Here’s a poster that Norman Reedus and the Official Walking Dead facebook page posted, teasing Season 3.

I’m sure we’ll find out more about the upcoming season during Comic-Con.

And I know a lot of people were bummed about the look of The Governor, but I think it’ll work great. He’ll be Belloq to Rick’s Indiana Jones; a shadowy reflection of him.

I will be representing Big Shiny Robot! on our very first panel appearance at San Diego Comic-Con.

Here are the details and we hope to see you there!

If you’ve wondered what it takes to get your project covered by Scoop or any of the other industry news sites, and you’re going to be attending Comic-Con International: San Diego, give some thought to stopping by the “How to Get News Coverage” onThursday, July 12, 2012 from 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM in Room 8 at the San Diego Convention Center. What makes the difference between an item that will get news coverage, previews, interviews and one that doesn’t?

A lot of publishers have no idea what to submit to the press, how to submit it and why they are being overlooked for coverage. Comic Journalist Rik Offenberger (First Comics News, Archie Comics) moderates this panel on just what it takes to get coverage with the Comic Journalists themselves telling you what they are looking for in your submission. Panelists include Alan Kistler (Comic Mix, Newsarama), Chris Thompson (First Comics News). Bryan Young, (Huffington Post, Big Shiny Robot), Dan Manser (Diamond), Heidi McDonald (The Beat), Holly Golightly (BroadSword Studios), Rich Johnston (Bleeding Cool), Kiel Phegley(Comic Book Resources), J.C. Vaughn (Scoop), Josh Waldrop (M1W Entertainment), and Matt Moore (Associated Press). Find out what it takes to self-promote and make a significant impact on your ability to sell your comic project.

Androidika and I will be there, covering as much of the convention as the two of us can. He’ll be staying primarily in Hall H, giving up to the minute updates. I’ll be covering as much of the rest as I can. GONK will also be there, but what he’s covering remains a mystery to me.

If there’s anything specific you’d like us to cover, or if you’ll be there and would like to be a deputized Robot, feel free to drop me a line. (Editor at Bigshinyrobot.com)

Random House Audio is taking submissions for the best fan-fic to be recorded and read at San Diego Comic-Con in about 10 days.

There are a number of fandoms eligible, including Star Wars, Artemis Fowl, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

At this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, CA, Random House Audio will be recreating an audiobook studio right on the convention floor–inviting authors of fan fiction to record a sample of their work for a chance to have their story recorded and released as a digital audiobook.

Stories from the following fandoms are eligible for the contest:

Star Wars®

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini

Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Aspiring authors (who must be legal residents of the U.S. and 18 years or older) can sign up for a time slot to record their five-minute sample during the convention, July 12-15 at the San Diego Convention Center. Random House Audio producers will listen to the entries (no mashups, please) and select one to be professionally recorded and mixed by Random House Audio for streaming at www.randomhouseaudio.com. The grand prize winner and five runner-ups will have clips from their stories featured on the Random House Audio weekly podcast.

Sessions will be available Thursday through Saturday, July 12-14, from 10am-12pm and 1pm to 4pm at the Random House Audio booth #1515. Registration for morning slots is open now through July 10 at www.randomhouseaudio.com, and afternoon slots will be available for same-day sign ups beginning at 9am the first day of the con on a first-come, first-served basis.

Don’t see your fandom included on the list above? Sunday, July 15 is Open Mic Day! Fans of other series will get their chance to record their stories as well from 11am to 3pm and enter to win a collection of audiobooks.

Even if you’re not a writer, be sure to stop by the Random House Audio booth (#1515) for exclusive Comic-Con giveaways, including buttons, posters, headphones and mini microphone recorders.

For complete contest rules, click here.

This seems puzzling and surprising to me, but stranger things have happened.

Since I’ll be there, I’ll try to stop by and get a quote or two about what their long term plans for incorporating fan fiction into their sales strategy are.

