The film Despicable Me is about the supervillain Gru, voiced by Steve Carell, and his attempt to remain the baddest evildoer in the world. And these yellow monsters are his henchmen.

Listen to that evil cackle — we want nothing to do with it. It's like two twinkies got rolled around in some hair. Meanwhile, the film itself, with the voice talent from Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Danny McBride, Miranda Cosgrove, Jack McBrayer, Mindy Kaling, Jemaine Clement and Julie Andrews, we're still quite interested in.

Plus the theme song by Pharrell Williams is addictive...

[via Yahoo]

Empire State University (Marvel)
Location: New York City
Notably Villainous Alumni: Harry Osborn (Hobgoblin), Victor von Doom (Dr. Doom), Chip Martin (Schizoid Man), Emma Frost (White Queen), Michael Morbius (The Living Vampire)
Fearsome Faculty: Professor Clifton Shallot (Vulture), Edward Lansky (Lightmaster), Buck Mitty (Humbug), Harrison Turk (Lunatik), Mile Warren (Jackal)
Nefarious Features: If science-based supervillainy is your bent, consider enrolling in Empire State University, where there are plenty of professors engaging in questionable experiments. Turn into a monster, dabble in the occult sciences, or perfect your super-soldier serum in Empire State's state-of-the-art labs.

Massachusetts Academy
Location: Snow Valley, Massachusetts
Notably Villainous Alumni: The Hellions
Fearsome Faculty: Emma Frost
Nefarious Features: New England's answer to the Xavier Institute, the Massachusetts Academy was run by Emma Frost in conjunction with the Hellfire Club to train a fresh crop of supervillains. Frost's first class of mutants became the Hellions, a proud team of villains who became a perpetual thorn in the New Mutants's side. However, the school simply hasn't been the same since Frost allied herself with Charles Xavier.

Praetorian Academy (PS238)
Notably Villainous Alumni: Charles Brigman, Ron Peterson (Argonaut), Alexandra Von Fogg
Fearsome Faculty: Evil cyborg the Headmaster
Nefarious Features: In a city filled with superhero schools, Praetorian Academy services the supervillain community, offering a full range of classes for superpowered bullies and the future dictators of the world.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Harry Potter)
Location: Scotland
Notably Villainous Alumni: Tom Marvolo Riddle (Voldemort) and the Death Eaters
Fearsome Faculty: Quirinus Quirrell
Nefarious Features: Most of the students and staff of Hogwarts aren't homicidal racial purists, but if you swing that way, there are plenty of ways to build your evil empire. You'll find plenty of recruits in Slytherin, and while school policy is teach students to defend against dark magic, not practice it, some faculty members can be persuaded to divulge dark secrets with a little flattery.

Dakota Union High (Static Shock)
Location: Dakota City
Notably Villainous Alumni: Royce Axelrod, Madelyn Spaulding
Nefarious Features: Dakota Union is conveniently located near the Big Bang, an industrial accident that turned many of the locals, including several of the school's students. If you're looking for mutant strength or the ability to turn everyone at school into your brain puppets, Dakota Union may be for you.

Super Crazy No Way School (The Venture Bros.)
Notably Villainous Alumni: The Monarch, Baron von Underbheit, Dr. GIrlfriend, Mike Sorayama
Fearsome Faculty: Prof. Fantomas (Phantom Limb)
Nefarious Features: The unnamed alma mater of pretty much everyone in the Venture Bros. universe is the must-attend institution for anyone interested in the field of super science. It's also a great place to meet your future nemesis, and develop a lifelong grudge against the lab partner whose negligence caused you to lose your jaw bone.

Peterson School of Math and Science (Soon I Will Be Invincible)
Location: Iowa
Notably Villainous Alumni: Dr. Impossible
Nefarious Features: For the prodigy on the move, the Peterson school will nurture your burgeoning mental gifts while ensuring your social isolation from the more popular kids. Is it an incubator for the future superheroes and future supervillains of America? Maybe, but it's also a feeder for Harvard.

Smallville High (Smallville)
Location: Smallville, Kansas
Notably Villainous Alumni: Pretty much the entire student body, with a few notable exceptions.
Fearsome Faculty: Walt Arnold, Desiree Atkins
Nefarious Features: Perhaps not as adept at grooming the creme de la creme of supervillains as Excelsior Academy, Lex Luthor's alma mater, but what it lacks in quality, it makes up for in quantity of villains. With its proximity to superpower-granting meteor rocks, attending Smallville High can virtually guarantee a freaky power of your own — just don't run afoul of Clark Kent before graduation.

