SAN DIEGO — The Poet Laureate of our age, LL Cool J, once described himself as “the man of the hour, the tower of power.” With all due respect, that torch was passed on this weekend to the biggest new cinematic character to emerge from Comic-Con: War Machine. And his mama didn’t even need to tell him to knock tens of thousands of geeks out — but he did it anyway.

In case you live in a cave and the ripple effect hasn’t hit you yet, Jon Favreau and his “Iron Man” posse made Comic-Con history Saturday night, unveiling dazzling new sequel footage that had fanboys swooning in the aisles like 12-year-old girls at a JoBros concert. At the end of the clip, sleazy arms dealer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) offers Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) a variety of massive weapons, only to have the buyer announce that he wants “all of them.” Cue the shot of an evil-looking Iron Man doppelgänger in full attack mode, weaponry erupting from every orifice.

Moments after the ear-shattering applause in Hall H faded, we caught up with man of the hour Cheadle to discuss his tower of power.

“War Machine makes a very impactful appearance in the movie,” promised the Oscar-nominated star of such films as “Hotel Rwanda” and “Crash,” discussing a story line that adheres to his character’s evil machinations in the “Iron Man” comics. “It’s significant.”

But what, exactly, is War Machine? Well, in the comics, Rhodes was a friend to Tony Stark who took over as Iron Man when the billionaire industrialist’s alcoholism, purported death, or other dangers made him unable to put on the suit. Responding to a threat from Justin Hammer, Stark designed his all-out battle masterpiece — the “Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, Model XVI, Mark I” (nicknamed “War Machine”) — which Rhodes would eventually wear. Over the years, Stark and Rhodes have had many falling-outs and reconciliations, usually surrounding one’s perceived misuse of the technology — and often resulting in Rock’ Em, Sock ‘Em Robot-esque battles between the two stubborn, super-suited men.

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Went to see “Watchmen” yesterday afternoon, and while I’m no longer quite as gung-ho for the film as I was when I saw the first 18 minutes at Comic-Con, I’m glad I saw it. More specific thoughts (complete with some spoilers) coming up just as soon as I go to the men’s room… A few casting issues (which I’ll get to in a bit) aside, I thought Zack Snyder and company did as good a job of adapting the story of “Watchmen” as I think a movie can. I thought the revamped ending worked fine (especially since I always found the alien squid from the comic to be really cheesey), and there were a number of moments (Rorshach in the cafeteria, Dr. Manhattan alone on Mars) that played out so closely to how I imagined the comic would look as a movie that they gave me a massive fanboy thrill.

But simply telling the basic plot of “Watchmen” kind of misses the point of “Watchmen.” Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were trying to deconstruct superhero comics, examining everything from the psychology of it (what kind of lunatic/pervert puts on a mask and tights to fight crime?) to the impact superpowers might have in the real world (Dr. Manhattan wins Vietnam, turns Nixon into a dynastic president, and alters the course of the Cold War) to the actual layout of comics (Gibbons’ brilliant use of the nine-panel grid and his transitions from one similar image to another). And that’s not even counting all the supplemental material that was either left out for time (the pirate comic, which is getting its own DVD before being spliced back into the DVD cut of the movie) or because there was no way to incorporate it into a film (”Under the Hood,” the psych profiles, magazine excerpts, etc.), but that made the world and point-of-view of the comic so much stronger.

Even the character material has to unfortunately be condensed for time. Even in a cut that runs close to three hours, I realize there’s no realistic way to give us all of Rorshach’s backstory. But the rushed way they do it(*) doesn’t really capture all the motivating forces behind his gradual descent into madness, and Silk Spectre’s realization of her true parenthood comes so quickly that it loses the impact of finding out after a long swing through her biography.

(*) In thinking back on it, the only stuff the movie really omits is the Kitty Genovese incident and the glimpses of Walter Kovacs as a young man out on his own. But the way the scenes of his childhood come across is really illustrative of the difference between the two mediums. Comics are static; you can linger as long as you want on any given page or panel. Movies are constantly moving forward (even though you can freeze-frame DVDs, people don’t usually do much of that the first time through). So a scene like little Walter listening to his whore mom yell at him feels much longer and more powerful on the page than it does on the screen, even though Snyder is basically using Gibbons’ images to storyboard the sequence.

Some reviewers have suggested that people who never read the comic won’t understand the movie. I disagree, in that the story the movie tells makes sense and is relatively linear (other than the flashbacks and the occasional Dr. Manhattan digressions). I just can’t imagine anyone new to this world understanding what the big deal is.(**) Without all the things that Snyder had to or chose to leave out, “Watchmen” the movie is a very violent, very bleak, very odd movie with a bunch of superheroes no one’s ever heard of beating each other up.

(**)I suspect word-of-mouth on this movie is going to be awful, and it’s going to have one of the steepest week two box office drops in recent memory. The ad campaign has done a very poor job of selling what the movie actually is, and the big crowd I saw it with was silent throughout and even after the credits rolled — not in a “We’re so engaged we don’t want to miss a thing” way, but in a “We have no idea how to respond to this” way. And I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence from other people who saw it that my crowd was not atypical.

As for the casting, Jackie Earle Haley is as perfect as I assumed he would be as Rorshach (like I said in the Comic-Con post, it almost feels like all the previous attempts to make the movie were destined to fail until Haley resurrected his career for this part he was born to play), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is as charming and evil on screen as the Comedian was on the page. Patrick Wilson is surprisingly good playing a paunchy, middle-aged dweeb, though he’s still not pathetic enough for a moment like Ozymandias telling Nite-Owl “Do grow up” to sting as much as it should. Snyder obviously wanted to cast young for the flashbacks and then age up a guy like Wilson with make-up and other prosthetics, but there’s a part of me that wishes they’d actually cast a dweeby middle-aged guy to play him, and found a workaround for his brief ’70s appearances.

