Superman's fate is not that different from Wonder Woman's. In addition to being an overweight smoker, though, he also doesn't leave home without his tequila shot.

Spider-Man doesn't gain much weight. Instead, he loses a lot of muscle mass, loses control of his bladder, and becomes one of those obnoxious perpetual hospital patients that walks around screwing up his IV. Images by Donald Soffritti

Donald Soffritti main page via NotCot

9. Decompression. This term refers to a more "cinematic" style in comics, in which the "lens" lingers over every moment of a scene, and the action is slowed down. There are more splash pages, or single-page panels. And a sequence which might have taken half a page in the 1960s will take half an issue. Comics' fad for "decompression" in comics coincided with the first blush of superhero movie popularity in the early noughties, and it's best understood as an attempt to copy the experience of watching a movie. Comics Should Be Good criticized this trend in 2005, and held up this page from Warren Ellis' Ocean #1 as an example: Yes it's an entire page of a guy walking out of a building and dropping a coffee cup, which dissolves. The "decompression" boom seems to be more or less over, although most comics are still slower paced than they would have been even 15 years ago.

8. Better, and fewer, costumes. Superhero movies are often loathe to cover up the faces of A-list actors, so masks tend to go out the window. You could get righteously sloshed if you drank to every occasion where Peter Parker loses his mask in Spider-Man 2. And many superhero movies avoid the gaudy spandex in general — most notably the X-Men movies, which influenced the comics to move over to the more dignified black leather uniforms... for a few years, at least. On television, Heroes chose to explore superheroic themes without any costumes at all, and it's becoming more common to see heroes in their civvies for long stretches in comics as well.

7. More Hollywood writers.
Comic book writers used to be their own breed, many of whom had started out as assistant editors at the big comic-book publishers before "graduating" to writing. But these days, you're just as likely to see a revolving door between Hollywood and comics, with writers like Jeph Loeb, James Robinson and Brian K. Vaughn working in both comics and TV/movies. And more slumming Hollywood writers, starting with comics buff Kevin Smith, have ventured into writing comics in their spare time — which has led to horrendous delays between issues.

6. Back to basics. If you liked Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie, and you wanted to read comics about that character, you might pick up a Spider-Man comic — only to read about a married high-school teacher who's some kind of mystical spider-totem and wears exo-armor. And goes around saying things like, "I AM THE SPIDER!!". (First J.M. DeMatteis, then J.M. Straczynski, explored the "spiritual"/mystical side of Spider-Man, adding a lot of baggage.) So Marvel started putting out Ultimate Spider-Man and other Ultimate titles, which retell the origins of their classic heroes. And as writer Mark Millar has pointed out, the Ultimate version of Tony Stark ended up being a huge influence on the new Iron Man movie. And of course, every now and then there's a huge effort to go back to basics in regular continuity, like in Spider-Man's "One More Day" storyline — which erased Spidey's marriage, his exo-skeleton, his unmasking and a ton of other baggage.

5. Reconstruction. In the 1980s, the watchword in comics was "deconstruction," meaning that writers like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Frank Miller were dismantling comics characters and critiquing them through works like Watchmen. In the 1990s, there was a wave of nostalgia and comics creators paid tribute to the innocence classic comics — which Moore creating the "1963" series of comics that were supposed to look like they'd been published in 1963, and later the "America's Best" comics. But it wasn't until superhero movies started to take off that the trend of "reconstruction" went mainstream, and superhero comics made a concerted effort to build up their heroic characters instead of taking them apart. Take Batman, whose spine got smushed in the early 1990s and then spent the rest of the decade mired in angst and self-doubt. Grant Morrison and other writers swung the pendulum the opposite way and started turning him into an almost infallible (well, except for that "Brother Eye" business) Nietzschean demigod.

4. The movie pitch in graphic novel form. This is one way that the rise of comic-book movies didn't necessarily make comics better — comics publishers put out a lot of graphic novels that were obviously only aimed at generating new characters and ideas that could result in a movie deal. In the worst cases, the graphic novels in question didn't have much to say besides, "Here's a cool concept and some kick-ass characters. Can't you just see Brad Pitt playing this guy?"

3. (Somewhat) more realistic art. In the 1990s, the trends in "mainstream" comics art were running away from realism as fast as possible. Hot artists included Rob Liefeld, who could not draw the human body if you put a gun to his head, and Todd McFarlane, whose art got more and more scratchy and gothic. There was also a huge trend towards cartoony Manga-influenced artists like Humberto Ramos, whose work lacked the expressiveness and detail of real Manga art, and was often just confusing to look at. In the noughties, as superhero movies have exploded, a more photorealistic art style has taken hold in superhero comics. This hasn't always been a good thing, as artists like Greg Horn apparently take photos from porn magazines and trace over them to create female characters. But it's an improvement over the bug-in-a-shitstorm art styles of the 1990s.

2. Every time, it's personal. One of the defining characteristics of superhero movies is that they take place in a small world. The villain of a superhero movie is usually someone the hero knows personally. Often, the villain plays a part in the hero's origin — think Batman Begins, where ubervillain Ra's Al Ghul trains Batman to be a super-ninja. This trend has carried over to superhero comics, where newer villains are more likely to have a personal issue with the hero. Like new-ish Bat-villain Hush, who turned out to be a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne's.

1. Villain stew. In superhero comics of the 1990s and earlier, each storyline would usually feature one villain at a time. Sometimes villains would team up, and they would have to come up with a cool name for their joint venture. Like the Sinister Six. Or the Superman Revenge Squad. Villains couldn't just have an ad-hoc team-up. And you would seldom have villains just randomly running around in the same storyline, each with their own agendas. But movies, starting with Batman Returns, regularly featured two or more villains per movie, just on a "more is better" theory. And comics started to follow suit, until every Daredevil villain, from the Owl to the Kingpin, would put in an appearance in the same story arc. Instead of getting defeated and then disappearing for a few months, the villains just hang around and keep getting in each other's hair.

In Transformers, the Megatron toy can transform into a Walther P38 gun, a model popular with the Nazis in World War II. This transformation gives him a giant trigger in his crotch (you can see here in the toy). It allows him to deliver focused energy beam blasts. But if we look at the actual capabilities of the Walther P38, we can see it's a semi-automatic but not really any more powerful than the typical hand gun. Obviously a giant-sized one would deliver more oomph. However, I think we can safely say this isn't the biggest or hardest of the crotch weapons.

