This Variety article about how director Guillermo Del Toro’s dance card is filled through 2017 contains a buried gem for fans of Hellboy: Universal Pictures could consider a TV series to help build interest in a third installment of the movie franchise.

Sure, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army did so-so in the United States, but it’s performed well overseas. That’s not enough for the studio to jump at a sequel, though.

“I think they’ll decide when the last euro hits the piggybank,” del Toro tells the trade paper. “We laid the groundwork to have a magnificent third act. I’d like to return to an action franchise with 60-year-old actor Ron Perlman, because he’ll be scratching at that age when I get to it.”

Perlman is 58, which means del Toro is apparently is hoping to charge into Hellboy 3 sooner rather than later.

But what about that television series? That tidbit came from Donna Langley, Universal’s president of production:

Langley said the studio is interested and may work with del Toro to add a TV series and online segments to broaden the following before making the series finale.

It’s nothing concrete, obviously, but given IDT’s abandonment of the animated movies and the performances of the theatrical releases, it’s interesting that Universal sees potential in Hellboy beyond comics.

– Darth Vader vs. the Fantastic Four.

– All-Star Superman in 11 panels.

– Shaenon Garrity writes about pioneer Anne Cleveland.

– Du9 interviews Chester Brown, who really doesn’t get interviewed enough.

– Kim Thompson and Eddie Campbell on just how many good graphic novels there are out there anyway.

– Alaska now has a cartoonist laureate.

– Paste shares 20 things they learned at Dragon*Con.

Compiled by JK and Chris. But mostly Chris.

– Joëlle Jones draws some X-Women.

– An entire blog devoted to Ronald Searle? I’m so there.

– Eric Bogosian to recite Art Spiegleman. There’s a pairing I never expected to see.

– PBS Newshour does a profile on Jeff Smith.

– Pantheon will publish Dash Shaw’s Bodyworld.

– Scatalogical Hulk joke alert!

– Ryan Kelly shares Northlanders character designs.

– Here’s a map in case you ever get lost in Springfield. Via.

– Vulture previews Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle.

– Das Gamer wonders why the Halo comic is taking so long to complete.

– Larry Marder teases new Beanworld. Wohoo!

– Neil Kleid is doing a series of articles on the Dark Tower for Marvel.com. Here’s the first one.

– Bill Kahler and Mark Yturralde, the treasurer for Comic-Con International, are contestants on the Amazing Race this fall.

– The Hero Initiative has more Hulk covers up for auction. This week’s covers are by John McCrea, John Romita and Fred Hembeck, among others.

Compiled by JK and Chris.

– Stan Sakai shares the character designs for Usagi Yojimbo and Gen from the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Setting my TiVo to “stun” …

– Willy Harold Vassaux is creating an Olympic comic. And will our search hits skyrocket if I mention “superhero” Michael Phelps?

– Brigid Alverson and her fellow contributors at Good Comics for Kids discuss Robot Dreams making Oprah’s Reading List for Kids.

– Film.com analyzes the most rabid fanbases — movies fanbases, that is, like Trekkies, Twilighters and Potterheads. They say Harry Potter fans are the most rabid, even more so than Whedon fans, who I would have picked for the top spot.

– “Because I want to set you free.”

– I’m sorry, but that’s just wrong.

– The New Yorker blog interviews Comics Curmudgeon Josh Fruhlinger.

– Tom Spurgeon talks to Abandoned Cars author Tim Lane.

Compiled by JK and Chris.

• Warner Bros.’ adaptation of Arvid Nelson’s noirish alternate-history series Rex Mundi is chugging ahead. Co-producer Barry Levine says a second draft is due in from Fight Club screenwriter Jim Uhls. Now co-producer and star Johnny Depp must settle on a director. [Splash Page]

• Iron Man 2 screenwriter Justin Theroux says the movie won’t take on a darker tone: “You know, I tremulously went and watched The Dark Knight myself, but it’s a totally different movie, like, you know that Tom Cruise movie where he played the race-car driver? What was that movie called … anyway. It’s like comparing that movie to Talladega Nights — it’s two totally different animals. We have a leading man who can sort of relish being a cad, and that’s a fun character to write for. We feel like we’re in the clear.” [Vulture]

• Last week a sentence in an Australian newspaper sparked rumores that the troubled Justice League movie is back on track. Not so, according to sources at Warner Bros. — of both the official and unofficial variety. [Spoiler warning: IESB]

