Famous Monsters pretty much ceased publication in 1983, apart from a brief attempt at a revival in 1993. But now it's coming back, full steam. This is fantastic news for anybody who loves classic monsters. Here are the details, according to a press release from IDW:

Famous Monsters of Filmland, the classic sci-fi/horror/fantasy-specific film magazine that captured the imaginations of so many for more than three decades, today announced its return to print. FM has partnered with IDW Publishing, responsible for hit comic book titles such as 30 Days of Night, Angel, Transformers, and Locke & Key, to bring this new incarnation of the magazine to life. The new Famous Monsters magazine will begin its run on a quarterly basis starting in summer 2010, and will be available in major book retailers, comic stores, and online at famousmonsters.com.

Originally launched in 1958, Famous Monsters of Filmland was one of the first magazines to take readers behind-the-scenes of some of the most popular movies of present and past. Pulling the curtain back on the filmmaking process, the magazine became a lightning rod for legions of young fans, sparking the minds and hearts of future storytellers such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo del Toro, Stephen King, and John Landis. Under the guidance of beloved editor-in-chief Forrest J Ackerman, credited with nurturing and even inspiring the careers of early contemporaries such as Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen, and L. Ron Hubbard, the magazine brought monsters to life and made household names out of writers, directors, creature designers, FX artists, and monster makeup technicians.

Editorial duties for the magazine will be handled by Michael Heisler, a veteran of the comic book industry for over 20 years, with experience logged at Marvel Comics, WildStorm Productions and IDW itself. "FM was far and away my favorite magazine when I was a kid, and there has been nothing quite like it since," said Heisler. "Our goal is to update that magic for a modern audience, with coverage of current horror in all its forms, while continuing to pay tribute to the classic films that started it all. Personally, I'm thrilled to be taking this step down the road that Forry Ackerman and ‘Chilly Billy' Cardille put me on so many years ago."

Famous Monsters cover via Godzilla Cover Gallery. [Comic Hero News]

Continuing the week of Halloween Smackdown (and classic Halloween costume favorites), we're bringing in the Misfits Of Science. No, not the shortlived 1980s TV show, but characters like Frankenstein's Monster, Mister Hyde and Seth Brundle - The classic idea of science overreaching, ignoring morality with terrible consequences that happen to include a monster we can all root for - I mean, against. Well, kind of. What happens when witchcraft comes up against something that spits in the face of all that's natural?

Yup, we're splitting the poll today, giving Mutations and Creations their own chances to duke it out with Witches, not only because Frankenstein's Monster is a different beast than Mister Hyde in many ways, but also because we're thinking that maybe the completely unnatural creations have some kind of edge over the mutated, in some entirely imaginary "What if magic is more effective against that which is naturally supposed to exist" sense. But what do we know about magic? We lost track of The Lord Of The Rings movies long before Cate Blanchett showed up.

Tomorrow: The final showdown! Today's winner versus the ghouls you've been expecting all along! Until then, the poll remains open until midnight PST tonight, so vote vote vote.

Frankenstein Conquers The World

Because, sometimes, a monster has to save the world from a Godzilla-esque other monster, who's threatening (where else?) Japan.

Dracula The Superhero
We'd love to say that we can't blame Dell Comics for trying to cash in on the Batmania of the 1960s by turning Dracula into a superhero, but... Well, it's Dracula as a superhero. Even worse, it's a modern-day Count Dracula as a scientist who accidentally swallows some formula that allows him to transform into a bat and then decides to fight crime in a purple jumpsuit. Seriously, in what world is that a good idea?

Supporting Team Spirit Is Some Kind Of Good-Doing, Right?
Maybe werewolves were meant to be working for a common good. Exhibit A:

Frankenstein's Monster... Hunter
Ignore the shortlived attempt to turn the character into a superhero from the same people behind the Dracula superhero (Although we're slightly charmed by the secret identity "Frank N. Stone"); the best comic version of Mary Shelley's creation is undoubtedly Grant Morrison's sullen hero from the Seven Soldiers series, packing heat and a grim demeanor as he dispatches demons, alien invasions and deals with his former Bride, who just so happens to be a reanimated agent of a secret government agency investigating weirdness. Freaks have never had such a strong defender as this son of Victor Frankenstein.

Zombies Can Do More Than Shuffle
It's hard to make a case for zombies being good guys; they're mostly unthinking forces of brain-eating chaos, as opposed to particularly malicious. And yet, who could argue that this didn't improve their life just a little bit?

Werewolf By Night
His name is Jack Russell, people. Whoever said that the 1970s wasn't the age of Mighty Marvel Bad Ideas?

Buffy The Vampire Slayer In General
Vampires with souls, sarcastic werewolves in bands and demons with perfectly justifiable fears of bunnies. Joss Whedon's calling card may have specialized in making heroes out of monsters - even Dracula helped out the Slayers in the Season Eight comic series - but he made sure to keep them interesting even after they'd seen the light (Metaphorically so, in Angel's and Spike's cases, of course).

Dracula Saves Hallowe'en

Any movie that has a plot where Dracula has to save Hallowe'en because the classic horror monsters are seen as funny rather than scary already has our love, but where The Hallowe'en That Almost Wasn't goes horribly wrong isn't even the Munsters-esque treatment of the characters, but the casting of Judd Hirsch as Dracula. There's just no way to find that man scary, sadly.

We Ain't Afraid Of No Ghosts (1)

'Nuff said? No, wait...

We Ain't Afraid Of No Ghosts (2)

Definitely 'nuff said. Paranormal Activity would've been so much better if it'd been Casper visiting instead...

From the mind (and pen) of John Byrne, this holiday-themed oneshot goes back to olden days when Angel was Angelus and evil, and Frankenstein's Monster was looking for revenge. Of course, things don't necessarily go as either of them had planned, as the title may suggest:

Angel Vs. Frankenstein is released this Wednesday.

According to Marvel, the DIY paper doll reanimatathon can be explained away like this:

To commemorate the upcoming FrankenCastle storyline that's running through PUNISHER, we at Marvel have created this Build-A-Frank graphic. We want you to download the image and add your own face, your friends' faces, The Sentry's face...really anything you want to this image. Spread it around the Internet, post your Franken________ on message boards and share 'em in our Build-A-Frank Flickr pool.

