Joss Whedon, shown in April. (Matt Sayles / Associated Press)

This story contains spoilers about “The Avengers.”

“The Avengers” passed the $1-billion mark in worldwide ticket sales this weekend, and a sequel is already in the works. Does that mean writer-director Joss Whedon will be back at the helm of the franchise that unites Marvel’s box-office heavyweights, including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the Hulk?

“You know, I’m very torn,” Whedon said in a sit-down interview in Beverly Hills before the film’s U.S. opening. “It’s an enormous amount of work telling what is ultimately somebody else’s story, even though I feel like I did get to put myself into it. But at the same time, I have a bunch of ideas, and they all seem really cool.”

Whether he gets his hands on the sequel, Whedon’s fingerprints are all over “The Avengers,” which echoes some tropes found in his other work in comics and television.

For one, Mark Ruffalo’s much-praised performance as Bruce Banner and his raging alter-ego the Hulk parallels Seth Green’s Oz, the werewolf character in Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Like Banner, Oz tries to run from the beast within, isolating himself in far-flung lands while he learns to master his inner monster. Ultimately, Oz learns to accept the wolf and displays Zen-like (though imperfect) mastery over his full-moon manifestations. Similarly, Banner learns to master the Hulk only by accepting and eventually embracing the anger that incites “the other guy.”

Seth Green as Oz in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” left, and Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner in “The Avengers.” (Fox / Marvel)

“I hadn’t really connected those,” Whedon said, when asked about the Oz-Hulk parallel. “But the Oz thing for me was kind of an intellectual exercise. And for Bruce, for me, it felt like a new truth — even though it really is similar and therefore isn’t new at all — because Mark and I had spent so much time talking about the way anger manifests. And I’ve even talked about the Hulk as a werewolf. As much as he’s a superhero, he’s that type of monster.”

Whedon’s “Astonishing X-Men” run featured young heroine Kitty Pryde. (Marvel)

Fans of Whedon’s work in comics also may have noticed similarities between Tony Stark’s “sacrifice play,” saving the world from a nuclear missile at the end of the film, and Kitty Pryde‘s act of self-sacrifice when she saved the world from a giant missile-bullet in “Astonishing X-Men.”

“I was afraid you were going to mention ‘Superman,’ the first movie,” Whedon said. “I had never thought about that, since she’s more inside [the bullet], but there is a little bit of that. But the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate threat, when you mix ‘em up, usually somebody’s trying to divert a rocket.”

Whedon said any parallels between his previous work and the characters and plot in “The Avengers” are unintentional.

“I’m not going to do the same thing on purpose; I’m going to do the same thing because I’m creatively bereft, and I’ve run out of ideas,” he joked. “Awkward…”

But one trademark characteristic Whedon embraces in his work is his ability to unite groups of raggedy misfits against imminent evil. Led by anti-hero Capt. Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), “Firefly’s” crew of lost space-wanderers exposed the misdoings of an interplanetary government that stepped out of line. A teenage girl and her “Scooby gang” of freaks and geeks saved Sunnydale and Earth from demons and demented gods in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” And now, in “The Avengers,” disparate superheroes worked through their egos and hangups, pulling together as a team to defend the planet against alien invaders.

So which misfit crew is Whedon’s favorite?

“You know, I love all my raggedy children,” he said. “But if I could be anywhere, I’d be on board Serenity.”

– Noelene Clark

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Nickolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister in “Game of Thrones.” (Helen Sloan / HBO)

The just-published book “Beyond the Wall” is a collection of essays regarding George R.R. Martin and his work. Below is one of the selections: Los Angeles author and essayist Ned Vizzini’s piece on the disdain and disinterest traditionally facing fantasy works that look for a spot on the bookshelf of respected literature.   

When I set out to get blurbs for a young adult novel with fantasy elements that I sold in 2010, the person I wanted to beg most was George R.R. Martin. While reading up on roleplaying games’ influence on American culture, I discovered his work through Dreamsongs: Volume II, which, if you’re already chafing for The Winds of Winter, documents Martin’s creative ventures in Los Angeles with Tyrion-esque cynicism. In Dreamsongs I found that in 1983 Martin started playing the Call of Cthulhu and Superworld games so much that he stopped writing for a year and nearly went broke. As he explained in an introduction to the Wild Cards novels that resulted from his obsession: “[My wife] Parris used to listen at my office door, hoping to hear the clicking of my keyboard from within, only to shudder at the ominous rattle of dice.”

This was the first time I’d read about a writer having a fantasy gaming problem, as opposed to, say, a drug or alcohol problem. Since I’d recently weathered my own ten-year addiction to Magic: The Gathering, I saw a kindred spirit in Martin, someone who might understand me—and dig my book. My publisher approved of my blurb quest, as Martin is a phenomenal success, with more than 8.5 million books sold in the Song of Ice and Fire series according to USA Today. But those sales are supported by a surprising development for an author steeped in roleplaying games and genre fiction — canonical critical acclaim. Time Magazine gave Martin the ultimate blurb in 2005: “the American Tolkien.”

But when did that become a distinction? Tolkien has been part of our culture for so long that it’s easy to forget that “The Lord of the Rings” was derided as escapist—and worse, foreign—when it first appeared here. You can get a sense of just how harsh the criticisms were in Michael Saler’s excellent 2012 critical overview of fantasy, “As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality”: “Certain people—especially, perhaps, in Britain—have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash,” declared Edmund Wilson in 1956. “What apparently gets kids square in their post-adolescent sensibilities is not the scholarly top-dressing but the undemanding, comfortable, child-sized story underneath,” chided Life.

This argument—that fantasy is simple, formulaic, and for children—has kept it in a genre ghetto since its inception as a modern literary form in the nineteenth century. Although it has been creeping into academia for years, and Martin has accelerated its move toward acceptance by serious circles like the New York Times Book Review, it is still dismissed by many critics as by-the-numbers hackwork created to serve a market: nerds like me, Martin, and, let’s face it, you. Fantasy’s story, from formulation through critical dismissal to massive popular success and overdue academic assessment, is part of an ongoing intellectual conflict as grueling as the War of the Ninepenny Kings—the genre wars—that is only now approaching detente.

More than anything, “genre” is a marketing term. It’s meant to help booksellers shelve product, and thus it doesn’t have much relevance prior to the ascendance of the book as a mass-market product in England in the mid-1800s, where reduced printing costs led to an explosion of garishly illustrated “penny dreadfuls.” These serialized entertainments, marketed as literature to lower- and middle-class readers, forced critics to draw the first line in the genre wars: between “literary” and “popular” fiction.

