Hey guys, did you know that we're only six episodes of the podcast away from 100 episodes? And next month our website turns 3 years old? (Don't do the math with the site and the podcast. If you already did, yeah, we know, we're lazy.)

In order to celebrate, we're going to combine some of our favorite things. Firstly, our love of New York Comic Con. Thing the second: Burgers & Cupcakes.

On Friday, October 8th, (2010), we'll be at New York Comic Con in New York City. On Friday night, we'll be at 458 9th Avenue, between 35th and 36th streets. That's where Burgers & Cupcakes is, and that's what we'll be enjoying. If you're interested in joining the party, bring some new (or gently used) comics with you to donate to our Comics Care Package project. While you're at it, buy some raffle tickets. Want to know what kind of prizes we've got? Hit the jump link to find out.

The Hollywood Reporter's Heat Vision blog reported yesterday that Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, the writers of "Iron Man," have been hired to write the script for the live action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" film being produced by Michael Bay. I'm just going to say this is a good thing. "Iron Man" is great. I mostly tend to attribute this to the awesomeness of Robert Downey, Jr. and how cool looking all the action sequences are, but someone had to come up with all that cool stuff for Robert Downey, Jr. to do. Now, I don't know for a fact that they came up with all of it, but someone said "and then all the flight attendants ARE ALSO STRIPPERS!" That could very well be these two men, and, if so, they are brilliant. They also wrote "Punisher: War Zone," which I've heard is the best of the Punisher movies. Of course, this is like saying "it was the least painful spleen rupture," but I can't judge. I haven't seen it. Did it have strippers?

(Katie Cook sketch card from SDCC. Charlie Ramirez is a lucky guy.)

Some days I'm like "Yeah, America is obnoxious and fat." Other days I'm like "Holy crap, we just invented a video game that simulates life in Medieval Times."

So far this week, there's been a lot to get excited about in the good ol' US of A. For instance, yesterday saw the dawn of a new "food specific" store in the vein of M&M's World and the Hershey Store: Pop Tart World. You can get limited edition flavors of Pop Tarts, make a mix-n-match box of flavors with an automated vending machine, get customized t-shirts, print your picture on a box, or try Pop Tart sushi.

Pop. Tart. Sushi.

"We did an internal tasting here at the building, and it was the winner," said Etienne Patout, senior director.

It's actually just crushed up Pop Tarts wrapped in a fruit roll up, but hey -- sugar is sugar. There's a lot more -- obviously you'll be able to buy Pop Tart tchotchkes and sample various pastries. But, just like LeVar Burton says: You don't have to take my word for it. Hit the jump link for video of the store, plus a lot of other kick-ass things.

Click to Embiggen

First Lieutenant John Black got in touch with us after our last soldier care package drive to let us know that his unit can out-geek any other in Afghanistan. He proved it by including photos of the above golf cart, tricked out with Batman flair. They use it to get everywhere on their Forward Operating Base.

They specifically requested Return of Bruce Wayne, Batman & Robin, and Thin Mints. We couldn't possibly deny them, so due to generous donations of comics from the last drive and our friend Lynnda at the Ohio Girl Scout Council, we once again need some help paying for shipping. For example, the last round of Girl Scout cookies cost over $130 to ship. (Cookies be heavy, yo.)

If you missed out contributing last time and would like to help out this time, please donate what you can through our PayPal. If you can't help this time around but are interested in helping in the future, let us know at comments@geektress.com. We're trying to organize another drive for our anniversary party in October.

If you'd like to see more photos from Afghanistan, click the link to continue reading.

If you're like me, the very mention of Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim makes you go "....mmmmehhhhhhh."

Maybe a combination of the original artwork talking with Cera's voice will help!

Apparently Universal films approached Cartoon Network / Adult Swim about promoting the live action movie (set to be released this Friday), and Adult Swim's idea was to animate some scenes from the series that were cut from the film. Edgar Wright and Bryan Lee O’Malley got on board with this idea, so the flashback scene in Volume Two where Scott meets Kim has been turned in to a four minute animated short, featuring the voices of the movie actors.

"Scott Pilgrim vs the Animation" airs Thursday, August 12th between 12 and 12:30 am on Adult Swim. It will also be available on Friday in full on Adult Swim's website, and on the Scott Pilgrim Facebook page.

SlashFilm had the "exclusive first look" (though I think it technically premiered at Comic Con.) Hit that link to see more footage, if you're in to that kind of thing.

For the month of July, we were keeping track of who commented here on the blog, and at the podcast. The votes are in, and due to a three-way tie for fifth place, only four of you will be getting cookies. (There is only so much of me to go around, and it can't all go to baking Star Wars cookies.)

Yes, that's right. It should be no surprise who our top four commenters are, as they are also the four most frequent emailers and voicemail-leavers. BUT FIRST! You must click through for cookie-related frippery.

So, apparently, as some sort of stunt at SDCC this year, Hot Wheels was selling empty boxes of Invisible Jet for $5 apiece. It's a cute gag and I can understand why people lined up for it. But now those folks are selling them on eBay at ridiculous prices only nerds could dream up. $5 for a gag, okay maybe. $25? Yeah, pass.

There is, however, someone selling the Invisible Jet plus a Wonder Woman iPhone case for $40. And it's a nice iPhone case. Unfortunately, I don't have an iPhone.

Anyway, after the jump, Laura put together some of our favorite quotes that came out of Comic-Con. We don't often remember to quote the panels we actually go to, so it's nice that someone else out there with a press pass takes notes.

The biggest news that everyone already knew to come out of San Diego Comic Con was that Joss Whedon would be directing The Avengers, and Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner are joining the cast as Bruce Banner and Hawkeye respectively. (Also in completely unsurprising news, Nathan Fillion will not be playing Ant-Man, and nerds can't tell when people are joking.) Still, it must have been a pretty exciting moment to see the cast assembled on stage at the end of the Marvel Film Panel, especially with Robert Downey, Jr. completely channeling Tony Stark live and in person. And it is nice to have things official, if only because Whedon can finally comment on his plans for the movie, which he does, and I like what he has to say.

As a huge Whedon fan, I'm naturally excited that he will be helming a movie that I was already pretty excited about, but it's what he says about the film that really encourages me, particularly in this io9 interview. The part I liked the best:

Are you tempted to pin [play with] the Civil War with Captain American and Iron Man against each other?

You know Civil War comes from what's great about the dynamic between them. And so does The Avengers, they definitely are at odds. But it's not a Civil War thing because it existed before that, at least in my mind. They are two very different definitions of a person. One is a self-made man, a modern man, a rockstar. The other is a World War 2 grunt, just trying to do his part. They couldn't have more different views of the world. That will just end up in fun. It ended up in Civil War in the comics, in my movie it will be witty banter.

Witty banter is so much better than ham-fisted and trite political commentary.

As you can see, you done good.

If you're just tuning in, Geektress had a fundraiser this weekend to send comic books and assorted sundries to four female soldiers stationed in Iraq. Thanks to the kind contributions of our readers and my co-workers, I was able to put all this together. In total for this shipment, we had:

• Two identical boxes containing: Shampoo / Conditioners, Body wash, Tampons, Deodorant, Pulsar Toothbrushes, ponytail holders, Lysol antiseptic wipes
• A food box containing: Waffle Crisp cereal (requested by the whole unit), FiberOne cereal, Fruit & Nut snack bars, Cereal bars, Blueberry snack bars, Clif bars
• A wish list box containing: One mega ball ice cream maker, 20 pounds of rock salt, vanilla/chocolate ice cream mix, a 25-song gift card to Karaoke MP3 Downloads, letters, cards, and emails
• A box containing 12 pounds of comic books - including Morrison's entire Batman & Robin run to-date
• Ten cases of Girl Scout Cookies. (The non-melty in the desert kind.)**

In total we raised over $250 and there are still more comics on the way from people contributing back issues out of their personal stash (thanks, John Wiswell and Janelle Siegel!) As a result, we're taking all the surplus and putting it in a shipment to 30 Marines in Afghanistan who requested "toothpaste, socks, and lots of comic books." If you're interested in sending comics or supplies for that drive, email Laura@geektress.com.

This was so much fun and wouldn't have been possible without lots of support from you. Especially awesome was the help of PackRat Comics* and Bimmer Tools, for helping find missing back issues and covering the expense of shipping. Also we can't thank Lynnda at The Ohio Girl Scout Council enough for the cookies, and FilmDrunk & Gamma Squad for helping spread the word so quickly.

*(PackRat Comics also sends a monthly care package overseas, so if you're ever in Columbus, Ohio, make sure to check them out because they are awesome.)

** As it turns out, the Girl Scout Cookies are going to be expensive to ship. If you haven't contributed yet and are interested in sending Cookies to Soldiers, donate here. (I may also get more cookies for some soldiers in Afghanistan.)

Geektyrant.com, whom I read in my head as "Geekty Rant", has possible insider news about the new Superman movie.

According to their "inside the lot" sources, Christopher Nolan's brother, Jonathan, is the dude who is actually hired to direct the film:

This would be Jonathan Nolan's first directing gig. At the time I didn't think the WB would give a first time director the $150 - $200 million dollar budgeted movie. But if his big brother is there to guide him, and teach him the ways of the force then maybe the studio would let him do it. After all, they're all about keeping Christopher Nolan happy.

As you may remember, the last rumor was that Chris Columbus was directing the Man of Steel reboot, which of course filled everyone over the age of 15 with a certain amount of dread. I mean, sure, if you want a Superman movie with pacing that stops dead in its tracks for twenty minutes to explain exactly who this Superman fella is with details from every Superman comic book ever written, because your mildly informed audience will not be able to infer such things from plot, than sure, hire Chris Columbus. We all know how difficult is is to translate the written word on to the silver screen in the most literal way possible. It takes a certain lack of finesse.

In other news, Alfonso Cuarón's Wonder Woman movie... is still not a real thing. Haha, you just peed your pants a little, didn't you? I know I did. Christ on a cracker, why don't I run Hollywood.

More Superman news after the jump.

Batman: Under the Red Hood is out on home video July 27th, but will premiere at Comic-Con International on Friday, July 23 at 8:00 p.m. in Ballroom 20 of the San Diego Convention Center.

The film has a star-studded cast (which we've raved about before), and the DVD will include the Jonah Hex bonus short. We won't be at SDCC this year, so we'll just have to wait for the DVD release. But, if you want to check out some more clips (which are always up first at our Facebook page), hit the jump link.

Jim Lee from Superman 211. Click to embiggen.

Did you know there are soldiers stationed overseas that are missing out on weekly comics? And you can help get them the stories they're missing, plus a lot more? Kelly Sue DeConnick posted a guide in her blog to finding a soldier that wishes they had comic books to keep them company.

