Comic-Con: New Game of Thrones Merchandise

At Comic-Con, HBO unveiled a variety of new licensed merchandise for Game of Thrones from the likes of Dark Horse, Funko, and Insight Editions & Factory Entertainment. Check out the gruesome new bobblehead, some adorable plush toys, a pop-up guide, two detailed figurines and a 4D Puzzle Map!

Game of Thrones Comic-Con Exclusive Pop! Ned Stark Figurine

The Game of Thrones Comic-Con Exclusive Pop! Ned Stark Figurine pays homage to the head patriarch of the Stark family.   Having gotten too close to discovering the truth that Robert Baratheon's children have no claim to the Iron Throne, the honorable   late Hand of the King paid his life. Held together by two magnets, his bloody neck from his beheading in Season 1, episode 9 is   revealed when you remove his head. Limited quantity on sale at booth #5343 and at the HBO online store (store.hbo.com).

Dark Horse Comics Game of Thrones Figures

Continuing in Dark Horse's incredibly successful line of collectibles based on Game of Thrones comes a new line of meticulously detailed non-­articulated figures. Measuring approximately 7.5" in height, the prototypes for the Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen figures were unveiled on Preview Night and are slated for a January 2014 on-­sale date. Three additional figures - Tyrion Lannister, Khal Drogo and Ned Stark - will follow in early May, with a wave of five more characters coming in late summer 2014. Suggested retail price for  each figure is $24.99. The figures will be on display at booth #2615.

Game of Thrones: A Pop-­Up Guide to Westeros

Featuring stunning pop­-up re-­creations of several key locations from the series, including the formidable castle of Winterfell the   lavish capital city King's Landing, and the Wall's stark majesty, this book from Insight Editions takes you into the world of the series like never before. Featuring five stunning spreads, which fold out to create a remarkable pop-­up map of Westeros, the book also contains numerous mini-­pops that bring to life iconic elements of the show. With a scheduled March 2014 publication, the  hardcover tome will sell for $59.95. A prototype is on display at  booth  #1134.

4D Puzzle Map of Westeros

This exciting new product from 4D Cityscape will give Game of Thrones fans a chance to build Westeros from the ground up. Featuring  three different layers and more than 1200 jigsaw pieces, this puzzle replicates the topographical landscape of the Seven Kingdoms and includes miniature replica models of famous Westeros cities and castles, including King's Landing, Eyrie, the Wall and many more. A prototype is on display at booth #2401 and the product will be available this November.

Factory Entertainment Game of Thrones Plush

With this line of officially licensed Game of Thrones plush, even the prickliest of Westeros's creatures are   soft and squeezable. Available in Q4 of 2013 will be three 8" tall fluffy and huggable  Direwolf cubs. Following in Q1 of 2014 are a 10" long three-­eyed raven with a deep black finish and accurate third eye and 6" tall dragon eggs in an assortment of three colors that are crafted from a unique fabric that gives a textured shell-­like coating but still allows each egg to be soft and cuddly. Check them out at booth #3351.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler, IGN at mattfowler, and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity.

Comic-Con: Divergent Positions Itself as the Next Hunger Games

Summit gave fans at today's San Diego Comic-Con their first look at Divergent, the futuristic action thriller based on the bestselling novel by Veronica Roth.

The author herself was on hand to present exclusive footage from the film and was joined on the panel by director Neil Burger and cast members Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Miles Teller, Maggie Q, Ansel Elgort, Mekhi Phifer, Ben Lamb, Ben Lloyd-Hughes and Christian Madsen.

Divergent is set in a futuristic world where society has been divided into five factions. As each person approaches adulthood, he or she must choose a faction and commit to it for the rest of their life. Tris Prior (Shailene Woodley) chooses Dauntless -- the daring risk-takers who pursue bravery above all else. During the Dauntless initiation, Tris completes death-defying stunts and faces her inmost fears in spectacular simulations.

When she discovers she is a Divergent, someone who will never be able to fit into just one faction, she is warned that she must conceal this secret or risk her life. As Tris uncovers a looming war which threatens her family and the life of the mysterious Dauntless leader whom she has come to love, Tris must face her greatest test yet -- deciding whether revealing she is a Divergent will save her world -- or destroy it.

