Saturday was, of course, the ninth annual Free Comic Book Day, celebrated at comic stores around the country. We hit our local store and grabbed a few of the books that were available which we’ll be talking about in this week’s podcast. Highlights included the Matt Fraction written Iron Man/Thor #1, Image’s Fractured Fables which features work by Ben Templesmith and Shannon Wheeler among many others, Jim Woodring’s Weathercraft and Other Unusual Tales from Fantagraphics, and a stack of other very cool items. If you couldn’t make it to your local shop for Free Comic Book Day Bookgasm has excellent summaries of many of the books that were being given away.

The main focus of Thursday’s podcast, though, is going to be the world of collectable card gaming. We’ll be talking to Mark Rosewater, the head developer for Magic: The Gathering, as well as the developer of a new entry into the CCG arena and a representative of one of the largest on-line retailers of CCGs to get a view on what new games are out there. Stay tuned!

Your Monday news is under the fold.

Comics

• Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Eisner-nominated miniseries Incognito has been optioned for a film adaptation according to Deadline.com. The adaptation will be written by Robert Schenkkan, a playwright best known for writing The Kentucky Cycle and for playing Lieutenant Commander Dexter Remmick in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes “Coming of Age” and “Conspiracy”. Incognito tells the story of Zack Overkill, a supervillan, trying to survive in the federal witness protection program after ratting out his boss.

Manga

• A new quarterly manga/comics anthology will begin publication in the U.S. this year. F*X*T (pronounced “fix it”) will focus on American and European artists who have been influenced by the manga style. According to About.com publisher Fawn Lau already has a lineup for the first issue which will include the beginnings of several continuing series and a new one shot story by Oregon-based artist Sloane Leong.

MMO

• Cryptic Studios has announced new rewards for current players and a “Welcome Back Weekend” aimed at luring former players back to the game. The welcom back weekend, scheduled to run from Friday, May 7, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. until Monday, May 10, 2010 at 10:00 a.m., will be free to play for anyone who has a lapsed STO account. Massively is also reporting that Cryptic has plans to offer a free demo for new players at some point in the near future.

Movies

• Multiple sources around the internet, including i09, are reporting that the third Batman movie directed by Christopher Nolan has a confirmed release date of July 20, 2012. Rampant and unbridled speculation about plot, casting and magor villians may now commence.

• Stephen King’s Dark Tower books are headed to the big screen. According to Deadline.com, Imagine Entertainment and Weed Road are in discussions to make a screen trilogy and TV series based on the novels. Akiva Goldsman who wrote the screenplays for The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and A Beautiful Mind as well as numerous episodes of the TV show Fringe will be writing the adaptation and Ron Howard is set to direct. So far there is no word on even a tentative release date.

Video Games

• The big news in the video game world is, of course, the announcement that Bungie has signed a ten year deal with Activision after splitting with Microsoft. Under the terms of the deal Activision will get worldwide publication rights to new Bungie titles, but Bungie will own the intellectual property rights to anything it develops. Bungie is currently wrapping up Halo: Reach, the multiplayer beta for the Microsoft-owned Halo franchise. There are no details on the new project that Bungie will develop for activision, but Bungie community director Brian Jarrard was quoted by Game Informer as saying that another Halo game “just doesn’t fit within our plans”.
  
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