Hamilton Hill High School (Batman Beyond)
Location: Gotham City
Notably Villainous Alumni: Willie Watt, Carter Wilson (Terminal)
Fearsome Faculty: Ira Billings (Spellbinder)
Nefarious Features: Hamilton Hill is an ideal training ground for teens who grew up admiring the exploits of the Joker, Hamilton Hill has it all: wealthy families to rob, bullies to help you develop deep personality disorders, and the high technology to execute your crimes. And, if you can't think up an original villain persona, you can always head up your local chapter of the Jokerz.

Necessary Evil Academy (Necessary Evil)
Notably Villainous Alumni: The city's top supervillains, including the Matriarch
Fearsome Faculty: Headmaster Anti
Nefarious Features: A bona fide school for supervillains, Necessary Evil Academy offers coursework devoted to making you the best supervillain you can be. With courses in thwarting forensics, understanding mystical weapons, and investment techniques for stolen money, Necessary Evil ensures that you will be well prepared for a life of crime.

H.I.V.E. Academy (Teen Titans)
Notably Villainous Alumni: Gizmo, Jinx, Mammoth, Kid Wykkyd, Billy Numerous, Private H.I.V.E.
Fearsome Faculty: Brother Blood, The H.I.V.E. Headmistress
Nefarious Features: If you want to ensure your post-scholastic employment in the field of supervillainy, consider H.I.V.E. Academy, whose clients include such high-profile villains as Slade. And H.I.V.E. graduates have a high level of acceptance into the Brotherhood of Evil.

Sunnydale High (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Location: Sunnydale, California
Notably Villainous Alumni: Willow Rosenberg, Amy Madison, Jonathan Levinson, Andrew Wells, Harmony Kendall and numerous others (many of whom never made it to graduation)
Nefarious Features: Want to commit unspeakable acts of evil, but lack inspiration? A few weeks at Sunnydale High, conveniently located on top of the Hellmouth, and you'll be whipping up skin-flaying magic, summoning demons, or going vampire in no time.

Evil Medical School (Austin Powers)
Notably Villainous Alumni: Dr. Evil
Nefarious Features: Unclear, but it takes six years, and chances are that graduates lord it over folks like Dr. Horrible, who have PhDs in evil horribleness.

Legion Academy (DC)
Notably Villainous Alumni: Ron-Karr, Spider-Girl, Radiation Roy, Nemesis Kid, Lightning Lord
Fearsome Faculty: Tarik the Mute
Nefarious Features: The Legion Academy has a true legacy of villainy, with its founding based on kidnapping, blackmail, and the theft of the Legion of Superheroes' training manuals. And the first class eventually graduated into their very own Legion of Supervillains.

Sith Academy
Location: Korriban
Notably Villainous Alumni: Darth Sion, Yuthura Ban, Darth Bane
Fearsome Faculty: Jorak Uln, Uthar Wynn, Qordis
Nefarious Features: Traditionally, there is one Sith Master and one apprentice, but if you want to learn to wield the Dark Side of the Force and don't want to wait around for the apprentice to murder the master, you can take up at the Sith Academy of Korriban. And if you don't get into the master school on Korribon, you can always shoot for the Sith warriror, assassin, or acolyte schools on other worlds.

Syndrome (The Incredibles)

You, sir, truly are Mr. Incredible! You know, I was right to idolize you. I always knew you were tough, but tricking the probe by hiding under the bones of another super?! Oh, man! I'm still geeking out about it!

Fannish Traits: Fashioning himself as Mr. Incredible's sidekick Incredi-Boy for one, but even the business of making the ultimate superhero-killing machine and luring Mr. Incredible to his island lair to fight it was fannish in its own warped way.
What Drove Him to Evil: A demoralizing rejection at the hands of Mr. Incredible left him with a inferiority complex and bitter grudge against the superpowered community.

Henchman #21 (The Venture Bros.)

Dude I can't believe we didn't get blown up. We're like those guys on TV who never get shot. Yeah we're like main characters.

Fannish Traits: He keeps a closet full of collectible weapons, has a side job with the Atomic Comic Collection Connection, and debates whether the Smurfs are mammals. Fortunately, #21 lives in a comic book world, and his genre savvy is one of the things that keeps him alive.
What Drove Him to Evil: #21 was actually kidnapped and pressed into the Monarch's service at age 15, but he keeps up his henching because he finds it kind of awesome.

The Trio (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Warren: What the hell is that?
Andrew: Death Star, dude! Wicked, huh?
Jonathan: Uh, thermal exhaust port's above the main port, numbnuts.
Andrew: For your information, I'm using the Empire's revised design from Return of the Jedi.
Jonathan: That's a flawed design!

