Jim Lee, the iconic artist and Co-Publisher of DC Comics, is releasing through Titan Books a collection of his art, some never before seen, and a look inside his creative process.

For it, I was able to do a pretty wide-ranging interview with him.

A more full version of the interview about the book will be appearing on Huffington Post soon (we’ll be sure to link it up here), but I wanted to give you a sneak peek at some of the things we’d be covering and a look at some of the art contained in the book.

It’s a gorgeous coffee table collection and is going to be released November 2, 2010.  You can preorder it on Amazon here.

One of the most exciting pieces of news from the interview is transcribed below:

Big Shiny Robot!: When you guys launched digital, one of the things you guys hinted at that everyone was really excited about were incentives for retailers funded and promoted by the digital side.  What new stuff  do you see coming up with that that you can talk about that will help get people to download comics digitally into a comic book store and buying trades and buying the new print issues?

Jim Lee: There are a number of initiatives we’re working on.  We’re looking at e-couponing.  We’re looking at ways to improve the Comic Shop locator service that already exists within the app itself, through the DC Comics app.  And we’ve looked to the advice and input of a large number of the countries best and largest retailers, looking for ways to further bring them into the loop.  There are things we’re exploring on the content side where stories will start out digitally and end up in print in the store.  And we’re looking for ways that reward fans that are buying print with perhaps digital copies of their books.  There are a number of ways we can do it, we’re confident we can do it, and we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think we could help our brick-and-mortar partners and expand the overall size of the pie, of the retail marketplace.

So it looks like we should be seeing digital comics that come with our paper comics much the same way we see digital copies of movies coming with DVD’s with DC.  This is a great step DC is taking.  Since their recent reorganization, they’ve really been trying to get out ahead on a lot of things and this would certainly make them the best bang for your buck if you care both about print books and digital archives.

Check back soon for the rest of the interview on Huffington Post.

You can preorder “Jim Lee Icons” here.

Every other year I get to choose where we go on our family vacation. Last time I drug the wife and kids through the tiny town of Metropolis Illinois for the Superman celebration and it was a great time except my families overwhelming fear that we’d be back again and again. Well, now the Clobber-Tron clan has a lot more to fear!

If I get my way we’ll be heading to Six Flags Magic Mountain to ride the 3 new planned rides, 2 of which are DC Comic themed!

Superman: Escape from Krypton
This ride looks fun and I’m a big Superman fan so I’ll climb on this as soon as I get to the park. I promise to take pictures and write up the experience if I survive the trip.

Green Lantern
No doubt planned to promote the movie and sell merchandise, this ride looks like a terrifying cross between a traditional roller-coaster and a rickety old carnival ride. I will stand in awe of how scary it looks and hopefully OVERCOME GREAT FEAR.

This morning I was hit with news via Twitter that IESB.Net broke the story that Lucasfilm is hard at work on developing another trilogy of Star Wars films to be released a year or two after the final installment of Star Wars 3D.

Their website has been crippled with traffic from the story and it might take a while to load, but you can find the story here.

I’m always very skeptical about news of new Star Wars movies.  Lucasfilm has been pretty adamant that there are no more films coming out and I’m reasonably in the loop.  I can pretty safely ignore stories like this 99 times out of 100.  But IESB is a usually reliable site and they are staking their entire reputation in the truth of this story.  If it doesn’t pan out, they’re up a creek as far as their reliability is concerned.

They claim that a spy deep inside of Lucasfilm leaked to them special knowledge of a desire by George Lucas, confident from the success of Clone Wars, to make more films set in the Star Wars Universe.  By all accounts, Lucas has said the Skywalker Saga has ended and we won’t be revisiting that again in any officially canon form.

IESB’s spy speculates that it is indeed a sequel, though how far into the Star Wars universe it is they didn’t know.

From their report:

What do we know? First of all, these new film will have nothing to do with the live action television series currently in development. That show already has over 50 scripts ready to go and plenty of pre-production time and money has been spent on artwork and storyboards. Once that show goes into production, Lucasfilm hopes to be able to produce at least 100 episodes since that is the threshold for syndication in the United States.

Too early for story details but one thing that our source is certain about, they will not be prequels but instead sequels. It’s not for certain if they will be the long awaited Episodes 7, 8 and 9 but could instead be Episodes 10, 11 and 12 or possibly even further out in the Star Wars timeline. And by giving space in the timeline, possibly even as far as 100 years or 1,000 years in the Star Wars universe future, Lucas avoids having to make these stories “fit in” with what the previous stories have told.

I’m telling you this firmly: take this news with a grain of salt.  A grain of salt with a vengeance.  Until Lucasfilm makes any sort of official announcement (or a little bird deep in Lucasfilm tells me so personally), this isn’t happening.