• That IESB link includes supposed story details from the planned Green Lantern movie. [Spoiler warning: IESB]

• Lionsgate as acquired the film rights to Duane Swierczynski’s novel Severance Package; Brett Simon will direct. What’s the comics connection, you ask? Swierczynski is a crime novelist who now writes Cable and The Immortal Iron Fist for Marvel. Also, comics artist Tom Coker illustrated the cover of Severance Package. [Variety]

• Brian Austin Green, of Beverly Hills 90210 fame, would love to play The Riddler. [Splash Page]

I’m exhausted, and I’m not even in San Diego.

Saturday’s “DCU: A Guide to Your Universe” panel at last put an end to relentless questions about the status of the Milestone Media characters: They’re being incorporated into the DC Comics universe, initially in the pages of Justice League of America and Teen Titans.

The same panel also revealed that the Archie Comics line of superheroes — The Fly, The Shield, The Black Hood and others — have been acquired by DC. The characters, licensed by DC in the early ’90s and published under the Impact imprint, will be reintroduced during J. Michael Straczynski’s run on The Brave and the Bold.

Marvel, meanwhile, announced that Mark Millar, original writer of Ultimate X-Men and The Ultimates, is returning to help reshape the Ultimate line.

“The Marvel Universe has basically been turned into the Ultimate Universe, right down to the military super-teams,” Millar told Newsarama, “so now it’s time to go back and take things to the next level. I have a very big pad filled with notes here and am blazing on this stuff. I just want to take things to the next level.”

The publisher also revealed its followup to Secret Invasion: a cosmic event called War of Kings.

Other convention-related announcements:

• ComiPress has a good rundown of the manga acquisitions and new releases announced at Comic-Con.

• Devil’s Due Publishing has entered into a parntership with Humanoids to release some of the French publisher’s titles in the United States.

• Mike Grell will helm a new Warlord series from DC, debuting next spring.

• IDW Publishing announced that Joe Hill’s Locke & Key will return in December as an ongoing series, and Steve Niles is revisiting vampires with Epilogue.

• The sequel to Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s Eisner Award-winning miniseries The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite now has a title and a release date: The Umbrella Academy: Dallas will debut in November.

• Dark Horse is revisiting the Aliens and Predator franchises.

• Writer Andy Diggle (The Losers, Hellblazer) will take over Marvel’s Thunderbolts beginning with Issue 126.

• Top Cow is releasing Art of Wanted, an oversized art book containing images from the comics, stills from the movie, and concepts from the upcoming video game.

You can follow our complete Comic-Con coverage here.

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards capped off a busy second day of Comic-Con, one that included big announcements from Marvel, Viz Media and Image, plus a slew of new titles and creator exclusives.

The meaning behind the much-teased “Marvel to the Nth Degree” panel came to light Friday morning in The Wall Street Journal with word that Marvel is reteaming with Stephen King for a “motion comics”-style digital adaptation of his forthcoming short story “N.”

Image Comics revealed a team-up of its own: Six of the company’s founders — Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio and Todd McFarlane — and new partner Robert Kirkman will release Image United, a miniseries starring some of their best-known creations, plus “side characters.”

And after a lengthy delay at the creator’s request, Viz Media finally will release Naoki Urasawa’s science fiction/mystery series 20th Century Boys. The publisher also has licensed his latest work, Pluto. Both will debut in February.

The Vertigo panel unveiled new titles from Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, and Jonathan Ames and Dean Haspiel, and offered details on the Vertigo Crime imprint, Seaguy sequels, and a hardcover collection of Death miniseries called, naturally, The Complete Death.

Other convention-related announcements:

• Del Rey has acquired several titles, including Shaenon Garrity’s CLAMP in America, Harvey Pekar’s Huntington, W.V On The Fly, Paul Hornschemier’s Life With Dr. Dangerous, and Brenden Burford’s Syncopated.

• Farscape creator Rockne O’Bannon will write BOOM! Studios’ previously announced adaptation of the sci-fi TV show.

• IDW Publishing will release a prequel to next summer’s Transformers movie.

• Dabel Bros. Publishing is adapting The Warriors, just in time for the cult film’s 30th anniversary.

• Artists Khoi Pham and Paolo Rivera have signed exclusive agreements with Marvel.

