As always there were sights to see at this year’s New York Comic Con from cosplayers to displays of toys from upcoming films to panels featuring actors and directors talking about their latest work. Here’s just some of things we were able to see at this year’s show.

Hasbro’s booth offers a close up look at the costume for the upcoming AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

The movie version of World War Captain America was a popular floor costume this year.

Ape Trek?

So do you think they knew each other before showing up?

ATTACK THE BLOCK director Joe Cornish tells fans that they should buy the movie when it comes out on blu-ray next week.

Nite Owl’s Arctic Mask from WATCHMEN

If you want unanimous consent, you’re gonna have to get it from one of the other owners.

You know, there are a few kids from your school roaming around out here.

Some IRON MAN 2 props on display.

Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) at the AVENGERS panel.

Pirates of the NY Waterway Ferry!

INCEPTION’s Dream Machine.

The original painted art for a two-page spread in the comic adaption of THE IMMORTALS.

Lots of Princess Leias but only in her Cloud City outfit.

Mark Ruffalo at the AVENGERS panel.

When you’re possessed by Babylonian gods because your apartments are in Spook Central who should you call?

These guys!

A close up look at Captain America’s AVENGERS Uniform.

Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman moderates the panel on the upcoming documentary on Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.

Although its release is still ten months away, director Len Wiseman felt that at least one segment of his upcoming Total Recall remake was ready to preview to a New York Comic Con audience this past weekend.

The clip comes from early in the movie and opens with Colin Farrell as Doug Quaid chatting at bar with a friend. He asks the friend if he had ever heard of “this Rekall* place.” The friend advises him to stay away. “They’ll mess with your mind!”

We cut to Quaid arriving at the Rekall company. It is a scene that is similar to one in the original 1990 Paul Verhoeven film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Quaid is ushered to a room where a device will implant false memories into his mind by a receptionist who cheerfully and ironically tells him to “Remember to have a good time!” A bleached-blonde John Cho extols the virtues of the process – “You’ll be a crime fighter or a world class athlete or a secret agent!” – before he advises Quaid about the potential dangers of the procedure. But just as they start, it seems that something has gone wrong. Cho’s character accuses Quaid of being a spy while a technician rushes to shut the machine down.

Suddenly, a group of white armor clad soldiers burst in and gun down everyone in the room except for Quaid. Quaid at first seems scared and states that there has to be some sort of mistake, but as soon as the soldiers advance to within arm’s reach, his demeanor changes and he launches into action, making short work of them. A second squad of soldiers arrives and finds the door to the room locked. The shoot a device through the door that embeds itself onto the wall and releases numerous sensors throughout the room. Back on the other side of the door, the sensors have relayed data that allows the soldiers to construct a small holographic view that shows Quaid as the only one standing inside. As they prepare to breach the locked door, Quaid gathers hand grenades from the fallen soldiers and places them in a pile. Dropping one activated grenade on top of the pile, he dives behind some equipment for cover. As the second squad of soldiers storm into the room, the grenades go off and allowing Quaid to make his escape to a waiting flying car.

The scene was followed by a quickly edited montage of shots that contained a lot of frenetic action, some more flying cars and a quick shot of a fight in a kitchen that looked as if it was a nod to a similar scene between Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone in the original film. The décor throughout the Rekall office is very Asian influenced and a change from the techno-futurism of the original film while the visual pallet of the film was a move away from the monochromatic look of Wiseman’s Underworld films.

Even though some of the visuals looked unfinished, overall, I found the full scene that was presented encouraging. I am not the biggest fan of Wiseman as a director but the action here was edited fast enough to create visual energy but not so fast that it was difficult to follow. He primarily stays away from a lot of speed ramping and strobe effects though there is one moment where the action slows down and the camera weaves around the various soldiers as Quaid is making short work of them.

Of course, this is just a taste to get fans buzzing about the film and it would be ridiculous to try and extrapolate the end product from the five minutes screened. The script could be genius or it could be a pile of trite crap. The overall direction could be quite good or it could be a continuation of what we’ve already seen from Wiseman.

I don’t have a particular horse in this race. I liked the original Total Recall when I saw it when it first came out, but I don’t think I’ve gone back and rewatched it in over ten years. I’m always rooting for any movie to be good, so we’ll see if Wiseman manages it next August.

* I’m going with the spelling of the Rekall Corporation from the original film as I can’t find anything to contradict this.

With it looking doubtful that Jason Momoa probably won’t be reprising his role of Conan the Barbarian after the film of the same name failed at the box office this past summer, the actor is looking to expand his resume in a different way by directing a film which he has also written.

During an appearance at the New York Comic Con this past weekend, the actor talked about a script he has written and is planning on directing and starring in titled Road To Paloma that draws a bit on his own Native American lineage from his father’s side.

