One of the first questions that's worth asking is "Is anyone left?" It's hard to top the much-stated 5000+ characters contained in Marvel's IP, and it'd be a tough argument to suggest that there are any other comic publishers available who could offer anything even vaguely similar, especially considering that the larger companies that aren't DC or Marvel don't own the majority of their IP (Dark Horse, Image, and IDW all predominantly offer creator owned or licensed material); although purchasing one of those publishers may offer existing relationships with creators, it doesn't necessarily translate into anything that Disney (or any other company with large pockets) could immediately take advantage of.

(That said, if I were looking for a publisher purely for the IP rights and wasn't specifically looking for superheroes, I'd probably see if either Boom! Studios or Tokyopop were looking to be bought out; neither has an IP farm anywhere close to the size of Marvel's, but both have had some success coming up with new series and concepts that could easily be adapted into movies or television - at least, until Tokyopop's cutback "restructuring" last year, on their side. Or, of course, Rebellion, who own the 2000AD rights, which could definitely use some exploiting.)

If IP is really what's being looked for, Disney might want to follow Hollywood and go for toy and game companies; Hasbro has been positioning itself as more of a intellectual property generator than toy company since their deal with Universal Studios last year, after all, and with already successful properties like Transformers and GI Joe, they must be looking pretty tempting to any company wanting to buy an immediate in to existing markets right about now. Perhaps not as obvious, but arguably more worthwhile, a videogame publisher like Electronic Arts - owner of The Sims and Dead Space, amongst others - or Valve may not bring the instant brand awareness of Hasbro or Marvel, but unlike both, is currently creating new properties as successful as their Greatest Hits, which might be a better investment in the long run.

All of this conjecture, however, ignores the Bantha in the middle of the room: Lucasfilm.

The privately-owned Lucasfilm may not own have as many separate franchises as Marvel, but it has Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and there's definitely an argument to be made that Star Wars alone is worth as much as the entire Marvel Universe (Containing almost as many characters, and with the ability to spin out as many sub-franchises as it has, after all). More to the point, unlike Marvel, Lucasfilm is much more than an IP factory; alongside the movie studio, publishing arm, online division and animation department - all of which a self-respecting media juggernaut like Disney also has - it includes industry leaders Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, making them almost unique in terms of value add (Yes, Marvel may be the industry leader in comic book publishing, but how important is that to Disney's core business?).

It's extremely unlikely that Lucas would sell Lucasfilm, especially as he seems to have become interested in the possibilities television offers to him and the company. But everyone has their price, as the saying goes. The question is just how high Lucas' price would be - and whether anyone could afford it.

Responding to a fan question about the historic problem of comic series with non-American white male leads selling poorly, Marvel's Tom Brevoort wrote

I don't know that it's any one thing, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it's all part of the same phenomenon that makes it more difficult to sell series with female leads, or African-American leads, or leads of any other particular cultural bent. Because we're an American company whose primary distribution is centered around America, the great majority of our existing audience seems to be white American males. So while within that demographic you'll find people who are interested in a wide assortment of characters of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, whenever your leads are white American males, you've got a better chance of reaching more people overall.

With fans on other websites disputing Brevoort's take, Boom! Studios editor-in-chief Mark Waid backed him up at Comic Book Resources:

Tom's syntax following that is a little blunt...man, I wish it were wrong, but it's not. Every comics publisher ever, including BOOM!, can tell you maddening tales of retailers who, even now, in the 21st century, are hesitant to order books with non-white, non-American leads because their community won't support them. It's absurd, it's crazy-making, I don't know what it's going to take to change that other than time...but like it or not, it is an unfortunate truth of the time in which we live.

Of course, now that Marvel will have the backing of Disney, who have had success with non-American, non-white and non-male leads (as well as recent accusations of racism all of their own), that might be about to change... if the audience will let it.

