Remember when I told you Nicolas Cage was a vampire. Would you believe this? John Travolta is a time traveler! This explains so much.

Yup, another Victorian-era individual bears a striking resemblence to a Hollywood star has surfaced and is being sold on Ebay. And according to The Hollywood Reporter, the woman selling this photo and the man who was attempting to sell the one of “Nicolas Cage” are friends. “The woman, who prefers to go only by Fawn, says she and Jack Mord, the man behind the Cage ‘vampire’ photo are both collectors of Victorian era post-mortem photography,” said THR.

The asking price for the Cage/vampire photo was $1 million, Fawn was asking for only $50,000 for the Travolta/time traveler. The Face/Off jokes are too numerous.

“Earlier this summer, Jack was joking about his Nicolas Cage vampire photograph and that he was listing it on eBay and I told him about my John Travolta time traveler ambrotype and he said list it because they were a good match,” she told THR. ”We were just having a good time.”

Fawn told THR the most she was offered for the photo was $35,000 but has not heard from Travolta himself. ”Most people were curious and just thought the photo was fake or that I was weird. It’s a really cool photograph but I never thought it would cause this sort of hoopla… funny.”

We here at Newsarama have found corroborating evidence that Travolta is indeed, a time traveler.

Have a great weekend kids…

Brian Michael Bendis talks about what makes Miles Morales different from Peter Parker:

Miles doesn’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. He doesn’t know what kind of guy he is and than he finds out that his father wasn’t that great a guy even thought he’s trying really hard to be one now. Then it’s his uncle too. So is this in him? Is this who he is? That’s something that Peter never had to struggle with. People who discover that they have alcoholics in their family often wonder, “Am I an alcoholic too? If I drink will I lose it?” So he worries about what kind of person he is. He doesn’t know.

Firstly: I think Miles is a good guy, but I really like the idea that he’ll continue to become a better good guy because he’s never sure whether he’s really a good guy, or just a guy who’s just doing good at that particular moment. There’s something about that particular internal struggle that really works for me, and it does differentiate from Peter Parker’s guilt and need to atone for past inaction, in terms of this new Spider-Man’s motivation.

(I’ve really enjoyed the two issues of Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man so far; I think Bendis’ writing has been charming, and Sara Pichelli’s art has been really nice… Which is why the 20 pages for $3.99 price point kills me. Because this is a good book, but it’s one that I actually feel short-changed by with both issues so far, and all because of that price point. Maybe I should learn to just wait for the collection…)

Today’s SWTOR Friday update is a big one, a whole new feature on the website. Through the new Galaxy Map, fans can tour the Galaxy, checking out the location of many of the planets you’ll be adventuring to within the game, from core worlds to Hutta, from wretched hives of scum and villainy to the ancestral home of the Sith.

The real fun, though, comes in exploring the 3D mode with the help of a very quick install plug-in. Here, you can zoom in on planets, watch videos that give you brief fly-by tours of actual places on the planet you’ll be able to see in-game, read detailed descriptions of the planet, what happens there, their allegiance and other facts, and even see the starships that are found commonly in that system, complete with rotating 3D models and text detail there as well.

As a note, if you have the means to hook a computer up to a big screen television for this experience, do it. With the epic Star Wars music playing in the background, it becomes a different experience at full screen in the living room.

With the game recently announced as coming out December 20th in the US, it’s nice for new features like this to be added into the site so that die-hard fans can explore the worlds of Star Wars: The Old Republic early and prepare for their journey into a long (long, long, long – hey, this takes place 3,000 years before the movies, people) time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Click here to jump directly to the new Galaxy Map!

Here’s some fun with numbers, prompted by yesterday’s post about Marvel’s Ultimate Comics Ultimates and its (unintentional?) sexism. In discussion of the subject, it dawned on me that Marvel only had one ongoing solo book with a female lead, which seemed so unlikely that I had to go check that I wasn’t forgetting something. Turns out, I wasn’t, but I was misremembering the number of ongoing series that Marvel publishes: Only 43 (excluding Icon titles). For some reason, that pushed me towards working out how many of those were solo books, and how many of those solo books had female leads, leads of color, and LGBT leads… and then I did the same thing for DC.

