If the latest trailer for J.J. Abrams’ highly anticipated “Star Trek Into Darkness” is any indication, the film looks to be long on action and wit — and quite likely to please the crowds for whom theorizing about the identity of Benedict Cumberbatch’s bad guy has become a key pastime.

Some of the scenes in this new teaser trailer we’ve seen before — our heroes running through a crimson forest while being pursued by attackers, the Enterprise emerging dramatically from the ocean surface, a volcano erupting. And some images will seem quite familiar to fans who turned up to see the opening nine minutes of the movie when it screened before certain IMAX presentations of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” last December.

But there’s plenty of new material too, including a sequence in which Kirk and Spock navigate a speeding spaceship through an impossibly tight spot.

“See, I told you it would fit,” says Kirk (Chris Pine) as they emerge only partially unscathed.

“I’m not sure that qualifies,” replies Spock, played again by Zachary Quinto.

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Cumberbatch’s bad guy makes a few appearances in the new trailer, though he does not speak.

Bruce Greenwood as Adm. Christopher Pike gets a fair amount of screen time too, asking Kirk at one point, “Any idea what a pain you are?”

“I think so, sir,” replies Kirk.

Gotta love that banter.

“Star Trek Into Darkness,” written by “Lost” alumni Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, is slated for a May 17 release.

– Deborah Netburn

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It’s been a strong run of episodes of late for “The Walking Dead” — last week’s installment, “Clear,” won plaudits for its smart character moments and the return of Morgan, the good-natured man played by Lennie James, who initially saved the life of Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes way back in the series pilot.

Of course, a great deal has changed in the intervening time and the former friends found themselves navigating a tricky reunion. But Rick will have to face off against a very different kind of man in Sunday’s “Arrow on the Doorpost” when he sits down with the Governor (David Morrissey) to come up with a peace treaty that would enable the leaders to prevent any further deaths among their people.

“What’s important to understand in this character, he sees himself on a historical stage,” departing showrunner Glen Mazzara told Hero Complex of the Governor last year on the series’ Georgia set. “That’s really how we look at that character. David’s interested in that. Sometimes you try to cast someone, you might feel they’re not fully committed to playing a villain. He’s fully committed to playing a layered complex character.”

As the highly rated AMC zombie series heads toward its upcoming finale, you can expect the show’s writers to continue to ratchet up the level of tension.

Click through the gallery of images above for a preview of what to expect tonight.

– Gina McIntyre

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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The time-and-space-traveling alien known simply as the Doctor made his first appearance on TV screens in the United Kingdom on Nov. 23, 1963. Five decades later, he’s still going strong.

The second half of the relaunched show’s seventh season is set to return March 30, with Matt Smith as the Doctor and a Clara Oswin Oswald making her bow as the companion, Oswald is played by actress Jenna-Louise Coleman.

The first new episode, titled “The Bells of St. Johns,” introduces new villains called the Spoonheads. Meanwhile, the Doctor investigates something sinister going on with London’s Wi-Fi.

There’s reason for celebration this year as the Doctor — who has racked up quite a lot of screen time and mileage on the TARDIS –  turns 50 (or 500 … who really knows?). It’s time to question just how well you know him.

Test your Whovian devotion with our “Doctor Who” quiz, below.

[snapapp_quiz id="eewidget_p_51392ba7465a10fb45000024"]

– Patrick Day and Noelene Clark
Produced by Amy Hubbard

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Young artists looking to break into comics might want to take a page from David Marquez. Based in Austin, Texas, the illustrator is one of the industry’s fastest-rising stars, working alongside veteran writer Brian Michael Bendis on such titles as “Ultimate Spider-Man” and “All-New X-Men” and working in his second graphic novel, “The Joyners in 3D,” after arriving on the comics scene only three years ago.

Soon after college, Marquez got his start as an animator for Richard Linklater’s 2006 rotoscoped film “A Scanner Darkly.” His first graphic novel “Syndrome,” co-written by Daniel Quantz and R.J. Ryan, was released by indie publisher Archaia Entertainment in 2010, soon followed by “Days Missing Vol. 2: Kestus” in 2011. His work earned him a nomination for the Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer award, given out each year at the prestigious Eisner Awards, and drew the attention of Marvel Comics.

Marquez made his big break into superhero comics with Jonathan Hickman’s “Secret Warriors,” soon followed by “Fantastic Four: Season One.” His work on “Ultimate Spider-Man” was widely praised, and he returns to the title this May for a highly publicized story line in which young web-slinger Miles Morales is rumored to be giving up his super identity. In the meantime, Marquez’s “All-New X-Men” run wraps up with issue No. 8. The comic, which features the first meeting of the original X-Men and the Avengers, hits stores today.

Hero Complex caught up with Marquez to talk about “Ultimate Spider-Man,” “All-New X-Men” and “The Joyners in 3D,” which reunites Marquez and his “Syndrome” collaborator R.J. Ryan.

HC: Can you tell us a little about how you got your start in the industry? Did you study art in school?

DM: I graduated about 10 years ago. I actually went to [the University of Texas at Austin] on an academic scholarship. I had planned originally to go into teaching. I was going to go to grad school to get a Ph.D. in either political science or history, because I majored in history and government. And while applying for grad school — I got into a few — I realized that it wasn’t really what I had expected it to be in terms of the life of being a grad student. So I delved back and was looking to be a history teacher and tried out on a whim for an animation position, because I’d always drawn. And I got the animation position on “A Scanner Darkly,” which was made here in town, and that kind of converted me to an art career.

HC: Had you received any formal training?

DM: I took some art classes in high school and some summer classes when I was in elementary and middle school, but with the exception of those, no. I’ve always been drawing. If you go back and look at all my college notebooks. They start off all nice and cleanly organized, but then they become just sketchbooks after the first or second week.

HC: How did you begin working with R. J. Ryan, your collaborator on “The Joyners in 3D”?

Marquez first collaborated with R.J. Ryan on “Syndrome.” (Archaia)

DM: We became friends during “Syndrome,” during the production of that book. I had been trying to break into comics since right after college when I was working on “A Scanner Darkly”. That was 2005-ish. I had been going to conventions and not really making much headway, and I was practicing at home during my time off from work. And towards the end of 2008, beginning of 2009, I had been posting my art online on these various discussion forums where a lot of these burgeoning talents congregate, and R.J. — who goes by Josh with friends — came across own of my drawings, brought it to the guys at Archaia and Fantasy Prone and sold them to me basically as the artist, having never spoken to me or anything, but just based on this one Batman sketch that I had done that he thought spoke well to whatever potential talent I had. … The guys who were going to be paying for the book, they approached me, and then he and I started working together on “Syndrome” with another writer, Daniel Quantz. The three of us became friends.

HC: So how did “The Joyners in 3D” come about?

DM: This has been a long-developing passion project. … Josh and I as we became really close friends started talking about doing more work together. And we bantered around a half dozen potential projects, and we settled on “Joyners.” Even when we knew that this was the story we wanted to tell, it developed and change quite a bit from that original seed of an idea about a scientist and his family, essentially. It started becoming much more of a deep, dark family drama, and moving to the idea of drawing in a very different style than in my traditional, mainstream work. … [It's] the story of a family of the future falling apart. It’s very much riffing on the concept of “The Jetsons,” even in terms of the names of the characters. The patriarch of the family is George Joyner. And then he has his wife and his kids, and he is basically the chief technology officer of a large, Apple-computer style company in 2060s Monterey, Calif. We’re playing pretty strongly with a lot of visual motifs as well as the Jetsons-style ’60s idealized future. We have flying cars and cities and buildings in the sky and all that kind of stuff. But we’re also somewhat satirizing the idea of utopia, in a sense that yeah, you have a future where everything is bright and clean and shiny, we found the solution to pollution and poverty and hunger and all these things, but ultimately, humans are still flawed. So in addition to just kind of playing with the idea of a family in the future, there’s also an Icarus style hubris story, where ultimately George and his whole family’s flaws come back, and they have to pay for what they’ve done.

HC: Why 3D?

DM:  The 3D came pretty early one, but the impact of doing it in 3D changed the nature of the project pretty dramatically. … I think Josh was the one who first brought it up. It was kind of during the first wave, the first year or two of 3D coming back and becoming a bit of a fad in film. “Avatar” had come out, and all of that. Josh had been having conversations with a producer friend who’d worked on the 3D “Jackass” movie, of all things. There’s definitely a difference between 3D done well and 3D done poorly in film, and I think it’s pretty obvious to see when you’re comparing the two, and it got him thinking about the lack of ambitious 3D in comics. I’m not going to say there’s none, but in general, 3D has been a gimmick 99-point-whatever-percent of the time with comics, at least recently, with little thought into how to use it in an innovative fashion, or how to integrate more into the overall storytelling and narrative, and not just be an excuse to have a dude punching through the page at you.

HC: So you do all of your own 3D rendering?

A page from “The Joyners in 3D,” by R. J. Ryan and David Marquez. (Archaia)

DM: I do, and that was a decision that was made fairly early on, but at first we weren’t sure how we were going to tackle the technical aspect of doing the 3D. There are number of people who will do the conversions … but in doing the research on 3D, and being a bit of a control freak, I decided I wanted to tackle that myself, if nothing else than for just the technical challenge of learning how to do it. And also being a bit of a control freak, I liked the idea of — if the purpose of doing the book in 3D is really to marry the narrative with the 3D, just having the 3D help tell the narrative, help sell the narrative, the more control I had over how the 3D looked, the happier I think I would be in the overall execution and the overall telling of the story.

HC: Did it make your work as an artist a more involved process?

