Talking to MTV, Ratner revealed that he's been won over by Pattinson's dreaminess himself:

He just feels like he belongs in that world. I don't only see him as a vampire, he's a really good actor... [Pattinson] could do anything. He just has that look. I picture him on Youngblood, for sure.

But don't assume that any reference to Pattinson having "that look" means that the occasionally shallow Ratner's adaptation of the infamously style-over-substance Rob Liefeld comic won't be a challenging, deep movie, according to the director:

My vision for it is: We're going to make a very edgy, cool film... We're not soft-peddling it at all.

I should hope not! After all, how could you even try and soft-pedal this?

Brett Ratner Wants 'Twilight' Star Robert Pattinson For 'Youngblood' Movie [MTV Splash Page]

Here are five pieces of wisdom that we've gleaned from the last six months (and handful of days):

President Obama Is The Greatest Hero Of All
As his many comic book appearances have demonstrated, there's no end to our current president's ability to save the world from any genre of threat. Amazing Spider-Man has him fighting supervillains, Youngblood shows him carrying massive laserguns to shoot renegade soldiers taking over the White House, Drafted gives us an alien-invasion-battlin' Barack and Barack The Barbarian brings everything back down to sword and sorcery basics. He's like a modern-day Arnold Schwarzenegger - and enough to make us wonder just how the comic industry would've dealt with John McCain winning the election instead.

Threats To Humanity Are Getting Weaker
Last year, it was the Large Hadron Collider and the possibility that it would rip existence apart when someone flipped the switch, and this year, it was... Swine Flu. It can't just be me, can it? I mean, Swine Flu... Doesn't that seem like a step down from the technological "Our Quest For Knowledge May Destroy Us All" conceptual genius that threatened us last year? Even calling it "the H1N1 Influenza Virus" still sounds kind of shit. Okay, so there's no chance of "hardon" spoonerisms, but still: Pandemics? Haven't we done that already? I'm holding out hope that sewer monsters will brighten the remaining months of the year, however.

The BBC Should Stop Making Us Feel Old
Yes, we know that it's just one of those aimless homilies that you know that you're getting old when the policemen and doctors start looking younger, but selecting a twelve year old to be the new Doctor Who really doesn't make us feel very good about ourselves nonetheless. I know that we started with the oldest of the Doctors and have progressively gotten younger since then - well, roughly - but between David Tennant and Matt Smith, I'm convinced that we'll have our first pre-teen Timelord by 2015. And then, the next one will be a little baby, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Joss Whedon Can Defy The Laws Of Nature
If nothing else, the renewal of Dollhouse proves that he can defy the laws of television. I wouldn't put money on him being unable to fly if he really wanted to.

Fuck Dystopia
Terminator Salvation and Watchmen - two downbeat movies offering popcorn versions of pessimistic views of humanity ("Ultimately, man's greed and laziness will lead us to become disconnected from our fellow man and controlled by the machines and mechanisms that we created to ease our daily existences - but doesn't this slow-motion action sequence look hot?") - both failed to meet expectation at the box office, while Star Trek's hopeful, colorful version of a future that may be too lens-flarey to be cuddly but is nonetheless positive surpassed expectations. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles also died a slow death on television. The obvious conclusion? No-one wants to their entertainment to end with the lesson "We're all screwed." The Dark Knight's glossy hopelessness was so last year, people. We hadn't experienced so much of the economic downturn and/or the hopetrain of Obama back then. We were all so much more innocent and desperate to be mistreated by our movies. (Along the same lines - Size Matters: Terminator, featuring human-sized robots, fails to become a hit. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, featuring giant robots, breaks box office records. I think you can see what I'm saying here. See also: Robot On Robot Action Is More Acceptable Than Robot On Batman Action and Megan Fox Is Hotter Than Moon Bloodgood. Sorry, But There It Is.)

Bolstered with this new knowledge, we look forward to what the rest of the year can teach us - presuming, of course, that the sewer monsters don't decide to team up with Joss Whedon and end the world before then. Pray for us.

It is, in actuality, another relatively quiet week for new launches this week, oddly enough. San Francisco's Wondercon convention is this weekend, after all, so you'd think publishers attending would want to have something new to show off... but then, they may have used up all their big books at the start of the month for New York Comic Con.

