Too small!: Entertainment Weekly has an image of Peter Sarsgaard in make-up as Hector Hammond, from the set of the upcoming Green Lantern movie. I suppose they may be doing some green screen stuff to make him look more Hector Hammond-y, but the melon size in the leaked image makes his head simply look grotesquely huge, rather than ludicrously gigantic.

Speaking of superhero films that aren’t out yet…: MTV’s Splash Page spoke with Iron Man director Jon Favreau about a possible third Iron Man movie, and the director explained one of the reasons he hasn’t been able to use The Mandarin yet (and might not be able to, depending on what happens in The Avengers movie). Because the Mandarin’s got magic rings, Favreau said he didn’t think he quite worked with the technology-based fantasy setting of the Iron Man movies. That’s a pretty interesting thought, actually, as it applies to the differences between Marvel superhero movies (where, so far, each character is cordoned off from the others and operate on their own set of rules) and Marvel superhero comics, where they all share a setting and everything goes. Linking to the Splash Page interview, Empire notes an even more obvious reason why The Mandarin hasn’t made it to the films yet, what with him being a stereotypical yellow peril, Fu Manchu type. Me, I’m hoping for industrial spy Red Ghost and his Super-Apes infiltrating Stark Industries and stealing the plans for the Iron Man suits to build Iron Ape suits in Iron Man 3. But then, I’m a comics blogger, not a screenwriter.

Wait, Incredible Hulk porn?: The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Vivid Entertainment, makers of the not terribly  imaginatively titled pornographic parody Batman XXX, are planning on tackling other superheroe  properties, like Superman, The Green Hornet, Wonder Woman and The Incredible Hulk. Here’s the official press release. I suppose I should also not that the Hollywood Reporter article links back to Rich Johnston’s Bleeding Cool coverage of Batman XXX, noting that Johnston’s been “all over this like vanilla scent on a stripper,” if only because if I don’t, Johnston will show up in the comments to do so himself and link back to himself.

“Sometimes I try to imagine what the 1970s would have been like if comic-book movies had dominated the cinematic landscape the way they do today”: Ross Douthat writes another dumb column for the New York Times, this one about how unfortunate it is that so many talented directors and actors are forced to make superhero movies and that there’s just way too much Iron Man in the Iron Man movie (The opinion piece was apparently prompted by the fact that Iron Man just opened. Or Matt Zoller Seitz’s piece about superhero movies sucking on Salon. Or perhaps that Douthat had a looming deadline and nothing much to write about). New York Times columnist Ross Douthat also misspells “Spider-Man” as “Spiderman.” In the New York Times!  Meanwhile, at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum notes that Douthat has kinda sorta asked a dumb-ass question (I’m paraphrasing), noting that The Godfather’s source material wasn’t exactly high art: “In the same way that Coppola transcended the usual boundaries of mob flicks and John Ford did the same for westerns, maybe they would have made great comic book adaptations too if they’d given it a whirl.”

Nothing…?: “What Batman Can Teach Conservatives on Immigration and Other Issues”

“Blame the people who thought the best way to diversify the DCU was to stick new guys in the old guys’ laundry”: In Monday’s installment, I linked to Chris Sims’ Comics Alliance column about how DC’s reverting from  some legacy characters back to their Silver Age progenitors has inadvertently lead to a whitening of the DCU. Sean T. Collins has a well-written, well thought-out response to Sims’ post and some of the issues he raised. The quote above is from Collins’ post, which brings up some excellent posts about what seperates some of the most successful non-white super-characters from the ones who are currently handing their IP’s back to old white dudes form the sixties.

This is another one of those instances where I wish DC’s Bizarro Comics anthology was an ongoing monthly: I’ve linked to most of these pieces individually before, but they’re awesome enough that they’re well worth relinking to, especially as a whole set. Here’s a flickr (did I spell that right?) set of images for a Doug Wright Awards auction, mostly featuring superheroes by unlikely artists. For example,  here’s a detail from Matt Forsythe’s Hawkman piece:

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