UPDATE: I’ll be meeting up with Random House Audio at SDCC, but I talked briefly by email to their point person on this project. The fan fic element of this is not the primary goal of this. Random House Audio is interested in providing a perspective for readers and writers about the audiobook format. They want to provide an experience that will illustrate the work that goes into creating an audiobook and hope that those participating will have a new appreciation for the medium.

It’s also important to note that this is Random House Audio, not Del Rey. They are entirely separate departments. The function of Random House Audio is to promote audiobooks and this isn’t the first time they’ve set up a booth at a con setting.

Here’s a video they made at the annual American Library Association conference where they more than 300 readers each read a half a page of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I think by opening this to fanfic, they’ve opened a door here that Del Rey may or may not have wanted open, but it’s going to be, at the very least, ajar after this.

When it comes to Batman the stakes are never higher than when the Joker is involved. He is the ultimate bad guy! And It’s been a while since the Joker has been around, but that will soon change. The last time we saw him was in the first issue of Detective Comics almost one year ago in which he cut his face off and disappeared. We were left wondering where and when the Joker will pop up again. Will he have a new face? We have seen the cut off face once since Detective Comics #1 and that was in Suicide Squad in which Harley Quinn breaks into the Gotham police department and steals it because she thinks he’s dead. She then goes on to tie up Deadshot, put the face on him, and pour her feelings out as if she were talking to the Joker to get closure. It was a moment in comics that made me feel icky!  I also wonder if Harley will show up in this story and what her reaction will be when she finds out her “Puddin” isn’t dead.

Now that the Joker is returning I’m sure he has some sort of master plan in the works and we’ll find out what that is in “Death of a Family” this October from Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo.   DC’s blog gives us a couple of hints of where the story will be going:

“The Joker will come out of the dark in a horrifying, unnerving, and huge way. And the grave consequences of his reemergence will be felt by not only the Bat-family, but by all of Gotham City. He crippled Batgirl. He killed Robin. What will The Joker do next? And what must Batman do to protect his secret identity and that of those who fight alongside him?”

Both creators seem to be pumped to be working on this story, here are their thoughts that they shared with DC’s blog about the upcoming story.

Scott Snyder:

“Joker is my favorite villain of all time,” Snyder told THE SOURCE. “Not just in comics. In everything – film, books, TV. He’s the greatest, hands down. So this story is something extremely important and personal to me – something I’ve been building in my head ever since I started working in Gotham. Basically, this is my big exploration of the Joker, my ARKHAM ASYLUM or THE KILLING JOKE, only bigger in scope. Bottom line: it’s the biggest, baddest, most shocking Joker story I could tell. This is Joker completely unleashed. He has been away for a full year planning this revenge, watching, plotting, setting things up. And now he’s back. He has his traps set, his knives sharpened… And wait ’til you see him. Greg’s sketches literally gave me chills. Point blank: This is Joker like you’ve never seen him before. He has a mission. He has a secret. And he has a serious axe to grind with Batman. It isn’t going to be pretty, but it’s going to be a wild ride. Thanks for taking it with us.”

Greg Capullo:

“When Scott told me that he’d written a Joker story for our next arc, I couldn’t contain my excitement,” added Capullo. “Talk about a dream come true! For me, the Joker is the ultimate rogue and the villain I most wanted to draw. I gotta tell you, after hearing what the story is about, this isn’t a dream come true. It’s a nightmare! A macabre and bloody, flesh crawling nightmare. We hope you’ll have the nerve to face what’s coming. Warning: It ain’t for the faint of heart!”

This news has me really excited. Batman from Snyder and Capullo has undeniably been the best book of the DC relaunch. If you haven’t been reading this I highly suggest picking up the first collection, which just came out. Batman Vol 1: The Court of Owls collects the first 7 issues of Snyder and Capullo’s run and is some of the best story telling I’ve ever seen in comics. And with that I’ll leave you with a teaser for the story, drawn by Greg Capullo.

It is my pleasure to report that The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t a bad movie.