Our favorite so far? FrankenTaco. Although, let's face it; FrankaChu may be more effective by freaking criminals out with his cuteness before gunning them down mercilessly.

FrankenCastle: Build-A-Frank [Marvel]

The Thing

There are two movie versions of The Thing, which is itself based on a short story by John Campbell called "Who Goes There," but every iteration shares the same basic structure. An alien beneath the ice of Antarctica gets thawed out by a lonely group stationed on the continent during winter. It slowly picks off members of the group, perhaps most spectacularly in John Carpenter's movie version, which is packed with terrific, gory effects of alien/human slaughter.

"At the Mountains of Madness"

This classic short story by H.P. Lovecraft is about a group of explorers who discover an ancient city buried beneath the ice in an Antarctic mountain range. Within the city, they find evidence that Earth's earliest inhabitants were aliens who took up residence in the once-temperate South Pole. They lived in a state of advanced civilization, occasionally having problems with other alien groups (like Cthulhu's spawn, which live in the sea). But finally their city descended into decadence, and the polymorphous slave beings known as Shuggoths began to take over. Eventually it emerges that some of the Shuggoths still live, and the human expedition may have released them upon the world.

The X-Files movie

The 1998 movie that came out of the popular alien-paranoia TV series includes a final set of scenes that take place in a secret underground lab in Antarctica, where aliens are being studied. We know the aliens are dangerous, and are associated with the black oil that has been mind-controlling several humans in the show. As the movie ends, a spaceship beneath the lab rises up and takes off. More black oil to be unleashed on the world? Aliens finally freed from prison? We may never know.

Alien vs. Predator

A group of explorers travel to Antarctica (this plot is starting to sound familiar, isn't it?) to investigate a mysterious heat signal in an ice field. They discover a vast, underground structure that looks sort of like a temple. It turns out to be a holding tank for aliens, and a group of predators have awakened them in order to have a fun hunting expedition. Unfortunately the human explorers are caught between the predators and aliens, and some of them get used as alien-hatching vessels so the predators can have their fun. When things get out of control, the humans have to decide whether to ally themselves with the dangerous predators if they're going to escape alive – and prevent the aliens from being unleashed all over the Earth.

Alien

It's possible to claim that the original 1970s Alien movie is about ice-bound creatures awakening to kill, kill, kill. The aliens that Ripley's vessel stumbles across are on what seems to be a frozen planet.

"A Colder War"

In this short story by Charles Stross, a Cold War-era nuclear submarine finds a Cthulhu-esque creature beneath the ice. It's an even greater threat than nuclear war, and makes the cold war pale by comparison.

Mammoth

Perhaps one of the greatest kitchen-sink monsters ever created, this movie's eponymous creature is discovered frozen whole in the arctic ice. But when the ice melts and (of course) the mammoth escapes, we discover that not only is it a reanimated paleolithic beastie, but it's also controlled via wireless by a group of hostile aliens and it's got the power to suck people's lifeforce out using its trunk. So it's an alien-controlled vampire dinosaur. And it's pissed. Watch the alien vampire mammoth wreck havoc among drunken teens, including Summer Glau (!) at a rave in the forest!

Transformers

In the first Transformers movie, evil Deceptacon leader Megatron is found deep beneath the ice, and as he thaws, his evil world-destroying powers grow.

Demolition Man

In the movie version of Demolition Man, set in the near future, supercriminal Phoenix is thawed out of deep freeze to face trial. Unfortunately he kills everybody in sight and escapes, to engage in a zillion acts of crime in a city unprepared for such a dangerous criminal. Luckily the city is able to defrost our cop hero too, whose skills dealing with violence were honed during Phoenix's era.

Dinosaurus

In this flick from 1960, a team constructing a harbor on a Carribbean island accidentally unearth two dinosaurs, a T-Rex and a brontosaurus. Of course the kaiju are struck by lightning and brought back to life for a mega-rampage – though sadly they aren't controlled by aliens or capable of sucking people's souls out. A caveman is brought to life with them, and serves as is the friendly defrosted foil to the dinos.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

This classic 1952 Ray Harryhausen movie basically started the giant atomic monster genre. A "Rhedosaurus" is awakened in arctic circle by atomic bombs, and unleashes monstery, claymation madness upon the world.

Doctor Who, "The Ice Warriors"

A new ice age is sweeping over the world, and a team of scientists and maniacs is desperately trying to find a way to roll back the glaciers. And then they find a weird Viking warrior-esque figure trapped in the ice for millions of years... and when the ice defrosts, the figure awakens!

Heroes

At the end of last season's superhero soap Heroes, Tracy uses her freeze-ray powers to freeze . . . herself! She goes mega-icy and then shatters into a million pieces to save the son of her dead, ultrastrong mutant genetic clone "sister" Nikki. But she'll be back this fall in the new season, all thawed out and healed up and ready to engage in all kinds of evil.

Frankenstein's Monster

In this early-70s comic from Marvel, the Frankenstein monster emerges from an arctic glacier twice: Once to battle Dracula, who injures him; and a second time in the modern world, aided by Frankenstein's distant, gothy relative Victoria Frankenstein. Though revenge and killing were among his goals after his first thaw, by the time he thawed a second time he was ready to fall in love (with Victoria) and fight for great justice (with Iron Man). Frankenstein's Monster teaches us that taking a second ice nap can be redemptive.

Terminal Freeze

In this novel by Lincoln Child, a group of explorers living in "Fear Base" underneath "Fear Glacier" encounter – surprise – something they need to be afraid of. It's a frozen, catlike creature that they plan to defrost when they return to civilization. But unfortunately it defrosts before the group makes it home, and people start dying. This is yet another tale in the sub-sub-genre established by "Who Goes There," the short story on which The Thing is based.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Michael Bay, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox had a press conference in South Korea, and here's the whole thing. [TLAMB]

Deadpool:

Ryan Reynolds has a promise for you about his Deadpool solo film:

He's going to be the Merc with the Mouth, [we're going to give] all those answers that everyone wants. He's going to have the scarred-up face, he's going to be in the suit - and, it's going to be incredible.

