Collider has picked up on a rumor that Hawkman will be the next DC superhero to get the movie treatment. Given the continued lack of success of a Hawkman comic - Like Aquaman, he's one of those characters who keeps getting relaunched without ever really gaining a lot of traction in terms of sales - we're unconvinced, but it's not impossible considering former Hawkman writer Geoff Johns being part of DC Comics' movie braintrust. Maybe we should wait and see how popular his upcoming Smallville guest appearance is.

Meanwhile, Latino Review is reporting that Green Lantern's girlfriend Carol Ferris is close to being cast, and that the choice for the role is between Bond Girl Eva Green, Keri Russell, Gossip Girl's Blake Lively, former Elektra Jennifer Garner and Inglourious Basterds' Diane Kruger. With the movie slated to begin production next month, expect an announcement any day now. We just hope that whoever gets picked knows that she'll probably end up in Star Sapphire's revealing costume in a future sequel...

The 1990s were a pretty weak time for movies based on both video games and superhero comics. On the video game side, there were Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter and a couple of Mortal Kombat films. And on the superhero front, Batman acted out the law of diminishing returns. And that was about it. (I'm going to pretend Steel didn't exist.)

And then in the 2000s, CG visual effects caught up to the amazing superpowered spectacles that comics and games had led us to expect. In 2000, Bryan Singer, well-regarded director of The Usual Suspects, directed X-Men, which was a huge success. And the floodgates of superhero movies opened. Meanwhile, we got movies based on Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and a ton of others.

But superhero movies have vastly outgrossed video-game movies, according to Box Office Mojo: $7.2 billion to $900 million. (And to be fair, the site lists 77 superhero films, and only 28 video-game films.) Not only that, but directors like Singer, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, Jon Favreau and Ang Lee have been willing to venture into superhero films. By contrast, the most well-known video-game directors are people like Paul W.S. Anderson, and... Uwe Boll.

Why is this? There seem to be a few reasons. For one thing, many of the most successful video games haven't yet made the leap to movies. Neill Blomkamp's Halo film could have been the X-Men of video-game movies, but it fell apart. Ditto for Gore Verbinski's BioShock movie, which seems to have stalled out due to budgetary concerns.

And it's possible that translating video games to movies requires a higher level of CG mastery than translating comic books — the CG renditions of superhero comics just have to live up to our memories of 2-D pen-and-ink drawings. A live-action CG rendition of a video game, meanwhile, has to look cooler than the already impressive computer graphics most games serve up these days.

But also, movie adaptations of video-game films have generally employed the same kinds of story logic you used to see in the Joel Schumacher Batman films. Like, really — the Doom film, which featured evil alien parasites whose tongues could tell if you were genetically evil or not. Let me just repeat that: They had tongues that could genetically scan you and figure out if you were evil. No superhero movie in the past decade has shown that level of disrespect for the audience or the material. Sure, the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil films were a lot better — but even the mediocre superhero films showed a certain commitment to telling a semi-coherent story. Most comic-book heroes have decades of stories in the bank, however contradictory and full of holes, and the films have gotten slightly better about drawing on them.

But maybe the crux of it is that superhero films learned the difference between respect for the format, and respect for the characters. In some superhero films earlier in the decade, you saw some half-assed attempts at making "comic book panels" and captions on the screen — this was especially heinous in Ang Lee's Hulk. But as the decade went on, superhero films learned that the format wasn't what made these worlds awesome. Meanwhile, even as video games became more cinematic, the movies based on them haven't been able to distinguish between paying homage to video-game action, versus translating it to the different format.

But the other thing that becomes apparent, after you look at all of the superhero and video-game films of the past decade, is that the overall level of quality of both has been pretty bad. For every X-Men 2, Spider-Man or The Dark Knight, there are plenty of films like X-Men 3, Wolverine, Catwoman, Daredevil, and so on. Uwe Boll would have to work overtime and weekends to make a film half as bad as Catwoman. Superhero movies have won, in part, due to sheer quantity — if you generate a large enough mountain of crap, some good stuff will rise out of it. But also, a movie doesn't have to be good to make ten squillion quatloos.

But one thing's for sure: The House That Bryan Singer Built won't stand forever. Something's going to come along and knock superhero movies off their perch, establishing a new Hollywood feeding frenzy. Will it be video-game films? Maybe, if the ten video game movies that are in the pipeline actually get made, and achieve Dark Knight/Iron Man levels of success. It really only takes one movie to make half a billion dollars to turn on the firehose of copycats and sequels.

And even though Avatar isn't based on a video game, it's enough like a video game that if it has a strong enough second and third weekend, you could see the gears (of war) turning in the studio execs' heads. Avatar could turn out to be the movie that supercharged the video-game movie genre, since its strengths can so easily translate to recreating Dead Space or Bioshock. And of course if Tron Legacy does gangbusters next year, it could also provide a shot in the arm.

But right now, the up-and-coming genre seems to be toy movies instead. The two Transformers movies did superhero numbers, and appealed to a similar sense of nostalgia and escapism to superheroes. And there are tons and tons of toys out there waiting for their moment on the big screen — and unlike video-game companies, toy companies don't have any concerns about making sure the movies do justice to their existing stories. A toy movie doesn't have to tie in with existing continuity or jibe with the stories that have already told. A toy movie has one purpose only: To sell toys.