DM: For my mainstream work, I work primarily digitally. Not exclusively, but primarily. And the fact that I have this digital work flow allows me a lot more freedom in working on any given page. It also allows me then to cater the art as I’m producing it to the 3D conversion process which happens at the end. As a very simple example, when I’m drawing, I typically work in layers. So I always have the foreground, the middle ground and the background separated out from each other. On a normal page, that means if I need to change someone’s clothes, or I drew the hand wrong, or something, I can edit that one aspect of the page without messing up the background or anything else in that panel. So working in 3D, it’s very simple then to take those layers and then start using those to sell the 3D effect and to move into that step of the process since they’re already separated out.

HC: Meanwhile, with Marvel, the response to your work on the Ultimate comics has been so positive.

DM: It’s been really, really rewarding. While I’ve been working in comics for three or four years, I’ve really only been in front of a decently sized audience for about a year now. And at that point, no one knew who I was, and there was a lot of skepticism about me coming on following a very successful and well-received artist in Sara Pichelli. And it’s been very rewarding that people’s skepticism has been overcome, and they seem to be pretty receptive now to my art.

HC: When you came on after Sara, you were basically an unknown name, and there was a lot of skeptical chatter on comics blogs. Did you feel a lot of pressure taking on such a big title?

DM: Absolutely. I’m still fresh enough that I will Google to see what people have been saying about the work. And considering some of the vitriol people get, I’ve been very fortunate that people in general seem to like it. But it’s a ton of pressure, absolutely. My first project was working with Brian Bendis, who is one of the biggest names in comics, so I knew that he and the rest of the folks in the Ultimates office were taking a chance on me as a fairly untried, youngish artist. There’s pressure to perform, not only because I didn’t want to get bad feedback from them, but also to make sure that I was paying back the investment that they had made in me by offering me such a high-profile project ["Ultimate Spider-Man"]. Originally, I was only going to be on for three issues, but after the first issue, they chose to keep me on considerably longer. I think I was on for nine issues, on my first run of issues. I’m going back and drawing more of it now.  And then I’m coming back on for another arc starting with issue 23.

HC: There’s a lot of excitement for that May issue. What can we expect from Miles?

DM: I can say what Brian has said publicly, which is that this takes place after the Venom storyline. Sara Pichelli’s been drawing those four issues., up to issue 22. Something really big happens, leading to the big tease that we’re doing, which is that Miles doesn’t want to be Spider-Man anymore. So I did the cover for 23, which is an homage to John Romita‘s famous scene of Spider-Man dropping the costume in the trash can. What Brian has said, and I can say it as well, is there’s a time jump. Issue 22 happens, really big impact on Miles’ life, and then a considerable amount of time will pass before 23 starts. So we’re picking up after x amount of time, seeing all these changes that have taken place with him and with his life, his whole world completely shaken by what happened, and him still trying to pick up the pieces.

“Ultimate Spider-Man” artist David Marquez pays homage to John Romita’s iconic splash page in Stan Lee’s 1967 “Amazing Spider-Man” No. 50. (Marvel Comics)

HC: Peter Parker is such an iconic character that fans can recognize the same Spidey movements and poses from artist to artist. Did you try to break away from those poses for Miles?

DM: It was a challenge, certainly. One of the earliest conversations I had with Brian Bendis as I was coming onto the project was he definitely had in mind Miles moving very differently. And that’s something you saw in Sara’s work, and I definitely tried to push pretty strongly in my own. And it comes down to exactly what you’re saying: Peter Parker is Peter Parker, and we all kind of know what Spider-Man looks like. But Miles is a completely different character. He’s younger, I think he’s 13 when he first starts out being Spider-Man, whereas Peter was like 15. And so his body is sized differently, and he doesn’t have the training Peter has, either, or just the experience. We always wanted him to seem a little bit out of control. He’s patterning himself after watching all these videos of Peter, and trying to learn how to be Spider-Man based on that research. But he’s figuring it out in these early adventures. And hopefully he always looked a little bit like you weren’t quite sure if he’d land properly or not.

HC: With that time jump, are you going to have to age him up for the next one?

DM: He will be older. I can’t say how much older, but enough time will have passed that people will notice, definitely.

HC: You’re getting to do the same kind of thing in “All-New X-Men” — drawing both adult versions and younger versions of these characters.

DM: Yeah, I mean I never would have expected myself as I kind of started developing as an artist as somebody who would enjoy drawing teenagers so much. It’s kind of become one of the things that I do. People seem to be responding pretty well to the “X-Men” work that the teenagers look like teenagers, which is something that I put a lot of effort, wanting to make sure that when you look at the younger Angel and the older Angel standing side by side, it isn’t just the design of the wings that differentiates them. The younger ones have a little more baby fat in their face, or just softer features or just look younger. Individual characteristics lead to that. And drawing Miles as well — I’ve started drawing issue 23 now — it’s so much fun drawing him and the cast, because teenagers are so emotive, and they wear everything on their sleeve, even when they think they’re trying to hide what’s going on, whereas adults can be moody and withdrawn. If a kid is moody and withdrawn, they’re acting out. It’s a whole lot of fun.

A page from “All-New X-Men” No. 8, by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez. (Marvel Comics)

HC: Was there anything you learned doing “Ultimate Spider-Man” that you took with you to “All-New X-Men”?

DM: Absolutely. I think I grew a whole lot as an artist moving from “Fantastic Four” Season 1, which was my project before “Ultimate Spider-Man,” to the end to my first run of issues. I’m not sure that I can articulate in details what those changes wore, but I think I had a much stronger grasp of  composition and layout in general. … In general when doing art or any kind of craft, you learn the rules so you can perform it well. At a certain point, though, you start having fun by breaking the rules in certain ways, and seeing what the results are, having the foundation laid down. And I think by the time I started on “All New X-Men,” I was willing to experiment in new ways with my art, whether that’s the way I compose a page, the angles that I choose when drawing a panel, even just little stylistic flairs in terms of the way I draw the characters. And working with a completely new cast with the X-Men as opposed to the Spider-Man cast, it gave me an opportunity to explore drawing in different ways and rendering in different ways and composing in different ways.

HC: Do you see your three issues on “All New X-Men” expanding into more, the same way it did with “Ultimate Spider-Man”?

DM: I mean down the line, perhaps, and I’d definitely love to work on that book some more, but for the time being, I’m back on “Spider-Man” for another substantial run. I’m not sure what the total number will be, but for the short term, the majority of this year, I’ll be drawing “Spider-Man.”

– Noelene Clark
Twitter.com/@NoeleneClark

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The official synopsis for Sunday night’s installment of “The Walking Dead” is pretty straightforward: “Realizing they are heavily outgunned against the Governor’s (David Morrissey) forces, Rick (Andrew Lincoln) leads an expedition to get more weapons.”

But photos from the new episode of the hit AMC zombie series suggest that Rick and Carl (Chandler Riggs) might get a little bonding time with Danai Gurira’s Michonne while making that run for supplies.

The three characters are prominently featured in stills from the episode, titled, “Clear,” and Gurira, speaking late last year, certainly had only kind words for Lincoln, who is at the core of the actors featured in the series’ ensemble.

“There’s something about this show where the actors have such a beautiful ownership of what goes into the camera frame,” told Hero Complex. “People want everyone to do excellently, and they let you know when you have. There’s such encouragement of fellow excellence. It’s so collaborative. It’s something that the lead of the show, Andy Lincoln, really brings to light. There’s something so pure about him; there’s no ego, it’s all about the work. He sets a beautiful example that way; he’s kind, encouraging, congratulatory, really happy for great stuff to happen. He’s a true actor.”

Click through the images in the gallery above to get a sneak peek at what’s in store as the show ramps up toward its anticipated third season finale.

– Gina McIntyre

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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If you ever watched “Star Wars” and longed to wield a light saber of your own, you’re not alone, young padawan. A San Francisco “Star Wars” fan has created a combat choreography class for the Jedi and Sith weapon.

The class is the brainchild of Alain Bloch, a 32-year-old software engineer with a lifelong love of George Lucas’ epic space opera.

“There are a lot of really awesome costuming groups in the Bay Area, but there was no one that was doing reenactments of the lightsaber battles that you find in movies, which I find to be some of the most exciting parts of them,” Bloch told Hero Complex. “So I went around and was actually looking for somebody who could possibly teach me how to do this sort of choreography.”

Golden Gate Knights instructor Alain Block demonstrates a move for his class. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

Bloch found Matthew Carauddo, a fencing instructor and martial artist who works on stage choreography and teaches fencing in the Los Altos area, south of San Francisco. Carauddo was also a self-professed “Star Wars” geek and taught kids lightsaber choreography to supplement fencing, Bloch said. He trained Bloch, and then the pair founded Golden Gate Knights to bring more padawans into the Jedi order.

Two years later, the class meets weekly, with roughly 25 people (many in costume) slicing, jumping, spinning, parrying and meditating for three hours every Sunday. Classes cost $10 and are open to adults and teenagers accompanied by parents. Bloch refers children to Carauddo, who no longer teaches with Golden Gate Knights and runs his own classes in San Francisco’s South Bay area. For the last few sessions, Bloch said, he’s had to turn people away due to the space constraints of the dance studio where the group meets.

“We have people who have their own lightsabers and really want to learn how to use them and look cool flourishing them around,” Bloch said. “We have people who are into film who want to learn how to do some choreography for their film projects. And we have just a lot of people who are interested in fun weekend activities who want to come out and do something interesting. We have a lot of people are into ‘Star Wars,’ or at least curious about ‘Star Wars.’ And we have a lot of people come out on fun dates.”

Part of the appeal, Bloch said, is in the weapon itself. In the “Star Wars” films, the lightsaber is a sort of laser sword wielded only by members of the Jedi order and their dark counterpart, the Sith. It is, as Obi-Wan Kenobi told Luke Skywalker in “A New Hope,” an “elegant weapon” as well as a symbol.

