Free Comic Book Day is in exactly one month – May 5th, 2007! (That’s the first Saturday in May.) It’s gotten bigger and bigger each year, and this year there are over 40 different books to choose from! That is, if your local shop orders them all.

Looking over the selection of books, boo to DC for just reprinting JLA #0 and issue #1 of the animated Legion book – Yet another year of DC participating in a totally half-assed way. (I guess some jeers go to IDW too for reprinting the Transformers Movie Prequel Comic #1, even if they’re actually pushing a movie here.)

Books to watch:

• Marvel – Amazing Spider-Man: Swing Shift – written by Dan Slott, art by Dan Jimenez
• Marvel – Marvel Adventures Three-In-One – featuring an Iron Man, Hulk, and Franklin Richards story (grab one to give to a kid!)
• Image – Astounding Wolf-Man #1 – new book from Robert Kirkman
• Antarctic Press – Pirates vs. Ninjas #1 – because it’s PIRATES VS. NINJAS
• Fantagraphics Books – The Unseen Peanuts – over 100 strips of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts that have NEVER been reprinted
• Rude Dude Productions – Nexus Special – Steve Rude picking up the reigns on his long dormant character
• Topshelf Productions – Owly & Korgi – Owly is a regular favorite of Free Comic Book Day fans
• Wildcard Ink – Gumby Special – because it’s Gumby!

Wanted, the movie based on the miniseries by Mark Millar, is supposed to start filming this month in Prague. (That’s in the Czech Republic, knuckleheads.) You might have heard of this, as Angelina Jolie was recently cast, and Morgan Freeman also stars in it. Obviously, neither of them are the title character – a gumpy white guy that finds out his father was a supervillain-type assassin and gets trained to fill his shoes. This is James McAvoy‘s role. It’s a fairly messed up book, burdened with one of the lamest last pages I’ve ever encountered (depending on your interpretation, it’s either Millar laughing at you for buying the book, or telling you to go out and be like the character). Oddly enough, it sounds like the film adaptation is removing most (if not all) of the superhero/supervillain aspects – perhaps the most endearing aspect of the story.

Anyway, all of that was to bring you up to speed, so you have some semblance of context for the little piece of concept art Bazelevs has treated us to. In their words, New American project of Timur Bekmambetov with the working title “Wanted@ is in progress. For right now the revisualization for the future feature is being made. CG specialists develop “art” and camera moves, objects, characters interaction, shots composing, animation – in a word, it is already seen now how the future featyre will look like. This work is being done for ‘Universal Studios”.

Ah, translations.

A scan from Japanese Mag Famitsu reveals the rumour of a Resident Evil 4 port is true. RE4 will hit Wii in June with all of the PS2 re-release bonus missions and new waggle controls. The pricetag is going to be a very affordable $29.99.

Sadly, thats the good news. The Umbrella Chronicles game we’d heard would feature a “best of” all the Resident Evil games is actually a rail shooter. The Wii control will act like a light gun, not unlike the (terrible) RE: Dead Aim on Playstation. The story focuses on the downfall of the Umbrella Corporation and… oh come on, a rail shooter? This is the big news? I can’t believe they actually found a way to make another release of RE:4 sound interesting.

If you’re one of the 5 or 6 people who didn’t play Resident Evil 4 or were just PO’d that you got the shaft by not buying the enhanced PS2 version, looks like June is your time.

In a post thanking fans for supporting 4 years of groundbreaking machinima, Rooster Teeth’s Burnie Burns has announced that Red vs Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicles will be complete at the end of season 5 with the 100th episode.

Before we all start gnashing our teeth at the loss of the series that invented “shisno” as a racial epithet, Burnie specifically mentioned that this would only be the last episode of “Blood Gulch Chronicles” and not the last RvB ever. I can’t imagine them throwing away the series completely unless it was demanded by Microsoft or Bungie, who own the Halo franchise their series uses as backdrop. Its possible they’re merely finishing up in preparation of a new series using Halo 3…

Over the weekend the Square/Disney faithful wept openly as this pre-rendered battle sequence found its way to the internet. It takes a while to really get to a point where you can even tell its even supposed to be Kingdom Hearts, but it is. This video was hidden at the end of the recently released Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix on PS2 in Japan.

Or maybe not. Eurogamer reports Tetsuya Nomura, the director of the Kingdom Hearts II, says the next title will be a completely new series. Why change it up? Maybe its not an RPG? Maybe it deviates too far from the conventions of KH? Who knows.

Also up in the air is where this series will be released. The pre-rendered video is no clear indication of hardware. It could easily continue on the PS2, jump to PS3, or even go cross platform to Wii or Xbox 360. The only certainty is that when it comes out it will sell a bajillion copies like the last one.

Madman Atomic Comics #1
written and drawn by Mike Allred

Mike Allred has an impressive comics resume, ranging from Spider-Man to the recent (and acclaimed) X-Statix, to the Bluntman and Chronic comic pages in Chasing Amy, and even to “The Golden Plates” – an adaptation of the Book of Mormon. Wait, really? Huh, really. Well, anyway, one of his most prominent works remains his creator-owned work on Madman. Having previously been published under smaller publishers, I’ve never gotten my hands on a Madman comic, despite being able to instantly recognize the character on sight. You have to admit – he makes for an intriguing visual.

As for who he is, Madman “was a hitman who was killed in a car accident, then stitched back together and brought to life by a pair of mad scientists.” I don’t know much else about the character, other than the fact that Bruce Timm admittedly used Madman as a direct inspiration for Freakazoid – “with comics open and referred to when developing the show.” And Freakazoid was pretty awesome, right? So, with a movie currently in the works, a hard-earned reputation for excellence, and a new issue #1, what better time to get acquainted with the character? The answer is NONE. So be cool like me – Gamble with a couple bucks and pick up the issue this Wednesday.

Textless preview pages after the jump…
[Read the rest of this entry…]

In what may be the most ambitious music game ever conceived, the developers of Guitar Hero have teamed with MTV and mega-publisher Electronic Arts to release Rock Band for PS3 and Xbox 360 this winter. USA Today brings us the story.

Take Guitar Hero II’s guitar/bass co-op play, add in some Karaoke Revolution singing, and keep the beat with a set of drums. Theres been no mention of how the drums will look or operate, but with so many successful music games under their belt, Harmonix should be able to find something that works for casual and hardcore gamers alike.

Game|Life reports from the press event early Monday that there will no longer be cover versions of songs, instead you’ll be treated to the real thing. Latency problems that kept Guitar Hero II from having full online multiplayer have been resolved and Harmonix promises your band can have practice online instead of in your garage. And though not formally announced at this time, a Wii version is inevitable.

Now… is it too much to ask they get The Clash in there?

Coinciding with Saturday’s airing of the series 3 premiere of Doctor Who the first episode of a new animated Doctor Who series “The Infinite Quest” aired yesterday as part of Totally Doctor Who. Coming in at a mere 3 minutes and 30 seconds there’s not much to say but I’ll give you a spoiler driven synopsis anyway.

The villain Baltazar is cruising through space on his ship that he built himself, talking to a robot bird named Caw, as he arrives to Earth. The Doctor and Martha show up in the Tardis. Baltazar explains that he’s going to turn everyone on Earth into diamonds. The Doctor takes out a rusty spoon which rusts the ship away, he frees Caw from his cage with his sonic screwdriver and then he and Martha escape in the TARDIS apparently going to Copacabana beach. Baltazar is left flying around through space on Caw.

[Read the rest of this entry…]