As the first Hall H panel to showcase exclusive footage this year, Divergent brought with it a brand new, never-before-seen sneak peek at the film -- just two days after the production wrapped. (Warning: Footage SPOILERS to follow.)

The footage opens on a sea of people running in a dystopian Chicago, attempting to catch a speeding train. We then see Woodley as Tris among the stampede as she manages to hop aboard with several others. The small group then jumps off the train to meet with a small gathering atop a high building. One authority figure announces to the group, "If you don't have the guts to jump, you don't belong in Dauntless."

This is when Tris steps forward to make "the jump." She walks up to the ledge of the building as the crowd watches in silence. After a deep breath, Tris leaps off the ledge and plummets into the chasm below -- but just at the last second, she's caught by a net in an underground shelter shrouded in darkness. She's greeted by James's Four, who tells Tris to pick her name. She replies, "My name is Tris." (Duh.)

Following that, the footage kicks into high gear with a training montage, as Tris learns, among other things, hand-to-hand combat and knife throwing. At the very end of the clip, Tris stands in front of one of the targets, and Four throws a dagger that just barely grazes her ear -- smash-cut to title.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the footage screened did have a distinct Hunger Games vibe -- very serious, slick action sequences, a bit of implied romance -- basically all the makings of another hormone-fueled YA movie adaptation. That said, it does look like there are going to be some pretty cool set pieces as well as a bit of drama for the younger set.

In addition to a Q&A after the clip screening, Roth shared a bit of new info on the third book in the Divergent trilogy, which she's currently writing. In this latest installment, the story will be told from two perspectives: Tris’s and Four's.

Divergent opens stateside March 21, 2014.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

Comic-Con: Harrison Ford Shows Off Ender's Game

Along with Divergent, Summit also gave fans a sneak peek at Ender’s Game, the sci-fi military feature based on the classic 1985 novel by Orson Scott Card.

Naturally, the big draw of this panel was the return of the big man himself Harrison Ford, who plays Colonel Hyrum Graff in the film. But also in attendance were co-stars Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin, as well as producer Bob Orci and director Gavin Hood.

Set in the near future, a mysterious alien race has attacked Earth. To prepare for the next assault, humans begin training the best students to find their future leader. Ender Wiggin (Butterfield), a shy but brilliant boy, is recruited to join the elite Command School, where he quickly distinguishes himself in training and soon becomes a prime candidate to lead his fellow soldiers against the looming alien threat.

At the top of the panel, we screen exclusive, never-before-seen footage from the movie -- basically, though, it was a more revved up version of the first trailer, with a few more action-y bits tossed in for good measure. (Warning: SPOILERS from the exclusive footage to follow.)

The clip opened with the same Harrison Ford narration with various shots of the alien attack on Earth. From there, we saw Ender in training and working his way up through the ranks and leading his own team a the head of a battle simulation.

This was intermixed with excerpts from a secret between Ford's Graff, Sir Ben Kingsley's Mazer Rackham and Viola Davis's Major Gwen Anderson, as they discussed the importance of Ender's destiny and whether or not he should know "the truth." From there, we see one final series of massive space sequences before we cut to the title card.

Like I said, a lot of this footage we'd already seen before. However, there was a noticeable influx of aerial combat and whiz-bang explosions -- definitely more supercharged. Overall, if fans were slightly let down by the tepid first trailer, this new sizzle reel seems to instill a bit more hope for Ender's big-screen debut.

Ender’s Game hits theaters stateside on November 1.

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

Comic-Con: Once Upon a Time Creators Take Fans to New Worlds

Once Upon a Time creators Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz were indeed busy Saturday morning, presiding over back-to-back panels before a rowdy Ballroom 20 crowd. Kitsis and Horowitz insist that viewers need not know anything about the original series to get the most out of their Wonderland spinoff, though the pilot does start things off in Storybrooke.

First, the audience got to see a 19-minute sneak peek of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. The visual effects were quite stunning, an encouraging sign as not-so-hot CGI has often plagued the original series. The presentation focused on a young-adult Alice (Sophie Lowe) and her star-crossed romance with Cyrus (Peter Gadiot), a dreamy genie with whom she travels the world before they're tragically separated by the Red Queen (Emma Rigby). Alice is aided in her quest to reunite with her lover by the roguish Knave of Hearts, played by Being Human's Michael Socha.