It’s fun, it’s true to the characters, it works generally well. Some parts work better than others and what it gets right, it gets very right. What it misses on, it misses widely.

The story is exactly the same one we got in the trailers. It’s the origin story of Peter Parker and how he got his powers, only this time his parents are vaguely kind of involved. He’s abandoned with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May and his selfishness costs him everything and his drive for vengeance turns him into a hero.

The broad strokes are the same as you’ve seen a hundred times. The details are different. Some of them work remarkably well. I think Martin Sheen did as well as anybody could following up Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben and sold the part with a heart and resonance that you need out of the character. Andrew Garfield, for his part, worked very well both as Peter and as Spider-Man. I really liked Tobey Maguire’s dopey Peter act, Garfield is much more wry, witty, and slightly more self-assure.

I’m not trying to compare the Raimi and Webb Spider-Man movies. I’m really not. I did everything I could to banish them from my head before I went into the theatre, but they’re just too fresh in the lexicon of superhero films. It was hard to divorce myself completely from making comparisons.

As for the villain, The Lizard works well enough. His best moments were the most comic-booky, from his sewer lair.

Emma Stone and Dennis Leary as Gwen Stacy and her father Captain Stacy are probably the aspect of this film I like the most. She works better as a love interest for Spider-Man than anyone has and Captain Stacy is so perfect to his comic iterations and his place in the story that it’s impossible to dislike him. And it’s the story of the Stacy family I want to see continued into the sequel. I will instantly forgive all the complaints about this film I’ve had if it is, indeed, setting the stage for a dramatic film version of The Death of Gwen Stacy.

For me, this movie easily surpassed Raimi’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 3, but it just didn’t have the runway space to fly above Spider-Man 2, which is hailed in most competent circles as a masterpiece of superhero cinema. There is no single moment in The Amazing Spider-Man that is better than the fight on the subway or Peter inadvertently revealing his identity to Mary Jane in the boat house. But I think moments that powerful take time. And if Marc Webb and the cast stays on, and there’s minimal interference from Sony, and the writers do their job well, we’ll have a sequel full of those moments to look forward to.

More than anything, that’s what I’m excited to see. Past the origin, I want the sequel. I suppose that’s as high of praise as you can give a movie.

ALSO: Do NOT see this movie in 3D. I don’t easily get headaches, but this film in 3D gave me one. And the colors were so much more rich and vivid when I took the glasses off. And since so much of the film was set at night, it was impossible to see what was happening with the 3D glasses. Even when it was bright it was hard to make out finer details. At one point, Flash Thompson arrives in a Spider-Man shirt and I couldn’t even tell with the glasses on.

The Amazing Spider-Man
7/10 on the Big Shiny Superhero Scale

Bryan Young is the author of Operation: Montauk.

This weekend is going to be huge for anime fans. Every year, Anime Expo in Los Angeles, California, brings us some of the biggest announcements in Japanese animation coming to North America. Why? Because with a partnership with the non-profit Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA) and big names like Danny Choo (www.dannychoo.com) in attendance, this is a convention that attracts a ton of attention and preparation from all the big companies. I’ll be here all weekend bringing you news and updates from the convention, so stay tuned fellow Anime and Manga fans!

First up: (and probably the biggest news so far) – Viz Media has announced a new 24-hour anime channel called “Neon Alley” that will premier this fall.

VIZ Media is excited to unveil the plans for Neon Alley, a new 24-hour programmed channel featuring the world’s best anime, debuting on a major game console this fall for the U.S. and Canada! Neon Alley will be studio agnostic, featuring not only VIZ Media titles, but ones from other producers and distributors!

Neon Alley will feature dubbed & uncut content, with exclusive debuts each week! Programming will include blockbusters like NARUTO SHIPPUDEN, INUYASHA: THE FINAL ACT, and DEATH NOTE. Fans will also be able to discover new titles like TIGER & BUNNY, BERSERK: THE GOLDEN AGE ARC, ZETMAN, and more!