You can follow our complete Comic-Con coverage here.

The sequel to Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s Eisner Award-winning miniseries The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite now has a name and a release date.

Dark Horse announced at Comic-Con that The Umbrella Academy: The Scarecrow Blues Dallaswill debut in November, with Bá providing interior and cover art. (James Jean illustrated the covers for the previous miniseries.)

Way told PW Comics Week that the second volume will deal with the aftermath of the events in Apocalypse Suite: “You immediately start seeing the relationship between the characters, and it ends with a very big climax and some violence. I’m really excited about it.”

Updated Aug. 1 : Per Dark Horse Comics, the title of the next Umbrella Academy mini-series is actually Umbrella Academy: Dallas. We apologize for the error.

It’s been a pretty good week for brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá.

Thursday’s announcement that they’re illustrating the upcoming B.P.R.D.: 1947 miniseries was followed by a Wall Street Journal profile in which Hellboy creator Mike Mignola sang their praises.

Then came news yesterday that they’re creating a 10-issue miniseries for Vertigo called Daytripper, about “a guy who wants to be a writer and how the things you do in your life every day, there’s stuff that can determine what you’re going to do the rest of your life.” (That’s art from the series above, posted on the creators’ blog.)

How do you top that? Well, if you’re Moon and Bá, you win a combined three Eisner Awards: Bá for Best Limited Series for The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite, with Gerard Way; Moon for Best Digital Comic for Sugarshock!, with Joss Whedon; and both for Best Anthology for 5, with Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos and Rafael Grampa.

Plus, they debuted — with Cloonan and Lolos — Pixu, the followup to the now award-winning 5.

All in all, not bad for one Comic-Con. (And there are still two days left!)

The Wall Street Journal spotlights twin brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, best known for their work, separately, on Casanova and The Umbrella Academy. But yesterday at Comic-Con the two were announced as the artists on Dark Horse’s upcoming B.P.R.D.: 1947 miniseries.

“They’re becoming hot properties,” Hellboy and B.P.R.D. creator Mike Mignola told the newspaper. “If we only get one book from them, that’s more than we deserve.”

Related: A slide show of some of Moon and Bá’s work

After several significant publishing announcements right out of the gate on Wednesday — among them, the Vertigo Crime imprint, Darwyn Cooke’s Parker adaptations and the BOOM! deal with Disney/Pixar — the first official day of Comic-Con seemed, well, subdued. At least as far as new projects go.

The biggest news on Thursday probably came from the “DC Nation” panel, where it was revealed that Kevin Smith will write a three-issue Batman miniseries called Cacophony, which features the villain Onomatopoeia from Smith’s 2000 run on Green Arrow. If you were planning some jokes about whether the miniseries will be late, or never finish, save them: Smith beat you to it.

And, surprising no one, Barry Allen will return in The Flash: Rebirth, by Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver.

The “Mondo Marvel” panel introduced a handful of new titles, including an ongoing Agents of Atlas, Greg Pak and Leonardo Manco’s War Machine as a replacement for Iron Man: Director of SHIELD, the return of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon for a weekly Punisher: War Zone miniseries, and … an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Electric Ant” by David Mack, with covers by Paul Pope.

Yeah, that last one seemed to surprise, or puzzle, a lot of folks.

At the X-Men panel, the next big X-event was revealed: X Infernus, a sequel, of sorts, to 1989’s Inferno crossover.

Other convention-related announcements:

• Virgin Comics and Perspective Studios rolled out their collaboration with writer Grant Morrison, MBX. It’s an animation franchise based on the ancient Indian epic the Mahabharata.

• Devil’s Due Publishing announced its new online initiative with Kevin Spacey’s talent-scouting website TriggerStreet.com.

• Wildstorm continued its licensing frenzy with a six-issue miniseries based on Electronic Arts’ upcoming video game Mirror’s Edge.

• And then there was the now-usual run of movie news: Bryan Singer’s Bad Hat Harry and Radical Pictures adapting Radical Publishing’s Freedom Formula miniseries; Landscape Entertainment picking up the rights to the Image miniseries Pretty, Baby, Machine, by Clark Westerman and Kody Chamberlain; and Disney renewing its first-look deal with Stan Lee’s POW Entertainment.

You can follow our complete Comic-Con coverage here.