Astro Boy deploys a machine gun from his butt. This is his main weapon, aside from super-strength and jet-powered flight. He can gun down bad guys, but the fact that these guns sprout from his ass makes them unwieldy.

The infamous cock and ball gun featured in the psycho-vampire flick from Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Til Dawn, is a gooder. It can slay a vampire from yards away, and it just looks plain cool. It's hard; it has those semi-automatic testicles attached; and it's really everything a good crotch weapon should be. But is it really big enough?

Kekko Kamen uses her pussy as her finishing weapon in the eponymously-titled manga by hentai auteur Go Nagai. She uses the notorious headscissors takedown to mash her crotch into the bad guy's face and get him good. Nobody survives this ninja lady's crotch. Great weapon for close-range combat.

The main character in recent film Teeth is a mutant who has razor-sharp teeth embedded in her vagina. She uses her super-crotch to defeat a rapist and mangle two guys who have treated her horribly but nevertheless want to stick their junk in the toothy place. This is a great surprise weapon, because our heroine looks like a sweet little teenager who goes to church and eats oatmeal. Points on this one for viciousness and power of surprise.

The Codpiece is a character from occasionally bizarre comic Doom Patrol who basically has a cock-shaped crotch weapon that does everything: it shoots fire, it drills, it slaps people around, and it even grows a weird plunger-looking apparatus. Plus, it looks as spiffy as it could possibly be (see image up top). In terms of versatility and firepower, plus sheer audacity, I'd say the Codpiece is a standout.

In the aptly-named Cannon Crotch flash game, you are Cannoncrotch, a hero who fights the Nazis with your crazy firepowering crotch. Not only is this game one of the most intensely-satisfying flash game experiences you'll ever have, it also wins points for not making any bones (heh) about what it's really about. You play this naked xkcd-looking guy who is basically jizzing bullets. Nice. Get your crotch on with this game here.

Robot Jox has a lovely giant robot transformation scene which is clearly a tip of the hat to our pal Megatron's trigger crotch. When one of the big robots is injured, it fights back by opening up its enormous crotchal region, and releasing a massive chainsaw that slowly and hilariously extends into many-toothed, killer erection. See the scene here if you don't believe me. All those spammers should put that clip into their emails if they really want to sell us their expando-pills.

I'm going to have to go with Codpiece as the winner here, since his weapon is so versatile. But the girl in Teeth makes a close second. I hereby declare Codpiece the WINNER OF THE CROTCHIES.

You're following up your Continuity graphic novel - about a girl who changed realities every time she fell asleep - with a book about tri-sexual redneck outlaws fighting for the survival of Mars. Why can't you write something a little bit more imaginative, McNamara?
 
I try to write the books I'd love to discover.  That doesn't always translate into an easy sell. You might like my next collaboration with [Continuity artist] Tony Talbert, it's pretty dull. It's called Sucker and it's an examination of the failed pursuit of American Ideology from the point of view of a guy who comes back from the dead to eat children and hump his sister.
 
Nothing kills a comic book for me more than cheap realism. It's boring and a waste of an artist's talent. I'd much rather adapt real world themes into a fictional landscape. For example The Martian Confederacy was inspired by the American super conglomerate Bechtel's failed attempt to privatize the drinking water of Brazil. Now I could barely stay awake writing that sentence, imagine trying to read a graphic novel about it. But throw in a horny android, a drinking bear, and some two sided ladies and it's suddenly fun for me to write and you to read. The goal is always to create someplace you'll miss when you close the book.
 
You've said elsewhere that the book takes place in a future where historical records have been lost and "the people of the future think Planet Of The Apes, Star Trek and Pulp Fiction actually happened" - Is this some kind of comment on the dangers of sci-fi being taken too seriously, or just an excuse for pop-culture reference nerds to piss themselves in glee?
 
I look at Science Fiction as a living language that's always building on itself. So the challenge for me was how to recognize where we've been while still going forward without being trapped in homage.  Instead of worrying about what's been done before we just decided to recognize all science fiction as our past and theirs.
 
It's also a reflection of people like me who were raised by TV. I couldn't tell you what I learned in grade school but ask me about how Different Strokes and the Facts of Life exist in a shared universe and suddenly I'm an expert on something.
 
Art for the book is by Jane's World creator and former Charles Shultz assistant Paige Braddock - What did she bring to the project besides making it look so good?
 
Because Paige is such a great writer herself, I actively sought her feed back in writing and editing the script. We had some spirited discussions over content and the book is better for it (if the book seems like it's missing a crucial poop joke it's because she asked me to take it out).
 
Paige also brought some unintentional anxiety to the partnership. I mean she goes from being nominated for an Eisner to working with me? Not since Cuba Gooding Junior has recognition destroyed such a promising career.
 
When The Martian Confederacy gets optioned for the inevitable movie treatment, who will you demand to play the lead roles before collapsing in a drug-induced stupor on top of your multiple Hollywood-paid hookers?
 
Optioning The Martian Confederacy would be a death sentence for me. My vices are only controlled by abject poverty. But if you really want to see me dead...
 
Ashton Kushter as Boone. The two of them are a pair of idiots, it would be perfect.
 
Natasha Lyonne as Lou. They're both trash talking, fun loving gals I'm crushed out on.
 
John Goodman as Spinner. Goodman might actually be too hairy to play the drinking bear.
 
Gene Hackman as the Alcalde. Hackman could easily embody the charm and menace of Mars sole lawman.
 
Carrie Ann Moss as both sides of Sally. Moss would be great fit for the two headed Sally. She's played both villain (Memento) and hero (The Matrix) before and after Red Planet still owes us a good Mars movie.
 
Last chance - Why should io9 readers pick up this book in twenty words or less?
 
Imagine The Dukes of Hazzard meeting Noam Chomsky. It's a perfect mix of social commentary, science fiction and cleavage.

The Martian Confederacy arrives in stores in July, and is available for pre-order now.

The Martian Confederacy

Resurrection takes place after "The Bugs" have left, but not without forever changing the face of the planet and its inhabitants forever. The attackers may be gone but now the characters have to deal with establishing order, power struggles, left-behind alien technology and decide what to do with alien stragglers and POWs. Finally an alien invasion movie that's going to focus on the people and not the fireworks. Watching downtown NYC get destroyed by monsters and aliens is always a treat but what happens afterwards? Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road (which is also being made into a movie) deals with these questions but it's exciting to see what veteran comic writer Guggenheim comes up with.

