Sexy Beast. Or Maybe Blue Balls: Bryan Singer Reveals Beast’s Look in Days of Future Past

While we have been talking about the rapidly ramping up hype around this summer’s geek and genre movies, the cool thing about living in this part of the 21st Century is that no one is waiting to see how the comic book flicks do this year before they make more: we’ve already got at least four of them in the pipe for next year.

As we speak, Marvel Studios has Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of The Galaxy being whipped together, but let’s not forget the Grand Old Man of modern superhero movies: the new X-Men, Days of Future Past, directed by Bryan Singer, the dude who put together the first two X-Men flicks (and I guarantee you that he thanks God for that fact every day, since there ain’t no one wandering around referring to Singer’s accolades as the director of Superman Returns, or Valkyrie).

And even though Singer is relatively early into production on Days of Future Past, he’s done a good job using Twitter to keep the rabid fans on the edges of their seats. Not too long ago, he Tweeted pictures of a bunch of the actors attached to the movie, but now he’s moved to showing off some early makeup effects. Specifically that of Nicholas Hoult in his Beast makeup. Which you can check out after the jump.

T-Minus 27 Days: First Complete Iron Man 3 Scene Released

We are about a month away from the start of summer movie season, and to this day, it feels a little funny to say that this early in April. Back when I was a really little kid, “summer movies” were, well, just movies that came out in the summer, and generally amounted to whatever Disney re-release fronted the double bill at the drive-in theater, where my parents gambled on me falling asleep in the back of the Dodge Aspen early enough for them to get hammered in relative peace and bemoan that they ever decided to have children.

But Jaws, in June 1975, changed all that, with Star Wars moving the start of summer blockbuster season up to Memorial Day. And that’s how it was until Spider-Man moved the magic date up to the first Friday in May back in 2002, and where it has stayed, guaranteeing a huge blockbuster on that day… and a giant pile of expensive shit that Hollywood knows sucks, but is still hoping will lure in enough bored dupes looking for something to do on a Friday night to make back the production investment, the weekend before (hello, Pain & Gain!).

But regardless: the season is coming, and we are, as we have stated in the past, most looking forward to Iron Man 3. Sure, we could spend our early spring looking forward to geek movies like, say, Man of Steel – and make no mistake, we kind of are – but as we have established, this is not our first rodeo. And while the early trailers for Man of Steel look good, we have been burned by a Superman movie made by a director with geek cred starring an unknown before (hello, Superman Returns!), and that one wasn’t even by the poor, deluded schmuck who made Sucker Punch.

So for now, Iron Man 3 is our frontrunner, and since it opens first, on May 3rd, it means we are getting more and more promotional stuff about it. Such as the first complete scene from the movie to be released via Yahoo Screen. It is referred to as “Holiday Greeting,” which is appropriate, because it reminds me of every Christmastime “conversation” I have ever had with my brother. And you can see it after the jump.

Changes in The Weather: Stormwatch #18 Review

Editor’s Note: They try to spoil the world, but they make no effort to change it.

Do yourself a favor and don’t let yourself too pissed off about the fact that we’re staring down the barrel of yet another reboot within the pages of Stormwatch. Sure, it means that the continuity we’ve spent about 54 bucks on since September, 2011 is now an anomalous waste of money with no bearing in the DC Universe, and it means that we get to sit through our third or fourth origins of Apollo and The Midnighter since thinking impure thoughts about Britney Spears was icky for a whole different reason, and we’re now forced to buy into yet another mandate for the existence of a superhero team – first it was a United Nations team, and then they were self-built to save the world, and then they were the descendants of Demon Knights – on an infinite timeline we will reach the point where Stormwatch comes together in an elevator to bring justice to the real bastard: whoever farted.

So you will be tempted to spin yourself up into a screaming frenzy of rage over the fact that, only a year and a half after the New 52 reboot, Stormwatch #19 represents the team’s second full reboot – and it is a full reboot – in less than two years ago. And you might feel the urge to scream because you now need to get used to an almost completely different set of characters, from familiar ones like The Engineer to weird ones like, well, The Weird, who is probably only recognizable to serious 1980s Justice League International fans who read an obscure 1988 miniseries featuring the character – a miniseries that I don’t believe has ever been reprinted, and for which I now need to dig through God knows how many longboxes to find. And you could find yourself frothing over the changes to more familiar, classic Stormwatch characters that writer Jim Starlin has chosen to make – Jenny Soul? Really? Warren Ellis created Jenny Sparks as the Spirit of The Twentieth Century due to the rise of electricity, so the Spirit of the Twenty-First Century is Jenny Soul? What, did Bob Harras shoot down “Jenny Xenu”?

You might feel this rage – and clearly I am feeling some of it as well. But you shouldn’t feel it, for a few specific reasons that I will get to in a second. But mostly you shouldn’t feel it because the story doesn’t warrant it. Not because it’s an awesome story, because it certainly isn’t. It’s okay, inoffensive and talky on a good day, and it builds the team based on stakes that, compared to what brought Warren Ellis’s, or even Paul Cornell’s Stormwatch, barely seem to exist at all.

