It really is an embarrassment of riches in this week's new releases. Take, for example, the vampire lover. Usually, they're stuck with some randomly generic goth-lite indie book to feed their fetishes, but this week, they can choose from the Brian K. Vaughan-written Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8: No Future For You (It's the Faith-centric arc, and very good it is, too, first issue of a brand new sequel to The Lost Boys (no, really), The Lost Boys: Reign of Frogs, or Jessica Abel (and friends)'s slice-of-life take on the genre in the graphic novel Life Sucks. How often does that happen?

It's also time to catch up on a lot of books we've featured here in the past:

• Matt Fraction's Casanova finishes its current run with #14,
• Chris Claremont's "Children of the X-Men" series GeNext launches,
• you can fulfill your Tony Stark-isms with The All-New Iron Manual,
• Bruce Wayne meets his end (possibly) in Batman #676 (the first chapter of Grant Morrison's Batman R.I.P., and you can also pick up a hardcover slab of Bat-foreshadowing with Batman: The Resurrection of Ras Al Ghul, collecting an earlier Morrison storyline),
• Geoff Johns' Booster Gold has its first issues collected in the new 52 Pick-Up hardcover,
• and you can see whether Marvel Comics are afraid of nipples or not in the first issue of Euro-import Sky Doll.

For example, you could get your Ed Norton on in advance of next month's movie with the special edition Giant Size Incredible Hulk, which brings you up to speed on the recent history of the jade giant before everyone starts talking, once again, about how they just can't make a good movie out of his comic. If that doesn't satisfy your appetite for greens, then there are also collections of two recent mini-series, World War Hulk: Gamma Corps and World War Hulk: X-Men to show you big green men being scary. Or maybe the first issue of space-bound superheroes Guardians of The Galaxy would be your thing? Remember, they have a talking raccoon. With guns.

Best value for money this week, though, is probably Vertigo: First Cut, a $4.99 collection of the first issues of a number of series published by DC Comics' "mature" imprint, including Western Loveless, New York-dystopic love letter DMZ and M*A*S*H for the 21st Century, Army@Love. If that's not enough for you, then there's also a sneak preview of Air, an upcoming new series from the imprint, included. What more could you want for (slightly, just) less than $5, as long as you don't think about tax?

Just like every other week, you can find the full shipping list to stores here, and then find out where to find the damn stores to shop in here. Just remember that $5 can't barely buy you a Happy Meal these days, is all I'm saying.

Time travel in Booster Gold, Space war in Green Lantern, and a sci-fi melange in Action Comics (time travel, alternate dimensions, planets full of Bizarros) - You seem to have taken almost all of your superhero books at DC in a more science fiction direction than usual over the last year or so; even your Justice Society of America currently has the Superman of a parallel Earth as a member. Is this intentional, and if so, what brought it on?

Not really intentional, no, but I have been striving to push my books and writing in general into a different direction.  Delving into the concepts and characters a bit more, exploring the DC Universe as a whole in a different light.  Coming out of 52, I really felt reinvigorated for some reason.  Or maybe inspired is a better word.  And with everything that DC's been gearing up for in this post-DC Universe #0 world, it just adds more fuel to the fire.  Science-fiction is inherent in a super-hero universe in general and I'm just trying to take advantage of that.

Would you ever want to tackle straight scifi, away from the familiar superhero characters?

Sure.  I'd also like to tackle an historical story, a western, a horror adventure.  All genres.  The film I'm working on with the Robot Chicken team is more of a family/comedy in the same vein as a Pixar movie, but with a bit more humor and Christmas espionage action on top of that.  I've been very focused on the DC Universe in the comics world and, quite honestly, that's where my passion lies when it comes to comics.  I'll be venturing outside it a bit with some creator owned projects, but my focus is the DC Universe.  It's what I enjoy doing more than nearly anything else.

A lot of DC's Silver Age books were essentially pretty straight science fiction stories disguised in superhero costume (Sometimes without that much of a costume; Adam Strange and Hawkman, for example) . While Marvel books seemed to be based on atomic age fear of what could go wrong, DC had a more optimistic take on the wonders of technology, even if their idea of what technology could actually do was somewhat mistaken. Do you think that one side or another has been proven right in the longterm?

