Pope explained what was behind the page:

I wanted to try applying the lessons learned from the Wednesday Comics experience to a different subject, here finding a source which would be difficult to illustrate as a page of comics, given that there is very little suggested action. I find that with the format of Wednesday Comics (which is really the traditional Sunday Comics page), one must condense the plot and action to the briefest yet most vivd bursts of information available— there is a lot of space on the page for the illustrations to really overwhelm the reader/viewer, but there isn't a lot of space for story development in the sense of how we'd develop a plot or work up dialogue for a typical comic book page. In a comic book, one page may be well drawn or well written, but it is still just a single facet of a larger whole. One page can be preceded or followed by another, but no one page carries the entire weight of the sustained narrative. The Wednesday Comics single page format forces the artist to create a story unit which may well be part of a larger storyline, however it still must be able to stand alone.

A one-off page (with colors by Lovern Kindzierski, who colored the last half of Pope's Wednesday Comics strip), we can't help but wish that a full-scale Dune adaptation makes an appearance on Pope's to-do list at some point in the future.

M'Uad Dib [PulpHope]

If anyone else in comics was doing a DJ set, I'd be much more cynical and think that's just something they're doing to show off. But for you, it makes sense; you've always ignored boundaries and been more of a "communicator" than "comic artist" or "cartoonist" or whatever.

Yeah, especially since falling in with these guys, Eclectic Method. I mean, they're really pro and we're all friends, so there's a chance there to start doing parties, like my friends at Dark Igloo, they're sort of a creative design group... Long story short, over the years I've met a lot of people who do proper event planning, for places like MoMA, you know, big parties for liquor sponsors and film releases and stuff like that, so I've been able to move into that world and do public events with those guys, things for audiences. It seems like a natural fit.

So is this a different way of expression for you? Are you using different muscles, is it less personal expression and more just getting people dancing? Or is this the same thing for you as drawing, writing, creating a comic strip?

For me, it's just sharing music that I'm into, you know? The Eclectic Method guys, they really bring a party - They've done some really big shows. We've done some big ones here in New York, like 250, 500 people. They always say that my sets are like festival set at five in the morning. Someone else described it as like a
shot in the nuts from a lazer beam in the Cantina bar. I like rock, stuff like that.

So what sort of music are people going to hear, when you play?

I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. I've got a few mash-ups I've done. I just play stuff I'm really into... I always like opening a night, because it's early enough, people are just getting to the party...

There's less pressure...

Yeah, it's a chance for people to meet and greet. It's a great thrill to hear music you love, loud. It's a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's great to see people respond to it, especially if they've never heard it before. When you can see them get into it, you see them get it.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm really into, everybody now loves 80s punk bands like the Clash or Joy Division, but I'm into early Nick Cave...

Like The Birthday Party?

Yeah, and there's a lot of splinter groups that came out of the Birthday Party that never quite got bigger. I'm into more obscure things, like '80s Berlin... I play off a laptop because you can store, like, four days worth of music on there. I do want to say that the guys I'm playing with, they do a lot of... It's one of those things that has to be seen to be experienced. They do what they call "video mash-up," everything they do is run through a video mixing board, so they do this crazy, hyper-media-conscious mash-up music, using everything from images from Sesame Street to Jay-Z to The Colbert Report. They do crazy stuff, but they make it work, so people love it. They've done some big things for people like the Bob Marley estate and for Motown, so if there's anybody I could be doing stuff with... I feel really comfortable with these guys. They're British, so they know a lot of the music I'm into, but they turn it into something different. There's a visual tie-in with comics, so it makes sense I'd be involved with something like this.

This thing has gone all over the place. I did this print for Coke Zero, it's going to press in the morning. That's what I'm working on today, we're doing the (color) separations, I'm working with the guys at the press. So primarily, I'm in comics and comic storytelling, but I do like to work in other media.

I think from reading PulpHope, you can see that the language of comics informs your "fine art," for want of a better way of putting it, your screenprints and everything else, but then the processes in doing those feeds back into your comic work. Is it the same for music?