And that means toy movies can be dumber, and yet also more spectacular, than superhero films and video-game films combined. Just look at the Transformers films — they're so overstuffed and bloated with nonsense, they can barely move, but they have the power to spew crap for miles in all directions. And now there are films based on Monopoly, Battleship, Viewmaster, Stretch Armstrong, Battle Bots, and countless others on the way. Actual directors, like Ridley Scott (Monopoly) and Peter Berg (Battleship), are signing on to these projects.

Toy movies could well win out in the next decade, because the key to success will be casting the widest net for nostalgia among adults aged 18-49. Everybody feels vaguely nostalgic for Monopoly or Battleship — and it's just a matter of time before we get Steven Spielberg's Sorry! or David Lynch's Yahtzee. It's like the perfect combination: Everybody feels nostalgic, but nobody will complain that they got it wrong. How on Earth do you get a Yahtzee movie wrong?

It already seems like we're maxed out on superhero films, when Warner Bros. puts the kibosh on Superman and Wonder Woman movies and a Green Lantern film starring "it" boy Ryan Reynolds struggles to get made. If Marvel follows through on its plans to put out four movies a year, we could discover just how many superheroic origins the movie-going audience can stand. So maybe we'll see more of a blend of action/nostalgia pics, with films based on comics, toys, video games and other sources. Or maybe toy movies will just crush every other film genre, until there's nothing but massive CG recreations of your old plastic playthings, as far as the eye can see.

Greg Cox is one of the most prolific, and successful, authors of media tie-in novels, and he's won a loyal following for his many Star Trek books, including a trilogy filling in the backstory of much-loved villain Khan Noonien Singh. He's also written tie-in novels based on Alias, The 4400, Roswell, Underworld, Fantastic Four and Iron Man. He's also novelized the movies Ghost Rider, Daredevil and several others, plus DC Comics' big crossovers.

We talked to him about his new Terminator Salvation tie-in novel Cold War, out now from Titan Books, plus some of his other recent projects.

Cold War uses the same timeline as McG's recent movie, but only includes a couple of characters from the film: The main character is Losenko, the Russian general who appears briefly in the film, mentioning that Skynet is looking for Kyle Reese, and we learn all about Lysenko's backstory. Says Cox, "When I watched the movie, I was probably the only person who was mentally hanging on every scene with general Losenko," watching for every detail about the character to include in the book. Also in the book is General Ashdown (Michael Ironsides), the resistance leader who lives on a submarine. John Connor only pops in the book as a sort of mythological figure, giving inspirational speeches over the radio.

The new book takes place in Alaska and Russia, in two different time frames: 2003, right after Judgment Day, and then 2018. In 2003, the survivors are coping with the aftermath of the nuclear war, and Skynet is attacking them with really primitive Terminators, and the technology is close to what really existed in 2003. And then in 2018, Skynet has all the same tech it has in the movie — plus snowmobile Terminators, to navigate those frozen northern areas. It sounds like Cox had a lot of fun with the frosty settings:

My big gimmick was snowmobile Terminators. There's also a giant Terminator train. The trick is to try to find stuff in the [same] universe, that's slightly different. What haven't we seen yet? We haven't seen a Terminator train. The main reason for setting it in Alaska [was to include things like] dogsled chases, grizzly bears, avalanches, volcanos... We've seen so many chases on California highways, with fire trucks and emergency vehicles. I was looking for a whole different environment, not just recapitulating what people had done before.

Cox is somewhat surprised that the Terminator/grizzly bear fight has been the main thing people have talked about in his novel. "You can't have a Terminator in Alaska and not have him fight a grizzly bear. Okay, it's gratuitous, but how can I resist having a grizzly bear fight a Terminator?" And now that people have been so excited by it, "from now on, I put a grizzly bear in all my books." Spoiler alert: The bear doesn't stand a chance against a Terminator, says Cox.

There's also a Western-style train heist and loads of detail on a Russian submarine, plus lots of gritty war-movie-style action. Cox watched tons of World War II movies on TCM, read every Tom Clancy novel for the submarine details, and did loads of research on the world right after a nuclear war.

Cox says he watched Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles "religiously," but Titan Books and Halcyon were adamant that his book couldn't contain any references to T:SCC continuity. So don't expect Cameron to show up, but if anyone ever green-lights SCC novels, Cox will be first in line. The Terminator people were very keen to make sure Cox's book fit in with their vision of the universe, including making sure Skynet wasn't developing high technology too early after Judgment Day — and that meant loads of conference calls, notes and intensive feedback at every stage of the process.

Wrapping up The 4400

The amount of feedback you get from the licensors on a licensed property depends heavily on whether it's an ongoing concern, says Cox. With The 4400, for example, Cox wrote one tie-in novel while the series was on the air, and went through four different drafts in response to feedback. But when Cox wrote the first of two novels wrapping up the series after it ended, Welcome To Promise City, he got a more-or-less free hand. (The other novel, available now, is written by David Mack.) Cox, Mack and their editor cooked up an ending to the series together.

Except for tons of feedback from the fans. Cox says as soon as it was announced that he was writing a 4400 novel explaining what happened after the show's cancellation, he was bombarded with emails from fans all over the world demanding to know what he was going to do with their favorite subplots and characters. "I can't claim we wrapped up every loose end, but we tried to wrap up the important one," says Cox. He and Mack debated with their editor whether to tie up the end of the series with a neat bow, or leave a few things slightly open-ended in case they ended up doing more novels. They settled on the second approach, so if the books sell amazingly well, you might see further continuations of the story.

