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That’s the refreshingly straightforward title of a recent study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Andy Cush sums up its findings this way: “The bad news: you’re probably a freak. The good news: everyone else is, too”:

Researchers from University of Montreal presented 799 men and 718 women—85.1 percent of whom identified as heterosexual, 3.6 percent homosexual, and 11.3 percent somewhere in between—with a long list of statements regarding fantasy scenarios, asking them to rate their agreement with each on a scale of one to seven. Anything rated over three was counted as a fantasy.

Some notable trends: women were far more likely to fantasize about sex with strangers or in particular locations, while men were more interested in oral and anal, as well as sex with acquaintances. Men also tended to describe fantasies that weren’t on the list more vividly and expressed more interest in actualizing their fantasies than women.

Jessica Orwig has more:

Interestingly, both sexes were about equal when it came to participating in group sex, although more men reported wanting to have an active versus passive role during group sex. When it came to whom the subjects thought about, men reported fantasizing more about people they were not currently involved with. Of particular interest to the researchers was the high number of fantasies that were mostly unique to men, for example, fantasizing about anal sex and watching their partner have sex with another man. “Evolutionary biological theories cannot explain these fantasies,” researcher [Christian] Joyal said.

Check out the researchers’ full chart of common and rare fantasies here.

Jesse Singal, regretting how he’d never challenged a “borderline-compulsive” street harasser he once knew, spoke with Hollaback’s Debjani Roy in an attempt to better prepare himself for such interventions in the future:

[A]m I overestimating the impact one disapproving conversation can have? Probably not, said Roy. [This serial harasser] Harry had probably, like many young men, been in a lot of social situations in which street harassment wasn’t looked down upon and may have been actively encouraged. “We all know about peer pressure,” said Roy. “And I think a lot of the original behavior comes out of that. Like, ‘Dude, why aren’t you hitting on her? Dude, why aren’t you trying to pick up more women? Why aren’t you yelling that at her?’” Having another guy come up and say exactly the opposite, then, can make an impact — even if it’s not guaranteed to.

Singal adds that even just commiserating with or checking on the harassed woman afterwards can be a beneficial way to get involved. He concludes:

What all this comes down to is that, in much the same way that harassing is a socially ingrained part of Harry’s life, not responding to “mild” incidents of harassment is a socially ingrained part of mine. For whatever reason, I and a lot of other otherwise “good guys” have succumbed to the notion that it’s best to just stay out of these situations rather than intervene.

A reader shares his own missed opportunity:

Many years ago when I was in my early 20s and living in Boston, I was on the T late at night and saw this middle-aged Hispanic man harassing a young black woman clearly unappreciative of his advances.

She was very overweight, and after the man sat down next to her, he started leaning in and talking to her and touching her arm while she just shrank into the wall of the car. Occasionally she would turn to glare at him, or say something so softly as to be inaudible. It was a pretty crowded train, but nobody else seemed to be paying attention to the situation and I, having never witnessed anything like it before, sort of froze. I just kept watching and told myself that if he really grabbed her or became belligerent, then I would intervene, but that never happened, and so still I did nothing. He kept harassing her, and I kept watching uncomfortably and wondering what I should do. Several minutes later when my stop came, I asked the group of people standing next to me to please keep an eye on the guy to make sure “nothing happened” and I got off the train.

I have no idea what happened to the woman, but of course something was already happening to her, and it may have gotten much worse. I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. Naturally, my regret over that night has only grown, especially after hearing my wife and female friends’ personal experiences with public harassment and assault. For all the consternation about these feminist campaigns and their tactics, the resulting discussion and increased awareness is surely a net gain. The women in my life certainly never told me about any of this stuff until I knew to ask, and I’m now quite grateful for, and influenced by, their perspectives.

As for us men? We’re long overdue to grow out of this crap, harassers and bystanders alike. I definitely wish I had sooner.

I’ve actually been in a couple of similar situations and have actually intervened. “Is this guy bothering you?” is my usual question. Both times, the answer was a demurral. But my just asking that question in public shifted the atmosphere a little bit. And I stood by, watching the dude until he moved away. I guess I could have been foolish and certainly didn’t want a physical confrontation with the dude. But it struck me how potent a simple question can be in making a woman feel a little less alone and a man a little more self-aware that others were keeping tabs.