Right now, he says they're just working out what the spine of the story will be, including what antagonists Wade will face, and whehter there will be flashbacks or flash-forwards or what. [MTV]

The Hobbit:

Not sure how much we're covering this franchise, but in any case Guillermo del Toro says the plan is no longer to adapt this book into two movies plus a "bridge" movie. Instead, the new plan is simply to adapt the book into two movies, adding in some subplot material. What subplots, you ask?

There is a whole other chapter, so to speak, which is the comings and going of Gandalf which are dealt with, people that know the lore know that Gandalf was delayed with a crisis… with a character that is very shady called the Necromancer that proves to be Sauron.

Also, he says Andy Serkis, Ian McKellen and Hugo Weaving are back in their roles from the earlier films. And he says he's definitely still directing Frankenstein, with Doug Jones playing the monster. But he says Blade IV and Hellboy III will probably never happen, and he's only producing Jekyll and Hyde, not directing. [Slashfilm]

Zombieland:

Here are the first official photos from this zombie comedy, which has the following storyline:

Jesse Eisenberg plays Columbus, a teenage who has made a habit of running from what scares him. Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) doesn't have fears. If he did, he'd kick their ever-living ass. In a world overrun by zombies, these two are perfectly evolved survivors. But now, they're about to stare down the most terrifying prospect of all: each other. The film also stars Emma Stone (Superbad) and Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine).

More pics at the link. [AICN]

Moon:

It's not just that the duplicate Sam meets on the Moon is a clone — the "original" Sam is a clone too, says director Duncan Jones. After he's injured in an accident, the robot Gerty activates an "energetic and irritable" copy of him. The older Sam is burned out and ready to go home, the newly activated Sam is still the guy who was eager to escape his wife and go to the Moon. They bicker and fight, until they realize that the mining company views both of them as disposable. [Wired]

Lost:

Shannon probably won't be back next season, but Charlie might turn up, you never know. And Rebecca Mader says she's eager to come back and play Charlotte for one or two episodes. [E! Online]

Torchwood:

The new five-part miniseries "Children Of Earth" pushes the Torchwood storyline forward, but leaves the door open for a fourth season, says Eve Myles. It starts with the gang still grieving their lost comrades, but then they have to put that aside and face a new threat, in a bigger storyline than the show's had before. It ends up with the team's relationships to each other, and to the world, greatly transformed. [Wired]

Battlestar Galactica:

Did we already show you this teaser for this fall's TV movie, "The Plan"? Just in case, here it is. There's more coming on Friday night, during Primeval.

Dollhouse:

So why will season two be better than season one? Joss Whedon explains:

We really understand the show now. We understand what works, and what didn't work so well or what we weren't so thrilled about. We don't have the onus of trying to be a big hit sitting on our shoulders. We can just be ourselves. And so the stories we're breaking are pure, and exciting, and everybody's on-board in the room, and it's never flowed better.

As for what will happen, he says the stories will expand on the second half of season one, and a lot of the plots are driven by wanting to have the most fun with these actors, and seeing all the stuff Eliza Dushku can become. Plus expanding the mythology of the Dollhouse. As for Alpha, the season won't pick up right away with "We've got to find Alpha!" Rather, the character will be used sparingly. As for Echo, here's her storyline in the new season:

Echo wants to find not just Caroline, but what's going on behind everything. She doesn't have all of the skills. [Laughs] But she does have this weird super power of becoming a different person all the time, so she might start using that more specifically to find out who Caroline was and what happened to her and why this place exists.

And surprise: Echo's past imprints may not be as wiped out as the Dollhouse would like to believe. [EW]

Supernatural:

Jensen Ackles says the Winchesters won't be calling the shots in the war between Heaven and Hell, but they may play a pivotal role. To some extent, the Winchesters will just be caught in the middle, but they will lend whatever help they can to Castiel and the other angels. And Ackles says Sam's demon blood addiction will remain a problem next season:

The demon stuff is still coursing through his veins, and he's got that to deal with. The season finale ended with the big, giant realization that he was being duped into becoming what he didn't want to be. So now he's got to deal with that and try to get back to neutral

Also, he says that a sixth season of the show isn't really all that likely. All he and Padalecki meant, when they talked about season six at that convention in England, is that they're signed up for six seasons. So if it happens, they have to be part of it. [E! Online]

Virtuality:

Ronald D. Moore talks more about the strands that run through this TV movie, airing June 26:

I think some of the fundamental questions on the show go to things like "What is real? What is not real in this story? What is manipulation? What is not manipulation?" If we went to series we would continue to explore that, and we'd play different characters starting to unravel different mysteries. What are they telling them from Earth, and is that true? Are they just being paranoid? Is somebody aboard manipulating their messages, the virtual reality? There are a lot of mysteries and certain interesting things that were set up that we would continue to play if the show went to series.

[Sci Fi Wire]

True Blood:

Sam Trammell and Rutina Wesley talk season two on a morning talk show:

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Dr. Leonard McCoy ("Bones") (Star Trek)
Kind of the obvious place to start, right? It's kind of hard to think of something to say about McCoy that hasn't already been said. He's probably the original Awesome Space Doctor, providing not only medical expertise to the Enterprise, but also being one-third of the trifecta that is Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. If Spock is the logic and Kirk is emotion, then McCoy is morality glue that holds it all together. (Morality glue?) Originally portrayed by DeForest Kelley, he will be played by Karl Urban in this summer's film.

Dr. Pieter Cross (Doctor Mid-Nite) (DC Comics)
Dr. Cross is actually the third DC hero to don the mantle of Doctor Mid-Nite, and like his predecessors, he a) can only see in pitch darkness, and b) is a doctor. Despite the fact that the chosen spelling of midnight looks like the name of a bad motel, it's a little refreshing, really, to have a superhero who uses the title of "doctor" and has the medical degree to back it up. Cross, in addition to his vigilante activities, still puts in a full day at the office and is always willing to take time to deal with a medical emergency. On top of that, he's the superhero community's physician of choice, having done everything from emergency surgery on Hourman to removing the Brainiac virus from Oracle to removing a bullet from Lois Lane to giving Power Girl her annual checkups. (I kid you not; Pieter Cross is a lucky man.)

