Victorian gothic romance directed by Guillermo del Toro with ghosts? Yes, please.
But unlike previous Gothic haunts like Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Watcher in the Woods, The Others, or Wolfman, genre favorite director del Toro is amping up the gore and violence in Crimson Peak, his latest and–reportedly–the greatest of his trademark visually spectacular fantasies so far.
And it adds another movie to that sub-genre of horror we keep talking about featuring creepy little girls.
Not for the faint of heart, check out this trailer for Crimson Peak, after the break:
Thanks to the magic of targeted Internet advertising, these Lego-ish figures streamed across the ad banner of borg.com this week and caught our attention. (You know how we like finding ways to talk about baseball here). Although they look at first blush like Lego knock-offs, these figures by Oyo Sports are fully licensed by Major League Baseball. Turns out, according to the Oyo Sports website, they seem to have been inspired by Legos, but attempt to go further by expanding the articulated movement of the standard building block figure.
And you gotta love how they matched up the goatees with the players.
You can buy individual players or team building sets, and not just for the current American League and National League champs. You can get current players and retired players like Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, and Bob Feller, or even mascots for pro and college teams, and figures from other sports. You can buy them on Amazon here.
The playsets for the current World Series teams reminded us of the metal figures some Dungeons & Dragons players use to visualize their role-playing game. Maybe this could be a new twist on fantasy baseball?
It’s the latest incarnation of sports table top play–remember electric football?
The annual Harvey Award nominations close tomorrow. The nominees for best works in the comic book industry are being voted on by comic book creators, with the final award ceremony to be held at Baltimore Comic-Con on September 6, 2014. The recently combined publisher BOOM! Studios and imprint Archaia lead this year out of the gates with 30 nominations. Independent publisher IDW Publishing received no nominations and the biggest, DC Comics, received only one. Probably not surprisingly one of our favorite books, Marvel Comics’ Hawkeye, is a top contender, along with David Petersen’s latest Mouse Guard work.
More of our favorites are recognized again this year: Francesco Francavilla’s Afterlife With Archie is up for Best New Series and Mike Norton’s Battlepug for best online comic. Here are the 2014 nominations for 2013 works, followed by this year’s Eisner Award winners for those that may have missed their announcement during the busy weekend of SDCC 2014.
2014 Harvey Award Nominees
Best Writer
James Asmus, Quantum and Woody, Valiant Entertainment
Matt Fraction, Hawkeye, Marvel Comics
Matt Kindt, Mind Mgmt, Dark Horse Comics
Brian K. Vaughn, Saga, Image Comics
Mark Waid, Daredevil, Marvel Comics
Best Artist
David Aja, Hawkeye, Marvel Comics
Dan Parent, Kevin Keller, Archie Comics
Nate Powell, March: Book One, Top Shelf Production
Chris Samnee, Daredevil, Marvel Comics
Fiona Staples, Saga, Image Comics
Jeff Stokely, Six Gun Gorilla, BOOM! Studios
Best Cartoonist
Matt Kindt, Mind Mgmt, Dark Horse Comics
Comfort Love and Adam Withers, Rainbow in the Dark, uniquescomic.com
Terry Moore, Rachel Rising, Abstract Studios
Dan Parent, Kevin Keller, Archie Comics
David Petersen, Mouse Guard: The Black Axe, BOOM! Studios/Archaia
Paul Pope, Battling Boy, First Second
Did you miss out on San Diego Comic-Con this year? Taking the sting out of missing the big annual show, both Gentle Giant and Entertainment Earth are making their SDCC 2014 exclusives available to everyone. Although a few items have already sold out, there are plenty of great busts and action figures that will provide something of interest for every sci-fi, superhero, and fantasy fan. Click on any image above or below to go to the store listing for prices and availability.
Number One on our list of the coolest action figures of the year is the above variant Predator figure from Funko’s ReAction retro-action figure line. We’ve seen one of these up close and not only is this a nicely constructed figure with great packaging, it looks like the character cloaked in the film and it comes with green blood splatter applied to the figure and even the box–splatter that was part of the plot of the movie and not just a sales gimmick. This figure sold out fast, but don’t worry, you can pre-order now for its re-release. After the break check out several variant retro-Kenner figures only available for a limited time, including Firefly’s Jayne Cobb and his famous hat, a Malcolm Reynolds with Browncoat. Even new figures from The Twilight Zone of William Shatner and Burgess Meredith!