San Francisco, CA, June 27, 2012 – VIZ Media, the largest publisher, distributor and licensor of manga, graphic novels and anime in North America, unveiled plans for Neon Alley, a 24-hour anime channel featuring the world’s best titles set to debut on game consoles this fall. The service will be available in the United States and Canada.

Neon Alley’s schedule will include a mix of action, adventure, science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, and horror anime, all uncut and dubbed in English, and presented in HD (when available). Programming will include blockbuster anime titles like NARUTO SHIPPUDEN, INUYASHA: THE FINAL ACT, and DEATH NOTE, and will allow fans to discover new titles such as TIGER & BUNNY, BERSERK: THE GOLDEN AGE ARC, ZETMAN, and NURA: RISE OF THE YOKAI CLAN, along with original content that provides news and behind-the-scenes access for fans of anime and manga.

“We created Neon Alley for fans to watch the best anime titles in the world right on their TV,” said Ken Sasaki, President and Chief Executive Officer for VIZ Media. “Neon Alley will have weekly exclusive premieres of the hit titles they love, along with a mix of new, cutting-edge titles they didn’t know they were missing.”

Neon Alley will be a subscription-based service, subsidized with limited commercial advertising, to keep the launch price to consumers at a low $6.99 per month. Anime fans can register online at NeonAlley.com for news, updates on the service’s launch, and to find out how to get a sneak preview of the series debuting during the first season. Neon Alley is the first platform designed to be studio agnostic, featuring titles from other anime producers and distributors, and will unveil its programming lineup, special introductory offers, new acquisitions and other partnerships throughout the next several months.

For more information on Neon Alley, please visit www.NeonAlley.com.

For more information on VIZ Media, please visit www.VIZ.com.

Second: eigoMANGA Heads To Anime Expo 2012

(San Francisco, Los Angeles) – June 26, 2012: San Francisco based comic book publisher, eigoMANGA announces its participation at Anime Expo 2012 which is held on June 29 to July 2, 2012 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. eigoMANGA will be exhibiting at Booth #1149.

Special Guest:

eigoMANGA Welcomes MinoMiyabi

We are proud to invite acclaimed animator, MinoMiyabi as our special guest. At Anime Expo, he will kick off the launching of his new cartoon studio in Los Angeles, California!

MinoMiyabi is conducting eigoMANGA’s annual How To Draw Manga & Portfolio Review workshop as well exhibiting his work at eigoMANGA’s Booth #1149 on Saturday and Sunday!

Animation Screening – ‘Padak’ is an award-winning full-length animated film directed by Lee Dae Hee. The film is about the lives of fish in captivity in a Korean seafood restaurant. Some fish accept their fate while others fight to change it.

This is the North American advance screening premier of ‘Padak’. The ‘Padak’ screening is scheduled for Monday, 10am – 1:00pm and located at Video 2 (LACC 404).

Panel Schedule –

eigoMANGA In 2012 Panel

Come join us at our panel discussion where we will announce and showcase releases of our mass-market publications, games, and animation. Come For The Free Giveaways!

eigoMANGA In 2012 panel is scheduled for Saturday, 10am – 11am at LP 2 (LACC 502AB).

How To Draw Manga And Portfolio Review Workshop

MinoMiyabi holds a workshop tutorial to teach the fundamentals of manga illustration and storytelling! He will also be on hand to critique portfolios from up-and-coming artists. Don’t Miss It!

The How To Draw Manga And Portfolio Review workshop is scheduled for Sunday, 11am – 12pm at WS2 (LACC 501).

Exhibition Booth:

Check Out Our Latest Work At eigoMANGA’s Booth

Come check out our latest releases in comic books, animations, and games. And celebrate with us the inaugural release of Vanguard Princess which is set to hit the gaming market in the late summer!

eigoMANGA’s Exhibition Booth is located at Booth #1149.

Advance Screening:

North American Advance Screening of ‘Padak’

You’re invited to view the North American advance screening of ‘Padak’ at Anime Expo!