The character - who started life as Mr. Machine before Ideal Toys pointed out that they owned the trademark to that name, thank you very much - started life as a very traditional robot whose purpose was to ask "What does it mean to be... human?" on a regular basis, despite work by Hulk and Captain America co-creator Kirby and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko in his early years. After multiple attempts to make something of the character - including a cyberpunk-inspired series in the early 1980s - the character fell into limbo until Warren Ellis brought him back in 2006's Nextwave series as a somewhat drunken bastard version of himself that... strangely... clicked with audiences. Now, with his new series, writer Ivan Brandon attempts to explain just what turns a sensible, staid robot to drink:

It's hard to get too far into explaining it without spoiling what's a really strange structural animal...let's say being a Kirby character is what drives the Ellis character to drink, if that makes any sense to anyone. Also, let's say that Niko Henrichon is really great at drawing the Hulk, and a dozen other characters I won't name for the sake of being a horrible person.

The funny thing is beyond NYC Mech, they all sort of grew their own legs without my help. We'd gotten a lot of interest from other creators who wanted to play in the NYC Mech world in some way and we took that and built 24seven out of it, trying to give them more room and a bigger stage to play on, something that wouldn't just speak to our own existing readership. With Machine Man, my editor suggested him and I loved the idea more for the fact that he's the perfect Marvel/Kirby weirdo than for him being a robot.

That said, ROBOTS! Who doesn't love 'em? When they run things, it might get me in good.

Comic Talent - Ivan Brandon [Heavy Ink]

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]

Branching level paths, new powers and unique costume options for villains are just a few of the additions in store for CoH fans. Episode 12 will also feature a set of missions that will send heroes and villains through time to ancient Rome to aid the Midnight Squad. New super powers will be unlocked for the game's pre-existing archetypes, and a host of tweaks and improvements to gameplay will make it even easier to save (or destroy, as you prefer) Paragon City.

If anyone wants to go heroing with an io9er, stop by Infinity server and say hi to Cyber Sabre. Electric blasters rule. Image by: NCSoft.

Issue 12: Midnight Hour. [NCSoft]

The Super Sons series, which ran on-and-off in the pages of Superman/Batman team-up title World's Finest from 1973 through 1976, was yet another creation of Bob Haney, the man who also gave the world Teen Titans and the Doom Patrol. Apparently feeling as if Superman and Batman themselves weren't hip enough for the kids of the '70s, Haney randomly created a series of stories that saw both heroes married to women whose faces were never seen, and both of them with nearly identical children - you could only tell them apart from their fathers by the size of their sideburns - called Clark Kent Jr. and Bruce Wayne Jr. Two kids with parental issues the size of Canada, and a desire to show the world how "hip" to modern "jive" they could be.

The stories themselves are dated masterpieces of failed relevance - The two teen heroes have a tendency to try to find themselves and/or 1970s "America," only to fuck up and have to be saved by their dads on a regular basis - and apparently hated even by others working at DC Comics at the time; three years after their creation, writer Denny O'Neil wrote a story that explained that all of the stories were the product of some malfunctioning computer simulation that the "real" Superman and Batman liked to run, after being given the job by his editor of coming up with some way of killing the characters off once and for all. Not that it did that job - in 1999, Haney revived the Sons for one last story, and a collection of the entire run was published last year as Saga of The Super Sons, giving everyone the chance to relive the adventures of two boys on two motorbikes trying to escape the shadows of their more famous fathers... by dressing and acting exactly like them.

Crazy in Love: The Saga of the Super-Sons [Living Between Wednesdays]

Though Mignola has drawn a million fight scenes for his most famous creation, Hellboy, I think some of his greatest fights can be found elsewhere. I love this action-packed cover Mignola drew for a Lobster Johnson comic because it contains all the most important ingredients of an awesome smackdown: a skeleton, a robot, a disembodied brain, and a scorpion. Really, it doesn't get better than that.

Mignola is also the creator of another brilliantly-named hero, the Amazing Screw-On Head, a robot head who fights giant monsters for President Lincoln in the nineteenth century. The comic, which won an Eisner Award, was made into an animated short featuring the voices of Paul Giamatti (as the Screw-On Head) and David Hyde Pierce (his arch-nemesis Emperor Zombie). Here you can see a great fight from the animated version of the comic book, right after Emperor Zombie raises a monster and the Screw-On Head fights it. Luckily, the Screw-On Head's sidekick Mr. Groin is there to help!

OK, the picture below isn't of a fight, but it demonstrates one of the reasons why Mignola is so great at composing fights. It's a picture of H.P. Lovecraft, his face defined by darkness rather than features. The backgrounds are complicated, murky, and evocative. And then there's the crowning glory, the tentacle snaking out of old H.P.'s pants. That is Mignola all over: a swirl of hyperbolic darkness, punctuated by a carefully-placed joke.

And no celebration of fight scenes would be complete without this great cover that Mignola drew back in 1990, for an Aliens vs. Predator comic book. Teeth! Stabbing! Darkness! Oh, yeah.

Over at Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch blog, Bernadin explained his journalistic outlook about moderating the panel:

It's not a time for hardcore investigative journalism. Whoever is on the panel — and this time, I had three of the final five Cylons (Michael Trucco, Rekha Sharma, and Michael Hogan, pictured) — can't answer the tough questions. And the last thing I want is for them to get stone-lipped and reticent in front of a packed house. Silence is deadly. So I've gotta offer them questions that they can answer at length while being both interesting and non-revelatory. In other words, cheat the crowd without them being upset about it.

Flickr image by The Fat Indian.

How I learned to stop worrying and love hosting 'Battlestar Galactica' panels [EW.com]
Battlestar Galactica at NY Comic-Con [Hulu]
Venture Bros: Exclusive New York Comic-Con Season 3 Teaser [Quickstop Entertainment]

According to Sci-Fi Wire, Silver said:

Maybe after I saw Spider-Man or whatever, I thought that it should be a genesis story. And then I had to kind of go back to the drawing board, because I had a version that the studio wanted to make that was not a genesis story . . . [But] I've got to find a way to tell it. Because whenever I got into the stuff, you know, Paradise Island and stuff, it was kind of goofy. But I've got to find a way to do it where it's effective. I mean, I thought some of the stuff they did in 300 was great. I don't know if I want to make it that way, but, I mean, I think there's a way to do this where the audience is going to accept it. But I've got to figure it out.

