Co-written by lead Mass Effect game writer Mac Walters and Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic's John Jackson Miller, with art from Star Wars: Legacy's Omar Francia, the comic "reveals an essential moment in the life of Commander Shepard," according to publisher Dark Horse Comics:

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the blockbuster science-fiction epic that IGN.com named the #1 Xbox 360 game of all time, Mass Effect 2 begins with the disappearance of Commander Shepard. The story of what happens next — exclusive to these comics — will have the commander's companion Dr. Liara T'Soni undertake a deadly mission of extraordinary importance in the Milky Way's lawless Terminus Systems.

Mass Effect: Redemption is released January 6th, ahead of the January 26th release of the videogame.

Earlier in our exclusive interview with director John Hillcoat, we discussed exactly what author Cormac McCarthy wanted put back into the film that was originally cut from John Hillcoat's translation. But strangely the writer had no issues with the missing scene from his novel where The Man and The Boy discover a baby being roasted over a fire. We found out just why, from the director...

People are asking why some of the cannibal scenes were cut from the film.

There were some definitely, that I wanted cut. I had to fight to cut them. And I was supported though. Because first of all, I fought like hell to make sure we had shot that stuff, and I got my way. Then I realized it didn't work, it was total overkill. It just made it redundant and didn't have any impact. Because once you go through the road game and the house, the cannibal house, you know about cannibalism. And the trees is the new element. Whereas if you go back to that, it's like going back to the start of the film again.

What was the reasoning for cutting the baby over the fire scene?

It also it all works in the book because it's in your head, when you visualize some of this stuff it just becomes too much. And it was overkill. Luckily, Cormac himself, he really understands how film works as a medium, how different it is. He didn't miss anything from the book other than four lines of dialogue... Just those four lines. Nothing else. He didn't miss any of it, he didn't even bring up the baby. He said, 'Oh, that's irrelevant.'

What did you think when you saw the first trailer for the film?

Well I was a little disappointed. I thought it was a little misleading. I would never put stock footage that isn't part of the film in something, like the trailer. But I also understand, from their point of view, what they were trying to do, which is give people context. Because their point was that most people haven't read the book that will come and see the movie. And in the film it's a very subtle, gradual thing that befalls [humanity], but it's never fully explained. So what they said is, that in when you have 30 seconds or a minute, this was their way of putting it into context for people. But it didn't work, they have a much better trailer now.

How do you walk the line of bleakness and hope that was in the book. It was a pretty bleak in some points, the book.

I never really saw it like that, for one. The heart and soul, the reason this book is now the most translated of modern time, apparently, is because of this love story between father and son. If it was just about that other stuff it wouldn't have struck that kind of chord. That's if you focus on the background scenery. I'm a little defensive about that. But sure, it's a projection of everyone's worst fear. The apocalypse has been around as an idea since ancient times.

It's very simple, it's humanity's worst fear. What is it? It's us dying, the world dying. And we saw what happened with the dinosaurs, so we don't want to join them, and that's understandable. But then I think, also, every individual has their own personal apocalypse, where your time comes. We're mortal beings, we have to check out. So I think in many ways it's just a projection of our fears. And it goes through different periods. In the 50s they were really freaked out about nuclear threats, so you had the mutant monsters that came out of radiation. A brilliant masterpiece of all apocalypse films is Dr. Strangelove. But again that came out of the whole nuclear situation, the Cold War. And you can see in ancient times, and the biblical apocalypse.

But that's also why it's not really about bleakness, it's about fear. And actually there's a morality tale about this. We see a man that we project on to, and we can see that his choices, under pressure, we see how he can, understandably, lose his humanity. And it's actually the boy that gives him back that humanity. So I'm with Cormac when he said that his was a book about human goodness and kindness.

Where do you think we are now with post-apocalyptic movies? What do you think the trend is now?

Well I mean the focus tends to be on the big event, so much so that there's no human dimension. I think that's all valid, I like to see spectacle, we all enjoy that. I like roller coaster rides, although I'm actually having trouble with them as I get older. But, there is thrills and adventure in The Road, but the focus as I say is more about this human experience. And really more, I love films where, what I love speaking in scifi, like I saw 2001 when I was 9 years old and I'll never forget I actually felt like I went into outer space - like I really felt like I was transported into this other world. And the more I watch films, the films that I love are those where you feel like you've gone to another place and that's what I love about scifi. When it's just a CGI fantasy or like a video game, that's when I kind of tune out of it. I don't feel like kind of, being transported.

So that's you comparing The Road to those other post-apocalyptic films coming out. Because we know the difference. But even when I was at the Book of Eli panel at Comic Con, people were asking, 'So how's this different from The Road?'

[Eyes widen] Well, ok, the big difference is also what we've tried to do is, well what I always try to do with genre, is find and make it fresh again, like something we've never seen. And ironically what we've never seen before is the real thing. And so that's why we shot at Mount St. Helens, the mountain blew up.

While he was doing press for drama Brothers we caught up with producer Ryan Kavanaugh and got an exclusive update on his next project, the massive relaunch of The Crow, penned and directed by Stephen Norrington.

I heard The Crow script received great reviews, where is it at now?

The script is great. We're very excited about it. The Crow is definitely going to happen, we're just getting all the pieces together right now. It's not officially greenlit, but it's going to happen... I think in a couple months we could have the package together for sure.

Any casting ideas?

Can't talk about that yet, but we've got good ideas.

Are you casting right now and looking?

We're looking. We're in discussions....I think it's something cool, we're approaching it differently. It's really a whole relaunch of the franchise, much more of a dark superhero type.

Will it be a well known actor, or someone we've never heard of before?

It will be an actor you've heard of, yes. We're not ruling anything out. We're looking at both, with the very well known and the "very talented but they may not be quite there yet."

