Spidey’s back! Well, almost. The Amazing Spider-Man doesn’t hit theaters for another year, but in anticipation of next week’s Comic-Con (July 21-24 in San Diego) we’ve got first looks at and inside scoops about the webslinger’s highly anticipated return — including interviews with stars Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and with director Marc Webb. EW can also exclusively confirm that Rhys Ifans will be playing Doc Conners, who, in an experiment gone wrong, transforms into one of Spider-Man’s most formidable foes ever, the Lizard.
Four years after Spider-Man 3, starring Tobey Maguire, The Amazing Spider-Man promises to be a “more contemporary,” “more gritty,” and “more character-driven” look at the comic book hero. He’s a hero the 27-year-old Garfield knows well. Growing up, “I related to Peter Parker [Spidey’s alter ego] so much because I felt like someone else inside,” he says. “I loved the comic books and the animated TV series and I even dressed up as Spider-Man as a kid.” READ FULL STORY »
Back when Entourage was still good, the show spent an entire episode brilliantly dissecting the curiously bi-polar phenomenon of Comic-Con. Invented by the lovable lunatic fringe of comic book nerds as a swap meet for true fans, Comic-Con spent most of this past decade slowly transforming into a corporate staging area, overrun by media conglomerates hawking films, TV shows, and videogames with gradually more ill-defined ties to the world of comic books. The Entourage Comic-Con episode aired in mid-2005, but it hasn’t aged a day: Visitors to the San Diego Convention Center this July will be faced with fading C-list TV stars rocking the autograph booth, strippers dressed like Rob Liefeld superheroines, and attractive Hollywood movie stars who will pretend to know about comic books. Well, maybe not so much the last one: According to a report by 
