when shown as a motion picture, are goofy as hell.
I've not read The Spirit (I know, I know), so I have no idea if he really lives in an empty loft with two dozen cats or if that's Frank Miller just doing his Frank Miller thing along with the all-black suit, the city-lover-mother thing and the rest. Can anyone tell me?
There's a trailer for a new Spider-man video game out today called Web of Shadows, but it's goofy and boring and shows no gameplay whatsoever, which is fine because I'd rather show this Lego batman clip instead:
Yes, it's the same old Lego gameplay, but if you watch closely, you'll see that the Riddler can beat a man with his cane so savagely that his little yellow head comes off. I don't think it's possible to love this game any more than I currently do.
Oh man. Remember how awesome all those Capcom Street Fighter vs. Marvel Superheroes video games were back in the late '90s? Well, Midway and DC have been paying attention, and now—a mere 13 years later—they've announced the next Mortal Kombat game, which is—I am shitting you not—Mortal Kombat vs. DC.
Oh yes. We're talking Sub-Zero, Raiden and Goro fighting against Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Besides the fact that Mortal Kombat has sucked out loud since 2000, think about this:
• There's a rumor going around that the game will not have blood or fatalities, which I'm prepared to accept as 100% true. There's no fucking way DC is going to let Scorpion rip out Wonder Woman's spine.
• If the Mortal Kombat guys can't perform fatalities, Mortal Kombat is literally the shittiest fighting game ever. Ever. It's like watching baseball without beer (Homer Simpson: "Wait a minute...this game sucks!")
Additionally, I have a theory I'd like to share with you guys. Think about this: in this game, Superman is going to be fighting, say, Kano, and Superman could possibly lose. Sounds ridiculous, right? Now think about those Capcom games, where the Hulk would punch Chun Li and Chun Li wouldn't explode in a fine red mist. While it might not be comics-accurate, it did work for the game. I'm not exactly sure why, but with the Marvel heroes, you could kind of accept the equalization of the field.
Now, maybe we can do that with DC heroes like Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, and obviously Batman is no problem. But Superman? You can't do it. He's Superman. He can move the goddamn moon. There's just no way the nerd mind can justify a loss to any of Mortal Kombat's roster of jackasses, and likely most of the DC heroes too. I don't think you can have Superman in a fighting game, period, because of this same problem. But I don't think the problem will be any more glaring than it will be in MK vs DC.
Entertainment Weekly's got a great article about the problems with The Incredible Hulk movie, specifically the post-production battle between star/writer/uncredited producer/auteur Ed Norton and Marvel. You could read it here, but I can save you some time by telling you the good bits:
• Marvel wanted an action-packed, more commercially viable, less than 2 hours version of the film.
• Ed Norton and director Louis Leterrier wanted a slightly more "meditative" 2 hour, 15-minute version.
• Marvel didn't care.
• Ed Norton was irked but understood why Marvel wanted the more commercial version (after the first Hulk flopped), and admits their version is indeed more commercial.
• It was only after TR sister blog Deadline Hollywood Daily called the Norton/Marvel-thing a "feud" and the press freaked out that Norton and Marvel stopped talking to each other. (Awesome! I wish TR could do that. Maybe someday!)
• Ed Norton gave EW a 257-word statement saying that the whole thing was a normal, if passionate collaboration as happens on virtually any movie, and he's cool with everybody and excited about the movie...
• ...but he still hasn't done any press.
I didn't see any Hulk art that didn't bore me, so the pic above is "Norton Defiant" by the always awesome Brandon Bird.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a shirt as simultaneously geeky and cool as these Technics shirts, featuring DJ-ing versions of Marvel's greatest superheros. There's honestly nothing I can say that will make these any cooler (me telling you that they're $50 certainly doesn't count), so I'm just going to tell you to head over to DMC to look at them all, including shirts of Spider-man, Hulk (so awesome), Black Panther, Silver Surfer (also so awesome), and more. (Via Gizmodo)
By Brian Heiler
By Rebecca Kelley
One of the big NYCC announcements from this past weekend was that Lee will be making a new superhero universe" for Richard Branson's Virgin Comics, which I had totally forgotten existed until this news. So why didn't I bother to post on this yesterday? Well, because I'm reasonably confident Lee's new superheroes will be totally lame. 
