2 Steps to Succeed in Comics: Bernard Chang

At the MCM London Expo today, the absolute highlight was meeting some great established and up-and-coming artists. While perusing the comics pages at Bernard Chang's stand (nice guy by the way), I was eavesdropping on the advice he was giving to amateur artist.

Happy Halloween!

A Horrific Halloween poster of an undead Dark Knight rising from the grave courtesy of the brilliant Fan Art Exhibit.

Recently, Christopher Nolan announced the title of the new Batman film will be The Dark Knight Rises. It could be something to do with Harvey Dent / Two Face still being alive as the title "The Dark Knight" was apparently as much to do with Dent as Batman. It could also be much simpler in that at the end of The Dark Knight, Batman had framed himself as the villain and this third instalment will see the final seal of his identity - much like a knight rises from their knee once given their title. In other TDKR news, Nolan has confirmed it won't feature The Riddler or Mr. Freeze, has cast Tom Hardy in an unspecified role and is looking for a female lead. Who could Hardy be playing? Could be any number of a huge list of characters or even a completely new character. I really rate Hardy as an actor so it'll be great to have him in the film. As for the female lead, who knows? New love interest or a female villain/hero like Catwoman, Huntress or Harley Quinn?

Chris Evans Gets Ripped for Captain America - One for the girls

The Must... use... POWERS! Sidekick has mentioned on a few occasions the propensity of the blog to show the occasional sexy Wonder Woman, Emma Frost or Power Girl photo manipulation (for purely illustrative purposes of course).

To even things out ever so slightly, here's one of the promotional stills of post-super-solder-serum Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) in Captain America: The First Avenger.

Captain America and Green Lantern Take After Zoolander

The cover of the latest Entertainment Weekly sports the first look at Chris Evans in his Captain America costume. There are a bunch of other pictures inside nicely showcased on SuperHeroHype.

Is it just me or have Ryan Reynold and Chris Evans both taken lessons from Zoolander for how to look like a really serious superhero guy?

The "Magnum" pose is really going to blow away the bad guys, Paralax and Red Skull!

Favreau's Favourites #4: My Little Tony

I'm playing a bit of catch-up here with Favreau's Favourites so here's an oldy: Iron Pony.
Not sure of the original source but here he is for your pleasure:

Apparently there's a whole niche for creating custom My Little Ponies. Check out the menagerie ranging from My Little Storm Trooper to My Little Jack Sparrow here!

You can follow Jon Favreau on Twitter here

Katy Perry as Catwoman

The other day I saw something about some promo Katy Perry was doing for her perfume, "Purr". Typical Lil' Katy poured herself into a little latex cat suit to play with a ball of wool no less! Being a comic geek, what were my immediate thoughts? Oh, I could make that look like Cat Woman... obviously! So, because it's not going to happen in a million years, here's Katy Perry in Catwoman as if in Batman 3!

(Click image to enlarge)

More camp 60s Julie Newmar version than Dark Knight, but, hey, it's Katy "I kissed a girl" Perry!

Fan Art Expo's version is, of course, infinitely better!

The Hulk is Getting A Live Action TV Show!

Now this is bound to be better than Smallville! I wonder how they'll pull of the special effects every week on a TV budget. Perhaps it could end up being a mini-series with fewer episodes and more money per episode. In any case, it'll be better than painting Lou Ferrigno green again! I'm definitely excited about this - far more so than the proposed Wonder Woman series and all the other superhero TV shows yet to find their way onto UK screens.

There's no word on who'll be involved or who the star will be but...

Mark Ruffalo is taking up the mantle as the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner, in 2012's Avengers movie. Before Ruffalo, Ed Norton played Banner in 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" and before that, the role had been played by Eric Bana in 2003's version, "Hulk". Getting yet another actor for the TV series would be just a crazy churn-rate so I expect it would be Ruffalo on TV too. In an interview with Empire, Ruffalo did indeed hint at the possibility of more solo Hulk outings but the implication was that they would be movies.

What might we see in a Hulk TV series?

London's Comic Con: The London MCM Expo

Roll up, roll up, it's London's Comic Con!

From 29th to 31st October 2010, us geeks can throw on a cape (or not), crawl out of our mums' basements to meet like-minded fellows and bask in collective geekiness (or something like that).

