First pic from The Dark Knight Rises is grainy, veiny, Baney

Tom Hardy still male.

Just yesterday I remarked how I was already bored with people reporting that there is no news on the new Batman film. Then, hours ago, like a bolt from the blue, the first official picture of The Dark Knight Rises leaked onto the internet and the blogosphere has literally caught fire.

The gnarled mass of muscle you see below is Tom Hardy (albeit in a gimp mask) as malformed wrestler-thing Bane – the 'roided-out, pumped-up fucknut that broke Batman's back in the comics. There's not much to see apart from Hardy's back (rejected headline: Back-man begins) but it's pretty cool nonetheless.

This is the first goodie gleaned from The Dark Knight Rises' viral campaign, which promises to be fascinating if you're the kind of person willing to wade through a mile of liquid shit just to get a whiff of the new Bat-suit's gusset. The site, www.TheDarkKnightRises.com, launched earlier today, with a blank image and odd chanting.

The chanting was soon (somehow) translated to 'The Fire Rises' and before long, some bright spark figured out that tweeting #TheFireRises added their Avatar to this page, where a weird and wonderful mosaic started taking place.

Then some asshat on a web forum hacked the site and found the complete image before it was even finished. Nerds 1, Innovative And Rewarding Viral Campaign 0.