It was clear to academics that the work of, say, George W.M. Reynolds (who never used the word “face” when “countenance” would suffice, and avoided “said” in favor of “ejaculated”) was not literature. It had to be something else, and “crap” seemed impolite. The problem was, people loved it: in ten years, according to The Victorian Web, Reynolds moved over a million copies of The Mysteries of London and its sequel The Mysteries of the Court of London, which would make them bestsellers even today. “Popular” fiction seemed a safe place to sequester his output from serious work.

Yet even when separated from literature, popular fiction was seen as a threat. Henry James warned against it in his 1884 essay “The Art of Fiction,” aiming squarely at Robert Louis Stevenson, who had just written the well-liked adventure tale Treasure Island. For James, “a novelist writes out of and about ‘all experience’ and aims to represent nothing less than ‘life’ itself in all its complexities,” says Ken Gelder in his 2004 survey Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field. In contrast, “Treasure Island [. . .] is nothing more than a fantasy.”

Stevenson responded in an essay of his own, “speaking up precisely for those qualities found in ‘the novel of adventure’ that Henry James had so disdained: a plot or a ‘story’, as well as ‘danger’, ‘passion’ and ‘intrigue’.” Hidden in this defense lies the problem that still hampers fantasy fiction today: “danger” and “intrigue” are one thing, and they’re both in heroic supply in A Song of Ice and Fire, but what makes a bookseller shelve a novel under “fantasy” is often that it stars a farm boy who doesn’t realize he’s a prince; or a farm boy who has to face a series of challenges having to do with earth, fire, water, and air. The persistence of cliché in fantasy allows critics in the Jamesian tradition to continue to dismiss it as writing for children, whereas Stevenson and his contemporaries preferred to think of themselves as pioneers of the imagination.

Imagination was a dangerous force in nineteenth-century Europe. Polite people were not supposed to imagine too much, lest they suffer like two causalities of earlier skirmishes in the genre wars: Madame Bovary, who read too many romance novels, or Don Quixote, who read too many knight’s tales. Real literature was supposed to be set in the real world, where real-world people navigated real-world problems. As Rousseau argued in 1762: “The real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other.”

But imagination did have its place among the masses, in folklore, satire, and children’s literature such as Alice in Wonderland (1865). In the guise of juvenile fiction, fantastical tales were acceptable even for upper-class readers, some of whom, like Stevenson, grew up to be authors who couldn’t constrain themselves to the realist mode sanctioned by the Enlightenment. They produced books at the turn of the twentieth century that embraced impossibility but were grounded in reality. Jules Verne called them “Les Voyages Extraordinaires”; H.G. Wells called them “scientific romance,” and that term works for me: it spells out the books’ necessary characteristics of fantastic premises and empirical prose.

“The Gods of Pegāna” by Lord Dunsany, “King Solomon’s Mines” by H. Rider Haggard and “With the Night Mail” by Rudyard Kipling.

In part, scientific romance—which included “King Solomon’s Mines” (1885) by H. Rider Haggard, “The Gods of Pegāna” (1905) by Lord Dunsany, and “With the Night Mail” (1909) by Rudyard Kipling—was a response to the antiseptic climate ushered in by the modern era. At the end of the nineteenth century, science was honing in on the most basic explanations of the natural world. (Or so we thought; nobody ever expected us to need CERN.) People had a chance to completely separate themselves from spiritual meaning—to abandon their souls in favor of cold, hard intellect—and the departure of magic from everyday life left a void. Scientific romance strove to fill that void while remaining true to the secularism that the modern world demanded. That meant presenting stories as if they were non-fiction, complete with glossaries, footnotes, and that essential component of today’s fantasy novel: the map. By buffeting their imaginative texts with ancillary paratexts, these authors anticipated the contemporary fantasy writer’s task of world-building: going behind the scenes to create a coherent world that readers could make their own.

This new movement demanded critical attention. For one thing, scientific romance writers outstripped George W.M. Reynolds and the penny-dreadful crowd in sheer skill. Wells, Verne, and Kipling weren’t hacks; they were gifted if workmanlike storytellers who exhibited a legitimate, cohesive response to the modern era. Their books also became beloved around the world, even by children who would later become intellectuals. As Jean-Paul Sartre says of Verne: “When I opened [his books], I forgot about everything. Was that reading? No, but it was death by ecstasy.” If you’ve lost weeks to A Song of Ice and Fire, you know what he’s talking about.

Yet the success of scientific romance did not sway critics, who accused it of being juvenile, having undeveloped characters, and not engaging the problems of the real world. Luckily for them, they soon had a more specific ghetto to place it in: “science fiction & fantasy.”

Emilia Clarke in “Game of Thrones.” (HBO)

This dual category, since formally split by critic Darko Suvin but still found in many bookstores with that dragon-like ampersand, was established in America in the early twentieth century through the pulp magazines. Like genre itself, the pulps were a marketing construct created, according to Richard Mathews’s Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination, to compete with popular-fiction dime novels. Through them, several major forerunners of George R.R. Martin first saw print, and within their pages many clichés were established that still dog fantasy: swords and sorcery, swords and sandals, and evil, sexy sorceresses. H.P. Lovecraft, who used the format to create a world of alien gods, felt that traditional fantasy stories were useless—as does Tyrion Lannister in A Dance with Dragons: “Talking dragons, dragons hoarding gold and gems [. . .] nonsense, all of it.” Lovecraft in particular went through great pains to create empirical backdrops for his tales, including the Necronomicon, an invented book of dark magic that has since been published in several versions. Unfortunately he had little success in his lifetime—and in death Edmund Wilson dismissed his oeuvre as “a boy’s game.”

Yet outside the realm of literary criticism, pulp readers were treating “science fiction & fantasy” as more than a game. They were discussing it extensively and building the groundwork for what we now call “fandom.” Hugo Gernsback, editor of Amazing Stories, did the movement an immense service by publishing the addresses of those who sent in letters, enabling readers to contact one another directly to discuss the work. By the middle of the twentieth century, genre outsold literary fiction by something like nine to one . . . yet it continued to founder in the critical establishment, which had doubled down on its commitment to real-world settings. Serious literature was “defined by most critics as narrative realism and admitted nothing that was non-realistic,” according to Ken Keegan in 2006’s ParaSpheres: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction; nowhere in the vast stylistic void between Joyce and Hemingway was there room for a dragon or a flying god.