“The lightsaber is a very iconic element to ‘Star Wars,’” Bloch said. “It’s the sword. You see that in all sorts of stories and movies — it sort of represents this force of change. And there’s a virtuous element to the lightsaber; it’s made of light, and only those who are keen to the Force can wield it effectively. Since I was a kid, I wanted a lightsaber. It would be very symbolic of being a hero, in a sense. So a lot of people come to our class, and they kind of want to live out that childhood or maybe adulthood fantasy of being a Jedi knight, so our class is sort of a dream come true to them.”

The class has grown to the point that it’s self-sustaining, Bloch said, but he’s not going to be quitting his day job anytime soon.

“It’s just something I do on the side,” he said. “Only on the weekends I get to don my Jedi robes and feel the Force.”

For Los Angeles-based “Star Wars” fans who want to learn the ways of the Jedi, Bloch recommends classes held by the Saber Guild, or instructional DVDs (co-created by Carauddo and martial artist Mark Preader) for sale at www.sabercombat.com.

– Noelene Clark
Twitter.com/@NoeleneClark

Gallery produced by Bryan Chan.

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Colton Haynes and Willa Holland in “Arrow.” (CW)

The population of Starling City continues to grow on the CW’s “Arrow.” This week’s episode adds “Teen Wolf” vet Colton Haynes as Roy Harper, a tough kid who appears to be up to no good. Of course, longtime fans of Green Arrow will recognize Roy’s name as Oliver Queen’s ward and eventual sidekick, Speedy (or Red Arrow, depending on which part of the character’s lengthy history producers choose to work with).

Haynes spoke to Hero Complex via phone about his new role, which debuts in tonight’s episode, “Dodger.”

HC: Roy Harper has quite a history, at least as far as the comic books go. Did you educate yourself or did you come in fresh?

CH: Oh no, I definitely learned a lot before I came into it. And I asked a lot of questions, trying to get spoilers. They tried to keep me in the dark on some stuff, but when I came with a lot of information, they had to tell me.

HC: It must be good for an actor to get some sense of where his character is going. A lot of times on TV, the actors have no idea.

CH: My brother is a huge fan of pretty much every DC comic. He thought I was joking. He said, “Do you realize [Roy] is the Robin to [Oliver's] Batman?” I said “No way!” Then I went and did a lot of research.

HC: That analogy wasn’t brought up when you first discussed the character?

CH: I did a lot of research and understood that there were three different characters Roy Harper could become. He could be Speedy or Arsenal or Red Arrow in the different stages of his evolution. But I wasn’t sure which way they were going to go. And I’m still not sure which way they’re going to go. Right now, he’s still just Roy Harper.

HC: Has your brother had a chance to visit the set?

CH: I keep telling him I’m going to fly him out, but he has a little baby at home. But I give him spoilers. My brother definitely knows a lot more than what I’m able to talk about.

Roy Harper as Red Arrow (DC Comics)

HC: How physical do you get to be?

CH: I’ve had a bunch of scenes where I’ve had to get down and fight, but I leave it to the experts. Eli, my stunt double, is kind of a bad ass. He’s one of the best stunt men I’ve ever worked with. He makes me look good. I’m not going to take the credit on that.

HC: Have you picked up a bow and arrow at all?

CH: I tried to pick up Stephen [Amell's] bow and arrow and he posted a picture of what happened after. He beat the crap out of me. I’m kidding. I haven’t gotten to touch the bow and arrow on camera yet.

HC: So now that you’re off of “Teen Wolf,” can we consider the second season finale the conclusion of Jackson?

CH: I’m not sure how they’re going to get rid of that character. It was such a fun experience for me, but it was definitely time for me to see how much fun I could have working on “Arrow” with Greg Berlanti.

HC: It must feel like you graduated high school in a way. You were on a show where everyone was playing teenagers and now you’re on a show where everyone is an adult.

CH: Yeah, except I’m the only teenager on the show. So it’s like I went from junior year to senior year.

HC: What’s your interpretation of Roy?

CH: Roy is really stubborn because people give him a bad rap. He’s got a reputation for doing bad things, but you have to realize that people do bad things because they’re acting out or trying to get love from someone to make up for a loss in their life. With Roy, he does a lot of bad things because that’s normal. He fears normal. When he meets Thea Queen, she’s extremely wealthy. It’s the only world she knows. So when you bring Roy Harper and Thea Queen together, from two separate worlds, they’re both out of the norm and they have a love-hate relationship.

HC: In the comics, Harper was a ward of Oliver Queen. Has Stephen Amell taken a similar paternal role to you on set?

CH: Oh yeah, it was a crazy, obnoxious bromance at first sight. Actually, I had met Paul [Blackthorne] at a poker tournament a few months ago and we all became friends and started hanging out. We had a hell of a Super Bowl party.

– Patrick Kevin Day

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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Hero Complex will be hosting a live stream of Sony’s hotly anticipated announcement, starting at 3 p.m. Pacific time (6 p.m. Eastern), so stay tuned for the reveal of whatever it is that Sony has up its sleeve.

Look for Sony to build off of recent industry trends, including the integration of movement-recognition hardware, a la the Microsoft Kinect, an extension of Sony’s efforts to dethrone Xbox Live with its Playstation Plus offerings and of course, upgraded hardware.

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The event hints that Sony may have adjusted its strategy with the launch of the PS4. Allowing the Xbox 360 to have a year’s head start over the PS3’s launch, Sony allowed Microsoft to seize momentum and it wasn’t until recently that PS3 sales caught up with the 360.

With Microsoft still keeping its cards close to its chest, Sony will host the first next-generation reveal, if not the first next-gen release to feature significant hardware upgrades. Nintendo’s Wii U, released late last year, marked the opening of the new console generation.

With new consoles come new games, but publishers have been reticent to start debuting their next-gen offerings. “Watch Dogs” and “Star Wars 1313” have been all but confirmed to be on the 360 and PS3 successors. “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” was recently confirmed to be a next-gen title, and a tweet from the chief executive of GameStop about seeing “Battlefield 4” has sparked speculation that the game will make an appearance at Wednesday’s event.

Sony, which has recently seen its stock reduced to junk status and made significant cutbacks companywide, announced earlier Wednesday that it expects to post an operating profit by the end of its fiscal year in March. Its console and games division has recently been hit with a loss of momentum in software sales, and sales of the portable Playstation Vita remain sluggish, so the hope is that Sony’s new offerings will provide a shot in the arm.

– Morgan Little

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The Sony Playstation used to be the new kid on the block. It was an inexperienced newcomer when it tried to break into the world of video-game consoles, a world long dominated by Nintendo and Sega. But in time it came to dominate the market and led to the world’s longtime go-to console: the Playstation 2.

And though the brand has lost ground to Microsoft and Nintendo with the Playstation 3, Sony is looking to reverse its fortunes Wednesday with the expected unveiling of its Playstation 4. Speculation about the system, code-named “Orbis,” has reached a frenzy, with rumors of controllers housing screens, a $399 price point, a new streaming service and more spreading across the Internet.

It remains to be seen if Sony can maintain the Playstation’s rampant success as Microsoft prepares its own announcement about its next-generation offering, and Nintendo continues to build support for the Wii U. On the eve of Sony’s much-anticipated announcement, let’s take a look back at the rise of the Playstation.

First launched in Japan in December 1994 before coming to American shores in September 1995, the Playstation eventually shipped more than 100 million units, with production lasting nearly 10 years. Birthed by the failure of a joint effort between Nintendo and Sony to develop a disc-based console, Sony went off on its own and eventually dominated the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn.

Building off of its gigantic install base, and the deep catalog of third-party titles that became synonymous with the Playstation brand, including “Metal Gear,” “Tekken,” “Final Fantasy” and “Gran Turismo,” Sony then launched the Playstation 2 on March 4, 2000, in Japan, with the system coming to America on Oct. 26, 2000. Even with another round of competitors in Nintendo’s Gamecube, Sega’s Dreamcast and Microsoft’s initial foray into consoles with the Xbox, the PS2 became the most successful console ever, shipping more than 150 million units.

Certainly the inclusion of a DVD drive, which made the PS2 for many households the easiest means of obtaining a DVD player, aided the PS2’s massive success. The depth of its software catalog and the emergence of the “Grand Theft Auto” series, which sold more than 34 million copies over three PS2 titles, solidified the PS2 as a ubiquitous console worldwide.

But Sony stumbled out of the gate with the Playstation 3.

The PS3 announcement in 2005 was riddled with awkward moments, with then-CEO Kazuo Hirai futilely trying to ramp up excitement for “Ridge Racer,” crabs being heralded as next-gen features and of course, the $599 price tag. The system was released in late 2006, and though initial sales lagged behind the Xbox 360 (with it’s one-year head start) and Nintendo’s Wii, the PS3 has since achieved worldwide parity with the 360, with an estimated 77 million units sold so far.

Sony has also expanded the Playstation line into mobile gaming, launching the Playstation Portable between 2004-2005, a console that had particularly great success in Japan, but was unable to meet up with the popularity of Nintendo’s DS. The latest Playstation mobile offering, the Playstation Vita, has been met with less-than glowing sales numbers since its launch in late 2012, early 2013.

So take a stroll down memory lane with the gallery above, or with the videos below that Sony has released to build hype for its Wednesday event.

– Morgan Little

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With his latest literary endeavor, “Seduction of the Innocent,” Max Allan Collins writes a hard-boiled detective novel inspired by the 1950s witch hunt against crime and horror comic books.

He took inspiration for the story from the real-life crusade of Dr. Fredric Wertham, who in 1954 published a nonfiction book also titled “Seduction of the Innocent” in which he accused comic books – especially violent ones such as those distributed by “Tales From the Crypt” publisher EC Comics – of corrupting America’s youth.

Collins sets his book in 1954, though it’s fictional EF Comics that is the target of concern. Would-be censor Dr. Werner Frederick meets a gruesome demise on the way to a Senate hearing, and it’s up to private eye Jack Starr and his beautiful boss Maggie to solve the case before the crackdown comes.

