Thor:

Will Hawkeye have a cameo in Thor, in preparation for his possible appearance in Avengers? Marvel was at least talking about it. At least, actor Jeremy Renner said this when addressing rumors he'd be playing Clint:

That was just one of those things that got blown way out of proportion. It was an idea. Those Marvel guys, I'm a big fan of them. They're so smart about how they want to do these things - they have Captain America, and Thor coming around, Iron Man 2, and then I happen to know Zak Penn, who's writing The Avengers. So they thought Hawkeye is an interesting role, and asked me if I knew anything about him. I said no, so they gave me their sort of spiel on what he was, and I thought that it was kind of interesting. The only reason it came out this early, because Avengers is two years away, is that they're thinking okay, we may throw him in Thor, we may not, as a cameo. You know what I mean? So there's truth that we talked about it, but there's no truth to me doing it.

So Marvel was at least considering having Hawkeye pop up in Thor, and they did have some vague discussions with Renner. But sounds like either the cameo's not happening, or it's not Renner. Or both. [Movieline via ComicBookMovie]

Also, Tim Roth says he's eager to return as the Abomination, and he's signed for two more Marvel movies. And he hints that with characters from the different series turning up in each others' films (like Tony Stark in Incredible Hulk), the Abomination could potentially turn up in any movie, not just a Hulk sequel. (Like, say, as a minor villain in The Avengers? Just a thought, especially if Edward Norton is a hold-out.) [MTV]

The Book Of Eli:

Denzel Washington talks a bit more about just what's going on in this movie. His character is walking across the country to deliver a very special book, and he picks up a barmaid (Mila Kunis) and gets into a spat with a small-town dicator (Gary Oldman). The apocalypse happened when Eli was a teenager. Says Washington:

As the story goes, everybody had to stay inside the first year after the war, and he got out and wandered and survived. In fact we just shot the scene. I won't give you the whole scenario but he basically survived and heard a voice that led him to the book and told him where to go and why and he'll be protected. And as he says, for 30 winters he's been walking.

Frances de la Tour and Michael Gambon play Martha and George, an older couple, and "these two old folks that eat people and have tea [also] have this small army," says Washington. At one point, Kunis asks "what are we going to do?" And Martha replies, "I know what I'm going to do," and starts shooting an AK-47 at everyone. And since it's the future and this 70-something couple was young in the 1970s, they'll be playing a song from their youth, like "I Will Survive," all during the crucial fight scene.

So with Eli walking cross country for 30 years after the apocalypse, you're probably wondering about his underwear. Allow Denzel Washington to elucidate:

I never wore underwear. He didn't have any because he wore them out. So it wasn't as difficult, but we did some little cute things like the sneakers. He starts off in sneakers that are all taped-up and beat-up that are actually the latest Lebron James sneakers, but he's a survivalist and he had to travel light. I don't think he had a second set of clothes. I can only squeeze so much in that backpack.

Way more at the link. [Collider]

And I've been seeing billboards and bus ads all over for the film, like this one. [Full image at NEOGaf Forum]

James Bond:

The 23rd official James Bond movie's storyline is "a shocking story," says writer Peter Morgan (The Queen), who wrote the script earlier this year. The film's on hold because of MGM's financial difficulties, but both Daniel Craig and Judi Dench have predicted filming will start in late 2010, with an eye to a late 2011 release. Maybe 11/11/11, one site suggests. And no, there's no more info about what's so "shocking" in the next Bond. [Kurier.AT via IGN]

Doctor Who:

We already knew the Doctor's brown suit was going to take quite a beating in this weekend's episode. See for yourself. It's like watching an old friend fall to pieces. [BlogtorWho]

Lost:

A dead character will "return" without the actor who plays him/her needing to be present. Miles will hear this dead person's spirit talking, and will carry a message from him/her — and it's something important. I'm guessing it's someone who's not available — so maybe Mr. Eko or Libby? Almost everyone else is returning (more or less) in the flesh. [E! Online]

Here are a couple extended promos, with absolutely no new footage. [Lyly Ford and Lyly Ford]

Dollhouse:

Here's what happens in the Jan. 15 episode, "The Hollow Men":

Sacrifices are made when Echo leads her crew to Arizona to dismantle the Rossum Corporation's mainframe.

[SpoilerTV]

Daybreakers:

We brought you a massive gallery of high-res stills from this movie the other day, but now here are some wallpapers. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Fringe:

Here's what happens in episode 2x11, "Edina City Limits," airing Jan. 14:

THE FRINGE TEAM PURSUES LEADS TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF A SMALL TOWN COVER-UP ON AN ALL-NEW "FRINGE" THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, ON FOX

Following an unexplained attack involving hideously deformed humans, the Fringe team visits the small town in upstate New York to uncover leads surrounding the bizarre case. When it's determined that these deformed people have managed to hide themselves for a while and they'll do just about anything to keep it that way, the investigation takes an unexpected turn.

[TV Overmind]

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

Two years ago Randy Schueller recounted to Comic Book Resources that Venom evolved out of an idea Schueller sent to Marvel in the 80s when the company ran a competition for aspiring comic book writers and artists.

I thought it would be cool if Spidey needed to upgrade his powers and his look, so I came up with this idea that Reed Richards had made a new costume for Spidey using the same unstable molecules that the FF costumes are made of. The unstable molecules would flow into Peter's pores and allow him to cling to walls better. I think my original idea was to increase his sticking power by 25% or something like that.

For some lame reason, I had the Wasp involved since she was the resident fashion plate of the Marvel universe at the time. Remember when Jan would show up in every other issue of the Avengers sporting a cool new costume? I loved when they did that! So to me it made sense to have her design the new spider suit when she was over at the Baxter Building for cocktails or something. Anyway, I saw the new suit as a stealth version of the original costume - jet black so he could blend in with the shadows. At best, all you could see of him was the blood red spider emblem, emblazoned on his chest. (Yeah, in my design the spider was red, not white. I also gave him underarm webbing like in the original Ditko design.