The series - long mentioned by Marvel head Joe Quesada and assumed to be a joke - will be written by former Superman writer Karl Kesel, who was the first to admit that the project doesn't exactly sound real:

Of course, the first things that come to your mind are the jokes and bad puns— Spider-MONKEY is a hero in MONKhattan in the United SIMIANS of America. It's a Cocktail Party Idea— one you can toss around funny one-liners about with your friends as you sip drinks (in this case: banana daiquiris). But to have a STORY you need more than jokes. You need conflict, you need characters readers can admire and root for, and you need something real at stake. That's when you start looking past the banana peels and asking yourself: Okay, how does this society really work? What's important to these characters? For all its similarity to the mainstream Marvel Universe, how is it different? Once you figure that out, the story almost writes itself.

The thing about monkeys and apes is that they look like us, but they're not us. So you put them in clothes and they look funny. But it's more than that because monkeys-in-clothes (or apes-in-capes, in this case) allow people to laugh at themselves without really laughing at themselves. You don't laugh at a monkey dressed as George W. Bush because he's doing the same stupid things the real Bush does— no no no. You're laughing at him because a monkey dressed as George W. Bush looks FUNNY! (At least, that's what we tell ourselves.) And there's a touch of that "court jester" comedy/commentary in this story, too. You almost can't avoid it.

Marvel Apes [Newsarama]

When director Louis Leterrier is introduced, he starts off by saying he's just come in from working on the movie's score, and that composer Craig Armstrong's work is "Star Wars good." This is perhaps not the best way to begin: a low hiss and some boos from the audience. It's probably smarter to tread softly with the Star Wars with this room.

Leterrier makes amends: he's going to show us a lot. There's going to be rough stuff, mixed in with good-looking stuff.

So what's essentially different, this time around? What does this particular take on The Incredible Hulk have? Answer: a kickass villain.

Clip: Zoom-in on the bearded face of Tim Roth. [Cheers!] William Hurt's Gen. Thunderbolt Ross talks to him about a supersoldier program from the fifties, and then we see Ross surreptitiously taking some formula out of deep-freeze. Next, a veritable needle-torture porn: Many. Scary. Long. Needles. Roth's character, Emil Blonsky, has seemingly volunteered to try out the formula. He's told that two go into his neck — and that the one in his back will really hurt. Blonsky is strapped to a a gurney that flips over, and we get to see both his face AND an even bigger needle going in to his back. But you can't cringe, because a sudden zoom-in on Blonsky has him opening his eyes in a jolt of realization, and you just know something crazy's about to happen —

The screen goes black, the lights come on, and Tim Roth takes the stage to enthusiastic applause. He says that the movie is in pursuit of what the Hulk is, and that in the clip Blonsky has had "his first injection, many to go" and that the film is "dark, twisted and fun."

The panel, comprised of Leterrier, Roth, and producers Gale Anne Hurd and Kevin Feige, were surprisingly forthcoming with information. Why choose Blonksy's alter ego, The Abomination, as the movie's villain? "We needed a big-ass fight. The Abomination is as big as they come." Such a formidable opponent turns the Hulk into the underdog, with many square-offs and many fights. There will be both Hulk vs. the army, and Hulk vs. the Enemy. There were no radioactive dogs in sight.

Leterrier says that he's worked hard to incorporate tons of images and panels from the Hulk comic books into the film. And he's about to show us a fight, though it's unmixed and with slightly rough visual effects.

The room goes dark again. Cheers! We see Ed Norton as Bruce Banner being chased by a ton of army guys in a gothic building setting. He ends up on this sort of enclosed glass bridge, with the army in full-on operation subdue mode. Liv Tyler's character, Betty Ross, is attempting to get to him and is clearly freaked out by the proceedings. When she tries to run towards the action, she's grabbed by some soldiers, and there's a great moment where Betty impatiently elbows and knocks down her restrainer. The army attacks with a ton of firepower and traps Banner on the bridge. They fire a canister of gas in after him and as it's going off, there's a ton of tension between him and the hungrily watching Gen. Ross and Blonsky, and between Banner and Betty Ross, who's panicky and obviously hadn't known what her guy is like when he's angry.

Needless to say, Banner transforms into The Hulk, and it is awesome, though some of the effects were unfinished. There's an insane chase with The Hulk busting loose with the army in full pursuit and firing endless rounds into him. The Hulk handily overturns a tank, to my internal cheer. When Roth's Blonsky decides to join the action, The Hulk uses two ripped sides of a car as a wicked bullet-shield. "Is that all you've got?" Blonsky taunts. The Hulk rears back, delivers a straight kick to Blonsky's chest, and he goes flying — into the dark.

The lights are back on again. Goddammit. Of the ridiculously cool action sequence we'd just seen, producer Hurd declares, "We promised Hulk smash, you'll get Hulk smash!"

Question and answer time! The fans line up. Of course, the first question off the bat is for Leterrier and is about what it was like to work with Ed Norton. Here, for the first time, there's a stumble: Leterrier is very amiable and has been smooth and forthright until now, but my notes read "awkward awkward says he's amazing awkward says he's very skilled tries to change subject awkward." Leterrier manages, at least, to laud Norton's talent and contributions while maintaining a good distance. He wraps up with "it was great, um, yeah, it was great."

Roth is asked if he had any motivation when playing Blonksy. He doesn't quite answer, but says of his character: "He's having fun. He's a combat man, not a desk man." But he's aging and needs to be physically enhanced.

The panel is asked about rumors that we could be seeing Nick Fury or Tony Stark in The Incredible Hulk. The question is neatly skirted by saying that some rumors are true, some are not, and we'll find out soon enough.

Another question about the off-screen drama that has plagued the film. What about those editing disputes we heard about? The producer fields that one, saying vaguely that Norton showed up to the editing sessions, and is 100% behind the film.

Does Hulk talk? What would you like him to say, they reply, then immediately joke, "Oh, Hulk smash? We should put that in."

Leterrier lets slip that the end of the movie features a fight in New York City — with attendant helicopters! He also mentions that he's read "many comments" on the internet about the film and says that he tries to take the fans' concerns into consideration.

The next questioner states that though we know the movie tries to be faithful to the comics, is it faithful at all to the live-action TV Hulk? Leterrier starts talking about how his first exposure to the superhero was via the TV show, once it was imported to France — that he grew up watching Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. Then — whaa? Was the question a plant? Because Lou Ferrigno is called on from the wings! The crowd goes wild. Ferrigno is still a naturally hulking, massive figure, especially sitting next to Tim Roth. He's supposed to have "a real funny part" in the movie, taking the normal cameo to another level. When he demonstrates his take on the Hulk voice (Ferrigno has a slight speech impediment and the voice for any Hulk dialogue on TV was dubbed), Leterrier offers that he has to do the movie's voice now, and is he free next week? Does this mean we'll have that most essential bit of Hulkish dialogue?

