With WonderCon having inaugurated the convention season with a by-all-accounts successful show, a number of big events will heat things up in the coming weeks.

First up is MegaCon in Orlando, Fla., set for March 7-9. This looks like a great show, with a deep pool of comics and Hollywood talent set to show. The programming looks equally good, including such diverse ideas as a belly dancing  seminar and the con's fourth annual indie film festival.

Wizard World Los Angeles returns to the South Hall at the L.A. Convention Center March 14-16. Wizard looks like it's bulking up its film programming for this year's shows, with a Lucasfilm presentation on "Star Wars: Clone Wars" and "Indiana Jones" sure to draw a packed house. Some big names will be on hand for a two-part "ultimate screenwriters panel," headed up current "Amazing Spider-Man" comics scripters Bob Gale (writer of “Back to the Future”) and Marc Guggenheim (“Law and Order,” “CSI: Miami,” “Eli Stone”) and featuring Zak Penn ("X-Men: The Last Stand," “The Incredible Hulk”), Mark Verheiden (“Teen Titans”) and John Cox (“Sgt. Rock”). There also will be a "Heroes" panel with Jeph Loeb and an "Incredible Hulk" TV retrospective with Lou Ferrigno, in addition to the usual comics panels from Marvel, DC and Top Cow.

Back on the East Coast, New York Comic-Con has chosen YouTube videomaker Michael Agrusso, creator of the Marvel vs. DC parodies of the Mac vs. PC TV ads, to create three promo videos for its third annual show on April 18-20. The first, featuring a plastic Doctor Doom trying to talk his way into a discount ticket, can be watched below or at this page here.

Lastly, there's the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, set for April 26-27 at UCLA, which will feature a new graphic novel area called "The Comix Strip." The Times is holding a design contest for a logo for the strip. Head over to this site and you can check out the 10 finalists and vote for your favorite. The winner will be announced at Wizard World L.A.

From the look of this new trailer, now up at MySpace, Marvel's managed to turn one of its B-list superheroes into an A-list movie.

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer

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In need of a tentpole pic for 2009, WB is moving ahead on production of "Justice League of America," with scribes Kieran and Michele Mulroney polishing the script and pre-production proceeding. The cast remains the same, with Adam Brody as The Flash, rapper Common as Green Lantern, Armie Hammer Jr. as Batman and Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. 2009 is looking like a good year for comicbook pics, with release dates also set for "Will Eisner's The Spirit," "Watchmen" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

Dimension, meanwhile, picked up the rights to "Locke & Key" from IDW. Just-debuted horror comic is written by novelist Joe Hill, son of Stephen King.

Jonathan Mostow is the most recent Hollywood director to create a comic for Virgin, with the first issue of his series “The Megas” hitting stands today.

Mostow, who directed “U-571” and “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,” says he’s not a die-hard comics fan, describing himself as a more typical reader who loved them as a kid but has not been an avid follower of the medium. You wouldn’t know that, however, from looking at his upcoming projects, which include a film version of “The Surrogates,” based on the Top Shelf graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele and set to shoot in two months with Bruce Willis, and a screenplay for a “Sub-Mariner” movie at Marvel that he says may be his follow-up project.

“The Megas” is an alternate timeline story: What if democracy never came to America and the nation was ruled by an aristocratic class that was subject to different laws than the rest of us. The story begins with a sordid Mega-related crime investigated by Bureau of Royal Investigation Agent Jack Madison, whose belief in the system is challenged by what he learns in the course of his enquiry.

Mostow says he came up with the basic idea a few years ago, and he had considered it as the basis for a television show. When Virgin approached him to do a comic for its Director’s Cut line, which has published concepts created by the likes of John Woo and Guy Ritchie, Mostow saw it as the right way to explore the concept.

We didn't make it up north for WonderCon this year, which is too bad because it sounds like it was a great show.  The first major show of the year, now that the scheduling conflicts of past years with New York Comic-Con have been worked out, WonderCon is increasingly becoming a West Coast complement to San Diego's mammoth summer show. (Both shows are put on by the same not-for-profit group.)