Readers Questions 2 [Marvel.com]

Officially unveiled here, Farscape #1 will be available for order in the next issue of Diamond Distributors' Previews catalog, released tomorrow. Here's the official solicitation:

Holy dren, Farscape is ongoing! Yes, Farscape fans have made the mini-series such successes that we made Farscape an ongoing series! Secrets are revealed, alliances are made, and hearts are broken in this, the start of a new chapter in the lives of your favorite character! Written by the creator of the show Rockne S. O'Bannon! Covers by Joe Corroney and Dennis Calero.

[Back to Mark Waid interview]

[Continue Reading]

[Back to Mark Waid interview]

The Unknown feels similar to television shows like Warehouse 13 or Fringe - Rational people investigating the irrational. Did you have this mild semi-X-Files-revival zeitgeist in mind when coming up with the idea behind the series?

Nope. The Unknown was created largely in one night, in one telephone call with my friend Christine Boylan, a stage and TV writer whose talent far eclipses mine. I was venting to Christine that I knew I wanted to do another detective/impossible crime series LIKE Ruse, but other than switching up the master/apprentice genders, I didn't see anything that would make it even remotely new or intriguing. "A female Sherlock Holmes" isn't the most original pitch in the world if that's all there is to it. But Christine wisely pushed me on the question of, "Okay, what kind of crimes would she be solving?" and I shot back with "If I'm gonna throw a new detective in the mix, the only mystery I want to write about is the biggest, most unsolveable mystery of all, which is what happens when we die. HEY, WAIT A MINUTE." A few seconds later, my lead character's motivation—that she has only six months to live—fell into place, and the next morning, I had my new series to pitch to BOOM! publisher Ross Richie: "WHATEVER REMAINS" — as in the Arthur Conan Doyle quote.

Ross loved the concept, hated the name. I think it was editor Matt Gagnon who pitched out "The Unknown," and this is a good example of the reasons we have for keeping that guy in his job. Another is that Matt's the one who found our spectacular artist, Minck Oosterveer, about whom I cannot say enough complimentary things.

Just so we'd all have a good, mutual understanding of my vision, I typed out a quick one-sheet, and at the top, I wrote "Doc Savage by way of David Lynch" as a yardstick for tone—fast-paced pulp adventure with a genuinely unsettling air to it and without the familiarity of the traditional pulp-adventure structure that's so ingrained in all of us who read or write comics.

I'm amused and unsurprised at the Doc Savage reference, because the "Science Detective" subtitle that Doc's magazine had has been one I've used when talking about Catherine before. She really seems like a descendant to both Holmes and Savage, and Doyle serves as a Watson/Johnny sidekick. Was that an intentional nod to the familiar pulp detective set-up, or was it just easier and more fun to write exposition as conversation, instead of monologue or narration?

I write good conversation, so that just makes it more fun to script. Dialogue is one of the easiest ways to get character conflict across immediately in comics. Plus, having written hundreds of comics stories using first-person narration and having read ten thousand more, I'm bored to tears by the device and haven't seen it used well, uniquely, or suprisingly in years and years. It's very much become the tool of the Lazy Writer because it's so easy to fortify the page with giant, tedious blocks of first-person text in the voice of someone I haven't learned enough about yet to give a rat's ass about. ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz.
On the surface of it, The Unknown can be taken as a science vs. faith story - Catherine Allingham seeking to categorically define what is (should be?) a personal, spiritual experience. It's more complicated than that (Doyle's "You sound like you WANT it to be true," in the second issue seeming like the core of the story, at least for me), but do you have a particular horse in this race? Where do you fall on the science/faith scale, or is working that out that point (for you) of the book, beyond telling a good story?

Working that out IS part of the point of the book. If you come into any creative project without questions, you're gonna bore yourself and it'll show on the page. While it may not show on the page, I probably did more research on this series than on anything I've handled since, well, Ruse, my last "weird, impossible crimes" book (and my favorite fiction subgenre to read). And, like Catherine, I have a very irrational, almost romantic need for there to be some form of afterlife, because the idea that we're all just sophisticated electrochemical batteries who'll eventually run down is too horrible for me to accept. So, like Catherine, I want it to be true that there's something beyond this. But also like Catherine, I'm one of the least spiritual human beings you'll ever come across; the phrase "faith in a higher power" is like nails on a blackboard to me, partly because my life and my interests are defined by science and hard knowledge, and partly (I'm sure) because as a kid growing up in the Bible Belt, I had a lot of first-hand experience with seeing how often "faith in a higher power" becomes an excuse to not take responsibility for your own decisions. (That's a generalization, and I know that, but we're talking about the programming I received as a kid, which is hard to shake.)