Using her guide, I found an Army unit in Iraq that has at least one female soldier looking for Batman and Robin comics. I plan to send that and a whole lot more! There are four women in the Broadcast Journalism unit. They need certain female toiletries, morale-boosting items, and reading material to pass the time (like comics). So I'm dipping in to my stash of back issues for Girl Comics, Gotham City Sirens, The Return of Bruce Wayne, Birds of Prey, and Batman & Robin, and I plan to buy anything that's missing and ship it out next week. There will be at least four boxes, one for each female soldier. If there's enough donations, I will try to do a fifth package for the male requests in the unit.

USPS Priority Mail flat rate shipping for the largest box is $11.95. So far I've received enough to ship two boxes. UPDATE!: Ken at Bimmer Tools just volunteered to pay all the shipping! Thanks Ken!

All that's left is to send letters / emails along with the shipments. If you'd like to send a good word along, just comment here or, if you'd rather keep it private, send an email to comments@geektress.com, and printouts will ship with each box.

Thanks to all who have already offered to help. If there's anyone else who still wants to donate, Laura is putting together a shipment of comics and supplies for a group of marines in Afghanistan, and if there's any extra left over, I hope to get my group something groovy from their wish list: an ice cream maker.

It's no secret that I love superheroes. I also really love dance movies. (I imagine it has something to do with the fact that I lack both super powers and rhythm, but really wish I had both.) So imagine my utter delight when I discovered the new web series "The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers," or "LXD" as they call it (via Spinoff Online). It's like "Step Up" meets "Heroes," or maybe "Harry Potter." I'm not really sure, but it is fantastic. It's even directed by the same director as "Step Up 2 the Streets" and the upcoming "Step Up 3D." Even better, it features and is co-choreographed by Mike "the Other Asian" from "Glee," also known as Harry Shum, Jr. Do yourself a favor and go to the above link and watch the trailer. Then go to Hulu.com and watch the first episode. It's only 13 minutes, so you have no real excuse not to do as I say.

(Washington Fighting A Tiger via Jason Heuser)
(Click to embiggen)

For all of our U.S. readers, thanks for reading. This post is to add even more awesome to a holiday that not only celebrates outdoor cooking and gunpowder, but the anniversary of our restraining order against King George III.

For all of our everywhere-else-in-the-world readers, thanks for reading. This post is to add even more awesome to your Sunday.

I hope all of you gaze upon the following artworks and are uplifted. Perhaps you should all grill some meat outdoors, weather permitting. It will only add to your general feeling of kick-assery.

Gallery of Patriots after the jump.

About a week and a half ago, the trailer for Disney's "Tangled" was released. Ever since, I've been trying to figure out why it pisses me off, even though the animation is a lot better than I expected it to look. After the cut, watch the trailer (via EW's PopWatch), and then read what I have to say about it. After, you can tell me if I'm crazy or not.

Williams Sonoma has a set of $20 cookie cutters. These particular cookie cutters make Star Wars shapes. I didn't even hesitate before I bought them. I'd heard tale of them from a friend, and as soon as they went up on the W-S website, I bought them.

I have not been disappointed.

As you can see from this tasty product shot (via the W-S site), the set comes with a Yoda, a Darth Vader, a Boba Fett, and a Stormtrooper. "Why put Yoda together with the greatest Sith lord ever, his minions, and a bounty hunter?"

Because Yoda is a badass, that's why.

More pictures and review after the jump.

Ever watch the old Universal horror movies and think, "this is good, but it could use more teen angst...and maybe a dash of Busby Berkeley"? Well, then Universal and Mattel are making the movie "Monster High" just for you. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "The monster musical is set at 'frighteningly fashionable' Monster High and features the spawn of famous monsters including Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman undergoing the trials and tribulations of high school." As Brenda pointed out, at least this toy line inspired movie is more creative than Hasbro's "Magic 8 Ball, the Movie."

(Click to embiggen)

For some reason I can't find out much about this animated short that will appear as a bonus feature on the Special Edition Blu-Ray and 2-Disc Special Edition DVD release of "Batman: Under the Red Hood" (July 27th). What I can gather is that Jonah will be voiced by Thomas Jane, but it also stars Linda Hamilton, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Michael Rooker in unspecified roles.

In the DC Showcase story, the tough-as-nails bounty hunter Jonah Hex always gets his man - until someone else gets to him first - in this case a murderous madam who wants to steal more than just her bounty from Jonah Hex.

More pictures after the jump.

You may have heard us mention Michael Fassbender on the podcast before. He was Lt. Archie Hicox in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Recently, he is rumored to have been offered both the roles of Magneto, and the villain in the new Spider-Man movie. But, as Laura has pointed out -- mostly, he is very attractive.

Which leads me to our segue... Centurion. When I originally got the press release, the only name I recognized was Dominic West's. Also, it looked like yet another sword-and-sandals in the woods flick that had little to hold my interest. I mean, 300 was great the first couple of times around, but I don't really need to see it -- or a watered down version of it -- again. (Centurion stars two actors from 300, which is how I jumped to the conclusion.) And I avoided Baskin & Robin Hood at all costs.

Then I did some digging and found out there are lot of hot guys in this movie, and I hope to hell they get half naked, but from the looks of the trailer: No. Not even a decent beheading (but a lot of slit throats.) So if you're in the mood for some desaturated yelling and stabbing, hit the jump link for a synopsis, the trailer, and a neat little photo gallery I put together of attractive people.

I love cartoons. I also love desperately clinging to my youth through nostalgia for the things I enjoyed as a child, so it should come as absolutely no surprise that news of new "Voltron" and "ThunderCats" cartoons would be of interest to me. According to Variety, "The reintroduction of 'Voltron: Defender of the Universe' will begin with an animated series on Nicktoons and a new toy line from Mattel rather than leap straight onto the bigscreen." The article also notes that "Warner Bros.' animation aims to produce an anime-influenced version of 'ThunderCats' for Cartoon Network to revive the '80s property, which has had a feature treatment stuck in development." I'm going to ignore the fact that the new "Voltron" cartoon is being timed to coincide with the property's 25th anniversary, because it is in direct conflict with the aforementioned "clinging to my youth."

Since they've finally seen fit to send us some pretty pictures, I figured I could at least post them. Above is not-yet-king Arthur and some girl. Sadly, Arthur is not shirtless, but we make do with what we've been given. This is to promote this Friday night's episode, which is all wacky with love potions and stuff. After the jump, you can find another picture of Arthur and the executive producer talking about the episode and having fun with romantic comedy devices. There's also some information and a link at the end about a sweepstakes to win that hideous red scarf Merlin wears all the time. One can only hope that giving it away means it won't be adorning his neck in series 3.

(She-Ra and friends sketch from Lauren Montgomery's blog.) (Click to embiggen.)

For those of you who had a day off today due to the American holiday: How's that going? Good? Well, it's about to get better.

Back in 2006, the animated cartoon She-Ra (Princess of Power!) started being released on DVD. Unfortunately, due to the production company falling on hard times, I don't think the full show run was ever put out on home video. FORTUNATELY, that is about to change. Vivendi Entertainment is releasing the entire series in one spectacular box set, available September 7th. It will include all 93 episodes on 10 discs, an iron-on t-shirt decal, a mini comic, "and much, much more!" (Which usually means: not much more.)

This is supposed to coincide with She-Ra's 25th anniversary, so in addition to the DVD collection, Mattel is going to have a special She-Ra action figure at their booth during San Diego Comic Con next month. No word on what's happening with Princess Adora's brother, Whassisface Guy, and his movie or whatever.

Source: TV Shows On DVD

Click to embiggen!

The eighth direct-to-home-video DC animated movie Batman: Under the Red Hood is being released on July 27th. Last month we posted the teaser trailer and then drooled about Jensen Ackles and Neil Patrick Harris. Today it's time to talk to John DiMaggio, voice of Bender B. Bending Rodriguez on the soon-to-return-to-cable-tv (June 24th on Comedy Central) Futurama.

I was shocked when I got the role, shocked when I came in to record, and shocked when I saw the finished product during ADR. I just wanted to honor the real true lunacy of the character. I didn’t want to make him campy, but I wanted to pay a little bit of tribute to the past Jokers – and yet keep it original at the same time. That’s walking a fine line, if there ever was one.

More pictures and interview after the jump.

James Franco is awesome and kind of weird, which is why it really shouldn't have been too much of a surprise to learn that he had signed on to star in FOX's "Planet of the Apes" prequel, "Rise of the Apes." I mean, it seems like it's a bad career move, because there is no way this movie could possibly be good. It's a remake of a decades old movie that was the subject of one of the suckier remakes in recent memory. Franco's involvement forces me to completely reevaluate all my preconceived notions about the project though. After all, not only did he manage to make his scenes in "Spider-Man 3" thoroughly entertaining, but he was savvy enough to know that playing the role of an "artist whose canvas is murder" on a daytime soap opera was at least 50/50 on the batshit crazy to brilliant scale.

I've had next to no sleep in the past two days and have the attention span of a goldfish, making any real thought impossible. Fortunately, random thoughts on various bits of pop culture news are much more entertaining. Above is a picture that has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this post, but is indisputable photographic evidence of the coming robot apocalypse. This is even more chilling than that chimp riding a segway.

Evangeline Lilly has signed on to costar in "Real Steel," Hugh Jackman's upcoming robot boxing movie. Now, I've really been looking forward to this movie. Sure it's not the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots movie we've all been dying to see, and the father/son drama aspect kind of makes me think of "Over the Top," but it's still about robots boxing and the director has promised Hugh Jackman will be shirtless. Those two things are pretty much guaranteed to get me in a theater, and I don't need Evangeline Lilly getting her Kate-cooties all over this thing. I friggin' hate Kate.

I can understand why phonagnosia would be a problem, but if I absolutely had to choose only one voice to recognize in my whole life, it would, without a doubt, be the voice of Sean Connery.

Click to Embiggen

When I was a young adult, I consistently read books by a man named Kevin McFadden, who goes by the pen name Christopher Pike. (I assume this is because he's a huge Star Trek nerd, since he also likes to reference the show in his books.) I remember being blown away by the way he could build suspense and bring fantasy elements like ghosts and zombies to a high school setting, and make it consistently believable. My most favorite of his works were Monster, about how bacterium in the town's water supply makes most of the football team into flesh-eating jerks (a premise heavily "borrowed" for the film "The Faculty"), and The Last Vampire series.

So you're me, and you've got 20 or so Christopher Pike paperbacks in the basement that you don't really want to let go of. You're wandering through the library on your day off, and you see a book prominently displayed on a shelf: "Alosha." As it happens, Alosha is both the main character and the first book of a new fantasy series that Pike is working on. (It being published in 2004, the most recent of the series being published in 2007, the next volume not even finished yet, I count it as "recent.") Of course you're going to pick it up and see if it's any good -- which is just what I did.

Now, I know you can argue that it's rated at a sixth grade reading level, and so I shouldn't expect too much, and for that I call bullshit. Harry Potter books start out at a younger reading level, so to speak, but by the fourth and fifth books, it becomes obvious they were meant for a maturing audience (because Harry and the series were growing up.) I just finished Philip Pullman's sublime His Dark Materials series, and Rania can attest to its definitely being "general fiction," as that's where they used to file it during her bookstore clerk days. So being a "kid's book" means it should suck about as much as a film being in black & white means it's not as good as say, Mansquito, because the latter is in color and Citizen Kane isn't.

