Wanna see some movie trailers?

December

• King Kong
• The Producers
• Fun with Dick and Jane
• The Matador

January

• Underworld: Evolution

February

• Curious George
• The Pink Panther
• Firewall

March

• V for Vendetta
• Pulse

July

• Monster House

"Superman Returns" teaser trailer to air during Smallville

UPDATED: See the trailer here.

The Teen of Steel will meet the Man of Steel this week. During tomorrow night's Smallville (8 pm ET on the WB), the first Superman Returns teaser trailer will air.

The teaser trailer will also be included in front of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which opens Friday.

News from DC's Retailer Meeting

DC held a meeting for retailers in Canda over the weekend. Here is some of the news revealed:

• As noted from the early February solicit information, Wonder Woman, Flash, Gotham Central and Batman: Gotham Knights will be cancelled.
• More info on the weekly 52* series: Each issue will contain 20 pages of stories with back-ups. Issues #2-#11 will feature a 10-part “History of the DCU” story. Focusing on the DCU's minor characters, there will be six stories throughout the run. It will cost no more than $2.99 and launches in the second week of May.
• Hawkman changes to Hawkgirl with issue #50 as part of “One Year Later…”
• June and July 2006 will see one new major series launch each week; and in July – one new major high-profile creative team launch.
• Batman/Spirit will ship in June, with the new ongoing Darwyn Cooke Spirit series starting in June.
• Supeboy from Earth-Prime is apparently getting a new costume.

Hmmm...

Aquaman Swims to WB

Smallville's Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are set to produce a pilot for a weekly series featuring the early years of the underwater-breathing, oft-maligned hero.

According to Variety, the show, however, is NOT a spinoff of Smallville, where the character recently made an appearance. Alan Ritchin, who played Arthru (AC) Curry, will not be playing the role for the pilot/series.

Infinite Implications

DC's solicitations for February hit Monday at 5pm, but some sneaky internet folks got a sneak peek at them. Of course, Infinite Crisis continues to impact the entire DCU. First, let's look at the solicitation and Perez cover for Infinite Crisis #5 (of 7):

IC #5 solicit info: "The DCU shakes apart as Superman of Earth 2 finally confronts our Superman. Meanwhile, heroes are disappearing throughout the DC Universe, a transformed villain returns, and the mystics of every world and dimension seek help from the very Spirit that is destroying them."

Here's some other intriguing info from the February solicitations, mostly tying into Infinite Crisis in some way:

• Gotham Central, Gotham Knights and WONDER WOMAN(?!) cancelled after Feb. issues.
• No issue of Flash
• Superman books: 3-part history of Earth-2 Superman through Crisis on Infinite Earths
• Supergirl solicit: "There can only be one true Supergirl, and there's only one person who can help Kara win that title: Superman! They've thrown down before, but now Superman has to stop Supergirl, even if it means the most unexpected death of all! Don't miss this special issue guest-starring Batman and Wonder Woman!"
• Infinite Crisis Secret Files: "Don't miss this important side chapter of the INFINITE CRISIS saga! Superman of Earth-2, his wife, Lois Lane of Earth-2, Alex Luthor of Earth-3 and Superboy from Earth Prime: the last survivors of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. What happened to them after CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS is finally revealed here for the first time by one of the masterminds behind that landmark event: writer Marv Wolfman! Learn what these heroes have been doing, how they have changed, and how their reappearance will force the DCU's heroes to reexamine themselves."
• JSA solicit: "Legendary JSA writer Paul Levitz makes his stellar return to the DCU with superstar artist George Perez for an important chapter of INFINITE CRISIS in a story featuring the members of original JSA: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman!"
• Legion of Superheroes solicit references the team being the "greatest heroes of the multiverse."

Hmmmm.....

Keep Away!

Try not to get addicted to this game.

Yoda Gets Down

Wolfman Howls at DC Again

At Wizard World Texas' "Infinite Crisis Counseling" panel this past Friday, Dan DiDio, recently promoted to Senior Vice President — Executive Editor, DC Universe, announced that Marv Wolfman, the chief architect of Crisis on Infinite Earths (with artist/co-plotter Gerorge Perez) 20 years ago is celebrating the anniversary with a return to the characters that he and Perez created even before that: "Marv is co-writing a couple of issues of Teen Titans with Geoff (Johns) and he's co-writing the Teen Titans Annual with Geoff."

DiDio also noted the Perez has a lot of work lined up with DC and that Wolfman has several pitches in with the publisher.