Fannish Traits: In addition the van with the Death Star mural, dialogue amongst the Trio (Andrew and Jonathan in particular) is a constant stream of science fiction and comic book references (notably, Jonathan claims fluency in Klingon). And their attempts at bank robbery and Slayer killing are pretty much straight out of the supervillain handbook.
What Drove Them to Evil: Repeated social, scientific, and mystical missteps, which required the Scooby Gang's constant meddling. That, and they hoped it would get them girls.

Superboy-Prime (DC Comics)

On my Earth, I read all about you, Polar Boy. You were a substitute Legionnaire who was let into the clubhouse because people felt sorry for you. Y'know, I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.

Fannish Traits: Raised in our universe reading comic books (and named after Clark Kent), Superboy-Prime is so distraught with the current direction of the DC Universe, that he tries to retcon the universe so it resembles the DC comics of his childhood.
What Drove Him to Evil: Pretty much the entire DC writing staff.

Control Freak (Teen Titans)

All these would've worked on the real Titans. It's just, your powers are... stupid! I don't wanna fight you anymore.

Fannish Traits: It's no surprise that, with his obsession with science fiction and television, Control Freak becomes an accidental fan of the Titans themselves. He's genuinely miffed when he has to face off against the Titans East instead of the main Teen Titans, and he's pissed when he realizes he's not on the list of their most notorious villains — after all, he's a recurring character.
What Drives Him to Evil: Mostly, because villains look cool.

Joe Jackson Stevens (Powers)

Every time they report about her, they ruin her. Every time they say her name, they chip away at her soul. The Indians say that a photograph steals your soul. Imagine if they are right. The world has no rights to her soul. If only I could get her attention.

Fannish Traits: Despite an avowed hatred of capes, Stevens has a profound obsession with Retro Girl, as evidenced by his diary entries and some rather sticky photos found in his apartment.
What Drove Him to Evil: Stevens is just plain unbalanced. He goes Mark David Chapman on Retro Girl because he wants to preserve her unblemished memory for the masses.

Red Mist (Kick-Ass)

Seriously. This whole superhero thing's been bubbling away for years, but you were the first to get out there and have the balls to do it, man. I'm your biggest fan. This is like meeting Elvis or something.

Fannish Traits: Mist claims to be such a huge fan of Kick-Ass (and superhero comics), that he follows Kick-Ass's lead and dons a ridiculous red suit to fight crime.
What Drove Him to Evil: It's not clear that Red Mist was ever on Kick-Ass's side, but whatever the case, he was probably getting paid good money to turn on his fellow vigilante.

Tim the Fanboy (Fans!)

These guys are the president and vice-president of a very cool club! They've fought a vampire, a mind-control conspiracy, and an ancient god! Share in the coolness! Join now!

Fannish Traits: Whereas most members of Bilberg University's Science Fiction Club are fans of science fiction, Tim is a devotee of the Club itself, turning down a spot at Harvard so he could worship at their feet. That, and he dresses like Harry Potter.
What Drove Him to Evil: Tim tends to become utterly devoted to a cause, only to turn on it completely when it lets him down in the slightest. When the Science Fiction Club is overwhelmed by the time traveling warlord General Maximillianna, Tim decides that she must be the superior moral force, and quickly joins her forces.

Ray Thompson (Justice League "Legends")

"Holy hijacking, Catman!"

Fannish Traits: Ray is so nostalgic for the superheroes of his childhood, that after they perished in a nuclear holocaust, he psychically resurrects them so they can continue their adventures.
What Drove Him to Evil: The sole survivor of the nuclear holocaust, Ray just wants to recreate the world of his idealized childhood. But when his illusion is shattered, he goes on a rampage that threatens to destroy reality.

The Mad Hatter (Batman)

As the great Lewis Carroll said: "One, two, one, two, and through and through the vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head, he went galumphing back!"

Fannish Traits: Jarvis Tetch is so obsessed with Lewis Carroll's Alice books that he dresses as the Mad Hatter, only eats hat-themed food, and constantly quotes Carroll.
What Drove Him to Evil: Psychosis. The Hatter has trouble distinguishing between Wonderland and reality, and has developed a frightening obsession with girls named Alice.

Mock Turtle (Astro City)

There was Narnia, with Caer Paravel. And Alice's Wonderland. And more. And children could find them, children like me. If I could find the right wardrobe, go through the right looking glass —

Fannish Traits: Like the Batman villain above, Martin Chefwick was obsessed with fantasy realms, including Wonderland, Narnia, and Oz. And, while he didn't mistake the real world for Wonderland, as a child he often went off in search of a gateway to a fantastical realm all his own.
What Drove Him to Evil: He wanted to impress a girl.