(Marvel Comics)

With the position of the establishment essentially unchanged for a century, genre readers couldn’t wait for academics to lend structure and insight to their obsessions. They formed a para-academic environment of bookshops, fanzines, and “Letters” pages in the pulps—and, later, comic books—to analyze the work in the context of its ever-lengthening history. One active participant in this culture was George R.R. Martin, whose fan letters mark his first appearances in print. In 1965’s Avengers #12, he praises “the fast-paced action, solid characterization, and that terrific ending,” some of the same characteristics Stevenson brought up in his defense of “the novel of adventure.” Thus the champions of fantasy moved from responding to Henry James to writing letters to Stan Lee — even after the cultural supernova of “The Lord of the Rings.” Things weren’t looking good for fantasy in the genre wars.

Enter “A Game of Thrones,” published as a genre title in 1996 to suspected commercial super-success. With Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time saga a hot commodity, publishers entered a fierce bidding war for what was then conceived as the Song of Fire and Ice trilogy. Subsequent sales have overshadowed the fact that Thrones was not an immediate hit, but rather a slow burn, encouraged by independent booksellers, reviewers, and a Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. In retrospect it’s easy to see why: Martin grew up in a world where fantasy’s rules were well established, but he had the courage to break those rules in ways that challenged critics—and readers.

The continuum of genre writers from the scientific romance to today established tropes for fantasy that are less obvious and more insidious than the wizard in the black hat or the gruff dwarf. One, identified in John H. Timmerman’s Other Worlds: the Fantasy Genre (1983), is “commonness of character.” The heroes of Richard Adams’s Watership Down (1972) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series (1968–2001) are everyday people—or everyday rabbits—saddled with the problems of “country folk.” Bilbo and Frodo are hobbits, not hobbit kings.

Sean Astin plays Sam, left, and Elijah Wood plays Frodo, two Hobbits in “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” Martin Freeman is playing Bilbo Baggins in this year’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” (New Line)

Martin subverts this, returning instead to a pre-fantasy paradigm. The fourteen major point-of-view characters in A Song of Ice and Fire are not farmers or goatherds; they are men and women of noble birth worried about preserving their station and, in most cases, ruling the world. They have less to do with Le Guin’s young wizard Ged than the scheming protagonists of Trollope or Thackeray. And in this way they go against a trend of fiction—genre and literary—that has been gaining steam since the Renaissance. Mythic literature concerned kings and demigods, Enlightenment literature focused on nobles, and modern literature brought stories to the street. Martin transports us back to the halls of power, and that’s why A Song of Ice and Fire often feels less like a fantasy saga and more like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.

Martin has been praised on Flavorwire by Lev Grossman, fantasy author and fashioner of the “American Tolkien” blurb, for shattering Middle-earth’s Manichaeism and replacing it with high-stakes political intrigue. But underlying this is the author’s refusal to make his characters naive—another common fantasy trope. “[N]aïveté in fantasy is always a good thing which suggests that the character has retained a willingness to wonder,” writes Timmerman. “[T]he pragmatists, the despoiled, the hard-bitten and cynical are often the villains of fantasy.”

HBO’s “Game of Thrones” stars Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. (Helen Sloan / HBO)

This is furthest from the truth in A Song of Ice and Fire. Pragmatists are the only survivors of the treachery of Westeros and Essos. The capacity for wonder that enables the childlike protagonists of traditional fantasy to enter another world or to make the best of it is a detriment here. The characters who stay alive are the despoiled—and thus, within Martin’s return to high-born Romanticism, we find antiheroes birthed from modern cynics. “[A] hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself,” claims the narrator of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864). More than Frodo or the Pevensie children or even Lovecraft’s tormented New Englanders, Tyrion Lannister resembles this modernist icon: what does he spend time on other than defiling himself?

Even the idea of a hero is up for grabs in Martin’s work. Fantasy has long been dominated, as has all genre fiction, by the mythic protagonist identified in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces: the one who leaves home, sacrifices himself for the good of his people, and is reborn to live happily ever after. This figure has become especially boring in film. He is a kid or a cop or a spy, common enough to earn empathy but superhuman enough to avoid the arcs of bullets that kill his companions. We know he’s going to win; we just don’t know how. That’s why Ned Stark’s death had such a resonance with the readers of A Game of Thrones and the viewers of HBO’s retelling. For once, the hero actually bit it—after showing that he was a brave and principled family man against the backdrop of schemers at King’s Landing. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, as well as Martin, who served as executive producer, deserve special credit here for ensuring that Ned Stark was the marketing focus of Game of Thrones. The poster was Sean Bean on the Iron Throne! Having the guts to chop his head off in episode nine sent a lurch through TV viewers that was comparable to the gasp that greeted Janet Leigh’s demise in Psycho . . . and that stands as the greatest pop-culture moment of our developing decade.

– Ned Vizzini

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Justice League #9

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Justice League #9

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Justice League #9

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Justice League #9

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Justice League #9

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Justice League #9 continues the heroes’ exploration of one another in the New 52 universe as they work together to stop menaces both extraterrestrial and close to home. A new story arc, “The Villain’s Journey,” also welcomes back Jim Lee as the series’ artist after a two-issue hiatus.

We’ve got an exclusive preview of the comic (you can quick-click through the pages above or find the links below that lead to larger images). The dynamic between Batman, Superman and Cyborg is played out a bit as they search Arkham Asylum for The Key, a being of some sort who is loose in the criminal stronghold. Cyborg’s ominous mention of being plugged into every computer on Earth, including Batman’s, sounds like there may be some tension brewing.

