Venom by James Harren

More Project: Rooftop. This time it's Venom, presented as a living / oozing overall by James Harren. I'm having fun delving back into their archives. It's pure design vim.

Shuma-Gorath by Jemma Salume

Zip over to Project: Rooftop for oodles more of Jemma Salume's delicate, watercoloury redrafts of Dr Strange's cosmic foes.

Rant

World-class raconteur Kevin Smith finally gets his dynamic on with this Red State ad. Caught about half an hour of Dogma the other night on TV, and as fun as the religion riffs can be, anything moving is flat as hell. Action is antithetical to that movie. The second a movement threatens excitement, it's either lost in a crash of mismatching edits, or a fragment in a dull master. Maybe that's why this shill fizzes? It's like Smith's been allowed to make a balls nasty X-Files episode. Sweaty hand-held, low-angles, prowling close-ups, and 70s cop stair vaulting: this is Smith cooking. It's fun to see. Fingers crossed Michael Parks and John Goodman get to have a sweaty, shirtless, WRESTLE.

Super

Super would make for a fine chaser to Observe and Report's maximum ugly. Both deal with mental illness as a primary component in the urge to enforce order. Super details the wrench wielding adventures of Frank D'Arbo, a short-order chef with a relapsing junkie wife and a hotline to Christ. After a hentai slanted communion with the Almighty, D'Arbo sets to policing his city as The Crimson Bolt. D'Arbo's street-level lawmaking motors on a simplistic after-school morality that eventually extends to braining yuppies who break basic social contracts.

Crimson Bolt is ably assisted by Libby, a micro-hipster with a hyena laugh and a taste for ultraviolence. First encountered as a sweary pop-culture tour guide, Libby eventually becomes The Crimson Bolt's ward Boltie. Beginning as a chaste hang-out, their team-up steadily mutates into a terrifying actualisation of the super sexual dysfunction noted by Dr Fredric Wertham. Super pops thanks to Rainn Wilson's sad-sack performance. Wilson is wonderful as a queasy, stunted man hopelessly screaming into the void. The film stumbles slightly with an ending that seems to imply growth, before mutating the sentiment with a prolonged gaze at D'Arbo's bemused, frowned up fizzog. Hopefully, he's learnt nothing.

EXCISED

After an underwhelming tease showing Luke boringly constructing his Return of the Jedi lightsaber in a papier-mâché cave, I wasn't exactly giddy at the opportunity to see more cutting room floor sweepings from the incoming Star Wars saga box sets. Maybe that's why the raw, high plains physicality of Luke disappearing into a violent sandstorm in this Blu-Ray hype clip got my attention? Jedi's not exactly known for its lyricism. The new glimpses of massive, practical sets, and vanity close-ups of ugly space puppets helped too.

Toyoo Ashida

All Hail Megatron by Dan Hipp

Class War by Mike McMahon

"Kung Fu this, bitch!"

Mortal Kombat gets its last DLC pugilist, Mr Fred Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Aside from a few familiar grunts, this Freddy's unusually taciturn. I can't quite place which iteration of Freddy this is supposed to be. Robert Englund's day-glo sequel quipper? Or Jackie Earle Haley's more recent Platinum Dunes de-think? Given the character's noseless, action-figure-left-in-the-sun appearance, probably the latter. Far be it from me to pour scorn on a purely bonkers corporate mash-up, but wouldn't it be cooler if Freddy screamed zippy New Line abuse whilst slash-handing his opponents?

Rocket Raccoon by Eric Orchard

Eric Orchard puts his twist on Rocket Raccoon #1. Shamelessly nicked from Covered. Mr Orchard blogs here.

HYPE

With a DLC drip feed derailed thanks to the Tohoku Earthquake / PSN outage double whammy, not to mention an allegedly rushed release to balance up a lacklustre fiscal year, Capcom strikes back with increment update Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Expect character balancing, neater netcode, new stages, online lobby tweaks and additional fighters. Announced in this vid are Ghost Rider and Hawkeye for Marvel; Strider Hiryu and Firebrand (Red Arremer in Japan, the hero of Ghosts n' Goblins's Game Boy spin-off Gargoyle's Quest) for Capcom.