To Schueller's surprise, a few months later he got a letter from the Marvel desk of then editor-in-chief James Shooter saying flat out, "I want to buy it," and offering Schueller $220 for the idea and the chance to write the script. He wrote up a few versions of his idea, but scripting didn't pan out and the idea, he thought, had been shelved.

A year later, Secret Wars came out, introducing a black costumed Spider-man. Shueller was surprised to see some of his concept brought to life, but when his idea then turned into Venom in The Amazing Spider-man he was disturbed. " I was never a fan of the costume-turned-villain idea. Give me the classic Ditko villains any day! Venom just never really seemed to work for me," he wrote in to CBR.

When Venom became such a big part of the Spiderman-3 movie, Schueller decided to bring his venomous alter-ego to light, along with the letter James Shooter personally sent to him in 1982.

While Schueller isn't looking for money from Marvel — he did get his $220 — he's bummed the comic giant never acknowledged his part in the character's creation. With Marvel's continued legal trouble as they suss out who created and now owns what of the Spider-man franchise, this two-year-old story has gained traction again.

With a Venom movie in the works, along with Spider-man 4 we wonder if Schueller will get any props from Marvel, or the movies' directors any time soon.

The secret origin of the black Spider-Man costume [Heat Vision Blog]

The image, sent out by Marvel with only the words "The Year of Spider-Man is 2010," seems to contain at least three different Spider-Man, as well as Arana (AKA Spider-Girl, not to be confused with this Spider-Girl) and the oracular Madame Web. The return of infamous "Spider-Clone" Ben Reilly has been teased for some point during next year's thrice-monthly Spider-series, and Avengers: The Initiative has already featured people not called Peter Parker in the red-and-gold "Iron Spider" costume, so is this a bait and switch or are we going to see multiple Parkers spinning webs at some point in the twelve months to come?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're torn about Girl Comics; on the one hand, a series written, drawn, lettered, colored, edited and all production work (proofreading, design, etc.) by women seems very... gimmicky, for want of a better way of putting it, and not unlike a token move that "proves" that women can work for Marvel too. But on the other, whatever cynicism we have is quickly dispelled by the quality of creators involved in the three issue series (many making their Marvel debut): Kathryn Immonen, Ann Nocenti, Trina Robbins, Louise Simonson, G. Willow Wilson, Amanda Conner, Jill Thompson, Colleen Coover, Molly Crabapple and Carla Speed McNeil all contribute, and io9 favorite Devin Grayson makes a long overdue return to comics in the series as well. Editor Jeanine Schaefer talked to Publisher's Weekly's The Beat blog about the project:

Although some creators have gravitated towards their favorite female super hero, it's not specifically focused on our female characters, and I'm not trying to generate content that I think will appeal to more women... I think the characters and the stories will draw in just as many men in as women, and will get people thinking that good comics aren't about the gender of the writer or artist, it's about where what you like to read intersects with what they like to create.

The series debuts in March, to coincide with Women's History Month (and She-Hulk's 30th anniversary).

Exclusive: Marvel announces GIRL COMICS [The Beat]

Launching next March with a reprint of 2008's Invincible Iron Man #1, Marvel's Greatest Comics will reprint first chapters of critically-acclaimed series or storylines for just a dollar. According to Marvel's VP of Sales, David Gabriel:

We're proud of the books Marvel publishes and now not only are we giving retailers a great way to promote our top collections, but also giving consumers a chance to sample some of our top comics, maybe for the first time and at an unbeatable price.

After the Iron Man reprint (which, as a special launch promotion, will actually be free), the line will move onto the first issues of Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, Marvel's (incredible) new Wonderful Wizard Of Oz adaptation, J. Michael Straczynski's Thor and Garth Ennis' Punisher Max. Given the crossmedia opportunities afforded by all so far, we'd expect Spider-Man and X-Men before too long.

Start Here with Marvel's Greatest Comics For Only $1.00 [Marvel]

Just like all the best Christmas letters, Doom's - transcribed by loyal subject, creator of the Invincible Super-Blog and Twilight fan Chris Sims - doesn't just wish us good cheer, but also updates us all on what he's been up to this year:

Some of Doom's subjects may have claimed that it was a mistake for Doom to swap out his traditional armor for black slacks, a pair of foam gloves inspired by the early-90s WWF wrestler "The Undertaker," and a mismatched lightweight nylon cape, but those people have obviously never fought an orange rock monster in July and should've thought of that before they opened their stupid mouths. Doom hopes you enjoy your stay in the dungeons of Doomstadt, Karl.

We wish you a happy holiday season, Doctor - and don't worry about your accursed foes: They're too busy having the origins of Hanukkah explained to them to stand in your way:

The Christmas Letter of Dr. Doom [Comics Alliance]

Since the mid-2000s, Mishka NYC has been at the vanguard of popular streetwear. A cornerstone of their success has been designing clothing influenced by gonzo horror, Z-grade sci-fi, and the overall dank and stanky underbelly of pop culture. Indeed, their gear is worn with equal aplomb by metalheads and hip-hoppers (Lil Jon and Lady Sovereign have sported Mishka in music videos), and the label's past collaborators have ranged from everyone from Iron Maiden album artist Derek Riggs to erotic photographer Ellen Stagg to electro-reggae supergroup Major Lazer.

Label heads Mikhail "Mike" Bortnik and Greg Rivera were nice enough to sit down with io9 and answer some questions about Mishka's design philosophy, winter line, and how Stan Lee cold lamps it at Comic-Con:

What's the Mishka origin story?