Cover | Variant cover | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4

– Jevon Phillips

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This past week the CW picked up the hourlong pilot of "Arrow," which will present a whole new take on Green Arrow, the DC comics character who first appeared in 1941. Stephen Amell stars as Oliver Queen, a playboy plucking his bow in Starling City. (The CW)

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Marvel's mega-hit "The Avengers" unites a god, a monster, a super solider and... that "Hurt Locker" dude with a bow and arrow? Yes, Hawkeye (along with Black Widow) is a mere mortal but he brings sharp edges to an all-star affair. “I love him," director Joss Whedon says, "because he really could not be less of a team player." (Marvel Studios / Disney)

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The first Pixar princess doesn't have a glass slipper -- but if you perch that poison apple on your head she'll be happy to shoot it with an arrow. Merida, voiced by Kelly Macdonald, is the impetuous daughter of King Fergus in the June 22 release of "Brave" that tells a tale of courage, magic and self-discovery. (Disney)

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Katniss Everdeen is a rural rebel in an oppressed society of faceless citizens. How will she make her mark? That's right, with a bow and arrow (and, um, the flaming dress didn't hurt either). "The Hunger Games" has gone from bookshelf sensation to cinema sensation and the influence of Katniss can also be tracked in national surge in bow sales and archery class enrollment. (Lionsgate)

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Director Tarsem Singh brought scenes of majestic mayhem to "Immortals" and among the most memorable was glowing arrows of the Epirus Bow, a weapon fit for the gods (or star Henry Cavill, shown above and the soon-to-be Superman). (Relativity Media)

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Sure, "Game of Thrones" is a sword-and-shield show -- but arrows have some royal favor on the HBO series. Cruel King Joffrey likes the heft of this crossbow, which might be the same one his father had on that fateful boar hunt. (HBO)

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"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" came out near the end of last year but it reached its pop-culture peak here in 2012 with a can't-miss meme: “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.” Miss the point? Just Google it. (Bethesda Studios)

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UPDATED: Thanks to reader Tom Adams who reminded us about the ominous interest in archery exhibited by the title character in "We Need to Talk About Kevin." The wrenching film premiered to acclaim at Cannes last year but got its widest release in mid-January. (Artificial Eye)

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UPDATED: Reader Robert Todd reminded us of another flinty spirit: Daryl Dixon of "The Walking Dead," who sharpened his survival skills during a harsh Georgia childhood and now carves the wooden bolts he fires from his Horton Scout crossbow. (AMC)

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If you want to know the weapon of choice in pop culture this year just follow the arrow. Click though the gallery above (be sure to click the “CAPTIONS ON” option) to see why 2012 is a year with a big bull’s-eye on its back.

– Geoff Boucher

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"The Avengers" face the evil Loki, but there's another mystery villain revealed in a mid-credits sequence... (Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Studios)

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The mystery villain at the end of "The Avengers" is Thanos, a native of Titan who is obsessed with death. (Marvel Comics)

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Jim Starlin's Thanos first appeared in 1973; his 40th anniversary may be celebrated on set of "The Avengers 2." (Marvel)

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Thanos seeks out objects of power to further his plans. One of those objects was the Infinity Gauntlet, which appeared in the film "Thor" and was also created by Jim Starlin. (Marvel)

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Joss Whedon says Thanos is "the most powerful and fascinating Marvel villain." (Marvel Comics)

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The Cosmic Cube in comics (called the Tesseract in the Marvel Studios films) is a prized object that would allow Thanos to destroy life. (Marvel Comics)

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Jim Starlin's stories and art, such as this 1977 issue, built on the "cosmic epic" vibe of Marvel Comics that began in the 1960s with Marvel dreamers such as Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and John Buscema.

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Jim Starlin says his idea for Thanos came to him while taking a psychology class after coming out of the service.

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Jim Starlin says the Hollywood adventure of his Marvel creations has been a mixed one. He didn't even get a free ticket to see "The Avengers." (Jim Starlin)

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COSMIC-LEVEL SPOILER ahead, so stop reading if you haven’t seen “The Avengers” — although with $775 million in worldwide box office it’s getting harder to find Marvel fans that haven’t seen director Joss Whedon’s all-star, crowd-pleasing epic.

As the credits roll on “The Avengers,” moviegoers see a sinister alien revealed — it’s Thanos, a being obsessed with nihilism and death, eventually falling in love with its embodiment, Mistress Death. The Mad Titan first appeared in Iron Man #55 in 1973 and would become a signature figure in the Marvel Universe’s “cosmic level” sagas — the struggles that brought heroes, monsters, aliens, immortals and gods into conflicts that spilled across space, time and other dimensions. The character was created by artist and writer Jim Starlin, who we caught up with to talk about his Mad Titan getting a Hollywood close-up.

HC: When did you find out Thanos was going to be in the film — and was it hard to keep it a secret?

The Cosmic Cube in comics (called the Tesseract in the Marvel Studios films) is a prized object that would allow Thanos to destroy life (Marvel Comics)

JS: I was only alerted by friends to Thanos appearing in the film a few weeks before the opening. They’d come across rumors about it on the Internet. So I had no problem at all about keeping that particular secret.

HC: Thanos has such a memorable visage and powerful aura — even in a Marvel Universe packed with cosmic-level characters. Did the character arrive fully formed in your imagination or did it take awhile to get the character to the now-familiar version?

JS: Thanos came to me while I was taking a psychology class in college after coming out of the service; the ol’ Thanos/Eros concept. I had him sort of roughed out before I ever started working at Marvel. When editor Roy Thomas asked me to do a fill-in Iron Man, I decided to add him to the mix. I showed some character sketches I had of the character to Roy, he asked if I could perhaps bulk up Thanos some and then let me run with it. Mike Friedrich then dialogued the issue. As time went on, Thanos just sort of grew organically on his own. Not sure where his loving Death came from. At the time I was recently out of the service and rather messed up. Hard to remember what was going through my head back then.

HC: On that topic, most villains in comics usually want to conquer or destroy things, but Thanos’ ends are more, well, romantic. Was there any specific inspiration that led to a character that — literally — courts death?

JS: I suppose the Mad Titan’s doing a Pepe Le Pew on Death was an offshoot of the death wish that I was probably entertaining around then. If I hadn’t had the outlet of writing and drawing comics, I guess there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be around today. But I got to vent and am still among the living and breathing.

HC: Through the years, what sort of reactions come back from fans? I can see Thanos setting up some unsettling questions or metaphysical argument, for instance…

Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 (1977)

JS: The conversations I have had on Thanos with fans over the years have ranged from the bizarre to the intense, as would be expected. The odder reaction to my handling of Thanos and (later) “The Death of Captain Marvel” came from my fellow professionals. I sort of became the go-to guy for killing off characters. At this point I don’t know how many comic-book characters I’ve been asked to assassinate. I eventually did in Robin, Warlock and Captain Marvel but passed on Shang Chi and at least a half-dozen others.

HC: I spoke to Jerry Robinson once and I congratulated him on the billion-dollar success of “The Dark Knight” and he winced like I had poked him in the eye. Of course I instantly realized that watching Alfred, the Joker, Two-Face, etc. fill the coffers of Warner Bros. was like watching a son raised in another house with another family’s name. I don’t know the arrangements on this film, but has this project and its success been a mixed experience in any way?