I wrote a script that I’m going to direct. It basically tackles some of the horrible things happening on Native American reservations.  There’s a bit of a loop hole where if a white man came onto tribal land and raped a woman, he would have to be tried in federal court. Tribal law couldn’t prosecute him. The problem is that Federal Court is doing a million other things so 95% of these cases are being thrown out. It’s a bit of a free-for-all.

My [character's] mother is raped and she is in a coma. The guy is released and it’s basically me living with the repercussions and taking revenge.But you’re going to be either dead or on the run or in jail. In the meantime he goes to get his mother’s ashes while he’s on the run so he can take her back home. It’s a road movie. And very much in the light of Jack Kerouac.

Momoa gave no indication as to whether he had any financing to get the project off the ground but I’m certainly intrigued by his description enough to keep an eye out for more news.

Although it got trashed by the critics (scoring a 23% at Rotten Tomatoes) audiences who came out to see this past summer’s fantasy adventure Conan The Barbarian seemed to enjoy the film, giving it a “B minus” CinemaScore. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough audiences showing up to see the film to hit any higher than fourth place at the box office its opening weekend.

This weekend at New York Comic Con, the film’s three stars Jason Momoa, Rose McGowan and Stephen Lang appeared at a panel to discuss the film. Invariably, the subject of the film’s poor box office and the chance of a sequel came was brought up. Momoa, who had stated when he was doing promotion for the film that he had written a story for a possible sequel, stated that there was little possibility that a sequel would happen.

I haven’t heard a word from anyone and it’s kind of sad because I feel a little cheated myself because we really busted our asses to make it amazing for the fans. I was a fan and I think we really hit it but to tell you the truth a lot of people didn’t go see it so I doubt that they’ll make a sequel. I would love it, but there would be less money there and [a sequel] is something that I would want to be bigger and better.

McGowan jumped in to add that a fate of a movie can often be outside the control of its cast and crew, stating that the film’s R rating may have kept some audiences away while the PG-13 rated horror film Fright Night, which opened the same day, further siphoned off potential ticket buyers.

People don’t understand behind the scenes stuff.  Lionsgate and Millennium, the people behind [the movie], to an extent did a really good job. But the entire distribution team at Lionsgate just got replaced. Also the second weekend Hurricane Irene happened and two-thirds of the country was shut down so it was just bad luck essentially.

McGowan went on to draw an analogy as to what it was like to make a film she was proud of only to have it fail at the box office. “It’s essentially like giving birth to this really great baby, you hand it to the nurse and it falls out of her hands and flies out the window,” she said.

“They dropped my baby?” questioned Momoa after the laughter in response to McGowan’s statement died down.

“They did!” she replied. “They drop kicked it!”

Lang added that he has participated in a number films that weren’t successful right away but still went on to find their audiences. He also stated that he was disappointed that he wouldn’t get to see more of his castmate Momoa continue to explore the character of Conan in future films.

It’s really easy to do a postmortem on the thing. I think that the R didn’t help the business of the film one bit. Maybe it was necessary for the movie. I see that. I think Rose says it pretty well that the distribution didn’t work out quite it should have. I sure wish this one had done much better than it did. I think it deserved a number of sequels and I would like to see Jason track that character for a long time.

In addition to the unveiling of new footage from the upcoming The Avengers at yesterday’s panel at New York Comic Con, studio head Kevin Feige also gave a broad indication as to

For the past four years, the studio has been laying the ground work of individual superhero films – Iron Man 1 & 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America – which have culminated in next summer’s The Avengers. Feige hinted that the next wave of films from the studio after The Avengers will also all work towards a specific point.

We’re in pre-production on a movie called Iron Man 3 right now with directeor Shane Black. And Iron Man 3 will be the first of what we refer to as the ‘Phase Two’ of this Avengers Assemble saga that will culminate, God willing, in an Avengers 2.

Currently, Iron Man 3 is scheduled for a May 2013 release with Thor 2 following in November. The studio has also staked out two summer dates in 2014 – one in May and one in July – though they haven’t announced what films will make their debut there. The studio currently has several projects in development that could take those slots including Captain America 2, Ant-Man,  Runaways, a movie featuring the spy organization SHIELD and two more science-fiction oriented comics-based projects The Inhumans and Guardians Of The Galaxy .

When asked about the possibility of a Guardians Of The Galaxy film and how it would fit within the studio’s established cinematic continuity, Feige stated -

Movies like The Inhumans and Guardians could certainly fit into that. We’ll introduce those groups in those movies though. We won’t do a Rocket Raccoon movie and then a Groot movie and a Starlord movie on there own. They would all be in a Guardians movie together.

