I don’t know if you’ve seen Cartoon Network’s DC Nation trailer yet, but amongst all of the clips of upcoming shows – including Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series -  it keeps showing sequences from the Blue Beetle live-action test footage released in June 2010.

Unless I’ve missed something, there’s been no announcement of any live-action Beetle series at all, never mind one for next year. Has Warners/DC Entertainment been working on something on the downlow, or is this just a trailer being recut from as much DC footage as possible (Note that the Stephen DeStefano Plastic Man shows up, as well…)?

There’s a line in this report about iVerse raising $4 million in funding that caught my eye:

Among the product offerings iVerse plans to enhance are its PLUS feature, which allows streaming video content for digital comics on iOS.

After getting over my first response of “Streaming video content for digital comics? Oh no, it’s Motion Comics all over again!”, I started wondering what uses streaming video could have for digital comics. Some creators have, in the past, talked about the idea of embedding extra information into digital comics, so that readers could get a more involved reading experience – Could this be a possible use for this kind of thing? Or what about a video (or audio) commentary track, page-by-page?

iVerse has, sadly, somewhat fallen to the wayside as ComiXology and Graphic.ly have become more popular platforms for digital comics, but this kind of innovation could point to a way that they could make a comeback, as well as a way forward for digital comics as a format. It’ll be interesting to see what (if anything) comes of this new round of funding, and experimentation.

Courtesy of Geoff Johns’ Twitter, here’s a NSFW look at next year’s Robot Chicken DC Comics Summer Special:

Remember: Geoff Johns is involved, so this is canon*.

(* – Okay, maybe not.)

Premiered at this weekend’s NYCC, Warner Bros. has made the opening of the upcoming Green Lantern: The Animated Series pilot episode available online for us to watch, enjoy and get surprised by the appearance of another Lantern corps so early in the show… Watch after the break!
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Oh, man. This was even a possibility and it didn’t happen?

A never-aired Plastic Man pilot created for Cartoon Network by Spongebob Squarepants‘ Tom Kenny and Stephen DeStefano, via Viceland, a blog I probably can’t name here but it rhymes with “sit comix”, and Tucker Stone.

The latest entry in DC’s animated feature lineup is Batman: Year One, starring Benjamin McKenzie as Bruce Wayne, Bryan Cranston as Jim Gordon, Eliza Dushku as Catwoman and Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Essen. The first trailer debuted today online, and here it is:

Batman: Year One is out on DVD and Blu-ray on October 18, and will premiere with a screening on Friday, July 22 at Comic-Con.

Warner Bros. isn’t letting a not-so-successful weekend at the box office hold them back from promoting their next big Green Lantern project. Here’s our first promo trailer for the new animated series.

The official website is now up as well. The series is centered around, who else? Hal Jordan. But in the clip we get looks at Salaak, the Guardians, Kilowog and…I couldn’t make out who the last one was. Regardless I’m really wondering how the series is going to do now that the film didn’t hit as big as they would have liked. Although, this show is obviously aimed at a entirely different demographic so you never know.

I saw a preview of the series at New York Comic Con last year and it’s definitely different than any of the other Warner Bros. animated series. It’s 3-D computer generated animation which puts me off a bit because I’m such a fan of their classic techniques but I’ll watch it regardless because there’s going to be Red Lanterns. Bruce Timm also mentioned the inspiration for the animation on the series was from Pixar’s The Incredibles and that he wasn’t worried about the success or failure of the film affecting the television show. You can read more details from the panel here.

The series will premiere on Cartoon Network later this year and stars Josh Keaton as Hal, Michael Clark Duncan as Kilowog (same as in the live-action film), Richard Green as Sinestro and Robert Englund as Hector Hammond.

It’s great to see well-deserving comics getting adapted to films. The latest? Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden from Dark Horse.

The news comes today via The Hollywood Reporter who say Shrek and The Chronicles Of Narnia director, Andrew Adamson, will be the one to bring the comic to the big screen. “Adamson is producing what is intended to be a CG-animated feature adaptation with his Strange Weather Films partner Aron Warner along with Mike Richardson of Dark Horse Entertainment,” writes THR.

