Perhaps it’s something to do with the amount of big name recent launches everyone has been doing recently, or otherwise a sign of impending San Diego Comic-Con (Publishers are already working on the timing of their big announcements, even though it’s more than a month away), but this is an astonishingly quiet week for new releases – DC Comics pretty much skip the week altogether, although you should probably be looking at picking up the second (and concluding) volume of Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War as well as the tenth and final collection of Y: The Last Man, called Whys and Wherefores (“Y”s and wherefores? Get it? Oh, it’ll make sense when you get to the last chapter). Otherwise, their big release of the week is probably a “deluxe” hardcover reissue of World’s Finest, a beautifully-illustrated (by Steve Rude) Superman/Batman story from the 1990s, as written by Watchmen’s Dave Gibbons.

Marvel, too, is taking this week relatively easy. Sure, there’s the fourth and final volume of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men, a paperback release for Neil Gaiman’s revival of Jack Kirby’s Eternals, and even a “director’s cut” rerelease of the first issue of Mark Millar’s increasingly-racist Kick Ass, but nothing really jumps out as particularly worthy of your time or attention. You may be interested by the sound of something calling itself Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, but trust me when I tell you that you would never forgive yourself if you spent any money whatsoever on that particular book.

No, this Wednesday, the message from your local comic store should be loud and clear: Kill All Parents. That’s the title of a new series by Aqua Leung’s Mark Andrew Smith and Marcelo Dichiara that shows you the darker side of superheroics… which happens to include the murder of any and all parents said superheroes may happen to have. What is behind such a plan, and who is doing the murdering? You’ll have to pick up the book to find out, but there may be a machine that can predict the world that’s coming, and a terrible possible future to avoid, involved. You have been warned.

If that’s not your cup of supertea, then why not try The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite, the first collection of Gerard Way’s superhero story that no less than Grant Morrison called “[a]n ultraviolet psychedelic sherbert bomb of wit and ideas.” I think that’s supposed to be a good thing; just don’t hold Way’s My Chemical Romance past against him (And if you’re just in it for the prettiness, this book is worth picking up just for its visuals from Gabriel Ba with covers by Prada-favorite James Jean).

As usual, the week’s new releases can be viewed in full here, and you can find where to shop for the origin stories of new generations of superheroes over here. And, although I’m sure there’s nothing to be worried about, I’d check on how your parents are, just in case you have latent superpowers that you aren’t aware of. You never can tell, after all.

Guggenheim, who's writing the screenplay for the adaptation of DC Comics' space cop series with Eli Stone co-creator Greg Berlanti and Heroes writer Michael Green, explained why so much about the movie is being kept under wraps:

I can't tell you anything, to be honest with you. That's the funny thing with these superhero movies; you do tend to develop them in secrecy. Maybe I'll get smack from the message boards for this, but I think that's in large part to how, when stuff leaks out, people hear about it out of context and get upset. There's always the concern on the part of the studio that things will leak out out of context and people will get upset and make up their minds before the movie has even finished or even starts filming... I can confirm that it's Hal Jordan, but I can't really talk about anything else. I really wish I could, because there's lots of stuff I want to brag about.

I love the idea that someone read the above and thought "They're going with Hal? Not John? Obviously the movie's gonna suck," thereby ignoring that whole "hearing things out of context and getting upset" thing. Nonetheless, Guggenheim tries his best to prove to fans that they're not going to screw this up:

I think Green Lantern has the potential to be a very highly regarded superhero movie. We're approaching it with such respect and such care. And really, it's written to be a movie that everyone who's not familiar with the character can enjoy, but there are so many nods to things that I know the fans love and care about that I think people will be very happy... We always start all our meetings and story discussions and all of our scene discussions with, OK, what's cool about Green Lantern? Why Green Lantern? And we always come from that place, which is an incredibly useful thing to do because you don't want Green Lantern to be a generic superhero movie. You want it to be all the things you expect when you buy a $10 ticket that says Green Lantern on it.

Listen, if this means we're getting a movie where a guy has a magic wishing ring that allows him to make giant green hands to punch things, I am completely sold already.

Marc Guggenheim Talks Eli Stone, Green Lantern [Newsarama]

The argument broke out initially over the question of which Green Lantern would be appearing in the upcoming fight game, and almost immediately, the fanboy gloves were off:

[Original Lantern] Alan Scott is a no in my books, unless they want to include members of the JSA... The real question is whether or not we will see Hal Jordan or John Stewart. Personally I feel John Stewart is the "Barack Obama" choice for this game, especially with his less than stellar track record (Gee, did I blow up that planet?). Kyle Rayner really hasn't been GL in a while since he took up the role as Ion (Oa's GL super weapon), so I am willing to count him out.