Dr. Janet Frasier (Stargate SG-1)
Dr. Frasier is basically amazing. She is a compassionate physician and finds herself not only dealing with Earth diseases, but alien ones as well, as she treats extraterrestrial refugees. Over the course of the show, she adopts a daughter, Cassandra, an alien orphan.

Dr. Owen Harper (Torchwood)
Owen is the medical officer for Torchwood Three. He's kind of sarcastic, kind of abrasive, and eventually also kind of wonderful. He spends his spare time getting romantically entangled with both of his female coworkers, a female aviator from 1953, and, well, pretty much whoever else he happens to run across. In the show's second season, he dies, but gets better. Sort of. In that he essentially becomes the team's resident snarky zombie boy for the rest of his run.

Dr. Simon Tam (Firefly TV series, Serenity, 2005 film)
A brilliant young doctor (graduating in the top three percent of his class at the Medical Academy), Simon became a resident trauma surgeon in a major hospital and his future looked bright. That is, until he has to bust his sister out of the Academy, where she's being experimented on, escape, and join up with a less-than-savory crew that conducts less-than-legal business. Lucky for him, their business tends to keep his medical training pretty well in demand. (Plus, he's pretty much a shoe-in to win Best Dressed among the ship's crew. He owns some nice waistcoats.)

Dr. Carson Beckett (Stargate: Atlantis)
If there were a competition for Most Awesome Doctor On This List, chances are Beckett probably wouldn't win, although he might earn a few points for sharing a last name with an existentialist playwright. At the same time, he's a pretty competent physician and has the honor of being the only Scottish doctor on this list. He also probably holds the honor of having the most awkward character death on here, but at least he's back now. As a clone. Which is also kind of awkward.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Maybe he's not exactly a certified physician, but you have admit that creating a living being out of a bunch of dead people is about as impressive as you can get when it comes to medical skill. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, however, Victor both fears and rejects his creation because of its ugliness. Way to be a pansy, man.

Dr. Thomas Elliot (Hush) (DC Comics)
He started out as Bruce Wayne's childhood friend, despite being kind of a nutjob of a kid, and went on to become a successful, Harvard-educated surgeon. Unfortunately, he eventually becomes the doctor of one Edward Nigma (The Riddler), which spells bad news, considering Elliot is the guy who tried to kill his parents as a kid (and half-succeeded) and now hates Bruce Wayne. Well, he and the Riddler realize they have that in common, and Dr. Elliot invents himself an alter-ego to work on the whole bringing-down-Batman plan. And thus, Hush is born.

Dr. Stephen Franklin (Babylon 5)
Dr. Franklin is the chief medical officer aboard the space station, and as Wikipedia describes him:

Dr. Franklin is a strong-willed, kind person and idealistic leader on Babylon 5; he is also a workaholic. He is not afraid to take risks to save a patient's life; this habit can occasionally get him into trouble. He has strong moral and ethical values, but he can also be self-righteous and a perfectionist at times.

And while those qualities make him kind of awesome, they also kind of make him addicted to stimulants in the show's third season. He, of course, beats the addiction and goes back to the awesome.

Dr. Miles Bennell (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956 film)
The good doctor is called into town to look at the uncle of the cousin of his ex-sweetheart, who somehow seems not to be himself as of late. (This ex-sweetheart also seems to be able to call in some pretty convoluted favors.) Dr. Bennell is at first unable to find anything wrong, but a little more investigation leads him to discover the pod people, come to Earth to replace us. And, of course, snatch our bodies in the process-A fate which Bennell warns us of the last dramatic fourth-wall-breaking moments of the film. (The 2007 adaptation, The Invasion, features Daniel Craig as a doctor named Ben Driscoll. It unfortunately also features a bad movie.)

Dr. Sherman Cottle (Battlestar Galactica)
The Chief Medical Officer of Galactica, Dr. Cottle is also the only real physician-surgeon aboard. As the Battlestar Wiki describes him:

Cottle is somewhat eccentric and is considered a "bastard" among some of Galactica's crew, in addition to his penchant for being a heavy smoker, despite knowing the risks, and one not overly impressed by positions of power. He is, above all things, a healer. To him, nothing else really matters, be it rank, riches, or species.

Despite his somewhat abrasive manner, he's still well-trusted among the crew.

Dr. Samuel J. Loomis (Halloween franchise)
While its debatable whether or not the Halloween films are remotely science-fiction (although Michael Myers pretty inarguably displays some rather superhuman abilities), it's pretty safe to say that Dr. Loomis is just about the most awesome licensed psychiatrist in the business. After all, one of his main charges is more or less Unmitigated Evil. Then again, Loomis also doesn't have a great track record with keeping Michael from killing people. But he does get to say things like, "Death has come to your little town, Sheriff." And in Donald Pleasance's voice to boot.

Dr. Donald Blake (Thor, Marvel Comics)
Dr. Blake was Thor's original alter ego, having somewhat accidentally discovered the ability to transform into the god while on vacation in Scandanavia. Blake was a surgeon and while not being Thor, was actually seen practicing medicine in the comics. He is also said to have worked with Thor on multiple occasions, but what exactly that entails is a little beyond me.

The Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)
The Doctor might be an Emergency Medical Hologram, but he's more than just a bit of hardware. In an attempt to build his own personality, he develops artistic talents and a holographic family, as well as friendships with his crewmates. He even writes a novel titled Photons Be Free.

Doctor Gogol (Mad Love, 1935 film)
Doctor Gogol is a brilliant-but, of course, completely mad-surgeon. After all, he's played by Peter Lorre, who pretty much invented brilliant-but-mad. Gogol is (madly) in love with an actress named Yvonne, and when her husband, a concert pianist named Stephen, has his hands crushed in a tragic accident, she comes to him, begging for help. He obliges by replacing Stephen's hands with those of a recently executed knife murderer. The results? Well, let's just say that Stephen and that kid from Idle Hands should get together and form some kind of support group. And Doctor Gogol? Completely mad. But also brilliant.