Dorkin and Thompson have both won Eisner Awards for their work on the story they created which revolves around a group of dogs and one cat who team up to save their owners and others after a supernatural event happens in the town of Burden Hill.

Besides what seems like a great choice for director, looks like they’ve got a good effects team on board for the film as well. According to THR, “Burden is being made by Reel FX, the company run by former Industrial Light and Magic senior executive Ed Jones and former Walden Media CEO Cary Granat, and that specializes in CG as well as live-action hybrid projects.”

“Dark Horse Entertainment’s Keith Goldberg is executive producing with Strange Weather’s Jeff Fierson co-producing” writes THR, “Reel FX’s head of feature development Jared Mass will oversee the project for the studio.”

Congrats to both Dorkin and Thompson! It’s very exciting news for them to be sure and I look forward to seeing this in theaters. What about you?

This is one of those wonderful times that I get to just let the post speak, or as the case may be sing for itself. If you haven’t heard nerdrock group Kirby Krackle’s Green Lantern themed song “Ring Capacity” yet, now it’s easier than ever to take in with their all-new animated video! Check out the video below, then hit the jump for information on the animator and links to more Krackle-y goodness!

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The Amazon Princess may not be splashing back into live-action anytime soon but Wonder Woman is back on television once more thanks to the animated series, Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

TV Guide has acquired the clip of Diana making her entrance into the series by rescuing Batman, her significant other, Steve Trevor and deflecting a whole lotta bullets. In the episode, airing this Friday on the Cartoon Network, Wonder Woman is voiced by Vicki Lewis of NewsRadio fame. The actress previously voiced Persephone in the Wonder Woman animated film from Warner Bros. starring Kerri Russell.

In the episode, titled “Scorn of the Star Sapphire,” Batman teams up with Green Lantern for the main storyline in which they fight against Carol Ferris and the Zamarons (watch a clip of the fight on IMDB) so it’s not clear how much screen-time Wonder Woman will actually have. Either way, using the Invisible Jet and Lynda Carter’s 1970s Wonder Woman theme song sounds like Warner Bros. saying, “Sorry about that other thing…”

Blink and you’ll miss it: This incredibly short (7 seconds) tease of the upcoming Cartoon Network Green Lantern: The Animated Series has leaked online, and it’s… well, it’s so fast, it’s hard to have any opinions about it, to be honest. But is that the Go! Team as the soundtrack? If they provided the theme music, finally Teen Titans would have some competition for Greatest Animated Series Theme Ever.

(Via ICv2)

In a very cool graphic showcase, one YouTube user has taken a slew of Batman’s symbol designs through the years and morphed them from one to the next. Beware: U2′s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” from Batman Forever plays in the background.

User Antupainamku includes the details of each symbol which for some are film or television credits while others are specific comic book cover or interior designs. The first comes via Detective Comics 1942, “Batman with Robin, The Boy Wonder,” the last comes from “Superman & Batman vs Alien & Predator” from DC and Dark Horse in 2007. It’s far from complete of course but definitely cool to see a good chunk of them put together.

Kenshin fanart by “Tsuyoshi13″

Anime News Network and others are reporting that this week’s issue of Jump Square magazine holds a special announcement for the 15th anniversary of Rurouni Kenshin – a new anime has been greenlit! No word yet whether this will be a new series, OVA, or film, but any new Kenshin will certainly be welcomed by fans.

In addition, if the older material is more your speed, you’ll have a new higher-quality way to watch it soon as well. With Japanese release dates of late August, September, and October (no official word on US release yet), the two Kenshin OVAs and the full length feature will be hitting blu-ray, watchable in high definition glory.

The Kenshin manga spanned 255 chapters, and the original anime series had 95 episodes.

