Dwayne McDuffie, the screenwriter of the next DC Animated Feature has announced via his blog that All Star Superman will be the next film in the series.  It will be coming out in Spring.

This is pretty good news for people.  This is one of the better arcs of Superman and is pretty popular.  Personally, if they had to pick one Superman story, I’d just as soon see them do Worlds at War, but this should be really good.

We’ll report more information as it becomes available.

I missed putting up last week’s article because of Comic-Con, but I’m making up for it by posting This Week and Last Week IN Comics now.

For this week’s article, Arse-Bot stepped in and offered a perspective on what it’s like experiencing Comic-Con from home.  You can read the online version here. It’s still on newsstands in the greater Salt Lake area, so be sure to pick it up while you can.

Last week, we wrote a special for the Burlesque community of Utah, since the issue was themed that way.  You can read the online version here.

Etnies has partnered with Kevin Smith to launch a line of incredibly comfortable foot wear that have his style, sensibilities, and name attached.  In honor of this launch, Etnies threw a very exclusive party at the Se Hotel in San Diego during the 2010 Comic-Con and invited selected press to come witness the taping of a live Smodcast and a very select few outlets were invited to interview Kevin Smith afterwards.

Coors passed out all  the free beer you could drink on the patio before the broadcast began and everyone mingled.  The picture above was Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes (Jay and Silent Bob) hanging out before hand.

Apparently, there was an incredibly complicated contest involving twitter, code-words, and a scavenger hunt of sorts for Kevin Smith superfans to attend the party and Smodcast, so as soon as Kevin Smith came out he was mobbed by people asking to take pictures.  He was incredibly gracious to each one, posing with them, talking with them.  He was a genuinely nice guy to everyone who approached him.

Then we were ushered into a neighboring room that overlooked the pool and were treated to a live Comic-Con version of the Smodcast.  Scott Mosier (producer of Smith’s movies) and Smith were brought out to a small table with three microphones and began to talk about their Comic-Con experiences going back to the premiere of Mallrats.  (“The audience reaction was great.  We thought we made E.T. and the studio was really happy, but this was the only audience who saw this movie in theatres, apparently.”)  You can listen to it on the Smodcast website as soon as it goes live.  In the meantime, you can watch a couple of brief tidbits we recorded from the front row:

Then Jason Mewes came out and things got dirty:

After the Smodcast, we were brought to a small private room and given the opportunity to interview Kevin Smith in a one-on-one setting.

You can watch the full interview here, the audio for iTunes will be up soon.  Highlights of the conversation are below.

First we talked about the Etnies collaboration.  “I thought I was getting punked.  One of the designs they showed me was for a pair of sneakers called The Walt Flannagan, which is my friend.  And that does it for me more than sneakers with my name on it.  If I can wear a pair of Walt Flannagan’s?  I mean, I’ve known that mother-fucker for twenty years and if I can wear a pair of sneakers with his name on it, I really feel like we would have accomplished something in this life.”

Then we talked about Red State, “We’ve been talking about Red State for three years and now we’re finally going to go and shoot it.  And the extremely limited information about it is people going, ‘It’s going to be like Fred Phelps and stuff like that.’ And it is and it isn’t.  I don’t think the Phelps are ever going to see the movie and say, ‘Yeah, that is us.’  The characters aren’t anything you’d want to take credit for.  For years people have been saying it’s the Fred Phelps movie and it’s really not.  In terms of it being political, it’s very political, but I don’t think the movie is…  It doesn’t bash Democrats or Republicans, it’s an equal opportunity basher.  It doesn’t single out one over the other.  Every once in a while someone in the hardcore right-wing, fucking websites will write something about it and you’ll think, ‘Is this fiction? This can’t be real.’ but somebody really thinks and talks about me going against conservatives and this film has nothing to do with it.  They’ll see and just go, ‘Oh.  Nevermind.’ It doesn’t take conservatives to task, it takes everybody to task and it’s a whole movie filled with deplorable characters.”

We also talked about his work in comics, “The last couple of years have been really fertile for me in comics.”  We talked about his reception in the Batman universe and what might be coming ahead from him.  If you haven’t read his Green Arrow or Daredevil, you’re missing out and need to click those links and buy them immediately.

This was perhaps one of my favorite interviews that I’ve ever done and I hope you enjoyed it.

Star Wars had much less of a presence at Comic-Con this year, owing to the fact that Star Wars Celebration V is just two weeks away.

I covered as much of it as I could (most of what there was to cover was on the exhibit hall floor.)  I also have an upcoming story about Star Wars Mimo-Bot’s and Bonnie Burton’s Star Wars can draw panel.  But now that I’m back in town, I wanted to offer a slideshow of some of the coolest Star Wars stuff I took pictures of at Comic-Con.

Enjoy the slideshow!