JS: Very mixed. It’s nice to see my work recognized as being worth something beyond the printed page, and it was very cool seeing Thanos up on the big screen. Joss Whedon and his crew did an excellent job on “The Avengers” movie and I look forward to the sequel, for obvious reasons. But this is the second film that had something I created for Marvel in it — the Infinity Gauntlet in “Thor” being the other – and both films I had to pay for my own ticket to see them. Financial compensation to the creators of these characters doesn’t appear to be part of the equation. Hopefully Thanos’ walk-on in “The Avengers” will give a boost to a number of my own properties that are in various stages of development for film: “Dreadstar,” “Breed” and the novel “Thinning the Predators.”

Jim Starlin (Courtesy of Jim Starlin)

HC: Where did you see the film and what was it like for you?

JS: I saw the film at a midnight showing at a local theater. Of course the audience was packed with comic-book crazies. It was like going to a comics convention. I had two heavy-duty geeks sitting behind me, narrating and commenting on the film throughout. I thought about asking them to pipe down but then realized they were actually adding to the experience for me and let it ride. My only surprise when I saw Thanos up on the screen was how violet he was. I always saw his exposed hide as being more grayish violet. I’ve only seen the film once and the Mad Titan appears quite briefly, but I had the impression he could perhaps use a bit more chin, but I could be wrong about that. I liked the voice.

– Geoff Boucher

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Whedon finds human side of thunder god

‘Avengers’ set visit: Joss Whedon’s heroes and humor

Whedon says Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye is a “loner”

Mark Ruffalo’s childlike inspiration for the Hulk

‘Avengers’ gallery: Marvel’s heroes assemble

Video: Scarlett Johansson breaks out the wit

The third Hero Complex Film Festival runs May 18-21 at LA Live, but the event began (above) in 2010 in Hollywood. (Los Angeles Times)

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This year the Hero Complex Film Festival begins May 18 with a 7 p.m. screening of "Dawn of the Dead" (2004) and a highlight reel from "The Walking Dead." Then "Dawn" director Zack Snyder and "Walking" creator Robert Kirkman hit the stage to celebrate -- and debate -- zombies. (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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There's more Friday night zombie fun when director Edgar Wright hits the stage at 10 p.m. on May 18 for a lively discussion of the genre's undying appeal followed by the deadly funny "Shaun of the Dead." (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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Saturday at high noon: A new print of "RoboCop" adds firepower to the May 19 program and star Peter Weller will look back as the film celebrates its 25th anniversary. (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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The bruising Saturday bill continues with the 4 p.m. Q&A with Malcolm McDowell about the 50th anniversary of the novel "A Clockwork Orange." McDowell then introduces Stanley Kubrick's "Clockwork" at 4:45 p.m. (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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The split-lip Saturday bill continues at 8:45 p.m. with "Super," the daft and deranged gem from 2010. After the credits roll, star Rainn Wilson and writer-director James Gunn take the spotlight. (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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The Sunday program on May 20 starts with a 2 p.m. preview of Pixar's "Brave" and then soars into space with the poignant sci-fi tale "WALL-E." Oscar-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton then arrives on stage for an animated chat. (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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The Sunday night finale whisks us to the 'verse of "Firefly" with Joss Whedon's "Serenity." After the credits roll? Star Nathan Fillion brings his shiny self to the stage. (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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May 21, the final night of Hero Complex Film Festival, delivers a living Marvel to the stage. An Evening with Stan Lee begins at 7:30 p.m. with some surprises, goes into an onstage chat with the comics icon and finishes with an 8:30 screening of "X-Men." (Sean Hartter / For Hero Complex)

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It’s almost here — we’re just one week from the start of the 2012 Hero Complex Film Festival and with the franchise in its third year we’ve moved to a sweet new home (Regal Cinemas at LA Live, where in September we brought you a 30th anniversary screening of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with Steven Spielberg and surprise guest Harrison Ford) and expanded the program (four days now with more than a dozen guests, including three that haven’t been announced).

To get a bead on the festival, peruse the photo gallery above — be sure to click the “CAPTIONS ON” option if you don’t see text across the bottom of each image – and you’ll get a snapshot description of all of eight of our separately ticketed screenings. The box here on the right leads to the ticketing page.

And how about those fun images in the gallery? They take each of our screenings and repackage their personas as vintage trading cards or the wax-pack packaging those cards were sold in. All that’s missing is a petrified plank of pink Topps gum that was as enticing as a tongue-depressor dusted with cheap sugar.

The cards and packs are the handiwork of Sean Hartter, the Massachusetts illustrator and designer who comes up with sly pop-culture mash-ups and collage creations that function as satire but without sourness — there’s just too much fan-infused celebration in his work. (If you missed it, by the way, check out February’s series of Batman movie posters he did for Hero Complex.)

Jim Lee’s artwork for 2012 Hero Complex Film Festival. Fans who buy weekend passes will get it as free poster. (Los Angeles Times)

And yes, we have a few surprises that might be coming during the festival. When I say might I’m not being coy; there are some well-know filmmakers and actors who say they will try to drop by but that their schedules are not always their own. I felt like my schedule was out of control as I spent months trying to line up directors and actors I could pair with films that meet two standards – it had to be a movie I love or a movie I want to see on a  big screen; and, second, it had to be a film or genre we write about on Hero Complex. The pieces were still moving around and changing in late April!

The first year we did this I got Leonard Nimoy, Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan to  join me on stage for Q&As after we screened film such as “Blade Runner” and “The Dark Knight.” That set the bar pretty high — but also gave me confidence that we could deliver something smart, polished and fun and use the weekend as a wellspring of content across multiple platforms.

So how does this year’s festival match up? Well, that’s for you to decide — tell us in the comments section  or — better yet, — buy a ticket and come see me over at the Regal on May 18.

– Geoff Boucher

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HCFF: McDowell and  ‘Clockwork’ on May 19

HCFF: Zombie!: Zack Snyder, Robert Kirkman

HCFF: Rainn Wilson unmasks ‘Super’”

HCFF: Pixar Sunday: ‘Wall-E,’ “Brave’ preview

HCFF: Robocop, reloaded for 25th anniversary

HCFF: An Evening with Stan Lee, May 21

HCFF: Jim Lee unveils Film Festival poster

Whedon fills ‘Avengers’ with heroes, humor

Ridley Scott: ‘Magic comes over the horizon…”

‘Prometheus’: Ridley Scott revisits canvas

‘Spider-Man’: Denis Leary dazzled by Emma Stone

Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page and James Gunn at the Los Angeles premiere of “Super” on March 21, 2011. (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)

Our “Super” screening on May 19 just got even more, um,  super.