Read our two long catcalling threads here and here.

Given dramatic declines in global biodiversity, E. O. Wilson continues to support the idea of making half the Earth a nature reserve. He recently explained to Joseph Stromberg why he thinks such dramatic action would be feasible:

[T]hink of it this way: currently, the ecological footprint of the average American is about 20 acres — that’s the amount of land required to support all needs of the average person. So this means that to achieve a US standard of living all around the world, it’d require three or four planet Earths. So it can’t be done.

But now consider the digital age — especially the industries of biology, nanotechnology, and robotics. These and other developing technologies can shrink the size of our ecological footprints. For instance, nowadays, people are buying smaller and smaller electronic devices. This is what they want to buy, not for any environmental ethic, but because they’re more sophisticated. But they also use fewer materials, and less energy is required to run them. … So by making use of these scientific disciplines and technologies, we can help save the living world and secure more safety for our species. It lies in an unintended consequence of the post-industrial and digital revolution.

George Dvorksy argues that Wilson’s idea isn’t so half-baked after all:

He’s right when he says that our collective ecological footprint is set to decrease over the coming decades. Once it’s down to manageable levels, humans won’t require much living space. We seem to like collecting ourselves in large cities, anyway. One of the main challenges as I see it, however, is reducing the ecological footprints of emerging nations. Disseminating these technologies to all the world’s people will be a monumental challenge.

Further, as a resource-crazed civilization – whether it be trees or oil – we’d have to resist the temptation of grabbing whatever we want from Wilson’s preserved areas. Petro states like Canada and Russia won’t be too happy to see huge swaths of their territory set aside for nature. And what about those people who live in these areas? Would they be forced to relocate? But that’s not to say these are intractable problems. They’re political problems, and an issue of collective will.

Amber Sparks interviewed serious writers about their lowly influences:

“I aspire to write ‘great books,’ but great books are not at all what made me want to write,” says Mike Meginnis, author of Fat Man and Little Boy. “Some of my most formative early reading experiences were apocalyptic Christian YA fiction from my church’s lending library.” It seems ridiculous, on the face of it, that writers could learn their craft at the doorstep of writing or culture that might appear inartful, inelegant, or lack complexity. And yet it makes perfect sense. These books are popular not because of their sentences, but because of their storytelling. And isn’t that the first thing every writer has to learn, regardless of medium or genre? …

I discovered, as I talked to lots of writers, that the vocabulary of the lowbrow almost universally reflects a kind of throwaway culture: garbage, disposable, trash. Yet it’s clear many of us have never tossed out these first and primary influences—they are anything but disposable when we look back at where it all began. Whether we writers actively avoided, sought out, or just plain knew nothing else, it seems what we consumed of the lowbrow world of literature, television, films, video games, and other pop culture has had significant influence on an awful lot of us. When we were young, many of us sought pleasure in the simplest kinds of stories, wherever we found them.

i don’t care if it’s simple americana, this so-called “treat” is wet fruit on wet bread mush and it needs to stop

That’s how cosmologist Alex Vilenkin explains the way the universe will end:

All of a sudden a tiny little bubble will appear. It can appear anywhere—under your chair, or somewhere in Andromeda, very far away—and this little tiny thing starts growing at a speed that’s pretty close to the speed of light. And as it expands, all things that it engulfs turn into an alien form of matter. It may be approaching us right now. Say it nucleated at Andromeda some millions of years ago, it may be expanding toward us at the speed of light. But we don’t get much of a warning. So the good thing about it is you don’t really have to worry about it.

So what would happen to the Earth? It would just go, “FLOOP!” and not exist anymore?

Yeah. Inside of this bubble, ordinary matter as we know it does not exist. It’s made up of different kinds of particles. So everything will be turned into some other stuff that we just don’t know about. But aside from the fact that the end will come very quickly, the other piece of good news is that the probability of the universe ending at any given moment is extremely low.

Like how low?

