As always, there are plenty of sights to see at the New York Comic Con. Armed with a camera but never enough time, we’ve tried to capture some of those film-related views for you – from cosplayers to con guests.

You've made in New York when you see your name up in lights.

Wow, what's billionaire industrialist Tony Stark doing at NYCC?

OK, now I see why Stark showed up.

Rob Corddry stopped by on Friday night to sign a few autographs.

You have to admire someone rocking a SUCKER PUNCH costume months before the movie hits.

FBOL honcho Rich Drees chatting with SUPER SIZE ME director Morgan Spurlock.

M Night Shyamalan at his first convention appearance ever discussing the 10th anniversary of his film UNBREAKABLE.

R2 Crossing 11th Avenue

Chicks dig the bow tie.

The family that cosplays together, stays together.

Look out behind you!!

Don't you dare steal anything from this retailer!

Bruce Campbell wins the award for best dressed con guest.

“It’s been quiet an interesting period film-wise,” writer J. Michael Straczynski stated this past weekend at the New York Comic Con. Although he has worked in television for the better part of two decades, notably creating and writing a majority of the classic series Babylon 5, Straczynski stated that he is considered still a relative new comer to the world of feature film scripting, a world he entered after selling his script The Changeling to director/producer Ron Howard.

During a panel dedicated to him on Sunday, Straczynski spent much of the hour discussing his past and current work writing comics, but managed to let slip a few tidbits about his current film work, including his cameo in the upcoming Thor film, for which he also has a story credit.

Thor – I was supposed to just show up and do a walk-through like they always have guys do. And Ken Brannagh decided I could act, against all the evidence to the contrary. He had more things to do and more scenes and this and that. If you’ve read the Thor book that I did, where the Hammer lands somewhere in the mid-west and this whole line-up of guys comes over to try and pick it up. The role that I play was extended to become this guy driving driving down the road, sees this crater and gets out of the car, walks over, tries to pick up the hammer. He can’t. so he gets a great idea, calls his pals and they all show up with trucks and he’s there trying to pull the hammer out. Which is what I wrote. I’ve vanished into my own narrative! I hate when that happens.

Forbidden Planet – Forbidden Planet is looking for a director. Jim Cameron, who is involved as a producer, wanted to direct it but he had to bail because he wants to do Avatar 2 and that movie will take 35 years of prep. I fully understand why he did that. It takes a lot of energy to put together a film and that’s his baby. he said, “I really can’t do a film like Forbidden Planet while I’m out doing Avatar 2 prep” and I totally get that.

Underworld 4 – I’ve just finished the script for Underworld 4, which is slated to go into production in March and come out next winter.

World War Z – I hear World War Z has gone to prep or pre–production. I’ve been told that it’s gone to prep, I haven’t been told that officially.

Shattered Union – I’ve turned in a script for a movie based on the game Shattered Union to the Bruckheimer boys and they liked it so much, much to my surprise, that they’ve hired me for a second film that I can’t tell you about it yet.

Others – I’ve decided to do a movie for Dreamworks animation that I can’t tell you about.

Movies have been turned into comic books and comic books have been turned into movies. But never has the back and forth between the page and the big screen been anything like this.

Director Morgan Spurlock was at the New York Comic Con yesterday to promote Supersized: Strange Tales From A Fast Food Culture, an upcoming graphic novel from Dark Horse Publishing spinning off from his acclaimed documentary Super Size Me.

“”After Super Size Me came out, we got lots of letters from former fast food employees with horror stories,” Spurlock explained to me in a quick conversation on the convention floor yesterday. “We decided to put them in a graphic novel which will be out in the spring.”

Released in 2004, Super Size Me followed Spurlock as he ate nothing that wasn’t on the menu at McDonalds fast food restaurants for 30 days to show exactly how that food can impact your health.. Although some dismissed the film and its premise as nothing more than a stunt, it did lead to the restaurant chain and several others to begin offering at least marginally more healthy alternatives on their menus.

What more does one need to know about a film like Mutant Girls Squad that you can’t discern from the title? There is a girl who discovers that she is a mutant and joins a squad of other, similar girls in what is very probably the Citizen Kane of movies about squads of mutant girls. But if you need to know more, read on.

Rin is a lonely high school girl, bullied by the other girls in her class. But when she is pelted with shoes by her classmates on her sixteenth birthday, Rin discovers that she suddenly has the ability to fight back when her right hand turns into a nasty, lethal claw and she has the fighting skills to use it. Freaked out by how she was able to so easily wade through her tormentors, she races home to tell her parents. Her father reassures her that this is not some curse, but a “treasure” and as he reveals himself to have a mutation of his own, their home is invaded by armed men. Although she escapes with her life, Rin’s parents are killed.

Wandering the streets, Rin is found by the mysterious Rei, who takes her to an abandoned warehouse where she is introduced to other girls all like Rin. She learns that she is not human at all, but of a race called the HILKO. All the girls have different mutations and are being trained to fight back against a secret government initiative to exterminate all the HILKO. Rin excels at her combat training and is given a mission to assassinate some top government officials which she does with ease, somehow never getting the copious amount of blood that sprays about on her immaculate white vinyl outfit. But when she is ordered to kill the officials’ families as well, she realizes that she can’t, even though one of them is one of her former bullying cast mates. Realizing that the HILKO’s plans are as equally genocidal as the government’s, Rin finds herself trapped between the two warring parties.