The award-winning film directed by Lee Dae Hee is about about the lives of fish in captivity in a Korean seafood restaurant. Some fish accept their fate while others fight to change it.

The‘Padak’ advance screening is scheduled for Monday, 10am – 1:00pm and located at Video 2 (LACC 404).

Media Appearance:

eigoMANGA Appearing On Crunchyroll’s AX stage

eigoMANGA’s team is set to make a live interview appearance on Crunchyroll’s Live Stage for their live-streaming show. We would love our fans to join us in-person or watch the live web-stream on Crunchyroll’s website.

Crunchyroll interview appearance is scheduled on Sunday starting at 5:30pm at Crunchyroll’s Live Stage Booth #701.

Paramount got us a couple of HD scenes from the new Jaws Blu-ray.

It hits your Blu-ray player on August 14th. Preorder now.

This first appeared on Huffington Post.

Last year, DC Comics relaunched Superman in an alternate universe they dubbed “Earth One.” It was written by J. Michael Straczynski and drawn by Shane Davis and was one of the single best retakes on one of the most iconic superhero characters of all time. (I wrote a review of it at the time, which you can read here.)

It was fresh and compelling, and enough had changed with the universe that I couldn’t predict what was going to happen next.

To date, Superman Earth One is the only graphic novel in the series to come out. The Superman of Earth One hasn’t had any other adventures and no other characters had gotten the treat… Until now.

Geoff Johns, the Chief Creative Officer at DC Comics, has written us a Batman for Earth One that will knock your socks off. It’s drawn by Gary Frank, and is laid out on gorgeous, glossy paper.

I’m a Batman fan, through and through. I’ve been collecting Batman comics since Jason Todd was still Robin. Messing with his back story is something I’m always wary of, but because of Superman Earth One, I came into the book with high hopes and it’s my pleasure to tell you that Johns and Frank delivered.

There is a contemporary layer of honesty to the character and the world that makes it all so much more believable. It will easily draw comparisons to Frank Miller’s Year One, but I think, in many ways, the storytelling here is much more mature. The book has many twists and turns and builds in a way that you can’t see in a regular comic issue. Johns understands the medium and plays to it, making character choices that I would have expected to be mistakes into strengths. In fact, one character, Harvey Bullock, is so different from his standard iterations, I was instantly fearful, but the character ended up as my favorite throughout the book. There’s a moment between him and Jim Gordon that is as good or better than any of Gordon’s moments in Year One.

“It was really freeing for both of us,” Johns told me, “to work on a self contained project. We’ve both been working on monthly books for most of our careers, so to be able to switch to this gave us a lot of freedom for content, character, format, and time. We took the time to do the best thing we felt we could possibly do.”

When asked about the challenges of redoing an origin as iconic as Batman’s, Johns told me, “Gary and I spoke a lot about [changing Batman.] We could have changed everything about his origin if we wanted to. We had complete freedom for that, but we wanted to keep the DNA of the character. Things like Alfred are very different, and we’re revolving around things that are different, Bruce’s parents and what they have connections to are very different, but at the core, we wanted to have the same building blocks and tell a very different emotional story. The emotional story between Alfred and Bruce, I think, is something we haven’t seen before like this. Same with Bruce and his connection with Batman.”

And for readers, this is a very different take on Batman than we’re used to, but it’s a worthy take. “Bruce is just a guy,” Johns said, “He’s a man. He not the myth. He is not the superhero that knows everything and it’s all about his villains. This is about Bruce Wayne. And the journey of this really tragic guy.”

I also wanted to find out if this Batman from Earth One exists in the same world as Superman from Earth One. Johns had this to say, “I don’t know. To be honest, we’re focused so much on our Batman story we don’t have any plans to cross them.”