James Gunn, the writer and director of the crime-busting, bone-cracking and (at times) heartbreaking film “Super,” will reunite with the 2010 indie project’s star, Rainn Wilson, on stage  at the Hero Complex Film Festival. The pair will share the stage during a Q&A session following the 8:30 p.m. screening of “Super,” which dresses like “The Greatest American Hero” but runs off the road of sanity like a hipster version of “Taxi Driver.”

“Super” follows a short-order cook named Frank (Wilson) who is gripped by rage and despair after his wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a  manipulative dope merchant (Kevin Bacon). At his most vulnerable moment, a cosmic message arrives and shoves Frank down a  new path – he dons the mask of the Crimson Bolt and swings a wrench at evil.

Gunn made his directorial debut with the 2006 horror-comedy “Slither” (with Nathan Fillion, Michael Rooker, and Gregg Henry) and has wildly varied experience in spooky cinema with writing credits on the films “Scooby-Doo” (2002), “Dawn of the Dead” (2004) and ”Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” (2004).

“Super” was one of the gems of 2010 and, if you missed it, this is the perfect opportunity to circle back to its deranged charms. The movie absolutely earns its R rating and it’s part of our savage Saturday bill that begins at noon with a 25th anniversary presentation of a new digitally remastered print of “Robocop“ (with a post-screening Q&A with Peter Weller) and continues with a “A Clockwork Orange” screening (which follows the 4 p.m. Q&A with Malcolm McDowell, who will reflect on the 50th anniversary of the novel and the 40th anniversary of the Stanley Kubrick film).

The third edition of the Hero Complex Film Festival runs May 18-21 at the Regal Cinemas L.A. Live. Tickets are now on sale. For a full list of screenings and ticket information, visit the festival landing page.

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Wilson: “I have to play this character”

HCFF: McDowell and  ‘Clockwork’ on May 19

HCFF: Zombie!: Zack Snyder, Robert Kirkman

HCFF: Rainn Wilson unmasks ‘Super”

HCFF: Pixar Sunday: ‘Wall-E,’ ‘Brave’ preview

HCFF: Robocop, reloaded for 25th anniversary

HCFF: An Evening with Stan Lee, May 21

Mark Ruffalo photographed in April. (Matt Sayles / Associated Press)

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Mark Ruffalo plays Bruce Banner in a scene from "The Avengers." (Zade Rosenthal / Marvel)

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The Hulk in a scene from "The Avengers." (Marvel)

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"The Incredible Hulk" #1, the 1963 comic by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby that began the franchise. (Jack Kirby / Marvel Comics)

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The latest comic incarnation of "The Incredible Hulk" hits stores this May. (Marvel Comics)

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Bill Bixby played David Banner in the TV series "The Incredible Hulk," which ran from 1978-1982, as well is in several TV movies. Here, he reprises the role in the 1990 TV movie, "The Death of the Incredible Hulk." (NBC)

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Lou Ferrigno plays the other side of Bixby's character in "The Incredible Hulk" TV series. He has also voiced the Hulk in the more recent Marvel movies, including "The Avengers." (USHV)

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Eric Bana plays Bruce Banner in the 2003 film "Hulk." (Universal Studios)

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A scene from 2003's "Hulk." (Universal Studios)

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Edward Norton portrays Bruce Banner in the 2008 movie "The Incredible Hulk." (Michael Gibson / Universal Studios)

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The Hulk in 2008's "The Incredible Hulk." (Marvel Studios)

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Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), left, and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in "The Avengers." (Zade Rosenthal / Marvel)

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Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in a scene from "The Avengers." (Marvel)

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Director Joss Whedon, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. on the set of "The Avengers." (Zade Rosenthal / Marvel)

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Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in "The Avengers." (Marvel)

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Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), left, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in a scene from "The Avengers." (Marvel)

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Mark Ruffalo, right, and his wife Sunrise Coigney at the Hollywood premiere of "The Avengers" on April 11. (Kevin Winter / Getty Images)

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Mark Ruffalo in 2010. (Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

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This story contains spoilers about “The Avengers” and previously released Marvel films.

When word got out in 2010 that Mark Ruffalo had been cast as Bruce Banner and his big, green alter ego the Hulk in “The Avengers,” many fans of the franchise were furious. They took to the message boards, touting the merits of Edward Norton’s performance in 2008′s “The Incredible Hulk” and decrying the decision to cast a different actor in “The Avengers,” which would finally unite Marvel’s superheroes, including Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.

Ruffalo — best known for off-the-beaten-path movies such as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and 2010′s critical darling “The Kids Are All Right” — had been unsure of his decision to accept the role in the action-packed flick. But he said the fan outrage was exactly the motivation he needed.

“I remember the fanboys — there was a lot of negative response to me playing that part early on, and I kind of liked that challenge,” he said during a recent interview in Beverly Hills. “This one really scared me. It was something that I had never done, that I don’t think anyone expected me to do.”

It might have been unexpected, but Ruffalo’s “Avengers” performance has been lauded by fans and critics in the week following the film’s opening. Los Angeles Times reviewer Kenneth Turan called Ruffalo ”the latest in a long line of Hulk portrayers, and perhaps the best.”

The Hulk in a scene from “The Avengers.” (Marvel)

Ruffalo’s Hulk was as green, angry and entertainingly destructive as ever, but his Bruce Banner brought humble wisdom and soft-spoken charm to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s pack of alpha-male egos. In many ways, he is the heart of the film.

“He’s all heart, because Mark is such a cutie,” joked director Joss Whedon. “I think he and Cap kind of share that role as the everyman who’s lost in this kind of world, who are both very centered in who they are, but at the same time, very convinced that they’re not going to be able to negotiate this modern situation.”

Trying to find a place in the world has been the underlying challenge for Bruce Banner since his creation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962. In the comics, nuclear physicist Dr. Robert Bruce Banner is exposed to radiation from a gamma bomb. He survives the blast, but when angry, he transforms into the brutish, powerful creature that becomes known as the Hulk. It’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde fate, punctuated with moments of heroism but underscored by sorrow and loss.

Bill Bixby played David Banner in the TV series “The Incredible Hulk.” (NBC)

The character has undergone several incarnations since, with altered origin stories, including 2003′s “Hulk,” which starred Eric Bana, and the 2008 version with Norton, but Ruffalo said he was most inspired by Bill Bixby’s David Banner in the 1978-1982″The Incredible Hulk” TV series, which he watched with his 10-year-old son in preparation for “Avengers.”