That's a long conversation and extremely subjective in my opinion.  Everyone has something that speaks to them.  There's something in Wolverine that speaks to people that I don't entirely get.  But a lot of people don't gravitate towards the Legion of Super-Heroes.  They don't see the struggle that team goes through, the dynamics and characters that their fans and I connect with.  My goal when I tackle these characters is to really show, not tell, why I subscribe to the DC Universe.  Why am I fascinated by Captain Cold and the Rogues or the Justice Society?  When a reader comes up to me and says, "I never really got into Green Lantern before Rebirth or Sinestro Corps." that's what it's all about to me.  Someone at the NYCC show pointed out Gary and I's work on Action Comics and said, "When Superman said, 'I'm for everyone.' I finally understood Superman after all these years."  So who was proven right?  There's no right or wrong answer in the take on technology and scifi, there's just the one we prefer.

If you're in the Sunnyvale, CA area tomorrow, you might want to go and tell Geoff that you're a fan yourself: he's celebrating the release of DCU: Zero with a signing at Comics Conspiracy between 2 - 6pm (Click here for details). Otherwise, just pick up the 50 cent book at your local store and get in on the ground floor before Superman and Batman spend the summer getting their asses kicked.

DC Universe: Zero [DC Comics]

Gail Simone, the comic-writing goddess behind Wonder Woman, had to leave early, but not before announcing that a new Secret Six book was coming up, featuring Catman, Deadshot, Scandal, Ragdoll, an A-list Batman villain, and a new character, Jenet, who has a secret even the rest of the Secret Six won't know about. Simone said that it will be literally "the most ballsy DC comic out there," written and drawn by two red-headed women.

Collins further hinted about the upcoming Wonder Woman storyline: scientists in the DC Universe think that they have found the exact mathematical formula to bring down Wonder Woman. Meanwhile, someone feels that the Amazons are a failed experiment, and starts one of their own: a new Wonder Woman will be created — and will be male. Originally dubbed a "Manazon" (though Simone liked "Olympian"), the Wonder (Wo)man is as of yet unnamed, though Simone added another suggestion: "Wonder Weenie." DiDio thought that might bring up some strange web-searches.

More news:

• Catwoman has been canceled, which was unceremoniously announced at last night's DC panel.
• DiDio promised an entire "repositioning" of the DC universe with the upcoming Final Crisis series. What can writer Grant Morrison tell us about the series? "They're all dead!" he told the crowd, cheerfully. He was probably joking.
• DC's next weekly comic, Trinity, will actually be one you want to buy every week. The series, focusing on Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, will be character-driven, "about who they are." The essential natures of the characters, and how they affect the DCU, will be explored. Astro City's Kurt Busiek will write 12 pages every week for 52 weeks, with a rotating team of artists.
• Rann/Thanagar: Holy War will tie together several years' worth of storylines about the battles between the planet of fin-headed guys and the planet of the bird people. It'll also set up what's going on for the next few years for DC's "science fiction characters."
• Batman R.I.P. Asked what that title means, Grant Morrison says: "It means Rest In Peace. But it doesn't. There'll be no peace for Batman." The Joker will be the scariest new Joker we've ever, drawn as 1/2 "a road accident"), plus a bunch of new Batman villains: "If you miss this you miss your chance to say goodbye."
• Other upcoming comics: Action Comics will have a scarier Brainiac, and James Robinson is taking over soon. Birds of Prey writer Sean McKeever has "learned to love Misfit," the teleporting superhero-wannabe. The Joker's Asylumwill have the "best rogue's galleries out there." There are no plays for any kind of Batman Beyond comic at this time. In the Justice Society of America annual, Power Girl is going to Earth 2, will meet with the Huntress and Batman's daughter there, but is in for a difficult return. Booster Gold will meet Peter Platinum, who is ten times the jerk Booster used to be, and find out who time-travel svengali Rip Hunter is. An upcoming Green Lantern story, "Massacre of Sector 666," will feature the worst disaster in the universe, leading into new series Blackest Night, in which all the dead rise up and kick ass.
• DC is also launching several titles with an eye toward capturing a younger audience. Editor Jann Jones announced the upcoming Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, with art that features a flat-chested, prepubescent Supergirl. The upcoming kid-friendly line also includes Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam. DC is excited about recreating the entry-level comic experience, no doubt anticipating the the kids who will grow up to fill future Con audiences. As for Supergirl, the first to be released, it'll have "all the fun of life in Junior High," Jones promised, which to me sounds menacing. DiDio added, for the benefit of the room: "And no boobs."

