McG Answered Our Most Pressing Chuck/Supernatural Question

When McG was doing Terminator Salvation interviews last week at Wondercon, we saw our chance to ask him a question that has been plaguing our minds for ages. McG has produced two science fiction/fantasy TV series: Chuck and Supernatural. And both shows feature a protagonist who drops out of Stanford, due to his encounter with something bizarre or other-worldly. So what's with the Stanford obsession? Says McG, "It's a Berkeley affinity." More »

League Of Super Evil Is Ren And Supervillain-Esque

A ragged gang of supervillains make their debut on Cartoon Network tonight, and you may just be one of their first conquests. The League Of Super Evil brings cuteness and slapstick to mega-villainy. Spoilers! More »

Michael Chabon, Matt Fraction, and the Nerd Cultural Insurgency (NCI)

I made it to the Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union) and Matt Fraction (Casanova) dual appearance at Wondercon, which was well worth it for anyone into literary comics - or comic-bookish literature. More »

What's Causing the "Earth Without Us" Craze in New Scifi Movies?

Following on the tail of the hit book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, and the documentary Life After People, Hollywood seems determined to make scifi movies that explore the same theme. Certainly we've had "Earth without most of us" flicks like I Am Legend, but two movies that were on proud display at WonderCon, Wall-E and Journey to the Center of the Earth were literally about an Earth that has no humans at all. In Wall-E all the humans have flown off in spaceships, left the garbage bots to clean up their messes, and have never returned. In Journey, the main characters discover an "Earth" that has never evolved human life. Why are we so obsessed by alternative Earths without humans right now? I've got four reasons why. More »

Wondercon Confronts The Rise Of The Police State

The biggest cheers at Wondercon weren't for killer robots, but for allegories about government conspiracies, endless wars and terrorism. Much of the weekend felt like a poli-sci seminar, except with nuclear holocausts and mutated alien bugs instead of textbooks. If you needed proof that the shadow of 9/11 keeps falling over our formerly escapist narratives, then you only needed to sit in on any one of the con's jam-packed panels. More »

Sneak Peek at Cyborg War Romance 'Appleseed: Ex Machina'

We've already mentioned the John Woo-produced anime sequel Appleseed: Ex Machina and spoken with director Shinji Aramaki, but Warner Video was on hand at WonderCon, handing out a billion postcards to remind people that it comes out DVD on March 11th. They even had a screening of it on Saturday night during WonderCon, although it faced stiff competition from parties featuring costumed fans and tipsy publicity reps. If you missed that, then peek at the clip below and find out what the world of Appleseed is all about. More »

io9 Party at WonderCon Was Full of Craziness

io9 and Last Gasp Press co-sponsored a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on Saturday night at WonderCon, and it was smashing. A ton of comic book artists came and drew at a table while we got drunk, and then CBLDF auctioned the art off to raise money for the fight for free speech in the comic book world. Here's a "before" picture of your intrepid editors (l-r that's Charlie Jane, Annalee, Graeme, and Kevin). Some after photos below. More »

Justice League Movie Takes Us Back to the Origins of Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter

Justice League: The New Frontier comes out on DVD tomorrow, a straight-to-DVD release based on writer/artist Darwyn Cooke's series DC: The New Frontier. This is part of a trend of Warner and DC releasing original animated films on disc that might never have seen the light of day otherwise, beginning with last year's Superman: Doomsday. We got a sneak peek at The New Frontier at WonderCon, and we loved the setting in space. But the flick gets mired in the origin stories of Green Lantern and The Martian Manhunter. We've got a full report, with clips, below. More »

Comics Wrapup from WonderCon: DC Abandons Lesbians; Vertigo's Superheroes Are Reluctant

Now that the dust is settling on WonderCon Weekend it's time to look back and wonder, as we so often do, what just happened? Anywhere that you can see Elvis with a hustle of Leias has to be one of the most wonderful places in the world, despite the hype and inevitable disappointments. The headlines, the low points, and bits that we didn't tell you about at the time all await you after the jump. More »

Hulk Smash Military Industrial Complex!