I do believe that any sort of electromagnetic energy that can be measured beyond the moment of death is, by the definition of energy, eternal. But I cop to the fact that calling it a "soul" and presuming it sustains our consciousness in any form is, to put it kindly, a leap. I need to be shown something irrefutable; I confess that my eagerness to WANT to be shown something irrefutable is as much an act of faith as is attending the church down the street—except that, ultimately, as science marches on where faith never does, we get closer all the time to proving (or disproving) something.

Or, Graeme, to put it all way more succinctly than that—on a personal level, I have little if any use for faith. Therefore, so does Catherine. Unlike Catherine, however, I'm far less judgmental of those who use faith as their engine to get through the day.

When writing a story like this, do you have to keep your personal beliefs in check, then? If the writing of the story is in some way you exercising and exploring your personal struggle between fact and faith, and you have an inclination away from the faith part of that argument, do you find yourself fighting a tendency to end the story with a variation on "No soul for you, ha ha ha"?

Not in any thunderbolt moment of epiphany, but what I write very often helps me refocus my own attitudes and arguments—and, in doing so, sometimes shows me more clearly the fallacies I've been suffering under.

How much does real science (or real scientific curiosity, at least) feed into this series? There may not be a scale as sensitive as the Faderbauers', but not for want of trying, after all. On a series like The Unknown - versus something like Irredeemable, or The Flash - do you feel constrained by the world as we know it (even if you do extrapolate slightly)?

"Constrained," is, to me, the exact antonym of the descriptor I'd use. Real science is the greatest, most exciting springboard I have available to me as a writer, and I don't feel the least bit constrained by it. When Catherine gives her big speech in issue two about the history of assigning weight to souls, that's all fact, every word. So is the conceit that the only thing holding modern science back from building a Faderbauer apparatus is financing. The Catholic Church gets in the way, it's said—I've read report after report that funding for afterlife research is (shall we say) "interfered with" by religious officials who claim it to be a "waste of money." (Feel free to substitute the words "danger to our fundaments" for "waste of money." I do.)

Anyway, even with Flash or Irredeemable, I try to stay somewhere in the general ballpark of recognizable science (outside of the standard superhero "gimmes" that a guy can run at near-lightspeed or sink the island of Singapore). It just gives the work a verisimilitude that's integral to helping readers connect with the story.

Do you keep up with science news? Is there part of your day that's spent reading New Scientist's website and thinking "Man, I could tell a GREAT story about THAT"?

Always. Constantly. It's part of the morning routine, surfing the science sites and bookmarking interesting phenomena for later use. In fact, I probably spend more time reading that sort of material as a hobby than I do anything and everything else put together.

There's a follow-up series, The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh, already solicited for later this year. Without spoiling the end of the first series, is The Unknown an open-ended concept for you? As a reader, I'm happy to know that there's more coming, but also kind of worried that this means that there's either going to be no climax to the first series or else a deus ex machina ending that'll see Catherine's illness suddenly healed or magically in remission (Assuming, of course, that Catherine survives the first series).

Trust me, when Ross said he wanted to do a follow-up series, I thought the same thing: "What now? Do I say she has FIVE months to live? And, oh, yeah, didn't I promise myself and the readers that she'd find an ANSWER to the mystery of the afterlife, seeing as how any orangutan with a keyboard can write a detective story in which the detective DOESN'T solve the case?" I can't say much of anything without spoiling the last issue, but the solution to all those problems came in a giant, sudden, totally unexpected bolt of inspiration that, in one second, turned what was a nice little four-issue story into the potential foundation for a whole mythology—which was never the plan, BUT I'LL TAKE IT. I will say this, though—there are no cheats in issue four, no deus ex machina cures, no magic wands. Nor in Series Two, Issue One—the first words of which are, "One Year Later."

