In addition to giving a moving response to the Boston Marathon tragedy, Patton Oswalt has been using his status as Lord High Geek to star in some amazing comedy videos this week.  The first is a bit from College Humor where he plays the Penguin in the site’s ongoing mockery of Batman, “Badman”.  In the sketch, Batman fails to understand the difference between death and being asleep.

The other video is a deleted scene from Parks and Recreation where he plays a citizen doing a filibuster by creating possibly the nerdiest fan-fiction crossover ever between Star Wars: Episode VII and The Avengers 2 while also bringing in the rest of the Marvel Universe, licensing rights be damned.  Eventually it just becomes geeky white noise where I stopped following the plot and just heard bits like “Lando Calrissian, Princess Leia, Han Solo love triangle”, “Robot Chewbacca”, and “Time Ribbon”.  I imagine that Oswalt wrote/riffed the uncut 8-minute scene, but since Parks has such amazing writers, I could believe they had input as well.  Hit the jump for comic greatness.

Premiering tonight on Starz is David S. Goyer‘s Da Vinci’s Demons.   The show stars Tom Riley as the artist/inventor/swordsman/idealist living in Renaissance Florence, struggling to exist within the confines of his own reality and time as he begins to not only see the future, but invent it.  I’ve seen the first four episodes and they’re really well done.  I definitely recommend tuning in later tonight.  For more on the show, watch this trailer.

Recently, I sat down with Goyer for an extended interview.  We talked about  how much of the show is based on actual facts, how important it is to balance storylines that resolve themselves within a season and those that carry on throughout multiple seasons, whether he knows the answers to the bigger story arcs, the portrayal of the Catholic Church (specifically the Pope), Bear McCreary‘s music, creating the show’s sets practically and shooting on location in castles, season 2, and more.  In addition, we talked about The Count of Monte Cristo, Godzilla, his thoughts on Man of Steel after watching a screening, whether he would be willing to do more Batman movies, and more.

Warner Bros. has a potential goldmine with the DC Comics license, but their attempts at moving forward on superhero projects have stalled.  Films featuring The Flash and Wonder Woman are stuck in development hell, and the recent script for Justice League had to be scrapped.  So it’s all going to fall on the broad shoulders of Superman.  In a recent interview, Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov says that Zack Snyder‘s Man of Steel is “setting the tone for what the movies are going to be like going forward. In that, it’s definitely a first step.”

Hit the jump for more including a dismissal of a recent rumor regarding Christopher Nolan and Justice League.

Though director Christopher Nolan is more widely associated with the most recent feature film iteration of Batman given that he’s, well, the director, David S. Goyer was also intricately involved with bringing The Dark Knight Trilogy to the big screen as Nolan’s close collaborator.  Goyer and Nolan came up with the initial story for all three films and the two co-wrote the script for Batman Begins.  Nolan has put an end to his relationship with Batman with last year’s closing chapter The Dark Knight Rises, but Warner Bros. will obviously be bringing Batman back to the big screen sooner rather than later given that it’s a billion dollar franchise.

Steve recently sat down with Goyer in anticipation of the upcoming Starz series Da Vinci’s Demons, which Goyer created, wrote, and executive produced.  During the course of their conversation, Steve asked the scribe if he would consider working on a future Batman film should Warner Bros. seek his involvement.  Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

Believe it or not, even though the Batman TV series aired in the 1960s and continues to exist in popular culture today, there was no licensed merchandise for the classic series…until now!  Warner Bros. recently launched a toy and apparel line, partnered with Junk Food Clothing, that pays homage to the retro show.  A kick-off event was hosted at Hollywood’s Meltdown Comics at which Batman star Adam West himself showed up, along with a host of celebrities and fans.  Hit the jump to check out some footage from the event along with images of the new toys and apparel.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off.  Batman’s return to an exorbitantly crime-ridden Gotham has been felt across the city – he’s wanted by the cops, the citizens are divided on the idea of a man who takes the law into his own hands and the mutants, having watched their leader get his ass handed back to him by the Batman, have splintered off, some becoming “Sons of Batman,” a violent vigilante group.  Meanwhile, the Joker, free of the catatonic state he resided in during Part 1, is poised to wreak deadly havoc.  And finally, on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the President of the United States has enlisted Superman as his own personal boyscout/henchman to keep the peace.

Hit the jump for my review of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 on Blu-ray.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are great games, and have been a hit video game franchise for Warner Bros.  Although writer Paul Dini has moved on, the studio hopes to keep the Batman: Arkham world going.  In a 2012 Q4 Earnings conference call, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer John K. Martin said,

“We also have a strong games release this year, which will include the next release in the Batman Arkham franchise. So all in all, we expect Warners to post another very strong year in 2013.”

Hit the jump for more.