Oh yeah, definitely. I'm a real champion of breaking down this distinction between "high" and "low" (art), that's a conceit that benefits galleries and dealers.

Have you read Bill Drummond? He's a big believer in the idea that "low art" is what people want to see and read and listen to, and so it's more important than "high art"...

It's an interesting thought, that's cool.

Is that kind of thinking what led you to do the clothing last year with DKNY Jeans?

Yeah, I think so. And anytime I get a chance to push the medium in new directions, push the... I don't know, the cause of comics, you could say, then I go for that. I hadn't done something like that before, so I thought it was interesting.

Does it all come back to comics for you? Are things like that experiences that you grab to help make your comics better?

I hope so. When I was growing up, there was such a strong division. There was a choice to be like a mainstream, Jim Lee, John Byrne type cartoonist, or you'd have to be an indie cartoonist...

It's such a weird distinction now, and with things like DC's Wednesday Comics, you're working in the same book as Brian Azzarello, Dave Gibbons... You look at something like that and you just see such a celebration of comics, not just a particular "kind" of comics.

Yeah, that's a thrill. It's a chance to do something that's classically pulp. It's very influenced by something like Flash Gordon or some of the great European comics coming out of the '70s and '80s. I thought this was a chance to take something people kind of think of as a B-list character (Adam Strange, the archeologist-turned-science hero of Pope's Strange Adventures strip), even though he has a lot of potential and a lot of interesting things about him, and try to give him a sandblast, come up with something different.

What's it like working in that format, with the big page to go wild on?

The originals are huge. They take a long time to finish. There's an interesting puzzle putting a page like that together, it takes a little time to consider how to get as much information into one page as possible. I feel like everyone's really doing strong work... I couldn't turn it down, when they offered it. I feel like everyone is stepping out of their (comfort zone), like Ryan Sook is clearly doing a great tribute to Prince Valiant.

Yeah, and in your strip, I see callbacks to European comics. I don't know if it's intentional of not, but I see a lot of Heavy Metal in there.

No, there is, (European creators like Manara and Moebius) have laid the groundwork in the same way that you might say that (Frank) Miller has over here, or Jack Kirby. There's a lot to be learned from spending some time with those guys. So that's a good thing.

So, do you see yourself as part of that continuity?

(Understanding Comics) Scott McCloud thinks I'm an "Internationalist", in terms of where I fit in in the big picture. Coming from McCloud, I think that's a good thing.

That makes sense, you have a very individual sensibility, but it's one that's informed by so many different cultural influences.

Yeah, and it's a sincere (influence). I really do love all the different traditions of comics. I have my tastes, there are a lot of things I don't like, but... When I approach a page, it usually takes a lot longer than I expect, which I know irritates the hell out of my editors, but I'm really competitive with myself, I try to do the best I can so that when I finish a page, it stays finished, you know (Laughs)?

You asked earlier where I see myself... After finishing Batman (Year 100), I've really come to embrace fantasy and escapism and its value. I really feel like, in a large sense, the work I'm doing now is a big project that I've committed to, and Adam Strange is one of the first manifestations. It's a real embrace of classic pulp, sincere, no tongue in cheek: Adam Strange is the hero and the bad guys are bad, and I'm just trying to put as much imagination on the page as I can. And that's how I approached the early days of THB, my imagination was unbridled, I didn't have a lot of responsibilities in life, I didn't have a lot of contacts in the industry, I didn't have a lot of perspective of what other people think of my work. I just did work to please myself. It didn't cost a lot to live in Columbus, Ohio, at the time.

Do you think you became too aware of your audience at some point?

No, I think it's more that you want to try things because you think that they'll work. I think everybody in the freelance and creative world is concerned about what people think because you want to make the next paycheck, so you try to be strategic about the balance between personal and professional. Sometimes, getting involved in projects, like, for example, working in Japan was a wonderful experience. Not a lot of the work got published, but I walked away from it with a very interesting skill set, despite the fact that, after five years, very little of it saw print. So, it's a strange thing when you look back on it.

