Marvel Studios has confirmed various internet rumors that Robert Redford will be playing the villain MODOK in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Check out the first look at Redford in character here below!

The Hollywood icon will be joining Avengers stars Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson Cobie Smulders, and Scarlett Johansson, along with Anthony Mackie, Toby Jones, Hayley Atwell, Emily VanCamp, with Frank Grillo as Crossbones and Georges St-Pierre as Batroc The Leaper, all set to star in the film directed by Anthony and Joe Russo.

Mara #3
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Ming Doyle
Colors by Jordie Bellaire
Image Comics
Release Date: March 6, 2013
Cover Price: $2.99

There’s this familiar feeling I got after reading the first two issues of the Image Comics series Mara that I couldn’t put my finger on, which is funny because the premise of the book – a beautiful athlete in the future competes in professional volleyball – has been praised for being unique. And it certainly is, but I realized that the book was reminding me of David Foster Wallace’s notorious tome Infinite Jest, the 1,100 page novel being set largely in a tennis academy where young people train to compete in a media landscape vastly different then the one we know. The novel and the comic also have a captivating protagonist with some sort of shameful secret and peripherally circling both of them are an array of bizarre human beings with their own askewed political agendas. Look, it’s far, far from a being a perfect parallel, like I said, but there’s just something there that brings it to my mind.

Now with Mara, things take a much different turn (let me quickly throw up a **SPOILER WARNING** for issues 1 and 2 for this upcoming paragraph)…

The Grand Duke
Written by Yann
Illustrations by Romain Hugault
Edited by Paul Morrissey
Translation by Edward Gauvin
Letters by Thomas Mauer
Archaia Entertainment
Release Date: November 14, 2012
Cover Price $24.99

The solicit for Archaias’ new European import The Grand Duke describes the book as “A Romeo-and-Juliet story set against WWII aerial dogfights.”

If that does not immediately grab your attention, then we’re looking for entirely different stories in our comics, you and I. Well, it got my attention and while that’s maybe not a 100 percent honest way of pitching the story, it got it’s foot in the door for what turned out to be an astonishingly great read.

Set along the Eastern front beginning in 1943, Luftwaffe Oberleutnant (Read: German [Read: NAZI!]) Adolph Wulf and Comrade Lilya (Read: Commie!) of the dreaded 588th known as the “Night Witches” – an all women battalion that, apparently, was a thing – have grown rather disillusioned with their situations in the war. Wulf, rather palatably, despises the Third Reich and fights solely for love of his homeland and motherless daughter. Lilya is realizing that even in Stalin’s socialist paradise there are still glass ceilings for women even after they’ve held bloody and terrible front lines down.

Swerve
Written by Jon Judy
Art By Dexter Wee
Cover Art by Chris Seaman
Art Director Sean McArdle
Production & Design by Jace Tschudi
Edited by Amanda Hendrix
Arcana Studios
Release Date: February 15, 2012
Cover Price: $19.95

A funny thing about pro wrestlers – for all their flamboyant showmanship, sometimes it’s their lives outside the ring that makes them really compelling. The family man that puts his life in danger is the premise that made the documentary Beyond The Mat work. The role of Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson – big, loving, flawed – is what almost singlehandedly brought back Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky’s seminal The Wrestler. A random stranger I still think of often: ten years ago, on an overnight Amtrak train, I once struck up a conversation with a retired semi-pro in his late 40s who lamented how he never got comfortable terrorizing little kids asking for autographs just to keep up his villainous persona. He was on his way to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter.

Swerve, a self-contained series from Archaia, is set in a seedy underworld of sex, drugs, and violence. What makes it stand out is that at the heart of the story are these compassionate characters. It’s not a flawless story; the alchemy of mixing the staged violence inside the ring with the very lethal violence outside it maybe doesn’t 100 percent click, but there are passages here that feel sharp and fresh.

When Quincy Gow left his career in New York City, he walked away from working on the sets of projects as diverse as The Amazing Spider-Man to Precious to FX’s Louise, what many of us would consider a dream job. He returned to his home state of Michigan in part to be closer to an old friend of his who’s been diagnosed with cancer who, despite his illness, insists on working towards the completion of a children’s book. Quincy was compelled to help in the only way he knew how, make a movie.