I didn’t get to attend anywhere near as many panels as I wanted to, but one I was able to catch was the Dark Horse horror panel.

In attendance on the panel were Scott Allie (Editor), Mike Mignola (Hellboy, BPRD), Eric Powell (Goon, Buzzard), Shawna Gore (Editor), Steve Niles (Criminal Macabre), and Marc Andreyko (the forthcoming Let Me In tie-in).

Future plans for Dark Horse and their horror line were discussed, including the future of the Hellboy franchise.  It was noted that 2011 was the 25th anniversary of Dark Horse and with that milestone, a concerted effort to reinvigorate the horror line would be made.

There were no incredibly major announcements made, though we’ll start with Mike Mignola.  As far as Hellboy is concerned, he’ll be continuing the line with Duncan Fergredo, (whom he said in my interview with him at Dragon*Con is better at drawing Hellboy than his creator).  He’ll also be collaborating on a future Hellboy project with Richard Corbin and all of the BPRD stories will culminate in a story arc he dubbed “Hell on Earth”.  He also said that he’ll be working less and less on other projects and whittle down the amount of Hellboy slightly because he wants to draw his own comics again.  There were also no plans for another Hellboy short story anthology at the time, since he’s focusing on comics.

His big non-Hellboy news concerned his 5 issue mini-series “Baltimore”, which is based on his book with co-writer Christopher Golden and his collaboration with John Arcudi on another “Witchfinder” miniseries, which will be his last for him to focus on the Hellboy universe and drawing comics.

Steve Niles, who looks vaguely like a full-sized Kenny Baker, talked briefly about his Criminal Macabre ongoing, as well as a team-up involving the Goon.

Eric Powell talked vaguely about his upcoming projects.  There is more new Goon coming, Buzzard is going to continue with Billy the Kid backups.  Billy the Kid will be taking on Jack the Ripper.  He offered no hints about the Goon movie other than it’s moving forward.  There was a panel for that movie later the next day, but I was unable to attend since I was interviewing Kevin Smith at that time.

Marc Andreyko then stepped in to talk about “Let Me In” and his comics prequel for the movie.  He was incredibly enthused about the movie, though the audience seemed skeptical.  He assured us that it was better than anyone could expect it to be.  It was very different from the original “Let the Right One In” and is just as haunting.  He also disclaimed the fact that he’s not just saying that because he wants to feel good about doing the book, “It really is that good.”

They also talked about the Dark Horse adaptation and licensed comics from Joss Whedon’s film “Cabin in the Woods”.  It keeps getting delayed because the film has been delayed and it needs to come out with the film.  The reason it has been delayed is because of a post-production conversion to 3D which none of the panel seemed enthused about.

(photos by Patricia Bailey for Big Shiny Robot!)

Here is the 5 minutes of  Thor footage they showed this past week in San Diego. So, for those of you that weren’t able to attend Comic-Con last week, or for those that did and weren’t able to get into the insanely packed Hall H you get to see it here in all its glory! I don’t know about you but I was a little bit wet in the pants after seeing this!

UPDATED: Here’s a new link. and an embed:

Warner Bros. has released four character teaser posters for the 2011 film, Green Lantern! You can check them all out below! (Click the images for higher res)

This con so far has been run sooooo much better than in recent years (though I will be submitting a list of 10 things to make the con better in a future article), but then, as I waited in line for hours and hours for the Marvel Panel in Hall H (and Paul and Cowboys and Aliens before that) but couldn’t get in because there was an altercation in Hall H and someone got stabbed in the eye with a pen, Joe Pesci style.

I was 100 people from gaining entrance to Hall H, but they closed entrance and exits, not that I think anyone would leave if they had the chance.

I got a series of live tweets about the altercation and first-hand information from security guards.  And the ambulances came by, etc.  It was during the Resident Evil panel, and I guess that’s just the sort of crowd that would stab a guy in the face over a chair in Hall H.

The big news out of the Marvel Panel, though, is that they assembled the Avengers for the first time with their official director.

Our friend Jimmy Martin was in Hall H all day, so we’ll try to get a first hand report from him.  But we would like to present to you the Avengers:

The Avengers, from left: Robert Downey Jr., Clark Gregg, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, director Joss Whedon and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige.

This confirms our report from Thursday about Mark Ruffalo, and all of the rumours about Jeremy Renner.

I’m incredibly happy with this cast.  I wanted to see Edward Norton as an Avenger, but Mark Ruffalo is perfect, too.  Jeremy Renner is a great choice for Hawkeye.  And I’m very happy with Wheedon directing as well.

There is a whole slew of photos and coverage I have that I’ll be posting over the next week, including photos of Chris Hemsworth, interviews and pictures of the cast of Scott Pilgrim and Paul, and my interview with Kevin Smith, among a ton of other coverage, so be sure to check in throughout the week.