Picking the best Green Lantern is tough, because they all have pretty much the same powers and abilities. As a result, it all comes down to personality and whether or not you have a jet pilot fetish. Here's our rundown of the five top GLs for you to choose from:

Hal Jordan
Pros: Called "the greatest Green Lantern of them all" by his fellow members of the Green Lantern Corps, Silver Age GL Hal Jordan was a founder member of the Justice League of America and helped save the universe during the Crisis of Infinite Earths after being chosen as one of the few fearless men on the planet.
Cons: Hal was also responsible for the destruction of the Corps twice; once by executing villain Sinestro (Don't worry, he got better) and tripping a failsafe that depowered all the heroes, and the second time by becoming possessed by Parallax, the insect god of fear and killing everyone around him. He's kind of a cosmic jinx that way.

John Stewart
Pros: He's the Green Lantern that all the kids know, thanks to his role in Cartoon Network's Justice League and Justice League Unlimited series, although his hard-ass-marine portrayal there is at odds with his thoughtful architect comic persona. In the '90s, Stewart got his own series, Mosaic, which saw him have to build an international community made up of different alien races on an accidental patchwork planet; his reward for doing so successfully? Temporary godlike powers. Which was nice.
Cons: Well, that whole "being accidentally responsible for the destruction of a planet and its entire population" thing doesn't really go away that quickly. Also, superpowered alien cop architects? Who'd buy that?

Alan Scott
Pros: The original Green Lantern, Scott got his power not from little blue aliens, but from a magical lantern (Hence the name). Similarly, his weakness isn't the color yellow, but anything made of wood, meaning that he's particularly powerless against pornstars.
Cons: Well, he's been around since the 1940s, so there's that whole age thing going on, and who wants a superhero who can be beaten by a well-placed tree branch on the head, no matter how experienced he may be?

Kyle Rayner
Pros: After Hal Jordan got himself possessed and destroyed the Corps, freelance illustrator Rayner became the last Green Lantern in the universe, fighting Hal and keeping the name alive until the powers that be decided to hit the magical reset button.
Cons: Post-magical reset button, Rayner's been more than a little superfluous to requirements, and has been thrown around DC's publishing line (including an unfortunate stint in weekly book Countdown where he did very little for weeks on end). Is there a place out there for a replacement with little personality when the main man comes back?

Guy Gardner
Pros: Former football star and current arrogant asshole, Gardner is one of the more complex and realistic superheroes in mainstream comics, capable of being a dick or shameless, stupid, romantic as needs be.
Cons: Like I said, "former football star and current arrogant asshole." What didn't you understand about that? In lesser hands, the character can turn into a one-note joke, and as well as know, the ranks of comic writers is pretty much filled with lesser hands, not to mention other body parts.

Of course, there are many, many other Green Lanterns for the game makers to choose from - Mogo, the planet Green Lantern, for one. Personally, I'm hoping that the one that shows up in Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe is Ch'P, the chipmunk Green Lantern who died after getting run over by a truck. And, no, I'm not joking.

Green Lantern? [Midway Boards]

The above clip also showcases one of the biggest challenges of doing a super-team movie or TV show properly: shoehorning in everybody's origins and explaining how all these random people got together. Justice League gets around this problem by making the Martian Manhunter into the Charlie, and all of the other Leaguers into his Angels. Sadly, J'onn J'onnz, Manhunter from Mars, is also kind of a dick, judging from the way he introduces himself to Tori disguised as her creepy coworker who's actually a supervillain.

I wanted to find a clip of the League doing something superheroic and using their powers in an awesome way, but sadly that doesn't really happen in Justice League. The TV movie's big final set piece consists of Green Lantern incompetently confronting the arch-villain, the Weatherman, and failing to prevent him from activating his weather disaster machine. And then the Flash incompetently carries a few kids to safety, but fails to take them far enough. And Tori, who's been pretty useless up until this point, finally stops the Weather Man's destructive tidal wave by freezing it with her ice powers. And Green Lantern, maybe overcompensating for his total failure a few moments earlier, makes a dumb crack about how the Weatherman is always wrong.

As dull as many superhero movies have been since Sam Raimi and Chris Nolan made the genre viable again, it's good to remember how dire they really were, back in the nadir of the Joel Schumacher era.

We at the io9 Space Station debated the reason why there are so many elongated countdowns in scifi. Here are a few possible theories:

1) When your ship is traveling faster than light, time appears to be moving more slowly to a stationary observer (such as the audience.)
2) Similarly, if you're traveling through time, or there's some element of time-distortion going on, it's entirely possible that two or three of our seconds could equal just one second in our heroes' continuum.
3) Every alien planet will have a day that's much longer, or shorter, than our Earth days. And if your home planet's "day" lasts 40 Earth hours, then you might evolve a clock that moves quite a bit more slowly than our Earth clocks. And who's to say whether the spaceships of the future operate according to Earth time, or Rigelian time? Eh?

