It’s still Tuesday somewhere right now and I said I’d finish up my Comic-Con coverage by today, so here it is! My San Diego Comic-Con 2009 SWAG round up.

In Hall H, which is the biggest auditorium at the convention center, there’s typically volunteers handing out items at the very beginning of the day. Sometimes it’s freebies, while other times it’s a ticket you can use to redeem a bag of swag from one of the exhibit floor booths. Thursday was a Tron coin, which led to a scavenger hunt that resulted in a trip to Flynn’s Arcade; Friday was a ticket to redeem a bag of Warner Bros. freebies at the WB booth; and Saturday was a poster and pencil for Lost and I found out that those entering the Hall later in the day got a ticket to get Iron Man 2 items (I was there bright and early, so I missed out on this last ticket).

I feel like I snagged a lot more swag last year, but there were still a few goodies to be had this year [...]

An updated version of DCU Online — DCUO — pre alpha demo was available to all attendees at the San Diego Comic-Con, showing vast changes to the version shown at the event during the previous year. Some of the more recognizable features plucked elements from both World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, yet adapting them to improve the user experience, at least in concept, anyway.

It’s impossible to know until a beta version is released since so much of a good MMO (Massively Multi-Player Online) game relies on the entire experience. The developers seem to understand this concept and they’ve done a hell of a job integrating the 70-plus year history of the DC Universe into the recognizable elements of an MMO. I’ve listed a few notable occurrences from the revised demo at Comic-Con…

High Level “Instances”
It’s nearly impossible not to refer to the epic battle areas of an MMO that requires a load screen as anything but “Instance” — as they’re called in WoW [...]

David Tennant’s last final episodes as the Tenth Doctor were the main topic of discussion in Ballroom 20, which hosted the packed Doctor Who panel at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. So much so, they showed the teaser trailer for his last episode, “The End of Time,? twice during the hour-long panel. Although not airing until Christmas Day 2009, fans went wild as this was the first glimpse of the much anticipated episode. Which you can watch here below.

Tennant was joined by producer Judy Gardner, director Euros Lyn, and executive producer/writer Russell T. Davies for this most interesting and enlightening panel. One of the most talked about rumors spreading across Doctor Who fans has to do with a possible film version based on the long-running BBC program. This was among the first rumors dispelled by the panel during the presentation. Even though a film is not in the works, they did give fans some hope by saying they thought it was a good idea. Sadly, neither Tennant nor his producers would comment further. Another rumor Mr. Tennant shot down was regarding him being cast in film adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic, The Hobbit. According to the actor himself, he “hasn’t even gotten a phone call about it yet.” [...]

We already brought you coverage of the Twilight Saga: New Moon panel from the San Diego Comic-Con. Now, here’s some images from the New Moon items that were on the exhibit floor. You can see all the pictures of the items here below.

Hallmark set up an area with their Twilight-themed items, once of which was a sneak peek at their 2010 Bella and Edward Keepsake Ornament, which showed the sculpt in progress. Along with the new ornament was an array of New Moon party supplies, but I didn’t see up them on the Hallmark site yet, though they are they are available for pre-order at Birthday Direct and include paper cups and plates and plastic utensils. Judging by how Bella’s birthday party turned out in New Moon, I’m not sure how well a New Moon-themed party would go over, but hey, if you dig the movie, here’s the theme for you [...]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in all of the highs and lows of the production of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, it’s that this right here is how to faithfully adapt a book. From the very beginning, the movie was a passion project that saw the director working closely with the book’s author Maurice Sendak to make it a beautiful and fitting adaptation, while also making it his own. This pure love for the material is showing in what we’ve seen so far, and the movie is shaping up to be something truly, truly special.

The Wild Things crew made an appearance at the recent San Diego Comic Con as part of the gigantic Warner Brothers panel, and while the panel didn’t have any big announcements or anything like that, they did bring a lot of wonderful footage and videos to watch. The clips were introduced by young Max Records, who plays Max in the film. The boy came out and stood strong, though he was a little nervous, which lead him to write some things on his hands so he didn’t forget. [...]

The Book of Eli is still relatively unknown to those who do not follow movies regularly. It’s a post-apocalyptic movie starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, and Mila Kunis. While Kunis fits the scene perfectly fine, it is a bit jarring to see people like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman at San Diego Comic Con — like gods of cinema visiting the people.

The movie is directed by the Hughes Brothers (From Hell), who admitted that Book of Eli was actually inspired by Planet of the Apes, though not in a literal way… more of an obscure inspiration. The movie’s tone is being compared to The Road Warrior, and Washington even trained in martial arts so that he could do all of his own fights. Very cool.

