update: this story is false.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (and the rest of the cast of Inception) has been heavily favored to join the cast of Christopher Nolan’s next Batman movie. Now with Tom Hardy in place as Bane and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, JGL will join the cast as Alberto Falcone.

You may recall Carmine Falcone was played by Tom Wilkinson in Batman Begins, and his empire was shattered by Batman and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Alberto Falcone is his son in the Batman fiction, and may be entering the story to reclaim the family business.

However, Nolan has borrowed from The Long Halloween before, and its likely that Alberto won’t just be another mob boss but will instead be The Holiday Killer. Holiday was a serial killer whose first murder occurred on Halloween, (then Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc) and continued until the following Halloween with the murder of Carmine Falcone.

As of The Dark Knight, Carmine is still being held in Arkham, after a dose of Scarecrow’s psychotic drugs. Its unknown how this might fit in with Bane or the possibility of Catwoman, but both of those characters are tied heavily to Gotham’s organized crime.

As casting news begins to slow down and filming not to far off, the full story is still hard to decipher. The Dark Knight had twists audiences didn’t expect that didn’t come from set reports and no script was leaked in advance. If The Dark Knight Rises can continue this momentum and use the wealth of characters to give the story life and depth rather than crowd it, we might have the first super hero movie series with a good third act.

Source: Variety

After an incredibly long hiatus the Sailor Moon manga will once again be available to English fans in North America. Kodansha Comic USA has announced the upcoming return of not only the Sailor Moon manga but also the book that started it all, the Sailor V manga.

The manga was originally published in English by Mixx, known now as Tokyopop, but has been out of print for years. The new release will be similar in format to the Japanese rerelease which had the books condensed from 18 books into 12, separating out 2 books of side stories. Sailor V will similarly be released in 2 volumes rather than the original 3. The books will feature the new cover art and occasionally modified art within it’s pages.

Sailor V is the precursor to Sailor Moon, published earlier, yet never previously available to English readers.

Keep reading for the full press release.

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The pilot episode for NBC’s Wonder Woman show is being filmed currently, and with it lots of official and unofficial news. Firstly is the logo for the show, snapped off the back of one of the chairs on set courtesy WonderWomanTV. This may be a temporary logo, and might not even be used in the show’s titles.

Now the costume….
First of all, I’m just going to say that Adrianne Palicki As Wonder Woman is ridiculously hot. Of course any attractive woman in a costume that tight with that much cleavage was going to be hot.

Is the costume accurate? Well its certainly nothing like what Lynda Carter wore, showing off less leg and a lot more shine. Seriously, is this made out of plastic? The pants aren’t a huge deal honestly, but they probably should’ve gone black instead of blue for the final version of the outfit. Likewise, red boots. In fact, the Jim Lee version of Wonder Woman would have worked great for a prime time show, leather jacket and all. But yeah, the costume hits all the basic notes of a Wonder Woman costume, including the tiara, the bracelets, and of course the bust.

Its about Smallville quality and easily more impressive than The Cape, though not quite as cool as Dina Meyer’s Batgirl from BoP. Its seriously bright, and if the tone of the show matches the outfit, then we might be headed for disaster. On the other hand, David E Kelley got NBC to pick up yet another super hero show after a string of disasters, so I hope there is something to this. And maybe when she’s not in a photography studio, the outfit won’t look so over-saturated.

As a bonus, we also have a look at Elizabeth Hurley as the show’s villain, who is yet unnamed. Also, since she’s just wearing normal clothes, we don’t have any leads. In fact, this could very well just be a photo of Elizabeth Hurley walking in LA. Photo from Superhero Hype!

Last week Marvel Editor Axel Alonso asked fans if they’d like to see a team up with Deadpool and troubled TV star Charlie Sheen.

Because this is the internet, and we don’t actually think Marvel would follow through, and if they do we don’t want to wait, someone has already come through with this page.

Ben Christian and Cory Smith of The Independents deliver us less of a team up, and more of an adversarial meeting. But, as they said, strike while the iron is hot.

I am the danger that fights evil by moonlight! I am the middle schooler that wins love by daylight! I am … Sailor … Duck?

Here’s Drake Malard aka Darkwing Duck from issue #8 of Boom’s recent Darkwing Duck comic, dressed as Sailor Moon! This is hardly the only cameo in this issue, as a seemingly endless number of alternate Darkwing Ducks all appear and it seems any mildly relevant comic or pop culture character from the past several decades makes an appearance. Tron, Sherlock Holmes, Where’s Waldo and more and more and more and … more.

Just check out a few examples from just that frame:

Thanks to poster Twighligh Ghost for bringing this to my attention in a post in the otherwise deserted alt.fan.sailor-moon newsgroup.

I’m a huge Deadpool fan. Since I’m such a big fan, I (and about 19,000 other people) follow Deadpool’s creator Rob Liefeld on twitter. One thing I’ve noticed during my time following him is that the man isn’t stingy when it comes to using exclamation points.

Last night instead of being subjected to the Oscars, I decided to find out if it was just my imagination, or does Liefled really use too many exclamation points. I wrote a simple script that downloads his tweets and counts the exclamation points. I ignored any retweets and downloaded as many as I could (Twitter limits how many historical tweets you can download). I ended up with 3016 tweets by Rob Liefeld. Time for some results.

Results after the jump
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The late Dwayne McDuffie had credits on over 60 episodes of the Cartoon Network Justice League Series. In the wake of is death, I wanted to review one of his most memorable episodes. This one has magic, aliens, multidimensional monsters, zombies, gangsters, and Aquaman!

“The Terror Beyond” is from the second season of Justice League, and like most episodes from the series, is split into two parts. It opens with the US Military hunting for a very large target, revealed to be Solomon Grundy. After a rocket propelled grenade to the face, Grundy chucks around some tanks like they were nothing. One tank fires a laser(!) on him, and as the military prepares to capture Grundy and take him in, Aquaman comes to his rescue. Riding atop a purple sea serpent, Aqauman announces “If you want to live, come with me” and the two escape under water. Now I remember how awesome this show is. Ha!

Aqauman arrives not in Atlantis, but the tower of Doctor Fate. Fate’s wife Inza greets them, and Grundy is offered a chest full of gold in exchange for some task or information. As a more immediate reward he scarfs down two cupcakes. Doctor Fate arrives and is pleased to me “Mr Grande.”
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CBR has reported that writer Dwayne McDuffie has passed away from complications due to a surgical procedure.

McDuffie started as part of the Marvel editorial staff in the late 80’s, and later went on to become a fulltime freelance writer and writing for several companies including Marvel and DC. He is best known for creating the Milestone Media brand in 1993, with the goal to expand the role of minorities in comics.

Later McDuffie moved into the world of DC Animation, where he wrote, edited, and produced on several properties including Static Shock and Justice League. More recently he was involved in writing for DC Animations’s direct to video animated movies including Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and All-Star Superman which coincidentally was released today.

DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio had this to say about McDuffie:

“Dwayne McDuffie left a lasting legacy on the world of comics that many writers can only aspire to. He will not only be remembered as the extremely gifted writer whose scripts have been realized as comic books, in television shows and on the silver screen, but as the creator or co-creator of so many of the much-loved Milestone characters, including Static Shock. The industry has lost a true talent.

Our sincerest condolences go out to the family and many friends he leaves behind.”

Our condolences to his friends and family. Let us know your favorite work or memories of McDuffie in the comments.