Other tidbits from the panel:

• Many DCU titles will be ending by the time Infinite Crisis is over, and "50 to 75 percent" of the remaining titles will have new creative teams
• 52, the weekly comic that fills the gap between Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later," starts in May, two weeks after the last issue of Infinite Crisis
• Zero Hour will be covered in Infinite Crisis, but Hypertime will not.
• The positive response to Jason Todd's return as the Red Hood in Batman indicates that he will be around awhile. How he has returned and how it ties into "The Death in the Family," the story where he was seemingly killed, will be the focus of the upcoming Batman Annual
• Blue Beetle Ted Kord, killed in Countdown to Infinite Crisis, will remain dead
• Speculation that Jim Corrigan, the corrupt cop from Gotham Central, will become the new Spectre is likely correct. Corrigan was the name of the original name of Spectre's human host . He was replaced by fallen hero Hal Jordan in recent years, but the Spectre is currently without a human host since Jordan returned to the mantle of Green Lantern

Read full coverage of the panel here.

Whoa!

Sandman Confirmed for Spider-Man 3

Thomas Haden Church as Flint Marko aka The Sandman

Revisiting "Crisis on Infinite Earths"

With DC’s Infinite Crisis now in full swing, the original series upon which it is based, 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths (COIE) is back in the spotlight as well.

In the latest issue of Wizard, COIE creators, writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez, provide DVD-style commentary for the series, providing page-by-page, panel-by-panel insights into their work and influences. The issue is out now and probably worth checking out just for that, but you can get a taste for free. Wizard's website has extra commentary that didn't make it into the current issue. You can check out the extras here and here.

Wolfman talks more about the impact of Crisis, and his upcoming Secret files project for DC that bridges the the past Crisis with the current one, in an interview at Newsarama. Here's what he says about the new project:

All I'll say is it answers nearly all the questions that have been asked about DC continuity for the past 20 years and more. So it's somewhat crucial to the entire Infinite Crisis series. And it provides a link between George and my story and this one. Let me say that Dan Didio, Geoff Johns and Eddie Berganza have been wonderful to work with, especially Geoff who not only was great and helpful in many, many ways to numerous to fully detail, but he also very patiently had to keep explaining things to me so I didn't screw up some of the very carefully worked ideas they had come up with.

I'm re-reading COIE now, and after reading Marv's recent Crisis novel, and the first issue of infinite Criris, it's like I'm reading the story for the first time. The story and art are still phenomenal. For further proof that Perez is still the master, check out his covers for Infinite Crisis:

Issue #1
Issue #2
Issue #3
Issue #4

Issue #2 hits comic stores next week.

Infinite Crisis #4

Here's the gorgeous George Perez cover to January's Infinite Crisis #4, an homage to the cover of the first issue of it predecessor, Crisis on Infinite Earths. If you can't see the pic below (or if you just want to see it bigger), just click on the header above.

For the rest of DC's books in January, click here.

Watchmen named one of Time's All-time Novels

This week Time magazine released its list of the Top 100 novels released since 1923. Named to the list -- the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons' graphic novel materpiece Watchmen.

From the article:

Told with ruthless psychological realism, in fugal, overlapping plotlines and gorgeous, cinematic panels rich with repeating motifs, Watchmen is a heart-pounding, heartbreaking read and a watershed in the evolution of a young medium.

If you haven't read it, you can't call yourself a comic book fan.

Bring Your Heroes Home

Tomorrow is a big day of superheroes on DVD fans, especially Batman fans. Look for:

• Batman Begins arrives in one - and two-disc versions.
• The four previous Batman movies are available as individual two-disc sets, or as an eight-disc collection
• The direct-to DVD animated Batman vs. Dracula debuts (it will also premiere on Cartoon Network this Saturday at 7 pm)
• Batman - The Complete 1943 Movie Serial Collection -- the second Batman movie serial from the 1940s
• The Adventures of Superman Complete First Season (the 1950s George Reeves live-action show)

In December, the next sets of the animated Batman and Superman series from the 1990s arrive, and in Janurry, look for The Flash: The Complete TV Series, The Adventrues of Superman Complete Second Season, and Lois and Clark: The Complte Second Season.

Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys!

Find this and other words and phrases coined by The Simpsons here.

Infinite Crisis: Before and After

DC has now definitely stated the Infinite Crisis is a direct sequel to the 20-year-old Crisis on Infinite Earths. But how are they linked? In an awesome surprise announcement, Marv Wolfman will provide that answer.

