The cast members announced for New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, pack a lot of geek cred – especially for a franchise whose fans are mostly female.

Announced this week by Summit Entertainment, the list of actors playing the vicious Volturi vampires introduced in New Moon includes some actors with surprising geek-media credentials. On the cast list are two actors who played X-Men mutants, one who portrayed Superman’s uncle Zor-El and another who played the werewolf leader in the Underworld films.

That’s one geek-packing posse of vampires.

Actor Michael Sheen may have won recent accolades for his role as David Frost in the Oscar-nominated Frost/Nixon film, but genre movie fans know him best for playing Lucian, the werewolf leader in the Underworld movie series. Now Sheen has been cast in New Moon as Aro, the charming yet creepy leader of the Volturi.

Other Volturi cast members announced this week include X-Men film alumni Daniel Cudmore (as the violent Volturi guard Felix) and Cameron Bright (as Alec, the vampire who has the power to cut off his enemy’s senses). Cudmore appeared as Colossus in X-Men: The Last Stand, and Bright played the young, bald mutant Leech in the same film.

Also cast as part of the Volturi is Christopher Heyerdahl, the actor who played Zor-El, Superman’s Kryptonian uncle, on TV’s Smallville. In New Moon, Heyerdahl will play the apathetic Volturi leader Marcus.

Rounding out the list of Volturi are the previously announced Dakota Fanning as the petite mental torturer Jane; fashion model Noot Seear as the human-baiting Heidi; Sweeney Todd actor Jamie Campbell Bower as the brutal Volturi leader Caius; and Charlie Bewley, a newcomer actor who will play super-tracker Demetri.

And Bower may have some upcoming geek cred of his own, as the actor is reported to be in final negotiations to appear in the two Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films as dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, whose battle with Albus Dumbledore is legendary in the Harry Potter universe.

(Since Robert Pattinson is also a Potter movie alum, perhaps his confrontations in New Moon with Bower will involve magic wands?)

Another addition to the New Moon cast announced this week was Native American actor Graham Greene in the role of Harry Clearwater, a leader of the Quileute tribe of shape-shifting werewolves. (Greene’s probably best known for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal as Kicking Bird in Dances With Wolves.)

All of the actors from the original Twilight film, based on the Twilight Saga books by Stephenie Meyer, are returning for the sequel and the third film, Eclipse, which is scheduled to film soon after New Moon wraps up.

Directed by Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass), New Moon is said to have a larger budget than the first Twilight movie. Twilight had a budget of only $37 million, putting it close to the category of an indy film, yet it ended up with a worldwide box office gross of over $379 million, and is among the top-selling DVDs of the year so far. Fans are hoping Summit puts money behind this one, because with shapeshifting werewolves and superpowered vampires, they’ll need extra cash behind this movie for all the special effects – otherwise New Moon will squander away what geek cred it’s earned with this cast.

Get ready for the best toy news of the year!  In celebration of Marvel Comics’ 70th Anniversary, Toys R Us and Diamond Select Toys are teaming up to conduct a poll where, for the first time ever, YOU the fans will decide which new Marvel Minimates will be featured in an exclusive box set!  And because this first-ever Minimates Poll needed that little something extra, all ten potential Minimates have been taken from one of the most popular Marvel events of all time – Secret Wars!

That’s right True Believers!  Beginning today and continuing until May 31st, fans will be able to visit ArtAsylum.com to cast their ballots in deciding which of their favorite characters will be included in the exclusive Secret Wars Minimates box set.  Spanning the twelve-issue Secret Wars, the characters listed below represent some of the most well-developed, visually-distinct and fan-favorite characters of all time – as well as some of the strangest!

This weekend is the annual Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, an annual convention of mini-comics makers, self-publishers, zinesters, new undergrounders and other not-quite-mainstream comics folks that constitutes one of several of the reasons that Columbus, Ohio is such a great comics town.