Which means, as per your parenthetical comment, that you are assuming maybe too much. (God, I hate having to write Previews Catalogue copy four months ahead of time.)

The Unknown #4 is released on Wednesday. A hardcover collection of the first series follows next month, accompanied by the first issue of The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh. For a chance to read the entire first issue of The Unknown, click here.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an interesting project.

It's a project like no other. We've never had a complete text of a novel in comics. Not [like this], with word balloons coming out of people's mouths and sequential artwork. We definitely consider it an experiment, but the first issue has been more successful than, certainly, I could have ever dreamt. Reviews were giving it four out of five stars, saying "This is great, if you love Philip K. Dick, you'll love this." When you're inside that bubble [working on the book], you sometimes think, "'I can only hope that people will enjoy this," and people seem to dig it. I was really happy, because the first issue is not Deckard blowing away androids. There's a big difference between Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but I'm glad that people are sticking around for the actual thing and not just hoping for Blade Runner the comic. This is a much deeper, bigger, project.

Did you wish that you could've re-arranged scenes to start with something more explosive? "Suddenly, there's a gunshot!"

We really can't change things, we are doing the text. In upcoming issues, there will be flashbacks where you see that kind of thing. We do like Deckard blowing away androids, but we're not going to throw it in for no reason. It's got to be something that's already in the text.

We're happy with the fact that the story goes into areas that the movie didn't. In Warren Ellis' backmatter essay [for the first issue], he talks about Mercerism, which is a religion in the book which - to the best of my recollection, I saw the movie about three years ago, last time - isn't in the movie. There's nothing about John Mercer, this character going up a hill and the people of Earth basically logging on to his experience to become more empathetic. There's nothing like that in Blade Runner, and it's such a cool concept, and something that's very visually interesting - something that Tony Parker, the artist, and Blond, the colorist, who we're very lucky to have, can really do some great stuff with. That's something we couldn't do if this was just Blade Runner. It's something you can only do with the original Philip K. Dick text.

How did the book come about?

Philip K. Dick's daughters, who have a company called Electric Shepherd Productions, contacted Ross [Richie] and Andy [Cosby, Boom! Studios co-founders] in 2008, and were impressed with what Boom! had done. They wanted to do a project that was really cool, but off the beaten track. They thought we were the ones to do it.

So how does the process work? Does Tony break everything down and decides who goes where? Do you, as the editor, place the word balloons and decides what goes into which panel?

It's Ross Richie. We have the text, and he turns it into a script, with panel descriptions, what the characters will say, what the captions will say, everything like that. Then we send it to Tony, and Tony is great at looking at panels and deciding how much to put into it. And when he's done, we send it to Blond and we send it to [letterer Richard] Starkings. And Starkings is a master of, "How does everything work?" He came up with idea for the first issue of some of the text being embedded, so it's not just caption box after caption box; some of the captions will be in the art.

It was our marketing director Chip Mosher's idea to bring in Richard, and he's just a godsend. There are a lot of great letterers out there, but Tony and Richard are such smart guys that they really make it work, this strange thing of having an entire text in a comic. The reason why we get good reviews is because of them. Those guys make it work.

Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep #2 is available in comic book stores today.

So, what's the news about Farscape from Boom! Studios?

The big news at this con is that the Farscape is becoming an ongoing series, plotted by Rockne S. O'Bannon, Farscape creator, and scripted by Keith R.A. DeCandido. We've had the the first four issue mini-series, which was a huge success - and when I say "huge success," I mean, it really changed Boom! in a big way. It was the first part of this huge growth that Boom! has seen, and now, along with the Muppet Show books, the Incredibles books, Eureka, all these things have garnered us new attention. Farscape was the first one of that, the first issue came out in December 2008. So we've had a four issue mini-series and then another one, Strange Attractors, which immediately followed up, and saw very little drop in readership. It was pretty much even. We saw fans really stick with this book, which we were happy to see.