Wolfman joins his Crisis collaborator George Perez on the Infinite Crisis team. Perez is providing alternate covers (with Jim Lee) for the 7-issue series. And Wolfman will explore the link between the crises in Infinite Crisis Secret Files, scheduled for February. Executive Editor Dan DiDio explains:

“It pulls the curtain back on the DCU and explains so much about what’s going on, as well as what’s been going on in the DCU since the original Crisis, and clearly shows how the two are connected. It’s also probably one of the most ambitious stories told in a Secret Files, ever. Not only does it address Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis, it also explains some of the anomalies in the DC Universe itself.”

With a page count of 40-48 pages, the Secret Files will utilize a number of artists, each depicting a different time period of the DCU's 20-year post-Crisis history.

With Wolfman showing what leads up to the Infinite Crisis, who's handling what comes after it?

The weekly series 52* will explore that "One Year Later" gap that happend in between issues of the Crisis and in all DCU titles afterward. The superstar writing team for this ambitious 52-issue weekly series is Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid -- and Keith Giffen.

Giffen, who popularized or created many of the characters getting treated so roughly in the events leading up to Infinite Crisis (Max Lord, Blue Beetle, Rocket Red), is the guy who will be providing the consistency between all 52 issues with plot and and breakdowns. A year-long weekly comic is extremely ambuitious, but Giffen says the team is up to the challenge:

I was a little concerned at first, filling 52 issues of a comic, which is basically about four years worth of monthly comic book time, that we might have a little bit of trouble. But after having sat down with this creative team, now my concern is, we might have to cut some stuff out!

I mean, you sit there and Grant Morrison alone cobbles up enough ideas to fill months and months and months of books and storylines, and you combine it with the other guys involved -- I mean, c'mon. It's astonishing that so many people are going, "aw, they'll never pull it off." Because I'm looking at the people involved and I'm saying, "how can we not pull this off? And how can it not be something incredible?"

J.G. Jones will be providing covers. Interior artists have not yet been announced, nor has the price of each weekly issue.

Infinite Issues!

As if an 80-page Countdown and 4 six-issue mini-series (not to mention a 4-issue mini within a mini, and a 4-issue JLA arc) were not enough set-up for the 7-issue Infinite Crisis, the stories told in those mini-series will continue in one-shot specials scheduled to appear throughout the run of Infinite Crisis.

As the recently concluded Days of Vengeance and The OMAC Project demonstrate, the stories didn’t exactly end with their final issues. Not only will they continue in Infinite Crisis, but DC has announced 32-page one-shots for each of the four mini-series that will not only resolve the storylines, but demonstrate exactly how they will tie into Infinite Crisis.

For readers who like to collect stories in trade format, this could present a problem. Trade paperbacks of all 4 mini-series have already been announced for November and December, so they will be out before these specials hit. So what does that mean? DiDio told Newsarama he isn't worrying about that:

"Yeah, the guys in Collected Editions want to kill me. Thing is, I’m approaching this story the same way we approached things before there were collected editions to worry about ... I’m worried about doing the best comics, and I figure it can be collected as things move forward. These are good problems to have though. I want to make sure that everyone is excited about what’s coming out at that moment, and we’ll make sure that everything of importance is collected somewhere down the line. Honestly, we did give this a lot of thought, but in the end, I didn’t want collected editions driving the way the story will be told.”

The OMAC Project trade paperback, will not only include the 6-issue main story, but also the 80-page Countdown to Infinite Crisis and the final part of the "Sacrifice' story from Wonder Woman, where the heroine killed Max Lord (a reprint of tht issue contained a brief recap of what happend in the first 3 parts of Sacrifice, and presumably what will be included as well.). For $14.99, this TPB, which appears in November, is a great deal.

But now, you learn that the story continues in another book -- where will that be collected -- as part of the Infinite Crisis collection?

Guess we'll have to see. Since I'm not patient enought to wait for trade on this massive story, i guess it;s irrleavant to me. I'll be buying the individual issues AND the eventual collections. DC has got me!

Here's the info on the TPBs of the other three series:

• Day of Vengeance
• Villains United
• Rann/Thanagar War

Crisis Counseling: One More Time

Adapted from reports on Comic Book Resources....

Two weeks ago, Wizard held its first WizardWorld convention in Boston. While not a major event in terms of news or announcements, a few tidbits about DC, Infinite Crisis, and what happens next were revealed. DC Executive VP Dan DiDio called the convention his “last chance to be vague, lie, and beat around the bush” before Infinite Crisis #1 hit stores.