Mutant Girl Squad is the brainchild of three directors -Tak (Be a Man! Samurai School) Sakaguchi, Noboru (Robo-Geisha) Iguchi, and Yoshihiro (Tokyo Gore Police) Nishimura. Reportedly, the three came up with the idea of working together on a film while drinking in a bar while guests at the New York Asian Film Festival in 2009, a story that no doubt tickles the NYAFF organizers pink. Each director brings his own unique stamp to the film. Much of the stylized action appears to be the work to Sakaguchi. Iguchi seems to have donated the flashback structure of RoboGeisha. (The weird nose guns sported by the government assassination teams in Mutant Girl Squad are another holdover from Robo Geisha, getting a black paint job in the process.) And it would be hard not to credit Nishimura with some of the weirder mutations that some of the girls sport. To tell you more about them, though, would be to spoil one of the more outrageous gags in the film.

All three director’s contributions seem to mix fairly seamlessly together. If you’re not familiar with any of their individual films beforehand, you may be hard pressed to tell that this is the work of a trio of directors. Mutant Girl Squad does nothing that will reinvent its genre of splattery, campy horror comedy. But then again, it exhibits no such ambitions, either. It’s a film that wants to show you a bloody good time and succeeds in doing just that.

In what will probably come as a disappointment to many comics fans, DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns downplayed the idea that the comics publishers superheroes would appear in a shared cinematic universe the way that rival Marvel Comics’ characters have.

Speaking at a panel at the New York Comic Con last night, Johns stated that he felt that the roster of DC characters currently being developed for films stood on their own.

I think our characters are bigger than Marvel characters. I like the Marvel characters a lot, but our characters are bigger because they’re icons that stand for morality and inspiration. I think it is very important that we introduce these characters and rather than trying to smash everyone together, I think these characters deserve to be spotlighted and treated equally.

This drives a stake in the heart of the current fan theory that DC was looking at constructing a shared cinematic universe in much the same way that Marvel has with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and the upcoming Thor and Captain America.

Speculation that DC was planning something similar began when Angela Bassett was cast in their upcoming Green Lantern film as Amanda Waller. In the comics, Waller has been involved with various clandestine spy organizations and has appeared in a number of various titles over the years. Since she is not necessarily considered a “Green Lantern family character,” conjecture was that the Waller character could be a piece of connective tissue between various movies to anchor them in one coherent universe. Fans were hoping that this would lead to a live action Justice League movie similar to Marvel Studio’s planned The Avengers.

Although we reviewed the crazy horror comedy Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl when it screened at last summer’s New York Asian Film Festival, we’re re-presenting it as the film will be screening tomorrow at the New York Comic Con.

If you felt that director Sam Raimi was too restrained with the gallons of fake blood he splashed through his classic horror comedy Evil Dead 2, you may find Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl to be more to your liking. As goofy as its camp title suggests, directors Yoshihiro Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu’s film is a manic and blood-drenched satire on school-girl crushes and high school cliques. But within the over-the-top excess, they still manage to surprise with a couple of well executed scares and a couple of moments that make you cringe. Sure it’s low budget, but that doesn’t mean it cheaps out on fun.

Mizushima is just an average student at Tokyo High, who catches the eye of new girl Monami. This does not go over well with Mizushima’s somewhat pushy girlfriend Keiko, who really sees red when Monami gives Mizushima a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Mizushima also sees red, but it’s because the chocolates are filled with blood. Specifically, Monami’s blood. And since she is a vampire, Mizushima starts to fall under her thrall after eating one of the chocolates. Keiko isn’t going to take this lying down and turns to her mad-scientist father for help, who promptly turns her into a fighting machine to get her boyfriend back using the body parts of various classmates. Keiko and Monami clash in a battle for the ages that ranges from the school gym to the sides of Tokyo Tower.

Think of this as Twilight filtered through a crazed, splatter punk filter without all the moping.

A majority of the film’s effect work may not be completely convincing, but that really isn’t the point here. The over-the-topness is what it is all about, laughter evoked from the audacity of it all. This is definitely the type of film you want to watch with a group of friends, possibly with a few choice liquid stimulants to help lubricate the experience.

A note about Ganguro Girls – When the Japanese embrace an aspect of pop culture, they do so with an almost aggressive whole-heartedness that can appear obsessive to westerners, and Gangura Girls are an example of this. Fans of US hip-hop, they not only dress like the rap artists they see in music videos, they actually apply makeup to darken their skin. Nishimura and Tomomatsu satirize this trend by exaggerating these girls’ mimicry to include lip implants and ear jewelry. To US viewers, though, it makes decoding these characters a little tougher. Anyone familiar with the racial implications of blackface entertainers from the days of vaudeville would be tempted to read this as Nishimura and Tomomatsu commenting that Gangura Girls are actually cluelessly racist for showing their love for hip-hop in this manner. But I don’t think so. I think Nishimura and Tomomatsu are just mocking them by taking their actions to an exaggerated extreme. Given the comedy through extremism that is pervasive throughout the film, I don’t think that the directors have any deeper intention beyond pointing a finger and laughing at something they regard as silly.

Although it had been widely speculated, DC Entertainment Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns confirmed earlier today at the New York Comic Con that the first trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern film from Warner Brothers will be attached to Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1, which hits theaters on November 19, 2010.

Johns, under whose penmanship the Green Lantern stable of characters have enjoyed a revival for the last several years, has been actively advising director Martin Campbell in an effort to help the film keep to the spirit of the comics. He promised those in attendance at his panel, “If you guys like the comics now, you’ll probably like the film.”

While I am a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see a trailer today at the con, it is nice to know that we know have a definite date when we will be able to see it.

We’ll have more from Johns’ panel later on this weekend.

Green Lantern hits theaters on June 17, 2011.