Trailer world exclusive! We are all completely freaking out at this point after the build-up. We hear that Banner is a fugitive for stealing state secrets, and see him as a lonesome loner in lots of gorgeous foreign scenic shots. He looks sort of like a bearded hippie on the lam. The army is after him. There is a crazily sweet-looking rooftop chase. The Abomination looks freaky as all hell. There is a kiss with Betty Ross in the rain. The tagline flashes: "Our only hope is...Something incredible." There's a flash of a sexy sex scene! Bruce Banner in boxer briefs in bed with probably Betty Ross! There are fights and explosions and gun battles and the Hulk brings down a helicopter!

The trailer kicks a ridiculous amount of ass, but we've been told to stick around for a minute afterwards for some important clarification. We all do, of course, and then..

William Hurt as Gen. Ross is in a bar and he is talking to HOLY CRAP IT'S IRON MAN! Pandemonium. The crowd around me shrieks. I do, too. Actor Robert Downey Jr.'s deadpan stare works well for Tony Stark. He says to Ross, droll, "I hear you have an unusual problem?" General Ross: "You should talk." I think I actually made the sound "squee."

Behind-the-scenes infighting notwithstanding, it seems like The Incredible Hulk film will, at the very least, provide for some spectacular action sequences, and with such a talented cast attached, there's bound to be tongue-in-cheek humor and references for the faithful.

Going in with lowered expectations, I left dying to see the movie. If everyone involved is happy with the results, and if they believe in the film as much as they claim to, then Hulk's PR people need to get a new buzz going. It looks like The Incredible Hulk deserves the same amount of attention as Iron Man, not just a visit from him.

If you're anything like us, then Eisner Award finalist Templesmith's art will bring out the hidden Decadent in you — the one who likes to snort powdered absinthe and scream out Rimbaud poems on New Orleans street corners just for a lark.

Templesmith also names Ronald Searle and Ralph Steadman as influences, and it's this mix of comic and horrific influences that gives Templesmith's images such vigor, along with a cheery inability to censor himself. His latest book is Wormwood, Gentleman Corpse: It Only Hurts When I Pee, and it features the continuing adventures of the aforementioned gentleman corpse.

Wormwood is, as they say, "defiantly weird," in the way people use "weird" when they're at a loss for words. Templesmith's black sense of humor, his uniquely delicate yet muscular style, his nuanced but bold use of color, and his knack for finding just the right detail to make a panel or page come to life—these traits in combination make the art and words work so well for readers.

Templesmith told us:

Wormwood is really just me having fun and trying to through in as many disgusting perversions of my old childhood influences. [And I do] call it my riff on Doctor Who, if it were more demonologically oriented and written for very juvenile adults with a sick sense of humor.

I am afraid of it. Always reluctant to dive in and embrace it, but once I do, I pretty much fall in love with it. (The latest being "Twitter," which I'm addicted to). I [also] try to keep my computer work fairly simple. I don't want to swap completely to the computer to do all my art. I still value the personal meat-world touch and only use technology for the bits I can't replicate physically myself. Some people think I do it all on computer, but I think I've just worked out a system that plays to the strengths of all the mediums, rather than overly rely on just one.

I literally have no constraints from the publisher, they just let me do as I wish. Well, so far anyway. I've yet to be sued or told 'no, you can't put Paris Hilton in the book and have her decapitated corpse used as a play thing by a band of sexually depraved redneck zombies, Ben.' Wormwood is really my personal project, so just the fact I get to do it at all is the fun bit.

Despite the commercial success of 30 Days of Night, including getting the major motion picture treatment and winning a Spike TV award, Templesmith is refreshingly oblivious to the idea of following up by adhering to any one formula for success. In addition to continuing to work on Fell with Warren Ellis, he's starting a new series called Welcome to Hoxford that looks like it's going to be a no-holds-barred psychiatric hospital creep-fest. Our guess is that Doctor Who won't figure into this one, unless he shows up as a patient . . .

Ben Templesmith [gallery]

Talking to Comic Book Resources, Pope admitted a secret luddite tendency:

I think there is a huge shift of public consciousness which comes with the implementation of significant new tools. Technology changes people's perception of time and distance, and it is necessary to be aware of all this, to create and understand new conceptual frameworks in order to understand and navigate the unanticipated social changes which follow... I worry about the gradual coarsening of society.

It's just exciting to come up with all kinds of ideas for machines and robots and costumes and whatever, architecture or whatever, and then draw them out on a page.

Paul Pope 2089 [CBR.cc]

Norton wouldn't talk to EW, but did grudgingly issue a bland boilerplate statement saying there's no feud and everything's wonderful, which you can read below. So what was the easy-going creative difference between Norton and Marvel about anyway?

According to Leterrier, it was over the movie's running length. Both he and Norton wanted a more "meditative" movie lasting 2 hours and 15 minutes. Marvel wanted to keep the movie under 2 hours and make it more of an action film. (And then, presumably, release the longer version on DVD.) I have to admit, I'm on Marvel's side here.

Leterrier says Norton admits the shorter version is probably more commercial, and is very "zen" about the whole thing. And yet, he's not doing any interviews about the movie. (The article's explanation, that Norton is avoiding interviews because he doesn't want the press to portray him as difficult, is sort of surreal.)

Anyway, here's Norton's statement, which he issued after a month of negotiation with EW and which Universal Studios and Marvel signed off on:

Like so many people I've loved the story of The Hulk since I was a kid, so it was thrilling when Marvel asked me to write and help produce an altogether new screen incarnation, as well as play Bruce Banner. I grew up reading Marvel Comics and always loved the mythic dimension and contemporary themes in the stories, and I'm proud of the script I wrote. In every phase of production, including the editing, working with Louis Leterrier has been wonderful...I've never had a better partner, and the collaboration with all the rest of the creative team has been terrific. Every good movie gets forged through collaboration, and different ideas among people who are all committed and respect the validity of each other's opinions is the heart of filmmaking. Regrettably, our healthy process, which is and should be a private matter, was misrepresented publicly as a 'dispute,' seized on by people looking for a good story, and has been distorted to such a degree that it risks distracting from the film itself, which Marvel, Universal and I refuse to let happen. It has always been my firm conviction that films should speak for themselves and that knowing too much about how they are made diminishes the magic of watching them. All of us believe The Incredible Hulk will excite old fans and create new ones and be a huge hit...our focus has always been to deliver the Hulk that people have been waiting for and keep the worldwide love affair with the big green guy going strong.

