Finally, a good look at this movie and some footage of the Spirit himself. A huge improvement over the previous teasers, this still looks a lot more like Frank Miller than Will Eisner.

As "Iron Man" hits today on DVD and Blu-Ray, Marvel and Par have revised and extended their distribution pact. Marvel will pay a slightly lower rate to the studio, which adds international distrib duties and is guaranteed to work on five upcoming Marvel pics through 2011: "Iron Man 2," "Iron Man 3," "Thor," "The First Avenger: Captain America" and "The Avengers."

* In Spidey news, Kirsten Dunst tells MTV she's set to reprise Mary Jane Watson now that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire are signed on for more pics.

* Meanwhile, the producers working on a "Green Lantern" pic for DC/WB have completed a script everyone likes and tells First Showing they are gearinig up to start shooting in the spring.

* The Beat points out an important story out of San Diego, where the convention center is taking its first steps toward an expansion that could keep Comic-Con based in the city. Officials have acquired 16 acres of land behind the center, right on the waterfront, and look to add 300,000 square feet of space by 2014.

The Mark Millar global assault continues, with the Scottish writer and art partner Tony Harris setting up their Image Comics series "War Heroes" at Sony with Michael De Luca set to produce.

This is Millar's third comic project to break through — he wrote the comicbook "Wanted" and his current Icon series "Kick-Ass" is in production with Mathew Vaughn directing. Sony is looking for a writer to adapt the comic, which has published only two of its six issue run so far.

Deals show Millar's knack for coming up with high concept stories and publicity — the rights to "Wanted," "Kick-Ass" and "War Heroes" all were sold with only a couple of issues released.

Variety's own Michael Fleming reports this morning that Oscar-nominated actor-director Kenneth Branagh is in talks to direct "Thor" for Marvel.

Branagh, best known for high-quality adaptations of Shakespeare and other period pics, is an oddly inspired choice for this project. The script by Mark Protosevich has been widely praised by the likes of AICN and, according to the details in Fleming's report, includes the original Don Blake secret identity for the God of Thunder. Branagh obviously would be the ideal guy to handle Stan Lee's faux-Shakespearean comicbook dialog, even as the choice invites comparisons to Ang Lee tackling the "Hulk."

I still think Lee's Hulk is underrated, but given the all-out action approach of Marvel's recent pics, it will be interesting to see how this one plays out in the casting.

DC's All-Star Superman took home three Harvey Awards this weekend, including best single issue, best continuing series and a best artist honor for Frank Quitely.  The winners of this year's awards were announced over the weekend during a ceremony at the Baltimore Comic-Con. Here's the full list, wih winners listed in bold:

BEST WRITER

Ed Brubaker, Captain America, Marvel Comics
Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
Grant Morrison, All Star Superman, DC Comics
William Van Horn, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Gemstone
Brian K. Vaughan, Y: The Last Man, Vertigo/DC Comics

BEST ARTIST

Gabriel Ba, Umbrella Academy, Dark Horse Comics
John Cassaday, Astonishing X-Men, Marvel Comics
Guy Davis, BPRD, Dark Horse Comics
Frank Quitely, All Star Superman, DC Comics
William Van Horn, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Gemstone

BEST CARTOONIST

Darwyn Cooke, The Spirit, DC Comics
Matt Kindt, Super Spy, Top Shelf
Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amulet Books
Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, Oni Press
Vasilis Lolos, Last Call, Oni Press
William Van Horn, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Gemstone

DC has canceled its Minx line of books, according to a report on CBR verified by an announcement from the publisher this monring that says the imprint will fold in January.

CBR says some of the completed books will be published, while others may be canceled or will be published outside of the Minx line, most likely as Vertigo books. The CBR report cites distribution problems as the reason for the line's cancellation — namely the inability of DC's book trade distributor, Random House, to place Minx titles in the young adults section of retailers like Barnes & Noble.

The line of graphic novels was aimed at the youth market, particularly a young female market. The quality of the books was decent and seemed to put an interesting spin on the manga content that had done so well with girls in recent years for Tokyopop and Viz.

