What did you guys think?

This show really does get better and better every season.

Batman: The Animated Series was, for me and many others, the Batman cartoon. There have been attempts to revive a Batman animated series, such as The Batman on the CW, but few have even come close to living up to this series. However, I remember hearing about this new series, from many of the same creators, called Batman Beyond coming as a follow up – and Kevin Conroy even managed to “age” his voice to continue to play the role of Bruce Wayne. I was excited, but concerned, I was old enough to be cautiously optimistic knowing that this series could be really bad.

If I recall correctly, they aired a “sneak preview” of the series in an hour long premier (two episodes back to back) during primetime – and I loved it. I watched the show religiously as Timm and the rest of the crew responsible managed to bring a new Batman into the future, while still keeping it grounded in The Animated Series roots and constantly drawing parallels between a now aged Bruce Wayne and the new Batman, Terry McGinnis. Unfortunately, the series only ran for 52 episodes and didn’t receive a proper ending until Justice League did a two-part episode called “Epilogue” in which they properly wrap up the Batman Beyond series.

Now, the great news is Batman Beyond: The Complete Series is coming to DVD on November 23, 2010! It looks like it will be filled to the brim with special features and include a few extras as well. Unfortunately, the press release doesn’t specify if the Justice League two-parter that wrapped up the series will be included, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Here are all the details!

BURBANK, CA (August 18, 2010) – Warner Bros. Animation’s breakthrough series Batman Beyond comes to DVD for the first time in its entirety. Featuring DC Comics’ iconic hero, Batman, Batman Beyond: The Complete Series presents nearly 20 hours of animated action spread over 52 episodes, as well as all-new bonus featurettes and a 24-page, 8”x 12” collectible booklet. Batman Beyond: The Complete Series will be distributed by Warner Home Video on November 23, 2010 as a nine-disc  limited edition DVD set for $99.98 (SRP).

Batman Beyond: The Complete Series centers on Terry McGinnis, an ordinary teenager … until his father is mysteriously murdered. Suspecting foul play at his father’s company, Wayne/Powers Corporation, Terry meets Bruce Wayne and learns of a secret identity hidden for decades. Now too old to don the cape and cowl as Batman, Wayne refuses to help – so Terry does what any brash young kid would do: steal the Bat-suit and take matters into his own hands! Vowing to avenge his father’s death, Terry dons the high-tech suit tricked out with jetpacks, a supersensitive microphone and even camouflage capabilities in search of his father’s assassin. It’s 52 action-packed episodes following the adventures of the partnership between an ex-crimefighter and his apprentice, starring Will Friedle (Boy Meets World) as Terry McGinnis and, reprising his seminal role, Kevin Conroy (Batman: The Animated Series) as Bruce Wayne.

Casting throughout the series’ 52 episodes featured award winners from feature films, primetime television and the Broadway stage – from Paul Winfield, Stockard Channing and Seth Green to William H. Macy, Wayne Brady and Teri Garr – not to mention George Lazenby (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons), Jodi Benson (The Little Mermaid), George Takei (Star Trek) and Henry Rollins (the front man for the rock band, Black Flag).

An all-star production team was headed by executive producer Jean MacCurdy and producers Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett, Glen Murakami and Paul Dini. Writers on the series included Burnett and Dini, as well as Stan Berkowitz, Bob Goodman, Rich Fogel, Hilary Bader and John McCann.

Included in the beautifully custom designed package is a 24-page, 8”x 12” collectible booklet with the inside perspective and artwork from the vaults especially compiled by DC Comics for this release.

Three new bonus features created specifically for the Batman Beyond: The Complete Series are:

TOMORROW KNIGHT: THE BATMAN REBORN The “Batman Beyond” creative team gives you a peek into the character of Terry McGinnis, and what made him worthy to become the new Caped Crusader.

GOTHAM: CITY OF THE FUTURE A look at Gotham City, circa 2039, and how the team built a realistic vision of the near future while remaining true to the city they created in Batman: The Animated Series.

