People love Loki. This is not something many villains can say, but Loki, who appears in Thor, The Avengers, and upcoming sequel Thor: The Dark World, is not your average villain. This is largely thanks to actor Tom Hiddleston, who portrays the Asgardian god in all three movies.

Hiddleston is so popular as Loki, in fact, that a petition has been created to try and get Marvel to make a stand alone Loki movie. Petitions are made all the time, of course, and rarely given a second look. But so far this particular petition has rapidly obtained support from all around the globe, quickly rising to almost 19,000 signatures as of the writing of this post, and has been covered by numerous news outlets.

Vincent Van Gogh is my favorite artists of all time, so I was pretty excited to see that one of the Dutch painter’s long-lost works was recently unveiled after spending decades in storage in a private collector’s attic after the owner was told it was a fake. (Usually, all we hear about is how Van Gogh paintings are stolen and then found and then stolen, etc.)

Titled “Sunset at Montmajour,” the recently authenticated painting was unveiled this week to the media by Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, who believe Van Gogh painted it in Arles in southern France in the Summer of 1888, around the same time as some of the 19th century Impressionist’s famous works, like “Sunflowers” and “The Bedroom.”

If you look at the blue building in the distance on the far left in this landscape painting, you’ll notice it looks pretty familiar, doesn’t it? As our pal Amy Ratcliffe over at Nerd Approved pointed out — as well as lots of fans on Twitter — this edifice looks a lot like the TARDIS from Doctor Who!

Part of today’s Kindle ebook deal of the day over at Amazon is the Wheel Of Time novel New Spring by Robert Jordan on sale for only $2.99 (that’s 63% off the regular price of $7.99).

Note – this deal is valid only for today, Thursday, September 12, 2013, until 11:59pm PST.

If you’d like to purchase a physical copy of New Spring, you can get the hardcover for $17.20.

Whether you’re accepting of the overwhelming use of digital effects or not, it’s hard to deny just how far we’ve come with the technology. So many little details can be added in later that you never even notice while watching, and it can be really incredible to see.

One example is the effects-heavy Pacific Rim, director Guillermo del Toro‘s massive giant robots versus giant monsters movie. Mirada Studios, which was co-founded by del Toro, Guillermo Navarro, Mathew Cullen, and Javier Jimenez, handled the over 80 visual effects shots created for the movie’s two-minute prologue (Industrial Lights and Magic did most of the rest of the movie), and they’ve released a special look at the befores and afters of some of these shots so we can see just how much goes into each one.

Click on over to the other side to check out the video below.

Wonder Woman, Vol. 3: Iron
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Cliff Chiang, Tony Akins, Dan Green, Amilicar Pinna
Colored by Matt Wilson
Lettered by Jared Fletcher
Cover by Cliff Chiang
DC Comics
Release Date: September 11, 2013
Cover Price: $24.99

Starting with the events that happened between Diana’s 12th and 13th birthdays, Wonder Woman, Vol. 3: Iron shows the training Diana received at the hands of War and the lesson of compassion and mercy that would lead her for the rest of her days.

Jumping ten years, she is now trying to help the mother of her infant half-sibling track and rescue from Hermes her baby. With a unique group assisting her made up of other half siblings, a now-mortal Hera, gods playing both sides, and Orion, Diana has to travel the world, and underworld, to find the missing baby. All the while, Cassandra is resurrecting the One with No Name, who has been buried for seven thousand years.