Following a screening of Iron Man 3 on Sunday night, Robert Downey, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle and Ben Kingsley met with the press at a conference in Beverly Hills on Monday to answer questions about the new Marvel Studios film based on the superhero created by Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Stan Lee and Larry Lieber. ComicsAlliance was there to hear the uncommonly jovial cast's remarks about working with acclaimed writer-director Shane Black on the much anticipated sequel; the challenges and pleasures that come with the third installment of a successful event movie franchise; Iron Man 3's peculiar nature as a followup to two different films; and the cast's own kind of on-set armor wars. The group also addresses questions about the film's prominent theme of terrorism in light of the bombing attacks on Boston earlier this month.

SPOILER WARNING: While the major plot twists are not discussed explicitly in this post, some more minor spoiler content remains. Proceed at your own risk.

Joining the line of 8" Mego style dolls and assorted bobble heads, Bif Bang Pow!'s long-awaited 3.75" The Venture Bros. action figures have finally started venturing (HAW!) into retailers. Entertainment Earth and other online shops have posted new product images for the line's first wave, including 3.75" versions of Dr. Mrs. The Monarch with a flowing scarf, Hank Venture with a machete, Dean Venture with a shotgun and Brock Samson with a knife. Dr. Venture, Phantom Limb and The Monarch are expected to follow in June and pack the same roughly same 10 points of articulation and the same roughly $12 price tag. You can scope out all of the Venture Bros. 3.75" figures after the jump, including prototypes of the second wave figures from BBP!'s Toy Fair 2013 display.

Whether you're an avid fan of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind manga, its 1984 Studio Ghibli anime adaptation, Neon Genesis Evangelion or... just awesome things in general... you may want to sit down before watching the recently released Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo short. Commissioned by former Nausicaä animator and Evangelion writer/director Hideaki Anno for The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in 2012 as part of a special Tokusatsu exhibition, the short was produced by Studio Ghibli (a live action first for the studio) and directed by Shinji Higuchi, known for his work as a writer and storyboard artist of the Evangelion anime and its related movies, and special effects director of numerous live action kaiju films. So yeah, basically the most qualified people in the universe made a horrifying short film about an army of enormous atomic-powered angel/demon-looking bioweapons in ceramic armor annihilating human civilization.

Despite various incarnations over the years (including two separate versions published by DC Comics) and the involvement of creators like Carmine Infantino and Alex Toth, Archie's superhero characters have always been the weirder branch of the Riverdale family tree. Over the last year, though, the revival they've attempted with New Crusaders seems like a good enough try at rebuilding their characters into a new, cohesive universe.

Now, they've taken another big step: Recruiting Mark Waid and Dean Haspiel to relaunch The Fox in a new series that's scheduled to hit shelves later this year.

I have a love/hate relationship with Mark Millar's work. When I was getting back into comics as an adult, his work with Frank Quitely and Bryan Hitch on The Authority and The Ultimates were fairly instrumental in keeping me reading. As time went on, though, and his books descended deeper into pandering to the lowest common denominator, I began losing interest. But he keeps working with artists I dig, so I'm routinely tempted to at least flip through. Jupiter's Legacy is out this week, and it's his first book with Frank Quitely since The Authority ended and the first long form work Quitely has done without Grant Morrison in forever. I like Quitely's art work a lot, and Peter Doherty's colors are generally a treat.

So I sat down with Jupiter's Legacy and tried to figure out what works, what doesn't, and how I feel about that. This is a thorough autopsy, so grab your comic and read along.

A few weeks ago, Ken Lowery and Robert Wilson IV launched a Kickstarter campaign for Like A Virus, a one-shot ghost story about a medium trying to uncover the mystery of a local haunting. Within a few days, they'd met their goal, but then something unusual happened: The entire Kickstarter campaign, from Wilson's pages to the rewards promised for backers, had been copied to a fraudulent IndieGoGo campaign, with the scam artists behind it sending out press releases to drum up business for their (nonexistent) version.

To say the least, it's a pretty weird situation. I spoke to Lowery and Wilson to find out how they dealt with having their (very real) comic cloned for a scam, and how it affected what they're doing.

Like most of you, I've got a to-read stack that kills me every time I look at it. Friends laugh at it, small children cry at it, and the police keep giving me the stink eye. I've also got a to-read list for those things that I want to read in digital form, but haven't yet. There's a lot of webcomics in there (Chris Onstad returned to Achewood last year, you say?) and I've been remarkably lax about getting caught up because I've got a never-ending reservoir of excuses when it comes to not doing things. But I found myself with three volumes of the webcomic Johnny Wander, an inexplicably long commute to work, and a (very rare) lack of excuses. So I read it. And I loved it.

I'm David, and I want to talk to you about Johnny Wander, a comic drawn by Yuko Ota and written by Ananth Panagariya, about Yukond Ananth. It's autobio, it's funny, and it's great.