Novelizing Final Crisis

Cox novelized Infinite Crisis, 52 and Countdown for DC Comics, and now he's novelized Final Crisis, Grant Morrison's narrative-shredding uber-crossover starring the evil Darkseid. How on earth do you take Morrison's loopy storytelling and convert it into a single novel?

There was a lot of condensing involved, Cox admits:

There's not a lot of connective tissue in that series. [There are] a lot of scenes that jump from place to place. I've got to admit, the book is probably a bit more linear than the comic book, especially issue seven, which was jumping all over time. I actually just tried to tell it a bit more in chronological order, and maybe simplify it a bit.

The biggest problem with novelizing one of these sprawling DC crossovers is figuring out what subplots and tie-ins to leave out. The first week Cox was working on the Infinite Crisis novelization, he was trying to include all of the spin-off issues, including things like Rann-Thanagar War One-Shot, and every other miniseries and crossover issue, "and I realized this book is going to take me ten years, and it's going to be the size of The Wheel Of Time." So he began paring things down. Similarly, the Final Crisis book ignores a lot of tie-ins, sadly including the 3-D Superman tie-in series. "I apologize if your favorite scene is not in this book, but there's no way I can get in the 3-D tie in superman issue and the Batman issues and the special tie-in issue of Secret Six."

With novelizations of comics crossovers, "it's all about streamlining." It's the opposite of novelizing movie scripts, which is all about fleshing out the story and characters and adding new stuff to turn a 90-page script into a 300-to-400-page novel. "The script for Ghost Rider was not a terribly long script," notes Cox. He recalls coming across the novelization for Snakes On A Plane and marveling that Christa Faust had managed to get 400 pages out of that film. He felt like sending her fan mail.

Should Khan Come Back?

As the author of three Khan books, Cox is conflicted about whether Khan should appear in the next Star Trek movie. On the one hand, recasting Khan seems almost impossible, given how much Ricardo Montalban put his stamp on the character. On the other, Cox might have said the same thing about recasting Kirk, Spock and McCoy — and J.J. Abrams and crew pulled that off. The real question is, "do you do Botany Bay Khan, or crazy burned-out Wrath Of Khan Khan? There's the young virile but not quite crazy Khan, and then there's the obsessed spent-15-years-in-Hell Khan. And then there's the whole messy [subject of the] Eugenics Wars — when exactly did they take place? Did they take place during the Bill Clinton years?"

Cox is writing one of four new novels that take place in the movie's continuity, picking up where the movie left off. He's written a draft of his novel, but hasn't gotten feedback from Paramount yet, so everything is subject to change. But at least for now, his novel takes place six months after the end of the movie, and follows Captain Kirk and his crew on a stand-alone adventure. And he hints that, if Paramount approves, the fact that the Vulcans are refugees scattered across the universe will play a part in his novel's plot.

As we all know, Batman's alleged death in DC's big Final Crisis series actually just saw him dumped amongst cavemen with his trusty utility belt, while Dick Grayson took over the cape and cowl in current times. But today's announcement of the six-issue Return series shows that getting him back to the future is going to require a lot of pitstops - and alternate Batman costumes. Writer Grant Morrison explains:

The first episode is set in the Late-Paleolithic Era, the second is in Pilgrim-era Gotham Village, and we also get to see Gotham in Western or noir style. Each of the stories is a twist on a different "pulp hero" genre - so there's the caveman story, the witchhunter/Puritan adventurer thing, the pirate Batman, the cowboy, the P.I. - as a nod toward those mad old 1950s comics with Caveman Batman and Viking Batman adventures. It's Bruce Wayne's ultimate challenge... So far I've had him overcome the Devil, Madness and Death; now we see him, truly lost, amnesiac, and stripped down to basic human survival mode in some extremely hostile environments and unfamiliar situations. He's the best fighter in his world, he's one of the smartest and most driven men who ever lived, but we've seen him outwit the Joker 10,000 times. This was a way of taking the character off the grid, as they say, and reminding readers what kind of man he is and what he's capable of. If you wonder why Batman is so cool - here's why Batman is so cool.

With each issue illustrated by a different artist, The Return Of Bruce Wayne is set to launch in April next year. We were sold as soon as we saw those costumes. Is it too late to lobby for 1980s New Wave Dandy Batman?

Grant Morrison on return of original Batman [USA Today]

The line will start with Superman: Earth One, by J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis, and Batman: Earth One by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. Not unlike Marvel's similar Ultimate line of new continuity (or, for that matter, DC's earlier All Star attempt at the same), these new books look set to try and create a movie-friendly entry point for curious readers.

Both books will debut at some point in 2010, which co-incidentally happens to be not only the first year of DC Entertainment, the new cross-media incarnation of DC Comics, but also the 75th anniversary of the publication of the first DC comic, New Fun.