Then we just started up Gone and Back, the first issue of the third mini-series, and with the numbers we saw, and the fan response we saw, we thought, Okay. This is doing well enough to support an ongoing series. It'll be called Farscape, it'll be out every month, and fans and retailers can depend on a quality book.

The fan reaction has been really positive?

Yeah, definitely. We had the Farscape comics panel, and Keith made a great point, which was that there's not a lot of spin-off material [from the series]. There were a few novels; Keith wrote one, "House of Cards," there was a video game, Wildstorm put out two comics, and that was about it until the show was cancelled. Now, the Farscape comics being the only ongoing presence of the story, of the characters. We're lucky enough to have it be canonical, have the creator, I mean, Rockne is totally great for these books, he's really doing amazing things continuing the story, saying "This is the show. This can be seen, if you wish, as the fifth season of the show." You couldn't do that with Star Trek, because Next generation was going, then you had the novels... Obviously, with the logistics of making Next Generation, you couldn't do that with all the novels and making it work with all the material, but we're lucky. We're in a place where we can.

How involved is Rockne?

It's a pretty cool process. Rockne sends me a PDF of a plot for four issues, and getting those PDFs is a huge highlight, because he's been in the business a long time, he's smart as a whip, a great storyteller, and each of those plots is a great little short story, with a great beginning, a middle full of adventures, and when it comes to the end, I'm sitting here reading the PDF on my laptop and going, 'This is like watching an awesome movie,' except in this case it's going to be a comic that I get to work on!

So we send that to Henson, and we're very blessed in that our liason at Henson is not a guy who just rubberstamps things, he's willing to get into discussions with Rockne and Keith, and there we get the plot approve, Keith works on the script and then Rockne and Keith go on and on about the script, they work on it and then I get it, and then Rockne, Keith and I work on it, and then Rockne, Keith, the licensor and I work on it, and the process moves much more quickly than it should with all these people working on it. We're very lucky that way.

So will the structure change in the ongoing series? Will there be longer subplots, or will you keep to something you can easily put into trade paperback?

You'll probably still see four-issue plots, because we found out that those are kind of like meaty episodes of the TV show. It's a little bit more than you'd get in a forty-five minute TV show, but it works out roughly that way. Rockne has always put in all these subplots - For example, the first story of the ongoing is called "Tangled Roots," and it answers a lot of questions that were posed since the first issue of the first Farscape mini-series. So it's definitely, there's that thrill of the monthly book, and a company the size of Boom! doesn't get to do that that much, there aren't a lot of small companies that get to do long, ongoing series or long projects that have subplots, multiple characters, that kind of stuff. The kind of thing that I loved as a kid, reading X-Men.

Of course, there's talk about the webisodes. At the Farscape 10th Anniversary Panel, Rockne and Brian Henson gave a lot of discussion to the upcoming webisodes that they're hoping to make happen, and those would obviously continue. So, you know, it's one throughline you can follow. It's the first four seasons, it's the Peacekeeper Wars, it's the Farscape comics. It's one great propulsion of story.

Do you guys get say in the webisodes because Rockne's on board?

The webisodes are Rockne and Henson, and because Rockne is working on both, the comics and webisodes share story threads. That's all I can reveal at this point.
Farscape #1 launches in November from Boom! Studios.

One of the most immediate surprises about DADOES is how true it manages to stay to both the comic medium as well as the original book; I'd expected something more akin to an illustrated book, large chunks of type occasionally punctuated with short comic sequences, but that's not what you get here. Instead, Dick's writing is broken into caption boxes and speech balloons and, impressively, it works - Yes, some pages seem wordy, but not so much that they're unreadable; whether the distribution is down to letterers Comicraft, artist Tony Parker or editor Ian Brill, it's a great job.
Artwise, Parker does well. There are some moments of discontinuity from the text ("Long robes" become noticably shorter in his hands, for example), but not so much that it pulls you out from the story, and he handles the space and choreography of the page well. I'm less in love with the coloring by Blond, which gives everything a glossy, generic texture, but willing to let that go as a sign of my obsessive nerditry; it doesn't stand in the way of the visuals, and you could argue that it speaks to some theme of synthetic/fake nature from the story itself.