Here's what I can say that's positive about the Alosha series: The cover artwork by Daniel Dos Santos is consistently fantastic. Surprisingly my favorite illustration (the one above) is on the cover of my least favorite entry in to the series, The Yanti. But let's get to the parts I don't like...

Next week, Grant Morrison's six part comic, "The Return of Bruce Wayne," hits shelves. CBR has a preview. We're very excited to see shirtless Batman. It so rarely happens these days. I mean, you don't get to gaze lovingly on Dick Grayson's posterior anymore due to his now wearing a cape.

Laura: I am disappointed in this, since all the cavemen appear to be fairly attractive.

Brenda: That head caveman reminds me of Ted Neeley.

Click for to embiggen trollery

Undoubtedly due to my glowing recommendation of the series (or the fact that we were already on their mailing list), we have received promotional material for the latest episode of Merlin, part two of "Beauty and the Beast," airing this Friday at 10 on SyFy. Mostly, I'm just amused by trolls, and the fact that Anthony Stewart Head, who will always be Giles (or the guy from the coffee commercials) to me, is in love with a particularly ugly one. Honestly, part one wasn't that great, probably due to minimal Arthur, but I think this week should have more of him and an appearance by the dragon with John Hurt's voice, the one unequivocally cool thing about the series, not to mention Giles staring lovingly at a troll. (It just makes me giggle.)

After the jump is what the PR material had to say.

Today I remembered that I had a Tumblr account, and then I read my Tumblr account, and realized I used to be full of jokes and now I'm just full of neglect. Anyway, this is from February 2008.

Laura: When I create a superheroine, she will have a hint of tragedy in her origin, her purpose will be easily described in a sentence, and she will have a logo.

Brenda: Vaccination Gal. By day she's a registered nurse. By night, she cuts down criminals with her deadly syringe throwing skills. Also that logo will be real easy to create.

Laura: Do not make fun of my plans. I seriously want to create a superheroine.

Brenda: Her ally could be Trojan Man. Her enemy could be Dr. Germ. And then we could have They Might Be Giants re-record their song Dr. Worm to Dr. Germ.

Laura: I'm ignoring you now.

I wish it really was spelled marshmellow because they totally are my comfort food.

While at C2E2, I kept passing the Squibbles booth, because it was strategically positioned near the main entrance. There was a complete display of marshmallow-headed characters that I had trouble resisting. They were all painted differently, and together as a group it was an awesome sight. Unfortunately they were packaged "surprise!" style -- you didn't know which character you were going to get.

I solved this problem by examining the booth further on Saturday afternoon. Turns out, these little guys are all named Marshall Mashumaro -- a little boy who ate so many marshmallows he turned in to one! You can even friend him on Facebook, which of course I did. Right after I shelled out $15 for the special "toasty" version of Marshall (pictures after the jump.)

Okay, so this year for the first annual Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, Laura and I decided that -- instead of awkwardly handing over random single-issue comics, or mumbling and shuffling our feet trying to figure out how to tell our favorite creators that we love them -- we would show the writers and artists that make our lives enjoyable that we love them by having them sign an exclusive piece of artwork we'd made ourselves (with help from Tony Miello in the actual art making department.)

It gave us something to talk about other than "ZOMG I LOVE BIGBY WOLF." It would be a way for us to advertise the site, too. And most importantly, it was something we could give to someone who wasn't able to attend. The best part is, we decided to auction off the posters we got signed, and donate the profits to the Hero Initiative. Turns out, this idea worked out great. The posters look fantastic, and we got to meet a LOT of our favorite creators.

After the jump is a list of who all we got to sign, plus links to the auction pages on eBay.

We're having trouble thinking about anything other than a HOBO.... WITH A SHOTGUN... these days. The fake Grindhouse trailer spun off like so many Machete movies, and is currently shooting in Canada with RUTGER AWESOME HAUER as the Hobo. It's only a week in to production, but the above compilation of BITCHIN FOOTAGE was put together to show THE POWER OF SHOTGUNS AND HOBOS.

Recognize.

While we were at C2E2, we had the pleasure of talking with Bryan Katzel from Senario Toys. He showed us their newest line of remote controlled figures: Little two inch robots called "Zibits." Currently the first wave of Zibits, 12 different models of robot, are available at Toys-R-Us. They plan to roll out Zibits version 1.5 by the Fall, and hopefully to stores like Walmart and Target.

Each robot has his own name, personality, and backstory, and runs on a combo of three button (watch-style) batteries in the bot, and two AAA batteries in the remote control. (The button batteries are included but you have to add your own AAA's.) They have led lights for eyes that glow and flash, and the remote control has a speaker on the back where you can hear a variety of different robot-like noises. They retail for $9.99 apiece, and playsets for the robots are coming soon.

Of course Laura and I found these things fascinating and were delighted to take home a pair. Review and videos after the jump.

(Click to Embiggen)

Jensen Ackles as the voice of Red Hood.

Oh, you wanted more to this post? Okay. Bruce Greenwood -- who, if you are to believe his own website, is THE GREATEST LIVING ACTOR -- as Batman. (Thank you Baby Jesus for not letting a Baldwin get cast in this role again. Or ever again.)

You want more? Neil Patrick Harris. As Nightwing, for God's sake. It shouldn't even be a real requirement that a voiceover actor have an ass resembling the comic book character he's portraying, but there you have it. NPH. In a Batman cartoon.

Before I explain more, click the link and see the trailer for this thing.

Series 2 of BBC’s “Merlin” premiers in the U.S. tonight on SyFy at 10:00 PM EST. You probably didn’t see series 1 when it aired on NBC this past summer, since only about 5 of us actually tuned in. That shouldn’t stop you from jumping into this “Smallville” inspired version of Arthurian legend now though. (Series 2 is way better anyway.) I’ll help you out. I can recap pretty much every episode of the first series right now. Some evil wizard tries to kill Arthur and Merlin has to save him without letting anyone know that he can use magic, because it is forbidden in Camelot. Occasionally, Morgana (the story’s future bad guy) or Guinevere (the story’s future fickle queen) will do something relatively unimportant, and towards the end of the season the writers seemed to catch on that Arthur was their most attractive interesting character and had more episodes focusing on him not playing the damsel in distress. Other stuff you might need to know: BBC totally chickened out on an Arthur and Morgana romance even though they’re not biologically related in this show; Merlin’s like twelve years old or thereabouts; Guinevere is a maid; Mordred is no longer the product of incest but some randomly evil Druid child; and Uther Pendragon is a huge douche, who will execute people with little provocation. (For those of you who never saw the John Boorman classic “Excalibur,” and shame on you if you haven’t, that last one’s a departure from the legend only in that in the legend, Uther was more of a huge douche who liked to rape women by impersonating their husbands.)

However, if you dig Arthurian legend, but formulaic plots, British hey-its-that-guys, and really cheesy special effects aren’t your thing, it looks like there’s plenty other Arthurian adaptations coming up.

It was reported yesterday that Sofia Vergara, of "Modern Family" fame, has joined the cast of Columbia Pictures' live action adaptation of "The Smurfs." The Hollywood reporter states that:

Vergara will portray Odile, a powerful executive at a high-end French cosmetics company who is the boss of the live-action character played by Neil Patrick Harris.

Jayma Mays and Hank Azaria also are cast in the movie, which begins shooting in New York in the next week.

So, I just gotta ask, what's the deal with all these humans in a movie about Smurfs? Hank Azaria I get, because he's playing Gargamel, I think. All those other people have to go though. I mean, how are they even going to interact with creatures that are only three apples high?

Click Photo to Embiggen

The caption lady said I should say this: Two-time Emmy Award-winning actor James Woods, pictured at the World Premiere in New York City on February 16, is the voice of Owlman in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the next DC Universe animated original movie. The film is now available on Blu-ray, DVD, OnDemand and for Download from Warner Home Video.

When did James Woods win two Emmys?

Wait, no. That's not the point. The point is, JL:COTE, as I call it, was released a damn month ago and I still haven't seen it because Warner Brothers is conspiring against Red Box to keep me unhappy.

Anyway: Far be it from me to mock any of Bruce Timm's direct-to-DVD animated adventures. I think the ones I own or have rented are all terrific, and I really would like to see this one, too. But in the following interview with James Woods, he compares Owlman to a lot of stuff that I just wouldn't normally associate a parallel Earth villain with, maybe because he's James Woods and his sanity ain't rightly screwed down all the way.

I thought, this is like The Remains Of The Day with Anthony Hopkins -- it's that kind of character. He's a character speaking with such a loss of any ability to dream for anything good. It was all about a dark, empty void of the meaningless existence.

....sure. Okay. *nods*

(Zombie Viking art by Jesse Turner)

As you may have gathered, we are having extreme technical difficulties on the podcast end of things lately. We've recorded three full hours of Geektress-ness, only to have it turn up "file missing or corrupted" when we try to deliver it to you, the listener.

Aside from this being a major bummer, we are losing valuable ideas in these non-casts. Take, for instance, our recent discussion of the fifty or so headless Viking corpses discovered in England. At first it was just "Wow, look at all those beheaded Vikings," but after about five minutes we'd almost entirely written the first Headless Zombie Viking movie. You see, zombies are usually stopped by destroying or damaging the brain. But what if a hoarde of headless Viking corpses were resurrected? How would you stop them then? COULD YOU STOP THEM? And so on, we theorized.

You shouldn't miss out on that kind of genius in action. So, after the jump, we've provided a handy crib sheet to zombies with no heads, followed by a lengthy email exchange between Laura and myself.

Today, while you're in the lovin' mood, why not share your big geek heart with others?

Geek Girls Network™ & Geeky Clean have created a fundraiser to support the Haiti Relief called Geeks With Heart.

Through Mercy Corp, Geeks With Heart has a fundraising goal of $2500 and there’s no minimum for donations. If you can spare just one special cup of coffee, an iTunes download, or a crispy chicken sandwich, donate to Haiti instead. Show Haiti why geeks have heart!

As extra incentive, and not that you need any, once Geeks With Heart reaches $2500, all who donated will have the chance to win a prize from an amazing grab bag of geek prizes!

So donate, tweet it up, put a badge on your website, and tell all your friends and family. Thanks!

Geeks With Heart: http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/geekgirls

This past Friday was the two hour event "Smallville: Absolute Justice," that had superhero fans talking. Viewer reactions were pretty mixed, so I thought I would get the opinions of two of the episode's stars, or, at least, the opinions of their action figures.

So, what did you both think of “Absolute Justice”?

Green Arrow: It was pretty good. I think I nodded off for a bit during the second half though.

Hawkman: The parts with the JSA were good, but I was confused as to when the past events of our careers were supposed to take place. It was very anachronistic.

Green Arrow: I have no idea. I wasn’t paying attention.

