The Government Manual for New Superheroes by Matthew David Brozik and Jacob Sager Weinstein: When you decide to become a superhero, there are some basics that you need to attend to. What should your superhero name be? How do you go about making a costume? Where can you find your very own Fortress of Solitude? Should you start out as a sidekick, or try joining a super team? This manual covers all those important topics in the life of a neophyte superhero, and ensures that you won't suffer too much embarrassment in your early days of fighting crime.

Batman/Superman/Spider-Man Training Manuals: From the folks who brought us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Ultimate Training Manuals help you tailor your superhero training by modeling it on a particular costumed crimefighter. The Batman Handbook teaches you such all-important skills as throwing a grappling hook, disarming a gunman, withstanding hypnosis, and surviving a poisonous gas attack. The Superman Handbook helps you leap tall structures in a single bound (by pole vaulting, not flying), how to rescue victims from anything from a runaway car to a burning building to quicksand, and how to treat victims of electrocution and radiation. The Spider-Man Handbook teaches you to develop your spider sense, build your own webslingers, survive a fall from a tall building, and live off a superhero's meager income.

The Action Hero's/Heroine's Handbook: Joe Borgenicht co-wrote these indispensable guides for any aspiring action star — with David Borgenicht for action heroes and with Jennifer Worick for action heroines. Despite the titles, their advice isn't entirely gender-specific. The Action Hero's Handbook explains how to take a bullet, wrangle a great white shark, and perform the Vulcan nerve pinch. The Action Heroine's Handbook has some female-specific advice — how to win a high-speed chase in high heels and a bustier, how to give birth under pressure — but also offers tips on fending off the undead, profiling serial killers, and outrunning fireballs.

The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook: Extreme Edition by Joshua Piven: Like other Worst-Case Scenario books, this volume is more focused on the emergencies and disasters you'll encounter in your life as a superhero. Thwart animal and vampire attacks, free your leg from a bear trap, and survive pandemics, all with this handy guide.

Don't Try This at Home by Hunter S. Fulghum: If you need advice on something a bit more ambitious — say, breaking into Area 51, sinking a submarine, forming an independent nation, or capturing the Loch Ness Monster — Fulgham has your back. He lays out the supplies and the steps you'll need to accomplish even the most bizarre and over-the-top super tasks.

How to Be a Superhero by Barry Neville: If, instead of going the Batman route, you've suddenly awaken to find you have superpowers, this might be the book for you. It aims to help you understand your new power — be it flight, magical abilities, or super-strength — as well as choosing an archenemy and polishing you superhero resume. Think you might actually be evil? There's a chapter on that, too.

Wisdom from the Batcave: How to Live a Super, Heroic Life by Cary A. Friedman: Sort of a self-help guide for superheroes and the people who want to emulate them, this book focuses more on the internal life of costumed hero. Written by a rabbi, it explores the values of self-esteem, willpower, hard work, and anticipating consequences that have made Batman such a successful crimefighter — and can help you on your superheroic quest as well.

Supervillains and Philosophy by Ben Dyer: Sure, you could opt for the similar book on superheroes and philosophy, but it's always good to understand your enemy. These essays will help you understand what drives your supervillainous foes — and why people sometimes root for them.

Kick-Ass by Mark Millar: Obviously this is a work of fiction rather than an actual guide, but Kick-Ass does provide some object lessons on what not to do when starting out as a superhero. For example, do not go after a pair of carjackers when you have no plan and no physical training. And it's probably not a good idea to waltz into a gangbanger's den and tell him off. After all, you won't always have a foul-mouthed preteen swooping in to save your ass.

Two years ago Randy Schueller recounted to Comic Book Resources that Venom evolved out of an idea Schueller sent to Marvel in the 80s when the company ran a competition for aspiring comic book writers and artists.

I thought it would be cool if Spidey needed to upgrade his powers and his look, so I came up with this idea that Reed Richards had made a new costume for Spidey using the same unstable molecules that the FF costumes are made of. The unstable molecules would flow into Peter's pores and allow him to cling to walls better. I think my original idea was to increase his sticking power by 25% or something like that.

For some lame reason, I had the Wasp involved since she was the resident fashion plate of the Marvel universe at the time. Remember when Jan would show up in every other issue of the Avengers sporting a cool new costume? I loved when they did that! So to me it made sense to have her design the new spider suit when she was over at the Baxter Building for cocktails or something. Anyway, I saw the new suit as a stealth version of the original costume - jet black so he could blend in with the shadows. At best, all you could see of him was the blood red spider emblem, emblazoned on his chest. (Yeah, in my design the spider was red, not white. I also gave him underarm webbing like in the original Ditko design.

To Schueller's surprise, a few months later he got a letter from the Marvel desk of then editor-in-chief James Shooter saying flat out, "I want to buy it," and offering Schueller $220 for the idea and the chance to write the script. He wrote up a few versions of his idea, but scripting didn't pan out and the idea, he thought, had been shelved.

A year later, Secret Wars came out, introducing a black costumed Spider-man. Shueller was surprised to see some of his concept brought to life, but when his idea then turned into Venom in The Amazing Spider-man he was disturbed. " I was never a fan of the costume-turned-villain idea. Give me the classic Ditko villains any day! Venom just never really seemed to work for me," he wrote in to CBR.

When Venom became such a big part of the Spiderman-3 movie, Schueller decided to bring his venomous alter-ego to light, along with the letter James Shooter personally sent to him in 1982.

While Schueller isn't looking for money from Marvel — he did get his $220 — he's bummed the comic giant never acknowledged his part in the character's creation. With Marvel's continued legal trouble as they suss out who created and now owns what of the Spider-man franchise, this two-year-old story has gained traction again.

With a Venom movie in the works, along with Spider-man 4 we wonder if Schueller will get any props from Marvel, or the movies' directors any time soon.

The secret origin of the black Spider-Man costume [Heat Vision Blog]

The image, sent out by Marvel with only the words "The Year of Spider-Man is 2010," seems to contain at least three different Spider-Man, as well as Arana (AKA Spider-Girl, not to be confused with this Spider-Girl) and the oracular Madame Web. The return of infamous "Spider-Clone" Ben Reilly has been teased for some point during next year's thrice-monthly Spider-series, and Avengers: The Initiative has already featured people not called Peter Parker in the red-and-gold "Iron Spider" costume, so is this a bait and switch or are we going to see multiple Parkers spinning webs at some point in the twelve months to come?

Star Magazine claims that Dunst will be written out of the next Spider-Man film:

"The plan is for her character to be written out, probably by dying. Anne will take over as Peter Parker's new love interest for this project and for Spider-Man 5 and 6 which are being written now. Anne's in L.A. doing a lot of meetings on the movie, because filming is right around the corner."

But Hathaway's representative told Gossip Cop there's no truth to rumors Hathaway will be Spidey's new girl. Nor has there been any confirmation that Hathaway's even in the film, in the rumored "Vultress" role or any other. Still, we can always hope the part about Mary Jane dying off is true.

The 1990s were a pretty weak time for movies based on both video games and superhero comics. On the video game side, there were Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter and a couple of Mortal Kombat films. And on the superhero front, Batman acted out the law of diminishing returns. And that was about it. (I'm going to pretend Steel didn't exist.)