“Bixby’s [Banner] used to fall in love with people and was trying to have a life even in the course of the thing, and was funny and charming,” Ruffalo said. “After the third one, my 10-year-old boy Keane said, ‘Papa, he’s so misunderstood.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, that is exactly it.’”

Ruffalo said he approached his character not as an homage or a reboot, but rather as the next step in an evolutionary process.

“We left the last Hulk — Ed’s Hulk — he was sort of like, ‘OK, this is who I am. I’m going to try and see if I can have some mastery over this,’ so we end that movie with him meditating,” Ruffalo said. “He’s older now, and he’s been on the run his whole life, and he’s tired of fighting. … He’s got a world-weariness and a joyful participation in the sorrows of the living. He’s an older Bruce Banner, and he’s kind of coming to accept his fate.”

Instead of running from the rage and the resulting monster, Ruffalo’s Banner turns and faces it. His secret to managing the Hulk, he tells the Avengers in a key moment in the film, is that he’s always angry.

“Mark and I had spent so much time talking about the way anger manifests,” Whedon said. “And how we deal with it, and who Banner would be at this point in his life, and how he would have learned to sort of walk between the raindrops and has a bumbling kind of grace to him that is based on the fact that he understands that control means accepting the thing within you and not sublimating it.”

In the film, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) becomes a friend to Banner, encouraging him to embrace the Hulk as a superpower instead of fearing the monster.

“Tony’s the successful version of him,” Ruffalo said. “He’s like a renegade scientist too, who used his own ideas on himself, but got everything that Banner hoped he would get. So yeah, I think he sees Stark as the successful version of himself, or what could be possible for him. Stark helps him come to the conclusion that maybe … having this enormous amount of energy and power can be used for something positive for once.”

Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), left, and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in “The Avengers.” (Zade Rosenthal / Marvel)

Whedon said the relationship between Stark and Banner is “one of the most beautiful things in the movie. They bond over their intellectualism, but Tony is also from the start pushing him to stop being afraid,” the filmmaker said. “And that’s not necessarily a smart idea, but it does turn into the right idea.”

The right idea, of course, was to “Hulk out.” And for that, Ruffalo said he turned to his son for inspiration.

“I’m playing my 10-year-old son,” Ruffalo said. “Why we long for Hulk is from very early on, around that age, we’re expected to behave a certain way, but we still have the force of nature just teeming through our bodies, and I see this conflict of trying to control all of these urges and at the same time still having them so strong. So I dedicate my performance to my 10-year-old boy.”

On the screen, the Hulk is 8 feet tall and strong enough to take down a fighter jet. But on set, wearing a skin-tight performance-capture suit, Ruffalo didn’t feel quite so powerful.

Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), left, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in a scene from “The Avengers.” (Marvel)

“They’re in their awesome superhero suits,” Ruffalo said, “I’d be in my ridiculous little leotard … and that’s exactly how I felt. I was standing there, freaked out.”

The result, however, is a Hulk that retains elements of humanity.

“When I Hulked out, that’s me Hulking out,” Ruffalo said. “The entire Hulk is a collaboration between me and the artists at ILM. What they’ve done with it is incredible. We were finally able, I think, to really meld Bruce Banner with the Hulk. You really see him inside there.”

Ultimately, Ruffalo’s Banner finds himself at home, both in his Hulk alter ego and as part of the Avengers team. At the end of the film, Banner drives off into the sunset with Stark. Ruffalo said he has “no idea” whether that relationship will carry over into “Iron Man 3,” but that he would love to take on Bruce Banner again.

“I think he found his family,” Ruffalo said. “I think it’s really about family in a weird way. All the ego, all the stuff you have to get through to work together, you know. He wants to have a life. Joss, he has him push that cradle, you know, ‘I don’t always get what I want,’ in that first scene. He doesn’t have a life. He doesn’t have anywhere to be. He doesn’t have a family. And maybe this is the beginning of that for him.”

– Noelene Clark

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Tim Burton and Richard D. Zanuck confer on the set of “Dark Shadows.”

With “Dark Shadows,” the tandem of director Tim Burton and producer Richard D. Zanuck has delivered its sixth movie, this one starring Johnny Depp as a confused and heartsick vampire who spends two centuries trapped underground before emerging with two urgent instincts: Drink blood. Find family.

Both those impulses stay with the fanged Barnabas Collins for the remainder of the Warner Bros. film, which arrives in theaters Friday, as he dedicates himself to restoring the fortunes of his cursed bloodline. It’s not the first time that the legacies of fractured families and a yearning for reconnection pulsed at the heart of a Burton-Zanuck film.

In “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” for instance, the film’s emotional payoff arrives with the doorstep reunion of candy-maker Willy Wonka (again, Depp, deep in the pale) and his estranged father (Christopher Lee). It’s a scene and subplot you won’t find anywhere in Roald Dahl’s book or the original 1971 film adaptation, but Burton viewed it as an essential addition.

“You want a little bit of the flavor of why Wonka is the way he is,” Burton explained in an interview just before the film’s 2005 release. “Otherwise, what is he? He’s just a weird guy.”

Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. (Peter Mountain / Warner Bros. Pictures)

Recognizing the complicated circuitry that runs between fathers and sons is also a way to frame the Burton-Zanuck partnership, which seems unlike any other major director-producer team today. At the very least, they are clearly unique among Hollywood’s “billion-dollar club” (their 2010 film “Alice in Wonderland,” is one of just 11 releases to go into 10-digit territory with its worldwide box-office tally).

Zanuck is 77 and seems immune to the passing decades — forever tanned, trim and tireless, a lifelong athlete who still enjoying ski slopes with his pal Clint Eastwood. Burton, at 53, is one of the most distinctive filmmakers of this or any other generation, with 15 feature films that usually glow in Halloween colors.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, the two met in a private dining room for a joint interview that quickly relaxed into warm conversation about the personal rhythm of their partnership in a business that rarely hums along with sentimental tunes.

Actress Helena Bonham Carter and director Tim Burton during the filming of the movie “Dark Shadows.” (Peter Mountain / Warner Bros.)

“We’re in our own weird family situation — that’s what we like,” Burton said, referring to Zanuck, key crew members and a core group of recurring cast members with whom he regularly works. “Mars Attacks!” in 1996 was the last time Burton made a movie that didn’t feature either Depp and/or Burton’s current romantic partner, Helena Bonham Carter.