Collins, of course, has an illustrious comics history of his own as the author of “Road to Perdition” and longtime scripter of the “Dick Tracy” newspaper comic strip. With “Seduction of the Innocent,” comic-book artist Terry Beatty contributes 16 pages of interior illustrations.

Click through them in the gallery above, and read the excerpt from the book, out Tuesday, below.

An interior sketch from “Seduction of the Innocent” by Terry Beatty. (Titan)

“Yesterday Harlem,” I said to Sylvia, “today the Waldorf. It’s a full damn life, don’t you think?”

We were in the midst of the mile-long lobby of the palatial hotel—between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets, Park and Lexington Avenues—surrounded by more marble, stone and bronze than in a high-tone cemetery, and more paintings by famous artists than at most museums. The furnishings were 18th Century English and Early American, but the guests were too rich to be impressed. Two thousand such guests were looked after by the same number of hotel staff members.

“You seem to know your way around here,” Sylvia said, following me past potted plants and overstuffed chairs.

“Yeah,” I said. “Some big-time cartoonists live in the tower suites, which are strictly residential. Hal Rapp lives here, the late Sam Fizer used to.”

I decided not to mention that gangster Frank Calabria, who had once been a silent partner of the major’s, also had one of those suites, though he didn’t live there. His mistress did.

The top eighteen of the hotel’s fifty stories were the twin towers, which had their own bank of elevators. We went up to the 35th floor and quickly found 3511, the doctor’s suite.

“You know, the Presidential Suite is just down the hall,” I said, pointing. “It’s where Ike and Mamie stay when they’re in town.”

She wasn’t impressed. “I voted for Stevenson.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

I pressed the doorbell. It was that kind of hotel, or anyway that kind of suite.

No response.

I tried again, then I knocked good and hard. I did this several times.

Also no response.

I tried the knob. I can’t tell you why, other than it was a sort of reflex action after ringing and knocking hadn’t got me anywhere. Plus, we were expected.

“It’s open,” I said.

Sylvia looked at me wide-eyed and I looked at her narrow- eyed.

She said, “Should we go in?”

“The doc may have left it open for us. Maybe he’s in session with somebody.”

“Dr. Frederick said he didn’t take patients till one p.m. And we’re right on time.” She mulled it briefly. “But…since he’s working out of where he lives, maybe he doesn’t have a receptionist or secretary. And just leaves it open for patients or expected company. Like us.”

“Okay, you sold me.” I edged the door open, then looked back at her. “Why don’t you stay out here?”

“Why?”

“I don’t really know why, but why don’t you?”

I had a chill or a premonition or something, and that didn’t make me Edgar Cayce: Dr. Werner Frederick had been subject to more death threats lately than Joe DiMaggio. He married Marilyn Monroe, you know.

An interior sketch from “Seduction of the Innocent” by Terry Beatty. (Titan)

Moving through the marble-floored entryway, I called out, “Dr. Frederick! It’s Jack Starr!”

Nothing, except some echo off marble.

Then I was in the high-ceilinged, long, narrow living room, which echoed other Waldorf residential suites I’d been in—a fireplace at right with facing black leather sofas separated by a glass coffee table; a big picture window on the city at the far end; French doors to a dining room at left (also a door to the kitchen); and beyond the fireplace sitting area, the closed bedroom door. The carpet was fluffy and white, the furnishings modern, everything black and white, solids, no checkered stuff—this leather chair black, that metal lamp black, this leather chair white, that laquer end table black.

Black and white like the doctor’s way of thinking. Black and white like the daily comics. The only splashes of color were magazines on the coffee table—one being that Collier’s I’d just seen at Maggie’s. My guess was all these magazines had articles by or about Dr. Frederick.

This was the most sterile, Spartan Waldorf suite I’d ever been in, not even a knickknack or award on the fireplace mantle; but that may have been because the living room had been transformed into essentially his patients’ waiting area.

And when I checked the dining room—“Dr. Frederick!”— I found that the area had been converted into an office, complete with a brown leather couch, a desk, swivel chair with tufted leather back and seat, a similar but not swivel visitor’s chair, lawyer-style bookcases, everything warmly masculine, reassuring. His desk was as neat as Maggie’s—even the stack of vile comic books, for research purposes, made a neat pile.

Okay. So this was where he saw patients.

Because it was handy, I checked the kitchen. Nobody in there, either.

Apparently the doctor had no cook, no secretary, no receptionist. The choice of the Waldorf seemed to have more to do with meeting and attracting upper-class clients than living in comfort. This was, after all, a small tower suite, designed for bachelor living—Frederick was a widower with no children—and he had given up the largest room for his office. His work was his life.

That left only the bedroom, always the most awkward room to enter in a situation like this. I damn near skipped it. I mean, he probably wasn’t here, right? Maybe he went downstairs to get his hair cut in the fancy barbershop, or his breakfast in the coffee shop had run late, and like Sylvia said, he just left the door open for us.

Maybe.

The bedroom was Spartan as well. You faced the foot of the double bed upon entering; the bed was modern with a brown spread. Glass doors led onto a balcony—these stood slightly open, and as this was another cool day, it was damn near cold in there. More bland modern furnishing ran to a couple of night stands and a dresser, and another bookcase. Also a smaller work area, a little desk. The only other item of note was Dr. Frederick himself.

He was right in front of me—hanging from a ceiling light fixture by a heavy rope. Eyes rolled back, tongue lolling, dried spittle on his chin, in a lab coat and tie and well- pressed trousers. A chair had been kicked over.

An interior sketch from “Seduction of the Innocent” by Terry Beatty. (Titan)

“Oh, Jack!”

She was just behind me in the doorway. She had a clawed hand to her mouth, as if about to stifle a scream—and would have been right at home on the cover of Tales from the Vault.

So would Dr. Frederick.

I held up a stop palm. “Sylvia, maybe you should wait out in the hall. Whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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Last month, news that J.J. Abrams would direct “Star Wars: Episode VII” took the entertainment world by storm.

Today, a new conversation begins — who’ll direct the “Star Wars” spinoff movies that Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg are writing?

In an interview with CNBC Tuesday, Walt Disney Co. chairman and CEO Robert Iger confirmed that in addition to releasing “Star Wars: Episode VII,” Disney will also distribute “a few” stand-alone films that are not part of the overall saga.

Kasdan, who co-wrote the screenplay for “Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back,” and Kinberg are working on the scripts for two of those projects.

Online speculation has suggested Yoda would be the subject of one of the movies, but Iger did not specify which characters might receive stand-alone treatment.

It’s big news that is sure to generate a lot of talk on the part of “Star Wars” fans, many of whom had a decidedly mixed reaction to word that Abrams had been handed the keys to the “Star Wars” franchise. Some suggested that no one man should creatively control both “Star Wars” and “Star Trek.”

Abrams, of course, rebooted “Star Trek” for the big screen in 2009 to much acclaim and rousing box-office receipts, with the film collecting upward of $385 million.

His follow-up, “Star Trek Into Darkness,” is due in theaters May 17.

– Gina McIntyre

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Studio Ghibli fans can get a glimpse of the Japanese animation studio’s latest film ”From Up on Poppy Hill” in a new trailer released Monday.

“Poppy Hill” follows high school students Umi (voiced by “Once Upon a Time” actress Sarah Bolger in the English-language version) and Shun (“Star Trek Into Darkness” actor Anton Yelchin), who find love when they team up to save a historic building from demolition in 1963 Yokohama. The film deals with nostalgia for a bygone era and hope for a modern future, as the country heals after World War II and prepares to host the 1964 Olympics.

The film is based on a 1980s manga by Tetsuo Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi. Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki wrote the screenplay and his son, Goro, directed. “Poppy Hill” was a box office hit in Japan and went on to win the 2012 Japan Academy Award for animation of the year.

The English-language version of the film is directed by Gary Rydstrom, the seven-time Oscar-winning sound wizard whose credits include such films as “Finding Nemo,” “Titanic” and “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.” Rydstrom directed the American version of Studio Ghibli’s “The Secret World of Arrietty,” released last year.

“It’s nice when a studio has such an identifiable sensibility,” Rydstrom said at the time. “They make movies like no other animation studios make them. I love movies that feel like they are done by human beings, that have such a personal and sometimes quirky and unique style to them, and all their movies do. … There’s also a beauty in how they use animation to study the most minute moments of life.”

The English-language “Poppy Hill” features the voice talents of Jamie Lee Curtis, Gillian Anderson, Christina Hendricks, Ron Howard, Bruce Dern, Chris Noth and Aubrey Plaza, among others.

The film is being released in the U.S. by GKids — whose “A Cat in Paris” and “Chico & Rita” earned Oscar nods last year — and is due out in Los Angeles and New York theaters March 15, before expanding to the rest of North America on March 29.

– Noelene Clark
Twitter.com/@NoeleneClark

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How many Iron Men does it take to save 13 people plummeting earthward after a plane breaks apart in midair? Granted, it’s kind of a trick question, seeing as how there is only one Tony Stark, but the passengers’ plight made for a gripping Super Bowl teaser touting the May 3 release of “Iron Man 3.”

Although “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” director Shane Black’s first entry in the Marvel series looks heavy on the action, the Robert Downey Jr. vehicle wasn’t the only upcoming blockbuster to get airtime during the big game, with new spots debuting for “Star Trek Into Darkness,” “World War Z” and “Snitch,” among other films.

In all, Disney promoted three of its new releases, with “The Lone Ranger” and “Oz: The Great and Powerful” joining “Iron Man 3″ as part of the promotional onslaught.

With its charging horses, chugging trains, wide-open vistas, silver bullets — Gore Verbinski’s “The Lone Ranger,” set to open July 3, has all the hallmarks of the Old West adventure series, plus a couple of very modern updates: Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the masked Texas ranger.