The high point of the Gentle Giant exclusives is this great Rocket Raccoon bust that we previewed earlier at borg.com. You can just hear Rocket ranting about something, gritting his teeth as he rescues the Guardians of the Galaxy team.
For retro fans, Gentle Giant has three other SDCC exclusives for sale. Check out this two-foot tall Alien figure–inspired by the unreleased Kenner figure from the 1980s:
And how about the latest in Gentle Giant’s line of jumbo-sized classic Kenner Star Wars action figures, one of Kenner’s best, the AT-AT Driver from The Empire Strikes Back:
While DC Comics fans were waiting for an online release to surface from Comic-Con of a teaser for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which doesn’t arrive for two more years and still hasn’t made it to the Web, Warner Bros. and MGM released a giant preview for the last film in The Hobbit trilogy–the last of Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy J.R.R. Tolkien series.
With a great title that seems to fit the dark and violent scope of this last chapter, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies looks to be another winner. In addition to the exclusive Comic-Con poster released earlier this weekend that we posted here, another version features Martin Freeman’s Bilbo Baggins.
But this first preview… a peek at Smaug devastating Lake-Town… War-goats!
Thranduil in battle… Thorin calls for war… Dark times are ahead for fantasy fans, and we can hardly wait.
Check out this first trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies:
I got to drive 125 miles south and east yesterday to visit the horde of awesome that is Comic-Con. As usual, it was a blast and I wish I had the mutant ability of Jamie Madrox the Multiple Man to see every panel, hang out at every booth, visit every place outside the Con and then at the end of the day, try every dessert at Café Zucchero. However, I am just one man in one place at one time in this universe. So, let me break down my small piece of Saturday in San Diego.
The Great
– As a Los Angeleno, the two banes of my existence in this metropolitan monstrosity are traffic and parking. Driving down took only two hours and I found a lot that only charged $5 for 12 hours. It doesn’t get much better than that.
– At forty minutes before high noon, I made my way to room nine and the line forming outside. The line kept on filling and filling and soon I was glad to have foregone any extra time on the floor, for I got to see “Berkeley Breathed: The Last Comic-Con Panel!” The whole session consisted of Breathed joking about himself, his love of merchandising and his “tiff” with Bill Watterson. Sitting in the room laughing made evident the comic quickness of the mind behind Opus and Bill the Cat. It made me miss “Bloom County,” “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side,” all bits of my past that now only show up in collections (like the future upcoming collection of Breathed’s work “Academia Waltz” from his time at the University of Texas.) The bit of the panel that will stick with me the most is about how times have changed and how the comic pages have begun to fade. Pieces of art, comedy and commentary that were in 100 million newspapers on kitchen tables 30 years ago, now barely make it out of the tin boxes in the vestibules of IHOPs.
– I may have missed the “Saga” panel at 1 pm, but I caught Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples during the “Strong Female Characters” panel two hours later in the same room. June Brigman, Colleen Coover, Sara Mayhew, Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Paul Tobin, Vaughn and Staples talked about what it takes to make strong female characters, how they approach it and listed some of their current favorites. The story that will last with me though came from the moderator, Maggie Thompson. She told the story of her husband reading to their daughter a run of “Fantastic Four” every night before bed. As a gift for their daughter when she was away in college they gave her a bound collection of a great many of those same stories. When she received them and started to read the stories, she angrily called her mom and yelled that these were not the stories her father had read to her. It turns out that her father had read her all of Reed Richard’s lines as the words said by Sue Storm. He didn’t want the only female superhero in the story to be the one that fades and hides.
More big news emerged from San Diego Comic-Con this weekend. A new comic book series for Haven and Galaxy Quest… a sneak peek at Arrow Season 3, a Star Trek crossover with Planet of the Apes… details and art from Marvel’s new line of Star Wars comic books… new actors to star in Marvel’s Ant-man… more content from Avengers 2… and new giant monster movies are coming soon from Legendary Pictures.