Dr. Cecilia Reyes (X-Men, Marvel Comics)
A Puerto Rican doctor, Cecilia has the ability to project a forcefield around her. As Wikipedia says:

Cecilia Reyes decided to become a doctor when her father was gunned down in front of her as a child, and she was unable to do anything to help him. The X-Men tried recruiting her when it was discovered that she was a mutant, but Reyes had no interest in being a superhero. However, when Operation: Zero Tolerance, a government-backed anti-mutant task force, targeted her, she was forced to join forces with the X-Man Iceman and other mutants to escape New York City and track down Bastion, Operation Zero Tolerance's leader.

Doc Benton (Supernatural, 3.15 "Time is on My Side")
When people started turning up with surgically removed organs and a dead man's fingerprints all over them, the Winchester brothers begin looking into it, as they are wont to do. Their investigation leads them to Doc Benton, a nineteenth century surgeon who discovered the secret to eternal life and now has a habit of replacing his parts whenever they wear out. Maybe it's not the best plan to win a guy friends, but it sure makes great use of his surgical skills.

Doctor Strauss, along with Professor Nemur (Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes)
Although nobody really remembers the name of the doctor who tripled Charlie Gordon's IQ, you have to admit that pulling that off is no small feat. Unfortunately, the effects are-not to ruin the ending-not exactly all they're cracked up to be. Additionally, Strauss and Nemur can claim the credit for one of the most famous mice in sci-fi.

Dr. Julian Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
As Wikipedia tells it:

As a child, Julian Bashir fell behind in school, and was evaluated as having learning difficulties. Because of this, his parents, Richard and Amsha Bashir, had him subjected to genetic engineering. The procedure made him mentally superior to most humans, and greatly enhanced his physical abilities. However, because human genetic engineering is illegal in the United Federation of Planets, Bashir and his parents kept his procedure a secret throughout most of his adult life.

Throughout the course of the show, he gets to do such exciting things as end up in a prison camp, see the woman he loves (Jadzia Dax) marry someone else, and attempt to integrate some other genetically engineered people into Federation culture.

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Unlike his more temperamental counterpart, Dr. Jekyll is a well-liked, friendly doctor. The secret life he leads as Mr. Edward Hyde, however, puts that likeable reputation at stake, thanks to a potion Jekyll invented. Perhaps the lesson here is that you shouldn't mix your own drinks, even when you're a trained professional.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods but Hollywood nabbed lightning from Zeus himself - and here are the ten best ways they've put those thunderbolts to use.

Create Life
This is the one that started it all. Before Frankenstein, lightning was just a handy way to collect some insurance money. After Frankenstein, it could do anything. Although Mary Shelley's novel provided no description of Victor Frankenstein's methods, the classic 1931 film cemented lightning's place in the popular imagination as the giver of life. Part classical Zeus imagery and part flashy spectacle, the revivifying lightning bolt is now inseparable from Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.

Save gas on your DeLorean
Great Scott! The entire plot of the first Back to the Future is centered around a lightning strike, necessary to power the DeLorean and send Marty McFly back to… well, you know. Doc Brown's plan to swap lightning for plutonium to get the necessary 1.21 gigawatts is also a clever nod to the history of technobabble – by the 80s, nuclear power had become the all-powerful pseudo-science of choice, but in the 50s lightning was still the dominant fix-it. Which leads to the most dramatic "should've gotten the longer extension cord" moment in all of movie history.

Scramble tv transmissions and DNA samples
Considering Doctor Who's long history with scientific hand-waving, you'd think they'd be old pros at the lightning fixit. But lightning saves the day in only the very lamest of the new series episodes, proving that we are better off with paradox machines and timey wimey detectors after all.

First, the mildly dreadful Idiot's Lantern climaxed with the Doctor clinging to a tv tower while some flashy pink lightning somehow trapped a face-eating television monster inside a Betamax tape. Then a year later, the exuberantly dreadful Daleks in Manhattan two-parter found the Doctor once again struck by lightning while clinging to a tower, this time the Empire State Building, causing his Time Lord DNA to mix with that of the already genetically awkward Human-Dalek hybrids. Somehow this saves the day. I don't know. I really try not to think about these episodes too much, and neither should you. If you want to try to suss it out, here's a clip:

Leap tall buildings in a single bound
It's a fairly established bit of Superman lore that a freak lightning accident can transfer the Man of Steel's powers to an ordinary human – a random Army private in a 1958 comic, a woman who would become electric villain Livewire in The Animated Series, even Lana Lang on Smallville. But my favorite example is Lois & Clark's "A Bolt From The Blue," in which lightning strikes while Superman is stopping a suicide, turning a 90 pound weakling into a 90 pound Hercules. Metropolis's newest superhero charges citizens for his services, asking Lois to print his price list, but in the end everything is put back to normal thanks to that other great scifi fixit – reversing the polarity.

Control lightning itself
The power to control lightning is not as common a side effect as you might think – so leave it to The X-Files to cover the obvious angle for us. Third season episode "D.P.O." features a young man whose lightning strike left him able to harness the power of electricity. Soon, four other men in town are conveniently struck dead by lightning, bringing in our favorite FBI agents so that poor Mulder's cell phone can get zapped as well. Check out the clip below to see Giovanni Ribisi use his powers to defibrillate Jack Black.

Teach robots to love
Yes, yes, we know: Short Circuit's Johnny 5 bears a remarkable resemblance to his adorable robot successor Wall-E. But while Wall-E gained his sentience through years of isolation on the desiccated Earth, Johnny 5's personality burst into life and into our hearts in a bolt of lightning. The lightning itself isn't the interesting part, so here's Johnny 5 busting out the moves with his friend Stephanie.

Help you cheat on tests
Saved By The Bell's Screech was one of the greatest of the tv nerds – you never knew when he was going to fall out of a locker, masquerade as a woman/teacher/alien to further one of Zack's schemes, or get struck by lightning. The wonderfully cheesy Saturday morning sitcom never shied away from patently ridiculous plot devices – see the famous Jessie Spano caffeine pill freakout and, my personal favorite, Zack's 1502 on the SATs – and it only took till the series' third episode for lightning to strike. The bolt hits Screech, of course, who becomes instantly but temporarily clairvoyant, and he uses his newfound lightning-powers to help Zack and the gang cheat on a history exam. Good thing it wasn't earth science!