For our final Toy Fair image article, we’re doing a huge roundup of NECA toy images.  While they’re making figures/toys for all the regular movies and TV shows you’d expect, the highlight of NECA’s 2013 lineup is the 60′s Batman featuring Adam West!  The reason it’s taken so long to get an Adam West Batman is lawyers.  From what I’ve been told, Warner Bros. owns Batman, while 20th Century Fox owns the show.  For years the two companies have been trying to work out an agreement to release DVDs/Blu-rays and new merchandise with little success.  However, late last year, the two companies finally worked out a deal and 2013 should see a lot of new toys and hopefully a home video release.  Which is great news for the fans.

In addition to checking out the first 60′s Batman toy in quite some time, you can also see new toys for Aliens, A Christmas Story, Captain America, Michael Keaton’s Batman, Carrie, Gremlins, E.T., Harry Potter, Hulk, Iron Man, Pacific Rim, Predator, Prometheus, Scarface, Rambo, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, Thor, and a lot more.

If you’re a toy collector, you’ve likely had a great past few days.  That’s because every February at Toy Fair in NYC, all the toy manufactures  show off tons of upcoming toys and many are being revealed for the first time.  Over the past 24 hours we’ve posted a ton of them broken down by manufacturer, and we’re not close to being done.  However, due to how many we’ve yet to post, I’m going to take a group approach to this article.

As you can see after the jump, we’ve got over 100 pictures from the convention floor and you can check out some of the new toys for Iron Man (and Iron Man 3), The Walking Dead, Batman, The Dark Knight, Star Wars, DC Justice, Real Steel, Marvel Selects, Resident Evil, Arkham City, Star Trek, Superman, Thor, Wonder Woman, Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible, and much more.

Yesterday, Mezco Toyz invited 50 reporters to their international world headquarters for an exclusive preview of the items set to be revealed at Toy Fair next week. We’ve got a bunch of preview images that are sure to please collectors.  On display were new models from such properties as Man of Steel, Breaking Bad, Axe Cop, Thundercats, The Dark Knight and more. Hit the jump to check out the images.

It’s tough making one cool superhero poster.  But making ten of them, each one is as cool as the last, that’s almost impossible.  But that’s what Marko Manev has managed to do with his new black and white superhero noir posters featuring Batman, Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, Thor, Iron Man, Superman, Dr. Manhattan, and Wolverine.  As you’ll see after the jump, every poster captures an iconic scene for the superhero featured.  And while all of them are extremely well done, I think the Silver Surfer is my favorite.   Let me know which is your favorite in the comment section.

As you can see from the above image, not everyone who’s historically been in DC’s Justice League will make it into Warner Bros. Justice League in 2015. The only confirmed creative type on the picture is screenwriter Will Beall (Gangster Squad) as no director or cast is in place yet, but it looks as if we might have a solid core of characters we can expect to see on screen.  We posted an extensive list of possible superheroes a couple of weeks ago, along with the rumors of the movie’s villain and source material.  That list has been whittled down considerably.  Hit the jump to see who made the cut, who missed out and who might pop up as a cameo.

A number of really cool collectibles from DC are set to be released in a couple of months, and we thought we’d take a minute to rundown what’s on tap.  Briefly:

• Man of Steel: Superman 1:6 Scale Iconic Statue – A fairly detailed sculpt of Henry Cavill’s Superman from the upcoming Zack Snyder film.
• Aardman Batman and Robin (Classic) Action Figure 2-Pack – A fantastic take on Batman and Robin from the stop-motion geniuses at Aardman.  Wallace and Gromit fans take note.
• 1:1 Scale Green Lantern Power Battery and Ring Prop Replica – Every diehard Green Lantern fan needs their own power battery.
• Batman Statue By Michael Allred – A nifty black and white sculpt of the caped crusader.

Hit the jump to check out images and further information for all of the aforementioned collectibles.

Yes, gallery shows are still coming fast and furious in 2013, and this week brings us another new one:  Bottleneck Gallery’s Gizmos and Gadgets opens this Friday, and—from the looks of the preview images sent over by our buddy Joe at the Gallery’s NYC location—it looks to be just as impressive as the work we saw from that Gallery throughout 2012.  Wanna see some amazing new artwork from Godmachine, Cuyler Smith, and Dave Perillo?  Find out when you can plan on getting a crack at purchasing some of this stuff online?  Meet me after the jump, folks.

Since his introduction in Detective Comics #27 in May of 1939, the masked vigilante known as Batman has also been called the Caped Crusader and the Dark Knight.  However, another nickname for Bats has been thrown around for a number of years, but we’ve yet to see it fully realized on the screen.  Of course, I’m talking about Batman as the “World’s Greatest Detective.”  (I think Mr. Sherlock Holmes might have something to say about that.)  For the sake of answering the question as to whether or not this is an appropriate nickname for Bats (and for a fresh outlook on the property), I think it’s time for a more cerebral adaptation of Batman.  Hit the jump for what’s sure to be a lively discussion on the topic.  Hollywood! Adapt this: Batman as “The World’s Greatest Detective.”