We’re told that the movie is set 30 years in the future where a major war has left few people behind and a lot of environmental changes. The main character is Eli (Washington), who’s on a mission of hope and is protecting a special book that is said to offer its owner large amounts of power to guide, lead, control, and manipulate with it. As it turns out, Mr. Oldman is once again playing the villain, and he’s out to get his hands on this book [...]

No one can deny that Robert Downey Jr was the hit of Hall H at the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend at both the Iron Man 2 panel and the one for the Warner Bros. upcoming reboot Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie.

Check out the images from the panel, as well as a description of the new footage shown here below.

Foregoing the usual introduction by the moderator, Downey strut onto the stage unannounced, a most pleasant entrance for the audience, and began to explain the Sherlock Holmes character, created 122 years ago by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Downey explained the Holmes was actually the first superhero and an intellectual one at that, and has grown to become most of the most recognizable figures on Earth.

Downey was joined on the panel by producers Joel Silver and Susan Downey (also Robert Downey’s wife), producer/co-writer Lionel Wigram (who created the comic book spec for the film), and Downey’s co-star Rachel McAdams, who plays Irene Alder, Holmes’ love interest and the only women to ever bested the detective.

The panelists made it clear that while making the film, whenever they were in doubt about a situation, they would always go back to Doyle’s source material to see what Doyle said the characters said and how the characters described one another [...]

Those of us lucky enough to check in on the smaller panel “Cartoon Books and Abstract Studios Happy Hour” at the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend by Jeff Smith (Bone) and Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise, Echo) were privy to some exciting news from both of the artists, as well as just a fun discussion.

The first news of the day was that Terry Moore’s newest book, Echo has been given a film deal by producer Lloyd Levin (Watchmen, Hellboy II) which means that we will be seeing a film adaptation at some point in the future. Echo is a sci-fi tale that tells the story of Julie Martin, a young photographer whose life gets turned upside down when she gets coated in a layer of metal that gives her strange powers. The series is currently on issue 14, with a planned run of 30 issues. Moore also said that his next goal is to get Strangers in Paradise produced as a TV series.

The other big news of the day came from Jeff Smith, who revealed much to the enjoyment of every Bone fan, that two new books will be coming out in the next two years [...]

Fans of DC Comics premier superhero have been happy for the last few months with the resurgence of the entire line, largely under the hands of writers Geoff Johns, James Robinson, Greg Rucka, and Sterling Gates, and they should know that the writers have a lot planned for the Big Blue Boy Scout in the coming months.

Here’s some of the news that come out of the San Diego Comic-Con panel on Superman:

Codename: Patriot will be the name of the next big storyline through all the books, and will place more of an emphasis on what’s been going on with the planet Earth while Supes has been away on New Krypton. The story will focus on Lois Lane’s father, General Lane, and will be the next step towards a BIG Superman event coming up in 2010. Codename: Patriot will be a big game changer and will affect all the characters for the next year. There will also be a Superman: Secret Files out to tie-in with Code.

The Young Justice era Teen Titans will be showing up in Geoff Johns’ Adventure Comics, as well as having what the creators call one of the best Krypto the Super-Dog scenes ever [...]

On Saturday at the San Diego Comic-Con, fans of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy were shown footage of the show’s first spin-off, titled The Cleveland Show. The show follows Peter Griffin’s friend Cleveland Brown, as he and his son Cleveland Jr. move back to their home town. Once back, Cleveland rekindles his relationship with his high school sweetheart, who has two kids of her own.

The show will premiere on September 27th at 8:30pm EST. Judging from the footage shown, I’m still not sold on the series. I’m a pretty big fan of Family Guy, but I was surprised to see that they would be using Cleveland as a character on his own. The show had decent jokes at times, but on the whole it left me pretty cold. Who knows, maybe the good jokes were left out of the previews shown, and it could just be that the creators haven’t found the right tone for the show yet, but Fox had better hope viewers enjoy it more than I did, since they have already picked up the show for a second season, before even one episode has aired. So far, 22 episodes have already been made, and we’ll have to see if they all get shown on the air, or if they just have a lot of episodes to include on the eventual DVD [...]

UPDATE: Since the SDCC panel, there’s been an update on the Futurama casting dispute, with reports that so far three cast members have signed on for next season.

***

None of the voice actors for Fox’s animated comedy Futurama were present for the show’s panel on Saturday at the San Diego Comic-Con, as the actors were still in contract disputes and its still unclear as to whether they will return for the upcoming season. Series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen (as well as some of the other show runners) were on hand at the panel, which turned out to be was a pretty laid back panel, with the writers discussing some of the ideas they have for the new episodes (which will be going forward, with or without the original cast).