DCU in 2010: Welcome To Earth One [The Source]

By accident more than design, Rhodes has ended up possessing multiple characteristics that sum up the black superhero experience. Sure, he may not have the word "Black" in his superhero name (See: Black Panther, Black Lightning, Black Goliath, the Black Racer or even the Black Musketeers. Yes, that's right; I said The Black Musketeers), and he may not ride a skateboard - Or not that we've seen, at least, who knows what he does in his spare time? - but look how many other checkboxes he's managed to tick:

He's A Sidekick At Heart
If there's one rule for black superheroes, it's that they're never the stars of the show (Or, at least, not for very long; attempts like Black Lightning or the Milestone books are always, sadly, done in by falling sales). Yes, you could make an argument that Black Panther contradicts that, but I'd just invoke the "He's the exception that proves the" clause and move on quickly*. Despite headlining his own books twice in his career - something that doesn't really mean anything, no matter how good those books were; remember, Marvel once published Street Poet Ray and Power Pachyderms, so anything goes there - Jim Rhodes is, and always will be, a sidekick to Tony Stark's Iron Man. His armor was created by Tony. His training and experience all came from Tony. Hell, even his reason for becoming a superhero in the first place is Tony and that whole alcoholic breakdown thing. Sure, he never had to deal with the embarrassment of having his name second in the title to a non-existent superhero (Poor Sam Wilson, having to shoulder Captain America And The Falcon during the post-Watergate period when Cap had quit. They couldn't have renamed it The Falcon for those months just to be polite?), but let's not kid ourselves: James Rhodes is defined by Tony Stark.

He's A Replacement
And how did Rhodey get his start as a superhero again? Oh, that's right; he replaced Tony as Iron Man. Just like John Stewart got his start replacing Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. And John Henry Irons, replacing Superman back when he died. Oh, and don't forget Monica Rambeau, Marvel's second Captain Marvel. Or, hell, the Justice Society of America's Mr. Terrific or Johnny/JJ Thunder, the Legion of Superheroes' Computo and Invisible Kid, DC's Mister Miracle (and, for that matter, Manhattan Guardian) or even The Spectre (And, again, who can forget Black Goliath, who replaced Hank Pym's original White Goliath - except, of course, the "White" was silent in his name). Even the characters that aren't actively replacing existing characters somehow manage to be replacing people we haven't seen - DC's Vixen and Marvel's Black Panther are both continuing long lines of heroes. When do we get to see white superheroes picking up the mantle of black characters? Only once - and even that was the result of a retcon to offer political commentary (Captain America, who it turned out was following in the footsteps of an earlier black Cap - who not only never called himself Captain America, but also was unknown to Cap when he took up the shield. So maybe that doesn't count after all).

He's "Edgy"
Let's ignore, for a second, the James Rhodes of the Iron Man movies, and instead look at the comic book version... A hero so edgy that he doesn't uphold the status quo, he takes on corporate interests that are raping and pillaging our planet (as per the current War Machine series). Because, that's what black superheroes do, apparently: they don't join in with everyone else to get the job done like we expect, they see the bigger picture and deal with social injustice (The Falcon, Black Lightning), play the outsider card (Bishop, Black Panther) and/or are willing to step outside the law for the greater good (Hardware, Luke Cage). It's incredibly rare to see a black superhero without some form of characteristic that puts them at odds with the status quo, and even when that does happen - John Stewart, Captain Marvel - they'll find themselves rewritten with completely new personalities at some point to make them stand out and get edgy again (Not that I'm still bitter than the jazz-listening, pacifist architect became an former army sharpshooter with a "get the mission done no matter what" mentality or anything. Oh, okay, I am; I loved Green Lantern: Mosaic).

He's A Cyborg
Yes, James Rhodes is a cyborg these days. Just like DC's Cyborg, from Teen Titans. Or Marvel's Deathlok. Or DC's John Henry Irons**. Or Marvel's Bishop, from the X-Men. Or even Iron Fist's girlfriend, Misty Knight (one of the Heroes For Hire/Daughters of The Dragon). What is it about high-profile black characters finding themselves turned into part-robot? Some kind of clever commentary on black culture being assimiliated into the white corporate machine, or white creators having a fear of a black robotic planet? I have no idea, but it's kind of odd, isn't it?

We're sure that, when James Rhodes was first created, his real-life parents had no idea he'd one day step into this proud and illustrious role. But he's here now, and there's only one way to celebrate the fact - Marvel has to cancel his series, just to underline that whole "sidekick" thing once again. Luckily, they've already taken care of that.

* - Yes, Todd McFarlane's Spawn would, in theory, refute this idea, being just about to make it to its 200th issue. But two things are worth remembering: #1: Yes, its titular hero may be black, but he wears a full-face mask to hide that fact from unsuspecting readers, and #2: Given the writing in Spawn, that whole mask thing and that fact that, even unmasked, his scarred face hides his ethnicity, anyone could make the argument that Spawn is an entirely race-neutral character.

** - At least, in John Henry Irons' case, he actually created the technology used to make himself into a cyborg. In fact, Irons is one of the few completely proactive black heroes in comics who doesn't rely on other characters for his powers/technology/operations. He's like Black Panther, but without the mysticism and ruling a country.

Magical Realism
Air
What It's About: At its heart, Air is a love story between Blythe - a flight attendant who's afraid of flying - and Zayn, who is as much a mystery to himself as everyone else. But Air is much, much weirder, and more interesting, than that: For one thing, Blythe is a natural hyperpraxis pilot, which means that she can travel to places, times and ideas that don't, theoretically, exist... a skill she's honing with the help of Amelia Earhart, who by the way is still alive. For another, there's a war brewing between terrorists over control of the skies, and for a third, certain people may be very interested in that whole "hyperpraxis" thing. A series that's gentle, human, full of wonder and emotion, and at times just beautiful, Air is unlike most comics - and television shows and movies, for that matter - out there.
Where To Start: Two collections are available, Letters From Lost Countries and Flying Machine. Pick both up; the series is great, but the first collection (Letters) stops at a frustratingly bad point, and you need to read the second to fully appreciate what's going on.
Click here for a preview of Air.