The Hollywood programming in particular has grown quite impressive and corrects one of the difficulties with San Diego's late July dates, which is that most of the major Hollywood summer pics have already come and gone by the time Comic-Con rolls around. WonderCon offers a chance to check out the stuff you'll want to see this summer before heading down to San Diego.

There's lots of great coverage out there from the usual suspects, i.e., news sites and blogs that were there to cover the show such as Newsarama, CBR and Comics Continuum. Here's a few of the film-related highlights, culled from such reports:

* “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau appeared for a Q & A, showing bits of new footage from the film. He also confirmed the “Hulk” crossover scene, says he'd like to do the Tony Stark alcoholism storyline in a sequel and would love to do the “Avengers” movie. A new trailer is set to debut on this week's episode of “Lost."

* Since I've seen nothing on these sites about "The Dark Knight" and "The Incredible Hulk," I'm going to assume they were missing in action at this con, though new trailers for both films are in the works.

* WB Animation debuted “Justice League: The New Frontier” Saturday night, including a panel featuring the creator of the comic its based on, Darwyn Cooke. Original movie comes to DVD tomorrow, though we saw it quite a while back and were very impressed by the adaptation.

* Animation fans also got a look at the premiere episode of “The Spectacular Spider-Man,” a new animated series that hits the Kids WB! lineup in a couple of weeks. Series is already in production on a second set of 13 episodes, with Marvel and Sony figuring out where to air them now that Kids WB! is going away.

* A packed panel got a first look at “The X-Files 2,” complete with appearances by David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz.

* Disney presented clips from “Prince Caspian,” and brought out director Andrew Stanton to show a bit of footage from the upcoming Pixar pic “Wall*E.”

* Lucasfilm showed "Star Wars" Lives! The house that George built promoted both its upcoming “Star Wars: Clone Wars” animated series, the premiere of which gets a theatrical release on Aug. 15, and the long-anticipated “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” videogame. They also gave a plug to “Indiana Jones” by showing the trailer for “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” as well as a Jones Lego videogame and the final DVD release of the “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.”

* James McAvoy stopped in to plug “Wanted,” introducing a quick look at the film before heading down to yesterday's Oscars ceremony.

* More folks on their way to the Kodak included Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, answering questions about “Get Smart” along with director Peter Segal. Roland Emmerich also showed some footage from “10,000 B.C.”

On the comics side, there was a lot of DC-related announcements as the company plugged its upcoming superhero plans, including “Final Crisis,” the new weekly title “Trinity” and writer James Robinson taking over Superman, (Expect Marvel to make more announcements at Wizard World Los Angeles next month.)

* J. Michael Straczynski, who recently ended his exclusive status with Marvel, is going to be writing some comics for DC, including new “Babylon 5” material. He also has two books at Image and will continue to write “Thor” for Marvel.

* Boom! Studios announced new projects from novelists Gary Phillips and Matt Forbeck as well as one by Adam Rifkin, director of Detroit Rock City.

* In a move that surprised no one, Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's “Demo” will return as a Vertigo series.

* Spotlight panels were held for artists Darwyn Cooke, classic Marvel artist Herb Trimpe, “Fables” creator Bill Willingham, and “Heroes” contributor Tim Sale.

David Fincher has signed on to direct an adaptation of Charles Burns' graphic novel "Black Hole," from a screenplay by the "Beowulf" team of Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. Fincher also has been long attached to adapting "Torso," a true-crime comic about Eliot Ness by Brian Bendis and Marc Andreyko.

Foo Fighters have sued Marvel, claiming the band's music was used without permission in the trailer for the upcoming "Wolverine and the X-Men" animated series.

Even more casting on "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," with former hobbit and "Lost" castaway Dominic Monaghan set to play Barnell, a.k.a. Beak, from Grant Morrison's "New X-Men" run and Daniel Henney to play Agent Zero.

While the "Justice League of America" movie is on hold, reports have it when production does start it will lens in the Great White North instead of Down Under due to a dispute over tax incentives.