Stewie Griffin (Family Guy "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven")

No way, I'm getting Patrick Stewart to sign it. Picard has it all over Kirk. He's poised and measured and doesn't wear a cheap rug. Rather, he accepts even baldness with a quiet cool that says, "I am in command. You are safe with me. I will cradle you in my arms through any crisis in any galaxy."

Fannish Traits: From our list of convention disasters, Stewie built a working transporter for the sole purpose of kidnapping the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
What Drove Him to Evil: Stewie has always been evil, but in this case, he was simply annoyed he didn't get to ask his question at the convention.

Melllvar (Futurama "Where No Fan Has Gone Before")

Fry: Melllvar's got a spaceship.
Melllvar: Yes, in mint condition... and you made me take it out of the package!

Fannish Traits: Another from our convention disasters list, Melllvar creates a paradise for the cast of the original Star Trek so he can hold his own private convention. Then he makes them battle the Planet Express crew to the death for his fanboy affection.
What Drove Him to Evil: Non-corporeal beings only seem evil until you learn that they're harmless 34 year-olds still living in their parents' basements.

Ben Meyers (Smallville "Action")

I'm sorry, Lana. But there's a hero living among us, and there's only one way he'll accept his calling. You need to die.

Fannish Traits: A fan of the Warrior Angel comic books, Meyers is upset when he learns that the hero's love interest won't die in the film adaptation like she does in the book. To maintain the purity of the movie, Meyers decides to simply kill off the actress playing the love interest himself. And, when he discovers Clark's unusual abilities, he believes Lana must endure the same fate.
What Drove Him to Evil: Hollywood's obsession with happy endings.

Mysterious Fan Boy (X-Statix)

If we're really being honest here, and I hope we are, I'd started to love the new X-Force, even though their high mortality rate did unsettle my bowels. And now they go and change the whole thing. If that was all they'd done I might be able to forgive them. But they have done the unforgivable. They've killed the best of them. I mean, how do those people expect us fans to react?

Fannish Traits: Arnie Lundberg wears his fandom proudly. He is such a huge fan of X-Force in general and U-Go Girl in particular that when his favorite team member gets killed off, he takes an entire town hostage, controlling and disfiguring its citizens, a la the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life."
What Drove Him to Evil: A combination of childhood taunting, relative omnipotence, and U-Go Girl's death. But it all works out for him since he joins the newly renamed X-Statix team so they can keep an eye on him.

Comic Book Guy (The Simpsons)

Lucite...hardening. Must end life...in classic...Lorne Greene pose...from...Battlestar Galactica. Best...death...ever!

Fannish Traits: There's very little in the Comic Book Guy's life that doesn't center around fandom. And, in the Treehouse of Horror episode "Desperately Xeeking Xena," he becomes a villain known as "The Collector," who steals his favorite celebrities and places them in PET bags for safe keeping.
What Drove Him to Evil: The desire to preserve his favorite actors in mint condition.

The Catgirl Menace (Something Positive)

I'm tired of you comic creators thinking just because you make something you own it! You don't! It's ours the minute we read it! And the fans know better than you do what's right, otherwise we'd be making comics, not reading them!

Fannish Traits: Not precisely scifi, but too powerful to be ignored, the Catgirls walk around in adorable cat ears and will read anything with the word "Neko" in the title.
What Drove Them to Evil: Someone dissed their obsession du jour, Neko Neko Holy-Chan. Fortunately, they lost interest when they realized the comic creators were changing the comic in a way that disagreed with their fan fiction and shattered their little yaoi fantasies. Some creators just like their straw fans to smack you in the face.

Deep in the suburbs lurks the terrible Gru (Steve Carell) who is up to all sorts of despicable deeds like replacing the pyramids with a giant blow up toy, but now he has his sites set on stealing the Moon. But all his plans are thwarted, when he's put in charge of three little girl orphans. Now this is where I want this predictable "and they make his heart full of joy so he's doesn't steal the moon after all" ending to go comically dark instead. What if the three orphans and Gru team up and decide the Moon is too small potatoes, and instead they decide they want Canada and parts of Alaska and unleash a robot army upon the peaceful mounties?

But we'll have to wait until July 2010 to learn more about this feature, I do like the growing trend to give villains the spotlight — but not at the expense of their evil-ness. Other actors who are lending their voice to this 3D CG movie include Will Arnett, Jason Segel, Kristen Wiig, Danny McBride, Russell Brand, and Julie Andrews. Oh, and check out the movies new website, Gru already has his own rap song.