DC Comics are almost entirely quiet, and Marvel's books of note are pretty much confined to New Avengers #50 — in which the New Avengers meet the newer Dark Avengers, for an Avengeroff — and an oversized hardcover collection of the first twelve issues of Mighty Avengers, Marvel's third Avengers title. I'd make a joke here about there being too many Avengers comics, but in May, they're launching two more, including (no joke), Lockheed and the Pet Avengers. Just think about that one for a second.

Also hitting the oversaturation point: Barack Obama. Sure, the gleam is beginning to tarnish a little bit already, but that's not stopping him appearing on the cover of three different publications this week: Wizard magazine has a cover featuring Alex Ross' Superman-inspired pose from last year's San Diego Comic-Con, Youngblood sees him front and center, picking a new team of superheroes to star in the book, and the Savage Dragon has him either shaking hands with the eponymous superhero or, in a Wondercon-exclusive, punching Osama Bin Laden — I promise you, I'm not making that up. That alone is a reason to get to San Francisco this weekend.

Book of the week, then, is almost unique by being a relatively big-name project in an otherwise dead-aside-from-Obama week: Doctor Who: The Whispering Gallery is something that we've mentioned before, but that doesn't mean that Ben Templesmith's art has gotten any less impressive in the meantime. Even if the story is terrible — and that's unlikely, given Leah Moore and John Reppion's history — it's got to be worth picking up for that art alone.

If you voted for John McCain, don't worry (Well, about comics, at least); the complete list of this week's new comic releases will still be able to offer you all manner of possibilities for you to spend your money on. Go and check it out, and then use the Comic Shop Locator Service to find out where that money should be spent. Yes, you can.

The latest comic to jump onboard the Obama wagon (Obamagon?) is Image Comics' Youngblood which, like Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man, will feature Obama himself in a second story in addition to the regular storyline:

President Obama picks new Youngblood team! A new day has dawned in America and for Youngblood that means a brand new direction under the executive direction of the new Commander-In -Chief! Who stays, who goes? Only Obama knows for sure! Rob Liefeld returns to the helm on story and art as Youngblood prepares for an all new direction in 09!

This news was announced on the same day that Marvel's Spider-Man issue with Obama was released, prompting lines at many comic book stores, and quick sell-outs throughout the country (If you missed it, don't worry; a second printing should be in stores next week), perhaps showing the business reasons behind the Youngblood decision, but nonetheless, between Savage Dragon, Spider-Man and Thunderbolts over at Marvel, and now Youngblood, the novelty of seeing our new President in comic book form has not only worn off by now, he's in danger out wearing out his welcome before he's even taken office.

At least we know that we're relatively safe from Obama popping up next to Superman or Wonder Woman; none of the presidential candidates in DC's DC Universe: Decisions series last year shared his name, so unless there was a hell of a write-in vote, he's not the president on DC Earth.

Youngblood #8 Obama Cover [Comic Book Resources]

If it's comics based on film and television, then this week definitely spoils you for choice; IDW alone is putting out the first issue of Star Trek: The Last Generation (An dystopian alternate-timeline version of TNG), the collection of Transformers Movie Sequel: The Reign Of Starscream, and a 3D Transformers Spotlight on Optimus Prime. DC Comics aren't far behind; they've got both the second hardcover collection of Heroes' webcomics (which is better than the first, but I'll say more about that tomorrow) and the first issue of a new X-Files series being released, alongside Batman: Gotham Underground (a collection of the recent series of the same name about Batman's villains) and The Spirit Special, which brings together some of Will Eisner's original stories that inspired Frank Miller's movie.

Marvel, meanwhile, are having a relatively quiet week, but Marc Guggenheim's Young X-Men gets its first collection, while Garth Ennis's non-mature readers take on The Punisher gets a weighty hardcover omnibus all to itself. Less weighty - but no less ridiculous - is Image's Youngblood Hardcover, in which one of the worst comics of the 1990s (by Rob Liefeld, a man who never met a face he couldn't cross-hatch into oblivion) is remixed and rewritten by comics iconoclast (and Ben10 co-creator) Joe Casey.
But even that accomplishment is overshadowed by a book from San Jose-based indie publisher SLG/Amaze Ink: Space Raoul brings together cartoonist Jamie Smart's weird and wonderful tales of somewhat misshapen and inept hero from Space Command. It's childish, doesn't take itself too seriously and is bizarrely awesome; go look for it and you won't regret it.

If you don't know where to look for it - and all of the other books from the complete list of this week's new comic releases, then I would suggest you hit up the Comic Shop Locator Service). Go on; embrace your inner child one more time.