The plot is simple and to-the-point. President George W. Bush, with new VP Arnold Schwarzenegger, has just been "reelected" a fourth time due to the wonders of electronic voting machines. All forms of public nudity (including in strip clubs) have been made illegal. The war still rages in Iraq. And scientists at the evil W Corporation have created a zombie virus to give to dead soldiers so that they can keep fighting even after being killed. Sort of a futuristic stop-loss situation. With zombies.

Inevitably, the zombie virus escapes the lab via an infected dude, with the Z Squad in hot pursuit. Of course the dude winds up in a strip club (whose owner is played by Robert "Freddie" Englund). He promptly proceeds to zombie out after biting Kat (Jenna Jameson), the star stripper. For some reason, her superpowered, rotting-flesh style of zombie stripping makes the guys go crazy! They just love all those veins in her boobies and her bloody teeth. So the other strippers start asking Kat to zombie them out too, so they can compete for tips.

Pretty soon, after about twenty zillion zombie stripping scenes that get weirder and more fucked up as the movie progresses, you've got a whole passel of zombie strippers who have to eat men every night. The men they pick from the audience imagine they're about to get some special attention — until they find out what it's like to get their dicks, tongues, brains, and guts gnawed out by apeshit zombie strippers hopped up on Nietzschean goofballs.

Inspired by classic existentialist play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, the flick is larded with references to philosophy (it takes place in Sartre, Nebraska) and surreal speeches which combine direct quotes from Nietzsche with Juno-style smartpatter. "It's not about a sense of self but of regression to the mean!" cries one about-to-be-zombified stripper, who then adds, "But it's so fucking cool!"

The special effects are great, the mood is pure fucked-up, and there is (of course) a zombie stripper showdown involving pool balls where Jameson commendably allows her naked body to look truly disgusting. After about an hour of watching the same dark sets in the strip club, you really do get the feeling that you're watching one of those claustrophobic existentialist plays where everyone is in hell screaming "I HATE YOU" to their own reflections in mirrors.

This movie is like some kind eruption from the dark heart of pop culture and intellectual culture at once, a meditation on female sexual conformity that nevertheless shoves boobies in our faces. But rotted boobies! That kill you! Are we supposed to enjoy the stripping or be grossed out by it? Are these just regular old cool zombies, or do they represent the disease of submission in political life?

All I have to say is: Damn that tongue-eating scene was great! And I don't think my life will be complete until poststructuralist feminist film theorist Kaja Silverman has explained this movie to me — or, if not me, at least someone.

Keep your eye on director/producer team the Lees. I think we'll be hearing from them again, and it's going to rock.

Zombie Strippers opens in theaters across the U.S. tomorrow.

According to writer/director Jay Lee (The Slaughter), here's the plot of Zombie Strippers:

A corporation is developing a chemo-virus to re-animate soldiers killed in combat so they can keep on fighting. The tests prove dying and re-animating can make these soldiers fearless, and thus they become super-zombie soldiers. The virus gets loose in the lab, an elite squad comes in to clean it up, one gets bitten, runs and hides in a dark building that happens to be an illegal strip club.

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.

First up is Amazing Spider-Man #546, which is the first issue of the new rebooted version of the character - Now, he's single, living with his immortal aunt again, and - if the MySpace previews are anything to go by - getting some girlie action from women who're happy that his marriage was retconned out of existence by the devil himself. With art by Steve McNiven, the man who drew one of the most popular comics of 2007 (That'd be Civil War, the political allegory that involved heroes punching each other in the name of liberty, for those who didn't know), and curiosity driven by the highly negative buzz for the new status quo, expect this to be sell out quickly and for Marvel's embattled editor in chief to boast that he knew he was right all along.

Marvel's second high-profile book is Hulk #1, another relaunch of a major character in the wake of a popular storyline. With Bruce Banner having apparently died at the end of last summer's "World War Hulk", it's been left purposefully vague just who is the bright red Hulk that stars in this new series by Heroes's Jeph Loeb (illustrated by Ed McGuinness). Loeb's reputation in comic critical circles isn't the greatest, but he consistently manages to hit the general public's sweet spot of dumb but pretty action, which is pretty much all you should want from a Hulk book. Cautiously worth a look, at least.

If you're jonesing for more monster action, you might want to pick up Dark Horse's Evil Dead #1, an adaptation of the monster movie that made Sam Raimi into a household name in houses that watch cheap horror flicks, or Friday The 13th: Badland #1 from DC/Wildstorm, which attempts to resuscitate the hockey mask horror franchise with added hacking and slashing. Horror of a different kind can be found via Virgin Comics, which launches Jenna Jameson's Shadow Hunter on an unsuspecting world with a special preview "issue zero". Yes, not content with making headlines for a failed vaginoplasty, Jameson comes to comics in the guise of a daughter of demons who gets to save the world while showing a lot of cleavage. One for the bathroom readers amongst you, most likely.

If you're looking for something to buy to hide Jenna's comic behind, you could do worse than my pick of the week: Teen Titans: The Lost Annual. Written by creator of the super teen team Bob Haney, the plot of this previously-cancelled special issue involves JFK sending the teenagers into space to bring peace, love and 60s-esque good vibes to alien races the world over. Admittedly, it's may not be as violent as Evil Dead or as scarlet as the Hulk, but there's little doubt that this 64-page, $4.99, oneshot will give you the best value for money at your store this week.

And let's face it: you'd rather have Wonder Girl in those ginchy hotpants rather than Jenna's bleach blondeness any day, right? Well, aside from that whole "fictional teenager" thing, at least...