The book was so thoroughly captivating that my most burning question for Johns was whether or not we’ll see more. His response was encouraging: :”Gary and I have a series of Batman stories we want to tell. We have a finite story with these characters in subsequent books. That’s what we’re building towards. Hopefully it won’t be another two years until the next one. We want to do it right, we’ve already started working on Volume 2.”

If you want to pre-order Batman Earth One, you can do so at your local comic book store or on Amazon. It comes out July 10, 2012, and if you’re new to comics or a longtime Batman fan, Batman Earth One hits bookstores on July 10.

In the meantime, here is an exclusive preview of what you’re in for:

Bryan Young is the editor in chief of the geek news site Big Shiny Robot! and his new book is a sci-fi adventure called Operation: Montauk.

Late last night, Variety broke the news that one of Marvel’s secret film projects they’re developing is, indeed, The Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are…well…guardians of the galaxy, dealing with the cosmic and fighting many foes, Thanos in particular. In fact, one character, Drax, was built with the specific purpose of combatting Thanos, who is the bad guy we were all treated to seeing at the end of The Avengers film.

With the cosmic scale of The Avengers film, and its high performance at the box office, this seems like a natural place to go for the studio. I don’t think anyone expects it to make the sort of money The Avengers continues to rake in, but my guess is they’ll show up DC again and show them how cool a balls out cosmic film should be in stark contrast to their Green Lantern film.

Perhaps my favorite member of the team is Rocket Raccoon. If they can pull off a gun-toting, talking raccoon, I’ll die of delight. And if Marvel has proven anything in recent years with their films is that they’re willing to try to make just about anything work.

It’s not known at this point if this film will launch the entire team right out of the bag or if they’ll be introduced slowly in their own smaller films and lead up to a Guardians film. We’ll know more after an expected announcement (or at least whispers) at Comic-Con in a couple of weeks.

Will it tie into Avengers as they work to take down Thanos? Will The Avengers even bother with Thanos and leave it to the Guardians? What is Marvel’s game?

There are still two more mystery movies on their docket as well. The Variety article mentions Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man, which has reportedly just finished with some top secret test shooting. Rumours are abound that we’ll get a Dr. Strange film as well, which I think could turn into something as big as Iron Man. I absolutely love the character and, if done right, he could straddle the universes of The Avengers and The Guardians with ease.

We’ll bring you more as this develops.

As many of our regular readers know, I’m an author in addition to all of my geeky writing. My new book came out at the beginning of this month and the reviews have been pretty incredible. (Huffington Post, The Deseret News, [insertgeekhere], The Galactic Drift, Troll In the Corner, Toschee Station, and more)

It’s called Operation: Montauk and it’s a time-travelling sci-fi adventure that is patterned after the old pulp adventures of the 30s or 40s. It’s got everything you’d want in a book: Nazis, time travel, spaceships, dinosaurs, adventure, suspense, romance, action, thrills… It’s even got a monkey…

Here’s the synopsis:

Lost in time after a failed attempt to kill Hitler before his rise to power, World War II soldier Cpl. Jack Mallory finds himself stranded, his whole team killed, nearly 100 Million years off course.

Together with a group of other wayward time travelers, Mallory has to fight to survive in a hostile environment swarming with dinosaurs.

Desperate to find a way home, the community of lost travelers searches for any solution that might send them all home and unlock the secret that shipwrecked them on the shores of time…

But the jungle holds a secret from Mallory’s future-past…

…and it’s out to kill them all!

It’s fun, it’s fast, and you’ll all love it.

I am going to be giving away two signed copies of the book through Big Shiny Robot! and entering the contest couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is got on your preferred social media platform (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and tell people, “I’m excited to check out Operation: Montauk by Bryan Young!” and include a link to this contest.

Then send me an email (editor (at) bigshinyrobot (dot) com) and let me know you’ve done it. Bonus entries if you tag me on Facebook or Twitter.

If you’re interested in supporting creatives in general, you can bypass the contest and just buy a copy. It’s available digitally and in print on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or you can buy signed copies off my writing website.

The contest will close on Friday, July 6, 2012.