Author: Van Jensen

Time magazine is just one of the many major media outlets to drop in on Comic-Con last week, and they’ve just put up some "awards."

Hugh Jackman earns "best actor," for his surprise visit with X-Men Origins: Wolverine footage, of course. Other winners:

Most Popular Costume: The Joker. If Oscar ballots were tallied in San Diego, Heath Ledger’s posthumous Best Actor statuette would be a lock. Guys with red lipstick-smeared smiles and purple dinner jackets were as plentiful at Comic-Con this year as those perennials, the Storm Troopers. A few Jokers said their costumes were an homage to Ledger; one confessed it’s just more breathable than a Batsuit.

Most Enthusiastic Fans: The Twihards, devout readers of Stephenie Meyer’s series of vampire books, Twilight, were the loudest and proudest in Hall H, starting a Twilight chant while they waited, shrieking anytime a cast member, Meyer or director Catherine Hardwicke said anything, and asking lots of questions about vampire hotness. After the panel was over, so many Twihards rushed the movie’s booth that fire marshals briefly closed it down. Fanboys, don’t look back. The fangirls are gaining on you fast.

"Twihards"?

It seems X-Men Origins: Wolverine might not be the only X-Men spinoff movie in development.

There are a few telling signs that Fox is working on X-Men: First Class, according to a story on Superhero Hype.

An interesting listing at Production Weekly caught our eye – "X-Men: First Class." Could 20th Century Fox be developing a movie based on the series written by Jeff Parker and pencilled by Roger Cruz? Or are they using the title of that comic for their proposed Young X-Men spin-off?

The story also notes that if you try going to www.x-menfirstclass.com, you end up right here.

Hmm

The big news out of the Oni Press panel at San Diego all revolved around Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, with an announced title and release date for the fifth book.

It’ll be Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe and it’ll come out at next year’s New York Comic Con. Other than that, all the news was of other books from the publisher.

Newsarama has some coverage.

James Lucas Jones moderated Oni’s panel, which featured a packed room of fans and at least a dozen Oni creators who Jones invited to the podium to talk about their titles as he announced them.

The panel kicked off with artwork for Billy Smoke by B. Clay Moore and Eric Kim. The book is about an elite hit man who’s nearly killed during a botched assignment. He decides his only path to redemption is to kill his former hit man associates.

Jones called it an “adrenaline-fueled thrill ride about an assassin on the path to redemption.” It debuts in early 2009. Matthew Fox has signed on to star in the film adaptation and was at the Oni booth some of the weekend signing autographs.