This year, the Eagle Awards will also be there. The Eagle Awards are the comics industry's longest established awards with prizes for every imaginable part of comics creation, including web comics. A list of the nominations can be seen here.

There's also long list of guests including comics artists, writers and publishers and actors and producers from a bunch of TV shows.

Girls Aloud's Sarah Harding as Emma Frost

UK girl group member, Sarah Harding, has revealed how she missed out on the role of Emma Frost in the up-coming X-Men: First Class. Despite numerous auditions, the 28-year-old singer missed out to January Jones, best known for her role in Mad Men.

In her interview, Sarah Harding says, "I got called back three times for X-Men but I missed out on the part to January Jones which was fine. She's a more established actress, but I was pleased to have got that far down the line."

Geekiest Cake Ever

And the Geek spoke unto the Baker, "Build me the ultimate cake,"
And the Baker make the cake.
And it was ridiculous.

Favreau's Favourites #3: Iron Gramps

This is the best yet. Someone somewhere has created this geriatric version of Iron Man kicking some pension-collecting arse, Iron walking stick and all!
If anyone has any information about the origins of Old Man Iron Man, please get in contact!

You can follow Jon Favreau on Twitter here

What the **** Is Going On With Spider-Man?!

For those that haven't been reading or keeping up with the Spider-Man comics over the last few years, this Spider-Man / Calvin and Hobbes mash-up is a pretty accurate summary:

This is basically what happened in the Spider-Man arc called, "One More Day". Mental.


Thanks to Timothy Lim (aka Ninjaink)

Geeks Beware!

The Comica London International Comics Festival is nearly upon us. Each year, The Graphic Short Story Prize goes to a story-teller who, judging by previous winners, I am not able to appreciate. However, this runner up by Emily Haworth-Booth is bitterly funny because it's so true. This has shone a light on my life and I will endeavour to change! Right after this next blog post..

Favreau's Favourites #2: Steampunk Stark

It seems not even Iron Man is immune to Steampunk and Jon Favreau approves. This prize-winning costume is of the Steampunk genre meaning it involves anachronistic technology in a steam-powered setting (usually Victorian). In other words, this is how Iron Man would look if it were set 150 years ago. I've seen Steampunk X-Men, Steampunk Avengers and Steampunk Justice League but this is the best so far:

Steampunk Iron Man courtesy of Marvel's Flickr
You can follow Jon Favreau on Twitter here

Comics and Sex Education

I saw this and I thought of you.

(Click image for full size)

Now there's no doubt comics can be educational courtesy of Amazing Super Powers

That's Novel! A Comics Exhibition

"From searing memoirs to global manga, from The Tower of Babel to The Walking Dead, discover the latest, greatest and up-to-datest in comics by leading international innovators and the British cutting edge..." 

So went the page for That's Novel!, an event kicking off with a party this Thursday (21st October). I used to think nothing to do with comics ever happened in London. Yeah, there's a convention at Earl's Court but I went one year and it was a bit lame. They're nothing like those in San Diego and New York here. However, while surfing one night recently, I discovered the Comica London International Comics Festival. This isn't a convention, but is something far more interesting (I know why you really go to conventions anyway). There's the Graphic Short Story Competition, the Comica Comiket indie comics fair, the Comica Symposium promoting the research of comics, graphic novels and manga and this, That's Novel! - "An exhibition celebrating comics by international innovators and the British cutting edge."

Black Panther Goes Pulp

One of my favourite comic artists, an a proper Twart, is finally getting a major run on a Big Two (Marvel and DC) job. I'd not been paying much attention to the goings on in Daredevil (he's currently out of action with no sign of return yet) and Black Panther (he's no longer king of Wakanda, so he's moved to the States to become an Average Joe superhero) but now that Francesco Francavilla has landed the job of regular artist on the new Black Panther: The Man Without Fear series, I'm sure it's going to at least look incredibly cool. Here's a preview of the first Black Panther issue so you can see for yourself:

Stephen Lang as Cable

Stephen Lang, best known for playing bad-guy, Col. Miles Quaritch in Avatar as Cable, Marvel's time-travelling cyborg freedom fighter from the future. He has a cybernetic arm, a supercomputer the size of a marshmallow and a massive gun.

You can read about Lang talking about Cable in an interview with Screen Rant here. While no Cable movie is in the works just yet, it's not outside the realms of possibility.