Over the weekend at WonderCon, author Douglas Wolk (Reading Comics) gave a talk about the not-so-secret allegorical tales that lurk beneath the BAM! POW! of your typical superhero comic book. I caught Wolk on the con floor and asked him to explain the political subtext of Greg Pak's recent World War Hulk series. In this video, he explains how it's all about blowback from 9/11, and why Iron Man represents the military industrial complex. More »

"Terminator" Producer Wanted To Bring Back Kyle Reese From The Dead

Thomas Dekker, who plays the future rebel leader John Connor on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has been working out so he can kick some more ass in the show's second season (if any.) John has been somewhat kittenish up till now, because the producers want to give him an arc on his way to future hero-dom, and because it's hard to write a show with "three alphas," including John's mom and Summer Glau's Terminator, said Executive Producer Josh Friedman. More Sarah Connor secrets after the jump. More »

Jericho Predicted The Blackwater Scandals

This week's episode of post-apocalyptic drama Jericho pits our hero Jake Green against Ravenwood, the government security contractor he used to work for. When the producers were originally coming up with ideas for a TV show about the collapse of governing institutions after nuclear attacks, they did a lot of research into contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater operating in the chaos of post-invasion Iraq, producer Carol Barbee revealed at Wondercon. Jericho's portrayal of unaccountable contractors presaged the Blackwater scandals, which hadn't yet come out. More about the politics of Jericho, after the jump. More »

Wildstorm Relives Past Glories, Other People's Characters

DC's once proud Wildstorm imprint showed signs of hurting at their Sunday panel at WonderCon. First sign was the sparse attendance for the panel, with less than 50 people in a hall meant to hold roughly eight times that number, with the second being that everyone involved, from pros to fans, would rather talk about crossovers with the mainstream DC Universe or old books that never got finished. More »

Gillian Anderson Reveals Kinky Plot of X-Files 3 Movie

Here's a gem we grabbed at the X-Files movie panel at WonderCon yesterday, thanks to intrepid videographer Roger Chang. A fan asks the panel if there are any stories they wish they'd had a chance to explore in X-Files. After David Duchovny hems and haws about how the new movie is sort of exploring Picture of Dorian Gray, Gillian Anderson lets this one drop: "I always thought Mulder should have explored autoerotic asphyxiation. That'll be XF3." Watch as Duchovny and show creator Chris Carter try to bring the conversation back on track.

Vertigo Re-Enters The House of Mystery

What do you do when you're kidnapped and imprisoned in a mystical building that has itself been kidnapped by forces unknown? Well, if you're the cast of upcoming DC/Vertigo series House of Mystery, you open a bar. Talking about the book at Wondercon's Vertigo panel, co-writer Bill Willingham (the other writer is Matt Sturges, his co-writer on Jack of Fables) gave us the lowdown. More »

When Will Swamp Thing Come Back?

Just who owns Swamp Thing? After being asked about the chances of a revival of everyone's favorite muck monster at today's Vertigo panel, DC's VP of Sales told the following story:

Every now and again, there's a battle between [DC Universe] and Vertigo about who gets to publish the character. DCU guys go up to the Vertigo offices with the issue of Batman where Swamp Thing appears and say "Clearly this is a Batman character!" and suddenly there are pitchforks and they're forced back to the elevators.

Trying to offer a more serious answer, editor Bob Schreck said that it was one of his favorite comics, but after about three failed attempts to bring back the character, he's realized that "maybe you shouldn't go home again."

Battlestar Galactica's Richard Hatch Talks About Zarek's Political Career

Yesterday we dropped in on the Battlestar Galactica panel with Richard Hatch, who starred in the original show, and plays shady insurrectionary and politico Zarek on the new show. io9's Kevin Kelly asked Hatch what he thought Zarek would be doing if he were involved in politics on Earth during this election season. Would he be more of a behind-the-scenes Karl Rove type or would he be in the race? This is Hatch's strange, rambling answer.

Chris Carter Says 9/11 Killed X-Files, But America is Ready for It Again

We just got treated to a very brief clip from the new X-Files movie trailer, featuring a group of mysterious FBI types marching across the icy antarctic snows, with Billy Connolly as a mad grayhair in the lead, crying out, "We've found it!" Cut to lightning fast clips of a body being dragged over ice, Scully looking hotter than hell, Mulder looking not so bad himself, and lots of zoomy blurred stuff. No shots of Xzibit, though Chris Carter did confirm for the millionth time that he would be in the film along with Amanda Peet as a federal agent. No word about that giant werewolf we keep hearing about. But director Chris Carter, writer Frank Spotnitz, and stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny were in attendance. Here's what they had to say about X-Files and 9/11, as well as what it's been like to return to the story after all these years. More »

Vertigo Releases New Demos

Revealed with a sly "I think a lot of you have guessed," Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan have confirmed that they are working on a new Demo series for DC's Vertigo imprint. The new six issue series will revive the black-and-white Twilight Zone-esque series about people discovering superpowers towards the end of the year. Unusually for a DC book, the new series will be in the same black and white, no advertisements, format as the original twelve-issue run. "There was a lot of magic in the original series that I didn't want to mess with," Wood said.