It's strange because, something like 100%, I think is one of the best, most interesting science fiction stories I'd read in years...

Thanks.

...So it's interesting to hear you say that Adam Strange is a return to a purer science fiction.

When I did that book, I was between 30 and 33, and I felt like I really wanted to tell an honest story, and I thought, what do I know about in life, what can I say that's true? At the time, I couldn't approach genre with confidence, I wanted to express something and do it through genre.

Also, at the time I had just read Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick, which is one of my favorite science fiction books, and it's such a subtle book. It was a really eye-opening read. It's not like later Dick, it's not like Valis, before he's working from a strictly-paranoid perspective.

I think early Dick works in the same way as 100%, in that it can work even if you don't like science fiction, because you can still empathize with the characters.

I really believe that, in a kind of philosophical sense. As long as we have five, maybe six, senses, as long as we live to be 80, maybe 100 years old, we can't pass on wisdom generation to generation. Everything has to be learned. That's why we keep having wars, that's why all the good, all the bad repeats. As much as we can share tradition, as much as we have the Magna Carta, exploration, conquests... These are things that we share as a culture. But on a deeper level, until people can transcend where memory is longer, or longevity is somehow expanded, we don't have the experience that a 200 year old man would have. But in 200 years, I have a pretty good feeling that there's still going to be boy meets girl, boy loses girl, there's still going to be sex, there's still going to be love.

Those are eternal experiences. There's always going to be someone who's 30, 33, 35, and going through the same things that you were at that time.

Yeah, I think about that a lot, because I'm sort of perplexed at how childhood seems so fresh and so new. It's easier to remember a vivid detail from something that happened when you were eight or nine years old rather than something that happened eight or nine weeks ago, you know? I think that, as you get older, you start to anticipate responses from experience, and I think when you're a kid, you don't have that. You've not even done anything. So everything's dreamlike, it's new. I think artists are able to hold onto that. For me, it's become a way to function in life, to not become overwhelmed by experience that will bring it down.

Is that one of the reasons you're doing your young adult book Battling Boy?

Yeah, I wanted to create a new superhero. I sort of thought, after working on Kavalier & Clay and spending so much time with Michael Chabon, really delving into the classics, the history of Superman and Batman, that superheroes really represent wish fulfillment in society, and (wondered) what superhero doesn't exist now, that people want. And I thought, a child protector.

I think children know that they're not safe in the world. They know there's abductions, they know there's war. There's this vague sense of things called bills, or taxes. There's a sense of things to figure out, so I wanted to come up with a kid who was a child defender.

It's really great to be in this position, working on this project with First Second. There's a lot of work to do, in the near future to finish the project and really get it going. And now there's a film in development, and that's another layer. It's been pretty amazing, it's really grown and developed. I can't wait to get it out there. There's a lot of cool characters in the book, good guys and bad guys. It has elements of superheroes, elements of horror, it's definitely got humor in it.

Are you working on the movie as well?

I'm working on the film as well. The writer who's currently working on the film is Alex Tse, who wrote Watchmen, we were up working til 1am on the script. I'm kind of a consultant.

Is there a date set?

No, there's a lot of stuff to do. It's not in development hell, we're moving along, but one thing I'm learning about this film stuff is that there's so many things that can happen, positively and negatively, outside your control. You could hand in a perfect script, and then the economy tanks, or the studio comes in and doesn't like what you're doing...

Does that make you appreciate the freedom in comics more?

Yeah, it definitely does, but I wouldn't want to choose one or the other. It does make me love comics, because you can have a really cool idea and just do it, you don't have to spend a lot of money to do it.

Paul will be DJing at the PopCult party at Onyx/Thin (852 5th Avenue) in San Diego on Saturday night, beginning at 9pm. Other performances include Eclectic Method, DJ Intel, Murs, Hollywood Holt and Rob Roy, with a live art performance throughout by Jim Mahfood, Dumperfoo, Mike Huddleston and Scott Morse. Entrance is a $5 donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and if you need more reason to attend, the limited edition Coke Zero print Paul talked about above is being given free to the first 300 people there.
Thanks to Jeff Newelt for setting this up.