If you’re in or around central Ohio this Saturday and/or Sunday, I’d definitely recommend stopping by SPACE (the acronym the event goes by to conserve letters). And if you’re not around central Ohio this Saturday or Sunday, well, feel free to get here. For more info on the event proper, you can check out the home site and a list of what creators will be there here.

Among the many comics that will be premiering at the show will be one by the Columbus-based comics creating collective Sunday Comix, which meets once a month at a local library to talk, draw and jam together.

Their book is called Jamtastic Foray, and if that sounds vaguely familiar, the cover design with the Kirby-esque space god with a halo of Kirby dots hammers home that it probably should.

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As someone who grew up in the country, I grew up drinking milk. Not milk, but MILK, as in, go up the road to the farm, pay the lady whose husband was still out in the fields at 6:00 pm, and get the bottles of milk that were filled about 15 minutes earlier from the big tank, which itself was filled, earlier in the day, from the cows.

When we’d later drink the milk, you always had to shake it, otherwise, you’d only pour the cream off the top. My father had heart bypass surgery when he was 49, but I don’t think that’s connected.

All of that said, I grew up drinking what would now be considered whole milk – something that’s nearly illegal in the supermarkets of today – and I never, ever had a milk mustache that was as thick and clingy as the ones in the “Got Milk?” ads.

Which, by the way, Hugh Jackman has done for Wolverine. (more…)

As reported by Comics Should Be Good, writer/artist David Lapham has announced the impending cancellation of DC/Vertigo’s brilliant Young Liars title with August’s #18. On Jason Aaron’s Standard Attrition message board, Lapham told fans, “Got word yesterday. 18 will be the last. There will be plenty of mind blowing shit in every issue till the last.”

Regular readers know that Blog@ usually carries a Q&A feature with Lapham on the title right after new issues hit monthly; that feature will resume on Monday with a look at last week’s Young Liars #14 and follow through to the end. The delay is unrelated to cancellation. In this week’s podcast, Lapham addressed the notion of cancellation, saying that he had a plan in place so that “if DC came to me and asked, ‘What’s the minimum that you need?’…” he had an ending in mind. On the message board, though, he said, “I’m not going to try and force my ‘ultimate’ ending in there but we will have an end, and as this is a series of endings, I can hold out hope that one day I may see it through to the end I had intended be the end, end.”

Ironically with all the talk of endings, Lapham shares real estate on the Standard Attrition site with Brian Azzarello, of the recently-concluded 100 Bullets fame. With the departure of these titles, I’m no longer reading any Vertigo books on a monthly basis (though I do buy Scalped and Fables in trade).

Not tuckered out from yesterday‘s Wednesday Comics previews? Good!

DC’s blog, the Source, has revealed two more previews for their 12-part upcoming weekly series: this time with Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred’s Metamorpho, and Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook’s Kamandi!

…Now discuss.

MSNBC reports that the upcoming movie Terminator: Salvation will be the first of the Terminator films to have a PG-13 rating rather than R.

This is some interesting news in a lot of ways: director McG had previously said that studio execs had “given their blessing to make the picture…and if it’s a rated R picture, then that’s that.” Also, there’s McG made a big show at Comic Con, asking if people wanted to see star Moon Bloodgood’s breasts.

But MSNBC makes a good point about another R-rated franchise — Die Hard 4 — that made upwards of $400 million with a PG-13 rated showing. There’s also the fact that the ratings system has matured a bit as time has progressed — the same way 1974′s Blazing Saddles is R but 1997′s Austin Powers is PG-13 — and the Terminator franchise is no different.

The reason the first three got R-ratings was due mainly to those shifting rating systems, as well as nudity in the first film, and the use of the F-bomb in the second and third. (Also, the smaller-scale version of the conflict allowed for more close-up gore, which in the third film is pretty much the only thing thing that made it R.) So if the fourth film can steer clear of that… maybe they’ll bring in more dollars with the teenage (and who are we kidding, pre-teen) crowd.

Okay, all — time to start the day with some good news.

Frank Fisna, writer/creator of Life’s a Bluff, has reported that thanks to all the support on Twitter and the blogosphere, his once-missing niece has been found, safe and sound.

