Poor Mojo's Newswire

DiDio turned to Batman: R.I.P., asking fans who they'd want as Batman if not Bruce Wayne. The mere suggestion drew loud boos, but then DiDio asked if fans would accept Dick Grayson in the mantle (cheers), Tim Drake (slightly less cheers), or Jason Todd (loud boos). "Jason Todd it is then," joked DiDio. DiDio said that Batman: R.I.P. will come to a definite end in November, and then brought out a "special guest" working on Batman in the near future - Kevin Smith. "It's so weird that we're at Comic-Con, and I was just at the Scream Awards panel, and that was in Ballroom 20, and this is a comic book panel, and we're squeezed in here," said Smith, speaking of the confines of room 6A. Smith announced that he's doing a Batman mini-series, then joked "It'll be done in about three years." He said he had two scripts done, with only one more to go ("I should have that done by the time my daughter is about 16," he joked), then announced the artist of the project - Walt Flanagan, a longtime Smith friend (who's cameoed in several of his films), and the artist for Karny for IDW. Smith said it was scheduled to start in November, then continued to joke about his history of lateness, saying "I'm great with first issues. I'm Mr. Foreplay, but if you want me to thrust, good luck." The comic is called Batman: Cacophony, and features Onomatopoeia, the villain Smith introduced during his Green Arrow run.

More girls than ever crammed themselves into Comic-Con's Hall H this afternoon — and it wasn't just to see clips from the Dakota Fanning futuristic actioner Push and the Nicolas Cage apocalyptic drama Knowing. No, they were there for the panel they'd long been waiting for: Twilight. And from the moment convention staffers placed the name tags of the Twilight cast on the dais, the ladies in the crowd never stopped screaming. The film's actors seemed completely overwhelmed by the rabid Twilight fans. "This all baffles me," said the British star Robert Pattinson. "Its nice though, it's nice."

Here's a surprising (and exclusive) tidbit: In the 1990s, when Marvel's fiscal situation was in shambles, upstart Dark Horse comics was making covert plans with Disney to take control of their far more established rival. "This hasn't been out there, but we were in serious talks with Disney about buying Marvel," Dark Horse founder Michael Richardson told me the other day. "I met with Michael Eisner, who is a good friend of [my mentor, producer] Larry Gordon, and they were going to buy Marvel and put Dark Horse in control of it.".. Why did the gambit fail? "There was some skepticism about numbers we were getting from Marvel. And in the end the [Disney] family just didn't like the idea of seeing Wolverine products on the same shelf as Mickey Mouse."

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