We can’t really tell. It depends on particle physics at very high energy, so we can’t reliably calculate it. But back-of-the-envelope estimates give you extremely low numbers, like trillions and trillions of years from now. The probably of it occurring while our sun is still active and burning is almost nil. So most likely it will happen when the sun is already gone and, you know, we might not be around.

We know there’s a Wonder Woman movie coming in 2017. We know it will star Gal Gadot in the lead, and she also appears in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice.

But as of this date, we presumed it would be set in the modern day. Well, why wouldn’t we?

It’s not. I have been informed by those who have seen the greenlit treatment that the film will spends the first half on Paradise Island with warring Amazon factions vying for control.

An arrival of a man on the island changes that status quo, as he asks the Amazons for help. Not necessarily Steve Trevor either…

Because when Wonder Woman joins him on his return to the world of Man, we all discover that it is the 1920s. And the film will then show Diana exploring that world – a world where women have only just got the vote – from her… unique perspective.

A planned sequel would then take place during World War II in the thirties and forties. This of course was the period that the seventies TV show began in, before shifting to the then-modern day.

And a threequel would then take place in the modern day, with the Justice League Of America.

So. Not the Wonder Woman we were expecting. But the period-set Captain America; The First Avenger didn’t do too badly, did it?

The First Wonder Woman Movie To Be Set In The 1920s, And Its Sequel During World War II

HBO has secured its principal actors for a seventh season of Game of Thrones. The actors who were all signed through a sixth season have renegotiated for a seventh season which has them making roughly $300,000 per episode starting with season five. A seventh season has not been officially greenlit, but it seems very likely.

The actors in the series are paid based on a tier system with the A tier consisting of Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and are said to have renegotiated their deals in tandem.

The B tier is said to also be getting raises but it’s not known how much at this time. The tier includes Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell), Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and others.

The show is one of the biggest hits for HBO with the season 4 finale pulling in 7.1 million viewers. Game of Thrones has passed The Sopranos as the most watched HBO show in terms of average gross viewership and the series pulled in 19 Emmy nominations.

[Source: THR]

HBO Locks Up Game Of Thrones Principal Actors For Seventh Season

There is a rumor that the first teaser trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice may be out as soon as next month. That would seem like a long time before the movie’s release date of March 25, 2016, almost too early to do a teaser. But if you think about it, normally a teaser for this big of a film would be released a year in advance, so this would only be a few months earlier.

Also, Warner Bros may be thinking of attaching it to the final Hobbit film, which is likely their biggest film between now and the spring. And a lot of the film has already been shot so putting a teaser trailer together now shouldn’t be a problem. But along with the timing of the teaser, it’s also said the teaser trailer is done and is going to be a very Batman-centric.

[Source: Batman On Film]

Batman V Superman Teaser Trailer May Drop Before End Of The Year

Humanoids Publishing has announced that The Metabaron will return in 2016 in a four book series, based on a story by series co-creator Alejandro Jodorowsky, written by Jerry Frissen and drawn by four different artist. Each book will be 108 pages long and published every eight months.

The Metabaron was introduced as part of The Incal, first created by Jodorowsky and Mœbius in the pages of Métal Hurlant. It later became its own series, The Metabarons, with art by Juan Gimenez sold more than one million copies during the 1990s.

The new series will kick off in June 2016 and will feature the art of French artist Valentin Sécher, who burst onto the scene with the series Khaal: Chronicles of a Galactic Emperor. For the second book, Canadian artist Niko Henrichon will take over. Henrichon is best known for the 2006 graphic novel The Pride of Baghdad, written by Brian K. Vaughan.

The Metabaron To Return In 2016

It is the lowest point in the Superman film franchise and one that doomed the film series for years, until Superman Returns doomed it all over again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. A film in which Superman destroys the nuclear weapons of the world, and then has to fight some nuclear-spawned semi-version of himself created by Lex Luthor. It’s not very good.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But with today’s Superman #35, writer Geoff Johns, who worked as Superman movie director/producer Richard Donner‘s assistant, seems to be trying to rectify some of the themes in that movie, giving them a different context and presenting a very different solution, courtesy of Superman-alike Ulysses.

