The 49th San Diego Comic Con was held this weekend and, as with every year, all the biggest sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, and nerd-adjacent news dropped at the same time. It’s like Geek Christmas and I look forward to it every year. In honour of Comic Con, this week we’re doing a Monday Link Roundup to collect all the best news that came out of San Diego.
- A new trailer for The Lego Batman movie was released this weekend. This version of Batman continues to be my favourite (sorry Ben Affleck) and I love all the Michael-Cera-as-Robin bits.
- Warner Bros. Animation just released an adaptation of Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke. The book became one of the most divisive Batman stories in history, after it portrayed both Barbara and James Gordon being heavily sexually and violently assaulted. At a panel this weekend, when Jeremy Konrad from BleedingCool made a negative comment from the audience about the film’s portrayal of Barbara, writer Brian Azzarello yelled back from the stage “Wanna say that again? Pussy?” Here’s a protip: if you’re being criticized on how you write female characters, maybe don’t react by calling someone a vagina in front of almost 5000 people.
- The Warner Bros. panel brought out the cast of the upcoming Justice League movie and premiered the first trailer for Wonder Woman along with some new footage from Justice League. They both include some squeal-worthy moments and even feature some real live jokes. I am feeling better about this series than I have since seeing Batman v. Superman back in February.
- A new trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also premiered at the Warner Bros. panel. This trailer finally features some actual fantastic beasts. Everyone in Hall H that day got a wand, which is mega adorable.
- Warner Bros. also did a Suicide Squad panel, but honestly the movie comes out so soon and so much footage has already been released, so I wasn’t super excited about this one. The panel did give us this amazing image of Viola Davis having none of whatever it is Jared Leto is serving up, though.
- At the Marvel Studios panel, CEO Kevin Feige brought out the cast of the upcoming Black Panther film and officially announced their characters. Michael B. Jordan will be playing the comic-book-ily named Erik Killmonger (I don’t know how you’d possibly know he’s a villain) and Lupita Nyong’o will be playing Nakia, a member of Black Panther’s royal guard.
- Kevin Feige also brought out the sprawling cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe including Chris Pratt, Tilda Swinton, Kurt Russell, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The panel ended with Feige announcing the newest member of the team: Brie Larson as Captain Marvel!
- One final announcement from the Marvel Studios panel that I just love is this first look at the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride that will be replacing the Hollywood Tower of Terror at Disney’s California Adventure. I had to watch this video twice, because I kept staring at this dude’s earring the first time.
- It was announced this weekend that Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay would be writing an upcoming Marvel book called Black Panther: World of Wakanda. The book is going to feature queer African women as its leads and I honestly can’t think of a better person for this. Roxane is going to be the first black woman to write a comic for Marvel and I especially enjoyed this tweet from her about it.
- An ad on the side of a San Diego trolley hinted at Ghost Rider coming to the next season of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and this weekend we got confirmation that not only is the character joining the show, but that it was going to be the newer Latino version of the character Robbie Reyes (so no Nicolas Cage, I suppose).
- Netflix released trailers for their next two Marvel shows, Luke Cage and Iron Fist. The former features an Ol’ Dirty Bastard song and is, generally speaking, perfect.
- Netflix also released the first teaser for The Defenders, an Avengers like team-up series featuring Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. It doesn’t show much (or anything, really) but it sets a pretty great tone for what the series is going to feel like.
- Comic Con isn’t all panels, trailers, and announcements. Some of the best stuff there can be found on the convention floor. This year Fox created an X-Men: Apocalypse-themed escape room.
- The 2016 Eisner Awards were handed out on Friday. The awards celebrate achievements in American comic books but it was the Canadians that cleaned up. Kate Beaton and Jillian Tamaki both won for their newest books Step Aside, Pops and Super Mutant Magic Academy. And Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly won in five categories and got two hall of fame inductions.
- In the Game of Thrones panel, HBO showed a blooper reel for season 6 and a production tease for season 7.
- At the Orphan Black panel, showrunners John Fawcett and Graeme Manson discussed why our favourite show about clones is ending after the next season. I can fully respect this decision while also feeling sad about it, right?
- A new trailer for the upcoming reboot of the 1975 classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show was released this weekend. From the trailer it looks like Laverne Cox is both honouring the original and doing her own thing as Frank-N-Furter. I’m getting major Glee vibes from this trailer but there are worse things they could do.
- Ashley Eckstein is the voice of Star Wars: The Clone Wars character Ahsoka Tano but she’s also the founder of Her Universe, a geeky clothing company for women. Her Universe held a fashion show at the convention this weekend and Eckstein came out wearing a dress made of Lego with Ahsoka’s face. You can see more pictures from the fashion show and Eckstein’s dress here.
1 comment
Super excited for these upcoming netflix shows. I cannot wait.