Remember this, sweetness? This is back when you were still kinda blond. We could call this: Your Fun Period.

The Hollywood Reporter is confirming posts elsewhere on the web saying Universal, in a fit of stupidity, wants to produce a film called "Dracula Year Zero," "rebooting" the "Dracula myth", with Sam Worthington starring. (If I wanted to get really bitchy with the sarcastic quotations, I could write "starring," but I'm taking advice from Coco this week and trying to be less cynical. Sorta.)

In other words, Laura called it a couple of weeks ago: Sam Worthington is becoming Gerard Butler, which means soon he'll be in a romantic comedy playing a New Zealander with a peculiarly high-pitched version of his native accent, because his interpretation of a Kiwi accent means stepping on your own nuts. Or, he'll play Mr. Mistoffelees in the film version of Cats, which will star everyone else who can sing except him.

...I can't be the only one who sat through Dracula 2000, seriously. SPOILER DRACULA WAS JUDAS SPOILER. That was seriously a spoiler.

Ridiculous rant after the jump.

The other day it was reported that the Spider-Man film franchise would be rebooted, and I, huge Spidey geek that I am, blogged about it and tried to remain optimistic. I knew that a rant was forming though, not specifically because of the news itself, but because of how the whole thing is just another example of a film studio completely missing the point. My annoyance was further fueled by reading this post at EW.com, which stated:

This time around, the series will place Peter Parker in a more contemporary setting, as a teenager battling today’s issues. The decision to go with an origin story stemmed from Sony developing two Spidey projects simultaneously. According to studio insiders, Sony was working on both Raimi’s Spider-Man 4 and the new origin story from James Vanderbilt, who wrote Zodiac. The original plan was to keep the Spider-Man gang together for one last film in 2011 before rebooting the series in 2012. When it became clear that Raimi would not be able to make the summer 2011 release date planned for Spider-Man 4, the studio opted to scrap Spider-Man 4 altogether, and focus solely on the series reboot.

Furthermore, according to EW, "the studio [is] interested in a more gritty, contemporary redo of the series." Did I not just say in my last post that I didn't want to see a gritty Spider-Man movie? And did I miss something where Sam Raimi's movies were some sort of period piece? Do kids today not live in crappy New York City apartments and have bosses who are jerks? Have teenage boys stopped having crushes on pretty girls? Are we going to get to see Gwen Stacy die? Is the new movie going to be all about terrorists and bomb threats in the high school? I'd just like to get an idea of what exactly is meant by contemporary.

After a lot of drama in the past few weeks, it was reported today that director Sam Raimi would be walking away from the Spider-Man franchise, and taking Tobey Maguire with him, leading to a decision by Sony to reboot the franchise with a script by original Spider-Man 4 scribe, Jamie Vanderbilt, and a director to be named later. Hopefully, this means I no longer have to fear seeing Anne Hathaway in a bad, platinum blond wig. Sadly, it also means I won't get to see John Malkovich, the scariest actor alive, fly around with goofy green wings and a feathery, white collar. It definitely means no more of Kirsten Dunst's annoyingly dreary Mary Jane Watson, which should, at least, be the one thing we can all agree is reason to rejoice. Maybe now Maguire and Dunst can join James Franco in the cast of General Hospital.

Hey, guess what happens when there's no podcast for a while? You folks get chat transcripts. It's like the low-fi version of the podcast.

Brenda
So, I am watching Bootmen on my iPod now. (Bootmen is available on iTunes for $5.99)

Laura
Yeah, I doubt I'd actually want to pay for that though.

Brenda
I will of course force you to watch it the next time I see you, much like I did Rogue. You don't know what's good for you. Only I know. I have the cure, and the prescription is: more attractive Australian men.

(more chat after the jump)

This one time, there was a robot show. It was a robot show that I liked very much. It was a robot show I wrote about on this very site. It was a robot show that never had the chance to disappoint me with some bullshit about angels, because this robot show was cancelled before that could happen.

It was a show with hot robots, like that other show, but more importantly, it was a show with Garret Dillahunt as a robot, and also that girl from Garbage with the hair and the accent.

In short, it was an awesome show, and lately I've come to resent its being cancelled. Again. Yes, it's time for my quarterly "FOX is the devil and they took away my robots" rant. Here we go:

If you're fretting over what to get that certain weirdo someone for the holidays this year -- don't. Geektress has got you covered. Take, for instance, Brandon Bird's Nic Cage Adventure Set. I don't know if you ever played with Colorforms as a kid, but you sure as hell never played with them like this. Nine vinyl stickers on two re-usable backdrops -- ALL NICOLAS CAGE.

You see, although Nic Cage is sort of scary and bizarre, I like to think we can move past Ghost Rider and learn to appreciate Cage in the abstract. Like justice, or Cheetohs. And for just $10 (plus shipping), you can appreciate him... anywhere! In the car, in the bathroom, on an international treasure hunt for historic-type objects. You never know.

(Thanks to Jack for the tip.)

For more gift ideas, check out the full entry.

Click to Embiggen

Someone who loves us, or just loves to confuse us, gave us the hot tip that a P.A. for Lost (presumably for the writer's production office, since the show shoots in Hawaii) has been buying up old Nick Fury comics, and having them mailed to an address on the Disney lot.

This may cause some of you to jump to the conclusion that J.J. Abrams is writing the Nick Fury movie. That's because you don't have our superior intellect. (Unless you turn out to be right, in which case, we told you so all along.) Logic says that it's probably nothing, and there is no cause for alarm, especially since J.J. has booked his waking life with movie sequels through 2012.

So, since we can't get anyone on the phone to confirm or deny said purchases (and possibly explain what they're actually for), this lead to a lot of discussion between Laura and myself whether we should run this story at all. Which leads to classic email exchange material, after the jump.

By the way, you should all be thanking me for not using a Hasselhoff photo on this post. It was damned tempting.

Click to embiggen

For some reason we can't post more than two video clips in one post, which probably makes your browsers happy. In that case, here is another photo from Superman Batman: Public Enemies, and more pictures, plus a clip, after the jump.

So, here's a free clip from Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, which is available today on DVD and Blu Ray and On Demand and Pay Per View and beamable directly to your subconscious.

Okay, maybe not the last one.

After the jump we have a few more clips, plus more photos from the film, and an interview with Tim Daly (the voice of Superman.) Apparently he does some sort of television show now. That's nice for him. What a nice young man.

(Click to embiggen, for downloadable, wallpapery goodness)

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is available for purchase on DVD (and On Demand) tomorrow. We haven't seen it yet, so we can only infer from the following interview with The Voice Of Batman, Kevin Conroy, just how much sexual tension there is between Bats and Supes. (We hope it's A Lot.)

Click through to get more photos and an interview with Conroy from this year's San Diego Comic Con.

Do you like Airheads brand taffy? Do you like Batman?

Well have I GOT THE CROSSOVER FOR YOU!

In some sort of promotional blitz (I assume) for the Batman: The Brave And The Bold cartoon, you can get a six pack of airheads, each flavor with its own hero, for $0.99.*

Red Tornado is cherry, Blue Beetle is blue raspberry, Aquaman is tangerine, Plastic Man is watermelon, Green Arrow is green apple, and Batman is grape.

I never though of Batman as grape flavored, but then again his costume is often purple-ish. Heh. Is Batman the grape drank of superheroes?

(More pictures after the jump.)

*UPDATE: I bought more today (11/14/09) and they are in fact $0.99 for a pack with all six flavors. BARGAIN.

Yay! Wonder Pig! Remember the episode of Justice League Unlimited where Circe turns Diana into a pig, and the pig has little piglet wristlets and Batman is trying to save her from the slaughterhouse and it was awesome? Well, to everyone's shock and delight, DC actually released the above JLU action figure version of Batman, complete with Wonder Pig. Target had the exclusive deal to sell this particular line of action figures, and quick-thinking Laura snatched up the two she saw at her local Target.

Since then, the both of us have been checking every Target we see to try and find a third for Rania. I haven't even taken mine out of the box, because I don't want anything to happen to it and then I no longer have a Wonder Pig. Even my Puptress loves this thing:

However. If you have any kind of free time and crafting skills and want to make your OWN unlicensed Wonder Pig, you don't have to worry. I've done it in order to help you do it yourself -- and here is the step by step guide.

(Image by Gre3g)

Did you know? This week on our Twitter and our Facebook page, we let you know about our friends that are cooler than us because they decided to organize and write music. It was Bands We Know! week, and four rock groups were linked from our various social networks. If you missed out, there's a recap after the jump.

In all honesty, I initially intended to write a post making fun of something tonight. Then I thought about it, and a fangirl cannot live by ridicule alone. On occasion, she must live up to the stereotype and let out her inner "SQUEE!" That's where the Supernatural panel at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con International comes in. Unfortunately, I couldn't go to SDCCI (I didn't want to go anyway...I swear...no jealousy here), so I've been reduced to scouring the interwebs for other people's accounts, the most detailed of which being at Zap2It, and by detailed I mean it lays out exactly what happens in the five minutes of the premier shown at the panel, with io9's coverage filling in some more details on the panel discussion. Spoiler-phobes beware!

See that? That's the

blood orange flavored soda [that's] slightly tart, lightly sweet and subtly carbonated. Designed to taste great while matching the appearance of Bill’s favorite drink, the drink pours like a regular soda, but with the standing appearance in a glass is stormy and mysterious.

TruBeverage. Yark. Yours for the low, low price of $96 a case. Show creator Alan Ball quipped that the ingredients were “Cabernet, the blood of European hemophiliac royalty, vodka, Viagra, and ecstasy. Unfortunately, it’s highly illegal.” Yeah. So, when can I get the one with the drugs in it, again?

As Laura has said, "at least it's carbonated and not thick like blood."

Remember how TruBlood, the actual synthetic blood drink, is the catalyst for the entire show? Let's hope the marketing will remind you. If fake orange soda blood is not enough to test your gag reflexes, you should check out the True Blood Comic-Con coverage after the jump...

Firstly, Great White Snark, a man after our own heart, puts his priorities in place by producing two great posts full of candid costumed comic-con attendee photos: Gallery One, Gallery Two.

I could really just spend all day sitting in one corner of a major Con, costume-watching. Awesome pictures.

Gary Oldman Loves Spoilers - remember when he didn't shut up about how The Riddler was in Dark Knight? If they're not asking him to reveal these tidbits, then they should probably not let him out in to public... with a shirt on. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pay attention to anything he has to say if he was half naked.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party Twitter - This might only be useful for people at the Con, but it would be neat if there were regular updates leading up to the new Alice In Wonderland movie.

By the way, if you haven't heard yet, Marvel Officially Owns Marvelman now. Which is great, because my (probably very illegal) scanned copy of Moore's run on the title is not exactly in what you would call numerical order by page, so I really have a very bad concept of the character. I'm guessing a Moore-Gaiman team-up for new issues would cause heads to explode, though.

Someone had the idea to team up the bouncer from Knocked Up, the funny kid from Sex Drive, Rob Corddry and John Cusack. They're an unlikely group, but nonetheless, the trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine made me laugh. Click through for moving pictures...