The sole comics-based pic nominated for an Oscar, “Persepolis,” was to no one's surprise passed over in the animated feature category for the heavy favorite, “Ratatouille.” Hard to be too upset by this, as both are excellent if completely different films.

The best comicbook mention of the night goes to supporting actress winner Tilda Swinton, who brought up the nippled Batsuit worn by her “Michael Clayton” co-star George Clooney in the camp-tastic “Batman & Robin.”

If you missed the "Y: The Last Party" benefit event for the CBLDF at Meltdown a couple weeks back, you can check out a short video clip produced by co-sponsor MySpace Comic Books.

Seen in the clip are 'Y: The Last Man" creators Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, DC writer Geoff Johns, Boom! Studios editor in chief Mark Waid, and parts of the keynote address by Joss Whedon. If you for some reason can't see the video below, you can check it out at MySpace here.

Y: THE LAST PARTY -- Joss Whedon Speech

The event was a big hit, raising more than $11,000 for the CBLDF and was a joint production of MySpace Comic Books and Meltdown, and was sponsored by DC/Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image Comics, Top Cow and Monster Energy.

You know you live in interesting times when the likes of "The Boys" and "Akira" are optioned on the same day.

"Akira" has long been talked about for a live-action version, though I'm skeptical that any adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga classic will live up to the anime version he himself directed in the late 1980s. Still, the visuals of this story are amazing and the Wachowskis' upcoming "Speed Racer" may point the way for really adapting anime-style visuals and storytelling to the big screen. In comics, this was a big one in manga's entry into America, first published by Marvel's Epic Comics line in the 1980s and most recently reprinted in six volumes by Dark Horse.

As for the "The Boys," well, that's a thornier question. Garth Ennis' irreverently gross and funny take on superheroes as corrupt jerks that need to be taken down was dropped by DC/Wildstorm for content issues despite being a decent seller for them, continuing now at Dynamite Entertainment. I'm not sure what kind of audience Col sees for this property, but I would bet that it's going to have to be toned down a bit much the same way as "Wanted" seems to have been, with the main characters changed from supervillains to "assassins who protect order."

Casting news on the upcoming "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" movie, now shooting down under, should make fans of the character's early 1990s adventures more than happy. It's been confirmed that Ryan Reynolds has been cast as Deadpool and Taylor Kitsch as Gambit, with rapper will.i.am playing Wraith. They join Hugh Jackman in the lead role, as well as Liev Schrieber as Sabretooth, Danny Huston as William Stryker and Lynn Collins as Kayla Silverfox, based on the comics character Silver Fox. Above photo is the first still released from the pic, courtesy of USA Today.

That's a lot of mutants for a "solo" pic — and perhaps not the ones that inspire the most confidence, either. The best Wolverine solo stories, such as the 1982 miniseries by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller or Barry Windsor-Smith's "Weapon X" — both reportedly influences on the film — were true "solo" stories staring a tough loner. Adding Deadpool, a motormouth assassin created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza in 1991's The New Mutants #98, in particular alters the tone of the movie to something a bit more jokey. Gambit makes a bit more sense, especially since he's almost made it into the "X-Men" pics twice now, as do Stryker (played in "X2' by Brian Cox) and Sabretooth (played in "X-Men" by Tyler Mane). Silver Fox also was an element in early drafts of the "X-Men" script, but ultimately was one of the more troubling elements of the 1990s-era Wolverine comics, in which the character constantly discovered his memories were faked.

* In other superhero movie rumors, it's going around that "Justice League of America" will be pushed back to 2010 and that it may be revamped to remove Superman and Batman, preventing overlap with their respective solo movies.

* On the toon front, could "Brave and the Bold" — featuring Batman teaming up with a different DC hero each week — be the next DC-based WB animation series?

* Meanwhile, writer director Edgar Wright is waiting to see which of his two comics films will get the greenllight first: "Scott Pilgrim," based on Bryan Lee O'Malley's popular humor comic, or "Ant-Man" for Marvel.