A lot of people were worried that it would be the original, but we know the Crow character can inhabit different people...

It's not a remake it's literally a relaunch of the franchise.

But will he have the same makeup?

No, totally different... He'll have makeup, but it will be different. The best way to compare it is the first Batman and Batman Begins. In terms of their look and feel and character.

I'm excited to see the world and how you build it. Will it still be dark and gritty?

Oh yeah, we're sticking to the flavor of it. We're just relaunching it and making it with a much more present day character, someone more relatable to everybody.

And the script is totally finished?

Yeah we're still tweaking it, but it's finished.

Watch as The Asylum's masterminds use rubber cement for explosions and blow a Porta Potty up 30 feet in the air. And use fan-refurbished military vehicles to add a layer of verisimilitude. These people are total culture heroes, the Roger Cormans of our generation.

This awesome behind-the-scenes snippet is from MegaFault, a movie starring er's Eriq LaSalle which comes out on DVD on Nov. 24. Yes, just in time for Thanksgiving, so you can give thanks that you're not actually in this movie. Here's the official plot summary:

In West Virginia, Charley "Boomer" Baxter (LaSalle) is supervising the placement of mountaintop-removal explosives. As he detonates the TNT, a massive earthquake liquefies the terrain. Within hours, Dr. Amy Lane (Murphy), a government seismologist, arrives at the epicenter. Amy determines that the initial quake has exposed a deep seismic fault that runs across the center of the North American continent and threatens to tear the world in half. Now, Amy and Boomer must race ahead of the massive crack in the earth while devising a plan to stop the devastation and warn everyone in its path.

Six days a week, Unshelved chronicles the daily lives and antics of a crew of librarians. Each Sunday, the focus shifts to the books themselves with the Unshelved Book Club. They cover a wide range of books and graphic novels, aimed at a wide range of audiences — with a particular leaning toward science fiction and fantasy. Here's just a small sampling of books the Book Club has covered:

We talked to Unshelved's creators, cartoonist Bill Barnes and pseudonymous librarian Gene Ambaum, via email about the inspirations behind the Book Club and the unexpected perks of doing comics about books:

Unshelved usually chronicles the daily lives of librarians. What inspired you to do the Sunday Unshelved Book Club strips?

We are both opinionated readers, so recommending books comes naturally. And given its setting, the strip felt weirdly empty without books - the hard part was figuring out how to talk about them without making fun of the books or their authors.

How do you go about selecting the books? You often revisit old classics, but do you try to keep up with the latest releases in the strip?

It's really just whichever books we're reading that are good enough to recommend. Over time we have forced ourselves to forage farther afield than we otherwise would have, which has yielded a few pleasant surprises. We do feature some new releases, but we are just as happy to pull an underrated classic from the backlist.

Have you gotten a lot of feedback from people who have read a book because of the strip who probably wouldn't have otherwise?

A daunting number of people have told us that the Unshelved Book Club is their reading list. We hope that's not literally true, but it makes sense that someone who enjoys our comic strip would also match well to our taste in books. But the best moment is when these same readers recommend books to us that we've never heard of — their recommendations are usually dead-on.

Do librarians ever use the individual Book Club strips to try to recommend certain books to patrons?

It's quite common for libraries, bookstores, and stores to post our strips in a display. They reportedly make books "fly off the shelves", especially for younger patrons.

What has the feedback been like from the authors?

Getting email from authors like Ursula K. LeGuin and Dan Simmons is one of the perks of the job. Bill keeps waiting for someone to tell him he drew their main character wrong, but it hasn't happened yet. We have, however, spelled an author's name wrong on more than one occasion.

Have any reactions from readers surprised you?

A few tell us it's their favorite part of the strip, a few tell us they can't stand it, and the rest seem to take it in stride. As you'd expect, most of our readers are pretty book-positive, so they're generally receptive to new titles (or a new take on a classic).

Do authors ever ask you to do a strip on their book?

Yes, in that we get a lot of review copies from authors. These days an author really needs to be their own P.R. department, so I love seeing them take the initiative to promote their work like that. Sadly we only do one a week, so the odds are kind of rough.

A lot of the books in your strips are science fiction, fantasy, or graphic novels. Are those particular favorites, or do you feel they translate particularly well in the comics medium?

Mostly that reflects our immense nerditude, but it is true that they tend to yield good illustrations.

You occasional have guest cartoonists do their own Book Club strips. Do you approach other cartoonists about doing a possible guest strip, or do people approach you with books they're dying to write about?

A little from column A, a little from column B. We love love love seeing cartoonists do their own take on a book. And if it saves us little work, well that's nice too.

What upcoming books are you looking forward to tackling in the Book Club?

That would be telling.

[Unshelved Book Club]

We sat down with Hillcoat and talked about the end of the world, and translating a film into a movie. The director shared with us the only issue McCarthy had with his film, which Hillcoat promptly changed...

io9: How did you deal with what to cut and what to leave in The Road?

JH: Cormac himself, he really understands how film works as a medium, how different it is. He didn't miss anything from the book other than four lines of dialogue. And this is where it's very telling as to what the real story is. Because those four lines of dialogue, which we did shoot and put back in, is when the boy says, "What would you do if I died?" And the father says, '"I'd want to die too, so you could be with me - so I could be with you."

Which is a beautiful thing to say, and that's in the movie. But that's what his interest was always - the focus of these central characters going through this journey. And the more cannibal stuff, it just becomes a different movie.

So that was what he wanted put back into the movie?

Just those four lines. Nothing else. He didn't miss any of it... It's been great, because he could see the more you focus on that other stuff [post apocalyptic doom, explosions and cannibalism] the more unbalanced it becomes, and it becomes something else.