The line was creatively well received, with DC bringing in at the outset outside help in the firom of Alloy Marketing + Media to help market the line. Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter has some good reactions from creators, as well as from a former bookstore worker who verifies that the books had plenty of marketing support, but DC failed to ask retailers to shelve the books where they should have gone.

Occasional Superheroine Valerie D'Orazio has some ideas on why the line failed, making a good point that girls who attend comic conventions and the like are more into sci-fi, fantasy and horror books — like the "Twilight" series — than the kind of romantic, coming of age stories that Minx preferred.

This also raises questions about the health of the market for comics in increasingly tough economic times. Has appeal of manga/comics faded with the young female audience that helped make it a runaway hit in bookstores? With the restructuring of Virgin into Liquid, the contraction at Tokyopop, questions about the financial health of Platinum Studios, and ICV2's reports that overall sales volume has slipped again in the direct market and we may be seeing the first signs of some tough times ahead for smaller comics publishers.

Rich Johnston reveals a fascinating possibility about the Fox-WB rights dispute over "Watchmen": That Fox may be seeking leverage to get permission from WB to release the clsasic 1960s "Batman" TV series on DVD. The series is one of the major omissions on DVD, with rights held up by, among other reaons, Fox owning the episodes and WB owning the character.

Other comics-related news:

* The assets and liabilities of Virgin Comics have been bought out by Liquid Comics, which consists of Virgin's former management team of Gotham Chopra, Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman. Liquid intends to proceed with a number of projects originally announced, and the apparent end result is the company will essentiallly continue under a new name but without the Virgin name or the resources that came with it.

* Image's Shadowline division goes online with a new webcomics community, featuring the long-running indie series "Finder."

* Frank Miller talks in Europe and star Gabriel Macht speaks to Wizard about "The Spirit" movie, while a pair of new posters provide our first good looks at Macht as the titular hero and Samuel L. Jackson as The Octopus.

* The Comic-Con site reveals that Eisner Award seals are now being made available to publishers to place on books that have been nominated or won the award.

* IDW hires Greg Goldstein as COO. He previously was VP of gaming and entertainment at Upper Deck, as well as CEO and founder of Popmania, a development and brand-licensing agency focusing on digital entertainment.

* Radical Comics unveils its new website, created by Sandman Studios.

* IDW's comicbook biographies of Barack Obama and John McCain are going to be made available to mobile phones through the Uclick reader, which is available for phones on most major networks, on the mobile net at Go Comics and through Apple's iPhone App Store.

And, as the comics' release date of Oct. 8 approaches, IDW announces a signing tour for the writers of the books, Jeff Marriotte and Andy Helfer. The tour itinerary is:

New York:
2–4 p.m., Oct. 8: Forbidden Planet, 840 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
5–7 p.m., Oct. 8: Jim Hanley’s Universe, 4 W. 33rd St. New York, NY 10001

Los Angeles:
6–9 p.m., Oct. 9, Golden Apple Comics, 7018 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038

Orange County:
4–7 p.m., Oct. 10, Comics Unlimited, 16344 Beach Blvd, Westminster CA 92683

* Meanwhile, Bluewater Prods. has jumped into the race with a comicbook bio of Hillary Clinton, due out in January. The cover for the comic, titled Female Force: Hillary Clinton, looks a lot like the ones J. Scott Campbell drew for the IDW books.

* Erik Larsen's The Savage Dragon #137, featuring a cover with the superhero endorsing Obama, will be going to a third printing.

* And lastly, Insight Editions combines politics, comics and the trend toward souvenir/pop-up books with "Mad About Politics." The book, which features a lot of removable bits looking back at the sheer idocy of the last few administrations and is quite funny, if a bit pricy.