A statement from Fisna:

The investigator said in all his years on the force he has never seen or had this kind of help/response from family and friends.   We did more than most people ever think of.   I found that a startling statistic.   There all are all these people who have no idea how to really use the Internet for this kind of thing.    He suggested that when all this blew over that we should think about putting together a quick howto.  That way other parents can reach out like we did.   I think that is a great idea.

On behalf of my family I have to thank each and everyone who helped from the bottom of my heart.   You all had so many different impacts on the situtation but most of all you kept us sane.   I was quickly crackin though and I am not sure how much longer I could have taken it without really losing it.   Those of you who donated reward money… a special thanks.   We raised over 3,000 dollars in less than 24 hours.   It would have been more but I stopped taking donations.    You will all get your money back over the next day.   I want to make sure your paypal fees are recouped.

As far as how Jennifer is or what actually happened, all I can say right now is that she is OK and appears unharmed.   I don’t really want to go into too many details for various reasons but at least know that she is a little shook-up but is not hurt.     It turns out someone she was with saw something on the Internet about her being missing and made sure she got home.   So whether it was Twitter, myspace, whatever…  That is what did it.

A clip from a local news station:

So for all of you who helped and/or were concerned, thank you for your assistance — comic book fans, poker enthusiasts, and Twitterers win yet again!

Okay, I’ve always dug Hugh Jackman’s bemused take on his own celebrity — if you didn’t watch his intro to this year’s Oscars, click here and do so for your own sake — but this bumps him up several notches in my eyes. The titular Wolverine has filmed a PSA with Diamond Distributors for Free Comic Book Day.

He’s the best there is at what he does. And what he does… isn’t very nice. (If you happen to be illiteracy.) The Wolverine film opens in theatres nationwide on May 1, and Free Comic Book Day takes place May 2.

[Via Heidi at the Beat.]

Image’s Comic Book Tattoo, a 500-page beauty of a collection of comics inspired by Tori Amos songs, was nominated for Best Publication Design at this year’s Eisners (as well as Best Anthology), and designer Tom Muller took some time out to explain just how the design for the book took shape, complete with some images from the process.

Click to read on…

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If you read any comics from DC’s superhero line this week, this is what you saw on the last page:

It’s apparently an image from the troubled James Robinson-written Justice League story, that was originally announced as an ongoing, then downgraded to a miniseries, and has had its title jiggered with slightly here and there. According to this, it’s now called JLA: Cry For Justice.

Sometimes DC’s efforts to sell their comics to their fans and readers are so…how to put this?…well, clueless I guess, that it’s almost charming. Like, I feel bad for even making fun of them, you know? Like, Aw, they don’t even realize how crass and creepy they look doing this do they? The little scamps!

So here’s a preview of Cry For Justice, which appears to be a comic book about four random DC supermen teaming up with Supergirl’s breasts. Not Supergirl herself, thanks, just her breasts. I’m sure this isn’t a full image, and was maybe cropped like it is to avoid a spoiler—Supegirl has been exposed to red kryptonite and is now an ant-headed centaur!—but really, that’s the single best image they could choose? One in which the foreground is devoted exclusively to a teenage girl’s breasts?

I like the fact that the text portion of the tease has Ian Sattler speaking of the wealth of great art he had to choose from too, as if this really was the image they thought would best sell the series over all the others.  “I know you wanted to use one with all the crazy gorillas fighting, but there were too many good ones to choose from,” he writes. So he just went with the most inappropriate one.

Also of note is the second-to-last-sentence:

Hmm, what could be redacted? I’ve spent a while—well, five minutes—puzzling over it, and I’m sure it must be a verb followed by a noun and then another noun.

It could be anything, of course: “I  still can’t believe that we’re going to let them consume Pop Rocks and cola,” or “kidnap Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar” or “marry Green Arrow and Hal Jordan.” I have the sneaking suspicion that the first blacked-out word is “kill” or “kill off” and the second two are names though.