[via Yahoo]

I had been meaning to write this "keep Khan out of Star Trek 2 (or 12, rather)" blog post for a while now — but honestly I thought Orci and Kurtzman were just kidding about including him. The script for the next Trek, at this point, consists of a few Gorn cartoons on a cocktail napkin, and they're barely batting ideas around. So it's easy for them to hint at all sorts of fan-favorite stuff: Sure, maybe the sequel will include the Doomsday Machine and V'Ger blasting each other. Why not? Anything's possible at this point, and it doesn't do any harm to answer "maybe" to every question. And of course, if the fans get particularly thrilled about one of these trial balloons, then that tells them something.

But now, it sounds as though the Fringe co-creators may actually be considering resurrecting Khan, who's still sleeping in his little suspended-animation capsule in their revamped timeline. So just in case they're really serious about this, here's a list of reasons why a new Khan would be a terrible, epically bad idea:

You can't improve on the original.

They don't make villains like they used to — and that's not just a cranky observation. It's really true. If you think about it. Khan is almost emblematic of what we no longer see in movie and TV villains, for several reasons. He's suave, in a way that nobody is suave any more. (Can you even think of a Hollywood actor who's suave now? Maybe George Clooney.) He's ruthless, and willing to do whatever it takes to win, and to prove his superiority. His arrogant swagger isn't just bravado, it's ideological: he believes, deep down, that he's the pinnacle of human evolution.

And you can't discount the Ricardo Montalban factor. His "Corinthian leather" showmanship is easily mocked, but he was one of a hundred bullies, bureaucrats and demagogues who went head-to-head with Kirk. And there's a reason he's one of the few we remember. (Remember Anan 7 from "A Taste Of Armageddon"? I didn't think so.) Montalban brings all of his gravitas, charm and menace to the role. I can't think of an actor working today who could do the young Khan justice, and it would be hard to imagine a modern-day summer movie that could make Khan as compelling as he was.

And remember, this wouldn't be the batshit-crazy, revenge-driven Khan from the movie. It would be the smooth-as-silk younger Khan from the episode "Space Seed."

Say goodbye to the freshness.

Abrams' Star Trek reboot threw armfuls of candy at the fans, to distract them from the fact that this was a whole new Star Trek. You had the Kobayashi Maru, the classic lines like "I am, and always will be your friend" and "I'm giving her all she's got," the Orion woman, Pike in a wheelchair, and so on. The constant hand-holding got a little annoying, because I'd rather see a movie that's concerned with telling a story than with placating a minority of OCD fans. But it was okay, because behind all of this clutter, there was a fresh story.

Even though Nero was a weak villain, he was at least something new, and he had a few really great moments. But it's hard to imagine a storyline starring Khan that wouldn't feel a bit warmed-over. It would be the opposite of the first movie: a few fresh ideas, wrapped around a core of fan-pleasing deja vu. Pass.

He'd probably be just one of two or three villains.

It'll be hard enough to avoid the traditional "sequel = villain multi-ball" syndrome in this film, in any case. It's hard to think of a recent sequel that hasn't had two or three villains. The pattern goes like this: the original film has the hero's origin story, plus one villain. The second movie lacks an origin story, so the writers throw in a second (or third) villain to compensate. Boom, you're in the movie business.

But for some reason, the addition of Khan makes me even more certain the new movie would end up having more than one villain. (Despite all those tantalizing hints that there might not be any villain at all.) After all, Khan has already starred in one movie as a solo villain. So how do you distinguish between this film and Wrath Of Khan? I know – why not have Khan plus a couple other villains. Like, say, Khan and the Squire of Gothos both giving the Enterprise hell. Or Khan teaming up with the Klingons! That would be awesome! Er, no.

Khan would need to have some kind of trauma.

It's another iron-clad rule of modern-day villainy. The villain can't just be a shithead who wants to rule the universe — a modern-day reinvention of Khan would need to be emotionally scarred. And he'd probably have daddy issues, or some other childhood trauma motivating him to go around trying to take over starships.

You certainly couldn't have a villain who's motivated by ideology — not in this day and age, and not in a Hollywood blockbuster. In "Space Seed," Khan wasn't just a random maniac: he was the product of a genetic engineering project to create the ultimate Nietzschean superman, designed to rule the world. Just like Doctor Who's Daleks, Khan is intended to conjure echoes of the Nazi "master race" ethos. He's a warning about the dangers of meddling with the human genome too much, but he's also the product of a social movement that believed in his rulership. Strip all of that away, and he's just another snarling maniac.