So without further ado, here are some examples of the "extra Mississippi" phenomenon in scifi:

Star Trek:

I feel like there are about a hundred countdowns in Trek that last way, way longer than they're supposed to. Here's one of them. I acutally timed it — the computer says there are 25 seconds left before the ship blows up. And then 25 seconds later, Kirk is still giving his chest-thumping speech about how nothing can stop the countdown except him. (Blame Shatner's trademark mid-sentence pauses.) A few seconds after the ship should already have blown up, the computer starts its ten-second countdown. (To be fair, this could be a feature deliberately built into Federation self-destruct sequences, given how often captains use them to bluff their way out of a jam.)

Doctor Who:

Here's the exciting climax from the Doctor's first ever encounter with the Daleks, who are like mutated Nazis in mini-tanks. The Daleks are going to launch some kind of neutron bomb that will kill off everybody who's not them, and give them the nice shiny radiation that they've gotten used to. So the Doctor and his friends launch a desperate last minute attack, as the countdown ticks down to zero... but it all just takes a little too long. The countdown reaches "4" and the guy waiting patiently in the background still hasn't swung down on his rope. Not to mention the Daleks still haven't been defeated, and there's a lot of pre-choreographed mayhem still to go. In those days, Doctor Who was recorded in one take, with little chance for retakes. So obviously somebody decided to just let the countdown stop, and let the last battle take as long as it needs to. You can't rush an apocalyptic final battle between humans and machine-creatures. You just can't.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow:

When Green Lantern and Green Arrow first teamed up, based on their color schemes matching so well, their comic was all about the mismatched duo traveling around and discovering America. It was one long civics lesson, about racial injustice and smack being bad for you. But low sales drove writer Denny O'Neill to reinvent it as a crazy space-opera, where Green Lantern fights aliens with his self-righteous buddy Green Arrow along for the ride. In this sequence, Green Arrow decides he can survive in the vacuum of space for ten seconds... which is enough time for him to jump from ship to ship, get inside the other ship's airlock, make himself some lunch, and invent a whole new space dance:

Spaceballs:

Watching this scene, I feel as though Spaceballs wasn't even trying to be taken seriously or something. I mean, what is up with this final self-destruct countdown? First the computer says it'll take two minutes and 45 seconds, and some three minutes later Mel Brooks is still goofing around. And then the computer skips the number 7 and goes straight to six — and has time to make a joke about it and restart the countdown at 6. And then when it reaches zero, it still pauses to wish the soon-to-be-incinerated people a nice day. At least it's a suicidal computer with manners. But seriously, it's almost as though they were mocking the genre conventions or something.

The Fifth Element:

This one doesn't take any longer than it's supposed to, but it's still a tad unrealistic to evacuate an entire huge pleasure ship in five minutes — and it actually only seems to take three minutes, since everyone's gone by the two-minute mark. And you can watch that awesome sequence here.

(More evidence of the possible funny-remake trend: Seth Rogen is supposedly starring in The Green Hornet, and Jack Black was slated at one point to star in a Green Lantern movie.) So vote already:

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

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

More news:

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

Here's the page that started us questioning Sinestro's orientation. It comes from Green Lantern #221, part of the Millennium cross-over. In a nutshell, the Green Lanterns (a space police force with magic wishing rings) are protecting a group of humans who are supposed to develop into the next stage of human evolution. It all goes horribly wrong, as you can read here. Those humans are supposed to evolve into quasi-gods and save the universe, or something.

One of those humans, Extraño, is very, very gay. He wears a pink shirt unbuttoned to his waist, huge earrings and chains. And he says things like, "I'd like to see some men in uniform!" (Sadly, he later gets AIDS.) In this scene from Green Lantern #211, the Green Lanterns have captured Sinestro, the would-be ruler of everything, and they're keeping him tightly bound. But Sinestro decides to flirt with Extraño. Is it a ploy? Or just a genuine moment of attraction? You be the judge:

So I had to ask Steve Englehart, the writer of that comic (and Millennium in general) what was going on here. Was Sinestro really gay? Or just pretending? Since another member of Sinestro's race, Katma Tui, married an Earthman (John Stewart), he definitely could have something akin to human sexuality. Here's what Engelhart says:

I haven't thought about Sinestro for a while, obviously, but here's my take:

He has an powerful, intense, crafty mind. He's the equal or better of most GLs, because he was one, and he's set himself against all 3600 of them. It's the life-choice of a man with an immense ego and grandiose imagination, who has no respect for conventional boundaries. His one overriding, single-minded goal is winning, and he will do anything to accomplish it. So - I don't see him thinking about sex much. At least to my time, we never saw him with another person, let alone another male or female. But since, in effect, he doesn't care, he would certainly seduce Extaño if that would help him, and he would certainly sleep with him in Times Square of that would help him. In other words, he's neither gay, straight, nor metro, he's just sociopathic.