But you shouldn’t let it piss you off. For reasons that we shall discuss.

Post-Foreplay, Pre-Climax: The Superior Spider-Man #7 Review

The Superior Spider-Man is not sustainable. It has never been sustainable. We have known this from the beginning.

Let’s face it: The Superior Spider-Man only works for as long as you accept that there’s a megamaniacal supervillain who talks like Ming The Merciless on a coke bender and kills more people as Spider-Man than he did with his pre-body switch Death Satellites pretending to be Peter Parker… without anyone noticing. Including the readers. I have been able to suspend my disbelief on my that plot point for a while, but the entire time I have been reading this book, I have known in the back of my mind that if I called someone a “dolt” more than three times in a month, my friends would demand to know what was wrong… and if I used the term “pilfering parasite” more than once in, well, ever, my own parents would hold me at pitchfork-point until the DNA results came back clean.

The cracks in this whole Doc-Ock-As-Spider-Man conceit are already beginning to show. In the current Marvel crossover event Age of Ultron, which was written by Brian Michael Bendis months ago, Spider-Man is pretty clearly Peter Parker… which caused writer Dan Slott to have to produce last week’s The Superior Spider-Man #6AU (AU for “Age of Ultron”), which tried valiantly to shoehorn Ock’s version of Spider-Man into the event… even though only a reader who uses the cover of an issue of Age of Ultron to roll a fat one would believe that Otto Octavius has a wisecrack in him that doesn’t include the word “pusillanimous.”

Thankfully, Slott seems to know the limitations of the body-switching gag. Because just over three months into the whole deal, he is simultaneously showing Peter beginning to show a modicum of control over his Otto-infested body, and Spider-Man’s teammates on The Avengers are finally convinced that something isn’t right with the guy. And while all this is happening with what feels like a fairly contrived situation just to show the extent of Doc Ock’s newly-found moral relativism, it’s good to finally see the noose tightening on this whole gimmick.

The Fackin Line Has Been Drawn: Locke & Key: Omega #4 Review

As often happens with recent individual issues of Locke & Key, I am of varying minds about recommending issue 4 of Locke & Key: Omega. On one hand, I want to tell you that, if you’re already reading Locke & Key, you’ll want to pick up this issue because it’s packed with action, suspense, violence, and a couple of damn satisfying – if small – triumphs on the part of the Locke kids’ mom, Tyler and disembodied Bode… but I also know that if you’re already reading Locke & Key, you’re gonna buy this issue come hell or high water, because that’s what this title does to you if you even like horror at all.

On the other hand, I want to tell you that, if you’ve never read Locke & Key, that the issue is packed with action, suspense, violence, and a couple of damn satisfying – if small – triumphs on the part of some shitfaced lady, a foulmouthed teenager, and a ghost… none of whom you will know. And therefore, unlike a recent issue of Locke & Key: Omega, it is not a particularly good place to jump in if you want to have any real understanding of what the hell is going on.

If you are not a regular reader, it is, however, an excellent place to jump in if you want to see, completely without context, giant monkeys attacking and murdering teenagers. And if you’re a bloated, drunken, 42-year-old suburbanite like me, maybe that’ll be enough for you.

Mistaken Identity: Robert Redford “Confirms” Role In Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the sequel to 2011’s Captain America (duh; what did you think it was the sequel to? Ice Castles? Use your head) is in production now, which means that casing rumors and news are coming out on a semi-regular basis. The latest news, from about a week ago, was that Robert Redford was being cast to play… something. But exactly who was anyone’s guess. Was it one of Captain America’s old, pre-freezing, World War II buddies? Agent Coulson’s angry and vengeful father? Batroc The Leaper? Leatherface (Yeah, I know, but the man’s spent a lot of time in the sun, is all)?

Nope. Redford did a press conference to support The Company You Keep, the upcoming political thriller flick he directed, and he point blank told reporters the role he’s playing… and it turns out that, yeah, we still don’t know what role he’s playing in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Because I don’t think Redford knows what the fuck he’s gonna be doing in the movie.

Why do I say that? Well, Redford told reporters he was playing:

Well, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. The head of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Oh, okay. The head of S.H.I.E.L.D. Got it. Thanks, Bob.

Wait, what?

Phil? His First Name Is “Agent” – Clark Gregg On The Resurrection Of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Agent Coulson

Clark Gregg recently spoke with Collider at WonderCon about his Marvel Universe character, Agent Coulson, who has been a breakout fan favorite. Fans were crushed when Agent Coulson went to the great beyond during a blowout with Loki on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, but the character’s death served the purpose of being the emotional focal point that rallied the heroes to the eventual defeat of Loki and the Chitauri. Coulson’s death also rallied fans into action, petitioning Marvel, Joss Whedon, and anyone else who would listen, for Coulson’s return. In this interview, Gregg discusses Coulson’s return with unabashed enthusiasm, along with how the S.H.I.E.L.D. television show fits into the larger Marvel Universe, and the overall weirdness of signing a multi-year television contract. He never quite spoils the actual mechanics of how Coulson returns, but I know I’m thinking Life Model Decoy. Who’s with me?