Mikhail Bortnik (left): It started sometime in '03. My job I was working at was going to close, so I decided to take a stab at t-shirt design, which I had wanted to do since college. This was about the same time I met Greg. A few months into it, I realized I was in over my head so I asked Greg to join on-board and sell the line. Greg immediately came on as a full-time partner. The basic idea was we wanted to sell street wear, but we soon realized there were so many fans who were into both street wear and scifi that there was absolutely no reason we couldn't incorporate these two things.

In terms of scifi, what were your earliest influences?

Greg Rivera (right): A lot of our influences have come from B-horror films, straight-up scifi films, and comic books, especially for Mike. I was big into horror comics when I was kid and also things like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, anything with the ironic twist at the end. Both of us are also big toy fans. Being in our early thirties, we grew up with 1980s toys, which ended up being a huge influence in our designs.

MB: One example of this influence was in our Fall 2008 Skyway Trippers collection – we tweaked an Israeli Special Forces design to include the phrase "Spaceknights" in Russian, as a homage to the old Spaceknights comic and toy line.

ROM Spaceknight allusions? That's wild. On a similar note, Mishka has a roster of kaiju-like characters who appears on a lot of your apparel – i.e. the half-serpentine, half-ursine Death Adder and the Cyco Simon skull. What's the story behind them?

MB: Actually the notion of bringing characters into the clothing brand goes back to metal bands. Cyco Simon is a reference to [Megadeth's ] Vic Rattlehead and Eddie from Iron Maiden, and we wanted our own. As for the Death Adder, we use our designs to tell a story with him – he's often seen teaming up with our Soviet super-soldier character.

Are we going to see an Adult Swim series with these guys anytime soon?

MB: I'll be honest, Greg and I would love to be able to a comic book or cartoon series with them.

What was the first sci-fi influenced Mishka piece?

GR: "They Live" was probably one of the first ones. It's hard to remember since we've had so many designs over time.

One of my early favorites was your Judge Death-inspired "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" logo.

MB: That was a mixing of the old Brian Bolland artwork with what people guessed [what the name of German industrial band] KMFDM stood for. KMFDM actually gave us a cease-and-desist for that one.

Really? Not the 2000 AD people?

MB: We figured we'd get something from them or Depeche Mode, but no, it was from the KMFDM people!

On a similar note, when was that moment when you said to yourselves, "Holy crap. We can't believe we just put that on a t-shirt."

MB: The "Tom of Eternia" t-shirt.

GR: Mike had the idea of doing a Tom of Finland-style shirt [featuring He-Man].

MB: If you've never hear of Tom of Finland, he's like the homoerotic artist. There was this impetus [to create this shirt] early on when someone made the comment that all we do is put naked girls and 80s cartoon characters on our shirts. Street wear on a whole seems more macho than we are as a brand, so Greg and I were like, let's do this.

GR: Our friend Robin Nishio – who is this amazing illustrator – met up with us and Mike pitched him the idea. Robin actually went and bought two big books on Tom of Finland and aped the style exactly. That was the coolest because we got so much shit from our customers because it was like, "Here's Skeletor as the master and He-Man down on his knees, gay porn style."

What sort of pieces are in the pipeline at the moment?

GR: We did this series of shirts for [the new heavy metal-themed video game] Brutal Legend and we're working with Dark Horse Comics on a project.

Oh wow, are you at the liberty to talk about that right now?

MB: Not really, but if anyone has followed our brand, you'll know that one particular Dark Horse character particularly sticks out.

As far as the Winter 2009 line goes, you seem to have strong robot theme going. You have the Terminator cyclops, the Decepticon hearse, and my favorite, the Ultron bear. Why robots this season?

MB: We've gone so far doing themes that this season just happened to be robots. This was probably one of our most rigid designs themes. The Ultron shirt's been particularly popular.

You guys hit up the San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was it being a street wear brand at what's been historically a comic and scifi show?

MB: We were selling some things there, but we were mostly there as fans.

GR: It's been a little calculated – and not to reveal all our secrets – but if a lot more other brands saw the potential of that market, you'd see a lot more people doing it. It's hard for us to do business, because Mike and I go and we're just geeking out. Besides going out there to meet Tim and Eric [from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!], we're both really into Japanese kaiju and we had the chance to show off our own kaiju designs.

MB: Comic-Con 2008 was my first one. We wanted to see the Lost panel, but after we saw it spilling into the street, we just said "fuck it" and went to the Battlestar Galactica panel. That crowd was pretty big too, but Dean Koontz was still speaking. So yeah, we killed two hours listening to Dean Koontz.

Any good Mishka Comic-Con party tales?

GR: We crashed an Activision party at the Hard Rock Café and saw Stan Lee. If you're at a Comic-Con party and you see Stan Lee, you know you're at the coolest party.

MB: He was just hanging out with this girl on his arm.

GR: (laughs) She looked like she was twenty years old.

MB: I don't if she was, like, hitting on him or he was hitting on her, but Stan Lee's exactly how you picture him. He really says "true believer."

I wouldn't want him any other way. Do you find yourselves getting calls from influences who've enjoyed your work?

MB: Other than the artists who we're huge fans of and end up working with – like Derek Riggs and L'Amour Supreme – no, not really. A lot of our influences are grumpy old men.

What would you say is the most quintessential Mishka design?

GR: On our first trip to Japan, we stayed in this little town outside of Tokyo and found all these old Japanese horror and sci-fi press kits. These kits would take the coolest part of the movie and turn it into poster art. We found this great Westworld kit and Mike added some comic book stuff, like Ultron and Cyborg from Teen Titans to the design. To this day, it's still one of my favorite ones.

MB: We also found this Motel Hell kit in which we used for our "Electric Funeral" shirt. We electrified the faces and it turned out great.

Alright guys - some final lightning round questions. Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China or Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan?

MB: Kim Cattrall. I'm a Next Generation fan, what can I say.

Zardoz or Troll 2?

GR: Troll 2.

MB: Zardoz.

Would you rather have John Carpenter compose you a personal theme song or direct a movie about your life?