THE HIGH TECH HERO Explore the technology behind the Bat-suit, its amazing powers and the real world science that inspired it.

The collection will also contain the DC 75th anniversary documentary, Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics.

“Batman Beyond was a landmark series as it created altogether new directions for the iconic character, and added dimensions for fans both old and new to the Batman mythology,” said Amit Desai, WHV Vice President of Family, Animation & Sports Marketing. “Warner Home Video is proud to release this important series in an all-encompassing box set, just in time to make a perfect holiday gift for the ultimate fan.”

Everyone knows that classic films have always inspired the Star Wars saga.  The most often mentioned is Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress having a direct impact on A New Hope (particularly the two peasants who seemed to translate directly into Artoo and Threepio.)  And it’s been no secret that The Clone Wars has followed very much that same pattern.

One of my favorite things to do when I watch each episode is decode what movies they may be homaging.  Since the movies they homage are some of my favorites, it deepens my love for the show.  In the first two seasons we’ve seen episodes based on Hitchcock films like Notorious (Senate Spy) and Kurosawa’s Stray Dog and Seven Samurai (Lightsaber Lost and The Bounty Hunters) and even Godzilla and King Kong (The Zillo Beast episodes).

It might be one of my favorite things on the show, since Dave Filoni and crew have such a love for not only Star Wars, but the classic films that we should all cherish and hold dear.  (In fact, when I interviewed Filoni at Celebration V (video soon!) the entire interview was almost derailed when we started geeking out aboutThe Third Man).

During the final press conference, I was able to ask Filoni what sorts of movies could we be looking at for hints into season three and his answers did not dissapoint.  There will be video from this press conference forthcoming, but this answer was too tantalizing for me to wait on.

The short, incomplete list of movies he gave as inspirations for Clone Wars Season 3:

Battle of the Bulge — Filoni said that this one came directly from George Lucas and was obviously an influence on Star Wars.  At one point a character blatantly stops and says “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Saving Private Ryan — My guess is we’ll see a lot of WWII-like combat in Season 3, if this is any indication.

Alcatraz — That’s what Filoni said, I can only guess he meant Escape From Alcatraz, which is a great escape film and has all kinds of possibilities in the Clone Wars universe.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — This one presents a lot of interesting speculation as of to how the influence could be utilized.  Will the Jedi be dealing with the Witches of Dathomir revealed in the trailer like the Thugee?  Will there be an episode with a Shankara-Stone like quest for the Jedi? Will it be a comedy, like our second favorite Indy film?  The possibilities are endless.

And the last one on his list:

Predator — This is another incredibly interesting film for him to reference and us to speculate on.  During the Republic Commandoes clip that was shown, it was insinuated that there was a beast somewhere killing clones and Jedi.  Could this be Savage Oppress?  Could he be like the predator?  He certainly looks the part.  On the other hand, we could be in store for another all-clones episode where they’re off in the forest and we could be seeing a direct homage to this film with some random monster on some outer-rim world.

In any of these cases, we won’t know until we see the episodes, but I hope this has provided some tantalizing food for thought about Season 3.  Also, I hyperlinked all of the films to their Amazon pages.  These are all films you need to have seen, so go ahead and buy them.

Season 3 begins on September 17th with a two part episode about an attack on Kamino.

Derek Hunter is a well known artist in our neck of the woods, and he’s also a dick. At least he seems to think so, we’re just indifferent to him. He draws awesome art, but he won’t even sit down and have a drink with us that has booze in it. Who drinks water a bar, honestly? The guy’s a tool. …Oh, yeah, anyway! He sat down and chatted with Gavin Sheehan at City Weekly about his exploits during his college years, and why he put it in comic book form. If you’re in the area, go check out Draw Night at NoBrow Coffee this Friday.

Gavin’s Underground interview with Derek Hunter

Gavin: What was the process like for you in deciding what stories to use?