Based on the footage we were shown, the tone of the series seems slightly more earnest and less irreverent than that of the parent show. In the early episodes of Once Upon a Time, Emma greeted Henry's insistence that magic is real with kind skepticism, while Alice is thrown into a terrifying asylum for saying the same sorts of things. Once character that didn't appear in the Comic Con preview but who looks to play a major role in the action is the evil genie Jafar, who will be played by Lost's Naveen Andrews.

You won't need to know what's happened in Storybrooke to follow Wonderland, but they do exist in the same universe. Kitsis and Horowitz left the door open to the return of Sebastian Stan's Mad Hatter, and said we'd see what Wonderland was like after Regina's cursed was unleashed. The first season of Wonderland will tell one entire story and will end. If it's a success, the second season would tell an entirely new tale.

After a short break, Kitsis and Horowitz took the stage again to preview Season 3 of Once Upon a Time. Most of the action will take place in Neverland, where the show's heroes and villains have all banded together to find the kidnapped Henry. When asked whether Peter Pan would be the season's main villain, the creators said that Pan's motivations are "complicated" but allowed that many will find him to be "frightening." Tinkerbell will be introduced and will have a 'surprising connection" to one of the following characters; Snow, Charming, Emma, Hook, Gold, Regina, Neil or Belle.

The producers were happy to announce that Season 3 will air its first eleven episodes on consecutive Sundays starting in the fall, take a winter hiatus, and then resume in spring with its final eleven episodes. A hilarious Jane Espenson-penned "Good Morning Storybrooke" video with spoof commercials was also shown, and included Community's Yvette Nicole Brown as Goldilocks, a role she tweeted about yesterday. Just as the panel was breaking up, the audience was shown a brief teaser in which Grumpy encounters a a red-haired mermaid with an interest in human cutlery. Yep, it looks like Ariel will be arriving in Storybrooke soon.

Season 3 of Once Upon a Time begins September 29th, while Once Upon a Time in Wonderland will premeire on October, 8th, both on ABC

Comic-Con: True Blood is Going Back to Basics

True Blood has garnered quite a presence over the last few years at San Diego Comic-Con, and with Season 6 now halfway done, it was time for yet another visit from Bon Temp's finest.

Joining the True Blood panel this year were stars Anna Paquin, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Trammell, Rutina Wesley, Nelsan Ellis, Deborah Ann Woll, Kristin Bauer van Straten, Joe Manganiello, Anna Camp, Michael McMillian, Rob Kazinsky and executive producer Brian Buckner.

Kicking off the panel was an exclusive sizzle reel showing what;s coming up for the characters in the rest of Season 6. Featuring quick cuts and fast-paced editing, it was kind of hard to tell what all was going on, but it appears that even more vampires have been contained in that pesky prison camp, and that Sookie is still struggling with her feelings for Ben/Warlow, as evidenced by a few sexy-time dream sequence shots.

As for the panel itself, it was a pretty standard Q&A, with each actor talking about the current state of their characters at the end of the last episode. Among some of the newsier tidbits, it sounds like Kwanten's Jason and Camp's Sarah haven't seen the last of each other this year. Could their reunion lead to another steamy encounter? That remains to be seen, but Kwanted confirmed, "They will interact again."

As for the mysterious Ben/Warlow, Kazinski was asked whether or not he thinks his character is pure evil. "Is he evil?" he asked. Referencing his character's half-faerie, half-vampire makeup, he continued, "I think there's a dichotomy inside of him, and you're going to see both of those sides come out."

Perhaps most interesting, though, were Buckner's goals for the series as Season 6 comes to a close. When asked how he plans to end the current season he said, "I think that you're going to feel that the show is going to return back to its roots. While we acknowledge that we have a very large cast, we're going to try to condense the number of stories, and hopefully it will feel like we're coming home."

Could that mean the (true) death of some of the show's principal characters? Perhaps... Buckner continued to hammer home the idea of taking True Blood back to basics, noting that "this show is ultimately about the relationship between vampires and humans" and the lives of the people (and non-people) living in Bon Temps.