Larry Young's trilogy of books (illustrated by Charlie Adlard, with Matt Smith providing some art in the first book) - Live From The Moon, Space: 1959 and One Shot, One Beer - is much less space opera than space rock'n'roll, three books in a shared universe concentrating on the simple thrills of adventure, space travel and good old-fashioned storytelling. Each book involves a crew from Channel 7 News getting mixed up in some space-related plot courtesy of bad guys who are easily identifiable and easy to root against; Space: 1959 sees the news team take on Communists who are racing to put the first man on the moon... and are willing to kill to make it happen, for example. Who needs more of a high concept than that?

When asked about the possibility of an AiT movie last year, Young danced around the subject:

There's always something going on with the astronauts. Who doesn't think embedded reporters on mankind's return to the moon isn't a going concern? The thing's been optioned three times, and I'm sure it's out there in the consciousness. I sure do get a lot of atta-boys on that subject. Meetings are being held; the moon is being discussed.

It's time to fix that, Hollywood.

Astronauts in Trouble [AiT/PlanetLar]

Despite spinning out of his Seven Soldiers series of books, Morrison wants readers to know that you don't need to know anything about what's come before when you pick up the first issue:

I like to write things so you don't have to read anything extra... Obviously, it sells more books for me, so yes, everyone should go out and buy 'Seven Soldiers.' Particularly 'Mister Miracle,' which was the most hated of the 'Seven Soldiers' books and sold least. Stuff like that has little clues in it, but honestly, you don't have to read anything else. 'Final Crisis' is like picking up a book. It's like you're picking up any science fiction book or a fantasy book and starting from page 1. Everything you need to know about the characters will be in the book.

What would it really be like if bad gods turned up on Earth? Because as this story opens, the war between Good and Evil has been won by the wrong side and Evil is now in control of the DC Universe. And then we see what happens next as a result of that...The Gods are here to destroy everything that we hold dear, everything that has meaning to us, everything that has value for us. They want to utterly crush the human species and reduce us all to slavery and that's as big a threat as it gets. We wanted to do a primal superhero myth that would pit absolute evil against pure good in a way you don't see much of in comics these days so it's the story of the DC universe facing its apocalypse and only Darkseid could cut it as the main villain.

If you've got a favorite character, I am sure he's in it. Supergirl and Mary Marvel are in it. They have a big climatic battle to decide how femininity should be portrayed in superhero comics!

All-Star Grant Morrison 1: Final Crisis [Comic Book Resources]

Dinosaurs . . . in space!
Dinosaucers, a cartoon show from the 1980s, was all about a bunch of nice dinosaur aliens called Dinosaucers who come from a planet in "counter-orbit" to the Earth where dinosaurs became intelligent. (See the amazing "extended theme" from Dinosaucers above.) They team up with a band of nice human teenagers to fight some evil intelligent dinosaurs — and meet some unintelligent Earth dinosaurs in the process. One of the Dinosaucers special powers is that they can de-evolve into giant-sized dinosaurs to fight. The three of you who saw the Super Mario Bros. movie will recognize this plot device. Special fun fact: Coke owns the rights to Dinosaucers, but apparently has never used this for the powers of evil.

Hell . . . in space!
Hellraiser Bloodline, one of many less-than-stellar sequels to the original (and amazing) Clive Barker flick, takes our familiar hell minions (you guessed it) into space! Set in the future, the movie poses the all-important question of what would happen if you opened a hell dimension portal — while on a spacehip!

Orcs . . . in space!
Warhammer is a miniatures game, a comic book, and a phenomenon. Basically the premise is that all your favorite D&D monster classes have been transported into space. Swordfights — in space! Orcs — with spaceships! Nothing could go wrong.

Lesbians . . . in space!
One of my favorite randomly-generated films from the brain of John Carpenter is Ghosts of Mars, starring Natasha "Species" Henstridge, Ice Cube, and Pam Grier. The plot is simple enough. A future Martian colony discovers an ancient Martian hoozit that turns everybody into Burning Man zombies. The Martian police force is called in to investigate, and that's when we find out that Mars is a matriarchal society run by lesbians. I love that you can have lesbians in space, but that's not even the main point of the movie. Instead, it's all about shooting the shit out of those zombies. Go, Ice Cube!

Evil clowns . . . in space!
The title pretty much says it all: Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This flick from the late 1980s was clearly the result of a coke-fueled pitch meeting where some studio exec literally did scream, "Wait, wait, let's do scary clowns . . . BUT FROM SPACE!!!" Then somebody did another line and said, "That's craaazy!" And that line, my friends, became the tagline on the poster. Guess what the plot is? Aliens who look like clowns kill a bunch of people.

Fantasy Island . . . in space!
Oh Ron Moore, beloved creator of the new Battlestar Galactica, what possessed you to pitch a show that is basically Fantasy Island in space? FOX just greenlit Virtuality, Moore's post-BSG TV project, for fall. The plot? A bunch of astronauts zooming through space for a long time need to stay focused and not go nuts, so NASA provides them with cyber-holo-pods where they can jack in and live out any fantasy they want. I predict that every week, we will get a new fantasy and a lesson. Sadly, there will be no dwarves yelling, "Da spaceship holopod! Da spaceship holopod!" before each fantasy starts.

Civil War reenactments . . . in space!
Look, I love space-western TV series Firefly, but I have to admit the show is one giant Civil War reenactment. They talk in funny frontier talk, steal cattle, and visit frontier planets that look like Scarlet O'Hara's bum. And of course several of our main characters fought in a civil war against the Man and lost. So yeah, it's the Civil War . . . in space!

Hello Kitty . . . in space!
Every kid always dreamed of sending Hello Kitty's perky little whiskered face into the wide reaches of the cosmos, and that's why anime Tamala 2010 is so satisfying for everybody. Especially because Tamala, the Hello Kitty-esque hero, is a punk rock weirdo who winds up hanging out with gay hustlers in a bar on another planet.