Depp’s unusual makeup alone is surely worth the price of admission.

James Franco stars as would-be wizard Oscar Diggs in “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” Sam Raimi’s quasi-prequel to the classic “The Wizard of Oz.” The technicolor wizardry employed to craft the land beyond the rainbow — a place populated by fantastical creatures and comely witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Glinda (Michelle Williams) — will be interesting to behold on the big screen once the film opens March 8.

– Gina McIntyre and Rebecca Keegan

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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Amid the narrowing concentric circles of corruption, murder and big city racketeering featured in the shoot-’em-up action caper “Bullet to the Head,” which arrived in theaters Friday, British actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s character, crime kingpin Robert Nkomo Morel, occupies the center ring.

He’s the movie’s heavy: a smooth-talking, African-born arch manipulator, all wide smiles, tailored tuxedos and silken menace with an outsize physicality that can recall Geoffrey Holder’s James Bond nemesis in “Live and Let Die.”

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. (Courtesy of Dave Wise)

But in “Bullet,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje comes up against the immovable force of Sylvester Stallone, portraying old-school hit man for hire James “Jimmy Bobo” Bonamo; he’s hellbent on taking an eye for an eye when his partner is murdered after carrying out a mob hit.

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A son of Nigerian immigrants who earned a law degree from King’s College in London, Akinnuoye-Agbaje is primarily known Stateside for his television roles, playing such imposing men of musculature as the guerrilla fighter-come-priest Mr. Eko in “Lost” and murderous convict Simon Adebisi in HBO’s “Oz.”

The actor relished the chance to put his more cerebral side on display in “Bullet.”

“Morel’s the epitome of greed and obsessed with money and power,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje noted. “Unlike some of the villains that audiences may be used to me playing, here is a character who’s more of a chess player, the orchestrator of criminal activity. He’s the brains behind the setup as opposed to the brawn.”

The coming months will find Akinnuoye-Agbaje featured in a trifecta of villainous roles. In addition to “Bullet,” he portrays a crusading truancy officer who doggedly pursues two preteen boys riding out a Brooklyn summer living on their own, surviving by their wits without parents, in the indie drama “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month.

And come November, the actor will be showcased in the splashy dual role of Algrim/Kurse in Marvel’s mega-budget superhero sequel “Thor: The Dark World.”

Still, Akinnuoye-Agbaje says he never approaches antihero parts with anything other than the characters’ internal compass points in mind.

“If you step into it thinking you’re playing a ‘baddie,’ it becomes caricature,” he said. “What I’ve always tried to do is show the human side: what’s flawed.”

Akinnuoye-Agbaje added: “I have to admit, I’m lavishing the opportunity to portray such a diverse range of baddies in such a diverse genre of films: indies, massive blockbusters to mid-size hit-’em-hard action movies opposite legends. I’m really enjoying it.”

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, right, and Marc John Jefferies in a scene from “Get Rich or Die Tryin.’” (Michael Gibson / Paramount Pictures)

Although details concerning plot points in “Thor: The Dark World” are still on lockdown, comic connoisseurs will be familiar with the Algrim-Kurse character arc. Algrim the Strong stands as the most powerful warrior among the title’s fictional race of Dark Elves. He’s compelled to fight Thor (portrayed by Australian hunk Chris Hemsworth in the films) by Elf overlord Malekith, who double-crosses Algrim, resulting in a life-threatening plunge into astro-lava.

However, Algrim survives – albeit wiped of his memory and transformed into a rampaging lava creature possessed of nearly infinite power — and sets out to exact revenge on Thor.

Akinnuoye-Agbaje often had to pull double duty as both characters in a single day – each characterization requiring around three hours in the makeup chair. And then there was the actor’s encasement in heavy-duty prosthetic padding to portray Kurse.

“The outfit weighed about 40 pounds. I’m sure there will be a certain amount of CGI but a good 80% was me in that suit,” said Akinnuoye-Agbaje. “The outfit informed how I was going to move – the horns – his fighting style as well. It’s almost like he’s made out of stone.”

Reluctant to reveal too much about “Thor: The Dark World” too early, the actor nonetheless shed a few rays of light on what fans can expect of Kurse.

Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is photographed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills in 2006. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s an amalgamation of a bull and a lava-like creature,” he said. “He has very animalistic tendencies but with this insatiable and unstoppable power. As an actor, that’s one of the hardest things to embody. You have to realize you are probably the most powerful thing you could imagine. And you have to be that. You can’t pretend, so that when you face Thor, it’s real.”

For all his big and small-screen accomplishments, the actor is most frequently recognized for – and chatted up about –his portrayal of “Lost’s” Mr. Eko.

“I’m amazed: When I go abroad, everywhere, people who can’t even speak English come up and recite half my lines as Mr. Eko,” said Akinnuoye-Agbaje. “ ‘Lost’ was a phenomenon and Mr. Eko was a part of that. A lot of people seem to identify with his journey and his struggle. The good, the bad, what necessarily looks good could be bad, and what looks bad could be a good means to a noble end. It just seems to be one of those shows and characters that resonates deeply.”

– Chris Lee

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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Matt Fraction used to live in the New York area that was devastated by Superstorm Sandy. To help out the community, the Marvel Comics scribe did one of the things he does best: He wrote an issue of “Hawkeye.”

The new comic book about the heroic archer/super spy has been seen as one of the best coming out of Marvel lately, and it is Fraction’s fresh take on Clint Barton and his downtime away from the Avengers that draws readers. In “Hawkeye” No. 7, which is drawn by Eisner Award-winning artist Steve Lieber and artist Jesse Hamm, Fraction humanizes the most human of Avengers even more by putting him in a situation that many had to face — albeit without trick arrows and S.H.I.E.L.D. training.

“Hawkeye” No. 7. (Marvel Comics)

Fraction had to act fast, banging out the book over his Thanksgiving holiday, and recruiting help to make it all work out. Fraction, who also writes “Fantastic Four,” “FF” and “Invincible Iron Man,” will be signing “Hawkeye” No. 7 at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the House of Secrets comic book store in Burbank, donating proceeds and royalties he receives from the book to the Red Cross to help with continued relief efforts.

“I’m leaning really hard on my comics-writing friends to stop by for cameos, too, so hopefully we’ll get some other notable luminaries in the industry to stop by.”

Hero Complex spoke to Fraction about his approach to “Hawkeye” and his larger take on the state of the industry.

Hero Complex: First off … We spoke to your wife Kelly Sue DeConnick last year about Captain Marvel. How is that dynamic at home with both of you being comic book writers?

MF: Our processes tend to be pretty different. We may fire broad shots across one another’s opinion bow, but our working styles tend to be pretty opposite of one another. Kell will try to talk through stuff while I tend to rely much more on her as a Jiminy Cricket, like “I shouldn’t do this” or “I should do that.” It’s very complementary and we can identify with each other very very well — like I’d imagine any couple in the same profession could probably commiserate better than a “mixed marriage” couple might have trouble. That special frustration that only other writers know where you sit at your desk for eight hours and type six words. Or you lose a day to [stupid] email and calendar [stuff], where there’s very little actual writing but you’re busy all day long. The kind of stuff that would be different if she was married to a doctor or something.

HC: How did you approach the new “Hawkeye” book?

MF: My first take was actually very Bond. Tuxedos and parties and women in gowns … that sort of stuff. It kind of didn’t feel right the more I thought about it. I saw a story like that, but didn’t have a book. I bowed out of it, but then I started thinking of him as the Marvel Universe’s Jim Rockford. Then I just got it … it was a book that I not only wanted to read and but also to write that hadn’t been done before, a book that was in absolutely no danger of stepping on anyone else’s toes. I didn’t plan to not have him in the costume — someone pointed out that no one even calls him Hawkeye in the first issue — it was never deliberate, but it just comes out of the character in the situation. It’s a book that is about a guy who can’t stop helping people because he can’t stand himself. There’s very little contrivance there. You don’t have to worry about “How do I get him in the costume?” or “What trick arrow is he going to use?” It’s all very Jim Rockford.

“Hawkeye” No. 1 variant cover. (Marvel Comics)

HC: Did Jeremy Renner’s portrayal of the character have any influence?

MF: I didn’t see ["The Avengers"] until everyone else. I had no inside look at it at all.  At one point, the book was supposed to come out in May, but it ended up not coming out until August, which was just as good because it gave us a chance to figure out more of what the book was. It was written out of order and has been sort of a weird process where we came at it sideways. The story that was [told in Issues] 4 and 5 was my initial pitch of what I thought the book should be. We wrote Issue 2 first, then I went back and wrote Issue 1. It wasn’t until Issues 6 and 7 or so that I started writing things in sequence.

HC: It’s Clint Barton-focused, so things like the upcoming “Age of Ultron” and the rest of the Avengers business is not in the book much.

MF: Yeah. That wasn’t deliberate or anything. This was just, “This is what he does when he’s not an Avenger. This is what Hawkeye does on Thursday afternoon.” I came up with an idea for an “Age of Ultron” tie-in, but it’s all locked. My idea was going to be him locked in a room … and he’s mortally wounded. That was it. A depressing 20 pages where Clint Barton is just bleeding out. I don’t know why they didn’t go for it! The Fantastic Four “Age of Ultron” tie-in that I wrote is the most depressing comic I’ve ever written. It was my fifth “Fantastic Four” issue, and I was like “This is bleak.” It was really weird.

HC: On that … What do you think about the whole “Age of Ultron” arc that’s coming up?

MF: It’s fun. It’s been in the works for a really long time. It’s why people love the Avengers. It’s one last chance for [Brian Michael] Bendis to do a great big calamitous Avengers adventure with weird futures and Ultron … It’s great. It’s fun to do these. The genius of it is that you skip the event. You just open it up and, bam — it’s already happened and the good guys lost. Now we see the aftermath. It’s a fun twist on the normal thing that we see so often.