If what Buckner said is true, it might be that True Blood is finally swinging back around to the Season 1 universe many fans have been clamoring for -- but is that a good thing? Only time will tell...

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

Comic-Con: HIMYM Cast & Crew Talk Final Season

How I Met Your Mother will finally come to an end this season, as Ted approaches his fateful first meeting with the Mother. And while it's still unclear just when that will happen, we did learn that the role of the Mother --  identified only as "The Girl with the Yellow Umbrella" -- is now being played by Cristin Milioti. We also now know that Season 9 will all take place over the course of one 56-hour wedding weekend -- a daring new change-up for the show, the likes of which we've never seen before.

Such as it is, obviously, there was a lot to talk about at HIMYM's first-ever San Diego Comic-Con panel in the Indigo Ballroom, where stars Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan and co-creators Carter Bays, Craig Thomas, as well as writer-EP Pamela Fryman, were all in attendance.

To kick off the panel, the audience screened a brief clip (now available to watch here) featuring Lyndsy Fonseca and David Henrie, reprising their roles as "the kids," complaining about how they'd literally been sitting there for eight years listening to Ted tell his long-winded story.

Not surprisingly, the crowd anticipation was high before the panel, as audience members sang along with pre-show HIMYM tunes like Marshall's "You Just Got Slapped." That enthusiasm swelled to roars, cheers and a standing ovation when the cast and crew took the stage. Said Harris in an oh-so Barney-esque voice, "What uuup."

First off, Bays wanted to address the new "wedding weekend" framework for Season 9. "And I stress the word 'framework,'" he said. "We don't want people to think there will be, like, four episodes of flower arranging... But, as we tend do on the show, we'll be flashing back and flashing forward."

The creators also revealed that there will be plenty of guest stars and references to episodes past in Season 9. "We're throwing a wedding and everyone's invited," Bays said. "If there's someone you loved on the show, we're probably bringing them back... We're in serious talks to get the pineapple back."

Added Harris, "I'm not beholden to anything, I'll give you some spoilers." The crowd cheered, and it was mentioned that Wayne Brady would indeed be coming back to play Barney's brother James. But not only that, Harris continued, "James is getting a divorce." Interjected Bays, "Neil, you're fired."

Of course, one big holdover from last season was the infamous Slap Bet. Bays and Thomas assured the fans that they haven't forgotten about Barney's painful debt to Marshall. "There's going to be an episode that takes place during a slap," Thomas said. "That is real." As Thomas described it, the episode will be a frame story in which the episode arc will literally be intercut with a mega-slow motion slap.

Another biggie: Will we see one final bow from Robin Sparkles? "It's a wedding. people sing songs at weddings," Thomas teased. At this, the crowd called out for Smulders to sing "Let's Go to the Mall," to which she and the rest of the cast clumsily picked through some of the lyrics. "Awkward!" said Harris.

As for Milioti playing the Mother, Radnor confessed, "It was kind of a relief now having her on the show. I knew I was going to be reading with her, and they flew her out for this top-secret reading. She's so delightful and talented... to add in this iconic mystery person, it could have been not great -- but it is great, and she's wonderful."

Bays added that what made the idea of Season 9 so appealing was the fact that, instead of revealing the mother in the last scene of the last episode, the creators now had an opportunity to explore Milioti's character and really weave her into the stories. "We want to get to know her, we want to see Ted happy," he said. Without giving away how or when Milioti will be seen, "know that we're going to get to know this lady."

Cristin Milioti as the Mother in HIMYM.

Finally, before the panel ended, Bays revealed that a new version of "You Just Got Slapped" will be included at some point in Season 9, performed by a special guest star... Ominous!

Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love by following @Max_Nicholson on Twitter, or MaxNicholson on IGN.

Comic-Con: I, Frankenstein Looks Crazy

Aaron Eckhart and Yvonne Strahovski joined writer-director Stuart Beattie and creator Kevin Grevioux at San Diego Comic-Con's huge Hall H today to debut footage from Lionsgate's I, Frankenstein.

Beattie kicked things off by explaining that this Frankenstein is like none we've ever seen before, an ageless creature who is caught up in a war between gargoyles and demons in a modern day dystopia -- with the two sides fighting to discover the secret behind his immortality.