Vampires . . . in space!
Lifeforce is one of those movies that brings all the goodness into one place: The bad guy is a naked lady alien space vampire who wanders around sucking the "lifeforce" out of anyone who gets in the way of her lithe undressed limbs. I think there might be some kind of deeper message about fear of aging, but really it's all about the naked vampire alien making out with science dudes until they wrinkle up into freaky husks. It's directed by Tobe Hooper, who brought you the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, so it's gotta be good.

Pregnant men . . . in space!
Oprah never saw Enemy Mine, which is why she was so shocked to meet real-life pregnant man Thomas Beattie. If she'd seen the Dennis Quaid-meets-pregnant-alien-dude flick Enemy Mine back in the 1980s, she would have known that sometimes a guy just has to give birth. Actually, the alien in Enemy Mine comes from a race of non-gendered lizardy people, but since we've thought of the character as a guy up until the time he becomes pregant, there's definitely a shock when he pats his belly and starts crooning to the unborn fetus.

(Thanks, Erin, for the funny line!)

Following on from Dorkin's comic version of second movie Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, the monthly Most Excellent Comic Book aimed to take a different tack on the characters... mostly because Dorkin didn't really like the movies:

I'm not a big fan of Bill and Ted, I don't even like the music, but I really found the characters easy to write.  You just make them see something amazing that would make the average person drink a beer or drop dead and then they just go "Whoa, cheap looking . . . "  You know, like they see the big bang and they think it's dumb.

Long out of print, the entire series was recently collected by SLG in two volumes as Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Adventures. Pick them up and, indeed, "party on." "Dudes."

Bill & Ted Comics [Bill and Ted Info]

A new article in the New York Times, casting doubt on the green powerhouse's prospects, also drops a couple bits of info: the Hulk will talk in the new movie, unlike the TV show or Ang Lee film. And if Norton disagrees with Marvel's final cut of the film, he may refuse to cooperate with publicity efforts. In separate news, a fight coordinator says filming of the Justice League movie has been pushed back to the end of the year due to funding issues. [New York Times, thanks to Christopher]

Ideas and stories that used to get passed around in dank basements among dudes with thick glasses have become mainstream Hollywood movies. We list the seven signs that fandom is synonymous with glam, and try to discover if there are any shreds of authentic fannishness left in pop culture.

Kristin Bell
This blond bombshell was the star of geek sleuth show Veronica Mars, where her character made Star Wars references, hung out with hackers, and used the word "frak" a lot. Now she plays electricity-wielding Elle on fan glam show Heroes, and will appear in the forthcoming flick Fanboys (pictured above). She's said in interviews that she loves nerd culture and Star Trek. But she's also a cover girl for fashion magazines. The fan world has always had its pinups, but fashion mag cover girls? This is a sure sign of fan glam.

Any authentic geek pinups left? Veronica Belmont, host of many an online geek TV show (currently Tekzilla). She's cute but not glam, wears Star Trek uniforms for fun, and can talk for hours about the latest gadget specs.

J J Abrams
This dashingly dorkish director/producer has got the fan glam look with his nerd glasses and mop of uncombed curly hair. Plus, he's the auteur behind fannish-but-mainstream hit shows Alias and Lost. He reinvigorated the giant monster genre by producing Cloverfield, and now he's single-handedly attempting to reboot the most fannish franchise of all: Star Trek. Everything he's created repackages fantasies ripped from the dark heart of fandom for audiences who would never consider themselves scifi fans. In many ways, Abrams is a shaper of the whole fan glam craze.

Any authentic geek directors left? Joss Whedon, creator of cult hits Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, has always been a little too fannish to be glam. Hired to write the new Wonder Woman script, he eventually left the project because what he wrote wasn't commercial enough. Now he's making another scifi TV show, Dollhouse, whose premise sounds brilliantly quirky but may again be too strange for audiences seeking glam rather than fandom.

Sweding - Movies about fans paying homage to their favorite stories are all the rage. Be Kind Rewind coined the word "sweding" to describe what happens when fans remake their favorite creations in a funny, low-budget way. Now everybody is sweding everything, but of course fandom has been doing this stuff for years in fanfic (fan-written fiction based on popular franchises) and fan films. A new movie, Son of Rambow, also celebrates fan reenactments and will be shown in sneak previews across the U.S. in the ultimate fan glam locations: Apple stores.

Any authentic fan fiction left? Harry Potter fanfic, stories written by fans about the characters in J.K. Rowling's popular series about pubescent magic users, is still going strong in the underground. Rowling has said that she will tolerate fan fiction about her books (though she claims not to read it), but none of these stories will ever be published by mainstream publishers or made into Hollywood movies. Many of these Harry Potter fanfic tales are as good as or even better than the originals, so at least the fans get something special that can't be commodified — yet.

Comic-Con explosion
Comic-Con, the annual comic book and science fiction fan convention in San Diego, used to be a quiet little nook full of dorks. Now it's grown to a 100,000-person event that takes over the whole city. It's become the hot place for giant media conglomerates to showcase their latest special effects blockbusters, and for Hollywood stars to put in an appearance (like Halle Berry, signing autographs at Comic-Con, below). It's basically a Sundance Film Festival — except it's full of fan glam instead of indie geek chic.

Any authentic international cons left? WorldCon, which focuses more on books and writers than it does on mainstream media, is still as authentic as it gets when it comes to large gatherings of scifi fans.

Threadless T-Shirts
It used to be that t-shirts with obscure slogans or rebus-like jokes on them marked their wearers as socially marginal and perhaps unhealthily obsessed with cultural arcana. Now internet company Threadless has turned such t-shirts into fan glam (see one of their glammy shirts below). Each shirt the company makes features a design submitted by a member of the site, which other members vote to have printed. Basically, it's Digg for t-shirts, which translates into mass-produced dorkery, with an emphasis on "mass" rather than "dork."

Any authentic nerdy t-shirts left? Any Dragon*Con shirt was and will always remain authentic.

Comic book film industry
Until recently, comic books were the purview of editors who lived in their mothers' basements. Sure there were TV shows and movies devoted to Batman and Superman, two of the industry's biggest franchises. But any comic book more obscure than Spider-Man could never hope to reach eyes that weren't already focused myopically on their local comic book store's new releases rack every Wednesday. These days, comic book writers get movie deals almost before their books hit the stands, and even irascible creators like Alan Moore are getting the splashy Hollywood treatment with From Hell, V for Vendetta and Watchmen. Smaller books like 30 Days of Night and Wanted (starring Angelina Jolie, looking glammy in previews for the film below) have gone celluloid too. Comic books are seriously glam.