MB: I'd rather have him direct the movie because then he'd have to compose the film's theme song.

Shit! I hadn't thought of that loophole. Any final words to io9 readers?

GR: By all means check Mishka out - you'll definitely find something you like.

Mishka apparel is available at their website and their Brooklyn store at 350 Broadway in Williamsburg, NYC. Store photography courtesy of Dave Digioia.

The Guardian's Stuart Heritage thinks that what we already know about the second Iron Man movie sounds worryingly familiar:

This time Iron Man 2 will have to balance Robert Downey Jr with Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke and Don Cheadle and Samuel L Jackson and Gwyneth Paltrow, and a shedload of exploding robots. Plus, there's a good chance that Tony Stark's also going to be an alcoholic in this one. And that's where the worry starts to seep in.

A tangled love story? Too many villains? A hero struggling with his demons? Unless I'm mistaken, that sounds just like Spider-Man 3 – a superhero movie legendary in its bloated naffness.

We'll admit it; we're concerned about Iron Man 2 as well, but that's got more to do with Whiplash's costume than any story-related reason. After all, if Favreau and Downey Jr. could make the first movie as fun as it was despite not having a finished script, making two bad guys, two Iron Men and an alcoholic subplot work should be a piece of cake. But do we put too much faith in their talents? Let us know in the comments whether you're worried that IM2 may be too full for its own good.

Why I'm starting to worry about Iron Man 2 [Guardian.co.uk]

Marvel Comics' reaction to 9/11 was both heartfelt and far-reaching, understandable for a company not only based in New York but one so tied to the city in its demeanor and subject matter (Marvel's New York state is the setting for the majority of its line, being home for years to Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men and Daredevil, amongst many others): Not only did they publish the prerequisite memorial special editions (Heroes and A Moment Of Silence), they also created a short-lived line of emergency services comics (The Call), relaunched Captain America as a hero hunting terrorists (with patriotic covers announcing things like "Fight Terror" and "Never Give Up"), placed a memorial logo of the World Trade Center Towers on all of their comics published for more than a year afterwards, and published a very special issue of Amazing Spider-Man where the company's most well-known character visited Ground Zero to help with rescue efforts, and found that it wasn't only the heroes who realized how terrible the terrorist attacks were:
Yes, Doctor Doom crying may have been a little too much - writer J. Michael Straczynski later denied asking for that in the script to avoid a backlash - but the meaning of all of this was clear: As a company, Marvel Comics had been severely affected by the devastating attacks, and had not only faced up to the reality of such widescale destruction previously fantasized about in their books, but also felt that reality for themselves. This was a sobered company.

Cut to last week's Siege: The Cabal, the prelude to next month's Siege event running across their entire line. Following September 11th, an increasingly political subtext has crept into Marvel's superhero lines, whether it's the "Personal Liberty or Safety" question at the heart of Civil War, terrorist sleeper cell paranoia of the run up to 2008's Secret Invasion or "The People Running Our Country May Not Have Our Best Interests At Heart" theme of this year's Dark Reign, and it's been something that's worked very well for the company: A decade ago, they were coming out of bankruptcy and their future looked uncertain, and now they're being bought by Disney for $400 billion. Siege: The Cabal acts as prologue to the big Final Act of the uber-storyline that's been running throughout their titles since 2004's Avengers: Disassembled, and ends with Norman Osborn - onetime Green Goblin and now head of what is essentially Marvel's Homeland Security department - talking with Norse God Loki about how he can make a pre-emptive strike against the mythical realm of Iraq. Wait, I mean, Asgard:
This explains the opening of next month's Siege, which was released in previews last week:

That's Chicago's Soldier Field getting destroyed, by the way. While there's a game going on, and the stands are full of people. Considering Soldier Field's seating capacity is 61,500, it's probably safe to say that we're talking about upwards of 50,000 fictional deaths in the stadium alone, even going with a "Well, it wasn't sold out" defense, and that's ignoring any damage and deaths in surrounding areas.

I think I'm allowed a W. T. F. around now.

There are so many things that come to mind from seeing this preview, and this amount of devastation for the purposes of getting a plot about good guys teaming up to reform the Avengers going, and to prepare for a new, optimistic status quo called "The Heroic Age". Primarily, it's the thoughtlessness and/or bad taste of the whole thing, especially coming from the publisher who seemed so affected by - or, perhaps, just displayed more of an emotional response to - September 11th (Which resulted in almost 3,000 deaths) and seemed to have come to some level of understanding of what an event of that scale actually means (Hint: It's not four issues of Cap and Iron Man and Thor getting back together to kick some bad guy ass, True Believer!). Don't get me wrong, I understand the difference between fictional death and real death, but that doesn't excuse the strange insensitivity here.

Secondly: Killing tens of thousands of people as an excuse to go to war? This is supervillainy on a ridiculous scale here, way beyond anything we've seen in a long time and not only completely removed from the intentional scale and bombast of old school supervillains, but (a) literally collateral damage given little thought on the road to Osborn's true plan, and (b) unlike other supervillain's genocidal plans, apparently completely successful (I hope that the next scene, not shown in previews, will reveal the Soldier Field destruction to be a fantasy sequence, but somehow I doubt it - And, if it were, it'd seem even more ghoulish to release these pages to get fans excited about reading Siege: "Look, kids! WIDESCALE DEATH TWENTY TIMES LARGER THAN 9/11! THIS IS THE BIG ONE YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! EXCELSIOR!"). I'm all for demonizing bad guys, but this is just insane; even going on the "Well, he's mentally unbalanced" explanation Siege writer Brian Michael Bendis has been giving in interviews about the character and project, it makes mastermind Norman Osborn into a character that is impossible to sympathize with, and reduces him to almost cartoon proportions and ideas about evil. All he needs now is a moustache to twirl when explaining his plan to the heroes.