Derek: In all honesty, I am not that awful of a person, so the stories in the book are the worst of them. Of course, I tried to choose the ones that would make for the best short stories. Ones with a good beginning, middle and end. For example, I used to put roadkill in those big blue USPS mailboxes when I was in high school, but that doesn’t necessarily make for a good story. So stuff like that was left on the cutting room floor. Also, the whole purpose of this comic was to be the ultimate “anti-biography”; I had to make sure the stories truly painted me out to be a “fuck”.

Gavin: Considering the personal nature of the stories, what are your feelings about the book being released for the public to buy and read?

Derek: That was a major concern before I started writing the book, but once the stories started coming together, and especially after I bookended all of the stories with the retrospect prologue/epilogue narrative, a very “playful” attitude sort of washed over the whole thing and, in my eyes at least, the character in those stories stopped being “me”. And to be honest, I’m not the person I was in those stories anymore and I think that is obvious to anyone who knows me. And those people’s opinions are the only ones that would really effect me anyway.

I apologize for the tardiness of last week’s This Week IN Comics column, but I was a little busy at Star Wars Celebration.

This week, the issue of IN was devoted to “Back to School”, so what better subject to tackle than Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters?

If you’re in the greater Salt Lake area, you can pick this up on News stands for another couple of days, or read the online version here. Or you can read the online print version below.

Shortly after the announcement of the Blu-ray at Star Wars Celebration V, I was given a press release with just a couple of more details about the release.  For one, it will be released in the fall of 2011.  Hopes that it would be sooner in the year didn’t pan out.

At the “Main Event” George Lucas commented that he wanted the set to be chock full material we’ve never seen before.

At that point, he brought Mark Hamill out for the reveal of the deleted scene from Return of the Jedi.

Thanks to TheForce.Net, I have video to show you of the scene:

More reports from CV soon.

Jon Stewart is clearly a bigger Star Wars fan than he lets on, which made more than a couple of people scratch their heads, wondering why he was asked to interview George Lucas on stage at the official celebration of The Empire Strikes Back’s 30th anniversary at Star Wars Celebration V in Orlando, Florida. The convention has been going on for the last two days, but today’s discussion between Star Wars creator George Lucas and political comedian Jon Stewart was entertaining and hilarious, and needs to end up on a DVD somewhere.  Stewart was even honored by Lucas with a one-of-a-kind action figure from planet Stewjon.  It was a figure of Stewart (with interchangeable heads) dressed as a Stromtrooper in vintage packaging.

We’ll have another, more detailed recap of the panel with pictures from a much better camera, but I wanted to drop the major news highlights as quickly as I could.

The biggest news was that the complete Star Wars saga will be on Blu-ray next year.  No date was mentioned, but it is definitely 2011.  Lucas mentioned that he definitely wants to make it special, but not the stuff we’ve seen before.  It was at that point that Stewart brought Mark Hamil (Luke Skywalker) to the stage where he introduced a rare clip that Star Wars fans like myself weren’t even confident had been filmed.

“This is Luke’s original introduction in Return of the Jedi,” Hamil said.

The scene opened moments after Vader finished his conversation with Moff Jerjerrod on the first Death Star.  He gets into an elevator and goes to his hyperbaric chamber, the entire time calling out Luke’s name with the force, much like at the end of The Empire Strikes Back.  The scene then cuts to Luke in a black hooded cape, eyes closed in thought, resisting the Vader’s presence.  He’s lit darkly, much like Anakin in Revenge of the Sith after his turn.  The camera pans down to reveal that he’s constructing his green lightsaber.  After a few more modifications, he ignites the saber (to the applause of the audience), just as he’s sending R2 and 3P0 to Jabba’s palace.  This would have made a very, very different movie.  This certainly emphasizes that Luke was dangerously close to the dark side and could have turned by the end of the film.