But the biggest news that almost “broke the Internet” was from DC Entertainment: the first look at Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and her new costume from the 2016 release Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It’s a nice Cliff Chiang-inspired pose for the Amazon warrior. So we now have three images of the DC Comics trinity:
We’ve got a pretty dark superhero movie in our future.
The next big news came from a Marvel Comics panel–the creative line-up for Star Wars comic books under Disney:
Marvel Comics announced that January 2015 will see the first of Marvel taking over the Star Wars comic book line from Dark Horse with three initial series. Kansas City’s Jason Aaron will write and John Cassaday will serve as artist on a series taking place just after A New Hope, where the original 1978 Marvel Comics line began and the current main Dark Horse title takes place. Above is the cover art by Cassaday for Issue #1.
A series beginning in February 2015 will follow Darth Vader after his TIE Fighter is knocked away by Han Solo at the end of A New Hope, to be created by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca.
And March 2015 will see a series following Princess Leia after the destruction of the Death Star, from writer Mark Waid, artist Terry Dodson, and colorist Rachel Dodson.
Here are four pages of early stage art for the main Star Wars series:
In its fourth year operating across from San Diego Comic-Con, Nerd HQ will be streaming live panels on the Web with archived panels available for viewing after the panels each day as they have done for past years. Click here to see all of last year’s panels.
Nerd HQ offers an alternative to catch a few panels away from the SDCC venue, and is ideal for those who didn’t get tickets in time for the big show but will be in town this weekend, although tickets sold out quickly for Nerd HQ this year. Seeing several Nerd HQ panels will cost you lots more than a ticket to SDCC, so the online version is the next best thing, and for those not in San Diego this weekend, an easy way to share in the vibe going on right now in Southern California.
These are full panels, held in a small venue, which will give those who have not attended a big Con an idea of what they’re missing.
Here are some of the panels held so far this week at Nerd HQ:
A Conversation with Firefly’s Adam Baldwin
A Conversation with Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Seth Green
Whether or not major genre properties are hosting panels or booths at Comic-Con 2014, studios released some great images on Wednesday preview night and the first full day of the show yesterday. The biggest is probably the above photo of Ben Affleck as Batman from the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, not coming to theaters until 2016. The image was nicely timed to the DC Comics celebration week for the 75th anniversary of Batman’s first appearance.
Warner Bros. also released the first poster for the latest movie in the Mad Max series, to star Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. It’s called Max Max: Fury Road, and won’t hit theaters until next year, but that didn’t stop releasing some advance images from the film, including this image of Theron:
and this image of some post-apocalyptic recycling of cars:
The Amblin Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/Universal sequel to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park trilogy, Jurassic World, netted us a teaser poster for the June 2015 release:
Jurassic World will star Chris Pratt, star of Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy, which also had a new poster reveal for its IMAX 3D version:
We thought we’d share some of the best exclusives and other offerings scheduled to be available at San Diego Comic-Con International this weekend for those of you who just can’t decide what to spend your money on. There’s too much to be able to see everything at the big Con, so we’ve listed booth numbers so you can make sure you don’t miss out on those toys, posters, and comic books that you simply must have.
But first, how about some early SDCC reveals, like this image of Roy Harper’s new Arsenal costume from CW’s Arrow:
and this great new SDCC 2014 exclusive poster for the final installment of The Hobbit trilogy, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies:
And what’s better than news of a new comic book series tie-in from IDW Publishing for Orphan Black?
Now on to the exclusives:
From the Weta Workshop (Booth #3613) you can get this Smaug scales T-shirt inspired by The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies:
and a pre-release copy of the new book The Art of Film Magic, signed edition:
From Alex Ross Art (Booth #2419) pick up original comic book art or limited prints, or this great 10-print edition portfolio of some of Alex Ross’s Marvel Comics work:
BOOM! Studios (Booth #2229) will be selling several exclusive cover variant comic books, including RoboCop #1:
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