As if we needed reminders to why we don't watch Smallville anymore, TV Guide breaks some Zod news:

"But this a different incarnation of Zod,” Peterson says of the new series regular, played by British actor Callum Blue (The Tudors). “We’re introducing him as Major Zod—this is before he became General Zod.” Adds Souders: “Over the course of the season, the venomous side of Zod rises because he experiences a few key betrayals with our beloved characters.”

Another gem in the article sparked a classic email exchange, posted in full after the jump.

First of all, look at those kicks. Are you looking at them?

Are you still looking? Are your eyes bleeding? Those are the new Nike Wolverine Airs (or something. I'm not a shoe girl.) They are frakkin' hideous. When you get a chance you can check out the Air Sabretooth shoes, too, which are slightly less eye-rapey than what you see above.

Now that I've freaked you out, you might notice that our podcast voicemail number has changed, because I'm an ass and let the account expire. The new digits are 206-202-5117.

I realize that no one calls the voicemail. So I took a cue from my own newscast and decided it would be a lot more fun to have a Geektress Twitter. Yes, indeedy. We have a MySpace that we don't update, a Facebook we rarely update, and now we have a Twitter account that we can thoroughly neglect.

HOWEVER! You can make it a success! If you have a Twitter account, friend us (or follow us, whatever.) Tomorrow we'll be podcasting at noon, as we do every Sunday. And during that podcast, we'll try and post tidbits to the Twitter in real time. If you @reply us, we'll try to work your comments in to the end of the podcast. IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK! I LOVE IT! It validates both my laziness and my need for affirmation.

I was planning on plugging Free Comic Book Day (Saturday, May 2nd) on here soon, but The Beat had this cool PSA, naturally accompanied by an "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" trailer. Why should you listen to me when you can listen to Hugh Jackman? He's got that sexy Aussie accent. To make things extra easy for you, here's a link to the Free Comic Book Day website, where, in addition to finding a comic shop near you, you can see the comics that will be available.

Thanks to some intrepid reporters sneaking into this week's closed-to-the-press "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" presentation for ticket brokers and group-sales agents, we have new info on the Spidey musical, including sets and villains. The New York Post's Michael Riedel reports that the $40 million production "features gigantic, perspective-skewing sets, 3-D projections, more aerial acrobatics than Cirque du Soleil, a cast of heroes and villains from Marvel comic books." According to him, "Broadway musical" doesn't seem like an appropriate description, and Julie Taymor herself prefers to describe it as a "circus rock 'n' roll drama." I'm not really sure what that means, other than that Spider-Man apparently won't being singing and dancing in tights, which still disappoints me. There's a lot of praise in this article though, and it certainly sounds like it's going to be quite the spectacle. I'm more excited now than ever.

Edit: Here's more from Modern Fabulousity (via The Beat).

I have a fondness for any character that appeared on the old "Defenders of the Earth" (Defenders!) cartoon back in the '80s. Yes, even Mandrake the Magician is beloved by me. I'm also one of possibly 5 people who enjoyed the 1996 "Phantom" movie starring Billy Zane. That's why I was happy to read the Hollywood Reporter announcement that the Sci Fi Channel (soon to be renamed Sy Fy - it's cool because it's misspelled) has green lit a pilot for the Phantom. It will be a four-hour movie, with further episodes being contingent upon it drawing a large enough audience, following the "Battlestar Galactica" program model. They have also green lit similar productions of "Alice," an update of "Alice in Wonderland" in the vein of the channel's "Tin Man," and "Riverworld," based on the books by Philip Jose Farmer. (via MTV's Splash Page)

Apparently it was reported back in December that an Australian company was planning on bringing The Phantom to the big screen again in a film titled "The Phantom Legacy," written by Tim Boyle. Somehow, I get the sense that this is not likely to happen now. I love the Ghost Who Walks as much as the next girl who had an inexplicable crush on Billy Zane in the early to mid '90s, but I just don't see the world being able to sustain two live action Phantom adaptations. That's just me though.

Last week, IO9 did a story about a "Splash" sequel, and we haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. According to Variety:

Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have acquired "Merman," a romantic comedy script by Jennifer Abu Hollander.

Pic will be produced by Imagine's Brian Grazer, his first fish foray since "Splash," the breakout hit that forged his partnership with Ron Howard.

Story follows a merman who comes to land so he can win back his mermaid fiancee, who has left him for a real man. The story was hatched by the screenwriter and Jeff Moskowitz.

Nevermind that there's already a script by someone you've never heard of, we've got better ideas after the jump. (Naturally.)

Andrew is a nice young man who lives in Toronto and loves Wall-E. So he decided to take a cue from Zack Snyder and do a verrry verrry serious trailer for Wall-E, using Watchmen's audio and camera techniques. I usually don't post mashup stuff like this on the site (and I'm telling you, I could -- Quantum of Bonds very nearly cured a hangover for me), but this involves both robots and comic book movies. A+, sir.

(Originally seen over at Robo's site.)

It's been rumored for a while, but DC has finally announced "Wednesday Comics" as their next weekly series. Debuting this summer, this 12-part series will be in the 14" x 20" broadstreet format and have to be unfolded to be read. From the Newsarama article:

“The concept is that we are trying to recapture the spirit, format, and sense of enjoyment that people had form reading the Sunday comics that arrive in newspapers every week,” DC Sr VP and Executive Editor Dan DiDio explained to Newsarama. “So, for this 12 week period, we’re creating 16 weekly strips that will be presented in newspaper format, which will feature some of our primary characters, as well as some of the premiere creators in the business.”

Apparently we have DC Art Director Mark Chiarello to thank for this, frankly, awesome project, which will include creators like Kyle Baker, whose Hawkman is pictured above (via The Pulse), Joe Kubert, Neil Gaiman, Paul Pope, Walt Simonson...there are a lot and they are pretty much all awesome. The cherry on top is that the series is completely divorced from regular DC continuity, and the stories specifically being written with first time readers in mind. There really is no excuse not to pick this series up.

Let's start this review out the right way -- by pretentiously reminding you that I, at one time, had a webcomic, and can therefore refer to myself as "a web cartoonist."

As a web cartoonist, I find myself to be a big fan of comic strips in general, and web comic strips more specifically, because I was a web cartoonist with a web comic, web. My list of favorite web arts is lengthy, but there is one that holds a special place in my heart, and that's Adam Koford's "Hobotopia." I was first introduced to these hobo LOL cats through the comic you see displayed above, which was forwarded to me by occasional Geektress contributer Golfwidow.

When asked to review the book "The LOLCats Sell Out", it was with this in mind: it's probably just a collection of comics I've already seen, know, and love; gimme gimme free stuff. So, as you can guess, my thoughts on the project are biased. If I didn't already like the comic (and I do,) I probably would've liked it anyway due to its freeness. That didn't stop me from doing some thorough research in to the matter. (Or, reading the press release. It all depends on how you define "thorough research.") (I define it as "reading stuff people send me.")

Review and statistical analysis after the jump.

Lots of big announcements coming out lately regarding superhero adaptations, probably the biggest being the announcement that Samuel L. Jackson has signed a nine picture deal with Marvel, ensuring that he will be playing Nick Fury to our geek hearts' content, or at least three years, given Marvel's current production schedule of two movies a year. I guess all that complaining about Marvel being cheap worked for him. I mean, it's not like Mickey Rourke has a deal to play the villain in "Iron Man 2" yet, despite principle photography beginning in April.

In the world of "well, that's just freaking cool," it has also been reported that Michel Gondry will be the new director for "The Green Hornet," after Stephen Chow dropped out a while back. Sure this clearly represents that Gondry is selling out, but at least we're going to get a movie that is going to be directed by Michel Gondry and feature Stephen Chow as Kato. That alone is more interesting than the old television series ever was.

Then there's the news that Warner Bros. may actually be ready to make and release a superhero movie that isn't Batman or "The Watchmen." At least, that's what the announced December 17, 2010 release date for the Green Lantern movie would seem to indicate. Personally, I'll believe it when I see it. Fortunately, Warner Bros. has a lot of movies planned for 2010 and 2011, with at least a few of them being a sure bet for release. Particularly interesting is the planned 2011 grudge match between Harry Potter and The Avengers, and I'm looking forward to Christopher Nolan's "Inception," since I don't think he's made a movie I haven't liked. (via Comingsoon.net, with plenty more release dates at the link.)

No one is more surprised at how much I love "Batman: the Brave and the Bold," Cartoon Network's super fun cartoon series that currently airs on Friday nights, than I am. To me, Batman cartoons begin and end with "Batman: the Animated Series," and Kevin Conroy is the one true Batman. But my first Batman was Adam West, and I will always have a soft spot for the old 60s TV show. Plus, I'm a sucker for cute, funny superhero stories. That must be why I have so quickly come to adore the series, not to mention the fact that it is extremely excellent.

That's why it was such a treat to go to the "Batman: Brave and the Bold" panel at New York Comic Con. In attendance were producers James Tucker and Michael Jelenic, who also wrote the script for the Wonder Woman animated feature, DC Comics Creative Director Ivan Cohen, actor Phil Morris, who voiced both Jonah Hex and Fox in episode 11, and writer and story editor Todd Casey. It was a fun group, with many interesting things to say about the development of the show. It's clear that they are enthusiastic about the show and having as good a time making it as we are watching it. They also premiered the penultimate episode of the season, which airs this Friday, February 27th, and is completely awesome.

Following the episode was a Q&A with the audience, where they gave out comics in exchange for questions (not that the audience really needed an incentive). promised more female characters next season, specifically appearances by Black Canary and Huntress. They also said that next season we would see the Outsiders become more like their comic book versions, and there would be great exploration of Batman as a character, building on what we saw in the Red Tornado and Terrible Trio episodes. Finally, in response to a question about what kind of villains we could expect to see in the future, we were assured that "[Batman] has no villain too lame for us to use."

After the jump is a transcript of the moderated portion of the panel, as well as a brief review of the episode.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this movie will probably be the best film I see all year, animated or not. I'm taking my chances and betting that Watchmen will probably disappoint me just a tad. Fortunately, there is nothing about this new Wonder Woman that isn't terrific -- from the script and story by Michael Jelenic and Gail Simone (respectively) to the wonderful direction of Lauren Montgomery. It doesn't hurt that Andrea Romano also works her magic here with a perfect voice cast, including a turn by Oliver Platt that threatened to steal Nathan Fillion (Steve Trevor's) thunder.

It comes out on DVD and BluRay March 3rd. I implore anyone who is a fan of stuff in general to purchase the movie, if not at the very least rent it (if you have OnDemand.) If you have young kids in the house, especially young girls, it will not disappoint. (It'll be a cartoon you won't mind watching over and over, too, so you might thank me if your kids like it.)

I had a chance to sit down with Bruce Timm before the early screening at New York Comic Con this year. He had a lot to say about the character, and seem genuinely delighted by how this film turned out. Interview and trailer for Wonder Woman after the jump.