Michael Chabon, of course, won the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay, his novel about Golden Age comics creators dealing with inspiration, sexual identity and the Holocaust, among other things. He also wrote the Hugo-winning alternate history novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Both Manhood and his earlier essay collection, Maps And Legends, deal with geeky, science-fictional elements. And he edited two anthologies of pulp science fiction by some of today's best authors, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. (And according to his Wikipedia page, he created a fictional alter ego, a quasi-Lovecraftian horror novelist named August Van Zorn, which I didn't know about until just now.)

The thing that's stuck in my head most about Manhood For Amateurs is definitely the passionate espousal of fandom, and the idea that fan obsession comes from the same place as the artistic impulse — the desire for communal expression. Why do you think people often see fans as in opposition to "true" creative people? Now that fans are running all the comic book companies, producing Doctor Who, and reinventing Star Trek, do you see this changing? What will it take for a work of fanfic to be recognized as art? Have you ever written fanfic?

Well, I'm not sure I fully accept the premise of the question: "People often see fans as in opposition to 'true' creative people." Or rather, you may be right, "people" do see it that way, but if so then these people are deeply ignorant of the history of popular culture and its production. Fans began to take over creative responsibility in the world of Science Fiction as early as the mid-thirties; I doubt that by the mid-seventies there were many major practitioners in the genre who had not started out as a passionate, Con-going, zine-compiling fans. The second great age of American cinema was entirely created by fans (Coppola, Scorsese, Rafelson, Ashby, Spielberg, Lucas, et al) ; The Godfather is as much about the intensive study of gangster films as it is about gangsters. Same goes, even more so, for Scorsese. Rock and roll, same deal. The Beatles work is fan fiction on the work of Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers: It's not simple (or even complex) imitation; it's elaboration, infilling, transformation, a strategic redployment of the tropes and figures of the source material/primary text; the Beatles are in dialog with Buddy Holly, as Badfinger was in dialog with the Beatles and Jellyfish with Badfinger. Or you could go Stones/Stooges/Sex Pistols. The word "influence" is insufficient and too one-sided to describe a relationship that is much more accurately reflected by the system of tribute/ appropriation/critique that fandom employs. This kind of process, by which one generation of fan/critics (because anyone who doesn't understand that a fan is a critic doesn't know what a fan is, and there is nothing sadder to contemplate than the idea of a critic who is not also a fan) becomes the creators whose work inspires and obsesses and is critiqued by the next generation of fans, who in turn become critic-creators, has occurred in every popular art form across the board going back fifty or five thousand years. The apostles wrote fan fiction on Torah. So your "people" are silly people, and we don't need to listen to them.

The other thing about Manhood For Amateurs, now that I've had a chance to mull it over, is the sense that shifting gender roles and the changing demands as you grow older mean that you have to keep reinventing yourself. To what extent is this like the process of world-building in a fantasy/SF universe?

It means — it means, if I take your meaning aright, that I am my own sequel, my own series, the CHAPTERHOUSE OF DUNE to my own DUNE: MESSIAH.

Why do you think such a high proportion of alternate history novels revolve around World War II in some way or another? Do you think it's different for authors who weren't alive during World War II and the Holocaust to imagine them turning out differently, than for someone like, say, Philip K. Dick, who was in high school during the war?

Well, of course PKD did a pretty fair job of imagining just that in THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. I think the thing about WWII is that it was so huge, so important, so clearly one of the two or three most significant periods in human history — and yet even a cursory study of it reveals it to have been woven of dozens if not hundreds of teensy little frail threads which, if pulled or tucked a different way, might easily have produced a completely different outcome. Say, for example, that the British Navy had not captured a German cypher machine from a sunk U-Boat in 1941. Cracking of the navy codes is delayed... key messages are never intercepted...

That's true for EVERYTHING that happens of course: "for want of a nail." But you can really feel the Little, Big of it with WWII.

As someone who's written both historical fiction and alternate history, how would you say the research process differs for the two genres? Do they allow you to comment on the here and now in much the same way, or in different ways?

Research is research; historical fiction is alternate history, in the sense that you are still saying What if? What if, for example, a Russian nobleman named Andrei Bolkonski, with such and such a set of traits, was running around the battlefield of Austerlitz, getting wounded and rescued by Napoleon, whom he once admired...etc. Whether you are writing Napoleon Loses Austerlitz (alternate history) or simply Fictional Prince Andrei Gets Injured at Austerlitz (historical fiction) the research is going to be the same.

When your first novel came out, you were nearly mis-classified as a gay writer. You told the Metro Weekly in 2002, "There's a big lump that's called literary fiction or mainstream fiction or non-genre fiction or whatever, and that's sort of where I am. That's not a problem that really dogs me, except for that brief moment when Mysteries of Pittsburgh came out and Newsweek did a big roundup of all the hot new gay novels. That was me being pigeonholed and possibly confined to a section of the bookstore from which it can be very hard to get out once you're in. Luckily the book attracted a diverse readership."

Do you think people who are writing science fiction or fantasy should try to avoid getting shelved in those sections, for the same reasons you were keen to avoid getting shelved in LGBT fiction? Should we, as readers of SF and fantasy, be trying to get the novels we love shelved in "fiction," or should we be trying to find ways to help deserving genre authors to cross over? (Like your inclusion of people like Tim Pratt and Cory Doctorow in the Best American Short Stories anthology.) If this is just a marketing issue, do we need better labels, or just more flexible ones?

Pride and Resentment are the twin banners flown from the walls of all ghettos. We love being in; we want to get out. We are at home; home is not the world. Endogamy weakens us over time.

I think, in the end, it is largely a marketing issue. Personally I would prefer to see bookstores shelve all fiction together regardless of genre. Or maybe just have two sections, "Good Stuff" and "Crap." Into Crap we will consign all novels regardless of genre or reputation that trade in cliche and dead language. If I ever own a bookstore I will do it that way. Only I will just leave out the Crap section.