(Second-and-a-half-ly: Killing tens of thousands of people as an excuse to go to war? Is this some kind of veiled "The American Right Wing Were Behind 9/11 As A Way Of Motivating People To Back An Invasion Of Afghanistan and Iraq" thing? After all, Bendis has said about the plot, "much like we've seen in our own modern history, it's not beyond world leaders to fabricate incidents if it serves a purpose." Hmm.)

Thirdly: We've seen this before, in more than one sense. Not only is this a deliberate and literal call-out to the accidental explosion that launched Marvel's Civil War, but the idea of using the destruction of a sports stadium to launch a war is from Tom Clancy's 1991 novel The Sum Of All Fears (adapted into a movie in 1999, but not released until 2002). Of course, in that case, it's a neo-Nazi trying to convince the US and Russia to go to war by placing blame on the event on the Russians, but still, the tone-deaf quality of the plot device becomes even stranger when you realize that it's not even original.

So what to make of Siege's Destruction McGuffin? A sign that, even if the rest of the world hasn't gotten over 9/11, Marvel has managed to move on and enjoy fictional slaughter as a motivator for superheroes to team-up again? Proof that cynical shock tactics outweigh genuine emotional responses when it comes to upping the ante in the name of sales? A thoughtless plot that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth? Maybe I'm just too sensitive to these kinds of things; it's been eight years, after all. Perhaps I should shut up and hope that they blow up an entire continent next so that Doctor Doom can reveal that he really did only have something in his eye down at Ground Zero. After all, destroying Antarctica would be really bad-ass, wouldn't it?

Here's a complete list of all the methods we found for jogging your memory from science fiction tales, from the least fantastical to the most. (The end of the list, sadly, includes some items that you're unlikely to be able to find at your local office supply store.)

Use an acronym.

Suppose you've got a beautiful blue time machine that goes by the ungainly name of Time And Relative Dimensions In Space — you can always shorten it down to TARDIS, which is much easier to remember. That's what the Doctor (and his granddaughter Susan) did in Doctor Who.

The same goes for Marvel Comics' super-secret spy organization, the Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.) The only problem with acronyms is, people will change what they stand for when you're not looking — S.H.I.E.L.D. now stands for Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate in the comics, or Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division in the movies.

There's also the General Unilateral Neuro-link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver (GUNDAM), and lots of other examples, here.

Write yourself a post-it note.

This may be the most foolproof method out there. In Star Trek: Voyager, Chakotay falls in love with a member of a species that erases itself from your memory after a while — and also somehow deletes all computer records. To guard his memories of their torrid, torrid love affair, Chakotay writes himself a paper note explaining everything that went on.

Similarly, in Scott Westerfeld's novel Uglies, Tally Youngblood undergoes the surgery to become a Pretty — but first she writes herself a note explaining all the plans she made to reverse the surgery. Because she won't remember them after she's become a Pretty.

In the movie Push, Nick gets someone to erase his memories and the memories of all his friends, so the mind-readers can't follow their plans. But he writes letters for himself and everybody else, to help them remember at the crucial moment — and there are instructions on how long to wait before reopening the letters.

And this technique is also used by Gwen Cooper in Torchwood (with so-so results), Noah Bennet on Heroes and Kurt on Odyssey Five. There's a great list over at TVTropes.

Keep a diary:

This is one step further than just writing a little note to yourself. In Gene Wolfe's novels Soldier in the Mist/Soldier of Arete, the protagonist loses his memory every single day. And he doesn't realize that his ability to converse with gods, ghosts and other mythic figures is unusual. He writes himself a detailed diary, and the first line of it is, "READ THIS EACH MORNING."

Lost's Daniel Faraday keeps a diary too, and seems to use it to remind himself of a lot of stuff he's forgotten as a result of some time-travel experiments that went wrong. Among other things, he doesn't remember writing the stuff about Desmond Hume being his constant.

Make up a song:

That's what Draycos does in Timothy Zahn's novel Dragon And Thief: A Dragonback Adventure. Draycos sees Jack being taken away on a spaceship, and needs to remember the words written on the ship's side — but they're in English, a language Draycos doesn't know. Says Draycos, "Alien symbols are difficult for one unfamiliar with them to memorize. But I am a poet-warrior of the K'da, and so as you were taken aboard the ship, I composed a song." For example, to describe the letter A, his lyric goes, "Two soldiers lean to, with joined hands." Or to describe the letter O, he sings, "Squeezed ring of fire, and what is more/A fire burns within its core." If you have an easier time remembering goofy song lyrics than unfamiliar symbols, this could work for you.

Leave yourself some objects to trigger a memory:

In Paycheck, Ben Affleck sees his own future, but then has his memory erased. So he leaves himself an envelope full of tiny objects, including a nail and an old penny, and a lottery ticket. They mean nothing to him — until he realizes that they're each incredibly useful at just the right moment. And they do help jog his memory, sort of. The Doctor on Doctor Who is constantly tying a knot in his hanky to remind him of things — but then he has to leave another knot in his hanky to help him remember why he made the previous knot.

Make yourself a video:

That's what Arnold Schwarzenegger does in Total Recall — he's forgotten his true identity as an agent of Mars intelligence (or maybe there was never anything to forget?) And now he leaves himself a video to explain everything — except maybe his past sellf isn't quite telling the exact truth.

Rodney McKay also leaves himself a video message in Stargate Atlantis after everybody loses their memories in the episode "Tabula Rasa." He tells himself to find Teyla quickly, or hundreds of people are going to die.

Create a memory key or "memory palace":

This one is a bit more involved. In John Crowley's modern fantasy novels, the Aegypt tetralogy, we meet the real-life philosopher Giordano Bruno, who had created a complex occult memory system, based on assigning graphical images to different pieces of information, allowing you to access them easily later. One such scheme involved concentric circles, and could allow you to set aside tons and tons of information. The Aegypt novels include the adventures of Bruno, who becomes the librarian of the Secret Library of San Domenico, keeping track of the huge collection of heretical texts using his amazing memory powers:

He knew and remembered every book, where it lay in Fra' Benedetto's cases, who had asked for it, and what was in it. In his vast and growing memory palace, the whole heavens in small, all that took up next to no room at all.