Still, Wilson mostly maintains the illusion, which is more than I can say for the miscast Matthew Goode and Malin Akerman. Goode always seems too young, but more importantly seems too slight and effete to play Adrian Veidt, who’s supposed to be as perfect a physical specimen as he is an intellectual one. Also, the weird mash-up of British and German accents feels like a blinking neon sign that he’s the bad guy.

Akerman, meanwhile, doesn’t look like or have the gravity of a thirtysomething Laurie Jupiter (I know she’s 30, but she comes across much younger and flightier). She as a very flat affect, and her voice sounds distractingly like Drew Barrymore’s. Carla Gugino, who’s fine as the original Silk Spectre, would have been a much better choice (with an ’80s hairdo, of course) to play Laurie, or any one of a number of actors of the right age and talent level.

I want to be clear: “Watchmen” isn’t a bad movie. It’s probably about the best possible movie that could be made out of this material, and features some dazzling moments. (The opening credits, with Snyder transforming a series of iconic American moments from the ’40s-’70s to show how they might have played out in a world with superheroes, is both the biggest departure from the book and the best thing in the movie.) But I think the only way to even come close to capturing what “Watchmen” is really about would be as a 12-part HBO series.

And, really, I feel like it’s really best off being experienced as a comic. They called it the unfilmable graphic novel. Snyder showed it could be filmed, but the movie makes me question whether it should have been.

Some came for autographs, or to catch a glimpse of a legendary comic book artist. Others were there to browse the seemingly endless rows of tables piled with graphic novels and shelves filled with Japanese anime figurines. Plenty of fans flocked to the New York Comic Con in midtown Manhattan yesterday for a chance to dress up like Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi. For Steve Vincent and Mike McLaughlin, owners of a Forked River, Ocean County, comic book company, this weekend’s three-day convention was a chance to catch up with old friends and sell a few comics.

It’s like a family reunion of weirdos and people who don’t fit in,” Vincent, 36, said from behind the table he and McLaughlin were manning. “We look forward to it, just having some fun more than anything else.” Vincent and McLaughlin, 37, were two of more than 50,000 fans and artists who flocked to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for the event, which was created three years ago as New York’s answer to Comic Con International: San Diego. The New York expo has quickly become the largest popular culture convention on the East Coast.

Vincent and McLaughlin are former high school classmates who created their company, Angry Drunk Graphics, 10 years ago to publish Vincent’s comic books and promote the work of other young comic book artists.

A venture that started with the two trading comic books for beer in the parking lots of heavy metal concerts has become a full-fledged passion, and now they spend many weekends setting up merchandise tables at local punk and metal shows, where the attendees seem to like the dark, sometimes twisted tales explored in the comics they sell.

By day, Vincent is a mild-mannered public works employee in Forked River, and McLaughlin works with his father, selling and installing irrigation systems and sprinklers. They pride themselves on promoting artists whose work is unique, and sometimes uniquely offensive; the books displayed on their table were organized into sections of “all ages,” “PG-13″ and, in Vincent’s words, “really horrible.”

This is the one weekend a year that the biggest geeks in New York could spend a Saturday night with the likes of sexy actress Eva Mendes.

Mendes is among the celebrities headlining New York Comic-Con, the rapidly growing sci-fi and comics convention that is drawing tens of thousands of rabid fans to the Javits Center - many dressed for the part in spandex, capes and cowls.

It’s the one place in the city where Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee can get the same worshipful treatment as the Pope.

“I consider myself a freak, so I’m right at home,” said Mendes, who with comics legend-turned-director Frank Miller, is promoting her upcoming movie, “The Spirit.”

“Halloween is my favorite time of the year, so Comic-Con is right up my alley.”

Now in its third year, the three-day convention has grown faster than a speeding bullet.

Last year, an estimated 49,000 zealots attended; organizers rented a space that’s 100,000 square feet bigger this year.

They learned their lesson from the inaugural event, where overcrowding forced fire marshals to turn away ticket holders.

“The geeks are coming out of the closet,” said Flynn, founder of the New York Jedi, a team of “Star Wars” enthusiasts who stage lightsaber battles for the conventiongoers.

During a panel at the New York Comic Convention today, Marvel Comics announced that they will be working with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Orson Scott Card to adapt two of his most acclaimed novels, Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, into comic books later this year.

Ender’s Game, a cult-favorite novel about a child prodigy named Ender recruited to help fight an alien army, and Ender’s Shadow, a concurrent book focused on another young soldier, will launch as separate comics in late 2008, with the first Ender’s Game collection due out in summer 2009.

Like Marvel’s other literary crossovers, the Ender’s Game comics aim not only to woo new readers into comic stores, but also to continue the push of graphic novels and trade paperback collections into traditional bookstores and libraries where they can reach a more mainstream audience.

Card, who also currently scripts the Ultimate Iron Man superhero comic with Marvel, says he was eager to pursue a comic book adaptation, but that the rights were previously bound up in film deal for the two novels, which were optioned by Warner Brothers, the parent company of DC Comics.

“The moment I got the comic book and game rights extracted from the movie option deal, I let Marvel and other [publishers] know about the availability,” says Card. “I truly was open-minded about who would end up doing the books, [but] Marvel got there first, with a terrific, ambitious plan for Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.”