The first of six issues spinning off from the new Fox series, Fringe #1 (Wildstorm, $2.99) feels too much like a place for the show’s writers to dump their back-story notes. Two stories here — one about the past of Walter Bishop; the other a seemingly stand-along “fringe science” case — don’t feature either of the show’s lead characters. The comic also, by focusing on the past, seems to violate the show’s promise to avoid complicated mythologies. And it still feels far too disconnected from the show to add much to the experience. Grade: C

Scott Pilgrim: Full-Colour Odds & Ends 2008 (Oni Press) is a modest package that nevertheless epitomizes everything cool about the game-playing slacker’s graphic novel series. Of special interest is seeing creator Bryan Lee O’Malley’s work in color — done so well Dean Trippe and Jason Horn that it’s a shame the rest of the series isn’t done this way. Grade: B+

An ongoing series from “Cairo” creators G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker, Air #1 (DC/Veritgo, $2.99) is a interesting mixture of fantasy, romance and air travel, centered around a flight attendant named Blythe who meets a mystery man and visits countries that no longer exist. It evokes the direction “Lost” has taken in recent seasons, but with more of an international flair and an appealing mix of romance that allows it to overcome a few growing pains in the writing and the art. Grade: B+

Greatest Hits #1 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99) is an oddball concept — a 1960s superhero group analogous to The Beatles that is a surprisingly conventional revisionist superhero comic. Glenn Fabry’s art is always welcome, but the flashback framing sequence involving a Hollywood movie about the team and the slightly sleazy and cynical take on era all feels stale and lacking any of the charms of the era its trying to evoke. Grade: C+

Judenhass (Aardvark-Vanaheim, $4) is not really a story as much as Dave Sim illustrating a series of short observations and quotations using the photorealism techniques he’s taken up of late. The art is, as always with Sim, stunning and accomplished — and in this case, suitably evokes the horror. The text is slim, but worth reading for the way Sim’s hoice of quote reinforce something often forgotten today: the ways in which anti-Semitism was accepted and easily observable in the governments and cultures of the nations that came to later defeat and condemn Hitler for his actions. Grade: B+

Archie #587 (Archie Comics, $2.25) kicks off the five-part Freshman Year storyline, in which the Riverdale kids look like they’ll be split up even before they start high school. Archie comics remain light, fun family entertainment — and this is no exception, doing a good job at the same time of feeling current and relevant. Grade: B.

DC’s Minx line offers more sophisticated takes on being young with “Token” (by Alisa Kwitney and Joelle Jones, $9.99) — about a young Jewish girl tempted by shoplifting and romance with a dashing mystery boy — and “The New York Four” (by the “Local” crew of Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, $9.99) — in which a college freshman learns to live with her friends, herself and deal with life away from her cell phone. Both stories are emotionally honest while having just a slight edge in tone and look — especially Kelly’s wonderfully gritty take on the Big Apple — that should appeal to teen readers. Grade: B (“New York Four”), B- (“Token”).

Simpsons Super Spectacular #7 (Bongo, $2.99) features a pair of clever superhero parodies, saddling Bartman with an unwanted sidekick called the Salesman, and sending Radioactive Man into “The House of Westinger!,” a friendly poke at the 1950s and 1960s Superman comics edited by Mort Weisinger. Goofy fun with a few moments worthy of out-loud laughs. Grade: B

I finally got around to reading Mark Evanier’s excellent “Kirby: King of Comics” (Abrams, $40) an illustrated biography of Jack Kirby. Evanier gives an excellent and entertaining overview of Kirby’s life and conveys in a relatively short text a compelling portrait of Kirby’s life, personality and motivations. Here’s hoping the wait isn’t too long for the more detailed bio of Kirby that Evanier plans to write. Grade: A+.

Notes from here and there:

* Writer Geoff Johns has been tapped to pen the story for the DC Universe Online videogame, currently being developed by Sony and featuring designs by artist Jim Lee.

* "Desperate Housewives" star Eve Longoria-Parker was spotted at the Marvel Studios offices with a stack of Avengers comics, leading to speculation that she might play The Wasp in the Avengers film, planned for 2011.

* "Eagle Eye" director D.J. Caruso says he'd like to tackle a "Thor" movie for Marvel. Caruso also is working on adapting Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's "Y: The Last Man," which he would like to shoot next year.

* Paul Dini is bringing his "Diniverse" of characters to Top Cow. The first book, the one-shot "Jingle Belle: Santa Claus vs. Frankenstein," will be out in October.

* Verizon Wireless is adding a DC Comics Channel to its V Cast mobile video service. The channel will offer "motion comics," the DCU animated features and clips from DC-based films such as "The Dark Knight" and "Superman Returns."