It’s not unheard of, though.  The prequels were bankrolled off the backs of the Special Editions, which helped advance the technology further to make them possible.  If Lucas is pushing the technology and form further with Star Wars 3D and will be using that to bankroll the live action TV series and a new trilogy, I will be nothing but elated.

The possibilities of a sequel trilogy set in the Star Wars universe are endless.  And I’d love to see George produce them in the same way he’s producing the Clone Wars and give top  filmmakers who are Star Wars fans a chance to play in the sandbox.  Though, if he does decide to direct them, I’ll still be there first in line.  As far as the films are concerned, he hasn’t let me down yet.

What do you guys think about this?

UPDATE:  Tracy Cannobbio from Lucasfilm responded to my request for comment on this story thusly:

“This is, of course, completely false. George Lucas has lots of projects keeping him busy right now – including plenty of Star Wars projects – but there are no new Star Wars feature films planned.”

I will take Tracy’s word for it, even though IESB ran their article with the following caveat:

Can we expect Lucasfilm to confirm our story? Have they ever? Nope, I am sure that they will spin this or completly deny the story, but we will stand 100% behind our source.

So, they can stand behind their source all they want.  Lucasfilm, quite predictably, is standing by the fact that it’s not happening, though in truth they’d have to say that at this point one way or the other.  It is interesting though that Tracy’s email to me is identical in wording to the email Wired got from their source at LFL.  At the very least, this story was enough for LFL to get together on an officially worded denial.

In any case, be sure to weigh in below.

This episode follows Ahsoka Tano and her effort to prevent her visions of Padme’s assassination at the hands of Aurra Singh from coming true. My faith in this season had been a little shaken over the last couple of episodes and I was wondering if this episode would pull us out of the slump that we’ve been in and I have to say, it really did. With a vengeance.

This was perhaps one of the best episodes of the show I’ve seen.

Ahsoka is once again on her own, without Anakin’s guidance and faced with a terrible dilemma. This episode echoed in a very clever way the trials Anakin and Luke go through in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, and The Empire Strikes Back and it’s a very classic Star Wars story. She needs to interpret visions that may or may not be true and act on them in a definitive fashion that won’t make things worse.

As it turns out, Aurra Sing didn’t die in the Slave I crash from last season and Ahsoka seems to be the only one who can sense it. She accompanies Senator Amidala to Alderaan for a conference to protect her after Yoda advises her to act on her visions in whatever manner she deems best.

This is perhaps the most self-referential episode of Clone Wars in regards to the film saga and that’s probably what I loved most about it. This was dripping in classic Star Wars situations, locations, music, themes, visuals, and so on.

The visual continuity of Ahsoka’s premonitions matches those Anakin had in Revenge of the Sith perfectly, though the visions Ahsoka has are much less emotionally intense, probably since she doesn’t have the fear of loss of Padme that Anakin did, and she wasn’t being manipulated by a Sith Lord. She follows the same course of action for these visions as Anakin did, and that’s to consult Master Yoda, who is even in the very same meditation chamber. The lighting in the scene matched the film perfectly and provided the exact right mood and atmosphere. She also visits Padme in her apartment (an exact replica of the apartment in Revenge of the Sith) to tell her of the danger.

Ahsoka decides that the best course of action is to accompany Padme to her conference on Alderaan. On the way there, there is a scene that is reminiscent of Episode I and Episode IV. Ahsoka is unsure of herself and a little scared. In very much the same emotional tones (both in voice and lighting), Padme reassures her much the same way she reassured Anakin during his first space flight away from Tatooine. While they do this, they pass the time on the way to Alderaan in exactly the same way as Artoo and Chewbacca on their way to Alderaan in A New Hope: playing Holochess. This was a very wonderful touch.

My favorite piece of classic trilogy incorporated into this episode, however, was the inclusion of Princess Leia’s theme into the score during their arrival to Alderaan. I’ve always found that piece of music melancholy and tied to the fate of Alderaan and using it here on the planet is bittersweet. It offers sort of a sad and sweet introduction to the planet on the show.

It was intrigued to see Ahsoka dealing with an assassin on her own based solely on her own premonitions. Since she didn’t have the attachment and emotion Anakin and Luke did when they dealt with theirs, we actually see visions of the future handled properly. There was less action in this episode than the last two combined, but because the story was well written and supported the action, it really meant much more and was much more exhilarating than the firefights and power struggles on Mandalore. The stakes were high emotionally and I was invested that much more in the climax.

And this episode actually build on Anakin and Ahoska’s relationship further, though Anakin was only in it for a few minutes. Ahsoka saved Padme’s life. Padme is the thing in the galaxy most dear to Anakin and Ahsoka saved her from dying and captured a notorious and dangerous bounty hunter in the process. He is indebted to her. And since he’s already showing the same sort of emotional attachment issues to Ahsoka as he has to Padme and his mother, her eventual fate is only going to drive him that much closer to the dark side of the force on the road to the events of Revenge of the Sith.