The trailer shown to the crowd begins with Eckhart's Frankenstein saying, "I am not human. I am unlike none other." From there, a torrent of gothic, action-heavy imagery followed, with gargoyles -- stone gargoyles -- and winged men (demons?) flying, battling, and attacking. Frankenstein gets down to some stick-fighting, and also has a pair of big old blades that he uses. We also get glimpses of his past, seemingly when he was first created and, perhaps, discarded by his creator, and these are juxtaposed with modern images of a high-tech lab. It all culminates with an onscreen promise: The Legend Lives 2015.

Beattie didn't want traditional action scenes -- car chases, gun fights, etc., which is one of the reasons he wanted the character to use the Filipino art of Kali stick fighting. Strahovski plays one of only two humans in the film, she said, a scientist who when we first meet her is reviving a dead lab rat. So yeah, her and Frankenstein are a match made in heaven, even though at first she doesn't believe Frankenstein is real or, like most humans, even know that the gargoyles and demons exist.

Eckhart said his character tracks with the original Mary Shelley version in that he's very soulful and lonely, and Beattie explained that Eckhart's monster (who goes on to take his creator's name) looks quite different in the past. His scars and physical defects heal and change over the centuries, eventually leading to the main look that he has in the modern portion of the film.

The film is about good, evil, and how Frankenstein is looking for his soul and his place in the world. He also trained for six months in the stick fighting, and he did pretty much all of the fight scenes himself. Would you expect anything else from the man who was once Two-Face?!

Grevioux, who was also behind the Underworld series, said he created the graphic novel that the film is based on because he wanted to delve into another classic monster -- but only with more action. So more action than Underworld, huh? That's definitely more.

Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottIGN, on IGN at scottcollura and on Facebook.

Comic-Con: Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow

Warner Bros. presented attendees at today's San Diego Comic-Con with their first look at Edge of Tomorrow, the upcoming science fiction action film originally titled and adapted from Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need is Kill. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in the Doug Liman-directed movie, which opens domestically in 2D and 3D in select theatres and IMAX on June 6, 2014.

And, yes, Tom Cruise was onstage to show off the film! Joining him up there were Emily Blunt, director Doug Liman, writer Chris McQuarrie, producer Erwin Stoft, and later Bill Paxton.

Edge of Tomorrow unfolds in a near future in which an alien race has hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, unbeatable by any military unit in the world.Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously dropped into what amounts to a suicide mission.

Killed within minutes, Cage now finds himself inexplicably thrown into a time loop -- forcing him to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying again…and again.

But with each battle, Cage becomes able to engage the adversaries with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt). And, as Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated encounter gets them one step closer to defeating the enemy.

The footage looked sweet, sort of like if Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket was crossed with Hero's Duty from Wreck-It Ralph. (Cruise revealed that the other soldiers referred to Blunt's character as a "Full Metal Bitch.") The mech suits were insane, but it's also clearly a character-driven story about this soldier's bizarre and very emotional journey. Cruise admitted that alien invasions have become a genre movie trope, but that this film is basically focused on this man's time-torn relationship with Blunt's character and how it evolves. Overall, the film looked pretty intense and visceral.

Edge of Tomorrow opens next summer.

Neil Gaiman Talks Returning to Sandman at Comic-Con

Head of marketing John Cunningham introduced Executive Editor of Vertigo Shelly Bond, Sandman letterer Todd Klein, original Sandman penciller Sam Keith, Sandman cover artist Dave McKean, Sandman: Overture artist J.H. Williams III to the crowd, but the truly thunderous applause came when Sandman creator Neil Gaiman himself took the stage. Of all the DC panels throughout Comic-Con, this panel had the loudest cheering and the most frequent laughter thanks to Gaiman's superstar status and charming personality.

The panel featured a retrospective on some of the most notable issues of Sandman, and then a look ahead to the upcoming Sandman: Overture by Gaiman and Williams.

The crowd was shown a shot of the first advertisement for The Sandman, which featured the tagline, “I will show you terror in a handful of dust.” Gaiman said that it was originally “fear” instead of “terror” because he borrowed the quote from T.S. Elliot, but he was told they had to change it so they wouldn't get sued.