Were you a fan of the original? Is that why you got involved with AMC's Prisoner series?

No, I never knew anything about the original, I had just read the six screenplays that were brought to me and I was actually going to shoot another movie and I was able to get out of that to do this. What got my attention first was Ian McKellen.

The second part of that was AMC and what they were doing, but I didn't really fully understand everything AMC had been doing with Mad Men. I hadn't seen Mad Men yet, and I became a huge fan of the network because I really got to see the ins and outs of what they were doing in The Prisoner. But what truly brought me to The Prisoner was the first two screenplays... I had no idea where the story was going, at any time as an actor when you get a role like this, it's kind of like one of those little trophies you can put on your mantle and be proud of. I'm definitely very proud of this.

One of the interesting things about AMC and their shows right now is their attention to detail in their production design, it's really evident in The Prisoner, it's sort of "sandy sleek". What was your favorite little world-building moment that AMC or the production crew created?

Well, I can be more specific to you, and in fact when I see movies like Giant, when I see George Stevens or any classic fimmakers, or when I see Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston but it [The Prisoner] reminded me of classic Hollywood great fimmaking... Every time I get a movie I think, "oh I'm never gonna be working in this town again if I don't get this one right," and I certainly felt that way making this because of the rapid fire of all the screenplays that were there and also the reediting and rewriting the scenes literally right there but I think we were able to pull out something pretty special here.

I'm so focused on the story and just trying to survive and the frustration of wanting it to be good and not knowing if it's going to turn out and in fact I remember one day we got to one particular scene with Ian McKellen and myself and we realized in that moment that I'm not supposed to be in this scene. So there's an element of running around like a chicken with your head cut off. So I'm sitting here acting, thinking what did I take away from that, I think the most valuable thing I got from it is I can work in some of the most extraordinary circumstances and be able to pull up performances in dire strait situation and I really kind of like that.

It was roughing the elements out there, wasn't it?

Yes, the lack of sleep, number one. Last night watching it [The Prisoner screening] and talking to Bill Gallagher [the writer], for me, it was a bit of a surreal experience, it looks so easy but knowing that what looks easy is usually rather difficult, there were hours and hours of rehearsing and then saying let's throw that out and try something else and being able to have a director come in with literally very little time... it's really a six hour film with two intermissions.

How many on site rewrites do you think you guys did?

Thousands, I can't even… at the last minute we'd say, "Do I need that line?" "Yes you do." "okay, what about this?" Then we'd try but you know for the most part, I thought that we were able to. It's like putting a square peg into a circular hole and that's what we do, and we get paid well for it and part of it is you gotta be a little bit of an adrenaline junkie.

Now your character, one of the things that's different abut him in the new series is there's a little bit more revealed about his life before The Village. Do you think that you're still "every man" even though you go into specifics running around in the desert?

I knew what Patrick McGoohan did. I knew that he was a legend, I knew who he was and I didn't totally understand the whole Prisoner thing, I never watched any of the episodes but wanted to bring something to my own performance that was original, that I wouldn't be compared to, and even I was I could say well it was a coincidence because I never watched any of his previous stuff. I remember talking to Mel Gibson one time about Patrick McGoohan and I said, I happened to ask him about Longshanks in Braveheart and he says "Well that's McGoohan" and he told me the whole story, he tried to have a run at making The Prisoner.

Mel Gibson tried to make The Prisoner?

Yeah he looked at it. Yeah, it's been attempted by several people.

Finally the political undertones in The Prisoner, do you think it's more like a friendly Gitmo, or a warning sign?

JC: Absolutely. You know its how you look at mornings. Mornings can either be a good thing or a bad thing sometimes. Some people just get disturbed and would rather be an ostrich and put their head in the sand. And you know, this is an allegory for peace...Nowadays you have one guy walking around who's willing to exchange his life for millions and for an ideal. And I think people can relate to that. At the same time, very much juxtaposed to that, this is Disney Land, the music, the way they feel, it is a bit of a ride and there's a romantic element to it too, and I hate to go too far to the right and say well understand from the left here you also have this romantic undertone, you're also going to be drawn to these characters, you're going to love these characters.

We're lucky enough to feature Quantum Mechanix's authentic replica of the Cylon targets used on Battlestar Galactica before any other site — even Quantum Mechanix's own site. They're model-makers who brought you the amazing animated-style BSG figures, the Cylon raider filming minature, the U.S.S. Enterprise model, the detailed map of Firefly's 'Verse, and most of all the perfect replica of the Serenity.

Here's the full description for the Cylon poster, so you can prepare to take aim with your credit card:

Take Out Your Aggression on a Target That Deserves It!

Battlestar Galactica is one of the most ground-breaking television shows of all time. Not just in terms of storytelling and visual effects, but in every detail – set design, soundtrack – even the background props.

In our continuing quest to bring you affordable, screen-accurate replicas of the iconic props from TV's greatest saga, we are proud to present our screen-accurate replica of the Cylon Centurion practice target as seen on Galactica's shooting range.

Reproduced from the same digital files used to print the screen-used props, QMx has painstakingly reproduced this practice target on an 18"x24" poster printed on 60-pound flat-finish paper stock. We've even die cut the poster into the same distinctive trapizoid shape (why do Colonials hate right angles so much?) and we've included the scoring form in lower right corner of the poster.

All for just $9.95 per poster. Perfect way to prepare for the fight against our Cylon oppressors, when that day inevitably comes.

It'll be available soon over at Quantum Mechanix.

Not sure what's happening, but damn that hospital is nice. Plus, it looks like AMC is going all-out with set design yet again, check out those classic cars and the rest of the amazing details in this interactive Village map. The attention to detail in this city is insane, right down to the "village white" and "village red" wine bottles.