In a follow-up to The Los Angeles Times’ big weekend profile of Mike Richardson and Dark Horse Comics, Geoff Boucher homes in on this interesting, and apparently previously unknown, item: During Marvel’s bleak financial times in the mid-’90s, Dark Horse made plans with Disney to take control of the House of Ideas.

“This hasn’t been out there, but we were in serious talks with Disney about buying Marvel,” Dark Horse founder Michael Richardson told Boucher. “I met with Michael Eisner, who is a good friend of [my mentor, producer] Larry Gordon, and they were going to buy Marvel and put Dark Horse in control of it.”

Obviously it didn’t pan out. But why? A mix of skepticism about Marvel’s financial figures and Disney’s uneasiness about “seeing Wolverine products on the same shelf as Mickey Mouse.”

Be sure to read both articles.

Related: Gerard Way’s favorite graphic novels (Part 1, Part 2)

I should have done one of these yesterday, but I didn’t and now I’m paying for it. So this one is going to be extra long. In this addition: a Pop Candy meet-up, Entertainment Weekly’s awesome panel schedule, Dark Horse signing schedule with extra Whedon, Electronic Arts, 007, Michael Golden, the BBC, free WiFi, Knight Rider and much more!

As always, you can send me your con activities any time between now and when it starts, and I’ll post them here.

*****

The Comic-Con website says the show will offer free WiFi this year, sponsored by the movie Eagle Eye:

Free Wi-Fi at Comic-Con!
Dreamworks Pictures’ Eagle Eye, starring Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan, is proud to be the official sponsor of Comic-Con Free Wi-Fi. Be sure to see Eagle Eye, in theaters September 26th.

Free Wi-Fi is available in all areas of the Convention Center except the Exhibit Hall.

*****

Whitney Matheson at USA Today’s Pop Candy blog is hosting a meetup in San Diego on the Saturday of the con. You can find more details on the meetup — as well as the really sweet promotional artwork Keith Simmons painted (pictured above — over on Pop Candy.

(more…)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army stormed the box office this weekend, earning an estimated $35.9 million and the top spot.

That surpassed expectations, as well as the $23.2 million opener for the first Hellboy back in 2004.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Hellboy II is the third comic-book property to top the box office this summer (Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were the first two). By all expectations, The Dark Knight, which bows this week, will make it an even four.

Hancock, last weekend’s top movie, slipped to No. 2 with $33 million, bringing its 12-day total to $165 million. Universal’s Wanted, loosely based on on the Top Cow miniseries, hung on to the fifth spot with $11.6 million, for an accumulated $112 million.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army led the box office yesterday, grossing an estimated $13.8 million and beating out Hancock in its second Friday.

The first Hellboy opened to the tune of $8.6 million in 2004.

According to Variety, the heavily promoted and critically acclaimed Golden Army should win the weekend, finishing north of $30 million.

Hancock fell just 44 percent in its second Friday, drawing at estimated $10.4 million.

• Viz Media sends word that Marc Weidenbaum, vice president of original publishing, and Eric Searleman, senior editor, will perform the publisher’s first Comic-Con portfolio reviews from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, July 27.

• The Venture Bros. creator Jackson Publick reveals that production has begun on the show’s fourth season. [Publick's blog]

• Apple profiles Dark Horse Comics, with a focus on the company’s network of 145 Macs. The feature includes a sidebar that details the production process for an issue of Hellboy – from initial discussions between Mike Mignola and editor Scott Allie to lettering to press — and a publisher timeline. [Apple.com]

• Speaking of Hellboy, Mignola talks about his collaboration with Guillermo del Toro on Hellboy II: The Golden Army: “It’s my job to take del Toro’s idea, which nobody else can make heads or tails of unless he’s drawn it in his sketchbook, and decipher it. Even though I don’t speak Spanish, we speak the language of monsters and we have very similar tastes in artists so I can usually understand what he’s going for.” [Underwire]

• The talented artist Kristian Donaldson updates his blog with news that the second edition of the Supermarket trade paperback from IDW will get a new format — 6″ x 9″ — and a new cover (above). Also, he’ll be reteaming with Supermarket writer Brian Wood for Issues 35 and 36 of DMZ, which sport covers by John Paul Leon. [Donaldson's blog]

• I’m enjoying Kyle Latino’s illustrated summaries of the comics he reads each week. [This Week in Comics, via Super Punch]