And then in the 2000s, CG visual effects caught up to the amazing superpowered spectacles that comics and games had led us to expect. In 2000, Bryan Singer, well-regarded director of The Usual Suspects, directed X-Men, which was a huge success. And the floodgates of superhero movies opened. Meanwhile, we got movies based on Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and a ton of others.

But superhero movies have vastly outgrossed video-game movies, according to Box Office Mojo: $7.2 billion to $900 million. (And to be fair, the site lists 77 superhero films, and only 28 video-game films.) Not only that, but directors like Singer, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, Jon Favreau and Ang Lee have been willing to venture into superhero films. By contrast, the most well-known video-game directors are people like Paul W.S. Anderson, and... Uwe Boll.

Why is this? There seem to be a few reasons. For one thing, many of the most successful video games haven't yet made the leap to movies. Neill Blomkamp's Halo film could have been the X-Men of video-game movies, but it fell apart. Ditto for Gore Verbinski's BioShock movie, which seems to have stalled out due to budgetary concerns.

And it's possible that translating video games to movies requires a higher level of CG mastery than translating comic books — the CG renditions of superhero comics just have to live up to our memories of 2-D pen-and-ink drawings. A live-action CG rendition of a video game, meanwhile, has to look cooler than the already impressive computer graphics most games serve up these days.

But also, movie adaptations of video-game films have generally employed the same kinds of story logic you used to see in the Joel Schumacher Batman films. Like, really — the Doom film, which featured evil alien parasites whose tongues could tell if you were genetically evil or not. Let me just repeat that: They had tongues that could genetically scan you and figure out if you were evil. No superhero movie in the past decade has shown that level of disrespect for the audience or the material. Sure, the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil films were a lot better — but even the mediocre superhero films showed a certain commitment to telling a semi-coherent story. Most comic-book heroes have decades of stories in the bank, however contradictory and full of holes, and the films have gotten slightly better about drawing on them.

But maybe the crux of it is that superhero films learned the difference between respect for the format, and respect for the characters. In some superhero films earlier in the decade, you saw some half-assed attempts at making "comic book panels" and captions on the screen — this was especially heinous in Ang Lee's Hulk. But as the decade went on, superhero films learned that the format wasn't what made these worlds awesome. Meanwhile, even as video games became more cinematic, the movies based on them haven't been able to distinguish between paying homage to video-game action, versus translating it to the different format.

But the other thing that becomes apparent, after you look at all of the superhero and video-game films of the past decade, is that the overall level of quality of both has been pretty bad. For every X-Men 2, Spider-Man or The Dark Knight, there are plenty of films like X-Men 3, Wolverine, Catwoman, Daredevil, and so on. Uwe Boll would have to work overtime and weekends to make a film half as bad as Catwoman. Superhero movies have won, in part, due to sheer quantity — if you generate a large enough mountain of crap, some good stuff will rise out of it. But also, a movie doesn't have to be good to make ten squillion quatloos.

But one thing's for sure: The House That Bryan Singer Built won't stand forever. Something's going to come along and knock superhero movies off their perch, establishing a new Hollywood feeding frenzy. Will it be video-game films? Maybe, if the ten video game movies that are in the pipeline actually get made, and achieve Dark Knight/Iron Man levels of success. It really only takes one movie to make half a billion dollars to turn on the firehose of copycats and sequels.

And even though Avatar isn't based on a video game, it's enough like a video game that if it has a strong enough second and third weekend, you could see the gears (of war) turning in the studio execs' heads. Avatar could turn out to be the movie that supercharged the video-game movie genre, since its strengths can so easily translate to recreating Dead Space or Bioshock. And of course if Tron Legacy does gangbusters next year, it could also provide a shot in the arm.

But right now, the up-and-coming genre seems to be toy movies instead. The two Transformers movies did superhero numbers, and appealed to a similar sense of nostalgia and escapism to superheroes. And there are tons and tons of toys out there waiting for their moment on the big screen — and unlike video-game companies, toy companies don't have any concerns about making sure the movies do justice to their existing stories. A toy movie doesn't have to tie in with existing continuity or jibe with the stories that have already told. A toy movie has one purpose only: To sell toys.

And that means toy movies can be dumber, and yet also more spectacular, than superhero films and video-game films combined. Just look at the Transformers films — they're so overstuffed and bloated with nonsense, they can barely move, but they have the power to spew crap for miles in all directions. And now there are films based on Monopoly, Battleship, Viewmaster, Stretch Armstrong, Battle Bots, and countless others on the way. Actual directors, like Ridley Scott (Monopoly) and Peter Berg (Battleship), are signing on to these projects.

Toy movies could well win out in the next decade, because the key to success will be casting the widest net for nostalgia among adults aged 18-49. Everybody feels vaguely nostalgic for Monopoly or Battleship — and it's just a matter of time before we get Steven Spielberg's Sorry! or David Lynch's Yahtzee. It's like the perfect combination: Everybody feels nostalgic, but nobody will complain that they got it wrong. How on Earth do you get a Yahtzee movie wrong?

It already seems like we're maxed out on superhero films, when Warner Bros. puts the kibosh on Superman and Wonder Woman movies and a Green Lantern film starring "it" boy Ryan Reynolds struggles to get made. If Marvel follows through on its plans to put out four movies a year, we could discover just how many superheroic origins the movie-going audience can stand. So maybe we'll see more of a blend of action/nostalgia pics, with films based on comics, toys, video games and other sources. Or maybe toy movies will just crush every other film genre, until there's nothing but massive CG recreations of your old plastic playthings, as far as the eye can see.

One of the things I like best about comics is they require no restraint. Most methods of story-telling benefit from some moderation. Comics are like the car pile-up scenes in the Blues Brothers movies. The more you add, the better it gets. No matter what the problem, it can be fixed by piling on a little more.

Problem One: Unpopular Subject
Let's start at the bottom of the barrel: Nazis. From the Batfamily to the Von Trapp Family, everyone hates Nazis. There is just no way to make them work. Or that's what you'd say if you didn't work in comics. If you did, you would see that Nazis are a starting point, a good, golden-age foundation that you can build up into something extraordinary.

Step One: Make them bigger. At first glance, this seems like the wrong way to go. All it does is make giant Nazis. That's no fun.

Step Two: Make them robots. Robots improve everything. Cops, rebellions in galaxies a long time ago and far, far away, Elmo dolls: there's nothing that can't be spiced up by adding robots. And yet, a giant robot Nazi still doesn't have the kick we need. What else can be done?

This. That's what. You take that giant Nazi robot, and you make it into an octopus. A land octopus. In a graveyard. Because, that's why.

Problem Two: A Plethora of Lame Concepts

Start with a shaky base: literally. When is the last time you saw someone on stilts? If you can remember, then I applaud your memory. Stilts are things that provide no value and make the act of walking both harder and more dangerous. They're a terrible concept all on their own.

Now take that terrible concept and make a supervillain out of it. Stiltman has terrorized the Marvel Universe since the sixties, presumably by nearly falling on people and then suing them for damages. Sure, the stilts are electronic and look like high-rises, but a crappy villain way, way up in the air is still a crappy villain.