The Prisoner begins its three-day run on Nov. 15.

So what is American Vampire?

The series follows, and is focused on, the concept of vampire geneology and vampire evolution. It reimagines vampires as these creatures that have evolved as the bloodlines hit different populations at different times, so there's different species of vampires, like there are different breeds of dogs. So there's this whole hidden history, this whole secret family tree. But the thing that it's about specifically is, there hasn't been a new breed of vampire in a couple of hundred years for reasons that are part of the fun mystery of the first couple of [story cycles]. There's only this one dominant species, and it's the one that's the classic, Euro-centric, nocturnal, stake through the heart... You know, the vampire that, when I conceived of the series, we were all a little sick of. The star of the series is the bloodline, this new breed of vampirism. The forward-moving part of the series, the part that's most exciting for us is, we have new characters with each cycle, with big parts played by favorite characters from the past, but we'll also be revealing parts of the secret history and how the world of vampires came to be the way it is. And also, the brewing tension between all the breeds of vampires that exist now.

So there's a big, behind the curtain, story that we're working on as well [as the individual story arcs].

So how did it get started? Did you pitch it to Vertigo?

I came up with it as a concept a few years ago, actually - I don't know how interesting this is, it's kind of a boring story, but I was in one of those model shops, like Warhammer shops, down in the West Village and I saw one of those figurines, and it was a zombie confederate soldier. I just started thinking about how, in so much vampire material at the time - and this was before Twilight, more around the Queen of the Damned time - vampires were always nocturnal and aristocratic and elegant and it just seemed so out of place, and out of touch with any straight-up American iconography that I could come up with, or my favorite genres, like westerns or 50s sci-fi and all that kind of stuff. I was like, how come we never see vampires in these kind of places?

I started to develop the idea back then, and I thought about doing it as a series of stories, I thought about doing it as a book, and at one point I was going to do it as a screenplay with a friend. But basically, I started doing some comic work on the side about a year ago, and I got the chance to pitch it to Vertigo last summer when an editor at Vertigo called Mark Doyle, who's since become one of my closest friends, read one of my stories in an anthology of literary writers coming up with new superheroes. He actually approached me at a reading for the book and asked if I was a serious comic fan, or just moonlighting for the purposes of the story. I told him I was, I'd always been, and I feel like he gave me a pop quiz; he was all, Well, what're you reading right now? And at the time, it was Final Crisis and Secret Invasion and everything like that. I think he was convinced, and he asked me if I wanted to pitch something. So I went there and I think he sort of expected me to pitch something more literary, but I was like, Hey, what about this vampire thing?
I'd been thinking about doing it as a comic for awhile, and thinking about approaching people who do more horror comics, like IDW or whatever, and then this came along and he really flipped over it. Once we got it on the table, it went pretty fast through development there. It was pretty much greenlit when they asked if there was anyone that I knew who from the writing world who might be interested in giving it a quote or a blurb. I knew Stephen King from before, so I asked him if he would be willing to do it. He read the pitch and decided that he really liked it and said, I'll do you one better. If you want, at some point, I'll write an issue for you. It's pretty funny; I called Vertigo on, I think it was a Friday afternoon, and left a message saying that Steve was interested - By the way, he makes you call him Steve, I don't want to sound like an asshole going "Steve, Steve" - I left a message on Friday afternoon pretty much when the office was already closed saying that he was serious about wanting to do an issue, and it was Monday morning, 9 in the morning, I get a call and everyone was there, and they're all "Did you say Stephen King was interested in doing an issue...?" [laughs]

Once he was involved we wanted to [work out how best for him to write an issue or two]. The characters were all developed, I had the seasons mapped out from the pitch. Steve wanted to write this character, who was planned for the second cycle, but Mark and I came up with the idea of doing it like an eight-page, or a teaser, at the end of each issue, to show a glimpse of Skinner, who's the first American vampire. He started writing it, and then he wrote me an email two weeks into it and asked if I'd mind if he went off the reservation a little bit. I was, like, go ahead, do whatever you want. He wound up writing five episodes of sixteen pages, doing so much better than I could've ever done. It really does raise the bar for the series, and he introduced so many big ideas about what the American West means to us, and all these questions about fact and fiction and legend versus history, and all this stuff that really enriches it. Not to mention, he just makes it really scary and vicious.

How did Rafael [Albuquerque, series artist] come aboard? His preview art is beautiful.

Oh my God. I promise you, this guy is incredible. He came in and did some sketches to see if he got the characters, based on the scripts, because the scripts were done, and he just nailed it immediately. It was, that's our guy. The funny thing is, some of the promo art, the sketches of Pearl...? That's from his audition, those're some of his first sketches. That was the first thing I saw from him, and I thought, that's my character. That's exactly her. She's a little bookish, independent, a little quirky. He's been such a creative force on the series, he brings so much to it.
Rafael, when he read the scripts, was like, Why don't I do the different cycles in different styles? So he would up doing Steve's cycle - which is the origin story of Skinner, who's the first of the new American vampire species, born of this random mutation - in these beautiful washes, so it has this painted, antique quality to it, as well as a creepiness. And for mine - which takes place in the 1920s and picks up on the second American vampire, the first person Skinner turns, who's this young girl and a struggling actress in the silent film industry - he did it in this precise inked, art deco style. I can't reiterate enough how amazing he has been on the book. He's enhanced it, he's been a total superhero himself on it.

It sounds like this a really big story.

