My original draft of this comic had the infant Jared bursting forth from Jennifer Garner’s swollen stomach like the Alien. Y’know… Demon Seed style.

But I opted against it. I thought it was a little crass.

Still, Baby Jared isn’t someone to mess around with. He’s one tough little customer! Koochie-koochie-koo!

You may have read that Mr. and Mrs. Ben Affleck recently celebrated the birth of their first born on December 1 – a baby girl. So it stands to reason that our favorite punching bag might have a little anxiety about the momentous event.

Still, in all seriousness, congratulations to the happy couple. Just because Ben Affleck sucks as an actor doesn’t mean I should begrudge the welcoming of his first child.

I feel like I haven’t had a lot of movie stuff to talk about lately and that makes me kind of sad. Is it weird that it’s almost the end of the year and the only film I’m remotely excited about seeing is King Kong? I mean, Fun With Dick and Jane looks interesting. I heard it was co-written by Judd Apatow, so that’ll get me in the door right there. I’ll see Munich, mostly because I feel like I should. I’m planning on avoiding The Chronicles of Narnia like the plauge.

The only thing that really has me captivated at the moment is the new X-Men 3 teaser trailer.

This kind of caught me be surprise. Because, like any good fanboy, I spent my time hating the idea of an X-Men movie directed by Brett Ratner for so long, I forgot that there might be something worth investigating here.

Some quick thoughts:

Kelsey Grammar as Beast. He looks pretty good. Maybe a little old. A little too fuzzy. But it’s Grammar’s voice and presence that are going to sell this role. Still, I don’t know how they plan on tossing him into any battle sequences. The man is 50 years-old! Maybe they’ll switch him out with a CGI character for the more frenetic stuff.

A character that should have been done totally CGI was Vinnie Jones’s Juggernaut. I’m sorry, but that ultra-buff body suit they have him standing in looks stupid. The Juggernaut is supposed to be 8 feet tall and 5 feet wide. If they could make the Hulk semi-believable in CGI, they could have done the same here. Just stick Vinnie Jones’s head on a digital body and be done with it. That helmet he’s wearing looks dopey, too. I understand that they want to leave the face plate open so you can see the actor emoting, but I much preferred the domed look of the character in the comics. In the movie he looks like and extra from Gladiator.

Good to see Colussus is on the team roster now. You can see him in the background walking with the group in the opening shot. Oh, and eagle-eyed viewers will notice – wait for it – THE FASTBALL SPECIAL! at the end of the trailer.

If you don’t know what The Fastball Special is (and it sounds kind of dirty, now that I think about it), too bad. That’s for comic geeks ONLY. Okay, maybe that’ll make up for the Juggernaut looking stupid.

Other thoughts:

Hugh Jackman is starting to look kind of old to play the non-aging Wolverine.

Halle Berry got a new haircut for Storm! Like I care…

Ben Foster as Angel looks promising. The wings actually look like they should.

Famke Janssen is back from the dead as Phoenix and she appears to have become evil. Okay.

No one passed the note along to James Marsden that his version of Cyclops is the most boring character in the franchise.

Beyond that, nothing much more to say. It’s too bad that they decided to do a movie about "curing" mutants and that there is no sign of the Sentinels. I think movies today need more giant robots.

If you have any opinions about the movie or the teaser, we’re talking about it in the THorum here. Check it out and I’ll catch up with you guys later!