PIYA SINHA-ROY REUTERS LOS ANGELES - Comic-Con International rolls into San Diego this week for its annual pop culture convention, and high on the list of must-see events is film footage of what actor Elijah Wood promises is a bigger Hobbit than fans can imagine. Comic-Con, which kicks off on Thursday and is expected to attract more than 125,000 people, is the biggest event of the year for many fans of comic book superheroes and science-fiction lovers. And TV networks and Hollywood's major studios stage elaborate promotions to showcase upcoming films and programs. Actors Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner will put on their vampire fangs and werewolf claws for the last time to discuss The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 . Hollywood veterans Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger will be on hand to promote The Expendables 2 . Perhaps the greatest sense of anticipation this year is reserved for The Hobbit , a Warner Bros. film based on the novel by [...]

We live in an age of speed-up, which may explain why the Spider-Man franchise feels the need for a reboot only 10 years after its first picture, and five years after the most recent one. In its broad strokes, The Amazing Spider-Man is a remake of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002), but it's not the broad strokes we care about. This is a more thoughtful film, and its action scenes are easier to follow in space and time. If we didn't really need to be told Spidey's origin story again, at least it's done with more detail and provides better reasons for why Peter Parker throws himself into his superhero role. Parker is played by Andrew Garfield (Never Let Me Go), who at 28 looks too old to be in high school, but then movie teenagers usually do. His key quality is likability, which he shares with his predecessor Tobey Maguire. As his classmate and girlfriend, Emma Stone (The Help) plays a well-grounded girl who needs [...]

X-Men | Moncton man says technology means you can be successful and still live in smaller communities By SHANE MAGEE magee.shane@dailygleaner.com The aisles in the back of Fredericton's Strange Adventures shop on York Street were crowded as people lined up to talk with Nick Bradshaw, a Moncton artist who illustrates one of Marvel Entertainment's top X-Men comics, Wolverine and the X-Men. 'It was cool,' said Nichole Saunders. 'I'm an artist myself so it was great to talk to someone in the indu st r y.' She was one of about 20 people in the store just after 1 p.m. on Saturday . Bradshaw talked to her for about 15 minutes about his work, the comic industry and her own work. 'He gave me a list of different comics and information to help me with my work,' she said. He offered Saunders advice on a web comic she's producing, telling her that a lot of people in the industry keep an eye on new web comics [...]

Halloween actor Richard Lynch , who became a staple in horror and sciencefiction movies with his scarred facial features, has died at age 76, his spokesman said on Wednesday. Lynch's representative, Mike Baronas, told Reuters that Lynch's body was discovered by one of the actor's friends, who had stopped by Lynch's house in Palm Springs, Calif., after not hearing from him in days. She found the door open and Lynch lying on the kitchen floor,"cold and lifeless." Baronas said no investigation is being held into the death of the actor and his body was sent directly to a funeral home. Lynch, who was born in New York City in 1936, made his name playing villainous characters in movies such as 1973's Scarecrow, 1988's Little Nikita and 2007's instalment of the Halloween horror franchise, directed by Rob Zombie. Lynch also appeared in numerous television series in his five-decade career, most notably the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980. Lynch's face was permanently scarred in 1967 [...]

NEW YORK - Ray Bradbury, a giant of American literature who helped popularize science fiction with works such as The Martian Chronicles , died on Tuesday at age 91, his publisher said on Wednesday. Bradbury published more than 500 works including Fahrenheit 451 , a classic novel about book censorship in a future society, and other favourites such as The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes . "Mr. Bradbury died peacefully, last night, in Los Angeles, after a long illness," said a spokesman for his publisher, HarperCollins. As a science fiction writer, Bradbury said he did not want to predict the future - but sometimes wanted to prevent it. Such was the case with Fahrenheit 451 , a book published in 1953 about a totalitarian, anti-intellectual society where banned books are burned by "firemen." The title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites. The novel, which Bradbury wrote on a rented typewriter at the UCLA library, featured a world that might sound [...]