Why? That’s a very good question. (more…)

Get your fatalities ready folks, Mortal Kombat is making it’s way back to theaters.

The Hollywood Reporter says New Line cinema has tapped the creators of the Mortal Kombat digital series, made earlier this year.

“The movie deal marks the end of a journey for Kevin Tancharoen, who will direct the new movie,” says THR, “Tancharoen, a choreographer for Madonna and Britney Spears who directed the 2009 remake of Fame and more recently the Glee concert movie, directed a short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth as a proof of concept for a Kombat movie he tried to pitch.”

Released by Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, Mortal Kombat: Legacy proved very popular in part to stars like Star Trek: Voyager’s Jeri Ryan as Sonya Blade and Spawn star Michael Jai White as Jax.

“The short was viewed more than 10 million times on YouTube, and although no movie deal materialized, he was asked to direct the 10-episode web series, which debuted in April, attracting more than 15 million unique visitors,” writes THR.

The original Mortal Kombat movie, based on the popular video game franchise, was directed in 1995 by the now well-known Paul W.S. Anderson. It did fairly well at the box office but its sequel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, directed by John R. Leonetti 1997, flopped.

THR says writer of the digital series Oren Uziel will write the new movie but that there is no actor attached and the story will not be a continuation of the video game or series.

Colin Smith looks at gender imbalances in Marvel’s Ultimate Comics Ultimates:

On the evidence of Messrs Hickman and Ribic’s The Ultimates # 1, the fundamental concerns of feminism haven’t yet become a matter of public concern and debate on Earth 1610, or, it needs to be said, in the offices of Marvel Comics either. For in the whole of The Republic Is Burning, there’s not even a single minor speaking role given to anyone who’s not evidently a bloke, while the few occasions in which women are discussed find them mentioned solely in a specifically sexual context… It’s just as telling to note who isn’t a woman in The Ultimates # 1. In addition to the active and apparently more important roles in Fury’s entourage being reserved for men, the leaders of this issue’s world-threatening conspiracy are all males too. (There are women in their ranks, mind you, and they appear to be identically blonde and beautiful Nordicesque twins.) Still, both Fury’s base and the gaggle of his primary opponents do have women prettying up their background. Yet not a single one of the European “Excalibur-class super-soldiers” who’re on display are anything other than conspicuously male. It’s something which I doubt real-world sensibilities over here on the other side of Pond would ever accept, but then politics doesn’t really appear to be Mr Hickman’s strong point. Similarly, the massed carousing immortals of Asgard are almost entirely male with the exception of one bikini-clad woman carrying the drinks in the background of a single panel and another largely-naked lass making a sole semi-nude appearance to cheer on the immortal boys when they get down to their manly brawling. It seems that only the youthfully undressed cheesecake gets the privilege of waiting on the boys in this Asgard of the Ultimate Universe.

Interesting to read this on the same day that I read Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #2, in which only one woman gets a line (“How did you — How did you do that?” for those curious). But, I have to ask those who’ve kept up with Ultimates more than I have: Aren’t there female members on the team? Don’t they appear in the first issue at all?

The new Entertainment Weekly is out this Friday, and on the cover is the cast of the Avengers movie (including the film’s Bruce Banner, Mark Ruffalo, who is looking kind of like a Las Vegas mentalist).

The brief write-up about the article on EW’s website plays up the film’s tension between the superhero cast, quoting Jeremy “Hawkeye” Renner as saying, “Just because they’re super heroes doesn’t mean they’re super friends.” (So that “some assembly required” tagline may end up being surprisingly literal.)

The Avengers is scheduled for release on May 4, 2012, and much sooner than that is the Avengers panel at New York Comic Con, to be held 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the IGN Theater on Oct. 15 and featuring as-yet unnamed “special surprise guests.”

Given the outcry surrounding the slimming of Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad #1, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone really comment on the “new” Morgan Edge from this week’s Superman #1. He’s also become younger and sexier, but where’s the upset?

It makes me wonder where the line is for internet condemnation in this kind of thing: Is Morgan Edge too minor a character for people to care that much about? What about Perry White, who’s also slimmed down, to a lesser degree? Is it only problematic when it happens to female characters? Has the internet decided to recharge its outrage batteries in light of last week’s Catwoman and Red Hood?