HC: You’ve said before that you read things and think about what you could’ve or would’ve done instead, other choices you might have made. What was the last thing you read that made you rethink something you’re writing?

MF: I’m reading “Fantastic Four” comics to my kids at night. The stuff I write and the classic Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby] stuff. Once I do a final proof of a lettering packet, I don’t read my stuff again if I can avoid it. But the opportunity to actually read my comics out loud has struck me as tone deaf quite frequently. So I’ve now gotten back in the habit of when I get my proofs, reading them out loud. It’s a little inward-looking — “Oh, the last thing I read that changed my life was something that I wrote” — but that was sort of the [best example] of something that I read that now affecting the way I work. Your ear hears things that your head might miss, you know? Even little things like you repeating a word twice on one page.

HC: What’s your take on the accessibility of comics, and what Marvel and DC are doing to try to bring in new readers?

MF: Comics can do a lot to be more accessible. A whole lot of that is — well, there’s this sort of weird arc over the last 20 years of thinking that these things would never be collected, and that we were writing exclusively for 36-year-old men who read comics every week. At this point, I think the price point is at such a place and the content is at such a place that we can’t afford to do that anymore. I think Issue 788 of whatever book wouldn’t be a problem at all if Issue No. 788 was written in a way that was satisfying to new and old readers alike. I think it’s really difficult to do, but I think it’s possible. I think we as an industry fell into this pattern of not caring about new readers anymore. There’s a way that you can do it that isn’t the clumsy, awkward way that it used to be done where characters refer to themselves in the third person, thinking back on who they are and how they came to be. You don’t have to write every comic as if it’s the first comic someone’s ever read, but you do have to write as though you would like new people to read your comic — which is kind of what “Hawkeye” is all about. How clean can I make this? How much like “The Rockford Files” can you go? It’s not a show like “Lost” where you have to see it every week, or a show like “The Wire” where you really have to watch and pay attention closely every week. “Rockford” had a setup, then a riff, and that is very much how superhero comics are nowadays. So there’s no reason that we should be exclusionary. People love it. I mean, “Avengers” is the third biggest movie of all time. It hits a cultural sweet spot. It’s just that comics need to get better at not being so … comic-y.

– Jevon Phillips

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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HBO’s “Game of Thrones” doesn’t return for its third season until March 31, but a new round of photos reveals what’s in store for the denizens of Westeros — and offers an early look at some of the newest additions to the already expansive cast.

Chief among the new characters joining the lineup is Ciaran Hinds as King Beyond the Wall Mance Rayder, with other new faces including Diana Rigg as Lady Olenna Redwyne, otherwise known as the Queen of Thorns, who’s best described as the Dowager Countess of Westeros.

Rigg, of course, remains a beloved figure for her turn as Emma Peel on the BBC TV series “The Avengers.”

QUIZ: Test your “Game of Thrones” knowledge

The third season of “Game of Thrones” will be based on the first half of “A Storm of Swords,” the third book in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series and one of the longest in the series to date (in hardcover, it’s 973 pages).

Martin created a stir last year when he told audiences at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, “I may have to start killing some of these characters to make room for new ones.”

Among the other new cast members joining the show this season: Mackenzie Crook (from the British iteration of “The Office” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) as Orell, Clive Russell as Brynden “The Blackfish” Tully, Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon, Richard Dormer as Beric Dondarrion, Ellie Kendrick as Meera Reed, Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Jojen Reed and Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr.

Click through the gallery above to see new images from Season 3.

– Patrick Kevin Day

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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With “The Avengers,” “The Dark Knight Rises,” “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and more sci-fi and fantasy films, 2012 was a landmark, record-breaking year for spectacle entertainment. But 2013 looks just as promising with a host of big, anticipated sequels — including “Iron Man 3″ and “Star Trek Into Darkness” — and such smart new offerings as “Pacific Rim” and “Elysium” on the calendar.

With that in mind, here’s a look at Hero Complex’s 13 must-see movies in 2013.

“Oz: The Great and Powerful” (March 8)

Sam Raimi’s upcoming “Oz: The Great and Powerful” promises viewers a journey down the yellow brick road that will include a breathtaking array of dazzling visual effects. The Disney film stars James Franco as the man who will become the Wizard of Oz, and takes place well before Dorothy arrives in the faraway fantasy land somewhere over the rainbow.

It’s clear that the studio is hoping for a repeat of the success it enjoyed with Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” which opened in March 2010 and like “Oz” was produced by Joe Roth. It will be interesting to see Raimi, with his first feature since 2009′s “Drag Me to Hell,” offer his take on the much beloved mythology created by L. Frank Baum.

“Evil Dead“ (April 12)

“Iron Man 3″ (May 3)

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark,  the self-proclaimed “genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist,” won’t have such an easy time of it in the next big Marvel release. The most recent trailer for the film, directed by Jon Favreau’s former “Iron Man” and “Iron Man 2″ consultant Shane Black (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”), sees Stark potentially losing everything he values — perhaps including his girlfriend and levelheaded counterpart Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) — at the hands of supervillain the Mandarin, brought to the big screen for the first time by Ben Kingsley.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” (May 17)

J.J. Abrams’ much anticipated follow-up to his 2009 reboot of the landmark television series beams into theaters May 17, and fans got a taste of what to expect with the nine minutes of the movie that played before Imax screenings of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” But the question remains, who is the villain that Benedict Cumberbatch is playing?

Some fans seem convinced that Cumberbatch would appear as Khan Noonien Singh, the character made famous by Ricardo Montalban on the original TV series and in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Others appear certain that he would play Gary Mitchell, a villain with psionic powers first played by Gary Lockwood in the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” the second “Star Trek” pilot filmed and the first to feature William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk.

Damon Lindelof, who penned the movie’s script with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, said that the filmmakers intend to keep the character’s identity a mystery for as long as possible.

“Benedict doesn’t even know who he’s playing,” he joked.

“Man of Steel” (June 14)

Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” is set to take flight June 14, and in terms of visuals, Snyder seems to be painting with a beautiful, muted steel brush as he tells Kal-El’s story, the striking yet subdued hues possibly speaking to the elegant influence of producer Christopher Nolan.

Snyder told Hero Complex late last year that “Man of Steel” takes the Superman mythology quite seriously. “He’s this amazing ambassador for all superheroes,” Snyder said. “What was it about him that cracked the code that made pop culture embrace this other mythology? What we’ve made as a film not only examines that but is also an amazing adventure story. It’s been an honor to work on. As a comic book fan, Superman is like the Rosetta Stone of all superheroes. I wanted to be sure the movie treated it respectfully.”

“World War Z” (June 21)

Fans who were disappointed that the release of Paramount’s big-screen version of “World War Z” was delayed from its original December date and rescheduled to open June 21 had reason to feel some cheer with the  gripping first trailer for the Marc Forster-directed adaptation of Max Brooks’ acclaimed zombie novel.

The clip plays like a taut thriller that taps into modern fears about the fall of mankind and the ongoing fascination with the idea of the zombie apocalypse. “World War Z” stars Brad Pitt as Gerry Lane, a United Nations fact-finder and family man who desperately races around the globe to determine the origins of a zombie pandemic that has toppled civilization in short order.

“Pacific Rim” (July 12)

Guillermo del Toro hasn’t directed a film since 2008′s “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” but he’s set to return next year in a very big way with “Pacific Rim.” The robots-versus-kaiju film promises near nonstop spectacle, or, as Del Toro said in an interview with Hero Complex, “the biggest wrestling matches on Earth.”

Set in the near future, the film posits that a race of kaiju has entered our world, rising up out of the ocean, and humans, struggling to survive the onslaught, have invented 25-story tall robots called Jaegers to fight them off. Charlie Hunnam stars as the troubled Raleigh Becket, who along with Rinko Kikuchi’s Mako Mori pilots Gipsy Danger, pictured in the gallery above; the film’s cast also includes Idris Elba, Charlie Day and Del Toro regular Ron Perlman as the fabulously named, nattily attired black market businessman Hannibal Chow.

“The Wolverine” (July 26)

Hugh Jackman returns as the mutant with the adamantium claws in James Mangold’s Japan-set “X-Men” movie, which borrows its scenic story line from Chris Claremont and Frank Miller’s moody tale of love, revenge and isolation.

The movie marks Mangold’s first time at the helm of a comic-book-inspired tale — he’s best known for films including 1999′s “Girl, Interrupted,” which earned Angelina Jolie her Oscar, 2005′s Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line” and the underrated Western “3:10 to Yuma.”

“Elysium” (Aug. 9)

In the future, Matt Damon toils on an overpopulated, diseased and polluted Earth, while the one-percenters — or .00001-percenters — luxuriate on a space station paradise where cancer is cured at the touch of a button. That’s the premise of “Elysium,” South African director Neill Blomkamp’s mystery-shrouded follow-up to his 2009 Oscar-nominated sci-fi film, “District 9.”

Blomkamp envisioned a dusty, Third World Earth for the year 2159 — much of it shot in a giant garbage dump in Mexico. The filmmaker, who also wrote the screenplay, said he was taken with “the idea of this habitat in space being a metaphor for rich and poor, thinking about haves and have-nots.”

The cast includes Damon, Jodie Foster, who plays a  government minister on Elysium, and actor Sharlto Copley, who worked with Blomkamp on “District 9.”

Matt Damon in Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium,” slated for an Aug. 9 release. (Sony Pictures)

“Ender’s Game” (Nov. 1)

After more than two decades of waiting, fans of Orson Scott Card’s 1985 sci-fi novel will see a big-screen adaptation. Asa Butterfield, who won over critics with his performance in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” plays the title character, young Ender Wiggin. The film, directed by Gavin Hood (“X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “Tsotsi”) follows Ender and other child recruits as they fight each other at an outer-space military Battle School. The book tackled some weighty themes, and Hood has said the film will retain its tragic ending.