So in today’ issue, Ulysses not only becomes aware of the weapons around the world, but finds it hard to distinguish them from the weapons of the bad guys they are fighting.

And Superman’s equivocation is hardly convincing. He made a much better speech to the UN.

So he decides, such as Superman did in that movie, to take it to the world.

For his very different solution… well, the comic is on sale today.

Comics courtesy of Orbital Comics, London. 

Is Johns And Romita’s Superman Meant To Be ‘Superman IV: The Quest For Peace’ Done Right?

After it’s record debut in China last weekend (29.8 million), the Guardians of the Galaxy has crossed the $700 milllion mark world wide. It is the third Disney release to do so this year and the second for Marvel Studios this year and fourth overall (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Iron Man 3, The Avengers).

Now standing at $705 millions, Guardians tops the domestic box office but ranks 6th in word-wide just behind The Amazing Spider-Man 2 at $709 million.

[Source: Deadline]

Guardians Of The Galaxy Cross $700 Million World Wide

Last night’s Variety promised that the next Captain America movie would be based on Mark Millar and Steve McNiven‘s Civil War series, and would co-star Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark and Iron Man.

It coincides with Marvel’s plans not only to do a new Secret Wars event next year but also a Civil War revival in the summer.

My own expectations are that this would also lead to the death of Chris Evans‘ Captain America with Falcon talking the role in Captain America 4….

But the Variety piece has another rather interesting note,

A Very Civil War Between Kevin Feige And Isaac Perlmutter?

“I don’t do well with claustrophobic situations.” That’s Landon Donovan, talking in “The Finish Line,” the new Grantland Features series on his imminent retirement from soccer, about the aftermath of his most famous goal — the one against Algeria in the last skinny sliver of extra time, the one that sent the United States through to the knockout rounds of the 2010 World Cup. The one that made a million cameras in a million bars shake like they were recording an earthquake. The one that made Ian Darke, the Englishman doing TV commentary for ESPN, into an American soccer folk hero for the delightfully unfeigned way in which he spilled his marbles all over the microphone. Donovan drilled Clint Dempsey’s blocked shot into the corner of net. Then — he describes it as involuntary — he peeled off to his left, toward the corner flag. As the whole bench sprinted toward him, he did an arms-forward belly slide onto the grass. “I had this split second where I went oh shit,” he says, because he knew he was about to get crushed. The whole team leapt on top of him, the way teams do. “And I remember being down there, and at some point, after a few seconds, I just remember saying, OK, get up, get up, get up … trying to get someone’s attention to get off me so that I could breathe again.”

The strange thing about Donovan’s retirement is not that he’s calling an end to his career; he’s 32, after all, not old for a soccer player but certainly not young for one, and he’s accomplished everything he’s likely to accomplish. He’s won five MLS Cups with two different teams, he’s won four CONCACAF Gold Cups, he’s been a league MVP and a multi-time U.S. Soccer Athlete of the Year. He’s gone to the quarterfinals of a World Cup. He’s the all-time leader in goals and assists for both the U.S. men’s national team and Major League Soccer (both regular season and playoffs). He’s even a two-time player of the month at Everton, proving that, despite the knock that’s followed him since he left Bayer Leverkusen as a homesick kid in 2001, he could in fact get ’er done in Europe. Now his knees hurt; there is no conceivable sense in which he hasn’t earned a rest.

No, the strange thing about Donovan’s retirement is that it’s finally a reality, when he’s appeared to be on the verge of retiring for so long. He spent so much time not-quite-explicitly on the threshold of leaving that it started to seem as though he never would. One of the mysteries of his career, in fact, is how he made himself into a figure of ironclad longevity — 157 caps for the national team, the second-most of all time — while often seeming like a gust of wind could take him away from the game. It sometimes seems as though he’s spent longer looking for a way out of soccer than he spent looking for a way into it. He could have left when he came home from Leverkusen, young but already with the air of vague sadness about playing soccer that has perplexed so many of his fans. He could have left when his L.A. Galaxy team remade itself, to his dismay, around David Beckham in 2007. He could have left when his loan to Bayern Munich fizzled in 2008. He could have left, and maybe almost did, when he took his controversial months-long break from the game in 2012-13. He easily could have left when Jürgen Klinsmann left him off the U.S. roster for the 2014 World Cup. He seemed, at most of those moments, like he maybe wanted to go. Instead he stayed through all of them, stared into the distance a lot, and kept scoring goals.

