Welcome once again dear readers!

Once again, this week has seen me working on a gaming project. The blurb’s not quite done, but if I had to describe it, I’d say it’s V for Vendetta meets This is Spinal Tap. It’s planned for Sydcon 2014, so keep your eyes peeled, air guitars warmed up and earplugs handy!

The big news this week comes from Marvel Comics, with the announcement (On daytime talk show The View no less) that the new Thor is female. No, it’s not a gender change (Like the time he got turned into a frog), but a female character (As yet known) who’ll be deemed worthy to lift Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer and thus gain his power. It’s a worthy move, but not without some confusing aspects – Thor is a name, not a title that can be passed down. Still, it’s not the first time a female character has been able to lift the hammer, with even Jane Foster doing so in the past. Now, if they can transfer this idea to the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Chris Hemsworth decides to leave, that’d be kind of awesome. (I still want a Black Widow movie though) And, if you’ve got a problem with that, well…

 You think you can take the Q-Unit? BRING IT!

Following on from that, Joe Quesada was on The Colbert Report this week to announce that the new Captain America is Sam Wilson, also known as hero The Falcon, with Colbert putting his hand up for the role, something that Marvel’s artists beat him to. Colbert has also recently been involved with  Star Wars Force for Change, a group raising money for Unicef (And with the chance to win a role in Episode 7) by engaging in a nerd fight with Jon Stewart that has to be seen to be believed. In another piece of glorious super hero news, Adam West will be voicing himself in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham.

The week’s strangest news is the former dictator of Panama, Manuel Noriega, is suing Activision over his appearance in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, claiming that Activision used his likeness without permission.  He joins a long list of people who’ve claimed their likeness was used without permission in games, with the likes of Gwen Stefani, Lindsay Lohan and even former US Army General David Petraeus. It must be something in the water – the North Korea government recent complained to the United Nations over the film The Interview, which stars James Franco and Seth Rogen as would be assassin’s tasked by the CIA with eliminating Kim Jong-Un. If you can’t take a bit of harmless fun about the leader of you country being assassinated, you’ve got a pretty thin skin – Cuba was laughing at the CIA’s attempts to bump off Castro for years!

In further bad news for the BBC, prints of the first 6 episodes of the new season of Doctor Who have leaked. As we’re busy trying to avoid spoilers, we aren’t linking to any news articles, so if you want it, you can find it yourselves – I’m not helping. It’s also been reported that BBC Worldwide have apologised to Steven Moffat and the production team, saying that those responsible for the leak have been ‘disciplined’. (Couldn’t they have just said Exterminated?) In better news, the first proper trailer for the next season has been released and is suitably awesome.

 What she said.

Turning to the Avengers, we have the first look at Ultron and wow, he looks mighty good. There’s also some new pictures from filming, which leads me to ask the obvious question: why do they keep putting Scarlett Johansson in those weird back arching poses? None of the guys are in them, so why should they keep doing it to her? (It’s things like that that keep the Hawkeye Initiative in business.) Andy Serkis has denied he’s playing Thanos in the film, while we also have a confirmed date for both the release of Agents of SHIELD S1 on DVD and the start date of S2.

There’s been big changes to Constantine, with word that both Lucy Griffith’s character has been dropped, to be replaced by Angelia Celaya and that Constantine’s bisexuality won’t be an element. I’m not a huge reader of the comic so I can’t comment on how it will affect things, but this strikes me as something that will annoy people. Another piece of casting for Powers has been announced and there’s been more casting news for Daredevil, with Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood) to play Karen Page, Daredevil’s secretary and Peter Shinkoda (Falling Skies) in an unknown role.

We have some new teasers for Gotham and some very interesting news: there was some excitement when the pilot for the show featured a failing stand-up comedian, one of the possible origins of the Joker, as stated in The Killing Joke. The show’s producers came up with a novel way to thwart any speculation – there’ll be a candidate in every episode of the show. That’s a wonderful way to both increase the anticipation and screw with people’s heads to an epic degree, something I’m sure the Joker would support.