Also, in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Tzu creates a "toy cupboard" in his mind, among other techniques for creating an order for random facts:

He learned to memorize longer and longer lists of things by putting them inside a toy cupboard the tutor told him to create in his mind, or by mentally stacking them on top of each other, or putting them inside each other. This was fun for a while, though pretty soon he got sick of having all kinds of meaningless lists memorized. It wasn't funny after a while to have the ball come out of the fish which came out of the tree which came out of the car which came out of the briefcase, but he couldn't get it out of his memory.

The Mentats, or human computers, in Frank Herbert's Dune seem to use a variety of techniques, including memory keys (and sapho juice) to remember tons of information with perfect clarity. There's a Yahoo group where would-be Mentats have posted advice on how to train your mind to be as clear as that of a Mentat — or a Vulcan.

Tattoo yourself:

It works for the guy in Memento.

Take smart drugs:

It's pretty amazing what you can do with smart drugs, but in Woody Allen's story "Think Hard, It'll Come Back To You," a smart drug called Cranial Pops can help you recall any weird bit of information that may have gotten away from anyone, allowing you to be the hit of a party — until they wear off and you crash.

Use hypnosis:

Lots of science-fiction heroes use hypnosis as a memory aid. In Robert Heinlein's Citizen Of The Galaxy, Baslim hypnotizes his foster son Thorby, so he can memorize a coded message to the Space Police, as well as a letter to a space captain to help Thorby get off the planet. When Claire forgets her assault by Ethan on Lost, the castaways use hypnosis to help her remember, and Fox Mulder on X-Files uses hypnosis to remember his sister's abduction by aliens.

More complex spins on the idea of jogging your memory using hypnosis include the hypnotic trigger that sets off River Tam and activates her killing-machine programming in Serenity:

And the images that make Chuck Bartowski suddenly recall bits of spy information stuck in his brain, in Chuck:

Wear video goggles or use image-recognition capability:

In David Brin's Earth, people wear True-Vu lenses that record everything they see, so they can recall stuff later. And in Amitav Ghosh's novel The Calcutta Chromosome, an object recognition computer can wring out all the details about objects you've seen. Science-fiction author Charles Stross suggests soon it'll be cheap and easy to store visual data on everything you've seen all day for a year, raising all sorts of questions about the boundaries between private memory and public records. Already, researchers have developed smart video goggles that will track what you see.

More way out solutions:

You could get a storage system in your head containing all the information you need to safeguard, as in Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson (and the movie of the same name.) You could burn your own initials into your brain to remind you that you erased your own memory, like Zaphod Beeblebrox in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. You could use Wonder Woman's magic lasso to restore your memories, if you know where to track her down. You could transfer your memories into someone else, like Data in Star Trek: Nemesis or Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. You could record your memories, like the people in Strange Days, or the dolls in Dollhouse. You could use a de-neuralizer to restore your memory, like Agent J in Men In Black II.

Top image: Citizen Of The Galaxy by Phil Golyshko. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder and Cyriaque Lamar.

Over at the Savage Critics, Khosla puts Marvel Comics' fear of women into some worrying perspective:

"Man Versus Castration Anxiety" has been a recurring theme for this generation of Marvel Comics "events". The first major "Event" Civil War began when Captain America was asked to submit to the authority of a woman named Maria Hill.

Captain America then initiates an all-out superhero civil war rather than take orders from a woman. At the conclusion of the comic, Iron Man has won that contest; however, the comic goes bizarrely out of its way to assure the reader that the patriarchal order has been restored: the comic's celebratory final three pages feature Iron Man forcing Maria Hill to get him coffee.

The Civil War can only truly end once a woman is put back in her "place". Civil War was then followed by a comic called— oh God, here I go again— Secret Invasion, in which an alien Queen attempts to institute a matriarchy on Earth. In response, the Earth's superheros murder the Queen, specificially by repeatedly destroying the Queen's head. In issue 7 of the series, her head is shot through with arrows. In issue 8, it is revealed that she's survived the arrows, but then her head is blown off by the Green Goblin. In the same panel as her head being blown off is a drawing of Wolverine, poised to slice into her head with his adamantium claws.

The comic takes a perverse glee in damaging this woman's head, basically. Freud often suggested that the head was a symbol of the repressed desires of the lower body, that is to say, he often associated the female head with a vagina. As David D. Gilmore explained in "Misogyny: the Male Malady": "Freud wrote a paper specificially on this subject, 'The Medusa's Head' published posthumously in 1940. [...] Freud argues that Medusa's head represents the vagina in general and the mother's vagina in particular, the archetypal 'hairy maternal vulva'. Here is the Oedipal terror displaced to the head: Medusa embodies both mother and woman, and the hairy vulva typifies incestuous temptation." The Secret Invasion can only end when the offending vagina has been destroyed.

Lots more at the link, including the comic that started off his observation, in which the monster is a woman who became a monster because she was horny. And, no, I'm sadly not even exaggerating.

It's worth pointing out that Khosla doesn't mention House of M, Marvel's superhero crossover event prior to Civil War, where the plot was essentially "That woman is too powerful and must be stopped before she destroys reality." Which was also the plot - and the same woman, for that matter - as the event prior to that, Avengers Disassembled. Ironically enough, March 2010 starts a year-long program called "Marvel Women" at the publisher, which according to Marvel Snr. VP of Sales David Gabriel, is intended...

...to celebrate the women of the industry, whether they are super-heroines, super-villainesses, artists, writers, editors, colorists, inkers, proofreaders, models, and on and on.

Here's hoping there'll be less disturbing undercurrent to Marvel's stories for that year, as well...

