Nerd Alert! Tintin art fetches $1.7 million; 8-Bit Cinema does Army of Darkness

Welcome to Nerd Alert!, your weekly round-up of news from the world of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, animation, and all things nerdy.

ONLY ONE PANEL really shows the boy reporter's face clearly, but that didn't prevent a two-page spread of original Tintin artwork from selling for US$1.7 million at an auction in Paris last weekend. The two pages from the 1939 Tintin book King Ottokar's Sceptre, drawn by Georges "Hergé" Remi, had a guide price of about $879,000, but after a bidding war at the Sotheby's auction, it ended up selling for nearly twice that amount.

Original art by Hergé is big business at auction houses these days. Last year, a double-page spread of inside-cover drawings, signed by the artist, sold for US$2.9 million, setting a new record for comic art. The original cover art from the 1942 Tintin book The Shooting Star nearly matched that, fetching US$2.8 million in February. A few weeks ago, an illustration from 1936's The Blue Lotus sold for US$1.2 million at an auction in Hong Kong. Oh, to have that kind of disposable income!

CINEFIX'S 8-BIT CINEMA strikes again, this time condensing Army of Darkness into two minutes and 45 seconds. Which is all the Army of Darkness you need, really. Am I wrong?

ON THE OFF CHANCE that you just can't get enough of that trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a superfan named James Darling has edited together pretty much every second of footage we've seen so far, including clips from the full trailer and the two teasers that preceded it. It doesn't offer any new revelations, but it might put some things in perspective.

SPEAKING OF TRAILERS, here's one for Extraordinary Tales, Raul Garcia's new animated anthology of Edgar Allen Poe stories, as told by Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, and even some people who are actually still alive and weren't famous for playing Count Dracula. The film's cinematic itinerary doesn't include Vancouver, sadly, but Extraordinary Tales is available on iTunes for your Halloween-night viewing pleasure.

CASTING NEWS AND RUMOURS

• Nathan Darrow (House of Cards) has been cast as Dr. Victor Fries/Mr. Freeze for the current season of Gotham.
• Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and Nicholas Hoult (Mad Max: Fury Road) have signed on to star in the "sci-fi romance" The Discovery, in which science has confirmed the existence of an afterlife.
• Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter films) has been cast in the lead role of a new series from Ugly Betty creator Silvio Horta and producer Aaron Kaplan. In the show, which has a pilot committment from NBC, Grint's character discovers that the comic-book world created by his late father is actually real. And he has to save it from destruction. Because of course he does.