The new Kirk doesn't have the gravitas.

One huge reason why Khan is such a swaggering, charming, magnetic figure in "Space Seed" is because he has to stand up to William Shatner's Kirk, who'd long since perfected his own brand of both swagger and smarm.

Not only that, but the episode comments explicitly on the differences between the two men: one from the barbaric 1990s, the other from the civilized, egalitarian 23rd century. Khan's forcefulness and brutish charm ("I take what I want") are contrasted with Kirk's more domesticated manliness. Yes, Kirk is a sexist tool as well — but compared to Khan, he's a sensitive new-age guy. The episode hammers home the comparisons: Kirk keeps his masculinity under layers of manners and irony, whereas Khan's is right out there in the open. And that's why Khan is so fascinating to Lt. Marla McGivers: she sees him as a throwback to a rawer, more unrefined version of masculinity.

I'm sure Chris Pine's "young hooligan" version of Kirk will grow on me, but I don't think he'll ever have the same "gentleman scholar" vibe that Shatner managed to convey. If you put Pine up against a young Ricardo Montalban, I'm not sure he could really hold his own. And most of all, I don't think you could create the same contrast between the more civilized Kirk and the barbaric Khan.

But the main reason I'd rather not see Khan come back is:

No more excuses for dyslexic bloggers to misspell his name as "Kahn."

Seriously, it makes me think that Madeline Kahn is going to jump out and start showtuning the Enterprise crew to death. Anything we can do to prevent that, we should do.

Top image is from ShitmyJorts.com. All other images from IDW's "Wrath Of Khan" comic book. [Movie-Moron interview via TrekMovie.com]

Orci and Kurtzman tell Collider they're debating between a couple of different ideas for the sequel:

The exploration sci-fi plot where the unknown and nature itself is somehow an adversary, or the villain model. That's an active discussion we're having right now. In terms of thinking about more than one movie, we want the movie to be self-contained in a way, but we're discussing the idea of having a couple of threads where if the second movie works, you could pick up into a cohesive whole. No thread more exciting and shocking for me when in "Star Trek III" you realize that Spock grabbed Bones and downloaded his Katra into him. When I saw "Star Trek II" I was like, "What's going on here?" and two years later, you're watching it and you're like "They're geniuses! They're geniuses!" So we're trying to think is there a version of that but again, "Star Trek II" does not rely on that thread, even though it turns out to be a thread. So we're thinking in those terms.

(Much more at the link.) [Collider]

Heroes writer/producers Aon Coliete and Joe Pokaski told fans at Comic Book Resources the name of the show's fifth "volume" (Following season 1's "Genesis", season 2's "Generations" and the third season's "Villains" and "Fugitives"):

[C]urrently, it is called "Redemption." All we can tell you is that act five of our "Fugitives" finale will give you a look at what it will entail.

That last part's no surprise - the final act of the final episode from each volume to date has been the first chapter of the next volume, after all - but "Redemption" is a telling title, considering the way that the current volume is trying to set up moral shades of grey for almost all involved. Will we be seeing Nathan, HRG and other characters involved with the hunting of Heroes face up to their methods, Sylar going good (again), or Peter and pals dealing with the metaphorical blood on their hands from their somewhat substandard freedom-fighting techniques...? Or all of the above? You'll only have to wait until the end of this season next month for your first hint.

Behind The Eclipse [Comic Book Resources]

To be fair, there are some differences between Villains and Wanted. In Wanted, it turns out that supervillains took over the world in 1986 and Wesley Gibson's real father was one of them. He learns to take on his father's mantle and become an amoral bastard in his own right. In , a loser dork named Nick Corrigan is drifting through life and getting crapped on (including losing his job) when he realizes his cranky old neighbor is a supervillain. He blackmails the neighbor into teaching him the supervillain trade, but the neighbor has some nasty surprises for him. So it's sort of an Apt Pupil thing, with the supervillain possibly betraying his apprentice on several occasions. Could be fun.

The main thing that makes me think of Wanted is the graphic novel's cynical narrative voice, which drones on and on, saying things like, "Some days it feels like everyone's out to get me. But that's just paranoia. The truth is, we're all out to get each other." Wow, man. The movie version will be co-written by Matt Jennison and Brent Strickland, who sold a World War II-era Wonder Woman spec script to Warners a while back. It's being produced by Idealogy, who are also behind Tr2n, the Tron sequel. [Hollywood Reporter]

First of all, the most important thing is to get back to trees' edgy beginnings. (Or, yes, their roots.) Back when trees started out, they were totally bad-ass and dark. People used to be scared going into a forest, not so much with the swinging picnic basket and off-road SUV-ing. As with so many classic monsters, trees have lost their edge. Sure, they occasionally score a victory, but we need a full-fledged tree resurgence.