The only problem with that theory, of course, is who’s left to kill off that hasn’t either just died or just come back from the dead, particularly with these characters involved. When the series was originally announced, the premise was that Hal Jordan and Green Arrow were forming a more pro-active branch of the League in response to a death in the pages of Final Crisis (presumably J’onn J’onnz, as they talked about this after viewing his body). But this tease teases of more deaths.

Maybe Connor “Green Arrow II” Hawke and Ryan “Atom II” Choi? Neither of them are in any books at the moment, and each would seem to motivate some of these characters to want revenge. I mean, justice. To want justice. And to want it badly enough to cry for it.

Now you can get some Human Torch with your hot sauce! (And you can finally explain the Thing in your gordita.)

C.B. Cebulski (who you may have read a week or so back with his look into how NOT to break into comics, S.A.S.E.) has posted on his blog that starting today, Taco Bell will be giving away one of four original Marvel comics with their Kids Meals!

Cebulski will be teaming up with NYX’s Sara Pichelli on Fantastic Four — there’s currently no word on the books’ length, nor what other creators will be involved.

Based on the look of the screen, while the covers seem to be from previous comics, these comics will be original stories including Captain America, Thor, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. Given that there’s some movies with those characters on the horizon, this sort of mainstream exposure (and really, how much mainstream can you get than fast food?) is actually a pretty smart way of getting the brand out there.

Well, how else are you going to get the gerbil out?

Kevin Smith, Silent Bob’s alter ego as well as the foul-mouthed funnyman behind Clerks, Chasing Amy, and most recently, Batman: Cacophony, will be hitting Carnegie Hall on June 17th.

In a press release, Smith replied, “This country must truly be in a desperate financial crisis. How else to explain Carnegie Hall allowing someone with so little talent onto their hallowed stage.”

Tickets go on sale Monday, April 20th. You can try your hand at buying tickets here.

If you’re lucky enough to score tickets, don’t be an idiot, and make sure you don’t ask him: “What’s a Nubian?” Trouble may ensue.

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

This is for all our Colorado readers, as well as those in nearby surrounding territories:

Frank Fisina, creator/writer of the comic Life’s a Bluff, posted on his blog today that his niece, Jennifer, has been reported missing. She is 14 years old (5/5/94), 5 foot 5, 120/130 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. Here’s the details he has at this time:

My niece Jennifer has been missing since Saturday night. She left here at 3pm to go to a friend’s house and was to be home by 8.  None of her friends have talked to her since 7pm that night and there is no sign that she ran away.   No clothes.. no cell phone charger.. nothing to suggest that she had any intention of being away that long. She has never been more than an hour or so late and this is beyond her character.   There was no trouble here and she was in a good mood when she left.

It took us a few days to get the police to take this seriously since the responding officer on Saturday night had her pigeon holed as a runaway from the start.  Thanks to that moron we have lost precious time.    Now we have the Colorado Bureau of Investigations involved and they are trying to get phone records quicker than I seem to be able to get them.   We would have had them already but CBI needed the Arapahoe County Sheriff to upgrade from runaway to missing.   The next step is to get her picture on the local news stations.

I cannot describe the torment we are all going through.  My worst nightmare has come true….     The idea of seeing her picture on the news is something I don’t think I could ever be prepared for.   I am going to want to include a reward for any information leading to her safe return.   If she is hiding out…  it is going to be hard for some 14-15 yr old friend of hers to keep quiet should there be money involved.    I have $500 that I can start it with…  Thanks to my ongoing medical bills, it is every penny I have to my name right now.     If anyone would like to donate the cause, please send via paypal to frankybones@comcast.net -  (* should no reward be issued…. monies will be returned.)   If I get some of this other cash I waiting on, it will  be added.

Fisina is the legal guardian of his niece and nephew, and can also be followed via twitter at http://twitter.com/frankfrisina. If you have ANY information on this, please help.

Some cool news from over at Image — the comics company announced that Cory Walker, co-creator of Invincible, would be returning to the title to draw a two-issue arc!