Now rip off crappy villain with a sadass tribute character. A few weeks ago we saw the debut of Lady Stiltman. For those of you not paying attention, I will repeat the name: LADY StiltMAN.

This is bad piled on bad piled on bad. Nothing can save it. Except something worse.

I don't know how adding a pair of novelty high heels saved this concept, but it did. Some things just need a cherry on top to turn out delicious. I'm the last person in the world to champion putting more comic book women in heels, but when I see this I can only sit back in wonder. Touché, Marvel. Touché.

Problem Three: Gimmicks That Have Been Done to Death

"Who would win in a fight," is the kind of tired speculation that wasn't even fresh in Stand By Me. Now it's torturous. We've seen Batman versus Superman a thousand different times. We've seen Batman versus Captain America, and Captain America versus Iron Man and Iron Man versus Wolverine, and Wolverine versus the Punisher, and the Punisher versus Everydamnone. At this point, the horse is dead.

In comics, there is only one solution to that: Zombie Horse.

When Marvel pitted The Incredible Hercules against Thor for the second time, they just kept trying things until it worked. Last time they had to lift up the entire city of New York. This time, they just had the two heroes switch outfits. I don't know why that's even cooler, but it is. Last time it was a lot of pyrotechnics. This time there was more banter. Again, for some reason it worked. But it needed something more.

And this is why comics will always triumph over other media. When you see that literal purple nurple, splayed gloriously across the page, movie sound effects pale in comparison.

Problem Four: It's Not Crazy Enough Yet

You see, there's this thing called the Green Lantern Corps. They're space cops with battery-powered laser wish-rings. Sound good? No?

But wait! They're actually part of a larger Rainbow Corps, in which each color represents a particular emotions. Now is it good? No again?

The red ring is for rage. Red Lantern Corps members have rings that are powered by anger. And they can spew something that looks like blood but burns you like lava. And even though they are aliens, some of them just happen to look like earth creatures.

And so, without further ado, I present to you the crowning achievement of graphic novels to this date:

Ruffles the Rage Kitty.

Keyboard Cat, Ceiling Cat, and the entire population of I Can Has Cheezburger can go to hell. Nothing can match the genius of this. Nothing.

IESB is reporting that production on Spider-Man 4 (known internally as SPIDER-M4N) halted indefinitely last Thursday and won't start up again until Raimi and the Sony Picture executives come to some agreements. It seems that the script remains unfinished because the parties can't come to an agreement on the villain.

According to someone working on the production, Raimi is campaigning for the Vulture as the fourth movie's villain, while Sony doesn't think the Vulture will sell tickets. Perhaps this explains some of the conflicting villain rumors we've been hearing. Word is there's a lot of anger coming from the production camp, but filming can't move forward until decisions are made and the script is fleshed out.

Update: MTV talked to a studio rep who is denying IESB's report, saying the only shutdown going on is a planned shutdown for the holidays. The rep goes on to say that, while the script is still being worked on, it's standard pre-principal photography tinkering.

SPIDER-MAN 4 Production on Indefinite Hold [IESB]

Cameron's early '90s "scriptment" is the kind of thing that shows that, while he may have loved the comics as a kid, he didn't necessarily understand them. For example, Peter's pre-Spider-Man awkwardness became defiance against modern culture in Cameron's hands:

PETER PARKER. Age 17. Peter is in the bathroom, popping a zit in the mirror. He puts on his glasses and checks his look in the mirror. Still the same. Nerdy. He doesn't care. Screw 'em... He thinks they are the real losers. They'll be flipping burgers while he's discovering the cure to cancer. We'll see who wins in the long run. He wears his isolation like a badge... with an air of superiority.

That's not the only essential change to the Spider-Man mythos: Uncle Ben doesn't give a "With great power comes great responsibility" speech - or, if he does, it's not mentioned in the scriptment - and Peter starts considering do-gooding before Ben's death (albeit with mixed results). J. Jonah Jameson is a television station owner, not Daily Bugle editor, and the Bugle doesn't appear in the film at all. The movie even ends with Peter winning Mary Jane's love by revealing that he's Spider-Man - the two of them, by that point, having shared a terrible love scene that hints at Cameron's Titanic script as well as shows that Peter's into bondage:

ON TOP OF THE BRIDGE TOWER. Hold a beat. We hear screams approaching. Spidey appears and sets her on terra firma. She clings to him, looking down and around in wonder. He has put the world at her feet. She can't believe this is happening to her.

In a dizzying down-angle we see how the suspension cables all meet radially at the top of the tower... like the treads of some vast spider web. Peter and MJ seem to sit at the very center of the web, surrounded by the lights of the city. It is a warm spring night. And the moment is pure magic.

She stands with her back against a girder, needing to feel something solid. Spider Man stands before her, a perfectly formed male silhouette with a soothing low voice.

SPIDER MAN
Courtship among the spiders is highly ritualized. It varies from species to species. The male spider may circle the female, or wave his front legs... to signal that he is not prey.

Spider Man moves in a hypnotic arc around her. He raises his hands in a dance-like movement. Lowers them.

SPIDER MAN
The female usually signals her willingness by an uncharacteristic passivity.

MJ takes a deep breath. Her lip trembles. Her knees are weak. Her eyes, though, are steady, gazing at the silhouette before her. She doesn't move or speak. He moves closer.

SPIDER MAN
In certain crab spiders, such as Xysticus, the male will attach strands of silk to the female... tying her limbs...

Spider Man moves his hand gracefully across her, and she sees the sheerest silk webbing glinting in the moonlight. First one wrist. Then the other. Hypnotic movement in the moonlight. Her arms are bound to the wall. Her breathing gets more rapid.

SPIDER MAN
Since the female can break free at any time, the bonds have only symbolic significance.

MARY JANE
The male must be very bold... to take such liberties with the predatory female.

SPIDER MAN
Yes. He is very bold. But he must also trust her.
(he moves very close)
Close your eyes.

He removes his mask and kisses her. Their mouths very slowly and very sensuously devour each other. Peter and MJ are locked together. He is mesmerizing, gentle, powerful. He pushes up her skirt. They make love, high above the world. She doesn't look.

Well, at least it's not as bad as this scene from earlier in the script:

THE NEXT DAY. Tight on Peter as he wakes up. He opens his eyes cautiously. Not knowing what to expect. PULL BACK to reveal that he is still in bed. All is normal. He breaths a sigh of relief. In fact... he feels pretty good. Lots of energy. He pulls back the covers and...

Something is causing the sheet to stick to him. He lifts it, revealing a sticky, white mass completely covering him, gluing him to his bedding.

OMG HIS WEBBING IS LIKE JIZZ I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE.

The villains of the piece are versions of Sandman and Electro, although they have different names for no immediately apparent reason (As does high school bully Flash Thompson, who becomes Nathan "Flash" McCreery. Maybe Cameron was working out some high school issues or something), and both end up dead during the climactic final battle (Sandman ends up turned into glass with the following, wonderful, description: "Sandman is a smoking lump of melted glass in the vague form of a man. Poised, cooling, in a position of agony. Like Michaelangelo's dying slave. His glass mouth is a shapeless pit of eternal pain. Bummer.").

