This LINK HERE leads you to an awesome, awesome Iron Man version of the nerve-janglin’ classic “Operation”!

Variety is reporting that Spider Man 4 will be filming in full 3D. Now there is no report on if the movie will be filmed with 3D cameras or just be upgraded to 3D in post production like the majority of current 3D movies are. No matter how enjoyable Avatar was in 3D, I personally don’t see the need for all these movies to be 3D as well, hopefully this fad will end sooner than later but by the looks of things it wont. Spider Man 4 is scheduled to be released on July 3rd 2012 and will be directed by Marc Webb. No casting announcements have been made at this time.

¡Hola mis amigos nerdy!  How about some comic-book-turned-movie news, yes?

Captain America:  (here), (here), and (here)

Green Lantern:  (here)

Superman: (here)

Daredevil: (here)

That was fun, no?  Until next time, ¡Ruego para que usted pierda su virginidad!

With the news coming out last week in regards to Bendis’ and Romitas Avengers book, there have been many questions in regards to what the other titles may be if any. Well, Marvel announced today the second Avengers book entitled Secret Avengers. This book will be written by Ed Brubaker, who has been doing a fantastic job with Captain America and had a brilliant run on Uncanny X-men previously, and will be drawn by Mike Deodato who currently is the artist on Dark Avengers. Now with the Secret Avengers book being announced we get a teaser image of the first roster member, who this is can be anybodies guess as the image is blacked out but I’m going with Venom for the hell of it.

Due to a slight delay in the book’s hardcover release, Chicago Comics and Challengers have rescheduled their joint “Strange Tales” party and signing from February 13th to March 6th.

This event should be one of the coolest in recent Nerd history, and will be totally worth the wait. Plus there will be beer. Nerd City will see you there.

With the announcement earlier this week that Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr would be the creative team for one of the Avengers books that will be coming out after The Siege, Marvel has continued to release promo images of The Avengers by Romita. So far all the art looks great, but really JRJR can’t do wrong in my book, but what is interesting is a new teaser image by Brian Hitch that features Hawkeye. We have a Hawkeye design by JRJR so speculation still continues in regards to who will be on what teams and what creative teams will be handling each Avengers book. So speculate away, until then enjoy the great art of Romita and Hitch below.

All images courtesy of Newsarama.

With the cancellation and relaunch of the Avengers books in April, Marvel has announced one creative team so far for Avengers.  That team would be Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr.  Bendis of course has been handling Avengers duty since Avengers Disassembled 6 years ago.  Romita is best known for his work on Spider Man, The Punisher, X-men and most recently Kick Ass.  There really isn’t much more to say about this team, other than buying this book should be a no brainer.   No word on what Avengers book this team will be on or how many Avengers books we will get, but this is a great start.

Marcio Takara is known right now for his truly amazing work on "The Incredibles" by BOOM studios, if you’re not buying this book add it to you pull box now!:

He’s also done a lot of work on his own on some of the characters from the Big Two:

Pretty amazing if you ask me! Check out his DeviantArt account you’ll see his take on some of the big guns of DC and Marvel along with several other indie heroes, video game characters and other great illustrations that display pop culture nerd love.

Sony and DC have once again added another hero to the mix for DC Universe Online. That hero would be Zatanna. For those not familiar with Zatanna she is one of the world’s most powerful magic users, born of a long line of magicians who use magic against the dark forces of evil. She inherited her ability to cast spells from her magician father and mysterious mother, the mystical Sindella. She is a loyal and long-time member of the Justice League of America, and often works alongside the most powerful magic users on Earth, including Doctor Fate, Madame Xanadu, and Captain Marvel. Zatanna casts spells by speaking her magic incantations backwards. Her powers are virtually limitless, from summoning shackles to healing others to teleporting from place to place. However, Zatanna is wary of overusing her magic and limits herself to defensive and non-lethal spells. So she will be a great asset to your team by being a primary magic caster, of course if you create your character to be magic heavy there wouldn’t be a reason to have her with you. That’s what will make DC Universe online so fun, the ability to play through pretty much however you want. DC Universe online is schedule to be released at some point this year for the PS3.

When the April solicitations for upcoming comics was released a few weeks back, Marvel detailed their plan to cancel all their current Avengers books (New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Avengers: The Initiative and Dark Avengers) but with no information on what books will come out of the current event The Siege. Well, today Marvel has provided a teaser image which shows the possible line-up for the new Avengers team. Marvel stated that after The Siege, the Heroic Age would begin and that would look to re-unite the top three players of the Marvel universe (Iron Man, Captain America and Thor). So there is no word if this is the actual Avengers team, as within the newsarama interview Marvel gave the standard “no comment” but stated that other teams will spin out of The Heroic age as well, so this could just be a tease of characters on these multiple teams. Either way, it should be a good story that will set up the Marvel universe for the next few years. USA Today has an interview with Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada about the launch as well.