A spin-off of a Green Lantern subplot, Millennium wasn't exactly the paranoiac's delight that Secret Invasion threatens to be, in that there was an upside to the story, as well. Representatives of the well-named Guardians of The Universe had come to Earth to select ten humans that would help usher in the greatest evolutionary step in a thousand years (hence the title), and the alien Manhunters - themselves created by the Guardians - went undercover to try and make sure that no-one helped that happen. The result was a line-wide story that switched between hippie lessons about the nature of life as the chosen few expanded their cosmic consciousness and revelations that many familiar faces - including a hypnotized Lana Lang, replaced Commisioner Gordon and the DC-Universe Nancy Reagan - were actually working with the bad guys to stall the process.

The series is a wonderful example of the schizophrenia of late-80s superhero comics, where political themes are attempted (The Iraqi woman chosen by the Guardians is stoned to death, for example, while the English chosen doesn't see the point of helping a humanity that helped put Margaret Thatcher in power) but everything devolves into a punchfest nonetheless. Once they achieve cosmic consciousness, the chosen turn into... more superheroes. Sadly never reprinted, there are two things that this series should be remembered for - the creation of the first openly gay superhero for either DC or Marvel (Admittedly, he called himself Extrano, but that's because he was a Mexican rip-off of Marvel's Doctor Strange as much as any queer joke), and the fact that The New Guardians, the spin-off comic starring the chosen cosmic avatars, not only featured HIV+ vampire assassins and bad guys fuelled by magic cocaine in its desire to be socially relevant. Ah, those more innocent days before it was all evil aliens trying to take over the world...

Millennium [Amazon]

• Spock in Star Trek: There's no doubt that Spock was one of the best characters on Star Trek, which is what made his death so awesome. However, when he returned to life by having his body shot onto the Genesis planet, it just lost credibility for the science-hardened. How did Spock's dead body get injected into the Genesis life matrix anyhow? Good thing he'd downloaded his brainfiles into Bones, eh?
• Ripley in Alien: Ripley was brought back to life in Alien: Resurrection as a clone, although with spotty memories of herself and a DNA strand laced with Alien bits and bobs, so she ends up as a freaky post-human mommy. It was creepy enough seeing all of the failed Ripley clones inside the vats, and the tied up Ripley who wants you to kill her, but the Ripley/Mommy clone was just devoid of everything we've loved about Ripley from the previous films. Yes, that's including Aliens 3.
• The Cylons in Battlestar Galactica: The Cylons aren't just exactly clones in BSG, they're identical copies that take on the personality of their previous self upon death, and "rebirth" into wet, gooey, slimy, and slightly sexy birth tubs. They have to fly giant "Resurrection Ships" within reach of their "bring me back to life, I'm dead" signal, which sort of defeats the purpose. Couldn't their memoryfiles just be stored until they're close enough to get zapped into a new body? Why is it a finite process? Why are we asking so many questions about a show we love?
• Just about any Jedi in Star Wars: When you die in Star Wars, and you have the power of the Force, you have the option of appearing as a glowing, transparent spectre. It's hinted that this is due to the research that Qui-Gon Jinn did sometime before he died, and it gets picked up by Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin so everyone can reunite and glow with pleasure around fires and dispense knowledge to your Jedi-kin. In fact, if you're lucky, you might get your own green glowy action figure.
• The Doctor in Doctor Who: If you ever need to keep bringing in actors to play the lead in your extremely long-running BBC science fiction show, what better way to just have them die and come back as the exact same person, who just happens to look completely different? The Doctor can resurrect or "regenerate" himself up to 12 times, although we're sure the writers could figure out some way around that. They might start working on that too, since we're already on the 10th model. Maybe we can get a new Doctor altogether? What about bringing back Romana?
• Captain Kirk in Star Trek: If you remember your Star Trek storyline, then you'll recall that Captain Kirk dies in Star Trek Generations, putting an end the The Shat in the series. Or so you thought. Shatner went on to write a book called The Return, which features the Borg and the Romulans teaming up to bring Kirk back to life. Sort of like your worst nightmare. It inspired several further novels, all co-written by Shatner, proving that the man will probably never die.

Between the resin models of battle-damaged Vipers from Battlestar Galactica, and the recreations of Mego's awesome Star Trek line of action figures from 1974, there's a lot to love here. But the two things that really look ridiculously cool are the Poseable 12" Sleestak Coin Bank that would look awesome right next to our io9 supercomputer (and is on sale already), and this incredibly bizarre Mola Ram Munny from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Just check out the gleeful expression on his face and the flaming heart accessory he comes with. Pure plastic joy.

There's also a 12" Master Chief figure from Halo that comes with all sorts of goodies, and a complete set of 13" Green Lantern Corps figures that look pretty darn cool. There's also a slew of posed Cloverfield figure photos that look loads better than Hasbro's lame pictures. So, we might just keep that preorder, just in case.

For even more photos, be sure to check out Figures.com, where it seems like they have endless amounts of image galleries and coverage from the show floor. And thanks to our very own 92BuickLeSabre for snapping some the photos in our gallery as well, especially that Sleestak bank. Start asking them for kickbacks.