You can read an illustrated version of Cameron's entire scriptment here, but we wouldn't blame you if you'd read enough already. While offering up enough visual thrills and surface spectacle that you know it would've made an exciting movie to watch, Cameron's Spider-Man shaves off so much of the weirdness of the character that it could be any generic teenage superhero saving his girlfriend and the The Day. We're happier this script stayed unmade and Sam Raimi got his chance to show off his superhero chops instead and, let's face it: Wouldn't the world rather have had Avatar than this, in the end?

Ghostbusters 3:

So you might have heard that Sigourney Weaver says that Venkman (Bill Murray) will be a ghost in the new movie? And that her character's son, Oscar, will have grown up to be a Ghostbuster? People who've been paying attention to the rumors and chatter around this film are pretty sure she's just repeating old rumors — like Bill Murray reportedly told someone four years ago that he would only be in the movie if he played a ghost. And Weaver probably hasn't actually seen a script, since nobody else has yet, either. On the other hand, Murray playing a ghost could be sort of fun. [Screen Rant]

Transformers 3:

People have been circulating a draft script for this upcoming masterpiece. I don't for a scond believe that this movie has a script yet, and even the people who are reposting the script thinks it might be a fake. On the other hand, apparently a similarly rough draft script of Revenge Of The Fallen popped up online long before it came out, and was viewed as similarly wild — but turned out to be real. Plus, it's always entertaining to read these things, and it's probably better than the real script will be.

So apparently this draft script includes the Aerialbots, the Combaticons, Perceptor, Wheeljack, Ultra Magnus, and Shockwave, and is a big love letter to fans of the 1984 animated series. As it begins, hostilities between the Autobots and the Decepticons have gotten worse, and calls for the Autobots to leave Earth have gotten more shrill. Sam (who's now an intern at the Large Hadron Collider) finds another fragment of the Allspark, which could give off enough energon to power all the Transformers forever, if bombarded with the right kind of particles. Optimus sends for the Ark, and Sam invites Mikaela to come join him there for a romantic evening, or something, and then proposes to her. Sam and Optimus Prime are all set to examine the Allspark fragment aboard the Ark, when Megatron attacks, but then Starscream betrays him. And somehow this leads to everyone traveling back in time to 1982, where Starscream steals the Allspark and kills Megatron "twice in one day," has he puts it.

This means that all of the Autobots have to disguise themselves as period cars (would GM even allow this?) meaning Optimus becomes a Peterbilt Semi, and Mirage becomes a Pontiac Trans Am, but also sometimes a Formula 1 race car. And Sam meets his own grandfather, and realizes that he can erase the Autobot/Decepticon war from history by getting rid of the Cube. But yeah, it's almost certainly a fake. Click here to read the whole thing. [Comic Book Movie and Allspark]

Iron Man 2:

Robert Downey Jr. says the thing that made the first movie work was that it was grounded in reality, and the high tech looked like something out of Popular Mechanics rather than a galaxy-spanning saga. And with the Marvel Universe as crazy as it is, it would be easy for the next movie to be too wild, but he and Jon Favreau want to keep it grounded. And he explains how they'll avoid sequel-itis:

My take - Jon [Favreau] was in agreement, and Marvel supported us - was that once you tell an [origin] story pretty well, that's usually where things start to get dull, and one or two or three things start to happen over and over again," Downey explained during an interview with Rotten Tomatoes. "So, we made Tony Stark's challenges very much outside the usual realm of activity. As much as anything else, it's much more of a side job for him the second time around.

[Rotten Tomatoes]

Remember how we reported the first movie was totally improv, with almost no script to speak of? Olivia Munn (who's admittedly not one of the film's main actors) says it was much the same this time around. "There's a bunch of improv, over and over." And apparently Munn improv-ed so well, Downey Jr. stopped the filming to give her a round of applause.

Thor:

Ray Stevenson, who plays Volstagg, says he wears a fatsuit, but he's got muscles and isn't the "weeble-shaped" figure from the comics. And he says the character has a ton of "Falstaffian vigor," which makes sense given that Branagh is directing. [Superhero Hype]

The Sorcerer's Apprentice:

Apparently we first meet the apprentice as a young boy (Jake Cherry) and then later as a young adult (Jay Baruchel). And producer Jerry Bruckheimer explains why we should be excited:

"He's more like a rock star," producer Jerry Bruckheimer tells PEOPLE about the film, due in theaters July 10. Like the animated version, this Sorcerer's Apprentice will also feature those dancing brooms. "We did it in a realistic way," Bruckheimer says. "The [brooms] are really dancing and doing their thing."

How could it be bad? [People]

Daybreakers:

Here's an international trailer, which I don't think we've shown you before — it includes a bit more footage from this vampire-dominated future dystopia. [Reelz Channel]

The Wolfman:

A new international poster shows that the wolfman's powers include causing people's heads to float randomly and to be eaten by unnatural shadows. [ShockTillYou Drop]

Spider-Man 4:

Some have speculated that Bryce Dallas Howard could be back as Gwen Stacy, but she hasn't been contacted yet, which makes it seem less likely. Meanwhile, don't hold your breath for her to return as Kate Connor in Terminator 5 or 6 — she's not signed up for any further installments. (But she would defininitely consider it.) [Coming Soon]

Avatar:

The New York Daily News review has a pretty good summary of the film:

Sam Worthington is Jake Scully [sic], a paraplegic Marine in 2154 assigned to a deep-space moon called Pandora, where his consciousness controls an avatar, a clone of Pandora's indigenous, humanoid Na'vi people. As Jake lies in a high-tech tanning bed, his mind is in his blue Na'vi, which is 10 feet tall with pointy ears, cat eyes and a tail.

A scientist (a tough Sigourney Weaver) created the process to aid diplomatic relations with the Na'vi, since the air is poisonous to humans and space suits, apparently, get in the way. It's the last chance for the peaceful aliens - who know what the avatars really are - since a corporate goon (entertainingly weaselly Giovanni Ribisi) wants a valuable element buried deep under the "hometree," the Na'vi's spiritual center. And if diplomacy fails, a gung-ho sergeant (Stephen Lang, overdoing it) will get it at any cost.

Cameron counts too much on the connection we'll have to his goofy-looking blue man group, or with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the Na'vi warrior princess who helps Jake's heart go on. Saldana - Uhura in last summer's "Star Trek" - delivers a remarkably full-bodied motion-capture performance, but the mystic-tribal clichés around her suggest every Netflix queue on Pandora includes "Dances with Wolves" and "The Last of the Mohicans."

[NY Daily News]

And there's a new Czech TV spot, plus a big Panasonic tie-in commercial that you may actually have seen.