Rumored for some time and finally confirmed yesterday, Wednesday Comics will be an experimental twelve-issue weekly series from America's oldest comic book publisher; dumping the now-traditional 22-page (with ads) comic book format in favor of an oversized (14" x 20") format filled with sixteen different one-page strips created by some of DC's top talent, like Paul Pope, Watchmen's Dave Gibbons, and Neil Gaiman. The characters you can expect to see in the series are a similar mix of big name (Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman) and the excitingly obscure (and, for that matter, science fictional: alien space-hero Adam Strange, teen-trapped-in-future-dystopia Kamandi and elemental robots-gone-wild the Metal Men, to name but three). Even better, this series isn't going to be the start of another company-wide crossover requiring you to buy seventy other books, according to DC executive editor Dan DiDio:

All the creators are working to make sure that these stories are being created from the standpoint that the readers is someone who has never seen or read anything with the character before, [a]nd really capture both the essence of the character as well as the magic of comics... The concept is that we are trying to recapture the spirit, format, and sense of enjoyment that people had from reading the Sunday comics that arrive in newspapers every week.

So, let me get this straight: Good creators, making stand-alone stories about good characters in a format that'll allow for experimentation in the form that hasn't been seen since the days of Little Nemo In Slumberland? DC may just have made a significant grab for the comic win of the year.

Wednesday Comics launches this summer.

(Image not from Wednesday Comics, but Kamandi by Paul Pope from his Flickr stream.)

Sunday Comics on Wednesday? DC's New 'Wednesday Comics [Newsarama.com]

It's pretty much impossible to discuss fictional archaeologists without talking about Indiana Jones, but until a year ago he arguably wouldn't have belonged on this list. If nothing else - and I'm pretty sure that that film didn't accomplish anything else - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull firmly ensconced Indy in the realm of science fiction. Which is probably a good thing, considering Dr. Jones is generally considered the quintessential fictional archaeologist, the iconic representative of everything alluring about the discipline - solving history's mysteries, going on exotic adventures, stealing priceless cultural artifacts...it's all there! That said, Indy can't really be considered the preeminent archaeologist in science fiction.

That title would probably have to go to Stargate's Daniel Jackson, who in his various incarnations headlined both the original movie and a decade's worth of television, making him arguably the most prominent archaeologist in all of science fiction. As a nice bonus, he even occasionally bordered on being a vaguely realistic depiction of an actual archaeologist, particularly when he used his linguistic know-how in the original movie to decipher the language on the other side of the Stargate. And honestly, who can resist the oddball charm of James Spader?

There are plenty more scifi archaeologists; in fact, far more than any one list can hope to capture. But here's a rundown of some of the most notable.

Doctor Who

Despite his stated policy of pointing and laughing at archaeologists, the Doctor does seem to spend a lot of time with them. If I had to guess, it's probably because nothing beats an archaeologist when you need to accidentally release an ancient evil. There's Professor Parry and his assistant Viner from the Patrick Troughton classic The Tomb of the Cybermen – I think you can guess which bunch of monsters they awaken (hint: it's not the Daleks). But nobody beats Marcus Scarman in Pyramids of Mars when it comes to unleashing evil; he lasts for maybe thirty seconds of episode one before the all-powerful alien Sutekh murders and possesses him.

The new series has only introduced one archaeologist, but Professor River Song is fairly important, what with her being the Doctor's wife and all (or not…I'm still not completely clear on that point). Still, she's not the first such scientist to play a major role in the Doctor's life – that honor goes to Professor Bernice "Benny" Summerfield, a hard-drinking, wise-cracking archaeologist from the 26th century. Originally created by new series scribe Paul Cornell in his novel Love and War, she both accompanied the seventh Doctor and had her own adventures in a horde of novels and audios.