Post-Invasion SF
Resurrection
What It's About: We've all seen stories about aliens invading Earth, but what happens after they leave? FlashForward producer and Green Lantern movie scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim's series starts with that idea and spins out a series that's part Y: The Last Man, part Lost and all-over fascinating. Why did the aliens invade? Where did they go? No-one knows yet, but considering they've left behind technology and even one of their own, you can sure that we'll probably find out somewhere down the line... but along the way, you can get sucked into the more down to earth stories of the humans left behind. Even if one of them is former president Bill Clinton, who was revealed to be more alive than everyone thought at the end of the most recent issue.
Where To Start: There's already a collection of the first black and white series out there, but we'd actually recommend waiting until the start of next year, when the 368 page Resurrection Vol 1: Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete first series and the first seven issues of the current series, hits the shelves.
Click here for a preview of Resurrection.

Urban Fantasy
Locke & Key
What It's About: Ignore the punniness of the premise - The Locke family move to the family estate of Keyhouse, wherein there are magic keys that can do various weird and wonderful things, which puts them right in the middle of some bad things that're about to happen - and instead, embrace and enjoy those weird and wonderful things that the keys can do: like open doors that turn people into ghosts or even open their own heads so that you can reach in and take out unpleasant memories. Mixing horror, fantasy, comedy and family drama and featuring moments that are genuinely unsettling, Locke & Key deserves all the praise it's gotten, and a lot more.
Where To Start: There're two collections out already; Welcome To Lovecraft and Head Games. Start at the beginning (Lovecraft), bearing in mind that Head Games is the better, and also the more freaky.
Click here for a preview of Locke & Key.

Nostalgia Done Right
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka
What It's About: A reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (with some nods to his other work thrown in), Naoki Urasawa's Pluto is inventive, dramatic and in almost every single way, a lesson in how to take reboot and update an old concept the right way. Instead of retreading the old status quo, the series centers around robot detective Gesicht, who's investigating the murder of various high profile robots around the world... Murders that may have been committed by another robot. Even if you don't get sucked in by the economy and subtlety of the writing, there's no way you could fail to admire Urasawa's amazing artwork.
Where To Start: Unsurprisingly, Vol. 1. The seventh volume of the series is due in January, but that's still too far away; when you finish the first volume, you'll be hooked and get through the other five in days.
(No preview available, due to licensing issues. Sorry.)

Crime/Romance/SF/Everything
King City
What It's About: I've written before about Brandon Graham's stunning future crime book, but now that it's being re-released in an easier-to-find serialization by Image Comics, I'll use the opportunity to gush again; the bastard child of an orgy that included Moebius, Vaughn Bode, Jamie Hewlett and Osamu Tezuka (and maybe a little Alex Toth, come to think of it), King City is the tale of one thief, his broken heart, his cat that can literally do anything if given the right drugs, werewolves with war trauma, stolen organs, sidekicks in wrestling masks and pretty much all that's good in the world, all wrapped in something that takes noir's cliches and gives them a makeover laced with enough absurdity and love that it all seems new again. The whole thing manages to be both laid back and electrifyingly kinetic, and your heart will break for multiple reasons while reading it. Really, really worth tracking down.
Where To Start: The serialized reissue is on #2, so picking up back issues from the start really shouldn't be a problem. The original Tokyopop release may offer more story in one sitting, but the Image re-release comes with bigger pages and brand new material to accompany the serialized reprint.
Click here for a preview of King City.

Let's get the Mythical stuff out of the way first, shall we? Marvel's (Incredible) Hercules begins his latest and greatest storyline in this week's special one-shot, Assault On New Olympus, which guest-stars Spider-Man and leads into the regular series with plenty of other guest stars in issues ahead.

Not to be outdone, DC collects the recent Wonder Woman storyline Rise Of The Olympian in both hardcover and softcover, and it's well worth a look - I admit to being thrown by it when it was being published in single issues, but the destination is worth sticking around for; it's also the largest scale adventure for the character in years, as well. DC also has the first issue of Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love, a spin-off from Bill Willingham's Fables that sees fairytales' most deadly secret spy go globetrotting on her latest dangerous mission with wit, panache and some great art from Shawn McManus, for those who like characters who've been around before there were comics.

Talking of long-lasting characters, Ricardo Delgado's dinosaur epic Age of Reptiles returns this week with a new series, The Journey, which shows why dinosaur migration isn't as simple as it sounds. If you go in expecting an unusual, challenging but surprisingly beautiful read, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Much less beautiful (by design), Anthrax's Scott Ian writes Lobo: Highway To Hell, the first issue of which is out tomorrow and sure to be, uh, "heavy." Or something.

For those looking for more superheroic thrills, DC spins out The Great Ten from 52 (A plan only slightly flawed in that 52 finished over two years ago, and few people remember who The Great Ten were; they were the government-sponsored Chinese superteam). Marvel launches Paul Cornell's new Black Widow: Deadly Origin series, as well as a new Deathlok series (Deathlok: Pretty much, "What if Captain America was a cyborg with a bad attitude in the future?" It's as good/bad as that idea may sound to you).