The indie books this week are really stepping into the Way Back Machine; Dynamite Entertainment goes for the genre vote with a collection of the Dark Xena series, telling you just how everyone's favorite Warrior Princess came back from the dead at the end of her TV show, as well as Zorro #1, launching a new monthly series for the formerly-Gay Blade.

Dynamite is also pushing out something called Battlestar Galactica: Cylon Apocalypse, which admittedly sounds awesome until I tell you that it's based on the original series and not the current Sci-Fi Channel version... In other words, for those who are unafraid of Dirk Benedict likenesses only.

IDW is picking up some of the nostalgia slack as well by releasing Classic Transformers, Volume 1, giving you a 312-page slab of the comics of your youth by collecting the original Marvel series from 1984.

As far as the "big" publishers go, DC Comics essentially give the week up for dead with the exception of the Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War hardcover that slipped from last week.

Image Comics also goes relatively quiet aside from the relaunch of some cartoony ghostbusters (and I mean that in a good way) with The Perhapanauts Annual #1. You can download a previous issue of the series for free here)

Marvel Comics, however, makes a major play for your dollar. Matt Fraction, whom I talked to a couple of weeks ago, gets his WWII kung-fu groove on in the pulpy one-shot spin-off from the regular Iron Fist book, Iron Fist: Orson Randall and the Green Mist of Death. Yes, it's not exactly sci-fi, but it'll be fun, dammit (Fraction's also the mind behind the super-heroes-for-one-year series The Order, the first half of which is collected in this week's The Order: The Next Right Thing paperback).

The big io9-friendly book of the week, though, is undoubtedly Marvel's The Many Armors of Iron Man, a collection of stories from Tony Stark's 40+ year history that gives you the chance to remember some of his lesser-known looks. You all know the classic red-and-gold armor, sure, but how many of you knew that there was a "stealth armor"? Or space armor (It had no mouth. No, really)? Or even special deep-sea armor? You can tell that Stark's a genius from the number of variations on his one invention that he's managed to crank out over the years; there was even one with a nose on it.

As always, you can have a look at the complete shipping list for this week and make up your own mind, and then go to your local retailer to find out where to pick it up. Just make sure that you take a look at that Iron Man book, is all I'm saying.

• A new casting notice for the delayed Justice League movie makes the plot sound even stranger than earlier versions. In this version, Superman has been killed by Doomsday, the monster from outer space that killed him in the comics. And Batman gets tossed out of the League for being a pointy-headed control freak. So the movie is about second-stringers Green Arrow and Green Lantern forming a meaner, greener JLA. [Cinemablend]
• The mutants making cameos in the Wolverine movie may include high-profile ones like Deadpool and Gambit, but also minor-leaguers like The Blob and Beak. And we may get (shudder) flashbacks to Wolvie's childhood. [IGN]
• On Lost, someone we've "gotten to know fairly well" is going to die soon, actor Michael Emerson told Barbara Walters. [DocArzt]
• Sounds like that Torchwood rumor we posted before, about Owen becoming the Weevil King, is coming true. Which does not sound good. In episode seven, Jack takes "drastic steps" to bring Owen back from the dead, but opens the doorway for "a terrifying evil" in the process. And the Weevils crown a new king. And then in the following episode, Owen is tormented by his "new circumstances," while a missing alien device threatens to kill everyone. [CoolSciFi]
• There are rumors that a new girl will be taking over as The Spoiler, the superhero whose whole superpower is giving away other people's plots. (The Spoiler used to date Robin, then replaced him, then died horribly and pointlessly. She should really be the mascot of Morning Spoilers.) [Midnight City]
• Monday's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles sees Brian Austin Green fighting for his life and having flashbacks to life in 2037. Meanwhile, Sarah has some explaining to do to her ex. [WatchTerminatorChronicles]
• A new preview went online for Joss Whedon's newest issue of Runaways. It's been so long since the previous issue that it's all a bit blurry. But the exciting development is that when Xavin loses control, she reverts to her girl self... making that the real her! Here are the preview pages, but unfortunately they popped up backwards. Read the last one first (the one with the big black space and all the text) and they'll make sense. [ComicBookResources]

DC Comics make the largest grab for your science fiction dollar this week, with three collections aimed right at your sweet spot. Mark Waid's run on Legion of Super-Heroes concludes in the uneven, but worth reading, Supergirl and The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Dominator War collection, which sees a time-travelling Supergirl join the 31st Century's favorite teenage rebels in a battle against alien invaders. For more interplanetary action, look no further than Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War Volume 1, a hardcover collecting the first half of the popular storyline that aims to make you scared of at least half of the rainbow.

And then there's Booster Gold #0, in which the super-hero Quantum Leap series flashes back to mid-90s time-travel crossover Zero Hour.

Less expected - but no less worth searching out - is the reprint of Time Masters, a semi-forgotten 1990 series by sci-fi writer (and Fiction Liberation Front creator) Lewis Shiner, along with Bob Wayne and artist Art Thibert. Starring Rip Hunter (now appearing in Booster Gold after a star turn in 52), the series saw time travellers at war with an Illuminati led by an immortal caveman, and if that hasn't made you even slightly curious, I don't know what will.