Aaaaaaaand right on time, here’re the “What’s happening behind the scenes at DC?!” rumors, courtesy of Rich Johnston:

I understand that at least one high profile creator will be making the jump to Marvel. As will quite a few slightly less-high profile creators with an opportunity to play up their new higher profiles in the wake of the relaunch. And that Marvel has also had to turn down a number of enquiries.

Is there anyone that wasn’t expecting a variation on this to appear within the next week or so? It’s not that I doubt that DC editorial has come into all manner of conflict with creators, pissing more than a few off in the process (One of the benefits of having such a long lead-time for the creation of the books, Dan Didio said in some interview pre-release, was the ability to “tweak” the content as much as possible, which was always going to upset creators), but… It can’t just be me who thinks that the above smacks of Marvel sources pushing these stories to undermine DC’s success, right (The giveaway is “Marvel has also had to turn down a number of enquiries,” which feels like a company release instead of an actual rumor, although maybe that’s just in the way that Rich is telling it)?

What’ll be more interesting will be what happens if a lot of creators do jump ship from DC soon. (more…)

You probably have thought that a few times in your life but now it’s literal thanks to British artist Ben Turnbull and his project, “Supermen- An Exhibition of Heroes.”

“Supermen,” now showing through October at Eleven in London, was created by Turnbull for the recent anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. Look closely at the images (click to view a bit larger) and you’ll notice that they are a collage made up of old comics books. Turnbull’s own comic books to be exact.

Comic heroes like Batman, Captain America, the Flash, Spider-Man and yes, tons of thought and speech bubbles were painstakingly placed onto wood to create images of firemen, a few logos and an American flag.

From Eleven’s website, “Turnbull celebrates the real heroic strength which exists outside the pages of comic books and examines who we look to for protection from an early age to adulthood. He comments, ‘the life changing events of 9/11 led us all to believe in the need for real life superheroes. Superman didn’t fly down to save the falling buildings, there was no Caped Crusader ready to do battle with the arch-enemy and Spidey didn’t spin his web. Without the need of a phone-booth or a revolving door these true patriots donned their iconic costumes and sacrificed life and limb for what they believed in. With every cut-comic hero and dialogue I hope to bring out the true merits of the Brave and the Bold in their fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way.’”

Turnbull has been collecting comics since age 11 they said and this series “is made from fragments of over 1000 pre-1990s comics, the ones that Turnbull read as a child, and created by his own heroes including Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema and Steve Ditko.”

The artist spoke with Yatzer about the art. “Inside all the works I do there is an undeniable truth which I feel has to be taught. I would hope that like me, when I was taken to museums/galleries as a kid, today’s generation of children will be able look at works and learn from them,” he said, “The biggest thrill I had recently was when a Brooklyn school came to see one of the Fireman pieces in a show in New York. It was a real buzz getting their reactions, their realization that hard work can produce results. They totally went for it! For me, that’s the reason I get up in the morning.”

In addition to the collages, Turnbull also has a few other superhero/real hero mashups in the exhibition.

I’ll admit, I’m normally not a fan of photo covers to comics. With very few exceptions, the photos are generic PR shots from the movie/TV show that they’re spinning out of, and that’s always seemed both lazy and, in most cases, somewhat ugly to me. It’s more than a little surprising, then, that I’m so onboard with IDW’s “Photo Covers Month” stunt, which will see 10 titles in December have illustrated covers replaced by photographs… but look at the photos for the GI Joe line:

With four of the ten books being GI Joe – and a further two being Transformers titles (The others are Eternal Descent, Doctor Who, True Blood and Star Trek) – I can’t wait to see the old-school toy photos filling the store shelves at the end of the year. It’s too much to hope that the Star Trek covers will be the old Mego figures, isn’t it…?