And I guide you away from those in the tights and bright colors to my current hometown of Portland, where Greg Rucka's new series Strumptown is set. Yes, Stumptown (Rucka's new detective series, which he talks about right here, but comes from love of The Rockford Files and Magnum PI) may lack any sign of supernatural, sci-fi or urban fantasy hallmarks that would make it io9 material, but nonetheless, it's likely to be the best thing you could spend your money on at the comic store this week. Consider it recommended.

Just like last week, the week before that and every single one of these posts, you can meet all of the comics released to comic stores tomorrow on this here Diamond Distributors shipping list, and then find your closest comic store to purchase all the goodies mentioned here. You know it makes sense.

As near as I can find out, there's only one horror movie that actually involves Alzheimer's directly: in Renny Harlin's Deep Blue Sea (1999), scientists are trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's. So (as one naturally would) they genetically engineer SUPER SHARKS with amazing brains. What can possibly go wrong? Oh, yes. The shark thing, is what can go wrong.

Here's a good chunk of that movie, which conveniently starts out with the foolhardy scientists explaining their scheme to Samuel L. Jackson, and ends with indications that things are going wrong. (I do not think Jackson, at any point, utters the words, "Get these motherfucking super-sharks out of this motherfucking seabase." More's the pity.)

But that movie just uses Alzheimer's as a plot device. If you're looking for stories that actually play on our fears of Alzheimer's and what it means to our tenuous grasp of personhood, you have to look a bit further afield. And as Sir Michael Caine says, Alzheimer's is scarier than any shark, no matter how big.

But here are the ways in which i think we're starting to see the rise of horror that takes about Alzheimer's, obliquely rather than dead on.

Forgetting:

There's been a rise in stories about people's memories getting siphoned off. I have a vague but vivid memory of reading a comic book (or maybe seeing a TV show) with baddie who exults in erasing people's memories, and says things like, "I just took your memories of your mother," with a smirk. But I can't for the life of me remember where I saw this — almost as if my memory had been erased, fiendishly. And googling has turned up nothing. (Any suggestions?)

(Update: Thanks to everyone who commented. I think Ian Cyr is right, and it's a recent issue of Green Lantern Corps. by Dave Gibbons et al., featuring a baddie with mental powers. Although, someone reminded me The Surgeon General does something quite similar in Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and, yes, Gibbons again. But it's fascinating how many other examples people came up with.)

In any case, there are lots of other examples of recent stories about mind-erasure. Dollhouse is an obvious example, which asks explicitly what's left of us after our memories have been stolen away. (And comes up with a moderately hopeful answer, over time: There's still something that remains even after our minds are gone, although it's hard to define.)

Heroes has the walking plot device, the Haitian, who mostly just shows up and zaps some of your memories whenever HRG or someone else needs a little memory lapse — then wanders off to do his own thing, until he's needed to henchman up again. But there is that one super-creepy bit where HRG is interrogating his former mentor in Russia, and he gets the Haitian to zap bits of the mentor's memory, piece by piece, gloating the whole time. You get the full scariness of being unable to remember your mother, or your wife, or other bits of your past.

Torchwood season two had Adam, the guy who insinuates himself into your memories. Smallville had Lex getting some super-advanced electro-shock therapy, which erased seven months of his memory, and being shattered as a result. DC Comics grappled with the ethics of the magician Zatanna erasing people's memories in "Identity Crisis." Acheron Hades in the Thursday Next series has shown a propensity for zapping people's memories as well. Various X-Men have gone around zapping memories of late, including Rogue, Professor X and Jean Gray. (And in
one recent X-Men comic, Emma Frost sadistically erases an assassin's only happy memory, vowing to do worse if the assassin comes back. In Mark Millar's Authority issues, the Evil Doctor also gets off on nuking people's memories.

The 2001 movie Time Lapse features someone who's been dosed with a memory-erasing drug, rushing to stop an evil nuclear scheme before his memory goes away completely. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind featured people paying to have memories selectively erased, only to discover how terrifying that is in practice. And Dark City was all about people's memories being rearranged every night.

I feel like this is just scratching the surface — there's a lot of fiction right now talking about how fragile your memories are — and how, if they go, what's left may or may not be recognizeably "you."

The shambling hordes:

And then there's the fact that we're seeing a proliferation of zombie movies, which are all about people who are falling apart physically and have lost all of their personality and sense of identity. As someone who's lost a few close relatives to Alzheimer's, slowly and horribly, it's easy for me to recognize how zombies are a metaphor for this dissolution of the self. People with Alzheimer's are still conscious and aware, they still move around and seem to respond to stimuli, but as disease progresses they get less and less capable of reasoning or having any kind of meaningful interaction with anyone around them. It's heart breaking and horrible — the person you knew is still there, but no longer really him- or herself.

As I pointed out a while ago, the zombie movie which comes closest to depicting the awfulness of losing a parent to Alzheimer's is Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, which is also sometimes called Braindead:

Quasi-zombie movie I Am Legend even makes the link clearer by showing that the "zombies" still have vestiges of humanity and are capable of caring about each other. In the movie's original ending, Robert Neville is able to get through to the zombies and help them remember they used to be people — he comes up with a cure for their condition, and is able to get through to them. Because their real problem isn't that they're feral or mindless — it's that they've forgotten themselves.