I'm so excited for the places we're going to go. We're already mapped out through the first twelve issues. The next cycle is already page broken, after these first five issues, and after that, the next cycle is pretty much thought out. And after that, I know what decade it's taking place in. It's fun with all of the press it's getting, the fun of introducing [the concept]. There's something sexy about an American vampire, because "It's American!" [laughs]. It's an interesting time to be American. Part of the series is about investigating what's horrific about the American character, and what's heroic about it, and the difference of that in different periods. But we're really way ahead of the game in terms of giving ourselves time to do eight or nine drafts of the scripts, because, believe me, no-one is more aware of a potential vampire backlash or the pressure once Steve is not on the series. We believe in it a lot.

American Vampire seems to be more than just a title, it's a statement of the book's intent, the American versus European...

Well, it's a fun hook, and there's a kind of, I guess, patriotic thrill in introducing a vampire that's supposed to be American and is stronger and more vicious and so on, but the story isn't about cultural stereotypes. The idea is that the bloodline mutates randomly at various times, and some of the characteristics of the person are adapted into that vampire. So it's the characteristics of a person, of Skinner, rather than a nationality, because otherwise you get into the specifics of, what makes us African-American, what makes us... It's person-to-person. Every once in awhile the bloodline will jump, not with every new person it hits, but every once in awhile, the blood will make something new with someone.

We're trying to keep it geneological, but the vampiric qualities have an American characteristic, because it comes from the character of Skinner and he is a character that's iconographic to the [Old] West, where he's this vicious snakelike outlaw. He has this desert quality, but they're based on him, based on a broad cultural assessment on what makes us American.

But what we are starting to do is explore the idea of American identity through the different time periods. With the first issues, it's a little tough, just because of the format, sixteen pages of story for Steve and sixteen for me, so there's a tightness to it that works really well for the way they double as stories. But there's more breathing room, I think, for exploring the decades once we get past the first cycle.

Pearl seems as iconic in her own way as Skinner.

I can promise you that the way they come across on the page, they're not someone you've seen before. Skinner is not The Man With No Name, in the same way that Pearl is very much her own character while keeping that quality of the "20s Girl." She's someone who's more fish out of water, she's a lot more bookish and isn't caught up in the glamour. She loves acting for her own reasons, and a lot of it comes from her upbringing. We try to flesh the characters out so that they're more than just their iconographic selves, especially these two. Pearl and Skinner are two opposing forces early on the series. Skinner is anarchy and violence and fun, and has the opinion that what makes us American is what keeps the west wild, and that we should be wild, and the taming of the west he sees as a feminization, an imposition on the American character. You can imagine how that works itself out in different time periods, where there's prohibition, or the construction of Las Vegas.

Pearl, on the other hand, is ethical and struggling to be someone who carries the best qualities of what we would think as American. She has a more hopeful and optimistic belief.

Is this going to be a series where there's a lot of jumping around in time periods, as opposed to telling the story chronologically?

Yeah, each one is going to approach a different decade, at least at first. Each story will pick up in a different decade but the same bloodline in surprising ways, so there will be some chronological jumping.

Are you watching True Blood, reading or watching the Twilights?

I'm a huge fan of True Blood. Some things I've not caught up with... I read the first Twilight - my wife has actually read all of them - but my feeling is, each one of them brings something different to vampire lore. I've never seen vampires as teen heartthrobs the way that Twilight does it, or the reimagining of vampires as a sociological underclass and the Southern Gothic elements of True Blood make that really fresh. For us, we're trying to bring something new to the table too. American Vampire wasn't conceived as the tale end of a trend. It definitely, for me, predated both of those, so I'm hoping that - When each one of those came out, we were all, Oh, it's just part of the trend, but the better stuff comes out in the crashing of a wave and you're like, That's awesome! We're hoping that we have that kind of response.

We really have put a lot of sweat and blood into it about making it something different and high quality, so that if there were no other vampire things around, you're look at it in the same way. I was thinking about it, but other than Bram Stoker's Dracula, I haven't seen a vampire comic since the peak of 30 Days of Night. For us, it's great not to be on TV with Vampire Diaries or True Blood, and we're not a movie, so hopefully it'll stand apart as a good read.
American Vampire debuts in March from Vertigo.

Here's the book's caption for the above image and our other images of that concept art:

The parallel reality of conceptual design - visions of the exotic bazaar a wandering Kirk might have stumbled upon in the film. In its final design, the desert planet becomes a threatening world of snow and ice.

So instead of seeing Kirk chased through the snow by the Cloverfield monster's cousin, we could have seen him encountering a slew of weird alien traders and smugglers on a desert world? I guess Abrams' film was already enough like Star Wars without this sequence.

Star Trek: The Art Of The Film, on sale next week, is Titan Books' latest coffee-table art book tying in with a major science fiction movie, and it's one of the best so far. You get insights into stuff you might not have thought about, like the many different head tattoos the film's scurvy-addled Romulan dogs sported in the film — there's a two-page spread showing all the different tattoos, just in case you and all your friends want to get done up as Nero's crew for a convention. It turns out that the U.S.S. Kelvin was originally designed to look like a Soviet submarine (there are some early renderings) and Nero's ship, the Narada, was supposed to be like a hundred scary knives. The Cloverfield monster in the film was origianlly hairier and more like Aggedor from Doctor Who.

We've already seen some gorgeous concept art from the film, but there's still some great stuff in the book I hadn't seen before — including some early paintings of Vulcan, and a huge section on the reimagining of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Images from Star Trek: The Art of the Film. Out November 17th from Titan Books.

IDW's official PR for Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez' 32 page first issue goes a little something like this:

Sam Lesser may be dead and gone, but Dodge still has uses for him, and in the first chill days of October, will make contact with him again. The dead know things the living may not, and Sam's restless spirit has had time to discover the thing Dodge wants to know most of all... where to find the key to the black door. The third storyline in the Eisner-nominated series begins here!

Locke & Key: Crown Of Shadows #1 is released this week.

