Ladies and Gentleman, Comic Con International has kicked off, with Preview Night in the books, and a LOT of news dropping.

I can already tell that talking about Mondo’s posters is going to be a wreck.

To be honest, I’m writing this on Wednesday night for your Thursday morning reading, so I feel like some big news will have already dropped that I’ve missed, but I promise, I’m doing my best! This convention weekend is CRAZY.

READ ON FOR THE AWESOME!

At the top of the post: Geek worries be damned, Marvel Studios is moving forward with promoting Ant-Man, with the above SDCC 2014 giveaway poster, which is from concept art from the film. Entertainment Weekly got the exclusive reveal.

Movies

• In addition to that Ant-Man poster, Marvel will also be giving out concept art posters from Avengers: Age of Ultron to lucky con goers.

• sigh Pirates of the Caribbean 5 has been given a July 7th, 2017 release date.

• Sony has changed their Spider-Plans. The Amazing Spider-Man 3 has been moved from its original June 10, 2016 date (now taken by the Uncharted adaptation) to a to be announced date in 2018. Concurrently, the Sinister Six movie is now set for a November 11, 2016 release.

• Following the change of plans from Sony (literally just hours after the announcement), Marvel Studios has announced an untitled movie for May 4, 2018 - the former release date of The Amazing Spider-Man 4. It’s getting personal!

• While currently only signed on for Avengers 2 and Avengers 3, surprise! Robert Downey Jr. is interested in doing Iron Man 4.

www.youtube.com/watch

• The first trailer for Nightcrawler makes it look like some of Jake Gyllenhall’s most inspired work yet.

• Warner Bros. has released the first poster for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. All I can say is: HELL YEAH!

• The Comic Con poster for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is pretty rad.

• Also awesome? The first official poster for Mad Max: Fury Road, available this weekend at SDCC.

TV

- Entertainment Weekly was the home to this reveal of Colton Haynes in full Arsenal gear from Arrow Season 3.

Gaming

• I guess Disney/Marvel is expecting great things from Guardians of the Galaxy, as they’ll be getting their own Disney Infinity 2.0 expansion this Fall.

• Curses! Looks like Gamestop has nabbed some exclusive Batman: Arkham Knight storyline content, where you play as the vigilante Red Hood.

• The slicing and dicing Samurai Warriors franchise will make its way to the PS4 this October. Samurai Warriors 4 will hit the shelves with a “Special Anime Pack” edition this Fall.

www.youtube.com/watch

• The mad chill Hohokum hits PSN on August 12th. It looks to be a nice reprieve from the games about blowing shit up.

Comics

• Mondo has announced a Batman 75 Gallery show, to be held in Austin, Texas starting October 24th.

• Following from this week’s announcement, Dark Horse has released the first teaser image from next May’s Fight Club 2 comic series.

• Want to actually - you know - READ some comics during SDCC 2014? Marvel’s running a special on their Marvel Unlimited online comic service. You can get a month of service for just 99 cents!

• IDW has announced a new series based on the popular BBC America show Orphan Black.

• As expected, Image Comics' Image Expo brought some major creator owned comic announcements to the eve of SDCC 2014, including new comics from superstars such as Rick Remainder, Jeff Lemire, Warren Ellis and Kurt Busiek.

Toys

• One of LEGO’s giveaways at Comic Con this year? The surreal Batman from Zur-En-Arrh, most recently seen in Grant Morrison’s Batman RIP storyline.

• Speaking of LEGO - Green Lantern will be getting his own LEGO set in 2015, although with Space Batman, it’s technically a LEGO Batman 3 set.

• Tamashii Nations has announced a Luigi figure to go alongside the awesome Mario figure they released earlier this year. There will also be a new accessories pack, so you can make awesome layouts like the one shown above.

• Hot Toys has a lot of new surprises in store. Let’s see, we’ve got the Back to the Future Marty McFly, with a FREAKY good sculpt…

• …the surprise reveal of their first figure from the Transformers franchise, Optimus Prime…

• …the official details on their film accurate version of Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy…

• …and last, but far from least, word that they will be making figures for Star Wars Episodes I-VII.

• NECA Toys has announced a line of figures based on the Robocop vs. Terminator video game.

• It appears that Medicom’s MAFEX 6" figure line will be expanding with an updated version of Batman from The Dark Knight Rises and a high-end replica of the Batpod.