At the 2009 New York Comic Con, I had the pleasure of interviewing Roddenberry Productions COO, Trevor Roth. Not only was Trevor a cutie, he was a delight to talk to. For those unaware, Roddenberry Productions is the company of Rod Roddenberry, son of Gene and Majel. They are involved with a number of projects right now, all of them very cool, and one in particular is quite exciting.

It's a documentary called Trek Nation, and a preview is available after the jump, as well as the transcript of my interview with Trevor.

So I know y'all are like: What the hell, people? Where is our Comic Con coverage? And I'm here to tell you that I'm just now getting over some sort of Alien Death Flu. In fact, this week's podcast is getting scrapped because it's 90% me coughing, hacking, and oozing mucus.

SEXY.

Finally I was able to go through the hours and hours of footage we shot at Comic Con, and after the jump I've embedded assorted fun moments from the various panels we attended.

Hey people, Laura and Brenda here. We just got shut down at the Robot Chicken panel, so no exciting Seth Green news for you this year. But we're awaiting Venture Brothers later tonight, and just finished witnessing Joseph "McG" Nichols trying to appease a crowd of comic book fans who already like robots and don't need much convincing that robot movies are awesome. (Although he may have lost the crowd at some point.)

That's all on tape, but Facebook is being a doucher and won't let us upload the footage here. So stay tuned for all of that plus J-Pads being adorable during the Friday the 13th panel, and much more, as soon as we possibly can.

For now, check the jump to get a look at Brenda's panel notes:

It was brought to my attention by my husband that on the internal company blog (at my day job) there was a link to a new website called Gender Analyzer. They claim to use "artificial intelligence" to determine whether a website is written by a man or a woman. The reason my husband found this bot fascinating was because no matter how many times he took their "survey" to correct them, the robots insisted that Geektress was 99% male-written.

We here at Geektress generally find this more entertaining than insulting, though a quick survey of our favorite websites revealed mysterious results. Email exchange / Geektress Investigative Report after the jump.

Last year, a Greatest American Hero movie was rumored to be in the works. And Stephen Herek, director of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead (shut up, I love that movie) was rumored to be directing. In September, Stephen J. Cannell, the tv show's creator, confirmed a script had been written and a director had been hired at a SAG event, but didn't say whether or not that director would be Herek. (For the record, it should be, because that would be an uncharacteristically brilliant move for Hollywood.)

So now comes the problem of casting the movie. (Our solution below the cut.)

Awesome Twilight art is by the talented Amanda Bussell

So, if you listen to the podcast, you've already heard that this weekend, Laura and I discovered the horror that is Twilight. After reading through Cleo Linda's hilarious recaps, I felt it was totally necessary to compile a list of things I didn't realize I didn't know about vampires and werewolves. Full list after the jump (and a bit of email exchange classic™).

Brenda: Fair warning, Laura. I'm reading a recap of Twilight book four. I'm gathering a list of terrible things about it.
Laura: It gets worse than vampires that sparkle?
Brenda: Yes. Pick one: Incestuous thoughts. Baby-lusting. Performing a cesarean with your fangs. Discussing a time-share situation for your wife's vagina. I mean, seriously. There is no way this book is ever being made into a movie.
Laura: EW! EW! EWWWW! ...And yet, now I kind of want to read it, 'cause I'm sick like that.
Brenda: As Cleolinda has observed: "...was it like fucking a popsicle? These are the questions I find myself asking."
Laura: I thought of that when I saw the trailer. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to touch someone whose skin was that cold.
Brenda: Well, she is clumsy. Perhaps she needs an ice pack all the time to cover her sprains.

Rumors first started circulating about this months ago, and Variety is now reporting that Josh Schwartz, creator of "The O.C.," "Chuck" and "Gossip Girl," will be scripting "X-Men: First Class" for FOX. The studio declined to confirm any details about the project, but the article notes that FOX has been leaning towards using the younger characters from the previous films in future installments.

Resulting film would likely draw from elements of the Marvel comic of the same name, launched in 2006, and enlist such characters as Iceman, Rogue, Angel, Colossus, Jubilee and Shadowcat, who have appeared prominently or made cameos in prior pics.

Given Hollywood's penchant for reboots with new actors playing familiar roles, pic could also reintroduce characters. Comicbook revolves around the Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, Angel and Professor X.

The new "Star Trek" trailer, which premiered before "Quantum of Solace" on Friday, is up at Apple.com. I have to admit, I was not expecting it to open with a car chase.

It's been a while, and there's been a lot of interesting news, so it's time to play "Good News/Bad News," and by "play" I mean I'm just going to list some news items and provide some light commentary. Let's get started. Shall we?

GOOD NEWS: The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Joe Johnston will be directing "First Avenger: Captain America." This is clearly awesome, because he directed "The Rocketeer," which is one of the best superhero movies ever. Hopefully, his first act as director will be to get the movie a new title.

BAD NEWS: McG is rumored to be a possible director for Wonder Woman. Normally I wouldn't comment on this sort of story (like that other Wonder Woman story that's been going on), but this rumor is so troubling I cannot stay quiet. McG directing Wonder Woman is the WORST. THING. EVER.

The Mid-Ohio Comic Book Convention was last weekend and I got a couple of sketches that I thought would be fun to share. Check out the cuteness from Mini Marvel's Chris Giarusso and Tiny Titans' Art Baltazar after the jump.

Last Wednesday, a lot of terrible ideas were kicked around by Hollywood. First, a "Robin prequel" television series by the new showrunners of Smallville. Then, the Hollywood Reporter announced that NBC would pick up the script for a new version of "The Partridge Family."

The Peacock has picked up a contemporary single-camera take on the classic ABC sitcom to be written by Jeff Rake.... A fan of the 1970s series, Rake plans to "turn the premise on its head."

"In the original, the kids actually recruited their mom to front the band, which I can't see happening in any family on this planet," he said. "The new version will reflect what seems to me to be the more realistic family band scenario these days: a struggling, sort of well-meaning mom pimping her kids in order to create a wholesome-slash-sexy cash cow."

(More about "The Graysons" and Ten Inch Hero after the jump.)

So, this week, as with last week: no podcast. (We're running in to some major scheduling errors and it's starting to suck.) To take the place of our regular phone discussions, I'm posting a chat transcript. I know you guys just love those. In it, Laura and I discuss some of the new shows we're watching, and the season premiere of Heroes. Enjoy.

It's still hard for me to believe that this is real, but someone got a look at the designs for Julie Taymor's upcoming Spider-Man Broadway musical and wrote about it on her livejournal (via The Beat). She also heard some of the songs from Bono and The Edge's score, which she describes as "undeniably U2 in the very best way." I'm not really sure what that means, but as long as Peter Parker's not walking down the street looking emo and doing pelvic thrusts, I'm cool with it. Personally though, I always thought of Spider-Man was more Weezer than U2, but they're probably not as Broadway-friendly.

In his latest column, Rich Johnston leaked news and art of an upcoming, though currently unscheduled, all ages comic from DC entitled "DCU Elementary." In it, all the heroes and villains of the DC Universe will be going to school together, and it looks adorable. Follow the link for more unbearable cuteness. Unfortunately, Johnston doesn't doesn't name the artist, which is a shame, because that person deserves a lot of love.

Last week, Justin Marks talked to MTV's Movie Blog about the upcoming adaptation of "He-Man" that he is writing. Some interesting stuff is talked about, like the fact that the movie is going to be called "Grayskull." Here's an excerpt:

“I grew up on the ‘He-Man’ cartoon and watched ‘He-Man’ six days a week. The notion that I think we most took from the cartoon are the characters, and trying to find a way that is true to them,” he said of his planned adaptation, which is currently in development at Warner Brothers. “Now, at the same time, we had to come up with why that is the way it is. I mean you’re talking about sword-and-sandal meets science fiction meets fantasy meets everything, and how does that all kind of blend into the same world? And so we had to come up with very specific rules that explained why Trapjaw looks the way he looks, and why Cyclops — who is awesome — looks the way he looks.”

For those of you that listen to our podcast, you've heard us mention the direct-to-DVD Wonder Woman movie that is set for release next year. It stars Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion as Diana and Steve Trevor (respectively). As I just saw the two in Waitress and can attest to their smokin' on-screen chemistry, I'm going to bet that their cartoon counterparts will be delightful to watch, as well.

If you rented / purchased the Batman: Gotham Knight DVD, there was a preview on it (much like the Gotham Knight preview on The New Frontier) for the Wonder Woman movie. There was not much by way of completed scenes, or even colored-in frames. It was mostly interviews with the stars/producers/director set against a few animatics and sketches. Since it clocked in at ten minutes, and roughly half of that was explaining who Wonder Woman is (yawn), I cut it down quite a bit to feature all the bits with drawings. Available after the jump.

ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

"Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.)

Other information revealed in the post included the fact that, following July 20th, the musical would be available for download at a "nominal fee," to be followed by a DVD at some point, with, what Whedon describes as, "the finest and bravest extras in all the land." More details about those will be revealed at San Diego Comic Con. If you can't wait that long, TV Guide's Matt Roush has some information about them in an article that I will not be reading because it also contains spoilers about the plot. (OK...fine...I skimmed, and the one DVD extra I saw mentioned sounded AWESOME!)

If, in February of this year, you had told me that I'd not only go to see Wall-E on opening day, but that I would be anxiously awaiting its release -- up to the point of counting down the hours till I could catch the first midnight showing -- I would not have only laughed in your face, I probably would have pushed you.

Of course, you would've been right, and I would've been wrong (and kind of a dickhead.)

Courtesy of the official fansite, here's the teaser for Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. I have so got to get me a pair of goggles like that.

Last month, Netflix released a set-top box to accompany the "Watch Instantly" section of their website. It's called Netflix Roku... and it's awesome.

At first, I thought maybe the IO9 editors were having an off-day when they suggested that Cillian Murphy would make a better Spider-Man than Tobey Maguire. Now, let me be honest: Do I like Cillian more than Tobey? Yes. Do I care much about Spider-Man or Spider-Man movies? No. (That's Laura's department.) But do I think Cillian Murphy would be a good replacement as Peter Parker for the Spidey 4 movie?

Uh, no. Because I don't smoke crack for a living.

Some pretty awesome news coming from Marvel Entertainment today. First of all, it has been announced that "Runaways," which started in 2002, is being developed for a feature film. The script is being written by the comic's co-creator, Brian K. Vaughn. (via The Hollywood Reporter) For those who don't know, "Runaways" is about a group of teens in LA who find out their parents are a group of supervillains called The Pride, and proceed to do exactly what the what the name implies. Among others, the team includes a lesbian alien, a dinosaur, a goth-gil who has to cut herself in order to access her magical staff, and the cutest little mutant girl you ever did see.

The second bit of news is that Marvel Entertainment exec Kevin Feige has spoken to sever sources, including IESB, and has revealed the Captain America movie set for 2011 release will be a period piece set, obviously, during World War II. He also put to rest that horrid casting rumor from a couple of weeks ago, but confirmed that the film will in fact have the very unfortunate title of "The First Avenger: Captain America."