Episodes will include the secret origin of Scruffy the Janitor; a storyline involving Bender and Amy getting married, which will lead to a debate on Robosexual marriage and will be voted on (in the show) Proposition Infinity [...]

Fans of the Fox animated comedy Family Guy were treated to a sneak peek of the next Star Wars parody episode, based on The Empire Strikes back, which is titled Something, Something, Something Dark Side.

We got to see about 10 minutes’ worth of the episode, and from the footage shown, fans of the show will be quite happy. All the humor that made the first Star Wars-themed episode a success was back on display. Show creator Seth MacFarlane said that the episode should be on around Christmas. They also revealed the title for the Return of the Jedi episode, which will be called We Have a Bad Feeling about This. Characters from all the Seth MacFarlane shows (Family Guy, American Dad, and the new Cleveland Show) will appear in the Jedi-themed episode. They didn’t say when that episode would air, but did said that work was beginning on it, and I would expect it to air next year.

One episode discussed for the next season was a show dealing with abortion that Fox has said they will not air. McFarlane did not seem upset with Fox’s decision on this, saying that they wrote the episode and submitted the script to Fox, which allowed them to produce it, but canceled the episode after seeing it. McFarlane said viewers could expect to see it on a future DVD release. It does seem odd that Fox would be okay with the episode at the writing stage, but would not have the guts to air the episode, but who can understand the inner workings of a television network [...]

Of all of the gigantic movie reveals that happen at the San Diego Comic-Con each year, you wouldn’t expect a TV show to steal some of the spotlight. Well, leave it up to Lost and producers Damon Lidelof and Carlton Cuse to put on a show and do just that. The duo showed up with some very interesting video clips and a little fun from a few of the show’s cast members, leaving the room fully entertained and perhaps even more curious than ever.

The panel started off with a promo for Lost University — which begins enrollment on September 22, so don’t miss out! After that, they played a few minor clips before introducing Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse. The duo gave a brief intro before going into some more hilarious videos. If you hadn’t figured it out, the panel was more of a collection of fun videos and the above-mentioned interesting videos than anything. Being the last time Lost will be at Comic-Con, the producers made their panel for the fans [...]

I already covered the news coming out of the Adult Swim side of this panel here, but the bulk of this panel was taken up with news and questions regarding the Venture Brothers. There were a lot of great cosplayers in the crowd, including at least a dozen Dr. Girlfriends, so you could tell that a lot of people were fired up for it.

The biggest thing that the crowd saw was the preview for the new season, which premiers in October. The biggest thing in the preview was the look we got at how Hank and Dean are growing up, especially now that all their clones were destroyed at the end of Season 3. Dr. Venture will be getting a new bodyguard, although it wasn’t shown who that would be. As to be expected there were a lot of funny moments to look forward to.

Some information that has already been announced, but which I will repeat here, is that Season Four will be broken up into two 8-episode sections, with the first 8 in October, and the rest airing next year. Creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer confirmed that there will be a lot of characters showing up who have been mentioned before, but never seen, including Monstroso and Captain Sunshine. Viewers will also get to see who the members of the Council of 13 actually are [...]

The annual Fables panel at the San Diego Comic-Con played to a full house on Saturday, largely thanks to a scheduling snafu that had many fans waiting for the Venture Brothers and Adult Swim panel that would be happening in the same room right after it.

After some not so gentle ribbing from Fables creator Bill Willingham about getting the Venture Brothers fans to read a book, the panel went into full swing. The best thing about the SDCC Fables panel is that every year the creators give away a one-page story that is only available at the panel. This year’s story is a prophecy told to Ambrose, one of Snow White’s and Bigby Wolf’s children, and according to Willingham, the story sets up everything that will happen in the book after Issue #100. This was reason enough for me to come to this panel, but fortunately, there was plenty of news to go around.

The big item that was being pushed by the panel was the forthcoming Fables prose novel, Peter & Max. The novel, which will be out in October and will cost about 23 bucks for 400 pages, deals with the adventures of Peter Piper and Max Piper (also known as the Pied Piper). The novel, written by Willingham, will feature illustrations by Steve Leialoha, as well as an 8-page comics story that will tie the novel into the regular series. The art shown at the panel looks great, and as a Fables fan, this is one I’m eagerly anticipating [...]

Just this past weekend at San Diego Comic Con 2009, James Cameron made the mega-announcement that August 21, 2009 would be Avatar Day, and that fans would be able to head out to participating IMAX theaters to see 15 whole minutes of glorious 3-D footage from the upcoming movie (Read: SDCC 09: See 15 Minutes of James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ In 3D Imax For Free On August 21), which will be released on December 18, 2009. This gives movie-goers the chance to really see what the movie is all about and how it hopes to change the cinema experience as we presently know it.