Heidi MacDonald was the first (I think?) to notice the strange inclusion of a 53rd title on the Neilsen survey of the New 52 books: Nerak (She’s now asking for people to send in their art for the imaginary book). Creators are already picking up on Nerak‘s inclusion, but that doesn’t answer how it ended up on the survey in the first place. Is it some form of control option, put in to disqualify those who claim to have purchased it (I did, and was told that there weren’t any further questions for me at this time)? It it some in-joke by a Nielsen researcher named Karen? Is it an unannounced replacement book for the first of the New 52 to fall?

…It’s probably the first of those, isn’t it?

Last week’s Red Hood and the Outlaws #1, in tandem with Catwoman #1, caused all sorts of controversy across the comic book Internet, from this very blog to ComicsAlliance and beyond. DC Comics has finally acknowledged at least part of the issue — Starfire’s hypersexual portrayal in Red Hood — on their official Twitter account. Here’s what they had to say:

This appears to quite clearly be a direct response to “A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire,” a blog post that appeared yesterday on i09 where author Michele Lee detailed her daughter’s response to Starfire’s portrayal in the comic. Though those tweets don’t address the main complaint raised by readers and critics — the perceived objectification of women — it’s at least a sign that DC’s public relations department isn’t turning a completely blind eye to the issue.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1, by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Kenneth Rocafort, debuted last week as part of DC’s “The New 52″ relaunch. In the comic, Starfire, a mainstay Teen Titan since 1980, was depicted as an amnesiac drawn to emotionless sex.

And then there was that part of Superman #1 where Lois Lane explained to the readers why DC Comics had decided to relaunch the DCU and go day-and-date digital with their entire superhero line…

Come back next month to see Perry White explain why digital comics need to cost the same as print for the first four weeks of release.

A Facebook campaign is seeking recognition for late writer Dwayne McDuffie, specifically in the form of the Animation Writer’s Caucus Lifetime Achievement Award.

According to a message from McDuffie’s wife Charlotte posted on the Facebook group, he can be added to consideration via a “groundswell” of write-in votes from Writers Guild of America Animation Writers Caucus members. If you are a member — or know one — and are interested, more information is here.

McDuffie worked in comics and animation during his noted career, penning Fantastic Four, Justice League of America, Damage Control and more in print, and much of the Justice League and Static Shock animated series on TV. McDuffie also scripted several of the DC Animated direct-to-DVD features, including this year’s All-Star Superman and the upcoming Justice League Doom. He passed away in February of this year.

Who wouldn’t want their portfolio reviewed by the legendary Neal Adams? Well, this year, in order to have more time at the New York Comic Con for signing books or chatting with fans, Adams is hosting a special event just for those wishing to have the artist look at their work.

The Adams’ family sent Newsarama the following press release:

Neal Adams Portfolio Review Comic Con Breakfast

Comics Legend and artist on Batman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Deadman, Dark Horse Presents: Blood, and New Avengers 16.1 is giving a unique opportunity to aspiring comic artists looking for guidance from one of the industry’s greatest. On Saturday, October 15th at 7:00AM, three hours before doors open at the con, Adams is inviting artists to come to the historic Continuity Studios for a pre-convention breakfast and one-on-one professional portfolio review and lecture.

Adams, who won’t be doing portfolio reviews during the New York Comic Con, is offering limited spots for the price $300 per spot in an effort to gather a more focused group of aspiring artists from all levels while also creating a good atmosphere and unique experience in his own famed Continuity Studios.
For years Continuity had been the starting place that many of the comic industry’s most renowned talents. Now hopeful comic creators looking to make their break in the comic industry get to follow the path that many of the greats did before them.

While aspiring artists can get reviews from most any artist at a comic convention, Adams is well known for his portfolio reviews and such reviews have themselves been the launching pad for the careers of many artists and offer insight and techniques that are unparalleled in the comic book industry. Spots for the event are limited but if the demand is high enough a second day will be scheduled for Sunday.

To reserve your spot please contact Erica at Continuity (212) 869-4170 or email Kris at Kris@nealadams.com. Spaces are limited so reserve now.

The new Marvel solicitations are out, offering hints at the post-Fear Itself landscape and making me wonder… How many Hulks are there going to be, by December? We already have the classic Hulk and the red Hulk, but the Defenders solicit – and, in particular, the cover – make me wonder if we’ll have another one before too long. “The final Worthy on a global rampage!” offers the Defenders solicit, and look at the background of the cover… Isn’t that the Worthified Hulk?