You could have a weird impression, watching Donovan’s late career, of someone who got sick so often that he finally became immortal. But it was more than that. Donovan carried a zone of retirement around with him, the way fighters sometimes seem to move in a zone of potential violence. There was always this slight hint of removal, as if he were surrounded by a Photoshop blur set to 1 or 2 percent — hardly detectable, but enough to let you know that you were seeing him, and being seen by him, through a force field of self-created privacy. His life was public (his postgame interview after the Algeria goal included some heartfelt words for his estranged wife, the actress Bianca Kajlich) but also visibly being lived inside his own head (no one could figure out why he brought up Kajlich in the interview in the first place; he filed for divorce a few months later). He was on camera and he was interior. Sometimes the contradiction between those two attributes made it seem as though he might go beyond leaving soccer and just wink out of existence, like the picture on an old-fashioned TV set when you switch it off.

Inwardness is a dangerous quality for an athlete, at least for one who wants to be loved. The crowd loves athletes who reflect its own feelings back to it, athletes who can be watched without seeming to watch back, athletes whose characters can be read uncomplicatedly. (Often this is a matter of performance on the part of the athlete, of the athlete’s acting out a set of approved gestures, but that doesn’t alter the point; Roland Barthes writes in Mythologies that professional wrestling appeals to spectators because it offers an image of “the perfect intelligibility of reality.”) Inwardness like Donovan’s makes that kind of identification tricky. It’s not so easy to achieve emotional fusion with your avatar-champion when everything from the tension in his jaw to the way his eyes keep flicking to one side of the frame suggests there’s stuff going on with him he doesn’t want you to see.

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

So he could be hard to love, at least from the crowd’s standpoint. Remember, Donovan came along at a vital moment of transition for American soccer, a chrysalis-level moment. When he won the Golden Ball at the Under-17 World Cup in 1999, soccer was still a fringe sport in this country. You couldn’t take it for granted that the U.S. men’s team would qualify for the World Cup, much less escape the group. MLS existed, but it still thought the way to appeal to suburban moms was by acting as much like a 1997 Plymouth Grand Voyager as possible. Aston Villa games were not only impossible to find on TV on Saturday mornings, the average American sports fan thought Aston Villa was James Bond’s car.

Flash-forward to last week, when Donovan made his final appearance for the USMNT, and the change is — but you already know what the change is; that’s why the change was important. The short version: I no longer do a double take when I see an Atlético Madrid shirt in Oklahoma, where the only more exotic piece of sports kit would be a Portland Timbers jersey. Donovan was the face of U.S. soccer for nearly all that time, with all the attendant pressure and scrutiny that implies. I’ve written about this before, but it’s frequently been hard to escape the feeling that a lot of American soccer fans, your Joe Sporting Kansas Cities or whoever, wish he’d been somebody else — somebody grittier or cooler or less self-conscious, somebody more like Tim Howard or Clint Dempsey.

So Donovan’s career represents this fascinating paradox. American soccer couldn’t have taken off without him. But American soccer did take off, leaving him an uneasy presence in a spotlight he’d helped create, a complicated hero at a moment that begged for a simple one. He refused to be anything but himself, and what could be more American than that? But what he was — complex, reflective, observant, careful with himself — was so out of step with our expectations for a major sports star that he left us with a sense of something unresolved. He left us wishing, not for someone more authentic, but for someone who’d do us the favor of pretending to possess the kind of authenticity we were looking for.

And yet he kept scoring goals. Years passed, and he kept scoring. There were people who called him a traitor when he took that long break from the game — which, keep in mind, came two years after the Algeria goal, something you’d think would have bought him a tiny bit of leeway with web commenters; but it’s true, there were people who felt he owed them something even after that. He took the break anyway, because he thought he needed it, and because he refused to be anything but himself. He meditated and did some therapy, because he thought that would help. And then he came back, and kept scoring goals.

Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Which is why the scene after his last USMNT match — Donovan jumping up and down leading a raucous American Outlaws supporter group in the team’s “I Believe” chant — was so moving. It was partly that the crowd embraced him. He’d been cheered by American crowds throughout his career, of course, but this felt different, more like a culmination; there was a gratitude that took in his whole career and transcended petty sports criticism, and he deserved to hear it. But the scene was also moving because, for once, the blur of aloofness fell away from him. He looked totally and openly in the moment in a way that’s usually reserved for the few seconds after he scores an important goal. It felt, weirdly, as if he was unretiring — as if he’d been gone for a long time and had now finally come back. In a way he had, I guess.

The match, an otherwise forgettable 1-1 draw against Ecuador, ought to be remembered only for that. In his “Finish Line” video, after he describes the claustrophobia of the post-Algeria pileup — and he’s joking around here, he’s smiling; still, though, it’s like him that the biggest event of his career had space for this little fretful aside — Donovan trails off. “But it was an incredible moment,” he adds. It was an incredible moment last week. It was an incredible moment for 15 years; now he gets to breathe again.

She made her first appearance in Edge Of Spider-Verse #2. I do hope you got a copy. Because, after promises that the alternate universe Gwen Stacy-turned-Spider-Woman would also appear in the new Spider-Woman series, today at the NYCC Marvel Retailer meeting, as well as an Avengers 2 trailer and news about Fantastic Fourever and No More Mutants, they were promised an ongoing Spider-Gwen series.

But what to call it? Spider-Woman is already taken. Spider-Girl might be too demeaning. Spider-Girl is just silly.

The Amazing Gwen Stacy?

Marvel Announces An Ongoing Spider-Gwen Series

It was a story that Bleeding Cool first only offered as a possibility, but as more and more evidence came in, it became more and more likely.

That, as a result of Disney’s highest single shareholder and Marvel CEO Isaac Perlmutter’s anger with Fox Studios over negotiations regarding the film-and-related rights to The Fantastic Four, that Marvel would cancel the Fantastic Four comic rather than provide any promotion, how small it might be, towards the Fox Studios film. Merchandise and licenses were scrapped and even Fantastic Four posters in the offices were pulled down lest Perlmutter see one and have his ire raised. It may not have been logical, but it was a decision born of personal emotion. It was steadied by sense, X-Men wasn’t cancelled for example as the Xbooks sell so well. But Fantastic Four? It may have been the first book of the Marvel Universe, but its sales have continued to drag, even after multiple relaunches with high profile creators. There would be less of a hit to the bottom line if this comic was dropped.

Our story was pooh-poohed by all and sundry, save for CBR who independently confirmed that it was intended for the Fantastic Four to be cancelled. Then the letter about sketch card artists being forbidden to use Fantastic Four characters was made public, Mondo talked about being forbidden to use Fantastic Four characters and today, we we were already planning to run another story about Diamond Select Toys confirming that they are unable to make any Fantastic Four toys.

Right now we are not able to make characters from the FF, but as soon as that changes we will consider them.

But events moved on too quickly. Now the catalogues of Hachette, Marvel’s bookstore distributor, seems to confirm the cancellation at least. With June’s solicitation for  James Robinson and Leonard Kirk‘s Fantastic Four: The End Is Fourever.

THE END IS FOUREVER! Witness the closing act on the First Family of the Marvel Universe! THE INVADERS meet the FANTASTIC FOUR as the hunt for REED RICHARDS and the missing kids of the FUTURE FOUNDATION continues. Meanwhile the mastermind behind everything unveils his ultimate plan. But how does FRANKLIN RICHARDS factor in? And how does this all lead to…The END?! Collecting FANTASTIC FOUR #642-644 and the Triple Sized Final Issue 645!

Fantastic Four Vol 3 ended with legacy numbering of #611, Matt Fraction‘s run went to #16, which would add up to #627. December’s 2014′s solicited issue for the current volume is #14 which would add up to #641. Which would slip into a renumbering of January’s #642 nicely.