Here’s a round-up of some of the noteworthy comments from a few different panels:

• Infinite Crisis is not a reboot; it will not restart continuity
• Infinite Crisis is a direct sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. Marv Wolfman, writer of the original Crisis is writing a Secret Files special that will show exactly how they are connected, explaining some of the inconsistencies that have cropped up in continuity in the last 20 years
• The origins of Jason Todd’s return are related to Infinite Crisis, but will be dealt with in Batman, rather than in the mini-series.
• Infinite Crisis is about what happens when the pillars of the DCU – Superman, Batman, and Wonder woman—stop holding the universe up
• “You can’t have a Crisis without a Psycho Pirate or a dead Flash” This quote from DiDio has been interpreted as meaning that either Barry Allen (a dead Flash) will be appearing or that one of the currently alive Flashes (Wally West, Jay Garrick or Kid Flash Bart Allen) will die. Psycho Pirate, a major character from the original Crisis is currently appearing in the JSA: Classified arc dealing with Power Girl’s origin. The Pirate’s words and action in that story reference the original Crisis.
• DiDio would not comment on whether the new Crisis will see a return to multiple earths, though many recent storylines seem to be hinting at that, most prominently, the aforementioned JSA: Classified arc.
• In reference to writer Mark Waid’s recent comment that the DCU, including Batman, will “lightening up” after the Crisis, DiDio said that Batman is a central part of the events up to and including Infinite Crisis. As a result, Batman would be doing a lot of self-examination before he'll be able to move forward.
• After the series, there will be new series, cancelled series, new costumes and new characters. When write Greg Rucka commented that anything can and will be changed, DiDio responded: "It's as though these characters all exist on multiple Earths!"

For more on what DiDio, Rucka and others from DC had to say in Boston click here, here, and here

Zod for President

General Zod for President

Looking Back on "Identity Crisis"

This Wednesday, DC's long-awaited Infinite Crisis #1 hits comic shops. While the plans for this mega-crossover, considered a sequel to 1985-86's Crisis on Infinite Earths, were in the works for months and even years, the first sign that things were changing in the DCU that readers saw was last year's Identity Crisis.

Identity Crisis was not always supposed to be the start of the countdown to Infinite Crisis, as author Brad Meltzer recalls in a recent interview conducted to coincide with the hardcover release of the controversial seven-part story where the JLA reveals a secret past.

"When I started Identity Crisis, it was supposed to be a small, emotional story. That's it," Meltzer says. "Those were literally the words they said to me. And the key word (was) small."

It wasn't until Meltzer was done writing the story and shared the scripts with DC Vice President/Executive Editor Dan DiDio and Infinite Crisis writer Geoff Johns that Identity Crisis became part of a much larger storyline. Meltzer recalls how excited DiDio was when he read the scripts, and how eager he was to use various elements-- the JLA's decision to erase Batman's memories, the resurgence of certain villains-- in the other titles.

References to the events of Identity Crisis were reflected in most DCU titles, and dealt with directly in Flash and JLA, both of which were written by Infinite Crisis writer Geoff Johns (JLA was co-written by OC scribe Allan Heinberg).

Some of the books directly setting up Infinite Crisis also reference those events, such as the 80-page Countdown to Infinite Crisis, the mini-series The OMAC Project (revealing the depth of Batman's paranoia, more relevant now that we know the reason for it) and Villains United, which reveals the super-villain community organizing for protection now the the JLA's secret of mind-wiping villains has been revealed). Even Days of Vengeance, the magic-based mini-series, has the mystery killer from Identity Crisis as the catalyst of that story.

But Meltzer notes one important thing in his interview that sets his book apart from what has come since -- it's the only story that's completely self-contained. I don't completely agree with that.

While the mystery from issue 1 is resolved by the end, there are several plot points that are NOT wrapped up in the book, most notably, how much do Batman and Superman now know about the JLA's secret and who is Captain Boomerang's son's mother? The answers are revealed, but not within the pages of Identity Crisis. You have to read subsequent issues of Batman, Adventures of Superman, JLA and Flash to learn those answers (and I haven't read all of them yet myself).

That said, however, Identity Crisis is a great read for DC superhero fans and worth the $25 price tag for the hardcover (a cheaper softcover version is likely at least a year away). In additon to great art by penciller Rags Morales and inker Michael Bair, it offers mysteries, secrets and a look at super-heroes' real weaknesses. And it ain't kryptonite.