Star Trek

Jean-Luc Picard was a huge archaeology buff, studying under the preeminent archaeologist of the 24th century, Richard Galen. He was even entrusted with completing Galen's final project, which revealed…well, I think I've dealt with that before. Picard also romanced the ethically dubious Vash, who was really more of a looter with a diploma than anything else.

Captain Kirk, on the other hand, showed no particular interest in the field. It probably didn't help that every archaeologist he ever encountered was a crazed degenerate with woman issues, whether it was Robert Crater in "The Man Trap" or Roger Korby in "What are Little Girls Made of?" It's almost as though the Federation's apparent policy of stranding one or two people on an uninhabited planet for years at a time to dig through the remains of a dead civilization was somehow flawed.

DC Comics

Want to become a superhero without all the hassle of locking yourself inside a nuclear reactor? Archaeology might just be the career for you! It's actually unclear whether there are any ancient idols in the DC Universe that won't give you superpowers. There's Carter Hall, who upon touching a stone knife remembered his past life as Prince Khufu and so becomes Hawkman. Rex Mason became Metamorpho when he was exposed to the radioactive Orb of Ra. The Silver Age Blue Beetle*, Dan Garrett, discovered the mystical scarab that gave him his powers during an excavation in Egypt. Adventurer Adam Strange was engaged in some archaeological work when the Zeta Beam transported him to the planet Rann. Sven Nelson died shortly after uncovering the Tomb of Nabu, but his son Kent would be trained by Nabu's spirit to become Doctor Fate. Oh, and the Tim "Robin" Drake's dad Jack was an archaeologist as well, but he somehow managed to never get any superpowers out of the deal.

*OK, technically a Charlton, not DC, character. But you get the idea.

Revelation Space, by Alastair Reynolds

In his 2000 novel, Reynolds follows Daniel Sylveste as his excavations on the planet Resurgam reveal newfound details about the long-dead Amarantin civilization. From this starting point, Reynolds weaves a tale of cyborgs, assassins, cosmic mysteries, and antimatter implants, all of which sounds pretty awesome. It's almost enough for me to forgive him for not knowing how to spell "Alasdair." Almost.

Isaac Asimov

Archaeology forms a pretty big part of my second favorite Asimov book, the criminally underrated Pebble in the Sky. The Sirius-born Bel Arvadan comes to the primitive backwater known as Earth in the hopes of evaluating the local claims that humanity originated there. Naturally, he gets a bit distracted by a plot to wipe out all of humanity and never does get round to doing any excavating. Which is why Foundation, set millennia later, finds the foppish Lord Dorwin blathering on about some very promising leads regarding humanity's origins recently discovered in the Arcturus system. For obvious reasons, this line of inquiry doesn't pan out, and shortly thereafter galactic civilization pretty much collapses, which I'm guessing led to some serious budget crunches in a galaxy's worth of archaeology departments.

Babylon 5

Ian McShane took some valuable time out from being a total badass to play Dr. Robert Bryson in the B5 television movie The River of Souls. Dr. Bryson brings an orb on board Babylon 5 that apparently contains a billion tortured souls. For some reason, the orb holds the secret to immortality. Either way, this is a serious enough situation that Martin Sheen shows up as a Soul Hunter to demand the orb be returned to him. This eventually happens, but not before Dr. Bryson and the billion souls team up for some serious havoc-wreaking.

"Omnilingual", by H. Beam Piper

This 1957 short story centers on the efforts of an archaeological team to decipher the language of an ancient Martian civilization, a task that at first seems all but impossible. They eventually figure out a road to decipherment with the discovery of some linguistic common ground: the periodic table of elements.

Saga of Seven Suns, by Kevin Anderson

The husband-and-wife xenoarchaeological team of Louis and Margaret Colicos accidentally set off Anderson's seven-book battle royale of elemental forces when they discover ancient technology that can turn gas planets into stars. This is great news for lovers of solar energy, but bad news for the super-intelligent, all-powerful aliens that live on gas planets (it's also bad news for people who don't want to be wiped out by super-intelligent, all-powerful aliens). Not the greatest advertisement for archaeology I've ever heard, really.

