Thanks to Team Coco for sending us this clip from tonight’s special San Diego Comic Con episode of Conan O’Brien. Not only did we get a first look at an action scene from the upcoming film “Suicide Squad,” but  we were able to hear Jared Leto talk about his preparation for the role as The Joker.

This action sequence that was shared may only be 30 seconds long, but we get a first glimpse  of Harley Quinn and The Joker taking on Batman.

Source: Team Coco

A brand new trailer for The Lego Batman movie made its debut during the Warner Bros. Hall H presentation. Check it out below.

Making its way to the big screen on February 10, 2017 The Lego Batman movie features the voices of Will Arnett as Batman, Ralph Fiennes as Alfred, Michael Cera as Robin, Rosario Dawson as Batgirl, and Zach Galifianakis as the Joker.

With Suicide Squad less than a month away the marketing for the film is about to really get amped up. You can’t go a day without seeing a TV Spot or some new interview from one of the members of the cast. Thanks to the guys over at Collider they have a 55 point Set Visit preview of the things that they saw on set. We took some of those points and condensed them down for your reading pleasure.

•They began talking about the Expanded Universe while they were making Man of Steel, but Suicide Squad wasn’t firmed up until David Ayer pitched his take on the material.

•The present day story of Suicide Squad takes place after the events of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, and is connected to Batman v Superman “in many ways.”

•The film has a fractured narrative, with a number of flashbacks that reveal more of The Joker and Harley Quinn’s relationship in the world of casinos and gangsters.

•The Joker as a character was on the table, but they didn’t want to move forward with him until they had a part worthy of a great actor and a great actor who would play the part.

•The film is a true ensemble, but Deadshot is the proverbial leader and Ayer says “this is really Will Smith’s movie.”

•For comics research, Margot Robbie sought out as many Harley Quinn comics as she could and then used the comics she got for Christmas, right after she got the role, to prepare.

•To justify Harley Quinn’s twisted relationship with The Joker, Robbie settled on codependency and compulsion as what drives her to keep going back to him.

•In rehearsals, David Ayer would push Robbie to jump on any weak spots her co-stars revealed and increase the tension as Harley Quinn, which is the opposite of what Robbie herself wanted to do.

•The intense rehearsal process consisted of Ayer pulling out deeply personal aspects of each actor to fully flesh out their characters.

•Harley Quinn is “nuts” when she’s with the Joker, but when she’s interacting with the rest of the Suicide Squad without Joker, Robbie says she’s “a little more focused.”

•The “adversaries” in the film are being kept under wraps, but the producers hinted that they may not actually be pulling their own levers.

•Putting Batman in the film was David Ayer’s idea and desire, because he has such a strong connection to so many of the characters in Belle Reve.

•They chose to shoot the outdoor Batmobile scenes knowing full well set photos and videos would leak, but they didn’t want to compromise the integrity of practical effects and using real streets.

•Before they started shooting the outdoor Batmobile scenes, they paraded it up and down the street so all the fans who had lined up could get their pictures out of the way.

•Ayer chose which members of the Squad would be in the movie. There was no mandate from the studio. But he did collaborate with Geoff Johns when it came to crafting certain stories for some of the characters.

•While on set, the producers stressed that the film has a tremendous sense of humor as a result of putting this dysfunctional family together.

•David Ayer wrote the character of Deadshot for Will Smith.

•David Ayer would come up with new ideas on set, or hand over new pages that he just wrote that ended up being an entire monologue.

So after hearing some of these things does this make you more or less excited for Suicide Squad?

Source: Collider

So what has been going on with Return to Arkham? The on again off again remaster of the series was suppose to be released this month, but then it was pushed back indefinitely. So when can we see a new release date for this remastered version of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City? Well Eurogamer seems to have some sort of inside scoop on the project, they initially seem to think that the game will finally make it out sometime this fall, but with so much uncertainty looming over the project some people over at Eurogamer even speculate the game might get pushed back to early 2017.

“After reviewing the progress of the project, the team at WB Games has decided to delay the release of Batman: Return to Arkham to give the team at Virtuous Games additional time to deliver a polished Batman Arkham game experience.”

“We do not have a release date yet and will be sure to communicate that once we are sure the game will be ready. We know this is disappointing news, but we feel the extra time will allow the team to create the best gaming experience for our fans.”

