The first pictures of Russell Crowe suited up as Superman’s dad Jor-El are after the jump to avoid spoilers. These come from DailyMail, who kept it classy with the headline “Paunchy Russell Crowe suits up to play Superman’s dad (but he can’t keep away from his own kryptonite… nicotine)”. At least he was looking no more chubby than previous Jor-El Marlon Brando while rocking some awesome shoulder pads over a costume with a pretty cool texture and color scheme. Good luck replicating that, inevitable porn parodies.

We exhausted most of our fat jokes in the last Jor-El post, kind of like Crowe exhausts his lungs when trying to climb stairs. 30 odd steps of grunts, you could say. More like Jor-El-O, am I right? What do you you mean, Jell-O’s not that fattening? It is when you dip it in batter and deep fry it. That’s how we roll in Iowa. And by Iowa, I mean Russell Crowe’s kitchen. I’ll stop now.

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Usually we don’t mention Oscar-nominated actor Laurence Fishburne much around Uproxx except in reference to his daughter.  That’s because porn tapes trump Oscar nominations in the SEO optimization game.  We keep it tight.  Others might not, but enough about the porn.  We have some real news to report.

Laurence Fishburne, who just left the cast of CSI, will be playing Daily Planet editor Perry White in Man of Steel, which has had its release date pushed back to June 2013.  The character first appeared 71 years ago and has been portrayed by John Hamilton, Jackie Cooper, Frank Langella, and a bunch of other white dudes.  But it’s Perry White’s gravatas that matters, not his appearance, and Fishburne nails that.  Not just anyone could live down playing Cowboy Curtis.

Fishburne will be joining a cast which includes Henry Cavill as Superman, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Diane Lane and Kevin Costner as Ma and Pa Kent, Michael Shannon as General Zod, Antje Traue as Faora Hu-Ul, Christopher Meloni as a General, and Russell Crowe as the world’s angriest Jor-El. Crowe is still merely tied with Brando for World’s Most Bloated Jor-El. Which reminds us, it’s about time they made a marketing tie-in with Jell-O for Jor-El-O . . .

We’ve kind of got to wonder why Warner Brothers is keeping its pet comics nerd around at this point. He got thrown off “The Dark Knight”; rumor is his “Superman” script is getting heavily rewritten; and his own film career consists of bombs nobody liked. The guy’s basically been living off of “Blade” for more than ten years now.

Still, he’s getting yet another chance, this time with “100 Bullets.” The good news is that he’s just the executive producer and will write a few scripts, which will leave room for other writers. It’s also going to Showtime, which has some serious franchise envy with HBO, so it might actually last more than a season.

But if there’s some chick who listens to her iPod relentlessly and the best lines go to Ryan Reynolds, I’m out.

[ via the revengers at SlashFilm ]

Russell Crowe has landed the role of Jor-El in Warner Brother’s Superman reboot Man of Steel.  He’ll be playing Henry Cavill‘s Kryptonian father.  Crowe beat out Sean Penn and Clive Owen for the role, presumably in an eating contest. That’s right.  I could only write two sentences before resorting to a fat joke.  You could say I’m phoning it in except I already threw the phone at a concierge.  Ba-zing!  No, Russell, I said “ba-zing” not “Ring Dings”.  No, I don’t have any Ring Dings.

Twitchfilm pointed out something interesting in Variety’s publicist-assisted article breaking the news: they credit Christopher Nolan with the casting and mention him three times in the short piece and only mention director Zack Snyder once in passing.  Why would WB want the exclusive to emphasize Nolan over Snyder when press releases earlier this year put Snyder’s name front and center?  Well, have you seen Sucker Punch?

[Hat tip to ThePlaylist for making most of the banner picture.]

You kind of have to feel bad for Superman’s writing staff. He’s an invincible hero with perfect morals and a profound sense of justice. He’s got zero failings. He’s apolitical. In short, he’s as boring as superheroes get.

Unless a writer decides to get all political, in which case we get into the realm of stupidity really, really fast. Like “Superman with a quadruple Gatling murdering Hitler’s evil twin clones” stupid (and yes, that happened). That story was supposed to say something about gun control!

So, needless to say, DC letting David Goyer start tossing around a political grenade like “Superman renounces his American citizenship” didn’t quite work out how they expected.

The basic plot: Superman flies down to participate in a demonstration in Tehran. He gets bitched out for this. He states he’s pretty sick of everything he does being construed as an American action. He considers renouncing his citizenship.

Unsurprisingly, most of the world yawned, but, equally unsurprisingly, the conservative blogosphere picked it up to whine about it, meaning comics fans get to experience a little taste of what it’s like whenever a video game shows a booby and Fox News fills its Depends in terror over TEH BEWBEH! TEH DIGITAL BEWBEH!

Go on, check out the report on Comics Alliance; best laugh you’ll have all year.

[ via the fighting Americans and honorary Americans at Bleeding Cool and Comics Alliance ]

German actress Antje Traue has been cast as Faora Hu-Ul in Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot Man of Steel.  The character of Faora was a Kryptonian serial killer who targeted only male victims.  She survived the destruction of Krypton due to having been sentenced to over 300 years in the Phantom Zone.  Superman had to flee his first fight with her in Action Comics because she’s an expert in the Kryptonian martial art of Horo-Kanu.

Variety [...] suggests she’ll play a character based on a later revision of Faora, “the version of Faora that debuted in Action Comics #779 as a Pokolistanian aide of General Zod. That character was an orphan metahuman with the ability to disrupt molecular bonds, which allowed her to create a mutagenic virus that served as the linchpin of Zod’s plan.” [/film]

Michael Shannon as Zod and Antje Traue as Faora instead of trying to shoehorn some bland 21-year-old ex-Disney actors into these roles?  This is actually starting to look . . . promising?  Get it together, RoboPanda.  Cool it down.  It’s still a Superman reboot.  Don’t get your hopes up.  Also, we’re out of vodka, which means we’re going to have to put on pants today.  And remember to put on the pants before the shopping trip this time.  Okay, talk to you tomorrow, self.  XOXOXO.