There’s no official drop date for the television pilot, but you can keep up with all news on the S.H.I.E.L.D tv show on its Facebook page.

Stinger: The Green Hornet #1 Review

Editor’s Note: While we might normally report on a piece or two of comics news this late in the evening, it is April Fool’s Day, and we don’t believe a single Goddamned thing we read on any news site today. And while I toyed with making up some bullshit story about us being acquired by Marvel Comics or something, I feared too many people would comment simply with, “Good.” So here’s a comic review.

Despite a misspent youth, adolescence, adulthood and middle age reading comic books, I don’t really have a lot of personal history with The Green Hornet. The radio show and the Bruce Lee TV series were before my time, and I missed the attempted comics reboot of the character in 1989 since I was just starting college and therefore needed to cut back on my comic budget to fund a newly-found Boone’s Farm habit. I became mildly interested in the first Green Hornet series from Dynamite Comics back in 2009 until I learned it was being written by Kevin Smith, and therefore there was an even chance that the second issue would be finished and released sometime next November. And then there was the 2011 movie starring Seth Rogan that was so abominably awful I felt ripped off seeing it for free on cable while so drunk I would have been entertained by almost anything airing on TruTV.

So, long story short, I really haven’t had much of a reason to follow The Green Hornet. I, however, have many reasons to follow Mark Waid. So I picked up his first issue of The Green Hornet purely based on Waid’s name, with my only preconception about the character being that Seth Rogan played him in a way that made Adam West look like he was starring in The Dark Knight Returns.

So was the fact that Mark Waid was the writer enough to make me give a damn about The Green Hornet for the first time ever? Well… kinda. There was some pretty good stuff here to be sure, but there were also a few leaps in logic that I didn’t believe, and a little too much time tying the character into Dynamite’s shared pulp universe that was interesting, but distracting. But on the plus side, it featured far fewer fart jokes than I remember from the movie.

Bastard In Charge: Guillermo del Toro Confirms Constantine To Lead Dark Universe

We appear to have our Internet and cable issues resolved here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives headquarters, after a long and exhausting weekend digging around in wiring… and we recovered our connectivity just in time for Wondercon to be over. Which means that there is a ton of news that even we need to catch up on, and, having quickly scanned our RSS feeds, it only proves that it would have been smarter and better for us to just catch a Goddamned plane to Wondercon, because not only would we have first-person news to report, but at least our hotel would have had fucking Wi-Fi.

But we couldn’t let the Wondercon weekend slip by without reporting on at least something from the convention, and this is the main item that caught our eyes once we had full Internet: Guillermo del Toro held a panel for his upcoming movie Pacific Rim during the convention, and, as one would expect at a comic convention panel where they hold a Q & A session, someone asked del Toro about his reports that he’s working on Dark Universe – a movie focusing on pretty much all the big Vertigo / DC Dark characters.

Now, what one wouldn’t expect is that a director would say anything at all about a roject in pre-production, particularly at a panel about his latest movie that isn’t even out yet. However, this is Guillermo del Toro we’re talking about, and as the director of Blade II and both Hellboy movies, it’s safe to say that he’s one of us, which means he’s probably as excited about the concept of a Justice League Dark movie as the rest of us are.

While is a long way to go to say that: yeah, del Toro let a couple of things about Dark Universe slip.

FInal Crisis: Bruce Timm Leaving Supervising Producer Job at WB Animation

Well, this is a bummer, even though it was probably possible to see it coming based on the recent cancellations of Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice: Invasion by Cartoon Network and Warner Bros., but Bruce Timm, the guy who has been driving DC’s animated movie and TV efforts pretty much since Batman: The Animated Series started in 1992, is leaving the Supervising Producer job at Warner Bros. Animation. He’s going to be replaced by James Tucker, the guy who produced Justice League, Legion of Super Heroes and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and he directed the upcoming Superman: Unbound movie coming from DC Animated Originals.

There’s no particular word as to why Timm is leaving beyond the wish “to develop some of his own projects,” but this news was kind of a bummer for Amanda and me, personally. The art centerpiece of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Theater Room is a framed collection of two of Timm’s sketches, of Batman and Batman Beyond, respectively, with pictures of Timm drawing them for us… and with a bonus, a picture of Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series co-producer Paul Dini and his autograph, to boot. So to say that we are fans of Timm’s work with DC’s animated work would be a gross understatement. Just look up and to your left as proof.

But the important thing is whether or not Tucker is the right choice to continue Timm’s work on the generally excellent DC animated properties… and the answer seems to be: probably, yeah. Tucker seems to have a solid vision of what he wants to produce in the future beyond Superman: Unbound, and fans of DC characters who aren’t Superman or Batman are probably going to be especially excited.