Baccarin plays Anna, the leader of the alien Visitors (or Vs) who come to Earth professing peace and friendship and promising healthcare and advanced technology. And of course, it's all too good to be true. Some pundits have been saying her character is meant to be Barack Obama, and Baccarin seemed to be aware of the comparisons. So we asked her if she thinks she's playing our new president, and she says:

I don't think we're saying Anna is President Obama. But she is the leader of her people, and she is coming down to Earth and offering healthcare, and offering cures for diseases, and things that sort of clean out and give people hope, and there are definite parallels to be drawn and our intentions are to create a show that people relate to. And I think this is something that's been on people's minds, even before Obama... finding hope again, and healthcare, and finding a leader, and someone who can save us from the hole we've gotten ourselves into.

Don't expect Baccarin to play to the cheap seats. One thing Baccarin stressed over and over again, in our interview, is that she's going for a subtle portrayal of Anna, and she never plans to become as out-and-out sinister as Diana, the evil alien leader in the original miniseries.

"We're working with Anna being a little more subtle than in the original," says Baccarin. She wants Anna to be "creepy" and "scary" but also have qualities that the audience can relate to. That said, in the next few episodes, we'll get to see Anna "show her true colors a little more."

Baccarin says her goal is to make the audience feel drawn to Anna, even though they know they shouldn't be:

It's really true of all the characters on the show: We walk a fine line. It's way more interesting to question why they feel they want to follow this character. There should be qualities that [the audience] can identify with, that we see them in ourselves. People identify [with Anna] and feel compelled by her, and feel like they want to follow her... and can't understand why they feel drawn to her. [The audience should be saying,] "I don't know, this isn't right that I'm going for it."

This was something the producers had worked out early on, she adds:

We had discussed early on, when I auditioned, [that] she couldn't be robotic or alien. She had to be nurturing and human, to be allowed into people's lives, so that people would trust her... We created this character who's very calm and controlled and nurturing. You don't see her losing her cool, and you don't see what's behind her motivations. It's like having your neighbor turn out not to be who you thought they were.

This subtle approach means that you have to watch Baccarin carefully to catch the little cues she drops in. The way she flutters her eyelashes. The way she lifts one eyebrow, or looks straight at someone, or looks away. Says Baccarin, "Obviously, Anna lives in a very constrained space, in that she is very precise, but there is a lot of freedom of subtlety and nuances."

I asked Baccarin how she felt about playing a villain after playing the more sympathetic Inara on Firefly, and she responded: "It really is fun. I'm not going to call her a villain. I'm going to say that you said that." (She really is good at the slippery politician thing.)

From Anna's perspective, "she is is being the best leader she can be. And if it's at the expense of a couple of humans, so be it."

Baccarin admits she gets asked whether she'll be eating a live hamster — like, pretty much all the time. She says:

We haven't done it in these [first] four episodes, and I'm bracing myself. And so many people ask about it, I think it's imminent. I think we are going to pay homage to those moments, but not maybe do them the same way — so hopefully I won't have to put a hamster down my throat.

Finally, I asked Baccarin how, as an immigrant from Brazil, she feels about taking part in a show that promotes xenophobia and suspicion of visitors. She says you shouldn't read too much into V:

I think we should all be suspicious of aliens. We're not saying be suspicious of people from other cultures, I think we're saying be suspicious of people from outer space. So we're very safe there. There's a lot of ethnic diversity in our world now, and we're not commenting on that all. It's literally about people coming from another world.

V airs on Tuesday nights for the next three weeks, and then goes away until March due to some kind of sporting event.

In Men Who Stare At Goats, in theaters today, Bridges plays Bill Django, a Vietnam veteran who founds a group of "psychic soldiers," who are warrior-monks steeped in the counterculture. And the film follows him from the 1970s to the present day. Meanwhile, George Clooney is Lyn Cassady, the best of Django's psychic soldiers, who takes a young reporter, played by Ewan McGregor, under his wing.

Both Bridges and Clooney manage to play their characters in the 1970s (in Bridges' case) and the 1980s (for both actors), as well as the present day. It gives you hope that Bridges really will be able to pull off his role as two different Flynns, an aged version and an ageless copy, in Tron Legacy.

So how did they manage to make Bridges and Clooney appear to span a few decades in the movie's flashbacks and present-day sequences? Heslov explains it was a tough decision:

We spent a lot of energy on that, even when I was just starting casting and George [Clooney] and I were talking about him doing the role, I was [wondering], "Do I have a younger guy play George in the past, and then George plays himself in the present? Or do I have George do it all?" And the more I thought about it, the more I hated the idea [of another, younger actor stepping in.] It's always hard to jump back and forth in time. I just felt like, if I had another actor playing George, the audience would be questioning, "Does he look enough like George?"

So once they had decided to use the same actors throughout, "it was just a question of how to back it up," and where to place the actors' current ages in the narrative. And how to use wigs and mustaches, among other things, to make the actors look younger in their flashback sequences.

For the 1970s sequences, they pulled Jeff Bridges' face back, to tighten the skin. "They use this kind of tape," explains Heslov. "They basically pull back under the hairline, and they tape it and pull back a little more, and then they use strings." The make-up people "use all sorts of gadgets" to get rid of Bridges' wrinkles, which sounds a bit painful. "It was fun, but it was time-consuming." Luckily, Bridges is "kind of a perfectionist," who "loves all that character-detail stuff." some actors don't want to be bothered, but Bridges will obsess over every aspect of his characters, including wardrobe, hair and makeup.

Also, for scenes set in the past, Heslov used as much soft light as possible, and in the present, "it was all about as much harsh light as we could use."

Escape From The Valley Of Elah

The majority of Goats' present-day sequences take place in Iraq, where Ewan McGregor's character travels to try and cover the war. So I asked Heslov if he was worried that his film would be lumped together with Iraq movies like Valley Of Elah and Stop Loss, which have bombed at the box office.