Now comes details via a press release that there will indeed be a whole lot more to Avatar Day than just the 15-minute preview that was announced — in fact, a multitude of Avatar goodies are on the way on August 21!

For those of us who aren’t able to get our hands on tickets to the epic preview, the official trailer will in fact also be released on August 21. That’s right, every single one of us will be able to finally get a look at the movie, whether it’s in theaters on any type of screen, or even just online. Of course, it won’t look nearly as good on a little computer screen in 2-D, but it will give us a small idea of what to expect, in the very least. [...]

At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, we were able to snag posters and a few sets of the Twilight trading card samples for a giveaway.

This year at the Con, we braved the crowds at the Summit Entertainment booth once again to bring you some Twilight Saga: New Moon posters and trading card samples! We have 3 sets of cards and 3 posters to give away to some lucky fans.

The sealed New Moon sample trading card set includes five trading cards: one each for Jared, Paul, Embry, and Sam with character bios and quotes on the back; the fifth card contains an image of all four of them, with info on the Quileute Wolf Pack on the back. See image here at right (click for larger, full view) of the front of the cards. The poster is the teaser seen here: ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’ Teaser Poster.

Three (3) winners each will receive:

– One (1) New Moon sample trading card set
– One (1) New Moon teaser poster

What do you have to do to get a chance to win? Glad you asked ’cause it’s really easy. Just make sure you’re a subscriber to our email digest, and then go ahead and fill out the handy dandy form [located in the contest post]. Good luck! [...]

Battlestar Galactica creator Ronald D. Moore’s followup television series Virtuality will have a commentary track to go along with its pilot episode, he stated during the San Diego Comic-Con panel for Caprica and BSG: The Plan.

“I’m going to do a commentary for it whether they fraking pick it up or not,” Moore said. “It will be done.”

The show has yet to be greenlit by FOX for full production. Currently it hasn’t been announced as a direct to market DVD, which would not stop Moore from doing the commentary anyway, he said [...]

Jonah Hex was part of the Warner Bros. presentation on Friday at the San Diego Comic-Con and unlike the other major presentations in Hall H, the security for the WB properties was insanely tight. Those of us covering the panels were not allowed to keep our laptops open to take notes of the footage shown (other studios didn’t have a problem with this, as long as we turned the backlight off). Because of this, it was hard to take detailed notes of the footage, so a few of us did a Check out the video blog over at footage-reaction video blog as soon as the panels were over for Jonah Hex, as well as the reboot of A Nightmare On Elm Street.

Check out the video blog over at /Film of Dave3 and me, along with Peter from /Film, Alex from First Showing, Vic from Screen Rant, and Dan from Totally Rad Show discussing the footage of Jonah Hex and Elm Street.

At right is the new poster that debuted for Jonah Hex; below are photos from the panel. See SDCC 09: Jackie Earle Haley Nails Freddy Krueger In New ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’ Footage for my full coverage of the Elm Street panel and of Jackie Earle Haley’s portrayal of Freddy Krueger.

The Jonah Hex panel included director Jimmy Hayward, along with stars Josh Brolin, Michael Fassbender, and Megan Fox.

The Jonah Hex film, based on DC Comics series of the same name, is a spaghetti western action flick that includes elements of sideshow and absurdity, as well as the supernatural and fantastical. Hayward stressed that although there’s a supernatural element in the film, there’s no voodoo practitioner raising an army of the undead, as has been reported [...]

While all the geeks and gals of doom were filing into Hall H on Friday at the San Diego Comic-Con we were handed gold tokens bearing the Flynn’s Arcade logo on the front and a “Home of Tron” slogan on the back. You can see this very cool marketing keepsake (which I also made into my new custom Tron Legacy desktop picture) to the right of this paragraph. Sometime later during a Disney panel it was announced that if the bearer of this coin were to show up at J Street & 1st Avenue in downtown San Diego later in the day they could be used to gain access to special surprise.

Those who did show up on J Street, like Devindra Hardawar from /Film and Katey Rich from Cinema Blend, were outfitted with a black light and a map and were instructed to search the surrounding San Diego streets for “Flynn Lives” posters, which according to Devindra contained “hidden coordinates on the posters, which will lead to a certain location on the map.” The payoff for this elaborate scavenger hunt throughout the streets of San Diego was eventually making your way to the front door Flynn’s Arcade itself — which had been fully recreated at 335 6th Street. Clearly the marketing department at Disney was intent on creating a lot of buzz (and fun!) for Tron Legacy during Comic-Con. [Read Devindra's account here; read Katey's account here.] [...]