I just wanted to see if I could manipulate some photos into a convincing version of Lang as Cable. You can use the comments below to let me know what you think (which is probably that I should just get back to this sort of thing).

Favreau's Favourites #1: Iron Baby

Welcome to Favreau's Favourites*! Since following Iron Man director, Jon Favreau on Twitter, I've noticed his approval (in the form of RTs) of all things Iron Man. Now, a lot of these are just people's kids in Iron Man masks but sometimes they reach a cut above the rest and really are quite cool. Take Iron Baby as an example and the first in this Must... use... POWERS! ongoing series, Favreau's Favourites:



You can follow Jon Favreau on Twitter here
For more from, Patrick Boivin, the guy who created Iron Baby, click here
* Thanks for coming up with the name, Robots vs Zombies!

Superman's Facebook FAIL

"Maaaa!"

Mothers should not be on Facebook - courtesy of Geek Culture

Agent Coulson's Exoskeleton Armour

In a laboratory in Salt Lake City, Utah, the XOS 2 armour is revealed and none other than S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) is there trying it on. Rex Jameson, XOS 2 test engineer, and Dr. Fraser Smith, VP of operations, provide a decent summary of its capabilities but of course all you want to see is the part where the suit punches through stuff. According to Dr. Smith, the XOS 2 could be in the theatre of battle as soon as 2015 in in tethered form and around 2018-2020 in the non-tethered form. Video and image gallery below:

EXCLUSIVE: Superman Movie Costume Design from a Fanboiii

Yesterday I received a very polite and unassuming email from a gentleman identifying himself as Fanboiii. I would later find out that his name is Jon Vincent and he has a cool idea for where Superman's costume should be going in Zack Snyder's Superman movie (aiming for a winter 2012 release). After having been inspired by David Williams' design for McG's scrapped Superman Reborn project (see them here), Jon thought he could do one better and, well, the results are great. See them below.

How to Imagine the 10th Dimension

Just one of those things you have to watch:

Superman's Getting Snyder'd

It's the big news of today. Zack Snyder has landed the job of directing the new Superman reboot. Snyder is best known for his graphic translations of comics from page to screen in 300 and Watchmen. There's no doubt that Snyder does is very faithful to the comic-book source material. However, I think he does need guiding.

New Wonder Woman TV Show to Replace Smallville

It's official. The Wonder Woman movie project has been scrapped in favour of a TV show. Helming the project is David E. Kelley, the executive producer of shows such as Ally McBeal, The Practice and Boston Legal. Details according to Deadline remain sketchy so it's not clear whether Wonder Woman will be portrayed as the old classic, be modelled on Jim Lee's controversial new reboot (see pics below) or something else. For obvious reasons, her costume is difficult to bring to the screen. Considering she's a feminist icon, she wears a pretty ridiculously skimpy costume. At this stage, I just hope they don't do to Wonder Woman what they did to Superman with Smallville - I was put off that series after about the 3rd or 4th season. It takes Smallville 10 years before Clark finally accepts his "destiny" and becomes Superman? Really? What a loser!

Here are some possible looks...

Krypton-like Habitable Planet Discovered!

And it's only 20 light-years away! A team of scientists of the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey recently discovered a habitable planet orbiting the red star, Gliese 581 in the Libra constellation.

Road Trippin' With Superman & Seinfeld

Wow, Superman would be so annoying on a road trip. Watch this short film to see what I mean.

Bollywood Superhero Trailer

Just the other day I was sat in an Indian restaurant saying, "I just don't get Bollywood movies - they're crazy!" To my taste, Hollywood musicals are weird enough but when sets expand and entire casts all start dancing together at every opportunity, I can't help but laugh. Not to mention the fast-zoom close-ups on supposedly menacing eyes and all those gimmicks. I don't want to get into a whole critique of a cultural art that I don't understand but so far my experience of Bollywood movies (which is very limited) suggests that the sense of kitsch humour I experience watching it is not intended.

The trailer below is for a Bollywood superhero movie, called Endhiran (Robot in English). It looks absolutely brilliant! Brilliant in an absolutely terrible kind of way! It's the kind of thing that has to be seen. It starts of looking like I, Robot before quickly becoming Inspector Gadget and then descending into hilarity. I will probably never find this film in any shop but if I do I may have to get it.