Marvel Comics, in comparison, are travelling in time in a different way. A previously-incomplete story by original creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby sees print (aided by artist Ron Frenz, filling in for the deceased Kirby as best he can; the now-85-year-old Lee completed the script last year) in Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure. Will it be more than an experimental curiosity? Pick it up to see for yourself. Also, the relaunch of the Fantastic Four hits the shelves. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, who came up with the critically acclaimed and popular Ultimates series, are taking over with this week's #554.

Also from Marvel this week: X-Force #1, in which Wolverine - yes, io9ers, your favorite character - gets together with lots of similar characters (including his clone ex-hooker daughter; yes, really) to kill bad guys and grimace a lot. I'm being sarcastic, but watch this be the best selling book of the month, depressingly.

The comic that may deserve that position is Image Comics' The Next Issue Project, which sees an all-star line-up of creators take on public domain characters from the 1940s to create what would have been the next issue of their adventures had their series continued. The high concept may not grab you, but creators like Mike Allred, Bill Sienkiewicz and Ashley Wood should. You can read creator Erik Larsen talk up the project a little more here.

If none of those grab your fancy, the complete list of tomorrow's releases is available here, and for those who want to know where their closest comic book store is? You can do so here. Honestly, sometimes we make it so easy for you...

Greenwich Village in the 50s and 60s was a place where anything seemed possible. Not only did writers like Samuel Delany and Kurt Vonnegut live in the Village back in the day, but some of the weirdest science fiction stories take place there. Just consider:

The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson. This is the first novel in the "Greenwich Village Trilogy." But the other two novels, written by other authors, aren't nearly as well known. Anderson's semi-autobiographical novel has a main character named after himself, and a supporting character named after his roommate at the time. Aliens are supplying a new kind of drug, known as "Reality Pills," which cause your LSD hallucinations to become physically real. One character takes the Reality Pills and is able to make butterflies appear spontaneously, all colors and sizes. Chester faces the vicious Blue Lobster aliens, who hook him up to a machine that forces him to experience horrifying visions that he would have paid to see otherwise. He writes: "I was the rabbit in the moon. I was as corny as Kansas in orbit. I wasn't thinking very well at all!" The book's Amazon reviews are full of raves about how true to the 1960s Village scene it is.

Hark! Was That The Scream Of An Angry Thoat? by Avram Davidson. A surreal description of the Village of the 1950s, populated by weird caricatures of science fiction writers including Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett. John Carter, Warlord of Mars stalks through the city looking for Edgar Rice Burroughs. Later, "a Thark astride a thoat rides through the streets." There are loving descriptions of the Open Air Market off Bleecker St., interspersed with a four-armed green monster rampaging down the street.

Green Lantern. Fighter-pilot Hal Jordan went nuts and lost the right to be Green Lantern, and his replacement was artist Kyle Raynor. We could tell he was a more bohemian artist type, because he lived in an artisty studio above a coffee shop in the Village. And because he wore a sandwich press on his face.

The Youth Information Party Line. Not fiction, but a very scifi piece of retro-futurism. An early cyberpunk experiment, the YIPL set up shop in the Yippie headquarters on Bleecker St. in 1971. A phone phreak who called himself Al Bell worked with Abbie Hoffman to "liberate" the communications infrastructure. But the venture broke up in 1973 because Bell wanted it to stick to technical assistance and Hoffman wanted it to be political.

"Walking The Floor Over You" by Walter Simons, from the Wild Cards: Deuces Down anthology. Bob runs a comedy club in the Village called the Village Idiot, and his star comedian, Carlotta has the telepathic power to induce laughter in her audiences. When mysterious bad guys start coming after Carlotta, Bob has to use his power to turn into a puddle to save her.

Conan The Barbarian. When Conan travels in space and time, guess where he ends up? At least the hairstyle fits right in.

Sleeper. Okay, it doesn't actually take place in the Village, but Woody Allen's macrobiotic health-food store owner lives there, before he's frozen for 200 years. And his flakey Village person sensibility makes him the perfect wide-eyed stranger in a future that's both more laid-back and more repressive than the 1970s.

Lensmen begins two billion years in the past, when a race of noble philosophers, the Arisians, have developed awesome mental powers. Invaders from another universe, the Eddorians, come to our universe because they detect that our galaxy is passing through another one. This galactic do-si-do will lead to the creation of countless new inhabited worlds for the Eddorians to conquer.

So the Arisians breed a new super-race of humans to defend the galaxy. And they give the Lens, which focuses thought the way a lens focuses light, to our heroes. (It's sort of like the Guardians giving a super ring to Green Lantern.) Only the Lens' proper owner can wear it without dying. The Arisians only give Lenses to worthy individuals, and if you try to get a Lens but aren't worthy, you just disappear.