Here’s a brief statement from Image’s web site:

“While Cory has been working behind the scenes in the INVINCIBLE crew, it’s great to have him back for these two very special issues,” INVINCIBLE co-creator and writer Robert Kirkman said. “They’re going to be pretty damn momentous in the grand scheme of INVINCIBLE as we place the spotlight on INVINCIBLE’s dad, Nolan, and his new partner, Allen the Alien, while they seek the only weapons capable of taking down the Viltrumite empire. It’s gonna be awesome!”

Walker was the original artist for the series, as well as co-creator for the character. However, he soon stepped aside as Ryan Ottley assumed art duties beginning with issue #8. Walker will be back starting with issue #66, due out in September.

The series chronicles the increasing turmoil in the life of superhuman Mark Grayson — aka Invincible — as he struggles to make the world safe. Yet with his now-estranged father — the former hero Omni-Man — a member of the deadly Viltrumites, it looks as though an invasion may be brewing…

Marvel has announced that they will be releasing a hardcover collection of the artwork of Marko Djurdjevic (Thor, Thunderbolts, Daredevil, Wolverine: Origins)!

Here’s what they have to say, according to a release on their web site:

“A friend of [Marvel Editor-in-Chief] Joe Quesada sent me some of the designs Marko posted online and I was blown away,” said Editorial Talent Coordinator Chris Allo of how Djurdjevic came to Marvel. “He jumped at the opportunity to work in comics and even though his digital painting process was new to many in the industry, he won over anyone on the fence once they saw his X-Men: First Class covers. The rest, as they say, is history!”

I think this is pretty cool — while Djurdjevic may look like an overnight success with his Daredevil, Thor, and Thunderbolts covers (the latter of which inspired the design of Songbird in the upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance: Fusion game), he actually busted onto the comics scene in 2006, working on covers for X-23 and X-Men: First Class, all before getting an exclusive contract within about a year. Whew — talk about speed. I really think Djurdjevic has only improved with his additional exposure, and this hardcover I think will put him at John Cassaday and J.H. Williams III levels of acclaim for lush, “cinematic” high-concept art.

The 200-page collection is due to be released July 1.

The good folks at MTV managed to track down the Fox Movie Channel’s Life After Film School, which talked with X-Men producer Laura Shuler Donner.

She had this to say about the long-in-development adaptation of Jeff Parker’s great series, X-Men: First Class:

“It is the first class of Xavier’s school, way back when, so it’s young Scott, young Jean, young Beast and that’ll be really fun. … I think (the plan) is to follow some of the characters into their own stories, and weave them back into the X-Men world … And hopefully First Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them as they grow up.”

MTV wonders whether or not Angel or Iceman are in the mix — but I really can’t see the continuity of the previous films hitting the movie that hard. In my mind, their personality traits — Angel’s arrogance and insecurities meeting Iceman’s bratitude and innocence — give a wealth of character interactions that Scott, Jean, and Hank alone just can’t cut.

That said, hewing to the original X-films might transplant Bobby and Warren with Ororo and Piotr… curiouser and curiouser…

If you need to plan a story about Mars, you go for the best of the best.

Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer for his comic book history chops on the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (and helped out a bunch on Spider-Man 2), said he will be working on some revisions on Disney’s upcoming film, John Carter of Mars.

The Amazing Website of Kavalier & Clay, a Chabon fansite, got the author to give this confirmation:

“I’ve been hired to do some revisions to an already strong script by Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews. … I wrote my original screenplay The Martian Agent back in 1995 because I wished I could do [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’s Barsoom. So this is pretty much a dream come true for me.”

This sounds like some pretty good news for an awesome author. (Who wrote Wonder Boys, which in its film adaptation somehow managed to get Iron Man and Spider-Man in this compromising position. But now at least we know why Peter was really invited to the New Avengers, right?)

Looking for some more updates on DC’s upcoming Wednesday Comics project?

Their blog, the Source, has unveiled a page of Superman by Lee Bermejo (written by John Arcudi), and the reuniting of 100 Bullets’ Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso on Batman:

…Now discuss.