Because we believe in democracy — unlike trees, which wish to impose their dictatorial will upon you and make you their unthinking fertilizer-dispensing-slave — we decided to consult you about reinventing trees in a new image. (Note: I came up with these tree-related questionnaires last week, before we decided to do the villain cage match thing. I'm not going poll-crazy or anything.)

First of all, there's the issue of costume. Many a villain has suffered under the "lame" banner due to a weak costume. Take poor Star Sapphire, who was literally unable to rotate her torso more than 15 degrees in her new costume for fear of making her Zamaron bikini wax the subject of heroic banter. What kind of costume do trees have? None, currently. At all. This is obviously a major source of the problem. What can we do about this?

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And then there's the catchphrase. Can you even remember trees' current catchphrase? Much less repeat it to your friends as a cheap in-joke when you're stoned in front of the TV at three A.M.? Everybody remembers "Resistance is futile," or "Exterminate." But what have trees got? Help them out:

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And then there's this:

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Okay, so it may seem off the top of your head like trees don't really need a secret identity, in which case you're free to vote your opinion — until trees conquer, and take your freedom of choice away, that is. But think about it for a moment: Trees have many awesome powers, but one of their biggest drawbacks is a lack of mobility. They can't actually sneak up on anyone. They tend to be better at hatching incredibly cunning long-term plans — trees are patient, they can wait forever — than they are at swinging into action.

So just think how shocking it would be if, say, our hero thought she had found true love at last — but it turned out she had been tricked into falling in love with trees. Or, I don't know, if you suddenly realized that the ATM that you'd be taking money from all this time was really a tree in disguise — and now trees could steal your identity. You never thought about that, did you?

And here's another idea: what about a storyline where someone travels forward in time, to an alternate future where trees have won? A tree-world, where the last surviving people cower in caves or desert areas, or possibly hide out in undersea strongholds from the tree overlords. Where humans are reduced to being the moth-culling, squirrel-eating, blight-scraping slaves of the tree overlords? Maybe the trees perform fiendish experiments on these future humans, to help them grow bark or start shedding tree-like pollen, so the trees would be able to tell us apart. Or, or, or — what if these future despotic trees tried to find a way to make half-human, half-bird hybrids? What could this future nightmare be called? "The Gathering Shade"? "Leaves Of Future Past"?

It's also not too soon to start thinking about what villains the trees could team up with. There's a long and proud tradition of plant monsters, including the Triffids and the creatures from Little Shop Of Horrors. Plus don't forget the Krynoid! And the Vervoids! But our sinister saplings don't have to restrict themselves to teaming up with other plants. They could join forces with aliens, including silicon-based life forms. Any ice-based or flame-retardant creatures might be handy allies for the tree army, since they could serve as a nice fire break against forest fires.

But realistically, we can't restore trees to their full villain potential on our own. Which brings us to our next question:

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How have we lived so long in ignorance of the deadly threat that the tree legion poses to us, as a civilization? Will we wake up in time? Is it already too late to stop trees in their relentless advance towards total conquest? The answer, dear readers, is up to you. Scary tree images by Akira_Kev, Nalilo, and Camera Eye.

Note: I was going to hold off a few days before doing part 2, but I ended up feeling like it was better to follow up while part 1 was still fresh in people's minds.

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According to Kring, the much-publicized third volume, "Villains," will only last 13 of the third season's twenty-five episodes, after which the show will immediately begin its fourth volume, to be called "Fugitives." The fourth volume is expected to run twelve episodes through to the end of the third season. No plot details were given about "Fugitives," but given the show's love of ripping off - I mean, "paying homage to" - old X-Men comics, don't be too surprised if you see the main characters having to go on the lam from some official governmental attempt to seek out and destroy everyone with superpowers following an attempt to save the world gone horribly wrong.

Kring also mentioned that the second half of season two, which was never filmed due to the writers' strike, would have been called "Exodus." And he said we won't learn any more about Kaitlin in Volume 3, but we will see more of Echo, the loud shouty postal worker from the webisodes. And the show is hoping to get invisible man Claude (Christopher Eccleston) back, as soon as Eccleston's schedule works out.

[Heroes The Series] and [Heroes Spoilers]

Fans may have been so upset with the second season of NBC's Heroes that creator Tim Kring apologized to them, but if they'd known what the WGA writers' strike saved them from seeing in the season's abandoned second half, perhaps they would've been much more likely to thank him for not having to sit through even more endless time-traveling dystopic drama after all.