Magnetize all available metals
You may be seeing Danny Kaye on your tv this time of year in White Christmas, but it was in the 1956 classic The Court Jester that he taught us how lightning can save the day even in vaguely-medieval England. The lead-up to the jousting scene is well-remembered for its impossible tongue twister about the pellet with the poison in the flagon with the dragon, but it wasn't fancy word-play that saved Danny Kaye's neck in the end – just good old-fashioned lightning. The bolt, in all its cheesy 50s special effects glory, magnetizes his suit of armor, giving him that vital edge against his enemy's mace. This is one of the greatest sketches of all time, so if you watch only one of the clips in this article, make it this one.

Magnetize all available non-metals
In another fine instance of random lightning-induced magnetism, Gilligan's Island had good old Gilligan go bowling in a storm and get struck just as he's throwing a strike. Naturally, this causes the bowling ball to become magnetized to Gilligan's hand. If the idea of a rock getting magnetized to a hand sounds implausible to you, just wait for the Professor's explanation at 3:30 on the video, one of the finest feats of technobabble ever recorded. Oh, and when they try to remove the bowling ball? Gilligan turns invisible. Of course.

Score free plastic surgery
And sometimes, lightning just makes you pretty. In a subversion of the classic Frankenstein trope, 1960's monster-family sitcom The Munsters had patriarch Herman Munster – normally green-skinned and bolt-necked like a traditional Frankenstein monster – turn magically, hideously normal after a freak lightning accident in Grandpa's lab. True to family form, the rest of the Munster clan is disgusted by Herman's newly handsome appearance. But fear not! Another lightning strike at the end of the episode turned Herman back into his usual ugly self. Check out the clip to see actor Fred Gwynne in his only appearance as Herman Munster sans make-up.

So next time you walk through a storm, hold your head up high - because if you get struck by lightning, who knows! You just might discover another fantastic power of the sci fi world's greatest fix-it.

Guillermo Del Toro told the Director's Guild of America:

I'm not doing Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. I'm doing an adventure story that involves the creature. I cannot say much, but it's not the central creation story, I'm not worried about that. The fact is I've been dreaming of doing a 'Frankenstein' movie since I was a child. The one thing I can promise is, compared to Kenneth Branagh, I will not appear shirtless in the movie!

Guillermo del Toro has mentioned his favorite creature actor the lovely Doug Jones for the role of monster, which I think is a great idea. After seeing his monstrously creative performances in Hellboy 2 and Pan's Labyrinth I now have complete faith in the man's portray anything strange and creepy.

[Coming Soon]

According to Slice of Scifi:

The director will add his own twist to the well-known “Frankenstein” franchise, a story he has been waiting to tell all his professional life.

“To me, Frankenstein represents the essential human question: ‘Why did my creator throw me here, unprotected, unguided, unaided and lost?’ ” del Toro said. “With that one, they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands to prevent me from directing it.”

However, for “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” del Toro plans on sticking closely to the original Robert Louis Stevenson tale.

Probably the last great version of Frankenstein to hit the screen was Kenneth Branagh's version with a scarred, whiny Robert De Niro emerging from a gooey, womb-like machine to become the monster.

As for Jekyll and Hyde, I'd like to see del Toro have the guts to really stick to the original story, which does not contain any annoying girlfriends or maids who are menaced by Hyde. Every single filmed version has had one or two ladies in it, which completely blows the premise of the original tale about a man who is so alone that he's driven to explore himself and divide in half.

And del Toro will also be adapting Vonnegut's beloved novel Slaughterhouse-Five:

In his upcoming version of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” del Toro will migrate away from the first film adaptation of Vonnegut’s inspiring novel and provide a more literal rendition, one that stays truer to the novel.

“There are ways that Vonnegut plays with and juxtaposes time that was perhaps too edgy to be tackled on film at that time,” del Toro said.

We'll see. This is one of those movies, like Watchmen, that could have fans clutching their heads in agony because it's really meant to be a book not a film.

del Toro's 9 Year Calendar [via Slice of Scifi]

Before we launch into our awesome list, let's just cop to something: We're not doing the Aristotelian definition of tragedy. We're just not. Aristotle is for wusses. We're going more with the basic definition: the person who has everything, and then loses it all, or just gets horribly fucked over. In a poetic or meaningful way. Okay?

Every scifi hero Charlton Heston played, ever.

The Charlton Heston science fiction oeuvre is splendid in its variety. But there are a few things you can count on in pretty much all of them. Heston will know better than everybody else around him. He'll be the last bastion of civilization, surrounded by dirty hippies or grandiloquent mutants in whiteface or apes or whatever. And in the end, he'll die because nobody ever listens to him when he's telling them how stupid they are. Why? Why won't they listen? Soylent green is people, you damn dirty whiteface cultists! (Okay, so he doesn't die in Planet Of The Apes, but then he does in the sequel.)

Sam Lowry

In Brazil, the fatal flaw that destroys Sam Lowry is his secret desire to escape the repressive system he's a cog in. (Yeah, okay, we're getting Aristotelean for a sec.) He dreams and fantasizes about being a flying hero in shining armor who fights monsters and soars away, but when he finally gets a chance to escape with the woman (literally) of his dreams, it all goes bad. And he winds up being tortured to death by his former best friend.

Dr. Frankenstein

He's obsessed with the idea of bringing inanimate matter to life, to the point where he drops out of school and spends years digging up corpses and sticking them together. But once he's created his monsterpiece (sorry), he rejects it and drives it away. His cruelty to his creation leads to the deaths of several of his friends, so Frankenstein vows to hunt it down. But Frankenstein doesn't even manage to die at the hands of his creation — instead, in the original novel, pneumonia claims his life after he pursues it to the Arctic. He doesn't even manage to die properly!

Henry Jekyll

Another guy who messes with science and gets messed with in return. Jekyll wants to separate his good side from his dark side, so he drinks a potion which turns him into the embodiment of his bad side, Edward Hyde. At first, it's all fun and games, until Hyde starts going buck wild and Jekyll is turning into him at night, even without the potion. But when Jekyll tries to repress Hyde, the monstrous side of him only comes back worse than ever, killing an old man. Finally, he becomes Hyde permanently, and decides to kill himself instead of paying for his crimes.