Big day for Capcom news and all of it is good. First things first, Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars is released today exclusively for the Wii. Due to high fan interest and demand, Capcom has finally brought this highly anticipated game over to the US.

Based off of the success of Street Fighter IV and Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Capcom has decided to continue the 2.5D fighting experience for all their future fighting games. According to producer Ryota Niitsuma:

“I think at Capcom one of our specialties is 2D fighting action and we have had a great history of making games like that.

“The 3D models on a 2D plane is a very good match and all of the (game) systems are capable of supporting such a feature. When making such games we can show our knowhow. Going out into the future I can’t say it will remain like this forever, but for the forseeable future I can see us making our games in this style.”

Even better news is, according to Ryota Niitsuma, if Tatsunoko vs Capcom does well Capcom will look to develop future Vs fighting games. Which one can only hope that we could see a full 2.5D Marvel Vs Capcom 3.

Finally, Capcom has unveiled the cover art for Super Street Fighter IV, while giving it an official release date of April 27th. SSFIV will be available on the PS3 and Xbox 360.

You thought it was impossible. You couldn’t believe that the two coolest comic stores in Chicago could work together for one common, awesome goal. Well believe it, baby! Chicago Comics and Challengers have teamed-up to bring you their badass Strange Tales signing and party extravaganza!

Strange Tales was my pick for comic book of last year, and the two stores are bringing in collaborators Michael Kupperman, Becky Cloonan, and Nerd City guest Jeffrey Brown to sign and party all night! This is going to be the shit! The Shit!

Listen to Chicago Comics’ Eric Thornton’s episode of Nerd City here.

Listen to Challenger’s Patrick Brower’s episode of Nerd City here.

Listen to Jeffrey Brown’s episode of Nerd City here.

With Sony starring as Stormin’ Norman/Green Goblin of course….

“Spider-Man 4″, which has had significant problems between Sony and director Sam Raimi concerning the story as of late, has been completely canned for a “reboot” of the movie series.  Ain’t It Cool News linked to their sources of Nikke Finke and Mike Fleming (article here) reporting that since Raimi couldn’t make the release date with the movie he wanted to film Sony decided to pull the plug and relaunch the series.  That means a new web-slinger and supporting cast of actors as well.  After the story broke Sony sent out a press release that said:

“Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012.”

Hopefully we won’t get another origin out of this and Sony will realize that they can just jump into a great story.  Going back to high school and ignoring the first three movies is kinda “One More Day”ish which REALLY won over fans with its retconning of more than a years worth of issues and the marriage to MJ.   While losing Raimi/Maguire is a big deal, it’s not the end of the world.  We all saw how “Spider-Man 3″ ended up with an unhappy Raimi at the wheel, so MAYBE this will be for the best.  But I also think that the studio stepped in and forced some of what we saw with the third movie.  I mean there are plenty of great ways to do another Spider-Man franchise seeing how the character has the second best stable of villians, just slightly behind Batman.  The press release wasn’t specific on a date other than “Summer 2012.”    I personally would love to see a “Kraven’s Last Hunt” on the big screen, but that’s just me.  Best wishes to Raimi, Maguire, and company, for their part in reviving Hollywood’s interest in comics and for making us believe a nerd can swing.

Hit the jump for the full Sony press release.

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As another Nerd year comes to an end, it’s hard not to reminisce about some of the awesome shit from 2009. With that in mind, my pick for best comic of last year (further discussed on next week’s episode of Nerd City) is Marvel’s Strange Tales.

A three issue anthology of top indie creators’ free-for-all interpretations of classic Marvel characters, Strange Tales is innovative and nostalgic and awesome all @ the same time. Featuring work by alt-comic luminaries Paul Pope (Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid), Nerd City guest Jeffrey Brown (Clumsy, The Incredible Change-bots), Max Cannon (Red Meat), Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo), Tony Millionaire (Maakies, Sock Monkey), Jhonen Vasquez (Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Invader Zim), and their takes on Spider-Man, The Hulk(s), Dr. Strange, The Inhumans, The Watcher, Submariner, The Fantastic Four, Longshot, The Punisher and many more.

Seriously, this one of the most jam-packed books I have ever read. Each issue features ten or so stories, their all 48-pages, and it’s only 3.99! In a time when it’s hard not to feel ripped off by the cost of a comic, Strange Tales is an homage to the good ol’ days when books brimmed with guest stars and not because the company was trying to pull off their umpteenth full-universe crossover event of the week. What’s more, it would have been good if even half the stories were cool, but all of them are rad. Really. Fucking all of them. Great for superhero fans, great for indie comics fans, this was the best book of last year.

Get your copy of Strange Tales @ Chicago Comics.

Listen to Jeffrey Brown’s episode of Nerd City here.

Direct Youtube Link

Also, Santa Claus in the Marvel Universe.