Harry Potter:

Tom Felton says Deathly Hallows will be truer to the book than any of the previous films. [Movies-Spoilers]

Doctor Who:

So Alexandra Moen, who plays the Master's wife Lucy Saxon, says she wasn't the one who picked up the Master's ring at the end of "Last Of The Time Lords." Since we last saw her, Lucy has been locked up in a big ominous castle-like prison, and it just got a new governor. And it sounds like she breaks out of there. She's decided to try and go straight, but she's not at peace — she's full of anger. And her scenes are mostly with the Master and a few other actors. [Digital Spy]

Lost:

Some more filming details: episode nine is definitely Alpert-centric, and the Black Rock is definitely a prison ship. Also, we see an Ilana scene taking place at an old hospital in Russia, suggesting that Ilana is tied in with Alpert's backstory somehow. Separately, there's a scene with Jin working in a hotel, and Sun was there too. Also filming in the same location was a Keamy/Omar scene, and Mikhail was there and spoke Korean. There was also a Jin scene involving the same community college where Hurley's asylum was filmed. And a scene at a nice house with Hurley and Alpert. [The Transmission via SpoilersLost]

Also, Sayid was filming a scene with a large group of the "temple Others," including Zoey, and probably Cindy and Zack. Also present: seven to 10 scientists, for some reason. [SpoilersLost]

The show is casting an E.R. doctor making rounds, an MRI tech, and an African American female lawyer who won't be pushed around, for its eleventh episode. [SpoilersLost]

And there's an extended version of the season six promo:

Fringe:

I really like these new wallpapers, which emphasize the "passing between universes" theme as well as more of Walter's oddness. [SpoilerTV]

Remember that set video we showed you last week that included Anna Torv getting blown around? Now it's her, plus a bunch of extras:

Supernatural:

I know we mentioned that Cupid would be showing up (along with Famine, one of the Four Horsemen) in the Valentine's Day episode "My Bloody Valentine." Apparently, he'll be doughy, out of shape and naked, and constantly giving everybody bear hugs. [TV Guide Magazine]

And we'll be meeting a holy man in episode 5x16, "Dark Side Of The Moon":

[JOSHUA] This benevolent — dignified, very Zen man in his 50's-70's is inflappable, simple, but not insincere. A Morgan Freemen type vibe. PLEASE SUBMIT ALL ETHNICITIES. GUEST STAR.

Could that actually be God? [SpoilerTV]

And after the rerun of "The End" the other day, they showed a new trailer for the next episode, coming January 21.

And here's a set video for 5x15, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", in which all you can basically see is Sam and Dean walking inside a house:

True Blood:

The show is looking for someone to play Alcide, who's described as "rough looking but articulate and basically decent," and he takes a liking to Sookie and may even have some mutual attraction with her. It sounds like he takes her out, given that we meet a giant nightclub bouncer who knows Alcide but is suspicious of his guest, Sookie. Also, an old-school Ob/Gyn examines Arlene with an ultrasound, and a pastor officiates at Eggs' funeral service. [EW and SpoilerTV]

Chuck:

As you've probably heard, we're done with Chuck's "reluctant spy" act. He's now a fully gung-ho spy, but he's also aware of how much his career puts his family at risk. And Awesome will get drawn into Chuck's espionage world to a much greater extent — and we'll get to see how awesome Awesome really is. As season three starts, we'll realize something awful has happened between Chuck and Sarah in the mean time, and eventually we'll learn just what that is. We'll also learn how crucial Sarah is to whether Chuck makes a good spy. Carina, Sarah's old partner from season one, will be back. And Jeffster will perform again in a very special episode. [TV Guide]

Also, Casey is going to have a lot to deal with this season — a secret from his past is going to come to light, and it'll make his life complicated. Also, he'll get more responsibilities at the Buy More, and will start to discover that Buy More may actually be his future. Meanwhile, Lester has a "Fight Club" episode where he goes nuts. And we'll get to see Lester's bedroom and his pajamas. [ChuckTV]

FlashForward:

Episode 13 will be called "Better Angels." [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

Here's a new trailer for the next batch of episodes, starting January 22:

Heroes:

It's the death that sticks — for now, anyway. Tim Kring says we definitely won't be seeing Nathan again for the rest of season four. [Fancast News]

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

Movieline is reporting that if all negotiations go as planned, John Malkovich will be playing the bald and pissed off Vulture in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4. All right, fine, another bad guy in the mix. But wait they're not done yet. According to the site, Anne Hathaway is not in negotiations to be the Black Cat, as we'd previously heard. Instead it's much, much worse.

The 27-year-old actress is currently the top choice for Felicia Hardy, who'd been long-rumored as one of the new characters in this installment. (Other names bandied about for the role included Julia Stiles, Rachel McAdams, and Romola Garai.) However, unlike in the comic books, this Felicia Hardy doesn't transform into the Black Cat. Instead, Raimi's Felicia will become a brand-new superpowered figure called the Vulturess.

Well, I think it's safe to say "no thanks," to that idea. While we like the idea of getting Anne Hathaway in a comic book movie, turning the Felicia Hardy character into the Vulture's distaff counterpart is a sacrifice we're just not willing to take. But take solace in this fact, it's still merely a rumor at this point. And the rumors for this film have been spreading like untamed symbiotes.

It's a strange mix of new releases this week, as the industry seems to be slowing down for the holidays and yet still managing to release a few must-reads (including a strong contender for book of the year), but we'll get to them later.

Instead, let's start with the TV and movie tie-ins of the week: Battlestar Galactica: The Final Five collects the mini-series that told a possible backstory for everyone's favorite Cylons, and it's better than you might expect. Meanwhile, Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Cardassians fulfills a similar role for Deep Space Nine's ridge-headed badguys. It's clearly backstory week, because Marvel's Ender's Game: War of Gifts special issue also fills in some blanks. Thankfully, DC's Dante's Inferno video game tie-in is much more straight-forward in just adapting the game... that adapts the classic story. Boxes within boxes!

Over in the superhero school of thought, DC have their annual Holiday Special to warm the cockles of your heart, after which you'll be ready for the triple-X-Men-threat of Genext United (The future children of the X-Men unite!), X-Men/Spider-Man (The X-Men and Spider-Man team up during different parts of their history!) and Nation X (The X-Men have their own island! And... stuff... happens on it?). If all of that sounds too much, we'll direct you to the much-anticipated-by-us Spider-Man And Secret Wars, a new series that retells the classic story with far fewer dated references.

Elsewhere, Image have a new Tank Girl special, Tank Girl: Nuggets to offer up festivities for kangaroo lovers. There's also Pilot Season: Murderer, a one-shot that you — yes, you — could help make into an ongoing series about a man who is compelled to kill in order to keep living.

But as topical as that may sound, it doesn't come anywhere close to being book of the week. No, that honor belongs entirely to the first issue of Daytripper, a new series by Brazilian brothers Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon that is as beautifully written as it is illustrated (Visually, it's easily one of the best things you'll have seen this year); admittedly, it's not the most io9-friendly story — it's very grounded in real life, at least in the first issue — but, having seen the first two issues in preview, it's definitely something we'd recommend as one of the best things we've read in a long time.

As ever, the complete Diamond Distributors shipping list will tell you everything that's hitting stores tomorrow, and the Comic Shop Locator will tell you where to find said stores. We just hope that, by the time you get there, you'll be more in the mood for magical realism than killing people.

Okay, that's obviously not completely fair; after all, this last ten years have also seen things like Lost and Twilight winning over new fans, not to mention the end of the Harry Potter book series. But there's no denying that this has been a decade of recycling ideas: James Bond, Batman and Star Trek all got movie reboots (Trek also got a television one, if you count Enterprise), Star Wars gained new life as a TV show, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica was reborn to much acclaim, unlike fellow television reboots Bionic Woman, Knight Rider and V. We even have Tron waiting in the wings for next year, along with a new Charlie's Angels TV show. The most successful "new" media franchises were Transformers and Spider-Man - based on ideas that are over two decades old (You could even argue that things like Lost and Twilight are simply mashing up old ideas into relatively new forms; they're definitely standing on the shoulders of giants, at least). So what happened?

