WTF! Sony is developing a spin-off movie for Venom?? Read the whole story here! Can this possibly good?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i9603a54f631ae7b0ccc841503f65f11b

Note from The Editors: Sorry this is late; we’ve been having trouble with The Russ’s account. Apparently, he is too awesome for the latest version of WordPress. Here he is in all of his glory.

Umaga defeated Mr. Kennedy in the dark match. Apparently Kennedy mocked Brett Favre before the match. That’s so en vogue these days…

Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder defeated John Morrison & The Miz, Finlay & Hornswoggle and Jesse & Festus in a Fatal 4-Way Match to become the new WWE Tag Team Champions. This was a nonelimination match. Given the way the wedding storyline finished up last week, I was thinking that La Familia would probably get broken up (or at least side with Vickie Guerrero), but this indicates to me that it will keep going, at least as long as Edge is with them to give them credibility. The finish had Festus cleaning house until Ryder tripped him up and Hawkins threw Jesse off the top rope to get the pin. Kind of an “eh” match, but maybe this will finally give “Biscuits & Gravy” something to chase.

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Here’s to the Ladies
Conversations on the Female Geek at Wizard World Chicago

Boobs
I had come to Wizard World Chicago through an email sent by my comic book journalist friend, we’ll call her J, to some of her girlfriends: “I know you guys probably would not be interested in the con itself although I might need some boobs… I mean… people to help staff a booth and that would be free but would involve ogling by geeks.”

I thought to myself: I have boobs. I thought to myself: Secret Life Dream #86—visit a convention where I know nothing and observe it anthropologically. So, I wrote back.

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Let’s have some fun, shall we? Hit me with your five fave, and feel free to comment on everyone else’s list.

In no particular order, here’s my list:

“Teenage angst has paid off well/Now I’m bored and old” Serve the Servants-Nirvana

“If you should die before me/Ask if you can bring a friend” Still Remains-Stone Temple Pilots

“He said it’s all in your head/And I said so’s everything, but he didn’t get it” Paper Bag-Fiona Apple

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins/But not mine” Gloria-Patty Smith (cover of the Van Morrison song, but that line is Smith’s work)

“I can’t believe life’s so complex/When I just want to sit here and watch you undress” This is Love-PJ Harvey

Well that did not take long at all, seems the trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine that was shown at Comic Con 2008 has been leaked onto youtube. Personally I cant wait for this, I now have 3 movies I am looking forward to in 2009: Watchmen, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Terminator 4: Salvation. Check out the trailer.

Want to talk about a labor of love?  How about trying to catalog and document all of Marvel Comics’ graphic novels, trade paperbacks, prose novels, and children’s books ever published?  That’s exactly what Rob Weiner does in this thoroughly exhaustive reference book.  Over five years in the making, Weiner gives Marvel fans a one-stop shopping place for information on all of these books published through 2005.

As I paged through the book I was simply blown away by the amount of information inside.  I had no idea that there were so many books out there.  But of course, in the past decade, we’ve seen this trend towards preprinting story arcs of varying numbers of issue into book format.  Comic fans are no longer merely collectors and some are not collectors at all.  They still want to keep up with their favorite characters and buying one book every six months versus having to run to the comic store monthly is simply more desirable for a lot of people and for those people especially, this is a fantastic tool.

What I love about Weiner’s layout is that he didn’t just decide to list books in alphabetical order but instead he grouped the sections by subject matter or characters.  For example there is a section for Marvel’s Superheroes with subsections for individual heroes or groups of heroes such as The Avengers, Conan/Kull, Hulk and She-Hulk, Thor, X-Men/Mutants, Wolverine, etc…

Next is the section for special volumes and series like the Marvel Masterworks and Essentials lines and Epic Comics graphic novels, followed by sections for Children’s books, Prose novels, Marvel/DC crossovers, guidebook and indexes and more.  Nearly 400 page in all and it’s all backed up by a comprehensive index or indexes I should say as there are three of them:  one for title, one for artist/author, and one for subject making it easy to pickup and find exactly what book you are looking for.  There are even three appendices including one for all of the Marvel Superheroes game books and modules published by TSR.