Burton and Bonham Carter met during the filming of “Planet of the Apes” and have two children together, Billy and Nell. The godparents for both are Zanuck and his wife, Lili Fini Zanuck, also a producer. Last year, on the “Dark Shadows” set in London, Bonham Carter said the Zanucks are “part of our life in a special way.”

She added that the heritage of the name Zanuck made the producer an instantly compelling figure for her and Burton, both students of Hollywood history. “The stories are magnificent,” she said, “I never tire of hearing another.” The producer is the only son of Darryl F. Zanuck, the cigar-chomping Hollywood titan who founded 20th Century Films in 1935 and then two years later bought out Fox and added its name to the company.

The younger Zanuck carved out his own history, becoming Fox’s head of production at age 28 and saved the studio by putting all his chips on “The Sound of Music,” which still stands as the third-biggest film in history (behind “Gone With the Wind” and “Star Wars”) in terms of number of tickets sold.

The producer would love to add another hit to his career list with “Dark Shadows,” a movie that (unlike Barnabas) is hard to put in a box. Part comedy, part romance and part light-horror, the film is based on the namesake gothic soap opera (1966-71) that was beloved by Burton and Depp and as well by costar Michelle Pfeiffer. The old series was never a comedy (at least not intentionally), but the new movie, which has garnered early mixed reviews, sinks its teeth into the fish-out-of-water possibilities of an 18th century vampire encountering hippies, lava lamps and Alice Cooper in 1972.

Zanuck and Burton first sat across from each other in the spring of 1999 when “Planet of the Apes” brought them together. Zanuck says the conversation was stilted (Burton is especially shy, which is why he cloaks himself in black sunglasses) because “neither of us liked the script we had, but neither of us wanted to say it.”

That would change as the two keyed their partnership on candor.

“Richard always gives it to me straight, even if it’s something I don’t want to hear,” Burton said. “He has always based everything on the story and the best thing for the film… that’s not how everybody approaches it,” Burton said. “That’s something you can see if you look at his whole career as a producer. For me, there’s a lot of trust.”

The early turning point for the two men came one morning while scouting locations for “Apes.” Burton was ready to leave the hotel when word came that he needed to take an urgent call. As long minutes ticked by, Zanuck had a sense of dread and returned to the lobby, where he learned that Bill Burton, the filmmaker’s father, had died.

Burton and Zanuck collaborate on the set of “Alice in Wonderland.” (Disney)

“He was shattered, as anyone would be,” Zanuck said quietly as Burton nodded in silence.

Burton grew up in Burbank, and he’s said numerous times that he felt oddly removed from his parents and that he knew relatively little about them considering they all lived under the same roof. His father had been a minor league ballplayer and worked for the city’s parks department; his mother ran a cat-themed gift shop, and the boy felt like a stranger in his own life.

Despite that — or maybe because of it — the death of his father sent the director reeling. Zanuck was there to share his story. He and his father feuded and clashed for years. (“His father fired him when he was at Fox,” Burton said with a grin, retrieving a famous bit of Zanuck lore.) The legendary mogul died at his low-desert home just before Christmas 1979.

“I didn’t come out for three days. They had to sneak food in,” Zanuck said. “I was just a mess. The pangs of that are difficult. When it is a bumpy father-son relationship, it even makes it more of a tragedy when it hits. My father had dementia, but I had resolved things pretty well before that. The end was hard. I would go to Palm Springs and see him just sitting there all day watching cartoons. I thought, ‘My God…’ Can you imagine? Him, watching cartoons all day?”

Director Tim Burton chats with Richard D. Zanuck on the set of “Big Fish” in 2003. (Zade Rosenthal / Columbia Pictures)

The “Apes” production that followed was wrenching as Burton fought his way past the studio, the material and the effects challenges. Bonham Carter was there at his side, however, and Zanuck protected him throughout. The director had lost a father and found a family.

“It’s true — we’ve become very close,” Zanuck said. “I think part of it is the connection we have because of our fathers and what we went through when they died.”

The next Burton film was “Big Fish,” a marked departure from Burton’s storytelling and stylistic trademarks, a “wild card” in the deck, as Zanuck once described it. The story is about William Bloom (Billy Crudup), who returns home after years of estrangement and discovers his slippery father (Albert Finney) is dying of cancer. He rushes to try to learn some sort of truth — any kind of truth — about this stranger.

“It’s a movie that was very much about that time in my life,” Burton said. “I was in a certain place. Definitely, that’s where it came from.”

It was by far the lowest-grossing of the Burton-Zanuck films and (along with “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”) among their proudest moments. Zanuck shook his head thinking about it. “If I watched it again right now,” he said, “I know I’d cry at the end.”

– Geoff Boucher

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Noel Redding, left, Leonard Nimoy, center, and Jimi Hendrix, second from right, in Ohio not long before the guitar hero’s death in September 1970.

We’ve just posted the second episode of “Hero Complex: The Show” on the Nerdist Channel on YouTube and it’s an exciting one for us:  Leonard Nimoy is the guest.

We visited the sci-fi icon’s Bel Air home a few weeks ago to talk about “Star Trek,” his evolution as a filmmaker and photographer and his philosophies on family and career. We also talked about a very special photograph — the one that shows him meeting Jimi Hendrix not long before rock’s greatest guitar hero died in 1970 at age 27.

“Hero Complex: The Show” premiered two weeks ago with our visit to the offices of Ridley Scott and picks up again May 23 with the conclusion of our Nimoy visit. (And just to make sure you check back, chew on this thought: In Part 2, he gives us a William Shatner impression.) But here’s that first installment:

“Hero Complex: The Show” features the great work of  video journalists Jeff Amlotte and Myung J. Chun, and as host my goal is to bring you insightful conversations with the biggest names and brightest thinkers in sci-fi, fantasy, horror, comics and gaming and deliver it to you in a way that always respects your intelligence. Let us know how we’re doing, and please, don’t hold back. We want to improve every episode and the feedback helps. I’ve been writing for the L.A. Times since 1991 but the on-camera world is a new (and frightening) frontier but it’s also exciting because I’m pretty passionate about pop culture and love talking about it.

If you liked watching the show, check out some of the “Star Trek” coverage below; I’m really proud of the Benedict Cumberbatch story that we published earlier today, for instance. And if you’re going to be in Southern California between May 18-21, take a look at the lineup for our Hero Complex Film Festival, we’d love to see you there. (We had Nimoy as a guest our first year, back in 2010; you can check out video from that and notcie he hasn’t changed a bit while I’m looking like a crewman from episode No. 41.)

– Geoff Boucher

Follow me on Twitter: @LATherocomplex

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