It's easy to just say "Well, the geeks are in charge of media now," even if it's not necessarily untrue. But that doesn't explain how they got there, and why they're not making us fall in love with all manner of new things, instead of retreads of old flames (Does Fringe count as new, or just an updated X-Files?). Personally, I think the blame is shared pretty much equally between creators and the audience. For all that we may cry YARM whenever someone talks about their dream to make the ultimate Logan's Run project, it's as much a desire to succeed as creative backwards-looking that's behind it; audiences, for the most part, tend not to support the new in numbers necessary to make it a big success. Look at the most successful movies of the last ten years: Each one is based on a concept that people grew up on.

So, is it simply nostalgia? Perhaps; it's tempting to play armchair psychologist and stroke the chin, commenting on a return to childhood things following the trauma of 9/11, but it doesn't quite fit, because how does that explain the domination of 2000's The Grinch or 1999's Phantom Menace? You can see definite post-9/11 tropes throughout the pop culture that followed (A simpler morality, where good guys always won and could save us from death from above, in many cases; stories of people dealing with increasingly familiar apocalypses in others), but I don't think that the prevalence of reboots was necessarily one of them. It's not laziness, either; some reboots (Battlestar Galactica, for example) put in as much work as any original concept in terms of worldbuilding and creation.

In the end, it may simply be the result of conservatism on everyone's parts: Audiences don't want to spend time or money on something they don't know will entertain them, and studios/creators don't want to spend time or money on something that they don't know will have an audience waiting for it. Movies like District 9 or Moon, web content like Dr. Horrible and the increasing use of comic books as source material for other media back this up, to an extent; the new ideas, and new voices, now have to find new - and cheaper - outlets through which to make themselves known, and become popular and proven enough for the big time. Maybe that'll have happened by the time they've been around long enough to be nostalgic about.

For the last year, Norman Osborn (a.k.a. Spider-Man's greatest archnemesis) has been the director of the intergovernmental military force H.A.M.M.E.R. Under his tenure, Norm's made bad behavior the norm - villains are posing as heroes, heroes are hunted as villains, dogs are breeding with cats, and so on.

Luckily for the forces of justice (and comic fans' hemorrhaging wallets), Norman's Dark Reign begins to wraps up this month with Siege: The Cabal, a prelude to the four-part Siege miniseries, which will detail Norman's inevitably ill-fated invasion of Thor's old stomping grounds, Asgard.

As a tribute to the man who made criminal insanity de rigueur for 2009, we've compiled the kookiest moments of the occasional Green Goblin's career. Thanks for memories, Norm.

(PS: As for Norman's man behind the curtain, I've got $25 riding on Shuma-Gorath and a Super Nintendo copy of Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage on Uncle Ben.)

Norman Pink-Slips The Swordsman

From: Secret Invasion: Dark Reign 1 (2008)

Andreas von Strucker never had a chance to become an A-list baddie. His dad was the most famous Nazi in the M.U. (Baron von Strucker), his superpower was way too incestuous for mainstream villany (skin-to-skin contact with his twin sister Andrea allowed him to fire energy bolts), and - when his sis kicked it - he traipsed about with a sword hilted with her tanned hide. Ick.

Given the Swordsman's lack of PR potential, it's unsurprising Norm fired Andreas from his gig as the Thunderbolts' in-house pompous bastard. Unfortunately for Andy, Norm's idea of a severance package was pretty literal.

Norman Fakes Aunt May's Death Just For Laughs

From: Spectacular Spider-Man 263 (1998)

In 1973, the Green Goblin throws Gwen Stacy off of the George Washington Bridge. It was poignant. In 1995, Aunt May dies of a heart attack (but only after revealing that she always knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man). This too was poignant.

And in 1998, Norman admits to kidnapping Aunt May, replacing her with a genetically altered elderly actress (?) and keeping the real May alive in a warehouse for absolutely no damn reason. This was why I stopped reading comic books in the late 90s.

Norman Recruits The Sentry with Hamburgers

From: Dark Avengers 3 (2009)

Norman's Dark Avengers sales pitch to the Sentry is awesome, particularly when he starts yammering out of the blue about Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Seriously, getting two mentally ill anti-heroes to bond over your burgers is product placement* In-N-Out can just dream about.

*To be fair, I tried Five Guys for the first time shortly after reading this. It was fucking fantastic. Yes, the Green Goblin sold me on a hamburger.

Norman Knocks Flash Thompson Off The Wagon

From: Peter Parker: Spider-Man 45 (2002)

In another story straight out of the "Overly Complex Green Goblin Scheme and Laughably Grim Take on a Classic Spider-Man Co-star" files, Norman hires a down-on-his-luck and recovering alcoholic Flash Thompson, gets him blotto, and puts him behind the wheel of an OsCorp truck on a collision course with Peter Parker's high school.

Luckily for Flash, the ensuing brain damage from the accident was retconned away by Peter Parker's deal with Mephisto in the One More Day storyline. Unluckily for Flash, he had instead lost his legs in Iraq. By the time Brander Newer Day rolls around, Flash will be caught betwixt the Scylla and Charybids of shingles and premature ejaculation.

Norman Mocks Spider-Man's Lack of Fluid

While we're on the topic of One More Day, we're pretty sure this 1982 exchange was retconned out of existence as well. Pity. If all of Spidey's rogues' gallery began making fun of his shortcomings in the fluid department, it could really mess him up on a psychosexual level.

Norman Watches the Submariner Take a Shower

From: Dark X-Men: The Beginning 1 (2009)

When Namor joined the Dark X-Men, one of the men seemingly tacked on a rider requiring the director of H.A.M.M.E.R. to watch the Prince of Atlantis' daily ablutions. Is it a mind game on Namor's part to give Osborn an inferiority complex? Is Norman just being Norman? We honestly cannot say.

Norman Knocks Up His Son's Girlfriend

From: The Amazing Spider-Man 598 (2009)

If Namor was indeed attempting to show up Norman's manhood, he'll have to try a little harder. For a white guy with cornrows, Norm's had disturbingly good luck with the fairer sex, with a big emphasis on "disturbingly" here.

In 2009, Norm impregnated his son Harry's girlfriend, Lily. Sure, she was secretly the supervillain she-goblin Menace (and the only woman strong enough to handle Norman's mutated goblin sperm), but really? Really? At least this stupid, creepy baby mama subplot wasn't born out of an even stupider, creepier baby mama subplot…or was it?

Norman Knocks Up Spider-Man's Girlfriend

From: The Amazing Spider-Man 512 (2004)

Hoo boy. Yes, that is Norman Osborn dirty dancing with Gwen Stacy. Yes, that is Norman's O-face. Yes, Norman is too evil for rubbers.

For those of you who don't remember this episode, allow us to recap in the simplest terms possible:

1. Norman has an affair with Gwen Stacy.
2. She secretly gives birth to twins. Norman's Goblin spunk alters the children's DNA and rapidly ages them to adulthood.
3. Norman has a hissy fit and chucks Gwen off a bridge.
4. The twins grow up to be super-assassins or some similar dross.