Abhay Wrote a Quick Description of Dark Reign: The List — X-Men #1, For No Reason [Savage Critics]

For the last year, Norman Osborn (a.k.a. Spider-Man's greatest archnemesis) has been the director of the intergovernmental military force H.A.M.M.E.R. Under his tenure, Norm's made bad behavior the norm - villains are posing as heroes, heroes are hunted as villains, dogs are breeding with cats, and so on.

Luckily for the forces of justice (and comic fans' hemorrhaging wallets), Norman's Dark Reign begins to wraps up this month with Siege: The Cabal, a prelude to the four-part Siege miniseries, which will detail Norman's inevitably ill-fated invasion of Thor's old stomping grounds, Asgard.

As a tribute to the man who made criminal insanity de rigueur for 2009, we've compiled the kookiest moments of the occasional Green Goblin's career. Thanks for memories, Norm.

(PS: As for Norman's man behind the curtain, I've got $25 riding on Shuma-Gorath and a Super Nintendo copy of Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage on Uncle Ben.)

Norman Pink-Slips The Swordsman

From: Secret Invasion: Dark Reign 1 (2008)

Andreas von Strucker never had a chance to become an A-list baddie. His dad was the most famous Nazi in the M.U. (Baron von Strucker), his superpower was way too incestuous for mainstream villany (skin-to-skin contact with his twin sister Andrea allowed him to fire energy bolts), and - when his sis kicked it - he traipsed about with a sword hilted with her tanned hide. Ick.

Given the Swordsman's lack of PR potential, it's unsurprising Norm fired Andreas from his gig as the Thunderbolts' in-house pompous bastard. Unfortunately for Andy, Norm's idea of a severance package was pretty literal.

Norman Fakes Aunt May's Death Just For Laughs

From: Spectacular Spider-Man 263 (1998)

In 1973, the Green Goblin throws Gwen Stacy off of the George Washington Bridge. It was poignant. In 1995, Aunt May dies of a heart attack (but only after revealing that she always knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man). This too was poignant.

And in 1998, Norman admits to kidnapping Aunt May, replacing her with a genetically altered elderly actress (?) and keeping the real May alive in a warehouse for absolutely no damn reason. This was why I stopped reading comic books in the late 90s.

Norman Recruits The Sentry with Hamburgers

From: Dark Avengers 3 (2009)

Norman's Dark Avengers sales pitch to the Sentry is awesome, particularly when he starts yammering out of the blue about Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Seriously, getting two mentally ill anti-heroes to bond over your burgers is product placement* In-N-Out can just dream about.

*To be fair, I tried Five Guys for the first time shortly after reading this. It was fucking fantastic. Yes, the Green Goblin sold me on a hamburger.

Norman Knocks Flash Thompson Off The Wagon

From: Peter Parker: Spider-Man 45 (2002)

In another story straight out of the "Overly Complex Green Goblin Scheme and Laughably Grim Take on a Classic Spider-Man Co-star" files, Norman hires a down-on-his-luck and recovering alcoholic Flash Thompson, gets him blotto, and puts him behind the wheel of an OsCorp truck on a collision course with Peter Parker's high school.

Luckily for Flash, the ensuing brain damage from the accident was retconned away by Peter Parker's deal with Mephisto in the One More Day storyline. Unluckily for Flash, he had instead lost his legs in Iraq. By the time Brander Newer Day rolls around, Flash will be caught betwixt the Scylla and Charybids of shingles and premature ejaculation.

Norman Mocks Spider-Man's Lack of Fluid

While we're on the topic of One More Day, we're pretty sure this 1982 exchange was retconned out of existence as well. Pity. If all of Spidey's rogues' gallery began making fun of his shortcomings in the fluid department, it could really mess him up on a psychosexual level.

Norman Watches the Submariner Take a Shower

From: Dark X-Men: The Beginning 1 (2009)

When Namor joined the Dark X-Men, one of the men seemingly tacked on a rider requiring the director of H.A.M.M.E.R. to watch the Prince of Atlantis' daily ablutions. Is it a mind game on Namor's part to give Osborn an inferiority complex? Is Norman just being Norman? We honestly cannot say.

Norman Knocks Up His Son's Girlfriend

From: The Amazing Spider-Man 598 (2009)

If Namor was indeed attempting to show up Norman's manhood, he'll have to try a little harder. For a white guy with cornrows, Norm's had disturbingly good luck with the fairer sex, with a big emphasis on "disturbingly" here.

In 2009, Norm impregnated his son Harry's girlfriend, Lily. Sure, she was secretly the supervillain she-goblin Menace (and the only woman strong enough to handle Norman's mutated goblin sperm), but really? Really? At least this stupid, creepy baby mama subplot wasn't born out of an even stupider, creepier baby mama subplot…or was it?

Norman Knocks Up Spider-Man's Girlfriend

From: The Amazing Spider-Man 512 (2004)

Hoo boy. Yes, that is Norman Osborn dirty dancing with Gwen Stacy. Yes, that is Norman's O-face. Yes, Norman is too evil for rubbers.

For those of you who don't remember this episode, allow us to recap in the simplest terms possible:

1. Norman has an affair with Gwen Stacy.
2. She secretly gives birth to twins. Norman's Goblin spunk alters the children's DNA and rapidly ages them to adulthood.
3. Norman has a hissy fit and chucks Gwen off a bridge.
4. The twins grow up to be super-assassins or some similar dross.

The most depressing part of this incident wasn't its necrophiliac treatment of the Silver Age of Comics. No, it's that One More Day didn't exile any of this dolorous twaddle into retcon oblivion.

Norman is Willem Dafoe

From: Spider-Man (2002)

Say what you will about his Power Rangers-esque bodysuit – when Willem Dafoe was out of his chartreuse kabuki mask, he brought a mantis-like sensuality to the Green Goblin that few other actors could muster. I almost wish Sam Raimi had simply painted Dafoe green, at the risk of audiences mistaking Norman for a deranged Green Bay Packers fan.