Less Lesbians and Teenage Death In Upcoming DC Comics

Hope you weren't getting too excited about that Batwoman series that Dan DiDio said was happening last night; today's DC Universe panel included DiDio admitting that he'd made a mistake, and that it was actually Batgirl who was getting her own series, not DC's favorite lesbian crimefighter. Other than that, the DC panel was again light on actual announcements, with DiDio answering one question with "If you go to the New York Comicon [in April], I'd have answers for all you guys [asking about new series]." That said, there were some interesting hints and answers amongst the bantering about Final Crisis, dead teenagers and why DC as a company is going to start cracking down on creators. More after the jump. More »

How Would Spider-Man And Spider-Woman Get Naked?

Annalee is asking costumed fans roaming the halls of WonderCon one crucial question: How they would strip off their costumes if they had to get naked really, really fast? She found not but two of the most famous arachnid-based characters in the comic book world and asked them how they'd strip down in record time. Turns out that Spidey didn't just inherit radioactive powers, he also gained the ability of extreme sewing and the power to airbrush muscles onto his suit. More »

Andrew Stanton Pimps Out Wall-E, Doesn't Remember Short Circuit

Pixar uber-guru Andrew Stanton was on hand at WonderCon to talk about his robot love story, Wall-E (which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth class), which was inspired by what he calls "the golden age of science fiction," and it's a story he'd been obsessed with ever since he wondered what would happen if we left the planet and "someone forgot to turn off the last robot." He showed off four new clips from the film, and you can read our descriptions of those down below.( We fired up our stealthycam for some video goodness, but the decidedly non-wonderful WonderCon security gave us the clampdown.) More »

Fans Demand Post-Nuclear Earth Be Pretty

Who said that post-nuclear dystopias have to be dull and colorless? Previewing their upcoming Bionic Commando videogame here at Wondercon, Capcom representatives talked about the fact that the game will be much brighter than early previews had made it look. More »

DC Comics' Biggest, Newest Hire

Opening the DC Universe panel with an announcement that's been rumored since the announcement earlier this week that J. Michael Straczynski was no longer under exclusive contract to Marvel Comics, Dan DiDio introduced Straczynski as the newest hire for DC. With details of their relationship still being worked out, no projects were officially announced (Although DiDio said that he had an "open door" in terms of characters), JMS did admit that he was talking to people at Warners about a possible Babylon 5 series.

Hunka Hunka Burning Leia at Wondercon

Seen on the mezzanine, without any particular context whatsoever. Someone, somewhere, is having an obscure pop-cultural fetish fulfilled by this image at this very moment.

Image Comics Is A No Show At Wondercon

First shock announcement of the day from Wondercon: Image Comics' The Image Comics Show was cancelled at the last moment "due to circumstances beyond our control," according to those in charge. What does this mean for planned announcements about new Mark Millar series War Heroes and new work from some of Image's better known creators? Stay tuned; although Image reps say that nothing official is planned to replace the panel right now, expect some announcements to happen nonetheless.

Hulk For Congress! Io9 Talks To Lou Ferrigno

We're huge fans of Lou Ferrigno's original Hulk from the TV series. So when we saw Ferrigno running a booth at Wondercon, we had to ask him some searching questions. Here's what Lou had to say about his role in the new Hulk movie, the original show... and his forthcoming career in politics. More »

How Would A Stormtrooper Get Naked?

Annalee is asking costumed fans roaming the halls of WonderCon one crucial question: How would they strip out of their costumes if they had to get naked really, really fast? She caught up with the an intrepid member of the Imperial Stormtrooper squad, complete with his own supply of Nerds candy. Stormtroopers have to eat too, you know. Since he was sitting behind a table, he may have already had his armored pants off, but find out how he'd disrobe in a hurry inside. More »

Monkeybone Hatred Reigns in "Meet the Creators" Panel for "Journey to the Center of the Earth"

At the panel about Journey to the Center of the Earth, Brendan Fraser was on hand, along with producer Charlotte Huggins, "3D expert" Ed Marsh. Brendan Fraser spent most of the time extolling the virtues of James Cameron's new Fusion camera system, which they used to make this. Despite being sick, Fraser spent a lot of time talking to fans and joking about the movie, which he gleefully described like this: "They fall into a hole, they try get out of a hole — that's the movie! We needed some carnivorous plants in there to give them something to do!" Find out more. More »

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D Gives Good Monster

Late last night, a bunch of Wondercon nerds piled into a theater across from Moscone convention center to see a special 30-minute preview of four monster-packed scenes from upcoming 3D epic Journey to the Center of the Earth. Hitting theaters in July, it's the first live action 3D film done using James Cameron's new 3D camera setup. You're going to be seeing a lot of this 3D stuff over the next several years, as Cameron's new film Avatar will use it, as well as Robert "Planet Terror" Rodriguez' new movie. And, dear readers, it looks frakkin good. Read on to find out about the future of your movie-going experiences. More »