The Magdalena #1
Written by Ron Marz
Pencils by Nelson Blake II
Inks by Sal Regla
Colors by Dave McCaig
Letters by Troy Peteri
Top Cow
Price: $3.99
Release date: April 21, 2010

Finally Ron Marz, known for his other recent Top Cow work on Witchblade and Broken Trinity, got his wish to work on The Magdalena and wow did he start off great. I really was blown away by this first issue of the new run. It isn’t very easy to please everyone with a first issue, but I think Marz did a great job of mixing in references to the old material as well as inform new readers of what they’re in for. Doing all this while peppering in characterization for all of the main cast shows just how much love Marz has for the series.

Let me start off by telling you what The Magdalena is about. After the death and rise of Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene, who was said by a few to be his wife, had a daughter. From this daughter started the line of Magdalena, which is the royal bloodline. Each daughter is trained as a warrior to protect the Catholic Church and carries the title of Magdalena, which entitles them to weild the Spear of Destiny — the spear that pierced Jesus in the side — as their weapon against evil.

Sunday morning brought an interesting panel at C2E2 2010 with the always entertaining Bill Willingham, writer of Vertigo’s Fables, as well as writer for JSA at DC, and the Angel series for IDW. One of the items talked about at the panel was the re-release of a novel Willingham wrote several years ago that’s been out of print for a while. The novel is titled Down the Mysterly River and will be released by TOR books sometime in the Fall of 2011.

The story is about a character named Max the Wolf who is mistakenly sent to the wrong afterlife because of his name, and then goes on a wild adventure with a bunch of other animals. Willingham remarked that this novel, which was originally released in limited numbers in 2001, is essentially a “proto-Fables story” and that the book is an unofficial Fables tie-in, so I’m willing to bet that fans of the series will be looking forward to this. Unfortunately, Willingham did not give any information about a follow-up to the official Fables novel, Peter & Max, which was released earlier this year, although he did mention that characters from that book would soon be showing up in the Fables comic.

Some depressing news for Star Trek fanatics worldwide. In an interview with The Toronto Sun, Leonard Nimoy apparently revealed that he now intends to retire from acting and even from all of those crazy conventions that have been such a huge part of his career.

Nimoy, who was finishing up his last episode as Dr. Bell on the popular J.J. Abrams TV show, Fringe, basically just explains that he’s been doing this longer than most of us have been alive, and it’s time for him to step away and enjoy his life.

We all know about the swarm of movies being made based on toys and board games, including one about the limber Stretch Armstrong starring The Twilight Saga‘s Taylor Lautner (Read: 3D “˜Stretch Armstrong’ Grabs “˜The Twilight Saga’ Star Taylor Lautner; “˜Battleship’ Now Set To Strike On Memorial Day ).

The script for the movie was originally put together by Evan Almighty writer Steve Oedekerk, but now Universal has decided to bring in a new writer to join their equally-new director.

The studio has chosen Rob Letterman to direct their Stretch movie, and has also brought in Nicholas Stoller to rewrite the existing script. Letterman has mostly animated film experience, having directed Shark Tale and Monsters vs. Aliens for DreamWorks, while Stoller has written Fun With Dick and Jane, Yes Man, as well as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, both of which he also directed. The two gentlemen recently collaborated on the upcoming Jack Black flick Gulliver’s Travels, which Stoller wrote and Letterman is directing.

By mk2fac3

On Friday, Harmonix and MTV games announced a new set of downloadable content for their popular Rock Band video game franchise.

In the upcoming week, a 3-pack of songs from Coheed and Cambria, as well as tracks from Supergrass, The Violent Femmes, and Siouxsie & The Banshees will be available on the XBox 360, Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii consoles.
All tracks are original master recordings.

With more than 400 artists’ downloadable songs available from Rock Band, these new songs definitely round out a wide variety for any fan of music-based games. All single songs are available for $1.99 (160 Microsoft Points) and the 3-track pack is available for $5.49 (440 Microsoft Points).

Songs available on Xbox 360 and Wii (April 20) and Playstation 3 (April 22)…