Winston Smith

He's another cog in the machine, helping to rewrite history in a future totalitarian state where everybody is watched. Because of his doubts about the machine, he gets lured into joining a resistance group — which turns out to be a set-up. He winds up tortured, and gives up his lover and accomplice. In the end, he doesn't die, but he does get utterly broken by the Party.

Jeff Brundle in The Fly

Annnd another hero who suffers due to his curiosity. Brundle invents the perfect teleportation machine, but a fly gets stuck in there with him. He and his little travel buddy get merged genetically, and they wind up as a half-human, half fly monster. So he decides the answer is to merge his body with his pregnant girlfriend, to add more human DNA to the mix. Sadly, the selfish girlfriend escapes and he ends up being merged with a machine instead, becoming a mangled heap.

Chet Kinsman in Ben Bova's Kinsman series.

It's the far-off year of 1999, and the Americans and Russians are sharing a base deep under the surface of the moon. Chet Kinsman is the chief of the American side, and he's got a plan to avert the war back on Earth. And it almost works, except that his best friend, Frank Colt, betrays him and he winds up dying as a result.

Mad Max

Poor old Max — he just wants to pursue justice as a police officer, but his uprightness gets him in the sights of an evil biker gang. And after they torch his best friend Goose, he becomes embittered and quits being a cop. Only to find that there's no safety in being a civilian, in the crumbling post-apocalyptic Australia. The thugs take out his family, leaving him a bitter loner who has no choice but to kill punks of all sizes, occasionally chaining them to their soon-to-explode bikes and giving them saws. He doesn't die, but he does end up getting smacked around by Tina Turner with really bad hair, and then suffers the indignity of getting rescued by a bunch of kids.

Londo Mollari

Lometa at Everything2 has a very passionate argument about why Londo Mollari is the ultimate tragic hero of Babylon 5:

Londo as a tragic hero went through more twists than a bag of pretzels. Born into a noble family Mollari had a good heart, but he was condemned at every turn by his own bad choices. His ascension to the throne as Emperor was bittersweet and in the end he surrendered himself to his greatest fear, death at the hands of a Narn.

Wolverine

We were arguing earlier about whether Wolverine is a tragic hero. He does lose his family and his memory, and then his girlfriend gets killed. He struggles with his berzerker nature and his bestial killing instinct, and people are always trying to make him wear a yellow leotard. Plus, if you believe Wolverine: The End, he's destined to end up a bitter, lonely old man in Canada, before dying in a fight with his evil mutant brother, whom he thought dead.

Hal Jordan

It's all been undone now, but the greatest Green Lantern had a tragic hero arc in the 1990s. Hal Jordan just couldn't stand to fail, so after the evil Mongul destroyed his home town, Hal went nuts and used his power ring to recreate the wrecked Coast City. Then he went berzerk and attacked the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians. Finally, he renounced his prized Green Lantern-hood and became the villain Parallax. (Later, this was all revealed to be some form of alien possession, but that's a retcon.) Finally, he died, sacrificing himself to save the sun from being eaten.

Dr. Edward Morbius from Forbidden Planet

His curiosity is his downfall — he's determined to study the artifacts of the long-dead Krell race, so he uses the Krells' "Plastic Educator," not realizing that it shapes items from your mind into reality. The Krell wiped themselves out by unleashing monsters from their own ids, and Morbius wipes out his own expedition the same way, except for his daughter. His id-monster is born of his fatal desire to stay and explore the Krell remains, even after the rest of his expedition votes to go home. Finally, he learns the truth and lets the monster kill him, sparing his daughter's life.

Rick Deckard

He's a retired Blade Runner who has to come out of retirement to take up, once again, a job which he no longer really believes in, killing the artificial Replicants. (And if you believe director Ridley Scott, Deckard himself is one of the Replicants he's killing.) In the end, he's with Rachael, another Replicant, but their time together is going to be short and probably not all that pleasant.

Harvey Dent:

Spoilers for the Dark Knight ahead... So stop reading now if you really haven't seen it yet. (Really?) Harvey is another guy there's some debate over. But it's true that in The Dark Knight, he's pretty much one of the good guys, and his insistence on seeing the world in black and white is part of what helps the Joker break him. Even more than losing his fiancee and half his face, it's the realization that the Joker's right and everything is just random chaos that drives him over the edge and leads to his horrible (maybe) demise.

Additional reporting by Lauren Davis.

These images were created by photographer Aleksy Galushkov, who is known for his retro-styled imagery and fascination with Victorian erotica. Here he's recreated the imagery from James Whale's early-1930s Bride of Frankenstein movie, with a naughty twist. What's interesting is that Galushkov isn't the first artist to make the erotic undertones in Bride explicit: the movie Gods and Monsters, a biography of James Whale that deals a lot with the making of Bride, is about how Whale's open homosexuality fed into his depiction of an erotic monster who doesn't want to do as she's told.

The Bride Unwrapped [via Frankensteinia]

Del Toro went on to explain what he knows about Jones and why he connects this character to the actor.

"I think he can do a fantastic job. Ron looks seven feet tall in Hellboy, but he's not. I think we could do that with Doug, but I would love to do it with him. The only vision of the Frankenstein monster I've ever latched onto is Bernie Wrightson's. He's lanky and long, and it's gorgeous in a tragic way. Doug has all of those qualities."

But here's who we'd cast as the monster instead:

David Boreanaz
Why He's A Monster: He's already played a classic monster, why not put the square head to good use and play a soft-sided monster with a soul, or something like that.
Why He Won't Make It Past The Villagers: Boreanaz might have a little too much heart — he's got to be a little destructive after all. I can't imagine him breaking a little girl in two.

Javier Bardem
Why He's A Monster: Bardem is amazingly scary with very little acting. He plays brooding so well and can make you jump out of your seat in a few seconds just with a look and a glance, perfect qualities for a monster.
Why He Won't Make It Past The Villagers: The Spanish part of the monster might be hard to explain if Frankenstein is robbing English graveyards.

Jeremy Irons
Why He's A Monster: On the flip side, Irons is exactly what you'd get if you started mining English graves for spare body parts. His proper attitude could flow nicely with the educated monster, plus he's already got the commanding voice.
Why He Won't Make It Past The Villagers: Too thin.