But Heslov says that he doesn't think of Goats as an Iraq war movie. "It has very little to do with Iraq, except that that's the backdrop of where the story takes place." The movie does touch on modern-day issues like torture and the military's habit of hiring huge contractors like Halliburton to take care of basic security and other functions, but "it was never my intention to make an Iraq war movie."

Counterculture meets military culture

One of the most striking images in Goats is the way Jeff Bridges' character brings a hot-tubbing, Zen, druggy counterculture influence to bear on the 1980s military. The merging of two opposite cultures in the "warrior monk" program is so loopy and weird, it feels like an alternate history. We asked Heslov if he thought the counterculture and military culture ever could really coexist, or learn from each other like that.

Heslov said he really does believe that the military is always exploring alternative ways of fighting wars. And he definitely does believe that in the wake of its experience in Vietnam and the 1960s and 1970s in general, the military was "beaten down by that experience, and they were searching for ways to change it up." But at the end of the day, Heslov thinks it would probably never have worked out, even if the individuals involved had behaved differently. Plus, if the military really learned to win without killing people, then it wouldn't really be war any more.

A debt to Dr. Strangelove.

Heslov says the weird blend of comedy and horror in his movie owes a lot to influences like Dr. Strangelove, M.A.S.H. and Catch-22. Certain directors, like Altman and Kubrick, have been very influential to him, and he did think about their works as he was creating this film.

Heslov says he tried to keep Goats from falling too far into horror or comedy, by keeping it as grounded as possible. Even at the most absurd points of the story, "I tried to keep it as real as possible, so the absurdness of the actual" situation would come through. Things like George Clooney trying to burst clouds with his mind, or people trying to run through walls, were played straight instead of playing up their silliness. "I hope that by maintaining that real tone, you could slide back and forth" between the absurd and the real.

We talked to Cusack yesterday as part of 2012 interviews:

With comic book films being so huge right now in Hollywood and big-name actors like Robert Downey Jr. starring in films such as Iron Man, would you ever consider doing a comic book adaptation or a superhero film?

I don't know, but yeah, for sure. I think the adult comics are some of the best film ideas out there.

Are there any comics in particular out there that you'd like to make?

Not one that I particularly know that I would like to do, but whenever I've come across one, I've really liked them.

Are there any [comic book movies] you've seen floating around in Hollywood that you'd like to see made?

Yeah, I can, there was one or two that I heard of that sounded really cool. One of them was about, I think... it's a vampire and a killer, and they're on the road, and it's this really strange story. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Also some of the obscure ones, I don't know if there are any more superheroes left.

That sounds a little bit like Preacher?

I think it might have been Preacher.

You should get involved with that!

I'm trying to. I heard about that one, I like that.

Who would you want to play?

I'd say either the vampire or the priest. One of those two guys.

So just the two best characters in the comic?

Why not?

So I'm not 100% sure if Preacher is the script that Cusack saw, but the name definitely struck a chord with Cusack. I can't even imagine Cusack as an murderous Cassidy, but he could make a pretty bad ass Jesse or even Arseface's daddy. John August's screenplay may not even be finished yet, and it's possible Cusack was merely talking about it as an idea he'd heard floating around Hollywood.

Last we heard about the adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's comic series, Sam Mendes was possibly going to direct and the script was half finished in May. But at least Mendes said he was trying to translate it just right so there might be a second or a third.

At the premiere for The Box we stole a few minutes with director Richard Kelly and finally got to the bottom of a lot of questions that have been plaguing us for years, like his constant use of water imagery, what it's like coming back after Southland Tales and what he really thinks about the Darko sequel made without him.

Why are you drawn to science fiction?

I think that science fiction is something that can capture the imagination of any human being, in the way that it lets us speculate and analyze the mysteries of the world. We live in a world that's filled with a lot of mystery. Fundamentally it gets to the heart of why we pay fourteen bucks to sit in a movie theater for two hours with a bunch of strangers. It's to discover new mysteries. And you know, with something like Avatar coming out, it sort of helps me reclaim the childhood sense of discovery I got from Jim Cameron when I saw Alien or when I saw Terminator for the first time, seeing the trailer for that film brings back all of those memories and makes me realize why I got into this business so… I think science fiction is where some of the most exciting stories are told.

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are seen getting water dumped all over them in this movie, you've used water before as a supernatural element, can you tell us what that's all about?

Well I think sometimes the concept of saltwater coming from the ocean and the ocean being the driving force of the planet and our bodies being made of saltwater almost entirely… there's something fascinating about embracing that, the essence of it as a higher intelligence, a higher technology of some sort and it allows you to portray a higher intelligence in a visual way that provokes a lot of discussion and interpretation for audiences. So that's sort of been the reason behind my thought process. People may not understand that when they first see it but it plants a seed in your mind. It's something that we actually did with Donnie Darko and a little bit in Southland Tales so hopefully people are kind of connecting the dots.

What was it like directing this movie after doing Southland Tales?

It was a pleasure for me to have a simple concept to embrace, where I could still design an elaborate mystery behind it all and to try to design an elababorate roller coaster ride. And also to work with intimate characters and… really it's a three-character melodrama, it's the husband and the wife and the stranger who knocks on their door. And there's something wonderful about that simplicity and also being able to work within the studio system… is such a relief for me. To know that my film is going to get released and here we are, red carpet, and there's people here! So I'm very grateful for that.

One last question, have you seen S. Darko [the sequel to Donnie Darko]?

I have not seen it.

Are you planning to?

No. I kind of... it's not… I didn't have anything to do with it and I just.. kind of want the movie to exist in my heart the way I made it and I just I won't… I don't have any plans to see it.

The Box is theaters November 6th.