It seems pointless actually reviewing the writing, in a way; Dick's novel is very Dick, complete with the imagination and surrealism he always offers, and complaints about the lack of drama in the issue's close become particularly ridiculous when you remember that this is literally just the first 24th of the book and never intended to build to a particular cliffhanger that'd bring you back next month. What may surprise many, though, is full of information this issue is; even allowing for the amount of text contained in this issue, there's a lot of stuff to learn, and remember. Whether this will be off-putting for some more used to less-filled monthly comics, though, remains to be seen (It's interesting that the first issue comes with a short essay in back from Warren Ellis, and that Matt Fraction will be providing a similar piece in the second; fans of those writers definitely should enjoy this, if they're not already familiar with the book).
As a comic, then, it works - Surprisingly, and against expectations. But there's still a part of me that wonders why someone would choose to read this over just reading the original book, which gives the full story in one sitting, as opposed to over a 24-month period; as good as the visuals are, and as interesting as the comic is as an object, the question of "Why?" looms large, if unspoken, on every page.

The first issue of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is released tomorrow.

The comic ostensibly centers around Alan Ripley, a writer of novels that another character refers to as "airplane reading," all pop political thrillers that prey on the public current fears, whether it be Y2K or terrorism. Meanwhile, his brother, Steve, is a military guy who spends time training "weekend warrior" mercenaries. That is, until his brother is killed in the September 11th attacks. (Or is he?)

Either way, Ripley thinks his brother has really kicked the bucket, and gets recruited (at the funeral, conveniently enough) into the Think Tank, a group of code-named specialists whose goal is vague and morally ambiguous. For example, one of his fellow Think Tank members is described thus: "Outbreak—Microbiologist, willing to create a deadly virus . . . Just to prove to you the bad guys can." (Ripley's code name is "Hollywood." And he naturally forms a connection with Outbreak, as she's the only woman on the team.)

Fast forward eight years to the present and we're seemingly in the middle of a war and an energy crisis, but it's unclear exactly how much different (or worse) this imagined present is than our real present. We can hope that future issues will fill in the gaps left by the eight years, telling us what exactly went down with the now-defunct Think Tank.

While Unthinkable is completely readable, especially for anyone who loves a good conspiracy, the first issue feels a bit too rushed, as though we are given too much story and not enough grounding. How much should we care about the seven members of the Think Tank? How much should we care about the Operator, set up as their shadowy leader "whose files are so classified even he can't access them?" What's more important to the present world Ripley lives in—his participation in the Think Tank or the activities of his deceased brother, which are given more weight than a mere subplot would ordinarily be?

These questions are probably reason enough to keep reading, but an additional problem of so much story in a single issue is the fact that we're given a limited amount of time to care about Ripley, the slightly self-centered pop lit writer. Then again, are we really sure that he's the one that we should care about?

Rather than being an alternate history comic, Unthinkable is more of an alternate present, just skewed enough to seem different. Then again, maybe we could say it's not that alternate, after all. Just taking us behind the scenes to a secret organization that seems straight out of an action film or, well, an airplane reading political thriller.

Unthinkable is created and written by Mark Sable, art by Julian Totino Tedesco. #1 is released on Wednesday.

Created and written by Stokes, Station, originally published as a four-issue comic mini-series last year, gives you the ultimate "locked room" mystery when an astronaut ends up dead on the ISS... but was it an accident or murder? The movie rights have been picked up by CBS Films, and I, Robot scripter Jeff Vintar and producer Laurence Mark are already attached. Mark explains why:

This feels like a Hitchcock movie in a James Cameron setting, and Jeff is ideally suited to adapt this graphic novel.

No director or stars are attached yet.