In the end, the heroic Kimball Kinnison marries the ultimate product of the Arisians' billion-year breeding program, Clarissa MacDougall. She's the first female to receive the coveted Lens. Their genetically perfect offspring have amazing powers and become the Children of the Lens.

Not only is Lensmen the sort of sprawling saga that does badly in the movies (not unlike Dune), but its themes of eugenics and oddball sexism are obviously a product of the 1930s, when the series began. Can Howard and Universal make a non-sucky version? Probably only by changing it beyond recognition. Luckily, there's some precedent: fans complain that the anime version of Lensmen has nothing in common with the novels except the title and a few character names. Image from cover of Second Stage Lensmen. [SciFi Wire]

The New Frontier DVD follows Hal Jordan from the Korean War to the Kennedy era, and he becomes Green Lantern along the way. Jordan and the Martian Manhunter are the stars of the new DVD film, according to the screenwriter. Putting "Silver Age" characters back into the 1950s and 1960s makes them seem less dated, and also lets Cooke comment on issues like racism and McCarthyism. The movie hits multiple DVD formats on February 26th, 2008.

But The New Frontier isn't the only classic graphic novel to use this technique. James (Starman) Robinson won plaudits for The Golden Age, a graphic novel which followed a group of classic 1940s heroes as they coped with (once again) McCarthyism in the early 1950s. His comic starred Starman, Robotman, the original Atom and Johnny Thunder.

And then there's John Byrne's underrated Superman & Batman: Generations, which showed both heroes starting their careers in 1939, the year they originally appeared. Byrne placed the heroes in a classic setting (at the 1939 World's Fair), then showed them aging in real time. Both Superman and Batman deal with aging and handing over their responsibilities to their kids and sidekicks. (Later installments follow them into the present day and beyond.)

DC has also published several "Elseworlds" stories taking place in alternate universes, featuring Batman in the 1930s and 1940s. These include Detective 27, Citizen Wayne (a Citizen Kane riff), and Gotham Noir.

Crash another planet into Earth. In an episode of the Transformers cartoon, the villain Megatron tried to bring his home planet, Cybertron, into Earth's atmosphere. The Cybermen also brought their home planet Mondas close to Earth in Doctor Who, and tried to suck the life-force out of our planet, which is sort of similar.

Freeze it to death. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, a substance called ice-nine freezes all water on Earth, causing the extinction of most creatures, including humans, within a few days.

Poison it. In the James Bond classic Moonraker, Hugo Drax distills the poison from a rare orchid and puts it inside globes, which he plans to launch from a space station to points all over Earth. The result: total obliteration.

Cause the sun to go nova. Evil Star, a Green Lantern villain, wanted to plant a device in the Earth's sun that would make it go nova, so he could feast on the stellar energy. The NOVA bomb in Halo: First Strike would do the same thing.

Materialize another planet around it. In the Doctor Who story "The Pirate Planet," a giant hollow planet materializes around smaller planets and crushes the life out of them, then strips them for all their mineral wealth.

Bombard it with garbage. In the Futurama episode "A Big Piece of Garbage," New York launches a giant ball of its trash into space in 2052 — only to have it crash back towards Earth, threatening destruction, years later.

Set up giant mirrors in space. This aspiring mad scientist has a plan to create a giant balloon in space, then cut it in half and coat each half with a reflective surface. If positioned the right way, they could reflect a ton of sunlight on a specific point on Earth.

Biological warfare. In the latest season of Heroes, the Company created a nasty virus that would kill almost the entire human race. And that white Samurai guy was so mad that Hiro kissed his GF that he decided to unleash it.

Killer robot army. In the classic video game Robotron 2084, a swarm of killer robots succeeds in wiping out the entire human race. Only one humanoid mutant remains to fight them off.

Knock it off its perch. Doctor Impossible plots to throw the Earth out of its orbit around the sun in Austin Grossman's novel Soon I Will Be Invincible. "As the Earth grows colder, my power becomes apparent, and the nations submit," he says. And the eponymous monsters in Zombies of the Stratosphere plot to send the Earth off course so Mars can take its place.

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

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

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

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

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

Now that you're already skipping the Christmas adverts on TiVo, it probably comes as no surprise that comic publishers are gearing up for the holiday sales. Berkeley's Image Comics are the most bold this week, releasing the first issue of their mature-readers title Archibald Saves Christmas, which married those two traditional holiday themes: Released inmates from mental asylums and serial killers. Suicidal Santas, of course, come free.

Image is also going after the bookstore dollar with the release of the anthology Popgun Volume 1, which brings together some of comics' newest, hippest and ubiquitous creators between two covers for a "mixtape" that ignores genre boundaries and, in some cases, just plain good taste. It's probably your best bet for value for money this week, unless you happen to have the $75 spare that would allow you to pick up Marvel Comics' Captain America by Ed Brubaker Omnibus, collecting the first two years' of crime writer Brubaker's run on the Star Spangled Soldier, featuring Nazis, "cosmic cubes", cyborgs and that whole "death of Captain America" thing people were talking about earlier this year. For those with tighter budgets and more delicate dispositions, there's always DC Comics' 1950s reprint book, Showcase Presents: Supergirl Vol. 1, taking you back to when girls knew their places, and those places were hiding in orphanages in brunette wigs because your older cousin doesn't want the world to know you exist.