For fans of the Clone Wars cartoon, more big news was made.  Aside from George Lucas making a cameo (as his Episode III alter-ego Baron Papanoida) on the series in a scene that showed him in a barroom shoot out with Greedo, was that Darth Maul’s brother would be on the show.  Count Dooku, eager to find an apprentice, goes to Maul’s homeworld, seeking an apprentice and finds a suitable candidate in Darth Maul’s brother.  The clip they showed of this scene was brief and was a very dramatic reveal.  There is another panel dedicated to just that and I’ll be back to report on it later (before I head to Disney World for the Last Tour to Endor.)

The thing I was struck most by was Stewart’s level of geek.  His follow-up questions to Lucas were just as sharp and knowledgeable as you would see on The Daily Show, but about Star Wars.  At one point, he stopped George and said, “One thing I never got, was it Palpatine that actually killed Darth Plagueis in his sleep?  It was insinuated, but was Palpatine making it up?”

It’s not a question that would hit the mainstream with much, but to this audience it was an incredibly pertinent question.  “Yes.  Palpatine killed Plagueis in his sleep.”

There will be more coverage and pictures from Stewart’s Press conference and a more detailed story of the event itself, but these were the highlights I figured everyone wanted to see immediately.

George Lucas, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Jon Stewart

To be honest, when I was given the chance to moderate the “Why We Love the Prequels” panel at Star Wars: Celebration V, I wasn’t sure if I was going to get anyone to be on the panel, let alone show up to watch it.  Could I have been the only one who loved the prequels?

The answer was a resounding “NO”.  The panel I was able to get to do the job was fantastic, and we spread our message of prequel love to a standing room only crowd.

Aside from myself moderating, the panel consisted of the Supervising Director of the Clone Wars cartoon Dave Filoni, voice Actor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) James Arnold Taylor, director of FanBoys Kyle Newman, Star Wars artist Tom Hodges, one of the lighters on The Clone Wars from Lucas Animation Singapore Jesse Hildreth and the social media director for TheForce.Net Eric Geller.

For well over 70 minutes (eat that Red Letter Media) we discussed the finer points of story and detail that made the prequels great.

I think perhaps the highlight of the panel (aside from all of the great points and stories) was when Kyle Newman broke it down for everyone: (and I’m paraphrasing, since I was up there instead of taking notes) “I love the prequels because I love Star Wars.  I hate how people say, ‘I love Star Wars, but I don’t like the first two, and only like half of Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith was okay.’  That’s only like 2 and a half movies out of six you like, that’s a failing grade.  If you like Star Wars, you like it.  Even Ben Quadrinaros, whom I love.”

Okay, I made up that last part about Ben Quadrinaros, but I like to think that Kyle would have said that.

Perhaps my favorite part of the panel, though, was meeting all of the panelists in person for the first time beforehand over the first two days of the con.  Invariably, every time any of us got together, we would all launch in to geeking out together over the prequels.  Even Dave Filoni, who can’t speak more than three sentences at a time in a place like this without getting mob.

I’m sure a more complete report will be written about it, but I wanted to offer the highlights and some of the pictures now, while the experience was still fresh in my head.

Today was the first day of Star Wars Celebration V and while I attended a variety of panels and the exhibition hall floor, two panels in particular forced me to write up my coverage quickly because of all the news pouring out of them.

They were both Clone Wars panels, first was Joel Aron’s lighting and visual FX panel, and then later was the “Evolution of Clone Wars” panel with Aron and Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni.

At first, I thought these panels were going to be retreads of things I’d seen at Comic-Con, but I was treated with things very new.  Instead of a rundown of the panels, since they were basically just them talking, I’ll cover all the major news points below.

Firstly, the two part season premiere on September 17th, takes us to Kamino to see the clones being trained in their training facility.  A lot of the scenes there were cut (including a scene in a Kamino infirmiry), but I would expect to see them on a DVD release of the season.  There is a “Battle of Kamino” in the second episode of the premiere.  Extended shots from the trailer were also shown, highlighting tentacled robots climbing up a Kaminoan city.  It was also mentioned more than once that in order to expand Kamino for the show, Filoni went back to the original concept drawings for Attack of the Clones and intimated that a lot of what the entire show is based on are concepts developed for the films that didn’t make it in.