I have no idea why I am so resistant to the idea that The Dark Knight Returns might be adapted into an animated movie, a la All-Star Superman. Is it because I thought that the animated version of A-SS replicated the action but missed the heart that made the original so special? Perhaps, but Dark Knight Returns is a shorter work than A-SS and also more weighted towards the action in the first place, so that might not be a problem. Maybe it’s that I can’t imagine DKR not being censored in some way, considering its content and what we’ve seen in the other animated movies… but perhaps I’m just being cynical about that. So why does it seem like such a bad idea?

Maybe it’s because it seems completely unnecessary. Has the world been crying out for this all along and I’ve not been paying attention? I feel the same way about this as I did the movie Watchmen: Isn’t the comic enough? Can’t something just be great as what it is, and the creators of the adaptations come up with something else, even if it’s something featuring the same characters? Unless Frank Miller somehow gets involved with this rumored animated version, I fear disaster (or worse, disasterous boredom) for this plan.

This new commercial for the latest Lego video game offering, Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is Lego humor at its best.

As you can see, the tough Clone Trooper showing off his stuff is nothing when faced with real danger. We’ve seen Lego animals relieve themselves in-game but never characters and well, I guess this answers the age-old question about whether or not Troopers have some sort of hatch when the need arises. And apparently, it’s automatic!

The game is available everywhere games are sold on March 22 but you can get a head start by playing the mini-game online. You can’t do much in the way of building but you can unlock images and trailers as well as characters for use in the actual game. And, you can dance.

Roger Hargreaves’ beloved children’s book series Mr. Men is being adapted into an animated feature by Fox.

Almost every kid I knew had one of these (if not more) books lying around the house. You remember, Mr. Tickle, Mr. Nosey, Little Miss Sunshine, etc. Well according to the Hollywood Reporter, producer Shawn Levy is joining Twentieth Century Fox Animation to bring us an animated adaptation of the British author’s works.

Levy, who is best known for directing and producing Night at the Museum and its subsequent sequel, does not have a director or writer attached to the project as of yet.

This isn’t the first time the Mr. Men have been animated, this will actually be the fifth adaptation, although the previous efforts have been for television. The first was produced in 1975 by Flicks Films and broadcast by the BBC, the second, in 1983 and also by Flicks Films, featured the Little Miss characters. In 1995 came Mr. Men and Little Miss which was aired in the US as well as the US. And finally, the Cartoon Network got a hold of the franchise in 2006 and created The Mr. Men Show with Renegade Animation.

Hargreaves wrote 48 Mr. Men books and 42 Little Miss books until his son Adam Hargreaves took over after his death in 1988. Since their inception in 1971, they’ve become a pop-culture phenomena and a standard in children’s books. Throughout the years artists have created their own Mr. Men in an homage to the creator and series. Last year someone even did a huge series of superhero characters in the Mr. and Miss likeness.

Can’t wait for the slightest newness when it comes to DC and Cartoon Network’s “Young Justice”? Well we have some bigtime preview images for you here for tonight’s episode, featuring soon-to-be-movie-star BANE!

Official episode description and many more images after the jump.

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Well, now you have the chance to help.

It wouldn’t be the first time that one of best-selling author and contemporary legend Neil Gaiman’s stories have been turned into a movie. Both “Coraline” and “Mirror Mask” were critically-praised, the former even garnered and Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. However, both of those had big studio backing, independent film-maker Christopher Salmon has a different idea. Utlizing the popular site, Kickstarter, Salmon has pitched the idea to make one of Gaiman’s short stories, “The Price”, into an animated short.

Newsarama recently spoke with Salmon about his artistic talents, the animation process of the short, and what it was like to recieve Neil’s approval.