Now if this were just a list that might be good enough but it isn’t.  Once you look up a book, Weiner provides the artist, writer, year of publication, ISBN#, the issues the book reprints if applicable and a comprehensive summary of the plot.  Now I don’t know if Mr. Weiner actually read all of these books but it doesn’t really matter…there is a wealth of information here that is indispensable for Marvel fans.   Extraordinarily researched and meticulously laid out, the book is well worth the $49.95 price tag.

Akiyuki, the main character of the animated series, lives on Sentan Island, a land that has preserved its status as a free and peaceful island in a world consumed by fighting between the Northern and Southern Governments. All of this changes when Akiyuki boards a bus along with a mysterious white-haired girl who transforms his arm with the lost memories and power of Xam’d.

As Xam’d, Akiyuki goes on a rampage and is saved when a foreign girl with red hair named “Nakiami calms him down, taking him back to her postal vessel. Akiyuki now must gain control of his powers and use them against the Northern Government’s latest weapons, known as “Humanforms”. Traveling the world on a postal vessel, Akiyuki hopes to return home one day, but until then he befriends other passengers on the boat.

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Now, I want to believe.  I spent 6 seasons, 1 movie, and about 8.5 episodes believing in the power of The Mulder and The Scully.  So it is with a dull heartache and a lengthy rant that I say that “I Want to Believe,” the new reunion X-Files film, trumping itself as “THRILLING” “SMART” and “SEXY,” manages to be none of the above.  As a fellow X-Phile put it, “It was like seeing your high school sweetheart, who you thought you would always love more than life itself, and seeing that, well…you’d both grown and changed.”  AND that s/he had developed a mysterious skin rash, comb-over, and the conversation ability of a small lizard.

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DISCLAIMER (angry creators, please read)

[[WARNING! THIS COLUMN MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS!]]

“My giant-sized teammate is fighting a mechanized version herself on the streets of downtown Tokyo… I’ve been preparing for this day my entire life!” Andrew Wells, Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight #15.

Yet another column? My, I’m really serious about this catching-up business, ain’t I? Here I am with the column for comics published on the week of 06/04. Last column’s DT! was solved by Lt. Cmdr. Snakebyte, who correctly spotted that Fever was referring to “Vundabar”, but the speech balloon said “Vandabarr”, Badge for you, and you’re three badges away from being full Commander.
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Guests of San Diego Comic-Con this year have been treated to a sneak peek at the animation for a new Grant Morrison project. That’s right– animation. In collaboration with Virgin Comics and Perspective Studios, Morrison is bringing the classic Indian myth of The Mahabharata to life with his project titled MBX. Combining the tale of ancient families at war with technology and super humans, this collaboration is a first for both companies and versatile– feature film and video game adaptation announcements in coming months are expected.

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Now that’s just damn cool . . . See the full image and an interview with Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver regarding the event at Newsarama.

Tsutomu Senkawa is an average high school kid who is busy studying for his senior entrance exams. Tsutomu goes out for some fresh air, after a hard day’s work studying for a big test, when he runs into a guy fleeing from a pretty young lady. The pursued man is actually an interplanetary criminal on the run from a Federation agent called Birdy Cephon Altera. Caught in the midst of this chase, Tsutomu gets thrown by the man at Birdy, which kills Tsutomu. Fortunately for Tsutomu, there is a way to keep him alive, although it comes at the price of discarding his body. He ends up merged into Birdy’s body.

So Tsutomu is stuck sharing a body with a rather attractive, yet very strong but impulsive, space police agent, while trying to keep his apathetic family and more importantly, his girlfriend, from finding out about his woman problems. In the meantime, to make matters worse, Birdy still has to do her job. Together, they take on a rather secretive group of evil aliens planning to perform maniacal experiments on the unsuspecting inhabitants of Tokyo.

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