The movie Fido also plays with this fairly explictly, by having the main character's dad become a docile, enslaved zombie by the end. He's still recognizeably the same old dad, but the biggest change is that he's lost most of his mind.

Obviously, a huge part of the zombie fad simply comes from the fact that they're a cool way to have an apocalyptic scenario — they're unstoppable and nasty, and if they bite you, you're screwed. They have many of the hallmarks of a good monster: loud, relentless, biting, overwhelming. But at the same time, as the zombie genre continues to expand and diversify, people are using zombies as metaphors for a bunch of different things — and one of those things, clearly, is having a loved one disappear, inexorably into the mists of forgetting.

So if it's true that we're only just seeing the beginning of the onslaught of dementia in our rapidly aging societies, you can expect to see more fantastical and science-fictional stories that attempt to capture the madness of it all. As Caine says, no monster can ever be as scary as Alzheimer's... but some monsters can help us come to terms with it.

Thanks to Kevin Schmidt, Morgan Johnson, Capt. Snowdon, Lynae Straw, Michael Wilson, Martina de la Cruz, Nivair H. Gabriel and anyone else I missed.

While present-day Marvel finds itself beginning to tie up their uber-story Dark Reign with this week's Dark Reign: The List - Wolverine and Dark Reign: The List - Punisher, the future presents itself in the form of the Wolverine: Old Man Logan hardcover collection, which can best be described as "What if Mad Max met The Unforgiven, only it was about Wolverine and took place in the future and guest-starred lots of over the top parodies of other Marvel characters as their own 'descendants'?" A particularly guilty pleasure, perhaps, but definitely one that hits a particular target.

Similarly on the "If you like this kind of thing, you'll love this," DC's Ambush Bug: Year None finally finishes its six-issue run with this week's seventh issue - which replaces the much-delayed and rumored-to-be-so-controversial-it-was-killed-by-editorial sixth, originally due out months ago... and that explanation is, oddly enough, one of the best examples of the sense of humor required to enjoy Keith Giffen's weird affectionate superhero parody. More straight-ahead DC thrills can be found in Arkham Reborn - which begins the reconstruction of Batman's favorite lunatic asylum, destroyed after Bruce Wayne died/went time-traveling involuntarily - and World's Finest, which brings together characters from Superman and Batman's supporting casts to solve crimes and compare sales figures.

Elsewhere, Dark Horse has a special issue of the Hellboy spinoff Abe Sapien, as part of its new initiative to get readers to try out new series and franchises (or comics, in the first place; the upcoming Doctor Horrible special is likely to entice some newbies into the fold, I think.)

And those who like that kind of thing are highly recommended to also pick up SLG's Pinnochio: Vampire Slayer graphic novel, wherein Gepetto's little boy realizes that life without cutting your nose off to stake the undead with just isn't worth wishing for. Yes, it's as odd and wonderful as that sounds.

Those looking for nostalgic thrills updated for a new cynical age could do a lot worse than the collection of GI Joe: Cobra, the mini-series I raved about recently (It really is very good.) And for those looking for a beautifully illustrated, touchingly gentle piece of storytelling, the hardcover collection of P. Craig Russell's adaptation of The Sandman: The Dream Hunters can't be beaten; I'd even argue that it's better than Gaiman's prose original.

Just like every week, the complete list of comics reaching comic stores tomorrow can be found here, and your local comic store can be found here. And, if you happen to have some spare change left in your pocket once you've picked up everything you're looking for...? Grab a copy of Boom!'s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep #5; I've got a text piece about Philip K. Dick in the back, and I need all the help I can get, coming after Warren Ellis, Matt Fraction, Rockne S. O'Bannon and Ed Brubaker's efforts...

The series, announced (fittingly) on the stroke of midnight last night, is created by Voodoo Heart writer Snyder with a second story running throughout the first five issues written by King in his first all-new comic work on characters he's created. Tracing an alternate history of an America populated by vampires, the series will launch in March next year.

Look for an interview with Snyder about the series later this week.

Scott Snyder and Stephen King to write a new horror comic book series, American Vampire [Graphic Content]

A straight plot recap of "Mayhem of The Music Meister!" wouldn't even scratch the surface of what made it such a joy to watch (But, if you need one: The Music Meister is a villain who can control people through music. He falls in love with Black Canary because of her singing voice, but even though she falls under his control like everyone else on the planet - with the exception of Batman - she's ultimately his undoing because of her canary cry superpower); it was, even more than usually for this series, all about the execution. Whether you came for the promise of Doctor Horrible-esque superheroic musical comedy, fanboy-baiting with characters like Green Arrow and Black Canary taking the first step down the road that's already led them to marriage in the comics, or just plain fun cartoonery with dancing gorillas, it's fair to say that this week, Batman: The Brave and The Bold delivered something for everyone.

It wasn't just NPH's dulcet tones that made this week's long-awaited episode of B&B so much fun; everyone involved raised their game, whether it was writers Michael Jelenic and James Tucker offering some of the best dialogue of the series so far (Who doesn't love Batman when he gets all pun-laded and sincere?) as well as a plot that's so ridiculous it approaches camp perfection (Never mind Batman singing, the explanation of how he managed to hit those notes afterwards was hilarious), or regular voice actors Diedrich Bader, John Di Maggio and especially Grey DeLisle (amongst many others) shamelessly singing their hearts out as well as managing to deliver their between-songs lines with straight faces. Although the casting coup and nerd cache of NPH has been getting all the plaudits for this ep, everyone involved did an amazing job.