“Thor: The Dark World” (Nov. 8)

The hammer-wielding God of Thunder is no stranger to the big screen after Kenneth Branagh’s “Thor” in 2011 and last year’s box-office smash “The Avengers,” but the upcoming sequel takes the muscle-bound Avenger (reprised by Chris Hemsworth) back to his own turf – Asgard.

“Thor: The Dark World” pits the Asgardian prince against an ancient race of Dark Elves, led by the villainous Malekith (Christopher Eccleston). In the comics, Malekith possesses superhuman strength, stamina, speed and smarts, and he can also teleport, fly and cast illusions. Whether those powers will present themselves in the movie remains to be seen, but fans are hopeful that director Alan Taylor (“Game of Thrones”) will bring some grit to the shiny world of gods.

“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” (Nov. 22)

Jennifer Lawrence returns as Katniss Everdeen in the sequel to one of the biggest hits of 2012. In the new film, directed by Francis Lawrence, the enterprising archer and her unlikely co-victor Peeta Mellark are summoned back into the arena for a special anniversary edition of the lethal Games, in which two dozen previous victors must face off as unrest begins to sweep through the districts of Panem.

Josh Hutcherson, who plays Peeta, told The Times last year that he found working with Lawrence refreshing and especially appreciated her authenticity. “When you are acting with her, when you look into her eyes, you see that she is being that character,” he said. “There is no lying.”

“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” (Dec. 13)

Maybe it was to be expected, but the first installment in Peter Jackson’s planned three-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” is closing in on $1 billion worldwide box-office take, signaling that there was indeed a rabid fan base thrilled to see what the “Lord of the Rings” filmmaker had in store for his return trip to Middle-earth. Part two of the journey commences at the end of the year — and this part of the quest is certain to feature some major screen time for Benedict Cumberbatch’s ancient, lethal dragon.

We’re guessing this one will set the box office on fire too.

– Gina McIntyre, Noelene Clark, Rebecca Keegan, Patrick Kevin Day

Follow us on Twitter: @LATHeroComplex

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David S. Goyer, right, and Tom Riley, who plays Leonardo da Vinci, on the set of “Da Vinci’s Demons.” (Ollie Upton/ Starz Entertainment)

David S. Goyer has made a living inventing outsized mythologies for some of pop culture’s most beloved figures — Batman, Superman, he’s even working on a new Godzilla movie due out in 2014.

Now, he’s giving Leonardo da Vinci the superhero treatment. Starz’s “Da Vinci’s Demons” presents the gifted Renaissance artist as a born-out-of-wedlock tortured genius with a penchant for opium who is branded as a heretic by the all-powerful church.

All of which, Goyer points out, is true.

The eight-episode series, which is set to premiere April 12, concentrates on Da Vinci (played by English actor Tom Riley) as a young man beginning at 25 and imagines his development as a free thinker in a rigid, often-secretive society. There is surprisingly little known about the Italian artist, often regarded as one of the greatest geniuses of Western civilization, during this period in his life.

“I hate saying it’s got a graphic novel approach, but it does — it’s photographically very different than any other historical show,” said Goyer.

“Downton Abbey” this is not, but then, coming from Goyer, maybe that’s not a surprise. The Michigan native with the sleeve tattoos is a fixture in the worlds of comic book movies and video game culture, arguably best known for his work on Christopher Nolan’s brooding, majestic Batman films and as the screenwriter for the upcoming Superman movie, “Man of Steel,” which Nolan produced.

Goyer also wrote the massively popular game “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” but he’s yet to find the same kind of grand success in television. His most recent series, “FlashForward,” lasted just one season on ABC.

Christian Bale in “Batman Begins.” (David James/ Warner Bros.)

Inside a darkened editing suite at a Soho post-production facility where he’d been putting the finishing touches on the first few episodes of “Da Vinci’s Demons,” Goyer displayed a cautious optimism about his latest endeavor.

“It’s premium cable so there’s no censorship at all, so there’s nothing we can’t do or show or any theme we can’t explore,” Goyer said.

He came up with the idea for “Da Vinci’s Demons” after meeting with BBC Worldwide executives Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner, who, Goyer said, invited him to craft the “‘Batman Begins’ version of historical drama” for their new label, Adjacent Prods. (Tranter and Gardner are executive producers on the series.)

David S. Goyer in 2005. (Bryan Chan/ Los Angeles Times)

Da Vinci turned out to be the figure from the past that most intrigued the self-professed history nerd. The storytelling possibilities around the tormented artist, who isn’t always the most likable protagonist, seemed almost limitless.

“He was this incredibly complex character,” Goyer said. “He was a polymath, he was probably manic depressive, he had a really conflicted, interesting life. He had a real chip on his shoulder. Because he was a bastard, he wasn’t allowed into all these aspects of society, and yet his dad lived in the Medici palace. That was deeply humiliating for him.”

Although the first season largely takes place in Florence, Italy, the production was shot on location in Wales; an artist in residence was hired to reproduce many of Da Vinci’s most famous sketches.

David S. Goyer, right, and Tom Riley, who plays Leonardo da Vinci on the set of “Da Vinci’s Demons.” (Joss Barratt/ Starz Entertainment)

Goyer has already turned his attention to a second season, mapping out a clear direction for a serialized story line that is anchored by real historical events, even as it explores wild flights of fantasy too.

“It’s sort of one-third Indiana Jones, one-third ‘Sherlock,’ one-third [‘Iron Man’s’] Tony Stark,” Goyer said. “There’s a lot of ‘Lost’ in there, it’s got a heavy mythology. It’s got time-bending in there, it’s all the [....] I love and grew up on crammed into one show, but I think it’s working.”

– Gina McIntyre, reporting from London

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Have a wonderful holiday everyone!

– Gina McIntyre

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Jeremy Theobald in “Following.” (Zeitgeist Films)

This month sees the DVD releases of Christopher Nolan’s first and most recent movies. “Following” from 1998, out last week from the Criterion Collection, was made on a shoestring budget of 3,000 pounds (about $5,000 at the time).

Shot on weekends over a year by a 28-year-old with a day job making corporate videos and a cast and crew that consisted largely of friends, it’s calling-card filmmaking at its most efficient, a savvy neo-noir from a young Turk with plenty of tricks up his sleeve.

This year’s “The Dark Knight Rises” from Warner Home Video is, in the current Hollywood context, about as far as a calling card can take you: a superhero blockbuster that inspires cultish obsession and cost 50,000 times as much as “Following.”

More than franchise movies, Nolan’s Batman films have become, for better or worse, cultural events, passionately defended by their fans and — certainly in the case of the last two — endlessly dissected by pundits for their alleged political subtexts.

To watch these two films in succession is to pick up on intriguing through lines — Nolan’s flair for montage and interest in process are there from the start, and there is even a Batman logo prophetically plastered on someone’s door in “Following.”

Christopher Nolan has said that with “The Dark Knight Rises,” he sought to bring a sense of finality to his brooding, majestic Gotham City triptych. Pictured, Tom Hardy as Bane and Christian Bale as Batman. (Warner Bros.)

As lithe and brisk as “The Dark Knight Rises” is grandiose and bombastic, “Following” barely made a dent in the pop-cultural consciousness. So under-the-radar that even Sundance rejected it, the film is a British variant on that fabled staple of the 1990s American independent film scene, the credit-card labor of love.

Like the American upstarts who preceded him — Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith — Nolan launched his career with a film that refers primarily to other films, but “Following,” which exists in a hermetic universe of archetypes, is less a winking postmodern pastiche than a supremely confident genre homage.

The protagonist, who calls himself Bill and is identified in the credits as the Young Man (Jeremy Theobald), is a classic film-noir patsy: an unemployed would-be writer who, out of boredom and curiosity, decides to shadow random strangers around London. The compulsive voyeur is noticed by one of his marks, a professional burglar, Cobb (Alex Haw), who invites him to tag along.

Jeremy Theobald, right, and Lucy Russell in “Following.” (Zeitgeist Films)

The trouble begins when they rob an apartment strewn with photographs of an alluring femme fatale (Lucy Russell, credited as the Blonde), who will soon cross paths with the Young Man.

The setup is instantly familiar: a triangle ripe for multiple double crosses. But the most interesting complications come from the film’s tricky structure, which leaps back and forth in time, withholding information and dropping clues, requiring viewers to determine the time frame based on Bill’s appearance (before and after a haircut, before and after a facial injury).

The Criterion release includes a “chronological edit” that flattens out the temporal kinks. “Following” plays almost as well as a linear thriller but the use of parallel time lines, more than a gimmick, heightens the suspense by more closely mirroring the way our brains construct stories from piecemeal information.

Guy Pearce in “Memento.” (Danny Rothenberg/Newmarket Films)

Nolan’s second film, “Memento,” would prove to be an even niftier exercise in narrative gamesmanship: an ingenious meta-thriller with an amnesiac hero that unfolds in reverse, all the while toying with the memory of the audience. But the Nolan film that “Following” most obviously prefigures is “Inception.”

Leonardo DiCaprio’s “dream thief” in the later movie, who performs corporate espionage by entering the sleeping minds of tycoons, is also named Cobb, and the Cobb of “Following” describes home invasion as an erotic violation, an act of perverse intimacy.

As it happens, Haw is now an architect with avant-garde leanings, and his sculptural designs are not far from the origami dreamscapes in “Inception.”

From left, Christopher Nolan, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cillian Murphy on the “Inception” set. (Warner Bros.)

While they remain in their way complex stories, Nolan’s later films lack the satisfying intricacy of his early films. Convoluted as it is, “Inception” subscribes to a literal-minded notion of dream logic. Whatever the virtues of the Batman films, narrative elegance is not among them.