Feige also commented that the post-credits tag scenes on their films had become a bit of a tradition and one that he expected to continue, even with Avengers. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is where we get our first glimpse of where this “Phase 2″ is heading.

David Gordon Green first started talking about his plan to remake Dario Argento’s classic horror film Suspiria back in 2008. He even had a script for the project at the time. At one point it looked like Natalie Portman would star as an American ballerina who discovers a witch’s coven in a German dance academy, but that iteration of the project fell apart and Portman had moved on to famously play a ballerina for Darren Aronofsky.

This weekend, at a New York Comic Con panel promoting the upcoming MTV animated series Good Vibes, which Green created, he did state that his Suspiria remake was very much still a project he’d like to do and hinted that he just needs to find the financing to get things rolling.

I was talking about casting just last night, so hopefully that will come together. I get excited about the idea of reliving all my 11-year-old fantasies and that was one of them, to make a great horror movie. And Suspiria is something that really planted a lot of seeds of inspiration that I’d like to indulge and follow up on. Hopefully, fingers crossed, someone will get behind me and support it. We’ll see.

So it sounds like the project is still right where it has been for a while, looking for financing. If Green is still thinking about casting, he is probably trying to find an actor to attach themselves to the project which should help in attracting someone to foot the bill for the movie.

This evening at the New York Comic Con’s panel for Marvel Studios The Avengers, studio chief Kevin Feige unveiled a newly completed scene from the movie featuring Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner and a meeting he has with an unexpected visitor. Spoilers ahead.

The scene starts with a young Indian girl racing through a market place until she reaches a house. Going inside she finds Bruce Banner (Ruffalo) who is tending to a sick person. She implores Banner to follow her home where her own father is sick. Reluctant at first, Banner follows her to the outskirts of town and a small shack. He follows the girl inside just in time to see her duck out a window. He realizes that he has been suckered and has probably walked into a trap of some kind.

Before he can react further, Black Widow (Scarlett Johanson) steps out from the shadows. The two verbally spar for a moment. Black Widow says that it has been two years since Banner has had an “incident” and explains that SHIELD had been keeping tabs on Banner all this time, watching him and “even help keep some interested parties off your scent.” She states that the world is facing “a possible global catestrophe” and SHIELD needs his help in tracking down an object called the Tesseract, the powerful cube-like object we saw this past summer in Thor. The object emits gamma radiation and Banner is the leading authority on gamma radiation.

Banner seems reluctant and suspicious at first (“What does Fury want me to do? Swallow it?”) but he agrees to help. That’s when Black Widow orders the SHIELD troopers that she said weren’t surrounding the house to stand down from their position of surrounding the house.

The scene was a pretty good balance of tension, undercut with a few moments of comedy – hallmarks of the film’s writer/director Joss Whedon. Interestingly, Banner continually referred to his Hulk alter-ego as “the Other Guy,” and Ruffalo brought an air of real menace to Banner in the scene.

Following the scene was a montage of footage from the film. Much of it has been seen before the post-credits tag on Captain America: The First Avenger, but among the new shots were a view of Stark Tower in Manhattan and some additional action sequences. It ends with Chris Evan’s Captain America asking Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, “Is everything a joke to you?” In typical fashion, Stark quips back “Funny things are.”

We’ll be back with more from the Avengers panel.

While this summer’s superhero film Green Lantern underperformed at the box office and with critics, it has a defender in Geoff Johns. Johns is the comic book writer who reinvigorated the Green Lantern comic book franchise for publisher DC Comics and who serves serves as DC Entertainment’s Chief Creative Officer, overseeing the creative direction of the comic book line as well as consulting on the various film adaptions of those characters.

Yesterday, at a New York Comic Con panel devoted to the four titles in the Green Lantern comic franchise, Johns was asked about the film and the possibility of a discussed sequel still happening.

My favorite thing about the movie is that introduced the character to a lot of people. I thought Sinestro was great and Hal had a lot of good moments and there’s a lot of really good stuff there. Obviously you want it to be as big as Titanic. I continue to root for it. I hope we get another film in, and it will be live action.

Peter J Tomasi, another of the writers on the comic book franchise, jumped in to say -

One of the things about the film, all of the things Geoff said apply, but I had four eight-year-olds sitting in a row watching it and they walked out of there and all they could think about was blasting each other with rings and talking about the characters. So that is seeding a love for those characters that’s going to go for many years.

Jones added -

A friend of mine’s kid was at my house and I asked him what his favorite superhero was and he said “Green Lantern” without even blinking.

Johns also took a moment to promote the director’s cut of the film which was just released on Three-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo with the new UltraViolet Digital Copyand in doing so obliquely mentioned that this version of the film addresses some of the criticisms leveled at it.

It has a lot of scenes that add a lot of heart to Hal’s story. It’s interesting, you should check it out.