The most depressing part of this incident wasn't its necrophiliac treatment of the Silver Age of Comics. No, it's that One More Day didn't exile any of this dolorous twaddle into retcon oblivion.

Norman is Willem Dafoe

From: Spider-Man (2002)

Say what you will about his Power Rangers-esque bodysuit – when Willem Dafoe was out of his chartreuse kabuki mask, he brought a mantis-like sensuality to the Green Goblin that few other actors could muster. I almost wish Sam Raimi had simply painted Dafoe green, at the risk of audiences mistaking Norman for a deranged Green Bay Packers fan.

Norman Goes Spider Jerusalem on The Thunderbolts

From: Thunderbolts 120 (2008)

Thunderbolts 120 is perhaps the best portrayal of Norman Osborn. Ever. The issue begins with a five-page monologue of unmistakable Warren Ellis patois and ends with Norman vowing to kill his entire security staff just cuz'. Along the way, we are treated to infinitely quotable epigrams on…

His Green Goblin outfit: "I'm so glad I never washed this particular costume. Smells like death, blondes, and victory."

Venom and Swordsman: "I was wondering if you could direct me to the arm-eating retard and the sword-waving aristo. I have to punish them you see."

Himself: "I'm fricking martyr to my own innate heroism, is what I am. Norman Osborn, America's last hero. That's what I am."

I could write a whole dissertation on this one issue, but let's just say that the brilliance of Norman's portrayal here is that he epitomizes the hallmark difference between heroes and villains – restraint. Let the good guys hamstring their powers with laws and moral pantywaistry. Norman Osborn's screaming "I AM GOD!", watching his peons brown their trousers, and laughing his ass off about it. Who's to say he's the crazy one?

Doctor Who:

The cast list for the upcoming David Tennant swan song, "The End Of Time," went up on IMDB. And there are some notable surprises in there. (Assuming this is accurate.) Here's the cast list for episode one:

John Barrowman (Captain Jack)
Brian Cox (The Elder of the Ood)
Timothy Dalton (The Narrator)
Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells)
Jessica Hynes (Verity Newman)
David Harewood (Joshua Naismith)
Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble)
Alexandra Moen (Lucy Saxon)
Sylvia Seymour (Miss Trefusis)
Catherine Tate (Donna Noble)
Russell Tovey (Midshipman Frame)
John Simm (The Master)
Jimmy Vee (Monster)
June Whitfield (Minnie Hopper)
Paul Kasey (Ood Sigma)
Silas Carson (Ood voice)

Verity Newman, of course, is the woman who wrote a book about the Doctor (judging from the filming reports) while Jason Naismith has written a very differnt book. And Midshipman Frame was last seen in the Titanic episode, "Voyage Of The Damned." Most of those people also appear in episode two, except for the Ood Elder. Plus:

Roger Bailey (Time Lord)
Teresa Banham (Governor)
Brid Brennan (Visionary)
Camille Caduri (Jackie Tyler)
Tommy Knight (Luke Smith)
Billie Piper (Rose Tyler)
Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith)
Matt Smith (The Doctor)
Penelope Wilton (Harriet Jones)

So we'll be getting our first glimpse at Matt Smith as the Doctor in this episode. Plus, we'll meet another Time Lord. Rose Tyler, of course, will be back for a brief cameo with her mom from before she met the Doctor (at least judging from filming reports.) But perhaps the most surprising will be the return of Harriet Jones — could the dying Doctor be trying to undo his past mistakes, including unseating Prime Minister Jones? One can only hope. [Den Of Geek]

Dollhouse:

Here are three new clips from Friday's two-hour Summer Glau-tastic outing.

Lost:

Here's another new promo for season six. [Doc Arzt]

Spider-Man 4:

I don't think we've featured this quote from Tobey Maguire about why he's excited about doing a fourth outing:

Hopefully I'll be able to evolve the character in a new direction. He'll still be Peter Parker, but I hope I can move him forward a bit and take him to a place where there will be new challenges for me as an actor.

[MTV]

Zombieland 2:

Producer Gavin Poulone says the second movie will probably be 3-D, and director Ruben Fleischer is already back, with the stars in talks to return too. [Variety via Wired]

Nightmare On Elm Street:

We already showed you your first look at the new Freddy the other day, but now here are a few new promo pics that look remarkably like the original. [Omelette via SpoilerTV-Movies]

Fringe:

Here's a sneak peek of Thursday's episode, "Snakehead":

Smallville:

Here's your first look at Steve Bacic as — bwa ha ha — the Dark Archer. [KryptonSite]

True Blood:

I don't think this'll be a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention, but it's official that Theo Alexander will be playing Talbot, the boyfriend of the Vampire King of Mississippi. Talbot is intensely beautiful and has an acerbic sense of humor — and he loves to cook, even though vampires aren't supposed to cook. And Grant Bowler will play Coot, the werewolf leader of a menacing biker gang. [THR]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

Here's what happens in Friday's new episode, "Brain Invaders":

Reunited after the Battle of Geonosis, Padawans Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee are assigned to take a supply ship back to Republic-controlled space. But their routine mission becomes a fight for survival when they discover that the ship has been overrun by a horde of deadly stowaways – Geonosian brain worms with the grotesque ability to control the thoughts and actions of their clone hosts. It is impossible to tell friend from foe when dealing with deadly "Brain Invaders."

With their clone comrades controlled by the gruesome Geonosian brain worms, the Padawans must confront their greatest challenge yet. Though faced with a deadly threat to life and limb, it is their commitment to the Jedi teachings that is truly put to the test; with former friends as enemies, the two young women are forced to weigh the fate of the Republic against their own personal attachments.

And here's a new pic and clip from the episode:

Chuck:

Episode 3x12, which would have been the penultimate episode of the season before it was extended, will be called "Chuck Vs. The American Hero." [ChuckTV]

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths:

In this direct-to-DVD movie, we see a different side to one of the DC Universe's worst villains:

A "good" Lex Luthor arrives from an alternate universe to recruit the Justice League to help save his Earth from the Crime Syndicate, a gang of villainous characters with virtually identical super powers to the Justice League. What ensues is the ultimate battle of good versus evil in a war that threatens both planets and, through a diabolical plan launched by Owlman, puts the balance of all existence in peril.

And here are a couple pics:

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

There's no word on how Disney's recent acquisition of Marvel (or Dubai's recent economic woes) will affect the development of the Marvel park in Dubai, but reportedly the plan is to open its doors in 2012. Off-site testing has already begun on at least three attractions: Flying with Spidey, Fantasticar and X-Men: Danger Room.

These concept illustrations come from Chimera Design, and show several designs from the park's planned City of Super Heroes, as well as a map of the park.

Dubai World Marvel Super Heroes Theme Park Concept [Disney and More via Neatorama]

Don't get me wrong, we're almost as happy as the next man that Spider-Man is getting his long overdue day in the sun this year, but it's not enough. The Thanksgiving Day parade we'd want to be watching would have to include some of the following:

A Yoda Balloon
To be honest, we have no idea how this hasn't happened already. If ever there was a fictional character more suitable for translating into giant inflatable form that isn't named Pikachu or Snoopy, we'd like to meet them. It's not like Star Wars isn't popular enough, or that George Lucas doesn't have the Clone Wars TV show to promote. Why hasn't this happened yet?