As far as production of the show, Season 3 is already more than two-thirds complete.  Season 4 is in production; Season 5 is being talked about.  The word is that the show really will go on as long as we continue watching it.

The next thing to remember is that every story on this show originates from George Lucas.  Though writers flesh out the story lines and Dave helps add in the finer details, these are really George’s stories that they execute in animated form.  A question was asked about the possibility of Lucas Animation doing something like DC’s Animated Features (like last month’s Under the Red Hood release) and Filoni seemed very doubtful.  “Everything comes from George and, as much as I’m a fan of the EU, I think he’d want to just show you something new.”

When asked about the possibility of a new feature film version of the cartoon, Filoni said, “I can’t picture finding the time to do it.  It’s better to make you guys a mini-movie every week instead.”

There was much talk of Boba Fett, Pre Vizsla and the Mando warriors we saw in a couple of different story arcs in Season 2.  Filoni described Mandalore in the Clone Wars era much like Post World War I Germany and hinted strongly that Satine’s government was very precarious and that Pre Vizsla (the character voiced by Iron Man director Jon Favreau) might very well be poised to be the Mandalorian Hitler of the Star Wars universe.  He confronted the EU controversy over Mandalore head on and knocked his answer out of the park.  When asked if the Slave I was okay (since it was last seen crashed over Hondo Ohnaka’s hideout in season 2), Filoni remarked, “Slave I is fine.  Maybe Hondo has Slave I since he’s sort of a junk dealer?  Boba’s in jail, it’s not like he has a use for it.  But maybe he gets out, but I don’t know anything about that, because I can’t tell you.”

Another fan asked him point blank if Boba gets his armour and Filoni blanched at the question and danced around it rather well.  “Well, he gets it at some point, doesn’t he?”

Perhaps the biggest news of the panel was the reveal of the Republic Commando’s Delta squad from the video game.  They appeared in a scene showed three times during the course of the “Evolution” panel.  A shuttle came down in the rain (a very convincing and incredibly well-animated rain) and landed in front of Adi Gallia, Saesse Tinn, Plo Koon, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.  The cargo hold opens revealing the Republic Commandos, who pull down a floating coffin down the entry ramp and explain to the Jedi that “there were no survivors”.  Adi Gallia is alarmed, since not even the Jedi survived.  And Plo Koon and Obi-Wan debate what this phantom menace killing Jedi could be.  All in all, the scene revealed little, but the animation has taken such a quantum leap forward in quality, it was worth watching repeatedly.

And while that may have been the biggest news, perhaps my favorite was hearing that Ahmed Best was back as the voice of Jar Jar Binks.  I know a lot of you probably wouldn’t care so much about that, but as annoying as Jar Jar might be, it’s doubly annoying to have someone else do the voice.  It might sound weird, but it’s true.

As far as what else we can expect out of Season 3, Filoni recited a piece of the opening crawl from Revenge of the Sith: “There are heroes on both sides.  Evil is everywhere.”  If there’s a theme to this season, he said “it’s revealing things.  And one of the biggest things is that we’re going to explore is the Separatists and we’ll see some of the heroes on their side and why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

(More Pictures and coverage to come soon!)

It looks like The Avengers has a start date for filming, at that date is in February 2011! If you’re counting, that’s a good fifteen months prior to the release date. All reports are saying that there will be 3-4 months of shooting and then the rest of the time will be spent on the visual effects – probably a lot of Hulk animation.

While there isn’t a whole lot more detail to give, next year is going to be a lot of fun watching leaked stills, publicity shots, etc. roll in from the shooting locations! I think they have put together a stellar cast and I can’t wait to see the interactions between all of them! So, keep your eyes peeled and keep up with all the leaks and stills right here at Big Shiny Robot!