Roster rooters over at NeoGAF have also dug up info and character art for eight further fighters on the sneaky: Marvel fans can expect Dr Strange, Nova, Rocket Raccoon, and the Immortal Iron Fist; Capcom drafts Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney, Frank West, Resident Evil 3's Nemesis, and Dante's twin brother Vergil from Devil May Cry 3. Nose around online and you can pre-order this shameless cash-in / desperately craved recalibration for under £25.

Web Head

What I like best about this sneak peak at The Amazing Spider-Man is Andrew Garfield's Steve Ditko dimensions. He's lank and beanpole were Tobey Maguire was stout and muscular; Garfield's wild hair even pushes in a Brendan McCarthy / Ditranko direction. Other than that it's a dour glimpse at next year's blockbuster that seems to hinge on the spy kit mysteries of Parker Snr's briefcase. Given that this flick abandons Jim Cameron's organic solution, is this version of the web-shooter an inherited gadget? Vim comes in the form of a Mirror's Edge influenced zip around the New York skyline.

Sketch Thursday: Frank West

Dead Rising's sleazebag hyper-consumer hero Frank West. I could've stressed his chubs more. Currently prepping himself for a return to zombie stomping in second installment re-jig Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, and, if NeoGAF snoops are to be believed, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. Welcome back Frank!

Sons of Batman

Batman doesn't kill or use guns, so how do you squeeze a team-based video game shooter out of that licence? Simple! If you're Gotham City Impostors, you plunder The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Beyond for imitation identity grist, imagining a city under siege scenario without either Batman or Joker. Players take control of numbskull geeks with faction threads and murder minds. Do you reckon there's any chance we'll get The Nixons too? I think the best we can hope for is a bat branded Team Fortress 2.

Over the Edge

Here's how the deathly angular Batman: The Animated Series (or more accurately, The New Batman Adventures) conceptualised a titanic rumble between Bane and Batman. We pick up events shortly after Barbara Gordon falls to her death battling The Scarecrow. Blaming Batman, a distraught Commissioner Gordon uses his daughter's funeral as bait, and hires Bane to break the Bat. Balls nasty! Not to worry, the whole episode is Barbara Gordon's fear toxin induced fever dream.

Dark Knight Triumphant?

Calamity! Batman's gone, Gotham crumbles, and James Gordon lies broken. A brutal, mutated young upstart rules the night, necessitating the Dark Knight's return. The Dark Knight Rises has more than a whiff of Frank Miller's masterpiece about it, doesn't it? It's also interesting that attention is referred back to Batman Begins; is Ra's al Ghul narration contextualising Batman or Bane? Both are unwavering super-identities locked into abstract extinction arcs. I wonder if it'll turn out that Bane's American adventures are sponsored by the League of Shadows? His reliance on psychotropic psychosis enhancers is certainly consistent with their MO.

THUNG

Difficult to know what to make of this brief tease for The Thing, the unwanted prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 Antarctic apocalypse. The footage has been well received, but all I'm seeing is a karaoke drag-act, with the demure Ms Winstead standing in for weirdy beardy Kurt Russell. Many shots look like straight lifts from the Carpenter calibration, even aping Dean Cundey's overripe location lensing. The creature's barely glimpsed - likely due to the all-ages rating for this shill - but the brief convulsion snatches we do see suggest shape homage. Fuck that noise! The whole premise of the creature is a revoltingly utilitarian approach to dimension. It rends and tears its flesh and bone to fit objective. The idea that it could have default guises and sizes not only undermines Rob Bottin's (and Stan Winston's) kaleidoscopic SFX work on the '82 model, it also goes some way to making the creature seem uniform and dull. Hopefully the splendidly named director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr, whose priors include a feature about a homicidal lift, will prove me pessimistic.

Zombie Zombie - Assault on Precinct 13 (Main Title)

This Time It's War

Aliens is 25 today. Happy Birthday Aliens! Like The Godfather Part II, Aliens is a follow-up that examines the characters and situations of its forebear, pulling them in directions antithetical to your usual repeat-em-up sequel think. Aliens is successful, in part, because it's interested in the character of Ellen Ripley. She hasn't been reset between pictures so she can endure the same expectation mandated arc. Instead her further adventure is informed by the past we've seen her experience; she's been mutated by it. Ripley is no longer a company stooge, she's an individual nursing a keen sense of personal responsibility. She doesn't wait for the alien to come to her, she seeks it out. She wants to destroy it. It doesn't hinder Aliens that it's also full of cool cool action beats and sweary space marines.

GOD GINRAI