A Partially-Deflated Superman Balloon
Because who doesn't want to see more of this?

A Brock Samson Balloon
Yeah, you heard us. And he can be pulled by lots of people dressed as the Monarch's henchmen. Admittedly, this may just be part of our Venture Bros-filled dream lives that would also include a Venture musical, complete with singing Hank and Dean and Nathan Lane as Phantom Limb. But until then, we can comfort ourselves with the dream of a giant, mulleted balloon of black t-shirt-wearing pain smoking and floating throughout the streets of a cold New York November morning, terrifying evildoers and NBC announcers alike.

Scenes From The Spider-Man Musical Being Performed In Front Of Macy's For An Unenthusiastic Audience
Just as every year's parade features special guests from the latest Broadway hit miming a song from their show while jumping about trying to desperately keep warm, why not give everyone a chance to see what U2 and Julie Taymor have cooked up for the perpetually-troubled Spider-Man musical Turn Off The Dark, thereby convincing everyone once and for all that Arena Rock and outsider superheroes really isn't a good fit after all. After all, given all the troubles the production has gone through already, this kind of performance may be the only time anyone will see anything from the show.

Stargate Universe Float
This is another no-brainer. What better way for the newest Stargate to win over new audiences than with a float filled with cast members to sum up what the series is all about? This is what I picture: The float itself looks like a scale version of the Destiny, with Scott and Chloe having sex on one side, Rush and Eli looking at computer screens and frowning, before Young walks up and shouts at them, leaving TJ to one side, looking on concerned. At the back of the float, Greer can look crazy and shoot his gun in the air, and somewhere, Camille can have multiple showers because that's what she seems to do if last Friday's two shower scenes are anything to go by. How could that not make everyone want to tune in on a regular basis?

Make those changes, and all it'd take would be the addition of Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell as replacement Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieiras (with Mark Sheppard taking the Al Roker wandering reporter role, of course; he has to be in everything, after all), and the show would be perfect. Well, for us, anyway. What changes would you need to make you have to tune in?

Thor:

Natalie Portman let slip that her friend Kat Dennings (Nick And Norah's Infinite Playlist) will be in this film with her — and speculation is, she'll play Enchantress. [MTV via Cinematical]

Spider-Man 4:

No real news about this movie, which starts shooting early next year, but Tobey Maguire says he likes the idea of the Lizard as the main villain, because the Lizard has a history with Peter Parker, and "we often will go towards that kind of stuff." And he echoes Sam Raimi's comments about not knowing much about Carnage, who came to the wall-crawler's supporting cast much later on. He also likes Mysterio. [MTV]

Star Trek:

Continuing with the always-awesome vein of "actors making random predictions," Leonard Nimoy says he doubts J.J. Abrams and friends will call him to ask him to be in the sequel. He'll be happy to talk to them if they do call, but he figures he's already served his purpose. (And I bet J.J. is a lot more desperate for Nimoy to come back and do more Fringe appearances, something he's seemed a bit leery of doing lately.) [TrekMovie]

Doctor Who:

The Beeb released official summaries of David Tennant's final two parter, coming soon but not soon enough:

Part One: It's the Tenth Doctor's final journey – but his psychotic nemesis the Master has been reborn, on Christmas Eve. With both determined to cheat death, the battle ranges from the wastelands of London to the mysterious Immortality Gate, while the alien Ood warn of an even greater danger approaching, as a terrible shadow falls across the entire Universe.

Part Two: The Doctor faces the end of his life as the Master's plans hurtle out of control. With the sound of drums growing louder, and an ancient trap closing around the Earth, the Doctor and Wilf must fight alone. But sacrifices must be made, and the deadly prophecy warns: "He will knock four times."

[BlogtorWho]

Meanwhile, remember the filming a while back, from Matt Smith's first story, which takes place in the idyllic fictional village of Leadworth? Apparently they needed a few extra shots for that story, because Leadworth was resurrected the other day for a bunch of minor pick-up shots. (And they had to make it look like summer, which can't have been fun.) Scenes included Smith running in his Chaplin-esque way, and poking his head out of a window. Karen Gillan was there in her oddly sexy police uniform, with her little red car. More pics at the link. [Alun_Vega on Flickr]

Lost:

Are the alternate timelines making you dizzy yet? The show was filming a scene by a lovely scenic waterfall, featuring Sayid, Locke, Jin, Cindy and a bunch of others — all decked out as "Others." Have our gang joined the Others? (One eyewitness thought Kate was among them, but apparently not.) Also on set, but not filming yet, Sheila Kelly, the L.A. Law vet who will play Kendall, who's caught committing corporate esipionage and has to lie her way out. And meanwhile there are more set pics showing Miles and Sawyer as cops in L.A. [The ODI]

Supernatural:

As we mentioned, the 100th episode will focus largely on Dean. But it'll also fill in a lot of pieces of the puzzle, says Eric Kripke:

We're aiming for it to be a big mythology episode. The Archangel Michael plays a very large part as we explore his relationship with Dean

[EW]

Heroes:

Some new set pics actually look pretty intriguing — Claire is running, and Sylar is minus an eye. If they make Sylar a cyclops permanently, I might have to start watching again. Just so I can call him Cylar. (Or SyClops?) [SpoilerTV]

And of course, because this is Heroes, Masi Oka hints that "you never know" if Nathan will come back from the dead. [Zap2It]

Chuck:

And there are some new promos:

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Nikki Finke, who actually has pretty reliable sources, is playing the "I know who the Black Cat is" game. First it was Rachel McAdams, then Romola Garai, and earlier this week Julia Stiles was thrown into the mix. But now Finke is claiming that Anne Hathaway has been approached for a role in Spider-Man 4.

While Sony Pictures insists no decisions have been made, sources tell me that the producers have approached Anne Hathaway to star in the film.

At least it's a step forward from reports of "auditioning". But maybe we can start a rumor next that Kristen Bell is up for the role? Because she would be actually, you know, good as Black Cat?

Entertainment Weekly caught McAdams briefly to chat about the rumor that she will be the new Black Cat in Sam Raimi's Spider-man 4.

"That's a total rumor, I have to say…I was hanging out in Toronto the other day and someone came up to me and said, ‘I just heard you're doing Spider-Man 4.‘ And I said, ‘Really? No one told me!' It's not true."

And just about every site reporting the denial is insisting that well, McAdams may have had some discussion about Spider-Man 4 at some point in her life so... yeah. But even if we have to give up on McAdams, there's no need to panic in the resulting news vacuum: the web is ablaze with a new rumor, this time Julia Stiles. Turns out UGO has sources that says Julia Stiles contacted a New York casting company about a role in Spider-Man 4.

Now before we get all upset about the prospect of Save The Last Spider-Dance For Me, let's just remember: She contacted a casting company about it. So it's a possibility not the truth. We still have no idea who the Black Cat will be, but there seems to be a consensus that she is in the film.

Oh and while we're at it, here's Will Ferrell's audition for Black Cat as well, thanks Jake: