AKIRA, PARTS I & II
SYNOPSIS: In post- apocalyptic Tokyo, the leader of a bike gang tries to save a friend from military experiments and execution.
CHALLENGING ELEMENT: Psychokinetic abilities that let one explode like a human A-bomb may be risky in the age of the suicide bomber.
BIG NAME ATTACHED: Leo DiCaprio (producer)

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
DEATH NOTE
SYNOPSIS: When a high-school student finds a death god’s supernatural notebook that allows him to kill anyone whose name he writes in it, he uses it to snuff out evildoers.
CHALLENGING ELEMENT: Given the rise of school killings, something tells us principals won’t be lining up to endorse this one.
BIG NAME ATTACHED: None yet. Cowards!

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
COWBOY BEBOP
SYNOPSIS: In post-apocalyptic (sense a theme?) space, a crew of bounty hunters (a.k.a. “cowboys”) on the ship Bebop track down criminals.
CHALLENGING ELEMENT: Kids will love the source material’s jazz themes!
BIG NAME ATTACHED: Keanu Reeves

————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
SCOTT PILGRIM
SYNOPSIS: A dickish Canadian slacker has to thrash his dream chick’s evil ex-boyfriends to get it popping with her.
CHALLENGING ELEMENT: Making Pilgrim even more like Michael Cera, so he can continue his “most movies playing himself” streak.
BIG NAME ATTACHED: Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jason Schwartzman. We smell an emo hit!
————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

So when pictures from the set of Iron Man 2 surfaced recently, we were excited to see Scarlett Johansson playing Black Widow…which subsequently reminded us of our other favorite villainous vixens. We picked the 8 hottest bad girls from comic book movies so see if your favorite villain made the cut…

#8 GIANNA JUN AS SAYA
BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE, 2009
A 400 year-old, half-human, half-vampire, has never looked so good. We wouldn’t mind putting our stake in her, yadadamean?

#7 JENNIFER GARNER AS ELEKTRA
DAREDEVIL, 2003
Elektra and Daredevil could never make their relationship work because they were kind of enemies. We’d be the bigger man and make peace if our rival was that hot.

#6 UMA THURMAN AS POISON IVY
BATMAN & ROBIN, 1997
The rash we would get from her is worse than any venereal disease, but we have a bottle of calamine lotion handy!

#5 DANIA RAMIREZ AS CALLISTO
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, 2006
She plays the leader of the Omegas and Storm’s mutant enemy. Battle scenes with Halle Berry? Are we dreaming?

#4 KELLY HU AS LADY DEATHSTRIKE
X2, 2003
Lady Deathstrike is Wolverine’s lady foe that he used to mess with. We’re lucky our psycho ex-girlfriends don’t have adamantium claws.

#3 MICHELLE PFEIFFER AS CATWOMAN
BATMAN RETURNS, 1992
One of our favorites, she can do no wrong.

#2 REBECCA ROMIJN AS MYSTIQUE
X-MEN, 2000
We’ll let Rebecca give us blue balls…literally.

#1 ANGELINA JOLIE AS FOX
WANTED, 2008
You’d think we’d get sick of seeing her in so many action movies, but it never gets old.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL “MIRROR, MIRROR” GALLERY!

WATCH THE “MAKING OF” VIDEO WITH ARTIST PAUL POPE:

In the February/March 2009 issue of Complex, we brought you a “Shotcaller” interview with Watchmen director Zack Snyder (click here to read the article). Like his adaptation of Alan Moore’s epic graphic novel, our feature was so deep that we had to edit some of the brilliance out just to make it fit on newsstands.

To see the complete version of the film that Snyder wanted to put out, you’ll have to wait for the director’s uncut ultimate blowout version of Watchmen on DVD, but you can get all the extras from our interview right now. Read on for Snyder discussing his relationship with Alan Moore, being spoofed and his awesome upcoming projects…

Interview By Justin Monroe

Complex: Sucker Punch, which is on deck, is an original story you wrote. Have you been looking forward to doing something without source material?

Zack Snyder: It's fun. I don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book. [Writing something original from scratch], the initial process is way different. But once it exists and you start to actually work on making it real, then the approach is kind of the same, for me anyways.

Complex: How does it feel to have 300 spoofed in Meet the Spartans, one of those horrendous parody films?

Zack Snyder: I think it's pretty funny. You can't get upset about that. If the thing didn't hit pop culture in the knees pretty hard, there'd be no reason to spoof it. My favorite parody of 300 is Robot Chicken's 1776. They nailed it. I saw that and I'm like, “I'm going to make that into a movie!” [Laughs.] I can't wait to see Robot Chicken's Watchmen parody.

Complex: You've respected Watchmen creator Alan Moore's desire to have nothing to do with Hollywood adaptations of his work, but do you secretly hope he calls you one day to say he accidentally saw the film and thinks you did a great job?

Zack Snyder: Do I respect him and think he's amazing? Yes. Do I hold that hope for that? No. That's a pipe dream.

Complex: If he were inclined to view Watchmen, do you think he'd be proud of it?

Zack Snyder: We've tried as hard as we can into keep the ideas intact in the hail storm that is Hollywood, so, whether he is or not, I'm personally proud of what I've been able to jam down their throats.

Complex: Early on, did you make any special gestures to Moore to try to get his blessing?

Zack Snyder: I did not. By the time I came along, that ship had sailed.

Complex: What do you think went wrong with previous adaptations of his work?

Zack Snyder: I don't want to make any assumptions about what's good and bad, but I will say that I tried not to make assumptions about what Alan thinks. I think that's what has been done by a lot of people.

Complex: You're doing Cobalt 60, from artist Vaughn Bode's work. He was big in the graffiti world. Were you into graf growing up?

Zack Snyder: I wasn't, but Vaughn was one of those artists I did follow, and I was aware of his influence in the graffiti world. I can't say I was connoisseur of graffiti art, but I was certainly aware of that influence.

Complex: What attracted you to Cobalt 60 originally?

Zack Snyder: I used to be a huge fan of Heavy Metal magazine growing up, and I was exposed to Cobalt there and fell in love with the character and the world. I've tried to track it down and pursue it myself to make a movie out of it. Also I felt like the thing that's cool about Cobalt is it does have a culty kind of underground quality to it that I really like.

Complex: What made you want to remake Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man?

Zack Snyder: Well, Bradbury's a genius. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books of all time, and The Illustrated Man as a collection of short stories ranks up there. When you read it you realize how influential it is on so many other stories and people.

Complex: The Illustrated Man's tattoos move on his body and depict future events. How will technological advances in special effects figure in to your portrayal of that?

Zack Snyder: Some of the stuff that we learned with Rorschach [whose mask features constantly changing ink blots] I think will inform a lot of what we do with that because you can do anything almost now.

Complex: Have you decided which stories you'll use?

Zack Snyder: It isn't all of them but it's a lot of them. More than you'd think. We have a couple right now. We've written a few extra and we’re probably going to decide how we're going to approach those last few. We have like a few extra so we can so we're not locked in. We can go, “Maybe this will be better.”

Complex: How do you maintain the crew's passion when you're working with CGI and green screens?

Zack Snyder: I know, that's hard because it's abstract, so it's hard for them to stay frosty and everything, but we keep a pretty healthy pace. And a lot of the people I work with, I regard as family. In that sense we all have a pretty good time. We're glad to do work.

Complex: What diversion helped get you through the filming of Watchmen?

Zack Snyder: I gotta say the [2007-08] football season. We shot through the football season. The Packers went pretty far and that really was my distraction. I was born in Green Bay, so I'm bit of a Packer fan. Brett Favre has Godlike status at our house. My wife would be like, “Oh my God, are you kidding me? On your only day off, you're going to watch a football game?” And I'm like, “Yes, we are.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ZACK SNYDER ARTICLE FROM COMPLEX’S FEBRUARY/MARCH ISSUE

Pause. Take a second to acknowledge how far we’ve come as a society that comic legend Stan Lee is executive producing a series about a gay superhero for Showtime. The project is based on openly gay writer/director Perry Moore’s novel Hero, which tells the story of Thom Creed, a teenager and the world’s first homosexual superhero, who wrestles with his secret identities when he’s not pinning villains.

Creed isn’t actually the first gay do-gooder. (Did you really think the super-chiseled men in tights running with the super-chiseled man-women were straight?) Whether their homosexuality was declared or merely implied, gay heroes have long existed in comics and have helped pave the way for this new series. Check out some of the gay do-gooders to grace the pages of Marvel and DC comics over the years. (Forget the indies'like indie rock and indie rap, it goes without saying that they’ve always been gay)…

Click here to see the gayest Comic Book Superheroes…

Some of the characters Dean has rendered include Dwight from The Office, Neo from The Matrix, and even former Simpson’s writer Conan O’Brien. This month, Fraser is focusing on Marvel, posting a different superhero or villain from the comic universe each day. In addition to three of the Avengers pictured above (Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man), he’s dropped 12 other characters so far. Check ‘em out below…

FANTASTIC FOUR (MINUS THE THING)

SILVER SURFER AND DR. DOOM

GHOST RIDER

SHE-HULK, THE HULK, SUB MARINER

LUKE CAGE, MS. MARVEL, THE PUNISHER

[Springfield Punx Via Drawn!]

You youngins may not be up on our boy Archibald Andrews'after all, Archie comic books originated way back in 1941. But after stumbling upon a batch of old-school Archie covers, we realized that the redhead kingpin probably has a lot in common with you: He’s irresponsible, forever broke, crazy about hot chicks, bi-curious, and loves to… wait, hold up, rewind. Bi-what? Yeah, you heard us. We’re not saying he ever played tug-head with Jughead, but Arch was kinda loose with guys and gals. We’ve got archived evidence as proof.

Click Here To See The Most Flagrant Archie Moments…

Now it’s almost seven years later and we’re less freaked out than we are in utter disbelief at the major hoodwinking we (and the rest of the world) received at the hands of our functionally retarded president. Well, guess what? Get Your War On is back, it’s as pissed-off as ever…and it’s on video! Watch the promo and first two episodes below.

The promo spot:

Episode 1:

Episode 2:

[23/6]

Heavy D shows his Jamaican roots on a possible comeback record with Junior Reid. [Nah Right]

Vans is plaid, not played. [Kicks On Fire]

Gears Of War 2’s head designer in charge teases fans with more hints about the soon-to-be Xbox classic. [Das Gamer]

The cover art for the fifth Scott Pilgrim installment is revealed. [Scott.Ning]

Then again, the teaser is so crazy that the admittedly crappy cameraphone quality is still enjoyable. The footage, which focuses most on Wolvy and Liev Schreiber’s Sabretooth before they became the mutants we know and love, also gives a glimpse of some other X-Men standbys like Gambit and Blob. Even will.i.am makes an appearance, though we’re already on record as not seeing the logic of that casting. Our only other concern is that Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds) is nowhere to be found. Watch the footage below.

But like the films themselves, not all video game adaptations are created equal. A great movie can sometimes make a wack game, and vice versa. After the jump, check out our analysis of every game release that was inspired by one of this summer’s superhero-style action releases.

IRON MAN (Sega: All Consoles)

RATING (OUT OF FIVE): 3.5
We thoroughly enjoyed everything about this solid action shooter, especially the inclusion of all of Iron Man’s various suits. Shit, that’s the best mech suit we’ve seen since Neon Genesis Evangelion! The only downside is that the game is fucking hard. Yeah, we’re quitters.

LEGO BATMAN (Warner: All Consoles) Shipping 9/23

RATING: 4
Fresh off LucasArts’ mildly disappointing LEGO Indiana Jones game comes another blockhead adventure, this time starring the Caped Crusader. Technically, this lighthearted game is more like the ’60s TV show than the The Dark Knight, but with plenty of villains and sidekicks, it looks way better than Indiana Jones. We’ll give it a 4 on the trailer alone.

SPEED RACER (Warner: Wii, PS2, DS)

RATING: 1
If you like the film, you’ll love the ga…wait a minute, did anybody actually like this film? ‘Cause we sure thought it sucked balls. Likewise, the game is good for about two minutes before crumbling into a big mess.

HELLBOY: SCIENCE OF EVIL (Konami: 360, PS3, PSP)

RATING: 3
We love the simplicity of third-person button-mashers, and this one delivers. It’s not based on the film, but it stars the same cast, and director Guillermo del Toro helped in the development. Call it a poor man’s God of War'and that’s a pretty good compliment.

THE INCREDIBLE HULK (Sega: 360, PS3, PS2, DS, PC)

RATING: 2
Another summer, another mediocre Hulk movie, another mediocre Hulk game. Some things never change. You know, Bruce Banner, his angry alter ego, a wide-open city…smash, grab, smash, grab. Yawn.

WANTED (Warner: TBD) Shipping Late 2008

RATING: TBD
All we know about this forthcoming title is that it’s being developed by the dudes behind Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and that it’s a third-person shooter that incorporates curving bullets and a storyline that picks up where the movie left off. Meh. We can wait.