MICHAEL CAVNA THE WASHINGTON POST Jon Goldwater was riding his New York commuter train, just two weeks into his new job as co-chief executive of Archie Comics, when a fellow passenger tossed off a remark that blindsided him. The fresh executive had an Archie folder on his lap, Goldwater recounts,"when a woman sitting near me turned and said:'They still make those?!' " "It. Freaked. Me. Out," Goldwater continues. "I almost got sick to my stomach." Yet he also took home the underlying message from the encounter several years ago: "If we didn't change Riverdale, we would risk becoming irrelevant." Led by Goldwater, the creative minds at Archie Comics decided to"update"their characters. In 2010, Archie Comics entered the current century by introducing Kevin Keller, Riverdale's "first openly gay character." The result: headlines and turned heads that culminated in its Marriage of Kevin Keller! issue selling out this year. To comics fans, none of this is new and surprising after decades of gay characters and relationships from [...]

Over the course of the glorious month of May, little green men are tinkering with our site. We are upgrading our server and firewall, upgrading our cart software, and implementing little gadgets and gizmos. Some improvements will, and have, resulted in slight hiccups to our earnest online Chaosium service. Other improvements will result in our taking our site offline for a few hours to chant, move databases, and perform other semi-occult rituals. The result will provide you with an increase in swellness when using our site. We will let you know as improvements and changes occur. The U.S. Post Office, for example, occasionally changes elements of their online app that allows sites to accurately receive postal rates. The effect for us is that it "breaks" our USPS module, causing hangups and general grumpiness. That module has been fixed, modified, re-registered, and fixed again, and now seems to be working well. We also had one of the little green men, Jim, rough-up our database. He stomped [...]

Celebrity American actor returns after three years out of the pictures for 'Men in Black 3' BOB THOMPSON POSTMEDIA NEWS Will Smith's been out of pictures for three years, but he's back with Men in Black 3 . Suffering from third-degree burnout, Smith took a break from an incredibly successful 18-year run. The Oscar-nominated actor's movies earned more than US$5.7 billion at the box office across the world. The former Fresh Prince of Bel Air TV star didn't exactly stay at home to count his money during his unofficial sabbatical, though. He was a producer on the successful 2010 remake of The Karate Kid , which starred his son, Jaden. And the former rapper helped his daughter, Willow, with her music career. She had a hit with the single Whip My Hair last year. Now, Smith returns re-energized with Men in Black 3 , which opens in theatres May 25. In the 3-D comedy directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, Agent J (Smith) travels back in time [...]

CONSTRUCTION ZONE Over the course of the glorious month of May, little green men are going to tinker with our site. We are upgrading our server, installing the latest version of our cart software, and implementing little gadgets and gizmos. Some improvements will result only in a slight hiccup in our earnest online Chaosium service. Other improvements will result in our taking our site offline for a few hours to chant, move databases, and perform other semi-occult rituals. The result should provide you with an increase in swellness when using our site. PDF NEWS We have lowered prices for PDF books derived from our in-print titles. All PDF prices across the Chaosium online catalog have been adjusted to reflect these lower prices. CTHULHU BY GASLIGHT It's been about a month since Cthulhu by Gaslight hit the stores. Here is a link to the print version of Cthulhu by Gaslight. Here is a link to the Cthulhu by Gaslight PDF. Both include access to a new [...]

By LIANA B. BAKER Reuters REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - Electronic Arts lost 400,000 Star Wars: The Old Republic subscribers in the fourth quarter, dealing a blow to its efforts to rely on the new game for growth and sending the game maker's shares down about nine per cent. EA has poured more money and firepower into Star Wars: The Old Republic than it has any game in its 30-year history. Wall Street is closely watching to see if the game can succeed, since it could bring EA riches for years to come. If it struggles, EA's earnings will be hurt in future quarters. Interim chief financial officer Ken Barker said in an interview EA is pleased with the stability of the game, but it wants to boost the subscriber base up with the release of two expansion packs this quarter that deliver players more content. The subscriber numbers EA reported on Monday missed some analyst estimates. Brean Murray analyst Todd Mitchell was expecting 1.5 million [...]