My favorite moment with my son (the real Anakin) was when Anakin and Ahsoka were trying to find out who hired Aurra Sing to assasinate Padme and he turned to me and said, “It’s Greedo.”

“What?”

“I bet it’s Greedo that hired Aurra to kill Padme.”

“It’s not Greedo.”

“Dad, trust me. It’s Greedo. Or Ziro. It’s Ziro the Hutt. I knew that all along.”

The bottom line is that this was a great episode, Katie Lucas did a great job writing it, the team did an excellent job pulling it off, and I did an impressive job enjoying it. This might just have been my favorite episode from this season.

Next week, I’ll fill the gap in episodes watching the Blu-ray of Season 2, which comes out Tuesday, and in two weeks I’m terribly excited to see Cad Bane torturing See Threepio.

To catch up on season one, order that here.  You can preorder season two here.

I’ve been catching up on the Hulk comics after watching the Planet Hulk DVD and they’re getting unbelievably good. I might have to double dip and pick these up in trade too.

Marvel is pleased to present your first look at Hulk #27! The critically acclaimed creative team of Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman team Red Hulk with Steve Rogers, Thor, and the brilliant Dr. Bruce Banner to put and end to the Intelligencia’s nefarious plans! Except in order to do so, Red Hulk must dive to the depths of the ocean and find an unlikely ally – the King of Atlantis, Namor!

HULK #27 (SEP100620)
Written by JEFF PARKER
Penciled by GABRIEL HARDMAN & MARK ROBINSON
Cover by ED McGUINNESS
Rated T+ …$3.99
FOC – 10/22/10, On Sale – 11/17/10

MARTIN FREEMAN IS BILBO BAGGINS.

end of line

Seriously, it could end there and it wouldn’t matter, right?  Freeman is great, and you may remember him from (the original and still the best) British version of The Office, Hot Fuzz, and  Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy.  He’s perfect, and who everyone was pulling for, short of getting Ian Holm to magically lose 40 years (or 80-90, as it were in the LOTR chronology).

The next piece of key casting is Richard Armitage, who I personally have no real opinion of, but my wife swoons for as she religiously watches MI-5, (literally, she just went, “Oooooh!”) But he is involved in one of my most anticipated films of the next few years, Captain America.

The rest of the cast are people I know even less, but given Jackson’s ability to properly cast even more minor roles (I would argue there is almost no miscasting in either Lord of the Rings or King Kong– good thing we dodged the bullet with a replacement Aragorn or that wouldn’t be true, now would it?)

What is missing here is an announcement for Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Gollum (Andy Serkis), and the voice of Smaug (rumored to be Bill Nighy) and relatively major parts Beorn and Bard of Laketown.  Back during when Guillermo del Toro was directing, it was rumored he had a part carved out for Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman, speculated to be one of these two roles.

Also, since it was originally conceived as two films, rumored to include what would have been some peripheral stories about Gandalf’s interactions with Saruman, possibly including some meetings with Aragorn, we have no confirmation of Christopher Lee or Viggo Mortenson being involved either.

What say you robots?  Let the speculation-tron and bitch-mo-matic engage its servos!!!

Here’s the official press release (and also “>some youtube love):

Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Rob Kazinsky, Aidan Turner, Graham McTavish, John Callen, Stephen Hunter, Mark Hadlow and Peter Hambleton have joined the ensemble cast of the The Hobbit, it was jointly announced today by Toby Emmerich, President and Chief Operating Officer, New Line Cinema; Alan Horn, President and Chief Operating Officer, Warner Bros.; Steve Cooper, co-Chief Executive Officer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., and Peter Jackson.

Since The Hobbit films received a green light on October 15, pre-production has been in full swing. Set for release in December, 2012 and December, 2013, we can confirm that Martin Freeman (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Hot Fuzz) will play Bilbo Baggins, the hero of the story. Richard Armitage (UK TV’s MI-5 and soon to appear in Captain America: The First Avenger) is set to play Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the Company of Dwarves which sets off to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from a thieving dragon.

“Despite the various rumours and speculation surrounding this role, there has only ever been one Bilbo Baggins for us,” says Peter Jackson.  “There are a few times in your career when you come across an actor who you know was born to play a role, but that was the case as soon as I met Martin.  He is intelligent, funny, surprising and brave – exactly like Bilbo and I feel incredibly proud to be able to announce that he is our Hobbit.”

He adds “Richard is one of the most exciting and dynamic actors working on screen today and we know he is going to make an amazing Thorin Oakensheild. We cannot wait to start this adventure with him and feel very lucky that one of the most beloved characters in Middle-earth is in such good hands.”