Futurama

I'm fairly sure we've yet to see any actual archaeologists on Futurama. If I had to guess, they're probably hiding out of shame at the general terribleness of their work.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Speaking of shame, the wonderfully, horribly Canadian MST3K entry The Final Sacrifice probably involved archaeology. The film isn't really coherent enough for me to speak with certainty, but I believe the father of hero person with the most lines Troy McGreggor got killed by an evil cult because he was investigating the ancient Ziox civilization. Although, on second thought, I think Crow and Servo clearly established Troy's father was really Miami Dolphins great Larry Csonka, who is not generally considered an archaeologist. Not yet, anyway.

There are plenty more, of course. Who are some of the biggest ones I missed?

Even when teleportation works properly, there are tremendous risks. You can get a smirking Hayden Christensen popping up on top of every world landmark, chased by a bleach-blond Samuel L. Jackson. And that's an example of successful teleportation. Here's what happens when it goes wrong:

Star Trek: Gosh, are there transporter accidents in Star Trek? I can't actually think of any. Oh wait. Yeah, there are a few. Just a handful, maybe. If you've got big hands. Most notably, the transporter splits Kirk into two Kirks: one passive, one aggressive. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Stonn Q. Vulcan beams up along with someone else, and they get scrambled into a mess that doesn't live long OR prosper. (And according to the book, Kirk also has a wife who dies in a transporter accident.) In TNG, Reg Barclay has a transporter mishap that makes him even more annoying than usual. And Ro Laren and Geordi get turned ghosty. In DS9, the transporter zaps Sisko and Bashir back in time, forcing Sisko to pretend to be a civil rights leader. On Voyager, the transporter makes Seven Of Nine's Borg implants have sex with the Doctor's holo-emitter. Also, Tuvok and Neelix have the oposite of Kirk's original malfunction, and get merged into one super-passive-aggressive entity. There are like 10,000 more of them, but you get the picture.

Tron. As we pointed out a while back, Tron is about a teleportation experiment, and it's designed to teleport from point A to point B. But instead, it disassembles Jeff Bridges and zap him into the passive-aggressive video-game world. Oops.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One of the Turtles' main frenemies is the one-eyed giant alligator, Leatherhead, who got adopted by the alien Utroms. Stranded on Earth, Leatherhead is constantly building Transmat devices to take him back to the Utrom homeworld. And they're constantly going horribly wrong, in the comics and in the TV show. One transmat device blows up in Leatherhead's face. Another one simply materializes three Utroms, who shoot him. A third transmat device generates energy that lures a whole gang of Triceratons to Leatherhead's secret hideout. Poor Leatherhead!

Savage Planet. This is possibly the absolute sickest teleportation disaster ever, from the indie movie Savage Planet. A whole bunch of intrepid explorers are zapping themselves to an alien world, and they put just a wee bit too much stress on the system. So one of them comes through missing a big chunk of his inner torso. (Warning: video is totally gross.)

Adam Strange loved the Zeta Beam teleportation mechanism, which zapped him to and from the planet Rann — until it scooped out his eyes like cantaloupe balls. The original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, had the same thing happen to him, but he only lost one eye. I'm noticing a theme of teleportation mishaps and missing eyes, what with Leatherhead and all.

Ultimate Fantastic Four. In the original Stan Lee version, the Fantastic Four get transformed into lovable freaks when they go up in a rocket to beat the Soviets into space or something. But in the Ultimate reboot, they build a teleportation machine to send matter into a parallel universe. By accident, the four of them plus (Dr. Doom) get teleported into the N-zone and they get transformed into alternate universe versions of themselves, with the rocky heads and the invisible blondeness and stuff. And they become really passive-aggressive. Like the Thing is always saying, "Is it clobberin' time? Do you think it is? I don't know."