Any authentic comic books left? No.

Action figure art
An action figure should be something like a Gray Hulk, lovingly painted and put on display behind a "do not touch" sign. Having a collection of them should be a badge of pure dorkdom, like the 40-year-old virgin in the movie of the same name. But these days, high-end boutiques like Kid Robot have turned the grubby action figure genre into high art with manga-influenced action figures more like sculpture than fannish fetish objects. Having a Frank Kozik bunny (left), or an Attaboy original, is seriously fan glam.

Any authentic action figures left? Limited edition obscure action figures for cancelled science fiction TV shows are still authentic.

Halle Berry photo by Tostie14. Nerd tee from Threadless.

Miller's dark designer's eye made the movie version of Sin City look like beautiful slag, and I can't wait to see what else he's got in store for us in The Spirit. The Eisner comic ended in the 1950s, right after the Spirit went to the moon. Let's hope the moon trip is in the film, because I'd love to see the Miller-ized version of Luna.

The Spirit is currently slated for release in January 2009.

Leaked pics of sexy Scarlett [Hollywood Newsroom]

It's another of those strange, uneven, weeks for comic releases with Marvel taking it easy with the exception of a couple of collections worth noting (Marvel Zombies: Dead Days collects the second series of the "What if Marvel's heroes all became zombies and ate each other?" comedy, while What If? Civil War brings together the last few specials of alternate worlds where Iron Man isn't a dick and Spider-Man didn't sell out entirely.)

And DC is launching some particularly uninspiring series in response. I mean, sure, Batman: Death Mask will probably be several shades of awesome and I'm sure there's an audience for the Marv Wolfman nostalgiafest that is Titans (bringing together all of "The New Teen Titans" again for the first time since... Well, Devin Grayson launched a book called Titans about nine years ago), but The Number Of The Beast? Do fans really want to see Warren Ellis and Jim Lee's creative legacies beaten up so badly that they'll buy a third six-issue series about apocalypse visiting DC's Wildstorm imprint in a row?

No, the real interest of the week is in the independents aisle. The comic version of Wild Cards launches, for one thing, and Brett Ratner's future movie Harbinger revisits its comic past in the Harbinger: The Beginning hardcover collection.

If your retro taste is for something much older, then you may find yourself drawn to the classic 1950s SF pulp found in a reprint of Frank Hampson's beautifully-illustrated Classic Dan Dare: Reign of The Robots, which will make even the most cynical young ones amongst you marvel at just how gorgeous old British comics were, back in the day.

The pick of the week, however, is Aqua Leung, a new graphic novel by Amazing Joy Buzzards creator Mark Andrew Smith with artist Paul Maybury that tells the story of Aqua, an asshole kid who discovers that he's actually the only surviving member of the royal family of Atlantis and sets out to regain his throne, clear his family name and beat up sharks. Even though it already sounds awesome, the book itself is twice as good as you'd expect, and despite it not really being science fiction, it's easily the one thing that you should be leaving your comic store with this week.

Wondering where that comic store would be? Check here. Wondering what else is coming out this week? Check here. Just remember to check out the story about the Atlantean boy king next time you're out.

Talking about how the movie's Times Square set is "kind of realistic but with our own Watchmen overtones," production designer Alex McDowell spends four minutes comparing movie sets to panels from Dave Gibbons' artwork from the series, and earnestly telling you how seriously he's taking his job:

It's really important for us to establish a world that is real to an audience, but absolutely remains faithful to the vision of the graphic novel.

The First Watchmen Video Journal! [ComingSoon.net]

5. Gateway: Less a character than a plot device with two legs - although he was sitting down so often you could rarely tell - Gateway took the "silent man of mystery" role to all new levels during his time with the team, barely speaking but always somehow magically knowing whether to send the rest of the X-Men with his magical teleportation powers without having to be asked back when they lived in the Australian outback and pretended to be dead. Years after they moved back to the US, Gateway was revealed to be the omnipotent keeper of all human knowledge, and then he was killed. Because, apparently, all human knowledge didn't include "how to avoid being killed."

4. Thunderbird: A character so pointless that he himself pointed out how pointless he was in his third appearance, right before being blown up in an exploding aircraft. It was probably meant to be poignant proof that being a hero can sometimes mean that you get blown up, but in reality, all his death did was make fans realize that it's a bad idea to hang onto the outside of an aircraft when it's about to explode. Seriously, outside of his brother Warpath (Their parents liked to give interesting names to their children, apparently), no-one can even remember what Thunderbird's powers were without checking Wikipedia.

3. X-23: There are many plus points to Wolverine's cloned hooker daughter, but sadly none of them are for originality. Or, for that matter, for anything beyond the amusement factor of her being Wolverine's cloned hooker daughter. It's not enough that Marvel came up with the idea of Wolverine having a teenage female clone of himself hanging around, they also had to make her a prostitute catering to masochists in order to cater to the fanboys for whom fantasizing about fucking a teenage female clone of Wolverine just wasn't kinky enough.

2. Slipstream: With the 2001 first appearance of this character - along with his sister, who went under the superhero name "Lifeguard" - Norrin Radd was stripped of the title of "Only superhero whose gimmick is a surfboard". Yes, Slipstream followed in the footsteps and, well, slipstream, of the Silver Surfer with his "warp wave" teleportation powers that were triggered by the use of his special surfboard. Despite his father being the godfather of Australian organized crime (Yes, I don't know why Australia and lame teleporters seems to be a theme here, either) and his being half-alien, Slipstream nonetheless failed to set the world on fire and was depowered within five years of his first appearance.

1. Angel: Yes, I know he was one of the first X-Men and that he's been around for years, but still, you have to face it - Angel sucks. Handsome, rich, and gifted with giant wings that he used to strap to his body so that he could wear a suit in public, Warren Worthington III has long been one of the least interesting characters in the world of the X-Men. He was so dull, in fact, that even turning him blue and replacing his wings with razor-sharp metal ones failed to make him interesting because, let's face it, "I can fly!" really doesn't measure up to "I can shoot laser beams out my eyes" or "I can turn to organic steel and punch shit". The fact that he's still around today is either proof that the nostalgia of comic creators is incredibly strong or that Stan Lee has some wonderful royalty deal making sure that all of his creations stick around while he's still alive. If the X-Men truly are the next step of evolution, you'd think that Mother Nature could have come up with something better than sticking bird wings on a guy's back, after all.