After this, it'll be tough not to see the regular lunacy of the series as something of a comedown - but, at the same time, it was the uniqueness of the whole thing that made it as special as it was. Still, considering every jail in Gotham City is fitted with a revolving door and staffed by unreliable guards, is it really too much to hope that we might see a reprise sometime next season?

Let's quickly get the superhero stuff out of the way, shall we? DC is launching a new Azrael series, mixing Batman and The DaVinci Code for a new religious hero to light Gotham's streets. Or something.

DC is also putting out a hardcover collection of the much-delayed, but much-awesome Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds series, that redefined the Legion of Super-Heroes franchise at least until the next reboot.

Marvel sees that collection and raises Captain America: Road to Reborn, another hardcover collection, this time of the Cap issues leading up to Steve Rogers' return. Marvel also offers Dark Wolverine Vol. 1: The Prince, a collection of the first solo stories starring Wolverine's bastard (in many senses of the word) son, and the special issue Dark Reign: The List - Hulk, in which gamma irradiated monsters come face to face with Marvel's current New World Order (I predict smashing).

Keeping outside of monsters for the time being, Nexus: Space Opera and Star Trek: Mission's End offer your fill of interstellar drama for the week, with the former bringing back the cult space cop superhero from its 1980s indie comic heyday and the latter offering a take on the final days of James Kirk's original five-year mission. Sticking with movies, the first issue of GI Joe Movie: Snake Eyes lets Ray Park, the movie's own silent ninja, co-write a story about his own character.

But none of those, as fine as they are - and Nexus and Star Trek are both particularly fine - hold a candle to Image Comics' reissue of Five Fists of Science, Matt Fraction and Steven Saunders' alternate-history tale of Twain and Tesla teaming up to save the world from forces more ancient and deadly than many could imagine. If ever there was a book I could eagerly recommend to the majority of io9 readers, it'd be this one. Go forth and buy.

Oh, but not yet. We've still got the Hallowe'enish books to go! You know about Angel Vs. Frankenstein after yesterday's preview, but IDW also has Frankenstein's Mobster, a pun-laden, funny gangster romp recasting of Mary Shelley's misunderstood monster, and Spike Omnibus, a collection of stories about Joss Whedon's other vampire with a soul, for horror fans this week.

Marvel, meanwhile, has the first issue of The Stand: Soul Survivors, a new series adapting part of the Stephen King novel, and DC are putting out their annual DC Universe Hallowe'en Special filled with spooky shorts starring superhero favorites. 'Tis the season, after all.

Whether you're looking for things going bump in the night, or giant steampunk inventions designed to scare the world into peace, you'll be able to find it on this week's shipping list from Diamond Distributors, and then inside your local comic store. But, seriously: At least leaf through Five Fists Of Science. You'll thank me afterwards.

OMAC is one of those characters that has a great concept that almost no-one has been able to do anything with: Basically, he's a nobody who gets retrofitted without his knowledge or consent to become the ultimate soldier, One Man Army Corps (or OMAC, for short). After years of attempts to update the character, work the character into regular superhero universe continuity and just generally redo the concept altogether, the comic version of the character seems pretty broken, but the Brave and Bold version managed to get everything right by... well, playing it relatively straight.

"When OMAC Attacks" wasn't the show's best episode, nor an obvious choice to bring the show back after its summer break - Both of those would be next week's musical episode - but it was entertaining enough, even for non-Kirby enthusiasts (Kirby fans like me would've spent the episode going "Is that really Kafka from the comic? Seriously? Awesome!"); using OMAC as an illustration of classic cartoon moral "Sometimes, it's better not to fight" was a smart move, balanced by the use of alter ego Buddy Blank as last-minute coward-made-good, saving Batman from mysterious villain Equinox. Where it fell down was a lack of the self-aware, more-than-a-little-goofy humor that's often the show's best quality... In fact, if anything, the episode seemed too sincere and straightforward. But perhaps that's because next week used up all the crazy pills.

In the end, it was nice to see the show back, and that goodwill alone was enough to make what was really a middling episode seem better than it actually was. But, having seen next week's "Mayhem of the Music Meister!," I know that much, much better things are around the corner. Better luck next time, then.

The Hollywood Reporter has the story that Warners have pulled plans for the movie, starring Ryan Reynolds as test pilot-cum-space cop Hal Jordan, to be shot in New South Wales due to the strength of the Australian dollar against the US dollar; yesterday, the Australian dollar hit a 27-year high against the US dollar, making the shoot 30% more expensive to Warners than it had been when plans were first announced six months ago. The studio released a statement that read,

After working closely with our partners at the NSW Film and Television Office (Screen NSW) and examining every scenario, we have decided to move the production of 'Green Lantern.' We are extremely grateful for the assistance we have received from the NSW Government, Fox Studios and the NSW filmmaking community.

No new location was revealed for the Green Lantern shoot, but rumors suggest Canada or Mexico are likely candidates. Green Lantern is scheduled for release in Summer 2011.

Lights out for 'Green Lantern' in Oz [Hollywood Reporter]