With the failed launch of Arkham Knight and the negativity that still looms over that game, it seems that they are trying to make up for AK. Maybe? Who really knows what is going on at this point? We at Shanlian On Batman are surprised that this project hasn’t been scrapped, especially since there are rumors that they are working on a VR version of Arkham and they have another Batman game in the pipeline with Telltale too. If we hear anything in the meantime we will surely give you guys a heads up.

Source: Eurogamer

Tom King got the title all to himself this issue, and it shines through the entire time. Batman #1 is a huge improvement over Batman: Rebirth as far as clear roles of each character and story strength. King’s got his beautiful story all lined up for us. Even though it doesn’t feel quite as gothic and novel as Snyder’s first Batman issue that launched Court of Owls, it will go down as a classic in the years to come if he keeps the momentum up in the next four issues of his first story arc.

King demonstrated a deep understanding of Batman, Alfred, Gotham, and Robin without shoving it down our throats in hundreds of words the way Scott Snyder might do from time to time with his boxes upon boxes distancing themselves from the story to tell us things we’re supposed to glean from dialogue and the characters’ actions, which were wacky anyway—Jim Gordon as Batman? What? Anyway, suffice it to say that King avoided pulling a “Gotham is” introduction and stuck to the characters and let them speak for themselves. This provided some truly heartbreaking moments towards the end: “Is this a good death?” As Frank Miller would say, “A good death? There’s no such thing. Although the way events were playing out even I was starting to believe that Batman had run into a good death.

King gave us great characterization, a wonderful story starter, and a really freaking cool  new Batmobile. Call me old fashioned but it’s glorious. He also set up the answer to the two month old question: who is this Gotham guy, and his tagalong Gotham girl? Hopefully we’ll find out on July 6 when Batman 2 drops.

Once again, Duke as Robin didn’t have much of a role besides helping Batman with the calculations needed to make the jump onto the plane, but I’m looking forward to seeing some of his training and getting the kid in action. With Damian Wayne out of the way in his own books for the time being (thank goodness) I think it’s high time Bruce trained a new guy.

In conclusion, I’m absolutely on board for King’s run after this issue, and looking forward to more of what I read there. I definitely recommend reading Batman #1 and jumping on the series if you haven’t already—it’s better than it’s been and you don’t have to read Batman Rebirth to start following along! It was a near perfect issue in my book.

9.5/10

By John McGee

Thanks to Diana from Team Coco with the heads up of Conan showing off some New Pop Vinyl Figures in this hilarious clip! Check it out below.

Batman Rebirth

Tom King made his partial Batman debut this month with the issue focused on revitalizing Batman for the future—particularly King’s run. But this issue was also a send off of sorts for Scott Snyder, who had obvious influence over some portions.

The issue was short but sweet, delivering not only a thrilling revitalization of Batman, but one of his least worthy foes, the Calendar Man. Instead of whimpering around about days of the year he can now literally die and shed his skin for a new one each “season” of his life, which makes him a nigh unstoppable foe. How else do you handle a guy who can do that without straight up murdering him? Arkham it is. Scott Snyder was great at creating new Batman villains, but his weakest stories were the ones where he handled previously established villains like Riddler and Joker.

Now, the weaker points of this issue were the lack of tying in to the actual Rebirth issue from May, and trying to send off Scott Snyder at the same time they tried to push Batman forward for Tom King’s run. There was no indication of what happened in DC: Rebirth #1, despite the cliffhanger of an ending featuring Batman himself! He seemed to be playing through the events of Batman Rebirth before DC: Rebirth #1 or he simply took a break.

Also the issue seemed to needlessly show off at times with Bruce doing pull ups on the edge of his skyscraper. As awesome as that is, he’s doing it in 100 degree weather in broad daylight. Sure, his back was facing the water, and no one could really see him and snap a photo, but that doesn’t make it helpful to us at all when we’re trying to get introduced to Tom King and Scott Snyder is giving himself a big slam bang finish.

However, the art was gorgeous and the story was solid. Batman has his company back, a new Robin, beat a new and improved Calendar Man, and got us all excited for the great Gotham battle that’s coming up tomorrow, even though we didn’t get to see much come straight out of DC’s Rebirth cliffhanger.

8/10

By

John McGee