Clay Enos. TM & © DC Comics

Judgment day for Watchmen is nigh.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has set Jan. 6 as the start of the showdown between 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. over the movie adaptation of the vaunted graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Gibbons.

Watchmen has devolved from a comic book flick into a courtroom drama in recent months, as Fox came forward with a complicated case claiming it still owns the rights to Watchmen and is seeking to block the release of Warners' anticipated film.

Fox scored a legal victory last month when U.S. District Judge Gary Allen Feess ruled there was enough evidence to go to trial. But on Tuesday, he shot down Fox's request to halt the March 6 release of the Warners movie, helmed by 300's Zach Snyder and starring Patrick Wilson, Carla Gugino, Billy Crudup and Jackie Earle Haley as a group of ostracized former superheroes trying to save the world and themselves.

Instead, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Feess fast-tracked the trial, presumably giving the two studios a chance to reach a settlement in the matter before deciding on potentially harsher measures.

AlbertL. Ortega/Steve Granitz/Francois Durand/Getty Images

Nicolas Cage has suffered a serious downgrade in sexy sidekicks.

After revving up Eva Mendes in his last comic book-based flick, Ghost Rider, the Oscar winner now gets stuck with Christopher Mintz-Plasse, aka Superbad's McLovin, for his next comic go-round.

Per the Hollywood Reporter, Cage and Mintz-Plasse have joined Kick-Ass, director Matthew Vaughn's feature film based on the ultraviolent Mark Millar graphic novel.

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Could Venom be the antidote to Spider-Man withdrawal?

Inspired by The Dark Knight's Joker-driven success and without another Spidey film on its slate until 2011, Sony is setting the ball rolling on a spinoff centered on the web-slinger's parasitic nemesis Venom, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Topher Grace played the unhinged shutterbug turned symbiotic monster in 2007's Spider-Man 3.

Not sure that the 30-year-old actor can carry his own franchise, however—like Hugh Jackman, who will be going it alone in next year's X-Men Origins: Wolverine—Sony is supposedly open to the idea of pinning Venom's sticky-tipped appendages on another leading man.

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Heath Ledger might get an Oscar nod for his agent of chaos in The Dark Knight.

Spencer Taylor might get five to seven.

The 20-year-old Michigan weirdo was busted for trying to swipe Batman posters and stand-ups from the lobby of a movie theater, all while in his homemade Joker getup.

The freaky fanboy was rung up on charges of larceny, malicious destruction of property and a bad mascara job.

First Look Studios

Now that Comic-Con has been slipped into the Mylar bags of our memory, we're ready to flip through our favorite moments of this year's event—some of which include hot, chain-mail-clad heroines, others that focus on hunky, hard-bitten heroes.

Big stars? Got 'em. Big movies? Absolutely. Big surprises? Hells yeah! Check out all the stories here, and click through our Comic-Con photo gallery below for some of the best moments at the convention.

AP Photo, USA

In today's edition, Tobey Maguire is going from Spider-Man to SCOTUS; Djimon Hounsou is crazy for Conan; Don Cheadle gets his Marching orders; Sarah Jessica Parker gets real for cable TV; and Monk loads up for its 100th B-day.

First up, Maguire reunites with his Seabiscuit director, Gary Ross, to star in The Crusaders, a drama chronicling the legal eagles who won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in the '50s.

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Sara Pezzini needed the Witchblade to come into otherworldly powers. Witchblade, the comic turned TV series, needed Michael Turner to come to life.

Turner was the artist who helped spawn the supernatural franchise. In comicdom, he was also known for creating Fathom, launching Aspen Comics, named for Fathom's heroine, and lending his pen line to the likes of Superman, Batman and Wolverine.

Online, his company produced—and still does—NBC.com's series of Heroes graphic novels—he provided the art for the very first chapter.

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