The Incredible Hulk star Liv Tyler was nervous for her first Comic-Con appearance.

Comic-Con's dense schedule -- with 15 programming tracks taking place simultaneously -- made difficult choice impossible to avoid. A dedicated Futurama fan had to bail early on Pixar (missing an extended WALL•E clip) to attend a panel in the smaller Ballroom 20 (a mere 4,000 seats) on the rebirth of Matt Groening's sci-fi spoof. The beloved series is set to return as a quartet of direct-to-DVD movies beginning with Bender's Big Score this December. The show's entire voice cast did a "table read" of the promotional comic handed out to attendees. "Bender," aka John Di Maggio, almost as outrageous as his robot counterpart dominated the panel, at one point shouting out Professor Farnsworth's catchphrase "good news, everyone" in Bender's voice.

After a trailer for the movie screened, the cast discussed the origins of their characters voices. (Billy West: "Fry is my natural voice when I was 25... Zoidberg is a combination of [character actor] Lou Jacobi and George Jessel.") According to show developer David X. Cohen, "every dollar [of the production budget] is on the screen -- the writers took the hit."

Marvel Studios followed Disney into Hall H to preview its first two independently produced films, The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man. Edward Norton follows Eric Bana and Bill Bixby as the conflicted Bruce (aka David) Banner, donning a motion capture suit to portray his green-skinned alter ego. "I didn't want to be replaced by a technical version" of the Hulk, said the Fight Club star. "I was shocked by how excited my friends were when I told them I'd be playing the Hulk." Asked which version of the character's origin (comic book, TV series or first movie) the film will be based on, Norton revealed his version will start from scratch. "We don't want to race through his origin... we're going to spool it out throughout the film."

The once again, Incredible Hulk is set to stomp into theaters next summer in hopes of making audiences forget Ang Lee's well-intentioned 2003 misfire. Director Louis Leterrier told the crowd his version takes place in the Marvel universe and will contain "lots of Easter eggs and homages, which is French for stealing ideas from American films" to the Marvel mythos.

Iron Man was everywhere at the event, making a big impression with the 150,000 plus people in attendance.

Jon Favreau made his second presentation on behalf of Iron Man, re-screening the action-packed trailer shown at the Paramount session, and was accompanied by Robert Downey Jr., the film's star. "Couldn't there have been more of me in the trailer?" Downey mock-asked. According to Favreau, with the exception of a few in-flight glimpses of Iron Man, all the effects in the trailer were "practical" and accomplished on-set.

Unlike good guys Peter Parker and Banner, Downey's Tony Stark starts out as a cold-hearted weapons genius and smug celebrity before donning his armor. ("They call you the modern DaVinci," reporter Gwyneth Paltrow tells Downey in the trailer. "Ridiculous," he says, "I don't paint." Paltrow tries again: "They also call you the Merchant of Death." Downey thinks for a second, then replies, "that's not bad.") "Iron Man was never meant to be likable," Downey told the crowd. "The question is how far to push the character and keep him empathetic."

Favreau credited the example of Batman Begins director Christopher Nolan's casting choices -- and Marvel's independent financing -- as enabling him to pick the actors he wanted for Iron Man in place of high-profile stars. Was Downey's own rehab-studded history a subtext for his performance? The audience member's question was tabled when Stan 'The Man" Lee put in a surprise appearance. "I have 20 lawyers going over the script," Lee warned, "you'd better be careful."

For Ridley Scott's upcoming Blade Runner: The Final Cut (from Warner Home Video), DVD producer Charles de Lauzirika assured everyone that the new digital vfx would be seamless. John Scheele served as the vfx supervisor, consulting with the landmark film's original special photographic effects supervisors Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer. Sony Pictures Imageworks did the Zhora head replacement (for actress Joanna Cassidy) during her fight scene, other work was done from Lola and The Orphanage, among others. Most of the work consisted of wire removal and stabilization and better matching of elements, such as in the opening or in the dove scene.

The cast and crew shared the new DVD artwork for Blade Runner: The Final Cut with a packed 6,500 Hall H crowd.

As for Scott, he was very pleased with a print of the director's cut that he screened before embarking on his final cut, so there are no substantive changes. The voice over narration is still out since he was never satisfied with all of it, and he still maintains that Harrison Ford's Deckard is a replicate, suggesting that cloning technology has caught up with the film and it's only a matter of time before we'll be able to implant memories too. This, he argued, adds great irony to the interpretation.

The Simpsons, Futurama and WALL•E were far from the only animation on the Comic-Con schedule. Three separate screening rooms presented non-stop anime episodes for the convention's entire four days. Historical cartoon buffs could enjoy "Treasures from the ASIFA Vault," UPA, Popeye, Hanna-Barbera and He-Man retrospectives, or Jerry Beck's masochistically hilarious "Worst Cartoons Ever." There was no shortage of panels dedicated to specific animated series, from upcoming (a revival of Biker Mice from Mars, Nickelodeon's Making Fiends), to departing (Billy and Mandy) and continuing (Ben 10, Class of 3000).