Norman Goes Spider Jerusalem on The Thunderbolts

From: Thunderbolts 120 (2008)

Thunderbolts 120 is perhaps the best portrayal of Norman Osborn. Ever. The issue begins with a five-page monologue of unmistakable Warren Ellis patois and ends with Norman vowing to kill his entire security staff just cuz'. Along the way, we are treated to infinitely quotable epigrams on…

His Green Goblin outfit: "I'm so glad I never washed this particular costume. Smells like death, blondes, and victory."

Venom and Swordsman: "I was wondering if you could direct me to the arm-eating retard and the sword-waving aristo. I have to punish them you see."

Himself: "I'm fricking martyr to my own innate heroism, is what I am. Norman Osborn, America's last hero. That's what I am."

I could write a whole dissertation on this one issue, but let's just say that the brilliance of Norman's portrayal here is that he epitomizes the hallmark difference between heroes and villains – restraint. Let the good guys hamstring their powers with laws and moral pantywaistry. Norman Osborn's screaming "I AM GOD!", watching his peons brown their trousers, and laughing his ass off about it. Who's to say he's the crazy one?

Twilight of the Midnight Sons: Twi Harder may just be the latest episode of Marvel's What The?! online comedy videos, but admit it; that's a better ending than New Moon managed.

[YouTube]

I say "anti-villainy", because you'd be hard-pressed to find a single hero in any of the six parts that make up Incognito. There's a protagonist, one Zack Overkill, who was once a super-strong villain but is now a heavily drugged civilian in the Witness Protection Program. He occasionally does the right thing, but never for the right reasons, and there are one or two truly unforgivable acts he commits along the way. Even the so-called good guys of this world, the SOS, are a morally gray, clandestine bunch who only recently stopped torturing their prisoners.

Brubaker chose to spin the universe of Incognito out of the pulp tradition of the 1930's, which is part of the reason this is now such a brutal world. As he argues in the collection's afterword, characters like Doc Savage and the Shadow were always more violent and ambiguous than the likes of Captain America and Superman, and the larger world of the pulps was one dominated by horror and noirish murder mystery.

Considering this background of pulpish adventurers and the current war between the omnipresent, villainous organization run by the Black Death and the heroic-by-default SOS, I couldn't help but be reminded of The Venture Bros. (There's another plot point that will really hammer home that connection, but I won't spoil it.) The comparison is a worthy one - both are superior explorations of how supposedly extraordinary people try but fail to lead ordinary lives, and the consequences of secret wars between good and evil for those caught in the middle. Oh, and they're both fantastic, if you prefer to keep things simple.

Between Sleeper and his truly epic run on Captain America, I'd rank Ed Brubaker as one of the top three writers working in comics today. After reading Incognito, you could definitely talk me into handing him the outright title. What's so impressive about his work here is that the story is grim, gritty, profane, ultraviolent, and more than a little offensive - and none of it feels gratuitous. He is telling a story from the perspective of a man without a moral compass, and there's no way such a story isn't headed for some pretty dark places. Still, because neither he nor Zack Overkill revel in it, all of the carnage feels artistically justified. Take note, comic book writers from the nineties. This is how mature comics writing is done.

At just six issues, the story barrels along quickly. Although the concept of a supervillian working an office job while in witness protection was the initial impetus for Incognito, Brubaker does not dwell on it for too long. He extracts a lot of great material from the premise - including Zack's one civilian friend and his rather inexplicable office crush - but puts a lot of other balls in motion while he does so. With at least five or six factions out for Zack, each with their own distinct interests, it's remarkable that the story is entirely coherent. Of course, based on Brubaker's track record, it's not exactly surprising.

Sean Phillips also deserves a great deal of praise for his work on the art of Incognito. A perfect visual fit for Brubaker's writing, he excels at bringing out the twisted, complex emotions of the book's characters. Although clearly capable of rendering an exploded head or charred corpse in all its exquisite glory, he too shows restraint, preferring to indicate the most horrific moments tastefully, rather than let them take over the panels. That isn't to say there isn't some brutal imagery in here - there definitely is - but much like Brubaker's script, none of it feels exploitative or gratuitous.

Incognito sets out to explore one possible fate of a supervillain and ends up tackling questions of morality, destiny, voyeurism, and whether there are limits to what humans can do to themselves in the name of power. It also takes the story of Zack Overkill and uses it as an opportunity to construct an entire world of pulp heroes and villains brought forward into the 21st century, one that Brubaker has promised he will return to. I can't wait.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The company promises an explanation tomorrow, but fan rumors already have the gun-toting monkey as either a new character from Marvel's Marvel Apes franchise, an oddly-primate version of a potential comic adaptation of the Hitman videogame or, most surreally and excitingly for us, a new character from Jeph Loeb's upcoming New Ultimates series rebooting Marvel's Avengers franchise one more time. Until then, just appreciate the image for what it is: A monkey, in a suit, with two guns.

Marvel's latest teaser for their December-launching Siege storyline (Officially, the series launches in January, but December brings a prologue issue, Siege: The Cabal) suggests that not only has everything in the publisher's recent history been leading up to their new return to happier times, but also that voiceover artists can get bored every now and again.

Marvel's official PR for the event:

SIEGE is coming! It's all been leading up to this universe shattering four issue limited series from the superstar team of Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coipel! Following the events of Dark Reign: The List, Norman Osborn sets his sights set on Asgard and nothing will stop him from completing his mission. But what does he want? How do Loki and Thor figure in? And just how does this relate to the inner strife between the Cabal? Marvel's greatest heroes unite against the deadliest threat they've ever faced, but even they have no idea what's coming next. It's time for the most jaw dropping comic book event of the decade begins in December with Siege: The Cabal and continues in January's SIEGE #1!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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