Newsarama: Okay, Christopher, tell us a bit about yourself

Christopher Salmon: Where to start? I’m Canadian & grew up in the stunning Okanagan valley in BC.. I’ve always wanted to make movies an spent my youth and, well, pretty much my whole life trying to develop the talents and skill set to do just that taught myself to draw, write, and sculpt (so I could make rubber monster masks and then foam-latex creatures & stop-motion puppets) Took enough piano so I could generate a simplistic John Carpenter-esque score to go along with my cheesy horror films I made in High School TV class, which usually plotted around some cool new special effect I’d figured out, like my own version of the chest-burster scene from Alien so, totally high-class stuff

I thought I might get my break into film through special effects make-up, but I wound up in the video game industry for many years, just from reading stuff (Fangoria, Cinefex) and trying things out. I blew my chest off once trying out a home-made squib (not so funny) my Mom took one look at the blackened mess on my chest and ordered me to surrender my can of re-filling gunpowder on the spot not too bright either … (me, not my Mom — she rocks)

Nrama: So big horror fan, I take it?

Salmon: I love monsters, so yeah, I’ve watched a lot of horror flicks, but the whole blood/torture/dark-evil thing isn’t what draws me … I just dig the monsters, you know?

But I love Sci-Fi, fantasy, anything really mostly, I love movies. That’s what I love about this story of Neil’s; even with the cool monster stuff, the overall feeling is hopeful, positive, and a little melancholy.

Nrama: Out of all of Gaiman’s stories, what drew you to the Price that made you want to make something like this?

Salmon: The theme of redemption. A chance to design some really cool monsters. I like cats too, so really it was win-win-win! Also, I was looking for something on a small scale that I could handle the bulk of the work for. In the animatic, I didn’t feature any of the secondary characters at all (you could see their feet or profile in shadow) … by being able to keep the focus on the Narrator/Neil, The Black Cat, and the monsters, I could manage costs and put the funds towards these central characters. So it was all of these things, but primarily the theme & feeling I got while reading The Price.

Plus, if I can see it immediately in my mind, I know my chances of recreating successfully are very high and once it’s in there, the only way to ever get it out … is to make the film!

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Photo courtesy Gary Miereanu

[The following is a pre-prepared interview provided by Warner Home Video.]

Whether as River Tam in Joss Whedon’s cult classic series and follow-up film, Firefly and Serenity, or as the indestructible android-from-the-future, Cameron, in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Glau has cornered the market on playing attractive, demure young females with the controlled homicidal power to destroy an opposing legion of trained warriors.

So it was only natural that as her first-ever animated voiceover role, Glau would fit neatly into the role of an uber-powered Kryptonian who falls under the spell of one of Superman’s greatest foes. Glau finds the perfect mix of youthful curiosity, teen angst and alien-turned-Earth-girl aggression as the voice of Kara, cousin of Superman (and ultimately destined to become Supergirl) in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, the ninth entry in the popular, ongoing series of DC Universe animated movies.

Based on the DC Comics series/graphic novel “Superman/Batman: Supergirl” by Jeph Loeb, the late Michael Turner & Peter Steigerwald, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse is produced by animation legend Bruce Timm and directed by Lauren Montgomery (Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Wonder Woman) from a script by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Tab Murphy (Gorillas in the Mist).

Glau’s career has been populated with frequent visits to the fanboy realm, adding regular roles on The 4400 and Dollhouse to her featured gigs on Firefly/Serenity and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The professionally trained ballerina had a seven-episode run on The Unit, and will appear in the upcoming NBC series, The Cape, as well as in the film, Knights of Badassdom.

Following her recording session, Glau freely discussed a number of subjects – from the acting strengths of the Whedon alumni association to her consistent on-set nerves to a strong desire to land more adult roles. Interview after the jump.

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Tonight in Los Angeles, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse gets a premiere screening along with a panel discussion from cast and crew, both at the Paley Center — and, yup, Newsarama will be there, covering the panel live.

The panel is set for around 8:20 p.m. local time, so 11:20 for you east coasters. Stay tuned to the front page shortly before then to follow along at home.

Confirmed at this point for the panel: Bruce Timm, Executive Producer; Lauren Montgomery, Director; Tab Murphy, Writer;; Andrea Romano, Casting/Dialogue Director; Susan Eisenberg, voice of Wonder Woman; Rachel Quaintance, voice of Artemis & Lyla.