Nolan is one of Hollywood’s most powerful players with good reason: Few blockbuster auteurs today are as ambitious, as determined to infuse their action spectacles with topical resonance. But a double bill of “Following,” an object lesson in wily resourcefulness, and “The Dark Knight Rises,” a demonstration of what money looks like on screen, cannot help revealing the benefits of limitations.

– Dennis Lim

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Pick almost any year since 2005 in cinema, and it can pretty safely be labeled the year of the superhero. In much the same way, video games have been celebrating the year of the first-person shooter genre for at least half a decade.

Despite the glut, not many of those gaming titles can make you cry, but “The Unfinished Swan” just might.

The latter is from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy, one who just lost his mother and wants to make his father proud. His weapon? A magic paintbrush.

It’s a moving narrative that is just one small part of a shifting conversation on the gaming landscape.

Players uncover a magical world in “The Unfinished Swan.” (Giant Sparrow)

Ever since Nintendo’s 2006 console the Wii and the explosion of the mobile and tablet gaming sector penetrated the market, the race has changed. Titles such as Telltale’s “The Walking Dead,” Thatgamecompany’s “Journey” or Queasy Games’ “Sound Shapes” are deviating from the norm by no longer jockeying for a position in the battle to be bigger, badder and lengthier.

They’re so simple in concept, most of these games make our 10- to 12-button controllers feel like an ostentatious indulgence. In the case of “The Walking Dead,” its story unfolds using many of the gameplay techniques first introduced in the mid-’80s via the point-and-click PC adventure. “Sound Shapes” will, on the surface, be familiar to anyone who has sampled a “Super Mario Bros.” game.

Where they challenge — and arguably even push boundaries — is in user interaction and character development. Split-second dialogue choices dominate “The Walking Dead,” “Journey” is a quest completed primarily with thoughtfulness and “Lili” is the all-too-rare game that features a female protagonist, one it’s worth noting who is book smart rather than handy with a weapon.

BitMonster’s “Lili” was the rare game to star a female protagonist. (BitMonster)

“Swan” producer Max Geiger, 26, originally dreamed of making whatever would become the next “Halo” or “Call of Duty,” at least until a professor at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies suggested to Geiger that the mechanics for making a successful first-person shooter were a “solved problem.”

“That was a wake-up call,” he says. “That set me on a path for exploring different things and what this bold new language of interactivity could be used to explore.”

“We felt that stories, particularly folk tales, children stories and children books, were fertile ground to draw from,” says Geiger. “One of the jobs of children’s literature is to teach young human beings that they are mortal and that they’re in a world filled with mortality.”

He and the game’s creative director, Ian Dallas, cite French animated classic “The King and the Mocking Bird” as well as the Mediterranean-influenced work of artist M.C. Escher as primary sources of inspiration. And shooters.

“A lot of those games are power fantasies,” says Geiger. “You’re a 7-foot-tall space marine stomping around in power armor. We wanted to make the player feel like a 9-year-old boy.”

There will always be a place for the awe-inspiring combat engines and pixel achievements, just as filmmakers will push for new advancements for 3-D or tinker with frame rate. Now, though, the mobile and download arenas are expanding the opportunity for risk-taking developers.

Telltale’s “The Walking Dead” has revived the point-and-click adventure. (Telltale Games)

If there’s a criticism against titles mentioned here, it’s that they’re short. But that’s irrelevant. Our lives are cluttered enough as it is, and iPhone-friendly games such as “The Walking Dead” and “Lili” can fit into our day rather than demand a portion of it. They’re also affordable, available at a fraction of the cost of most traditional console games, making them better positioned to show a nongaming audience what is possible with interactive storytelling.

There’s more to come. In the works is L.A. Game Space, a planned nonprofit in downtown that aims to nurture new talent and educate visitors on independent gaming. Add in the now-annual IndieCade festival in Culver City, and we are amid an independent gaming renaissance.

Of course, the independent market has always been bubbling just under the surface, and it has a large audience to reach. There’s also the simple fact that experimentation never comes easy. “We want to make games that have something to say,” says Geiger. “Most people,” he adds, will feel games are not the “place to say it.”

And then there’s the always-shifting fiscal realities of the creator-publisher relationship. Giant Sparrow, the company that designed “The Unfinished Swan,” has a partnership with Sony, but will a large corporation feel the same love for smaller-minded games in 10 years?

In one sense, the answer doesn’t matter. The ideas are out there.

– Todd Martens

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If Nathan Fillion’s rough-and-tumble Capt. Malcolm Reynolds was the leader of Serenity in Joss Whedon’s short-lived television series “Firefly,” Jewel Staite’s mechanic Kaylee Frye was the ship’s (and the show’s) heart. Staite, Fillion and the rest of the Serenity crew are back on the air together for “Firefly: Browncoats Unite,” a Science Channel special commemorating the show’s 10th anniversary. The one-hour special features a roundtable discussion with cast members Fillion, Summer Glau, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin and Sean Maher, and writers Tim Minear and Jose Molina, as well as separate interviews with Staite, Gina Torres and Morena Baccarin. The special also includes footage from this summer’s “Firefly” reunion at Comic-Con International’s Hall H, during which the cast members reflected on the show’s premature cancellation a decade ago and subsequent second life on the big screen. The special airs Sunday at 10 p.m. ET/PT following an all-day “Firefly” marathon on Science Channel. Hero Complex’s Noelene Clark caught up with Staite to talk about “Firefly,” “Serenity,” Whedon and what’s next.

HC: Can you tell us a bit about your audition process? What were your first impressions of the rest of the cast?

JS: I was living in Vancouver when “Firefly” was first being cast. My agent gave me a breakdown of all the characters in the show and said there was a request from casting in L.A. for me to put myself on tape for the role of Kaylee. I thought I was more of a River than anything, but I did it anyway, never thinking it would even be seen by Joss. A couple of weeks later I got a call asking me to hop on a plane for a network screen test the next day. Everything happened really fast. As soon as I was done with my screen test, they called to let me know the part was mine. I met the cast for the first time during a read-through of the pilot. Something we’ve always all agreed on is how fast we clicked. It’s rare you get nine actors together and have everyone bond as strongly and as quickly as we all did. They’re honestly like a second family to me.

HC: You talk a little about that in the Science documentary, specifically about the relationship Kaylee shares with Jayne. Why does the whole crew work so well together?

JS: They’re incredibly different people from very different backgrounds and walks of life. They’ve been shoved into this living situation and forced to deal with each other as best they can, and in the process, they end up bonding over a lot of intense and life-threatening situations. With most of them, there’s a trust there that when it comes down to it, they’ll look out for each other. They’re a reluctant family, and the best part is seeing them grow to love each other whether they want to or not.

HC: Kaylee is smart and tough and, at the same time, feminine and sensual. How did you develop that character?

JS: I wish I could take more credit for developing it, but the truth is Joss had a very direct and well-rounded vision of all of the characters in the show. He had a specific person in mind for each of them, and I think I just got lucky enough to fit the criteria. My favorite part about her was the juxtaposition between femininity and being one of the guys, the kind of girl who has a fascination with machines but at the same time would kill to put on a dress and go out to a fancy restaurant. She’s also incredibly trusting and so honest, and that kind of honesty is really fun to play.

HC: You’ve done quite a lot of work in the sci-fi genre. Would you say you’re a sci-fi fan?

JS: I’ve never been a particular fan of any genre. I’ve just always loved really good projects. The things that draw me into a new project have very little to do with genre and have more to do with the characters I’ll be playing, the people I’ll get to work with, and things like that. The sci-fi genre just happens to have a lot of really great characters for women.

HC: How does your experience with “Firefly” compare to your experience with “Stargate: Atlantis”?

Jewel Staite portrayed Dr. Jennifer Keller in “Stargate: Atlantis.” (MGM)

JS: I had an amazing time on “Stargate: Atlantis,” and a really great run on that show, which was shot in my hometown. It was kind of a dream job. But “Firefly” will always have a special little spot in my heart as kind of “the one that got away.” I have nothing but great memories from that show, but it’s all very bittersweet because it ended so early.

HC: Why do you think “Firefly” garners such devoted fans? What is it about this world?

JS: I think the thing that hooked people initially was strangely enough the abrupt finality of it all. It was this really well fleshed-out world with all of these crazy back stories that were just getting revealed, and then all of a sudden that was it. The thing I hear the most is how devastated people are when they get to the last episode in the season and realize that there isn’t anything left to watch.

HC: What’s the most common question or comment you receive from fans?

JS: Everybody wants to know if there’s going to be a sequel to the movie. I get asked that question probably once every 48 hours, literally. I had a customs officer ask me that when I was crossing the border. It doesn’t help that Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion are always dropping these hints in the press that it may happen.

HC: It’s kind of unbelievable that there’s a TV special and a reunion event and people camping out overnight at conventions for a show that got canceled 10 years ago. What’s it like, to keep coming back to a universe you had to leave so long ago?

JS: Surreal. Always will be. Every time we do these big panels at these conventions, I’m always amazed at how many people turn up to hear us tell the same stories and the same jokes again. I know we love going, just because we get to see each other again and feel the magic of all of that all over again. I’ll never get tired of talking about “Firefly.” It did so many things for me, both personally and professionally. It was one of the best times in my life, and I think the fans can sense that from us as a cast, and they reciprocate that feeling and vice versa. It’s a nice little circle to be in.

HC: What are you working on, and what do you have coming up?

JS: I just wrapped Season 2 of “The L.A. Complex,” and we’re waiting to hear about a Season 3. I have a couple of other projects in development that I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a chance to do while I’m on hiatus, but for the most part, I’m going to find a beach and stay there  for a while. And no, we’re not filming “Serenity 2″ on a beach.

– Noelene Clark
Twitter.com/@NoeleneClark

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