Oh, you only wish I was joking.

Still bearing the upcoming holidays in mind, Marvel also answers the time-honored question "What do I get my nerdy friend who cares a little too much about the fictional worlds he spends too much time reading about?" with the first issue (of two) of Marvel Atlas, letting you know just where Vibranium can be mined in Africa, and how far you'll have to go to import it into Doctor Doom's kingdom of Latveria. Alternatively, Virgin Comics have something for the overly-sensitive art movie lover in your life: Dock Walloper, a series created for the publisher by The Brothers McMullen director and Saving Private Ryan actor Ed Burns. If you prefer your movies with a little more bullet time, however, you might want to check out the much delayed sixth issue of Doc Frankenstein, written by The Matrix's Wachowski Brothers, and drawn by Matrix storyboard artist Steve Skroce.

Pick of the regular books, meanwhile, is DC's Green Lantern Corps #18, which manages to drop the ho ho ho and replaces it with the kind of high concept Hollywood dreams about: Indestructible Space Cop with Magic Wishing Ring versus Evil Superman. This gem of carnage fiction, along with everything else mentioned above will be available Thursday at your local comic book store, which can be found here.

And if you can't find what you're looking for, remember: You better not cry, you better not pout.

Popgun image courtesy Image Comics, Green Lantern Corps image courtesy of DC Comics

• The Wachowskis' Speed Racer movie backgrounds will be all greenscreen like 300, says star Emile Hirsch. All except for Chim Chim the monkey, which is real. And presumably flung its poop at the pristine green walls. [Empire]
• Dave "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" Eggers collaborated with director Spike Jonze on the script to Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze's next movie. Wild Things will mix live puppeteering and computer animation. [Hollywood Reporter]
• The Mist took ninth place in the holiday weekend box office, behind more obvious holiday movies Enchanted, This Christmas, Bee Movie and Fred Claus. But Beowulf, American Gangster and Hitman also blew The Mist away.

• Jack Black is bummed that he didn't get to star in a Green Lantern movie. Black was set to star in a comedy, involving an ordinary schlub who joins the corps of space cops with wishing rings. He would have attacked his enemies with green boxing gloves, cages... and condoms. Suddenly, the upcoming Justice League movie (which includes Green Lantern) doesn't sound so bad. [MTV Movies Blog]
• But Black's getting his revenge, by creating a fake trailer for Robocop. It's one of the viral videos posted on the Web site for Be Kind Rewind, his January 2008 film about a guy who erases a video store's stock and decides to remake every movie himself. [Slashfilm]
• When Michelle Forbes return to play Admiral Cain one last time, she chased the other Battlestar actors around the set demanding if they knew who the final Cylon was. And she got nothing. Come to think of it, maybe Cain's the last Cylon? [TV Guide]
• The fans are all right. Southwest Airlines' Spirit in-flight magazine randomly decided to feature an article about fan-fiction. Want to see a version of Heroes where the physics actually makes sense? Leave it to the fans. [Spirit]

Famous names: Hal Jordan, dude! Okay then, writer Geoff Johns and artist Ethan Van Sciver, both of whom became household names in nerd households after this series was done.

Crunchy goodness: 4

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Successful enough to launch a monthly Green Lantern title, as well as the companion Green Lantern Corps monthly, this storyline had a direct sequel in this year's crossover "The Sinestro Corps War," described by Johns as "Empire Strikes Back to Rebirth's Star Wars."

Elevator pitch: It's Lord of the Rings in space as written by Dr. Phil and directed by Michael Bay.

Life lesson: "If a giant glowing yellow insect asks if it can live inside you and kill all your friends, make sure that you've got some Grecian formula handy."

Review of the series at Pop Matters

He could totally patch that suit up with his ring. He chooses not to.

The story continues in this week's Green Lantern. Another Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, emerges from the fear-eating monster Parallax totally naked. His fellow hero, Guy Gardner, uses his power ring to clothe poor Kyle — but only in a pair of tight-fitting boxer shorts. That's the kind of team spirit we like to see.

This Week's Haul [Living Between Wednesdays]

It features the seven founding JLA members, including John Stewart as Green Lantern and Barry Allen as the Flash. We get to see how the A-list and B-list supers founded the League. Superman has "epic battles" with both Batman and Wonder Woman. Rich bastard Max Lord turns up. So does the One Man Army Corps, which transforms regular people into killer cyborgs. It sounds as though we won't have to wait for JLA 3 to see subplot overload rivaling Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3.

More Justice League Plot Details [/film] Image by AbbyNormy