Image Comics' Transhuman is a new series by Pax Romana and The Nightly News creator Jonathan Hickman and artist JM Ringuet that oozes potential joy for the faithful. A "mockumentary" about genetic engineering, superheroes and the effort to mass-market a combination of the two, the series looks set to confirm Hickman's reputation for both visually-arresting work and an ability to play well within the SF genre. If you want to know more, you can find a 5-page preview of the first issue here (PDF).

Another premiere that's worth paying attention to this week is the first volume of Flight Explorer, the kid-centric spin-off from popular anthology Flight - It may not all be science fiction, but with a new story about the top-heavy monster Jellaby, and another strip called Zita the Spacegirl, this should be considered for the childlike near you. Even if that happens to be you yourself.

(You can read some more about the book, including seeing preview pages, here).

The third book appearing for the first time on Wednesday is Star Trek: New Frontier #1, a new mini-series tying into the New Frontier novel series. Both the novels and the comics are being written by Peter David, allowing for both coherent continuity and full-on nerditry, both of which are heartily approved around these here parts.

Elsewhere, it's all about the collections. Marvel is putting out hardcover collections of their popular time-travelling 1980s Iron Man versus Doctor Doom stories in Iron Man: Doomquest and their not-so-popular "The Devil annuls Spider-Man's marriage" story in Spider-Man: One More Day.

Meanwhile, DC pulls in some of the best of their 1980s output with the complete run of Dan Jurgens' greedy jerk anti-hero in Showcase Presents: Booster Gold, and then reprints some comic history with the fourth and final volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, which not only reprints Kirby's final stories starring Orion, Mr. Miracle and Darkseid, but also does its best to return Kirby's final work with the characters, graphic novel The Hunger Dogs, to the way it was before editorial forces demanded rewrites and changed the ending to make the production of more Super Powers figures that little bit easier. Previously unseen, reworked and re-inked art, and restored script and structure on the strip provides something like a Director's Cut version of one of the lost masterpieces of superhero comics by one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived... which has to be worth a look, right?

As ever, a full list of the week's releases can be found here, and the place to find your personal comics emporium can be found here. Now go and buy the Fourth World book and make a dead comic mastermind a happy ghost already.

Get your space opera thrills with Nova Vol. 1: Annihilation Conquest. Nova, the Marvel Universe's answer to Green Lantern, came back from total obscurity during 2006's Annihilation mega-crossover. This trade collects the first seven issues of the Nova series that came after Annihilation ended. It crosses over with some other storylines, including Civil War, but manages to remain amazingly readable on its own.

Also from Marvel: The Ultimates Vol. 2 gets collected in a $35 hardcover.

If you're looking for something less superhero-y, Astronaut Dad Vol. 1 looks pretty great. It's a coming-of-age tale in the 1960s, about two kids who discover their dads aren't just astronauts in training — they're working on an orbital spy program. It's the first of two volumes, and it's only $5.95. And from IDW, there's the Transformers Megatron Origin TP, which reveals at last how the Megatron became the baddest bot and gathered his own Manson Family in the form of the Decepticons.

Meanwhile, in the floppies, Fantastic Four #552 starts to reveal what Reed Richards was really up to during Civil War. Many fans had a lot of complaints about Richards' apparently out-of-behavior psycho behavior during that series, and writer Dwayne McDuffie has been slowly rebuilding Richards into a believable character again. So this could be an interesting character-saving patch, or a pointless detour.

Also, Battlestar Galactica: Origins #1 shows how Gaius Baltar became the puppy-eyed, weepy, threesome-having politician/religious figure he is today. Nexus: The Origin reprints an award-winning one-shot from 1991 that gets you up to speed on Horatio Hellpop and his tortured world. And Booster Gold #5 dares to tamper with one of comics' most iconic — and controversial — stories, as Booster travels back to stop the Joker from shooting Batgirl in the spine.