The Fly. In both the 1950s movies and the 1986 version, it's a teleportation accident that turns an inquiring scientist (Jeff Goldblum in the 1986 version) into a half-human, half-fly mutant. In the 1958 original, the scientist starts off his somewhat safeguard-free experiments by teleporting his cat, Dandolo, into a monstrous dimension where we can hear the cat screaming for help. And the cat never gets rescued! That's fucken hardcore. In the new version, Jeff Goldblum wants to stick Geena Davis into the teleportation machine so he can merge with both her and his fly parts, thus creating an even more awesome mutant. Not surprisingly, David Cronenberg is turning his version into an opera.

Blake's 7. I lost count of how many times people get teleported into space on this show, but it happens a lot. It's the show's get-out-of-jeopardy-free card. It definitely happens to Brian Blessed in the third episode. But given Brian's planet-sized ego, he shouldn't actually have been harmed by being zapped into space. He could just generate his own atmosphere and gravity field, with the force of his shouting.

Thunderbolts: Baron Zemo's mind gets zapped into Techno's mechanical "Tech-Pack" in a teleportation accident, according to the source of all lies wisdom.

Dinobots. In one of the origins of these awesome Dinosaurs-in-Disguise robots, they suffered an accident with the teleportation systems of the supercomputer Teletran-3, which zaps them back into Earth's prehistory where they turn into the robot dinos we love.

There's also a BBC show for kids called A Purrfect Villain, which sounds totally meowniacal:

Victor's DNA gets mixed up with that of a cat in a teleportation accident. Victor gets the cat's nine lives while the cat gets the computer code to destroy the world and turn all human life to jelly! The chase is on to save the planet, as Victor loses life after life while the cat types in the code numbers one by one over the internet.

I love that synopsis so much!

And then there's this:

DC are hitting the ground running with a full-on dose of J.J. Abrams in the first issue of their Fringe tie-in comic. That's followed by the launch of Gail Simone's sure-to-be-twisted ongoing Secret Six series, where six anti-heroes do their best to appall the moral majority on a regular basis. There's also the Adam Strange Special, which ties in with Jim Starlin's current wrap-up to the Rann-Thanagar war storyline

But after that, it's reprints all the way. Most worthy of your attention: Starlin's own Death Of The New Gods series gets a hardcover collection. And the 1980s B-Movie-tastic Invasion! series (You can tell that it's pulpy from the exclamation point, can't you? It's about aliens invading Earth and destroying Australia. No, really) gets a surprise paperback edition.

Image Comics, meanwhile, put no truck in the book format: They just collect the first three issues of The Darkness into a thicker comic, call it a "Reader's Edition," and offer it to you for less than $4 (Albeit only one cent less, but it counts).

The same format — but not the same price point, sadly — sums up two of Marvel's most anticipated comics this week. Kick Ass: Must Have Edition and 1985: Must Have Edition both collect the first three issues of two of Mark Millar's latest hits for those lucky enough to have missed them the first time around, both for $4.99. Also, Marvel is putting out the $20 Iron Manual guide to how Iron Man's armor works (I'm not joking), a hardcover collection of the first issues of J. Michael Straczynski's The Twelve, a new San Francisco-bound X-Men anthology series called Manifest Destiny, or if you're really desperate, the first issue of Marvel Apes.

The best release of the week comes from a small indie company that you won't have heard of, though; we've written about The Martian Confederacy before and, come Thursday, you'll have your own chance to experience the weird, wild and downright woolly frontiers of Mars for yourself, courtesy of Jason McNamara and Paige Braddock. In a week otherwise dominated by reprints and retcons, make a point of taking home at least one book that dares to do something new. Involving bears.

It's normally at this point that I point out that you can find the complete shipping list for the week here, and then use the Comic Shop Locator Service to find where to buy said comics but, let's face it: You know all that already, right? Just remember: When you go into your nearest store, the first thing you want to say is, "Some guy on io9.com told me to buy..." and then just name anything listed above. Seriously. I'm hoping for kickbacks.