CBS Films acquires rights to 'Station' [Variety]

The series, appropriately titled Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? will include the full text of Dick's 1968 novel - famously adapted into the movie Blade Runner - alongside brand new sequential illustrations for something more than just illustrated prose. Laura Leslie and Isa Dick Hackett, Dick's daughters, are excited about the possibilities offered by the 24-part series:

We are thrilled that Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is being adapted for this audience by such a talented team. We've been incredibly impressed with Boom!'s ability to create such a faithful interpretation of the original work without sacrificing their own original instincts and artistic sensibilities... Through this medium, readers will now have visual access to parts of the novel not explored in the film adaptation Blade Runner.

The first issue of the series doesn't just offer the first part of the seminal story; Warren Ellis provides an afterword about Dick and the novel.

Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? #1 is released in June.

There's no getting around it; for almost every publisher this week, it's all about the reprints. DC collect some of the funniest self-referential comics ever in the black and white Showcase Presents Ambush Bug, Marvel showcases the next generation of mean green mothers with the Hulk: Skaar, Son of Hulk hardcover, Wanted creator Mark Millar's stab at religion, Chosen gets a reissue as American Jesus Volume 1: Chosen (worth picking up if only for the insanely terrible ending, and I say that with something approaching love) and a genuine classic gets new life as Ted McKeever Library Volume 3: Metropol.

(Also released, if Diamond's shipping list of this week's releases is to be believed - although I am convinced that it can't be, because this isn't due for another month - is the collection of IDW's Star Trek: Countdown, the prequel to JJ Abrams' big screen reboot of Gene Rodenberry's franchise, and a fun Next Generation story in and of itself. I keep thinking I should do a recap for Trek fans who haven't picked it up, and the same with IDW's Terminator: Salvation prequel - Would you guys be interested in that?)

That said, Boom! Studios have easily taken the win for the week's releases with two new books based on old friends.

Firstly, Pixar's The Incredibles come to their natural home with the first issue of The Incredibles: Family Matters (written by Kingdom Come, The Flash and many other great things writer Mark Waid), which manages to capture the tone of the movie pretty damn well... but even so, still isn't the best thing to hit stores tomorrow.

No, that title belongs to the first issue of Boom!'s new The Muppet Show series, which I will tenuously define as sci-fi for the purposes of inclusion here thanks to the Pigs In Space sketch contained therein. For anyone who loved the old Muppet Show TV series... you have to buy this. You really, really won't be disappointed. Unless you hated the comedy and only tuned in for the musical numbers.

For those who know what it is to laugh, you'll have to use the Comic Shop Locator to find out where to buy the wonder (and pick up The Incredibles, while you're at it). For everyone else...? Well, why not look and see what else is coming out this week to find something to tickle your fancy?

Hexed - a new four issue series from Boom!, the people behind the Farscape and upcoming The Incredibles comics - centers around occult thief Luci Jennifer Inagcio Das Neves (you can call her Lucifer for short) and a particular job that, as you may expect, doesn't necessarily go as easily as she may hope.

With writing from Michael Alan Nelson and beautiful art from Emma Rios and colorist Cris Peters, Hexed is aiming directly at the same audience who dig Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Vertigo's Hellblazer... and with an unusual distribution plan, it's likely to reach them. At the same time as each issue of the series is released in comic stores, the full issue will go online, for free, at MySpace.com in both embedded image and .cbz format. The reason for this seemingly counter-intuitive scheme? Boom! Editor in Chief Mark Waid explains:
MARK WAID - "HEXED" FREE ON MYSPACE/COMICBOOKS

The first issue of Hexed is already available in comic stores and online.

Hexed #1 [MySpace]

Written by show creator Rockne O'Bannon, the new series picks up immediately after the last scene of the TV series.

Farscape #1 is released in comic stores this month.

The series launches in December.