(If you’re thinking “Well, he didn’t have teeth like that when we last saw him,” then… yeah. But he still has to get through that Fear Itself: Dracula Vs. Hulk series, so there’s that to bear in mind.)

Quite how a Worthified Hulk can exist outside of the regular Hulk remains to be seen, but judging by the solicits for the new Incredible Hulk series, the Hulk and Banner may have become separated as well, so perhaps something particularly big is awaiting Bruce Banner and his alter egos.

If screenwriter Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn have made it sound in various interviews as if Kick-Ass 2 isn’t going to be happening, then there’s a reason for that, according to creator Mark Millar: It’s because they won’t be the ones making it. Talking to the LA Times, Millar explained that Kick-Ass was a victim of its own success:

The thing about the first movie is that it kind of exploded all our careers. People forget, but this was a $28-million indie movie made in the UK. It grossed $100 million at theaters and made the same again and more on DVD and Blu-ray and got amazing reviews. So everybody involved suddenly got hired for a million different things, and re-forming the band again would be impossible. Hopefully, we can use the same actors if and when we do a sequel, but getting Matthew [Vaughn] to direct or Jane to write a movie at this budget would be very difficult because they’re superstars now and they have projects of their own. I’d imagine, if this happens any time soon, that Matthew will produce and possibly co-write, like George Lucas did with “The Empire Strikes Back,” and hire a new director. But there’s a window because the actors are all supposed to be in high school and if this came out after 2013, for example, that window would have closed. I obviously know more than I can say, but I think people will be pretty happy with the conversations we’ve been having.

Hasn’t Chloe Moritz already grown past the point where she’d play a believable 11 year-old?

Here’s a random question: Now that Justice League #1 is in its fourth printing in the month since its release, how many copies has it actually sold on a distributor level? The first-round US distributor sales seemed to run somewhere in the region of 171, 344 for the regular version alone, according to ICv2, with an additional 14+K copies of the “Combo Pack”, bringing the total somewhere close to 186,000 copies. For the first printing. Since then, it has gone through two other print runs, and is onto its fourth – and, given the way things are going, it’s not impossible that it’ll hit a fifth before the end of the month – which not only has to cement it as the most successful book from a US publisher this year, but also makes me wonder where it’s going to appear on the September sales chart. How big were the secondary print runs? Will Justice League‘s reprints mean that it’ll manage to chart higher than the original orders for some of the other New 52 books for September?

(And if so, is that the cut-off point that DC is going to be looking at for books that need to be performing better?)

It’s been a crazy September for DC. As it draws to a close, I can’t be the only person who’s really, really curious to see what the Diamond chart for the month is going to look like.

Something about the teaser for Point One #1 this afternoon got me thinking: When is it a good idea to tell people about good jumping on points? Because there’s something about saying, like the Tom Brevoort quote being used, “It is the starting point to what’s in store for the world’s most iconic characters and startling events” that reminds me of a lot of the reaction to DC’s announcing the September relaunch… the idea that the books between now and then will, somehow, “not count.”

It’s a ridiculous idea, in many ways – The stories count as long as you enjoy them, surely? – but one that Brevoort himself raised following the DC relaunch announcement, leading me to wonder (a) whether this is significantly different a tactic, because there’s no continuity reboot involved, (b) whether suggesting that this book in November is “the starting point to what’s in store” underplays the importance of October’s Fear Itself #7 to the greater Marvel Universe continuity, and (c) whether the success of the DC New 52 has underscored the importance of a new jumping on point for people terrified of having to catch up on mammoth continuity to the point where it’s more important to seem approachable than step on the toes of your current big event book.

I wonder to what extent the New 52 will end up genuinely being a game changer  – Whether it will push Marvel to de-emphasize the importance of backlist books in their big events, and instead play up new starting points to try and catch the same heat that DC currently have, or whether the dominant Marvel ploy of “Everything is related to everything else” for the last few years will ultimately win out in sales. A full-out Marvel reboot is extremely unlikely, but that doesn’t mean continuity couldn’t be downplayed if it’d convince more people to try out the books, after all…