The profile of the Golden Avenger keeps rising.

Instrumental in the biggest things Marvel has going on right now [Secret (Skrull) Invasion and the earlier Civil War storylines] and the biggest thing Marvel has ever done onscreen (by itself), the comics company continues to let Tony Stark lead them in interesting directions, this time with an assist from Bruce Banner.

The latest venture is the new Iron Man digital comic book, along with an Incredible Hulk book as well. No, they are not the first digital comic books that the House of Ideas has produced, but they are the first it’s used to tie directly into and extend the storyline for a movie.

(LA Times)

The actress and comedian stars in VHI’s The Cho Show (tonight, 11 ET/PT), her first series since 1994’s short-lived ABC sitcom All-American Girl, an experience from which the outspoken San Francisco native still appears to be recovering.

(USA Today)

For every Batman, there’s a Matter-Eater Lad.  For every X-Men, there’s a Legion of Super-Pets.  There are comic book characters and groups who make it big, and there are those who never find a lasting audience.  Only now and then do the obscure characters get noticed, and even more rarely do they get the big-screen treatment (Blade is the notable exception).  Here are ten superheroes there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of, but that we at GeekDad think are good enough to carry a movie.

(Wired)

These days, “300″ director Zack Snyder is hard at work perfecting the impossible. As you read this, he is undoubtedly in some dark edit bay, unshaven and chugging a Starbucks, doing his very best to transform “Watchmen” from an unfilmable comic book into the next smash superhero movie.

(MTV)

Jackie Earle Haley steps inside of the Night Owl’s spaceship, walking gingerly past the pilot’s seats toward the control panel, touching the blinking gauges and dials.

“It’s still a little hard to believe,” the balding, bespectacled actor says, “that I’m playing a superhero.”

But if this year’s Comic-Con convention, which wrapped up Sunday, has demonstrated anything, it’s that comic-book and superhero movies are not what they used to be.

If anything, they’re the opposite.

Gone are the lantern-jawed heroes whose raison d’être was to save mankind from villains threatening to wipe out the populace.

Instead, the anti-hero rules. He drinks heavily. He has problems performing in bed. He’s as likely to kill an innocent as an evildoer. Often, he doesn’t care that much for people.

(USA Today)

Longtime heavyweights DC Comics (Batman, Superman) and Marvel (Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four) are trotting out lesser-known characters from their catalogs. Ant Man (pictured at right)? Yes!

Joining the fray are relative upstarts including Dark Horse, Platinum Studios, Top Cow Productions, Oni Press and Devil’s Due Publishing, which are busy populating the superhero pipeline with a new generation of flawed crime-fighters.

Comic books have become so hot that some titles prompt a feeding frenzy from studio execs before they’re even published. 

(Wired)

George Carlin, who died on Sunday from heart failure at the age of 71, was one of the funniest and most influential American comics of the 20th century, with a wealth of wise and witty things to say about the world we live in and the way we live today, yet he’ll probably be best remembered for seven words: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

These were the “seven words you can never say on television”, a thoughtful, illuminating routine about swearing, censorship and semantics, which got him arrested and sparked a legal case that went all the way to America’s supreme court. These words were conspicuous by their absence from most of Carlin’s obituaries, an irony he surely would have relished.

(The Guardian UK)

 

A film adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr’s Kick-Ass has now officially entered pre-production according to Comic Book Resources. Based on the creator-owned comic from Marvel’s Icon imprint, the story follows a a 15-year-old boy named Dave Lizewski who attempts to become a real-life superhero. The catch is that he has no powers or any of the stereotypical reasons for choosing to fight crime.

(Slash Film)

It’s been called one of the most violent comic books ever created, and now Frank Miller’s “Hard Boiled” may finally be seeing its way to the big screen.

At one time developed as a starring vehicle for Nicolas Cage with none other than David Fincher directing, MTV News can exclusively reveal that the acclaimed three-issue miniseries is once again inching closer to a Hollywood reality, this time under the tutelage of “Spirit” producer Deborah Del Prete.

(MTV)