[Boom! Studios]

Talking to Boom! editor-in-chief Mark Waid about the series at Newsarama, O'Bannon explained that the new comic series picks up where the television show left off, in terms of both tone and timeline:

I'm personally looking at this as if it were the next season of the series. I would hope that fans will approach the comics as if they are reading scripts from upcoming episodes — except that there is also great art accompanying the words. And the possibility of paper cuts. Other than that, it's very much the same Farscape... The story contained in the first set of four comics focuses on Crichton and Aeryn and their newborn son, as well as those characters who stayed aboard Moya at the end of the Peacekeeper Wars mini-series. Talk about continuing the saga from the television series — the comics pick up immediately after the close of The Peacekeeper Wars. It's that contiguous.

And if you're wondering how O'Bannon finds writing the series as a comic instead of a television show, the answer is somewhat unsurprising:

I'm finding that adapting the Farscape world to this different medium is actually quite freeing — because unlike producing episodes for weekly television, I don't have to limit my imagination at all. Environments, creatures, events that I might have had to tone down or eliminate altogether on an hour TV budget are all readily available to me now.

The series launches in November.

Mark Waid & Rockne S. O'Bannon on Boom's Farscape [Newsarama]

O'Bannon couldn't be happier with his new job of comic writer:

This is a dream opportunity for me - to get to continue the Farscape saga... The comic book series starts off directly where the PEACEKEEPER WARS mini-series left us. It's like we're finally getting to experience Season Five of Farscape.

And what kind of thing are we going to see in the unofficial fifth season? How about something that the television show always failed to bring us?

One of the places that we always wanted to explore in the television series was Rygel's home world of Hyneria. No matter how passionate we were about telling that story, we simply couldn't do it. But now one of the massive-scale arcs in our first 4-issue comic series has us off to Hyneria... The great thing about the comic book medium is that the scope and scale of the Farscape world is no longer restricted. In terms of where we can go, what we can show — these new stories will be Farscape Unrestrained.

[Boom! Studios]

Talking to Newsarama, Waid - who is also the Editor-in-Chief of Boom! - explained that the deal between the publisher and Pixar has been in the works for quite some time:

It's been in development for a couple of years. Of course, the writers strike put a spike in everything for everyone for awhile across all media. But everything is back on track and we were able to make this work... The deal we put together with Disney is Pixar and Muppets. The Pixar end of it gives us reign over creating new properties and new material based on the Pixar movies. So I think our six launches are Incredibles, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, Wall-E, and Finding Nemo.

If you're wondering what Waid will bring to The Incredibles - besides his experience of writing super-powered families in both Fantastic Four and his recent return to The Flash - he's perfectly happy to share:

When the properties came available, that's the one I seized on immediately. I sort of jumped on that like a junkyard dog and made everyone else get away from it... I can't take my toes completely out of the superhero pool. So yeah, this gives me a chance to work out my superhero jones. And also, it's comedy! I love writing comedy. We've got some great ideas that have been approved by the Pixar organization and Disney. Obviously, they're faithful to the Incredibles property, but they're giving us a little bit of latitude as far as storytelling... We're not limited by strictly what's in the movie. We can hopefully introduce a few new characters and a few new villains and play it out from there.

The first sighting of the new comics is, of course, at San Diego Comic-Con, where Boom! are giving away a special preview comic with excerpts from the comic versions of Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc.. The actual series themselves will launch in Spring of 2009.

Mark Waid Talks New BOOM! Studios/ Disney-Pixar Deal [Newsarama]

The series, created and written by screenwriter David DiGilio, takes place in a future frozen Los Angeles following environmental meltdown and centers around frostbitten citizens leading a revolution against the dictator who's taken over the city. The five issue series launched at the start of the year, and gained a certain amount of attention when publisher Boom! Studios then offered the comics for free on MySpace simultaneous to their paper release.

The movie rights have been purchased by Davis Entertainment, which seems to have a thing for genre projects - In addition to I, Robot, they're also the producers behind Aliens Vs. Predator and fantasy dragon porn Eragon. The movie will be co-produced by Boom!'s Ross Richie and Andrew Cosby.

Davis acquires 'North Wind' [Hollywood Reporter]