Gaiman said that the genesis of Sandman came when he was working on Black Orchid and then head of Vertigo Karen Berger told him she wanted to boost his profile by putting him on a monthly book and she suggested that he recreate Sandman. She actually rejected his first pitch, but two other editors liked it, so they gave him the green light.

McKean chimed in with a note that the design for Morpheus the Sandman came from Bono in a music video. Gaiman added, “I didn't want to go in the direction of superheroes. It was going to look enough like a superhero comic to the unwary... I'll go rock. I'll make him look like a rock star.”

Gaiman told a funny story about how he saw a drawing of Death without clothes and he saw that Jill Thompson was the artist. When she came up to ask for an autograph at a convention, he recognized her name and told her he loved her naked sketch of Death and he asked her to come on and draw the series. She was embarrassed and speechless, but wound up leaving Wonder Woman to draw Sandman.

As for Sandman: Overturn #1, Gaiman said, “When I was writing Sandman there would be stories that didn't fit, and at one point I realized that there was a story I thought would get told during Sandman hat didn't fit that just wasn't part of the theme. The story of what happened before the first panel of #1 when he was captured. Later on there was a text piece where I said he was exhausted and vulnerable to being captured, but I never told that story. Nobody knew expect for me what had happened. It was one of those stories that was sitting there. We talked about doing it for the 20th anniversary, but that didn't happen. Then when the new powers that be moved in and asked me what I wanted to do, I said I have this story I'd like to tell. Why don't we do this for the 25th anniversary? Then we had to find an artist.” Gaiman then pointed at Williams, earning a laugh from the crowd.

Gaiman talked about his experience with Williams. “I asked him to do something impossible. I would like you to draw me Morpheus as a pant with the leaves and the stem as the cloak and a face formed out of petals. That's the thing you tell an artist to put them in their place,” Gaiman joked.

Joshua writes for IGN. If Pokemon, Game of Thrones, or Green Lantern are frequently used words in your vocabulary, then you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Snyder and Capullo Talk Batman: Zero Year at Comic-Con

The Batman: Zero Year panel kicked off with writer Scott Snyder, artist Greg Capullo, inker Dan Miki, and Bat group editor Mike Marts.

Snyder began by explaining the genesis for them doing this Batman origin story. “DC came to us and said Batman hasn't had his origin explained in the New 52. Characters like Jim Gordon and Selina were changed so that Year One doesn't stand. This story will take place in a Gotham you've never seen before,” he said.

Originally, Snyder tried to make the New 52 origin fit Year One, but it didn't fit, so he decided “I'm going to go for it. I'm going to change it. Year One exists as a perfect Batman masterpiece, so instead I'm going to go 180 degrees, a way that's new and personal... If I'm going to do it, lets do the Red Hood and have them represent the fears of the city. Lets have his first challenge be in a post-apocalyptic Gotham with the city overgrown and Batman on a steam-powered motorcycle.”

Snyder spent a lot of time detailing the structure of Zero Year. He said it would be in three parts, with covers that represent the theme of each one. The first part asks the question, Why do you love Gotham? to Bruce. “His parents are killed there. He doesn't live there. What is it? Why does he protect this city?”

The second part has the Batman: Year Logo and is nearly all black, which represents Gotham in darkness and how both the city's bones and Batman's are resetting in the dark and becoming something new. It will ask the question, What does Bruce see in the dark?

The third part has a cover that is green to represent the overgrown city, and he teased that Poison Ivy may be making an appearance.

As for the villain, Snyder said, “The Riddler believes he's the smartest dude in the world. He's got degrees just for fun. He can see the design of things coming. I wanted to have a character who can see what's coming to give Batman a need to catch up.”

Snyder explained that a lot of writers don't use the Riddler because riddles are really hard to write. “Riddles are considered the highest form of warfare... Riddles are a test of worth, and if you fail you die. The Riddler is going to wage war against the city and Batman needs to be the one who is smart enough to answer the riddle,” he said

Capullo was enthused to be working with Miki again, who he first teamed with on Spawn. “He's the best inker I've ever had because he knew what was in my head,” Capullo said.