We have news on yet more remakes of 80s cult classics. First up, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Summit Entertainment has acquired the rights to remake "Highlander" with a script from "Iron Man" writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. The article points out that "Highlander" is a franchise recognized worldwide, having spawned 4 sequels and three (three? really?) television series. "There can be only one" my ass!

Next up, Variety reports that Sony has won a bidding war over the rights to "Flash Gordon," which will be directed by "Sahara" helmer, Breck Eisner. The article does not mention whether the film will remain faithful to the 1980s classic, but one can only hope it recreates the classic football fight. What is clear is that the soundtracks of both films will be significantly less awesome than the originals.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, MGM is looking to remake "Red Dawn" and "RoboCop." True fact: About halfway through "Iron Man," I started getting this strange desire to watch "RoboCop." Maybe the MGM executives aren't as dumb as they seem...except for the whole remaking "Red Dawn" thing. There's no way to make that a good idea.

Just a reminder to everyone that this Saturday, May 3rd, is Free Comic Book Day. How awesome is that? If you follow the link, you will find a store locator for participating shops. Unfortunately, it is for the U.S. and Canada only, but Free Comic Book Day is international. There's also a list of the comics that will be available, several of which I would buy if they weren't free. I'm most excited about getting my hands on Tiny Titans #1, since I missed out on it when it first came out, and the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. comic. The Marvel Adventures Iron Man issue is written by Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin, so that one is definitely going to be good. If you didn't buy All Star Superman #1 when it came out, you really want to get that one. Trust me. There's a lot to be excited about this year, so go check it out. Get free stuff. Bring the kids. If you don't have kids, pick one or two up at the local playground. They won't mind. They're getting free comics. Unless you reach your limit on the free comics you can get, but there are others you want. Then you might want to take the kids' comics.

Apparently, some movie with a lot of hype starring some famous former drug addict comes out this week. People seem to like it, and are excited about it. Whatever. I'm not disappointed at all that I'm not going to get to see it until next week. I don't like the Fascist douchebag anyway. I'll just watch this Incredible Hulk trailer over at the Apple website. Then maybe get a better glimpse of how awful Hulk and Abomination look in the trailer images at Blog@Newsarama. Aside from the fact that I think Edward Norton is absolutely perfect casting for Bruce Banner, this reboot seems like more of a downgrade from the 2003 film. The trailer barely even utilizes the theme music from the TV show, which is the only thing to be really excited about in this adaptation.

Finally, Quick Stop Entertainment brings you the non-shakey-cam version of the Venture Brothers Season Three preview, making it okay that we had seats right in front of the screen, but couldn't get our camera to work.

More exciting video after the jump.

On Saturday, Rania and myself had the joy of sitting through a few major panels in the New York Comic Con screening theater. One of the showings was Disney related, and thus had many clips of Wall-E and the new Prince Caspian / Narnia flick. Wall-E didn't really capture my imagination before, but after seeing the previews of it, I'm definitely going to try and catch it when it opens in theaters. (On June 27th.)

The other panel was Battlestar Galactica related, and as you can see, I could actually be bothered to dig my camera out of my bag to snap some pictures. Originally, the panel description was to have stars Tahmoh Penikett and Grace Park, but to the surprise of everyone, convention virgins Rekha Sharma (Tory, Roslin's Aide) and Michael Hogan (Colonel Tigh) appeared with Michael Trucco (Sam Anders). They didn't have much to say by way of spoilers for the final season, but they did have some interesting comments about discovering they were Cylons (video after the jump.)

Geektress is still recovering from the New York Comic Con, and despite the fact that three of us were there, we have to catch up on all the news and announcements just like everyone else. (What can I say? We just don't care all that much about Skrull invasions, the umpteenth DC Crisis, or movies directed by Frank Miller.) However, this little piece of news begged our immediate attention. In the vein of Marvel Zombies, Marvel Comics has now announced Marvel Apes to be written by Karl Kesel with Ramon Bachs on art.

Pilot season seems to be shifting in to high gear. The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica only began two weeks ago, and already creator Ron D. Moore has made plans for his next project.

"Virtuality" is a series about bored NASA astronauts on Earth's first intergalactic spaceship, and how they use "virtual reality modules" to keep themselves occupied. Of course, as there always is with these things, there is a "bug" in the system that I can only imagine causes shenanigans.

If you have been sitting around thinking "Man, there is nothing I loved more than the Star Wars prequels, I wish I had more alternative medium interpretations of that stuff, man that was great," I have good news for you. In a move that confuses me, George Lucas has bumped the brilliant Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars from his Star Wars site and replaced it with promotions for The Clone Wars

If you were a fan of the stylized mini-series that Tartakovsky created and generally want to punch Jar-Jar Binks and anything involving the word "Padme" in the face, read on.

Jackson Publick has announced on his livejournal that the new season of The Venture Bros. will premier on June 1. There's also a mention of season 4. You can now commence being overcome with relief and joy. I'll give you a minute.

20 Uses For Iron Man's Helmet

In the comic books, Tony Stark has been an inventor, an industrialist, a playboy, a superhero, a member of the Avengers, the Secretary of Defense, a member of a secret organization called the Illuminati, the Director of S.H.E.I.L.D., a futurist (whatever the fuck that is), and an alcoholic. He's gone in and out of the superhero closet, traveled through time with Dr. Doom, fought Communism, slept with a lot of women, shot Hulk into space, and imprisoned a bunch of his friends in the Negative Zone. His most recent role is as Marvel's resident Fascist Douchebag.

Now Iron Man is the subject of a major summer movie starring Robert Downey, Jr. Naturally, this means his head was bound to be turned into a Slurpee cup. Slurpees are awesome, but once the deliciousness is gone, what does one do with a Fascist Douchebag's helmet? Geektress has got some ideas.

I was just informed today (and by "just informed" I mean I read FilmDrunk,) that the sort-of tolerable Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins movie title was recently re-worked by McG. Chud reporter Jeremy Smith is saying this:

I am 100% certain that the title below is the approved-by-McG replacement. Dig it:

Terminator: The Return of the Terminator

While out loud I'm hoping to jeebus that Jeremy is just kidding around, secretly I want this to be the title, because it provides me ammunition to load my McG Hatred Guns with. Just earlier today I had a sinus headache to beat the band (as my grandmother would say), and now I'm feeling slightly better. When you have one eye that feels like it's trying to stab its way out of your skull, the best medicine is to get incredibly enraged about something really geeky like killer robots. One entire throbbing skull really detracts from the pain of allergy season.

Hugh Jackman is apparently teaming with television and comic book writer Marc Gugenheim to create a comic book for Virgin Comics to be titled Nowhere Man. Here's what the press release has to say about it:

Story details are being kept under wraps but Virgin officials describe the story as a Sci Fi odyssey set in a groundbreaking vision of the future in which mankind has traded privacy for safety. “I’ve had so much fun in the graphic novel world with the X-MEN franchise that I wanted to get even more involved,” said Jackman about the project. “I am so excited to work with Virgin and Marc and create a compelling character and story that hopefully will also make it to the big screen."

So it's not about the TV show?

Not surprisingly, Jackman's own production company, Seed Productions, is already developing it for film and "other areas." One can only hope this includes radio.

You may have heard this already, but TV Guide had the story last night about how Jared Padalecki is just seconds away from being involved with Michael Bay's Friday the 13th redundancymake. J-Pads apparently really wants to outnumber his Supernatural co-star Jensen Ackles in the Terrible Horror Movie section of their résumés. (House of Wax, anyone?)

"But Brenda, why are you featuring a picture of Michael Bay in your banner graphic instead of a shirtless Jared?" That's a good question with a fairly decent answer, kittens. And to get you to keep reading, I promise that a shirtless Jared is just after the jump link.

Guitar makers Gibson have got a major bug up their butt, and decided to sue the jeebus out of everyone and their brother this week. Those specified in various different lawsuits are the companies that make the game "Rock Band" -- Harmonix, MTV Networks and Electronic Arts -- in addition to Activision and Red Octane, for their "Guitar Hero" game. Gibson has also filed suit against retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Amazon.com, GameStop and Toys “R” Us for selling both Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.

And I thought I was the cranky one this week. I shouldn't have given up smoking crack for Lent.

Because we essentially missed all this news the first time around, here it is, in convenient digest format.

Back in December, Peter Berg said he wanted to remake Dune and was totally planning on doing it as soon as the writer's strike ended. Unfortunately for Dune, the writer's strike ended.

So now, Berg is all set to direct his movie adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel "Dune," which you may or may not remember as having already been attempted in 1984 by David Lynch -- and then again in 2000 as a miniseries by the Sci Fi channel. Expect the musical theater version of Dune in 2015, followed by the movie adaptation of the musical in 2018 or so.

"Coming Eventually to a Theater Near You: BrigaDune!"

Thank God for Whedonesque, the internet's best source of all things even remotely Whedon-y. They visit sites like Ain't It Cool News so that we don't have to, and find out that Neil Patrick Harris is working on a web short film musical thing with Joss Whedon called Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. Fortunately, it's also the sort of place where Whedon posts regularly, and can confirm such things.

The R2D2 Trashcan, available from Think Geek for $99.99.

Three thoughts:

1. I must have this.
2. $100 is way too much to pay for a trashcan that can't talk light up carry secret plans for the rebellion empty itself.
3. I must steal this.

Newsarama has an interview with Paul Tobin announcing a new addition to the Marvel Adventures line of all ages comics, entitled Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes. Tobin describes it as such:

The title is set up to revolve in four issue arcs, with not only the creative teams but also the featured characters themselves changing out. It’ll give us a chance to showcase characters that don’t have their own book, or team-ups of characters that do. Beyond that, Super Heroes largely holds to the same "rules" as the rest of the line, so we're looking at one-issue storylines with an emphasis on fun and action.

Tobin will be writing the first arc, featuring Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Hulk in stories that revolve around the Hulk entering Orthus and Cerberus into a dog show, extreme sports in space, a Kang the Conqueror plot involving potato chips, and Klaw becoming a country singer. As if it couldn't get even more insanely brilliant, Tobin dropped some hints, and some preview art (above) about an upcoming Marvel project with his wife, the crazy talented Colleen Coover.

A five year old Brenda bonds with the original K.I.T.T.

And now, another "Email Exchange" special from Brenda and Laura, this time covering the highlights of the highlights from NBC's Knight Rider tv movie.

These are always more interesting than real reviews, right?

Laura: So, is it wrong that I would actually watch this show if it went to series?

Brenda: I actually had a cigarette after the opening credits. They could've just played that over and over for two hours.

Here's our 2008 Toy Fair roundup. First of all, our header graphic here is one of NECA's new Harry Potter busts, available starting June 2008. At $55 it's slightly less expensive than the full body statue things for Voldemort and Harry himself, but since I never noticed until now that David Thewlis is like a young Peter Tork, perhaps this thing will satisfy both your Harry Potter and your Monkees needs.