There’s been a lot of speculation about whether or not a complex character study like this can ever be done justice in a two hour movie. But even the biggest skeptics have to admit that the trailer makes it look like director Zack Snyder (300) is on the right track. And damn, Jeffrey Dean Morgan really does look exactly like The Comedian. Watch it below.

More than just a visual history, the book reads like a labor of love; images from pre-Depression nudie comics to modern-day Mexican sensacionales are presented along with insightful essays that make the book perfectly suitable for a coffee-table centerpiece (albeit an intesnsely NSFW one). After the jump, check out some relatively tame images from inside the book.

(A postcard from 1902)

(A 2007 Mexican sensacionale cover)

(An Eric Stanton cartoon from the 1960s magazine Satana)

Always on the lookout for new shit in the ink and paper world, we were stoked to come across fantasy author Jeff VanderMeer’s collection of ’70s comics from India. The Hugo Award-winning author turns 40 next week and is revisiting his comic collection (which is something we can relate to'except we do it when we turn 24, 25, 26 and most days in between). It turns out there was (and still is) a whole genre of comics depicting Indian historical and religious figures. Peep more of Jeff’s collection after the jump.
 

    

[Ecstatic Days via Boing Boing] 

While the show won’t debut until next Spring, Marvel announced that they will be debuting the pilot at this year’s San Diego Comic Con. Watch two new trailers for the series below.

New Trailer for Wolverine And The X-Men
Extended Trailer for Wolverine And The X-Men

[Marvel]

The 2004 Punisher film starring Thomas Jane, which was panned by critics and comic fans alike, was only a moderate success after being released on DVD. Nonetheless, they’ve recruited a new actor, Rome’s Ray Stevenson, to play the badass vigilante in the new flick that’s being released in December. It’s too soon to tell whether or not this is a good move, but we’re happy that they decided to cast The Wire’s Dominic West as his mangled enemy Jigsaw. Watch the film’s first trailer below.

There is something compelling about a man living in fear of the beast that lurks within him (just look at how many hits Monstersofcock.com gets daily). The cursed Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) has to run from the military and avoid contact with loved ones for fear he might hurt them. Worst of all, he can't smash the Brazilian model who lusts after him because his fully excited Hulk unit would explode her (Talk about not being green with penis envy!).

Unfortunately, it's the “star of the show,” Hulk, who creates a big problem for the movie. Ayo! Scott was at Comic Con in 2007 and heard all about how exciting new technology would transfer Norton's facial expressions to Hulk's face, allowing him to emote like a thespian. Other than one (admittedly fresh) transformation scene, Norton is imperceptible. For much of his tour de brute force, CGI Hulk is either pissed off, really pissed off, or really fucking pissed off. On the rare occasion he's not roaring or grunting, he inexplicably transforms into a super-sized bitch, getting sappy around Banner's piece Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) and wincing when he bumps his head'even though he's just shrugged off bullets like they were a mild case of jock itch. Ultimately, the new and improved Hulk didn't make Ayo! choke on his own vomit, just cough up a little bile. See the trailer and Complex’s own 3-minute reenactment after the jump.

The Trailer:

Complex’s 3-Minute Hulk Reenactment:

The 8 issue story arc is set 50 years in the future, when the villains have taken over the world, and Wolverine is just a dusty old farmer in Sacramento named Logan. The first issue drops next Wednesday (June 11), and Newsarama just leaked a seven page preview. Get a taste of Old Man Logan after the jump.

[Click on an image to view full size]

[Newsarama]

The story follows a college student who finds a mysterious notebook that somehow kills whoever’s name you write on its pages. Rumors about a Hollywood remake have been swirling since the rights were picked up by Warner, but it seems like its really happening after a recent report surfaced claiming that Vlas and Charley Parlapanides (the writers behind 50 Cent’s upcoming car racing movie Live Bet) are currently working on the screenplay. Watch the trailer for the Japanese movie after the jump to get familiar.

[Bloody-Disgusting]

Now, French publisher United Dead Artists has collected some of his best frames for a new book called Permagel. The anthology includes 32 large-format printings of art from Black Hole, Big Baby and the rest of Burns’ work thorugh the years. Right now it’s only available in Europe, but a U.S. printing can’t be far behind. View more frames from the book below.

[Click on an image to view full size]

[THE BEAT]