BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT The four-day geek high holiday that is San Diego Comic-Con has just come and gone, leaving behind an endless amount of juicy news about upcoming video games, movies, TV shows, and of course comics. To avoid writing my graduate thesis early, I am just going to give bullet points about everything that geeks who couldn’t afford (or didn’t plan the year and a half in advance it takes) to attend North America’s biggest comic con need to know.
- Iron Man 3 (May 3, 2013) will feature Iron Man controlling his armor with just his mind (similar to the Extremis from the comics). The film will feature Tony Stark’s archenemy The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), a Chinese businessman who has 10 rings — that he found in a crashed space ship — and each one can do things like shoot lightning or fire, freeze time or people. Badass. War Machine (Don Cheadle) will once again appear but with an American Flag paint job to the armor (similar to the villainous Iron Patriot).
- Thor: The Dark World hits theatres November 8, 2012 and nothing was revealed.
- Captain America: Winter Solider (April 4, 2014) will most likely feature the Winter Soldier, a Russian spy with ties to Captain America’s past.
- The expected announcement that a film version of The Guardians of the Galaxy was in production and scheduled for release August 1st, 2014 was made. Pictures were released of the walking alien tree Groot, the gun wielding Rocket Raccoon, space cop Star Lord, space assassin Gamora, and human Drax the Destroyer.
- The Ant-Man movie by director/screen writer Edgar Wright is coming along nicely, thank you, with test footage aired featuring the bug-like hero (whose has the power to shrink himself when need be) walking on a gun and punching out full sized humans.
- Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming pulp-western Django Unchained (December 25, 2012) will also have a DC comic book to go along with it.
- The storyline “Death of the Family” (which echoes “A Death in the Family” where Joker killed Robin Jason Todd) begins in Batman #13 (October) and features the first appearance of the Clown Prince of Crime, aka The Joker, since he got his face removed at the beginning of the DC reboot.
- Neil Gaiman is returning to his masterpiece The Sandman in 2013 with a prequel that takes place before Morpheus’s (the Lord of Dreams) first appearance in The Sandman #1 nearly 25 years ago.
- September’s Batgirl #0 (for non comic book fans, DC is doing #0s this September to fill in missing information since last year DC basically hit the reset button on their comics’ history and then fast forwarded) shows why Babara Gordon is no longer in a wheel chair.
- Ultimate Spider-Man artist David Marquez was signed to an exclusive contract with Marvel, suggesting that the industry is getting competitive once again.
- Cartoon Avengers Assemble will replace the Avenger’s show Earth’s Mightiest Hero on the Disney Channel.
A new animated Hulk show titled Hulk And The Agents of S.M.A.S.H. was revealed to have a cast that includes the Hulk (duh), Red Hulk (Thunderbolt Ross, Hulk’s father in law who wanted the power to destroy the Hulk), She-Hulk (Banner’s cousin who got a blood transfusion), A-Bomb (Rick Jones, the kid who Bruce pushed out of the way of the gamma bomb), and Skaar (The Hulk’s half alien son).- Coming out of this summer’s event book Avengers vs. X-men is Uncanny Avengers, a team book made up of members of both teams and led by Havok, Cyclops’ brother.
- Another spin off of Avengers vs. X-Men is the one shot A vs. X Babies that features adorable versions of these heroes duking it out for no other reason than the fans demanded it after seeing a variant cover featured babies fighting (and yes, the Baby Avengers do have a Hulk).
- Shazam (formerly Captain Marvel) will be joining the main Justice League cast sometime after October once his origin story is completed in the second features of Justice League.
- The Green Lantern titles gets a shake up with the guardians (little blue men who run the Lanterns) making war against free will, Guy Gardner “falls,” and the newest Green Lantern of Earth carrying a gun that he can use if or when his ring runs out of juice.
- DC stated again that there are no future plans for former Flash Wally West (sorry fans).
- Hit TV show Walking Dead will feature the Prison, a refuge/hideout controlled by a a corrupt mayor.
- In addition to the numerous novels and comics of the expanded Star Wars universe, Dark Horse will publish a new Star Wars comics including the classic cast of Luke, Solo, Chewbacca, etc. which will take place right after the Death Star goes boom!
- The Avengers/Buffy The Vampire Slayer director Joss Wheadon’s hit Internet video Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog will be shown on the CW Channel next season.
- Open-minded, non-homophobe fans who enjoyed the first gay superhero wedding in comic book history should pick up October’s issue of Astonishing X-Men which will feature Northstar and his new husband Kyle’s honey moon (and expect more outrage from protest One Million Moms).
- Marvel’s favorite psychopath assassin Deadpool is finally getting his own ridiculously violent video game next year.
- Creator Marc Silvestri is rebooting indie publisher Top Cow’s former flagship franchise Cyber Force and giving away the new series for free (at least the first five issues will be free except for variant covers which comic shops will sell just to cover the cost of buying the comics wholesale to give away).