On that basis we might expect Fantastic Fourever to begin in January and the final issue to be published in April. Although the collection before Fantastic Fourever is listed on Amazon as going up to #16… though I can’t worth the addition on that at all. Anyone?

And how this tallies with Tom Brevoort’s statement back in June that,

We are publishing FANTASTIC FOUR. Next month, we will be publishing FANTASTIC FOUR. A year from now, assuming that it’s still selling well, we will be publishing FANTASTIC FOUR.

…I don’t know. I suppose if it isn’t actually being published, then it won’t be selling well. August’s stats has #8 of the comic selling more than Wolverine & The X-Men, Punisher, Nightcrawler and Storm, and way ahead of other to-be-cancelled titles.

Expect the announcement of the cancellation of The Fantastic Four at NYCC. And expect a story-based reason for the cancellation – that they have a great final story for the team and want to give it impact.

We have also noted that the Time Runs Out storyline in the Avengers titles, looking forward to April and May, sees Susan Storm as a member of an Avengers team hunting the Illuminati, specifically her now bearded husband Reed Richards, who is in hiding. The Fantastic Four is clearly no more.

That and also feel that the comic could do with a rest, as happened with Thor in the past. Maybe that because the film is so different to the comic, they don’t want confusion in the marketplace. I’m sure there will be a reason given. But people working at Marvel who have spoken without attribution say that, from the beginning, it was all about Ike.

It’s also worth noting that this comic may be cancelled just before the Fantastic Four movie was originally planned to come out. Now that it has been delayed, you may have to wait even longer for the comic to return – after the DVD is out, perhaps?

CONFIRMED: Fantastic Four To Be Cancelled In 2015 With A Triple-Sized Issue 645, For Fantastic Fourever

Kidnap my family once, shame on you… kidnap them twice, shame on me… kill my wife, all bets are off. 20th Century Fox has released the trailer for Taken 3… or Tak3n as the logo says and here we see that Liam Neeson is back as Bryan Mills and he is wanted for murdering his wife (Famke Janssen) and is being hunted by Forest Whitaker. Also in the cast but I didn’t see in the trailer is Dougray Scott as Stuart St. John… sounds like a villain to me.

Tak3n will hit theaters January 9, 2015.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In New Trailer For Tak3n, Liam Neeson Needs His Particular Skill Set For Revenge

Blizzard Entertainment has a juggernaut that may be slowing down, it’s called World Of Warcraft. One of the most successful games of all time, but not nearly at the peak of popularity it once was. Perhaps the upcoming new expansion will bring folks back… but the question Blizzard has been asking for a while is, what’s next?

That answer will not be Titan.

Though it was never officially announced, the next generation game was in development for seven years. Now Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime confirmed to Polygon that the project was now dead.

“We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs. So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn’t come together. We didn’t find the fun. We didn’t find the passion. We talked about how we put it through a reevaluation period, and actually, what we reevaluated is whether that’s the game we really wanted to be making. The answer is no.”

Blizzard is expected to release more news soon about what they will be doing plus we are not far away from the release of Warlords of Draenor and Blizzcon.

Blizzard Cancels Titan After 7 Years Of Development

We got confirmation on Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn for the second season of True Detective, now Variety is saying that Rachel McAdams is being offered the female lead. Jessica Biel and Malin Ackerman were also considered, but McAdams has been the front runner but up until yesterday a scheduling conflict with a film project, Spotlight, kept her from accepting. But their sources say that a deal was worked out in the last 24 hours allowing the actress to do both roles.

They report that it is the female lead that many believe will have a similar response to fans that Matthew McConaughey’s part as Rust Cohle had in season 1.

Also, it is still expected that Taylor Kitsch will sign on as the fourth lead.

Creator Nic Pizzolatto has been busy writing the second season, which is set in California and revolves around three police officers and a career criminal who navigate a web of conspiracy in the aftermath of a murder. McAdams and Kitsch are expected to play cops alongside Farrell, while Vaughn plays the crime boss whose empire is threatened when his partner is murdered.

Rachel McAdams Likely Female Lead For True Detective Season 2