Let's start by saying this: Is this the worst thing I've ever seen in my life? No. It is not. Because I've seen Meet Joe Black, and that was a far worse waste of my time than any one of the three Star Wars prequels. (Any time Brad Pitt getting hit by a car is the highlight of your movie, AND it happens within the first twenty minutes of the film, you should know you're in trouble.)

I'm here to warn you about Tin Man. It comes out on DVD on March 11th, and if there's one thing I can impart to you in this review, it's that you should not pay money to rent it or buy it. If you missed the original airing and the re-broadcast on the Sci Fi channel, you lucked out. That's six hours of your time that you probably spent doing any manner of things more important than watching possibly the worst miniseries in television history. At one point in this thing, I actually thought that Richard Dreyfuss probably saw what was happening around him and DEMANDED that his character be killed in the second act. (SPOILER!)

Metroblogging Los Angeles reports that LA Opera is going to put on a new opera production of David Cronenberg's "The Fly." It is to be directed by Cronenberg and conducted by Placido Domingo, with music by Howard Shore and book by David Henry Hwang. (via The Beat)

I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Makers of new Knight Rider movie: Hey, GM. You know how you built a new Camaro for Transformers? Can you design us a new Firebird?

General Motors: Go away, we're busy diddling around with Corvettes.

Makers of new Knight Rider movie: Well, okay. I guess we'll just have Will Arnett portray a Ford Mustang, then.

General Motors: We are so confused by the new Dodge Charger! Won't someone love us?

TVGuide.com has a "First Look" at Hawkman from the episode of The Batman entitled "What Goes Up...", which airs February 16 on Kids WB. He will be voiced by the T1000 himself, Robert Patrick. I only hope that the plot involves a missing Robin, so that Hawkman can ask someone "Have you seen this boy?"

So, Geektress very kindly invited me in for a guest posting, because I'm right on my uppers and I cannot write poetry as well as Ewan McTeagle.

This site tends more toward comics and science fiction than not. I love these subjects quite a lot, but not passionately enough to write knowledgeably about them.

However, Bren offered me some subjects to discuss, including "Gadgets We Don't Need But Want (You Know, Like Jump Drives Shaped As Sushi)."

I found an issue of World's Finest in the bargain bin of the local used bookstore. It was worth every penny. Issue #167, from June 1967, deals with what happens when DC writers smoke a lot of crack and get bored with the usual Bats/Supes slashiness. Alternate Universe! Boosh!

Cyber Group Animation has a trailer and description for the new "Wolverine and the X-Men" animated series. My favorite part of this trailer is when Cyclops optic blasts Wolverine into another building. That needs to happen more often.

Diversify! Diversify! DC Comics Must Diversify! Or at least that's what they were shouting two years ago as they announced a slew of upcoming "diverse" characters ranging from a Hispanic "Blue Beetle" to a lesbian "Batwoman", Kate Kane. Blue Beetle passed under the radar as far as a major fan outcry goes, however Lezzy Kane did not-- not that this is a surprising turn of events.

The very first appearance of the new "Batwoman" was in my comic book store in 52's issue number 7. The introduction was short and wanting for more. Several weeks passed before Kate's first caped appearance would flap its way across the panels, and admittedly, it was pretty bad-ass.

Newsarama is reporting that Lionsgate Films and Marvel Studios have signed an interim deal with the Writers' Guild of America, similar to the ones made with United Artists, The Weinstein Co., and Worlwide Pants. This is significant because it will allow Lionsgate to continue to churn out "Saw" sequels while the strike continues, though one wonders if those movies even really need a script at this point. It also means that work can be resumed immediately on the various films based on Marvel characters that are slated for production, which include Ant-Man, Captain America, Thor, and The Avengers. It also continues the long trend of Marvel actually making movies while Warner Brothers allows its DC related film projects to fall apart. I wouldn't be surprised if we actually see The Avengers movie hit theaters before the JLA. Hell, there'll probably be a Cloak & Dagger movie before there's another Superman movie.

Cold chills, y'all. Cold chills. I am actually developing some hope that this is going to be done right.

[Also, we hope this version of the trailer doesn't give you epilepsy. -Bren]

How the hell did I miss this? There's going to be a "Greatest American Hero" movie. Not only that, but it's going to be directed by the guy who directed "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure." IGN found the report on ProductionCharts.com earlier this month. I didn't even know a "Greatest American Hero" movie was a possibility, let alone that it was ready for a director or a July 2008 production start date. Apparently, it has been in development since 2000.

Geektress Laura brought to our attention that Wizard Universe online had a story article titled "READY FOR A RAMBO VS. PREDATOR MAIN EVENT?", which did not in fact involve any sort of event Re: Rambo V. Predator. Which, to be sure, was a disappointment to all of us here.

As much as I am loathe to give them credit for anything, Ain't It Cool News and their readers had a question and answer session with Sly Stallone. His response to "What's next for Rambo?":

...I think a challenge would be to take the character, which has been perceived mostly in a realistic vein, and add another element of the surreal that would actually take the audience into a slightly different genre. It’s not like I’m going to turn it into a full-on Broadway musical starring the Muppets, but it is ambitious.

Tired of hearing me say things like: "I like Supernatural, it reminds me of all the good stuff about the X-Files," Chris Carter has taken a quick survey of his finances and has finally decided that an X-Files movie sequel would be a good idea.

USA Today has the first pictures from the new film, which I didn't use for the banner photo because it's just not goddamn sexy enough.

(Video via buzzfocus)

The scenes were shot in the Long Beach City Council Chamber (you can see a picture of the space here - it really does look like a Trek set, even without set dressing). Extremely minor spoiler after the jump.

Writer: Gail Simone
Art: Terry and Rachel Dodson
Imprint: DC Comics
Publish Date: 11/14/2007

Christmas came early for me when DC announced that Gail Simone would be taking over the writing helm for Wonder Woman. After her excellent run on Birds of Prey, I really couldn't think of anyone better suited to write for one of my all time favorite superheroes. Add the Dodsons on art, and well, my head exploded off my shoulders. So, imagine my absolute delight when, after hungrily tearing through the issue before I even made it out of my comic book store (and then the heavens opened up with a most glorious light and the angels trumpeted while I gently wept tears of redemption), I realized that this was indeed going to be a fun ride.

Chud is reporting that the producers of the ridiculously long named X-Men Origins: Wolverine are offering the role of Victor Creed, also known as Sabertooth, to current comic adaptation It-Boy, Gerard Butler. This is after Karl Urban fell out of talks, which, if they can get Butler, seems fortuitous for them. I like Karl Urban, but Gerard Butler is a star on the rise. Chud also reports that director Gavin Hood is seeking Natalie Portman to play a character named "Kayla" (good luck with that) and that Deadpool may make an appearance.

In this short clip from a failed pilot (Alexander the Great, 1965), we get to see William Shatner and Adam West sharing a scene dressed up like ancient Roman soldiers.

In order to preserve the chastity of those who do not wish to be spoiled for last night's season two finale of Heroes, do not read what's after the jump. For everyone else, a Laura/Brenda email exchange classic is just beyond the cut.

In light of the recent casting rumors, we at Geektress have given some thought to how best to address Warner Brothers current production difficulties and the concerns of fans who are less than thrilled with various elements of the film. We believe we have come up with a solution that should please everyone.

Of course, Sarek always looked younger than Amanda, and you'd expect that, given the difference in lifespans. So this makes the choice of Winona Ryder to play Amanda even more problematic. Cross is 59; Ryder is 36. Hm.

"Beowulf" seems to have been the movie to take nearly everyone by surprise the weekend before Thanksgiving weekend, gobbling up attention from all ages wishing to see this classic tale come to life on the big screen. It was specially filmed in 3-D, although there are 2-D theaters showing the film as well.

The CGI film brought in a sweeping 27.5 million dollars and left most viewers satisfied with an overall very well-adapted movie of a fable told for hundreds of generations.

Despite my deep interest in the epic movies based on classic books, "Beowulf" somehow slipped under my radar until several months ago while sipping lemon water in some fancy cafe in Hollywood-- not a regular activity. My interest went as far as me making plans to watch the movie within the first several weeks, as I was a bit weary of the CGI effects. Even after my friend told me that it had Angelina Jolie, undressed, I refused to initially give it the same attention.

Fortunately, I am not always in charge of how I spend my weekends and got to go on a much needed date with the girlfriend to watch the film. Little did I know what a wonderful piece of art this would turn out to be, but what a dreary piece of writing I would have to endure to see "the pretty".

How Many Sucks Does It Take To Get To The Center Of A Crapfest Lollipop?

As reluctant as I am to report on the wild speculation surrounding the George Miller live-action Justice League movie, my cynical and spiteful nature has got the best of me. The need to gloat about the possibility of this project getting tabled because of the writer's strike is overwhelming.

Nyeah nyeah, Warner Brothers. This is what you get for marginalizing women. Plllllbt. :P

That seems unlikely. Doesn't it?

Justin Marks reveals plans for He-Man: IESB has an excerpt up of Justin Marks' interview with Toyfare Magazine where he talks about his plans for the film. Among other things, he talks about his hopes of making a trilogy, his desire to not cast a professional wrestler in the title role, and how He-Man will, in fact, be going by the name of He-Man. The most obvious revelation from the interview is definitely that the villain will be Skeletor. One wonders why Toyfare would even bother asking that question.

I will admit that I don't know much about Dragonball Z except that you are under no circumstances supposed to call it "Dragonballs." (Which is almost entirely why I put that term in the heading of this news piece.)

In strange and possibly unfortunate casting news: Buffy ex-pat James Marsters has been cast as the villain "Piccolo" (pictured above -- the green, cartoon-like one. On the left.) in the live-action version of the popular manga cartoon. He stars alongside Justin Chatwin (War of the Worlds; the pilot episode of Weeds, oh, where have you gone?) in a project to be helmed by Stephen Chow (of Kung Fu Hustle fame) and director James Wong (Final Destination).

This is why we now do podcasts: chat rooms take too long.

Brenda: What is this "Superman has a kid" shit? Also, did no one else find it creepy that Superman was basically stalking Lois? Hey, dude, she moved on. Supereavesdropping on her family is just fucking weird. Weirdo.

"You know what I like, really love? Outback Steakhouse!"

Brenda: In some ways I think maybe Wonder Woman and J'onn J'onnz are doing it off-screen. I mean, their nicknames are inverted versions of one another, anyway.

Laura: I am so disturbed. I can't imagine how they convinced anyone to wear that.

Brenda: "But... there will be slow motion beheadings!"

Laura: That probably would have worked on me. I'm a sucker for a good beheading.

Brenda: Well, it got me to the theater.

True, she appeared at other functions in other Star Wars tees, so it might be all just a promotional stunt for Fanboys. But I ask you: Do you care? Because I don't. It just means she's got a couple of Star Wars shirts at the bottom of her closet. No different than you or I, I'm sure.