Ron Perlman
Why He's A Monster: Monster work is Perlman's bread and butter. He's an old pro from playing Big Red to the Beast.
Why He Won't Make It Past The Villagers: Way too obvious of a choice, might need to pass just because it's been done to death.

Ted Danson
Why He's A Monster: Let's put that brow to good work shall we? Just add a couple of bolts to the neck and voila, monster.
Why He Won't Make It Past The Villagers: Might be hard to take Danson seriously. Audience members would be pressed to watch this film with out wondering who was tending bar at Cheers?

[Shock Till You Drop]

• The sound was originally recorded in 1931 for Frankenstein, and it quickly became a staple for haunted houses, spooky castles, and impending bad weather on film soundtracks everywhere.
• Originally recorded on optical film stock, most modern day version are 15th generation (or older) copies, meaning you can no longer hear the original crackles and pops that are apparent on the original.
• The sound was featured in Star Wars, courtesy of Ben Burtt again, and can be heard during the trench run sequence on the Death Star.
• The most famous science fiction use of the sound (besides Frankenstein) was probably when the Delorean was struck by lightning in Back to the Future. In fact, we're surprised they don't use that sound effect when anything gets struck by lightning. It's just so perfect. Maybe because I can't get it out of my head right now.
• Other science fiction films that latched on the Castle Thunder were: Ghostbusters, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Big Trouble in Little China (okay, we know this is fantasy... but c'mon), Short Circuit, The Land Before Time, The Monster Squad, and of course Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.
• The sound can be heard multiple times every day inside The Haunted Mansion as both Disneyland and Disney World, most famously in the stretching room when the host suggest a "way out." Cue the thunder and screams.
• The sound effect was a favorite on Scooby Doo, and could be heard during the opening credits. However, they later "retired" the sound from the show in 1988 to make way for digitally recorded thunderclaps. The bastards.
• However, it's still featured prominently in the opening to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, so there is still some cartoon love for the sound going on out there.
• For my money, the best usage of the sound was in the opening sequence to Dr. Shrinker, which was part of the Krofft Supershow. One day I'll devote an entire triviagasm to this show, trust me.

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Dogs. Apparently, Blackenstein has no resistance to dogs whatsoever. They're his kryptonite. I love the dogs tearing chunks off him and carrying them away, including what looks like a piece of his arm. The real Frankenstein monster probably would have been able to kick those dogs' asses. But sadly, Blackenstein just doesn't quite bring it.

Blackenstein is one movie you'd be happy to see end, by means of dogs or any other device, really. It features slow-moving (and badly shot) renditions of classic monster movie scenes, like the married couple woken up in the night, with the wife sending the husband down to see what's up before finally getting slaughtered herself. (But at least the wife is wearing a ginormous wig in bed.) And the young couple in a convertible in the woods, with a ten-hour scene of the man trying to touch her leg and her pushing him away. By the time the monster kills these people (mostly in out of focus shots of their legs), the mercy-killing is anti-climactic. Oh, and there's the obligatory mad scientist, who's white (wtf?!) and who looks sort of like Dick Van Dyke in his bad-mustache phase.

And then there's the long stretch of some random stand-up comedian telling jokes in a nightclub, followed by a blues chanteuse who's actually not bad. I was waiting for the monster to burst into the nightclub and kill everyone, but it never happened. It was just an excuse to have a long stretch of the film-maker's friends performing. The monster does kill someone in the alley, possibly near the nightclub, possibly miles away.

Commenter OMG-Ponies proclaimed the other day that the only true zombies come from "voodoo or Jesus," not science. But as champions of a rational, scientific view, we disagree, of course. And here's the list to prove it:

Reanimator. A mad scientist, Herbert, invents a "re-agent" serum that brings the dead back to life in this H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. It starts with cats and devolves into zombie heads and rampaging corpses. Here's a gross and possibly disturbing zombie head scene:

World War Z by Max Brooks. A plague causes a zombie outbreak, which starts in China and spreads around the world. At first people think it's a type of rabies, but they soon realize it's an unstoppable pandemic that resurrects the newly dead.

Fido. This 2007 movie never really explains how the zombie plague happened, but it's definitely science fiction. The last survivors of humanity live in fenced-in bubbles of normality and turn zombies into their slaves using electrical collars. The collars neutralize the zombies' aggression and turn them docile and obedient. It's this weird paternalistic 1950s pastiche where your newly dead loved-ones become your mindless servants. There may be some social commentary buried in there.

28 Days Later and I Am Legend. Two movies with slightly different takes on the same premise: well-meaning scientists create a plague that turns people into monsters. They're not technically undead, but they growl, eat human flesh and rampage just like zombies. In 28 Days Later, their bite turns you into one of them, which is much more zombie-like. In both cases, it starts in the laboratory and ends with pale mutants biting you.

Night of the Living Dead. This one's a bit iffy. At one point, a scientist suggests that radiation from a returning Venus probe may be responsible for the zombie outbreaks. But director George Romero later disavowed this explanation.

Planet Terror. The better half of Grindhouse (sorry, Quentin) features a toxic gas called DC-2, aka Project Terror. A bioweapon deal gone wrong releases some of the fumes onto a sleepy town in Texas, and soon everybody is turning into horrendous zombies. A few people are immune, and you can delay the effects of the process by exposing yourself to the gas again.

Zombie Prom. A lovestruck teenager throws himself into a nuclear cooling tower, only to return as the Atomic Zombie. Reunited with his sweetheart, he wants to attend the high school prom, but principal Delilah Strict (RuPaul!) harbors anti-zombie prejudices. This musical short film is yet another 1950s pastiche, possibly harboring more social commentary. Here's the trailer:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The monster is a collection of dead body parts, and Victor Frankenstein zaps him to unlife using a modern science, including electricity and chemistry, mixed with old-school alchemy. Okay, so the monster doesn't go around turning others into zombies, and he's conscious and intelligent in the book. But he acts quite zombie-like in most of the movies, except Kenneth Branagh's. Call him a zombie outlier.

Resident Evil. In the movies, at least, the evil Umbrella Corp. creates viruses to use as biological weapons. The deadly T-virus is later turned into a cosmetic cream to restore your dead skin cells, which has the unfortunate side effect of turning tons of people into contagious zombies. And cosmetics company Olay recently started marketing a rejuvenating product that looks just like it.