Capullo and Snyder went back and forth teasing that there would be a new suit and a new batmobile, but they'd be unlike anything that has come before.

“This is rebellious punk rock Batman. It's got layers and elegance beneath it, but we want it to be rock and roll in your face,” Snyder said.

Snyder said that in issue #24, the new suit will be featured. It will have a modernized, militant version of the Bob Kane design. Also, he will look different under the cowl than you might expect.

Capullo said that when redesigning the Batmobile, that he wanted to break form with it like the Tumbler from The Dark Knight movies, but wouldn't go into further detail so people would experience it for the first time themselves when they read the issue.

Snyder said he sometimes gets grief from fans for not telling any romantic stories for Bruce, but he stood by his stance that Bruce is Gotham-sexual.

To end the panel, Snyder emphasized how he wanted to give us a younger Batman with an edge. “What if Batman was 25 today and a badass? He's a rebel. What if the car is like a hot rod, colorful and different?”

Joshua writes for IGN. If Pokemon, Game of Thrones, or Green Lantern are frequently used words in your vocabulary, then you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN.

Hollywood Acts Warily at Comic-Con, Fearing Bad Publicity

But he also played it safe — very safe — by not so much as mentioning, much less demonstrating, the filmmaking wizardry at the heart of the project. That left big questions about the movie industry’s future unanswered and added to a theme of this year’s Comic-Con: Hollywood has come to fear this place.

Mr. Jackson is shooting his two “Hobbit” movies, the first of which is to arrive in theaters in December, at an unusually fast 48 frames a second, twice the standard rate. The result can startle — colors appear brighter, images sharper and motion smoother — and Mr. Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, thinks the technique can transform moviegoing.

“We have to provide a cinematic experience that brings people back to theaters,” he told reporters.

But an estimated 6,500 fans did not have that experience when they gathered in Comic-Con’s cavernous Hall H moments earlier to see the new footage. A large number of them had camped through the night. (Ian McKellen, who portrayed the wizard Gandalf, was struck by the fans’ youth. “It is astonishing that most people at the presentation just now have never seen ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in theaters,” he observed at a news conference.)

With devotion like that, one might think that Comic-Con would be a relatively low-risk place for Mr. Jackson and his studio backers, led by Warner Brothers, to take 48-frame-projection for a test drive. This is a crowd that has been starved for a successor to “Avatar,” a movie that was supposed to herald a transformed moviegoing experience that has so far not arrived.

Still, Mr. Jackson, one of Hollywood’s boldest directors, made the unexpectedly timid decision to present “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” in a standard format here — it was not even in 3-D — because he feared an online outcry that could hurt box-office results.

It is no small worry. “Unexpected Journey” and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” due next year, together carry an estimated $800 million in production and global marketing costs.

“I didn’t want to repeat the Cinema-Con experience,” Mr. Jackson explained. At that convention, held in April for movie theater owners, his high-speed presentation of “Unexpected Journey” footage received a sharply mixed reaction. “Hall H is not the place” where he wanted fans to experience it, he said.

Mr. Jackson was far from the only one holding back in San Diego this year. Three of Hollywood’s six major movie studios — Paramount, Universal and 20th Century Fox — decided not to come at all rather than risk showing footage for distant movies with still-unfinished special effects.

On Saturday, the director Zack Snyder, there to promote his new Superman movie, “Man of Steel,” set for release next June, showed a trailer with no overt villain. When fans asked about the bad guy, Mr. Snyder hemmed, hawed and decided to treat that bit of news like a state secret: everyone in the movie will be “relatable,” he offered.

“Trust me” seemed to be Mr. Snyder’s message; he described his movie and its components as “awesome” 10 or 12 times. But the brief atmospheric footage that he presented was not so much awesome as adequate. The clips hinted at the sort of moody, gritty superhero revisionism that has been standard since Christopher Nolan, a producer of “Man of Steel,” directed “Batman Begins” in 2005.

Entertainment companies come to Comic-Con with the goal of igniting controlled brush fires on the Web — a burst of positive Twitter, blog and Facebook chatter that spreads to the mainstream and creates new fans. But the Comic-Con crowd is a discerning one and frequently refuses to cooperate. This can create difficult (sometimes impossible) messes for studio marketers to mop up.