Rounding out the Company of Dwarves are Aidan Turner (TV’s Being Human) and Rob Kazinsky (TVs EastEnders) who play Kili and Fili, respectively. Jackson comments “Rob is an extremely talented young actor with a huge career in front of him, I’m thrilled that he has agreed to take on the role of Fili.  Besides his talent as an actor, Rob is also a champion sword fighter; I’m looking forward to seeing the damage he can do to a horde of marauding Goblins!”  He continues, “Adian is a wonderfully gifted young actor who hails from Ireland. I’m sure he will bring enormous heart and humor to the role of Kili.”

The remaining dwarves will be played by Graham McTavish (Secretariat and TV’s 24) as Dwalin; John Callen (TV’s Power Rangers Jungle Fury) as Oin; Stephen Hunter (TV’s All Saints) as Bombur; Mark Hadlow (King Kong) as Dori; and Peter Hambleton (TV’s The Strip) as Gloin.

Jackson notes, “Graham is a terrific actor, with a great depth of experience, which I know he will bring to the role of “Dwalin. I have worked with Mark Hadlow on many projects; he is a fantastic actor.  I am thrilled to be working with both of them on these movies.  He adds, “I am also proud to announce the casting of New Zealand actors as Peter Hambleton, John Callen and Stephen Hunter. Fran and I know that they will bring great depth and talent to our Company of Dwarves.”

The two The Hobbit films are being co-produced by New Line Cinema and MGM, with New Line managing production, Warner Bros. Pictures handling domestic distribution and MGM distributing internationally. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Carolynne Cunningham are producing the films, with Phillipa Boyens serving as co-producer and Ken Kamins as executive producer.

The Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed LOTR trilogy, also from the production team of Jackson, Walsh and Cunningham, grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide at the box office. In 2003, Return of the King swept the Academy Awards, winning all of the 11 categories in which it was nominated, including Best Picture — the first-ever Best Picture win for a fantasy film. The trilogy’s production was also unprecedented at the time.

For those of you savvy about movies and art, Drew Struzan is not a new name to you.  It’s already synonymous with some of the most beautiful film posters ever rendered.  For those of you more passive about movies and art and design, you may not know his name, but you know his work.

Some of the most iconic posters of the last 30 years were created by Drew Struzan and you’ve seen them.  Indiana Jones?  Back to the Future?  Star Wars?  Harry Potter?  Blade Runner?  You remember those posters?  All Struzan.

Titan books published a gorgeous volume of Struzan’s art (with a hilarious and brutally honest introduction by Frank Darabont, who’s had Struzan posters made for The Shawshank Redemption and The Walking Dead) but also included commentary and early sketches and concepts, guiding you completely through his process.

The best part about this book is the fact that you’re able to peek behind the curtain and read about the stories behind all your favorite movie posters.

Remember this iconic piece from John Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing?

Did you know that Struzan had less than 24 hours to get it done?

And did you know that there were dozens of designs for the Back to the Future poster before they decided on this:

Could you even begin to imagine a different image to represent this movie?

This book is an excellent addition to any coffee table and I highly recommend you picking up a copy.  It’s a gorgeous, well-laid out book with all of your favorite Struzan art in it, along with all of the works, sketches, and stories that led up to it.

You can order it on Amazon here.

Big Shiny Robot! has a weekly column in the Salt Lake City alt-weekly IN Magazine and every week we bring it to you on the site.

This week, Dr. Cyborg is back, pondering the issue of Super-hero origins and whether or not they stand up.

If you live in the greater Salt Lake area, you can pick up a copy of IN Magazine up from one of their ubiquitous newsstands, and we would highly suggest that you do.

You can read the online version of the story here.

Click on the image below to read the article as it appears in print:

It’s time once again for another installment of The Big Movie Mouth Off, starring Jeff Vice from X96′s Radio From Hell and Jimmy Martin from SLUG Magazine (and both are regular panelists on The Geek Show Podcast)

You can friend the show on Facebook here.

These are available exclusively on Comcast: Utah On Demand, and then after their exclusive run there, they will be appearing on Big Shiny Robot! and across the Internet. (iTunes/podcast versions coming soon by popular demand.)

Without further delay, let’s get to the reviews:

The Sundance documentary Catfish:

Zack Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole:

The Impossible True Story of Secretariat:

David Fincher’s The Social Network:

You Again:

And finally, Let Me In:

Just today I was thinking to myself, “Self, what would it look like if you mixed Marvel superheroes and TRON?”

Well, I’llbedamned, would you look at this!

Marvel has revealed the variant covers of some of it’s most popular titles “celebrating” TRON: Legacy‘s release – which still is just about two months away. Starting in November you can pick up these TRON variants featuring your favorite Marvel superheroes all TRON’d-up at your local comic shop.

Kind of a weird mash-up idea, but it definitely looks pretty cool with some of these characters. You can check them all out over at Marvel.com!