The best Con in the UK Calendar returns, with a very special ticket offer:

Cardiff International Comic Expo IN FIRST ticket offer!

A very special offer to all of the 2011 attendees which means you can BUY NOW until the 30th October at the 2011 prices!

This will be an all ticket event so pre-booking and a special low entry deal guarantees you can’t miss out on Premier Event of 2012

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The conclusion to our trilogy of columns looking at the Avengers Big Three, and the best actors to portray, them is here, and I’ve saved my favourite for last. Regular readers will be aware that I do love Captain America. Even wrote a whole piece about why a little while back. Cap’s put in more screen appearances than Iron Man or Thor, thanks in part to the fact that he precedes them in the comics by a good couple of decades. There were also two attempts at live action Cap movies before the recent effort with Chris Evans in the title role (winner of your vote for best Cap, by the way). In the seventies there were a couple of made for TV movies starring Reb Brown as a rather lacklustre, one-note Captain America. Then, the early nineties gave us Matt “son of J.D.” Salinger in the title role in a disastrous movie in which Salinger did his best impression of… Well, Reb Brown. And wore rubber ears as part of his costume. Who thought that was a good idea?

Neither of these efforts were ever going to make this list, and are now mostly regarded as, at best, curios. However, leaving them aside, I was more than ready to bombard you with a Super Soldier Serum charged column featuring one awesome live action Cap, and four awesome animated Caps too.

Then I discovered one more live action version...

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The DC animation wagon of quality just keeps on trucking with the latest offering Batman: Year One, adapted from Frank Miller's seminal comic of the same name. Not long to wait now as it'll be released in the US 18th October.

Continue past the jump for the clip...

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There have been some truly awful Thors over the years. In researching this column (yes, I do research. It involves watching a lot of cartoons) I was reminded of how difficult it can be to bring a character like Thor to the screen. Things that work well in the comics, such as his faux Shakespearian dialect or his long, girly hair, just don’t really translate that well unless done properly. You either have to go all the way, and adapt the comic character as is (will only work in animation), or you have to make some pretty drastic changes somewhere.

To pick a prime example, check out Eric Allan Kramer’s awful turn in nineteen eighty-eight’s The Incredible Hulk Returns. While the original Hulk TV series was absolutely brilliant, Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno’s return to our screens in several low budget TV movies left a lot to be desired. Of the three, and opinions are divided, but in this writer’s opinion, this first one was the worst. Yes, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk featured a completely uninspired version Daredevil, but the Thor who showed up in Returns, and had his ass handed to him by the Hulk, was, at best, a one note joke. An Asgardian warrior who relished battle, women and drink. There was no nobility to the character, and he was incredibly difficult to sympathise with. He also looked bloody stupid.

So, as with last week’s look at Iron Man, we’re faced with a dilemma. There are few truly great Thors, and not a whole lot of good ones to choose from either. Still, I did manage to find five who, at the very least, could be considered adequate. Four of the men on this list deserve their places. This first guy though, I’ll admit, is mostly there to fill out the numbers...

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This week’s column presented a challenge. When I decided to write the next three columns on the Avengers Big Three (Iron Man, Thor and Captain America), I hadn’t really factored in that they haven’t actually been played by as many actors as, say, Batman or Spider-Man. Until their recent movie adventures, the characters didn’t have the same level of popularity as their slightly more famous friends, and they just haven’t clocked up as many screen appearances.

Of course, all that changed with the release of the first Iron Man movie, but it’s only really been in the last few years that the general, non-comic reading public (or Flatscans. Maybe Muggles) have become aware of the Armoured Avenger, et al. This means fewer (though by no means a total shortage) animated or computer game outings in which actors can portray them, and a distinct lack of great Iron Man performances.

In fact, and I’m aware that this is a controversial statement that may well generate some backlash, for my money, while there have been several good Iron Men, there are only two performances who stand out as great. But let’s visit some of the good ones first...

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This year's comic con season is far from over over yet but already we're getting ready for next year. The most important con on next year's calendar is obviously the now two day Cardiff Comic and Animation Expo (that's right CICE becomes CICAE with the addition of animation to the line up) held on 25 - 26th February 2012 at the Cardiff Mercure Hotel. Why is it such an important convention? Well because it's ourhometown con of course.

They've just announced next year's Guest of Honour and we can reveal it's the legendary...

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When I first started writing these columns, many moons ago (twenty-eightish), I was going to take a slightly different approach to them. As well as listing my five favourite actors to portray each character, I was also going to give one example of how not to play the part. It was while I was writing about how awful George Clooney was as Batman that I realised this wouldn’t work. Where would it go? You couldn’t start an article about the best with the worst. And you want to finish on a high, so the end’s out too. So I cut it, and decided it wouldn’t appear.

But Pat Fraley, who voiced Wolverine in Pryde of the X-Men pilot and on Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends needs mentioning here. For Odin’s sake, he played Wolverine as an Australian! Everyone’s favourite Canadian, with an Aussie accent. It just didn’t work. At all. I’m not anti-Fraley here, after all, the guy was also Krang in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but…did he ever read an X-Men comic? Rumour has it, the accent came about because in the script, Wolverine called Pyro a dingo. Pyro, who was an Australian. No one bothered to check. And we get the worst Wolverine ever. But anyway, on with the best!

As ever, I put it to the good people of the internet who their favourite Wolverine is, and it was surprisingly close. Two Wolverines stood head and shoulders above the rest, with Hugh Jackman taking the gold. But only just. But, as we all know, it’s not what the public thinks that matters. No. It’s all about me. And so…

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First among Superheroes, Superman paved the way for the rest of our favourites, both in comics and on screen. Superman has been played by possibly more actors than any other superhero out there, which made this particular column incredibly difficult to write. Not only have a lot of people played Superman, a lot of them (well, more than five) played him well. Narrowing it down to my favourite five was a real challenge, and I didn’t want to cheat like I did on the Batman one. Apologies to Kirk Alyn and Beau Weaver, who were both able animated Supermen, and if I ever meet the ghost of George Reeves, I owe him big time for cutting him at the last second.

So, who did make it? Well, when I put it to guys and gals on the internet, the winner by an overwhelming majority was Christopher Reeve, with more than three times the number of votes as his nearest rival (Tom Welling). I’ll be honest with you, the top spot on this list will come as no surprise to anyone. But what about the rest?

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And so, my look at the best actors to have ever played our favourite superheroes continues with Marvel’s webbed wonder, Spider-Man.

There have actually only been two live action Spider-Men, with Nicholas Hammond taking the role in a 1970s TV series, and Tobey Maguire in the recent films. Andrew Garfield doesn’t count as no one’s seen his film yet. Though that didn’t stop him coming in second place when I asked the public who people’s favourite Spidey is. Top of the public vote? That was Tobey Maguire. But is he my favourite?

No.

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Link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batman-year-one-lines-up-179942

Earlier in the year at Wondercon DC animation god, Bruce Timm, announced that the next animated Batman project they were working on was Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. Yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter not only unveiled these two shots from the production but also announced who would be voicing the various characters; Bryan Cranston as Jim Gordon, Ben McKenzie as a youngish Bruce Wayne/Proto-Batman, Eliza Dushku as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Katee Sackhoff as Detective Sarah Essen.

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