According to Joe Pokaski and Aron Coleite, two writers and producers on the show, the "lost" third volume to the show, "Villains" - which will now appear in a significantly reworked form as the show's official third season starting in September - would have followed up on a few dangling plot threads from the second volume, "Generations". Ahead of the DVD release of the second season, which will include storyboards and completed footage for the abandoned episodes, the two spilled the beans on what we all missed to comic site Comic Book Resources.

One of the major plot threads for what we will never see involved a difference in what we did see:

We were excited about where season 2 was going to end originally. Instead of catching the [power-stealing and ultimately lethal Shanti] virus - it would be unleashed onto Odessa Texas. Creating a Quarantined town and having our heroes overcome the adversity of failure.

A series where the main characters are quarantined in one town and powerless? How much fun would that be? Not as much fun as a show where time-traveling results in accidentally abandoning characters in now non-existent futures... No, wait:

Peter's trapped Caitlin in a future that doesn't exist anymore [as the result of his time-traveling]. It's pretty hard to get back from that. (We would've seen Peter try to get Caitlin back in the remainder of Season 2, but in Season 3 — he has a whole other slate of problems to deal with.)

Personally, I think the fact that the shortened second season saved us from having to deal with either Angsty Peter weeping about accidentally dumping his girlfriend in a parallel universe (or, for that matter, from ever having to see Faux-Irish Personality-less Caitlin again) is reason enough to forgive the strike for also forcing an early end to the first season of Pushing Daisies. But wasn't there anything that would've been good about the never-to-be seen back half of season two?

As far as a flashback episode of the company founders - it's already happened in an alternate universe. Episode 15 of season 2, "1977" was to do exactly that. Powers in the time of Disco. Angela and Arthur Petrelli. But now it's up for grabs. Fan-fictioners, start your engines.

Oh, come on. There's always time for a good flashback episode, no matter what season you're working on.

Behind The Eclipse Summer Spectacular, Part I, Part II [Comic Book Resources]

The super-fast-running girl, who we previously reported was named Joy, has had her name changed to Daphne. And she's going to be played by Brea Grant, who spilled some details about an early scene:

I'm stealing a secret that's been kept in Hiro's family for a long time that he's just now found... He stops time right as I grab it, but in that second it took him to grab it, I almost make it out of the office...

Her character is supposed to be Hiro's Joker... Batman has The Joker. Hiro has Daphne. This is the season where Hiro finally finds his arch nemesis, and it happens to be this Speedster. I kind of equate it more to Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, except Daphne says more than "meep-meep."

[Taylor's Entertainment News] [Heroes Volume 3]

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• Tim Kring and Jeph Loeb explained they'd literally pried the footage out of NBC's hands to bring it to us at the Jules Verne Festival. It's never been seen before, and might be the only new Heroes footage for weeks or months.
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• The footage starts out by summing up the tail end of Volume Two. Nathan Petrelli gets shot, Noah Bennet (HRG) leaves his family to go back to work for Bob and the company, and Sylar gets his powers back.
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• Then we move into the new stuff when Angela Petrelli says "There's going to be some changes around here." Based on what we can see, she's moved into a powerful role at the company.
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• Sylar confronts Elle (Kristen Bell) and she tells him, "I'm not scared of you." To which Sylar says, "You should be. I'm a psychopathic killer." She retorts, "Takes one to know one."
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• Angela explains that the prisoners kept on Level Five, one of The Company's prison areas, are "The most dangerous, the most powerful: rapists, arsonists, killers." And guess what: Level Five gets breached.
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• There are shots of most of the major Heroes all dead. Peter as a corpse in a pool of blood, Hiro is pinned to the wall with his own sword, lifeless. Matt Parkman has his throat torn open.
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• Noah Bennet says, "It's like twelve Sylars running free."
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• While there might be a lot more villains, it's doubtful they've cast them all yet. There's one new African American bad guy running amok who seems to have the power of super-strength and speed, but it's not totally clear in the clips. Although he does rip one guy's heart out, which can't be good.
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• Sylar is all over the place in this one. At one point, he's held captive in a room which looks like another Company cell and has tubes running up his nose. Maybe he has some sinus problems, who knows.
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• At one point, Sylar puts his arm around Angela's shoulders, in a friendly way. So either they're working together now, or they both have some creepy dating habits.
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• Several villains are walking towards the camera, Reservoir Dogs style, but they're all in shadow so we don't know who they are. Yet.