Decisions, decisions…

We finally have the first trailer for Big Hero 6, as well as the voice cast for the film, which looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I haven’t been that interested in an animated film since The Incredibles, which should say something. We also have the first trailers for the films Suburban Gothic, about suburban ghost hunters and Reconstruction of William Zero, about a man trying to reconstruct his memories after an accident. There’s also looks at the horror films Ouija and Annabelle, which is a spin off from The Conjuring.

There’s a clip from the animated film Batman: Assault on Arkham, which is set within the timeline of the Arkham video games and stars Kevin Conroy as Batman (Yay!) and there’s a short preview of a  new Green Arrow short that’ll appear on DC Nation. It took us a while to find a version of the trailer for 12 Monkeys that wasn’t region locked, but it was worth the hunt. On the other hand, all the trailers for American Horror Story: Freakshow that I’ve found are either region locked or marked as private. Harrumph.

Christopher Walken will be playing Captain Hook in a live adaption of Peter Pan, Thomas Jane has been cast in SyFy’s new space opera The Expanse and the trend for reboots of 80’s cartoons has continued, with word that Super-Ted and Rainbow Brite will be returning. Jason Isaacs will be voicing The Inquisitor in Star Wars: Rebels and if anyone is surprised by this casting, please raise your hand. I mean, the man’s got a British accent, he’s in a Star Wars production and isn’t playing Obi-Wan Kenobi. Therefore, bad guy. That’s up there with George Lucas intending Count Dooku being evil to be a surprise –HE’S PLAYED BY CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. *Ahem* Sorry about that. Furthermore, Marvel will be releasing all their vintage Star Wars comics to boot, while Seth Rogen has previewed the first song from Preacher.

 Let’s face it, it doesn’t get much more awesome than that.

In a piece of rather odd news, MTV, the channel most known for bizarrely tanned drunken idiots, teenage mothers and NOT PLAYING MUSIC ANYMORE, has given the green light for a Shannara series, based on the book series by Terry Brooks. The first series will be 10 episodes long and adapt the second book in the series, The Elfstones of Shannara. Hey, best of luck to them.

The film Nothing Lasts Forever, starring Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd, has resurfaced. The film was shelved by MGM and never released on video, but has emerged on YouTube. There’s also the first teaser poster for the film Horns, staring Daniel Radcliffe as a man who grow’s a pair of horns from his head, a brochure from Jurassic World has leaked, two of the writers of X:Men: First Class and producer Roberto Orci have joined the Power Rangers movie and Universal are said to be trying to establish a series based around the classic monsters.

With Justice League: Throne of Atlantis confirmed as the next DC animated movie, we’ve a look at the action figure designs and the voice cast, which is a pretty impressive cast – Sam Witwer, Sean Astin and Nathan Fillion appear, among others. Guillermo Del Toro has said that Hellboy 3 isn’t likely to happen  due to a lack of funding, some odd rumours have been emerging from the Fantastic Four reboot, namely that it might not have anything to do with the comics, or possibly not be based on any one story from the comics history. Before you start screaming though, it’s translated from the original Spanish using Google Translate, so it could be anything from the lyrics to Paranoid to the Gettysburg Address.

 Well, there goes my heterosexuality… *swoons*

Joss Whedon has been drawing new Firefly and Buffy on his Twitter feed and Bioware have announced a poll about Mass Effect 4, so if you want your voice to be heard get to the website and fill the poll in! We leave you this week, with news that a new Dungeons and Dragons comics series has been announced, starring everyone’s favourite Ranger and Hamster combination, Minsc and Boo! To make the news even sweeter, it’ll be written by Jim Zub, the writer of Skullkickers, a comic you really should be reading.

Quote of the Week:

Protagonist: Ah, I see you still have that… rodent. Dare I ask how you have kept it hidden from our captors?

Minsc: Don’t ask questions better left to aged sages. Boo is so quick and evasive and there is ever so much of Minsc to search, there is no hope of getting us apart!

Imoen: Eww, I… really don’t want to think about that too much.

Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn

Cheers,

Gavin