Magical Realism
Air
What It's About: At its heart, Air is a love story between Blythe - a flight attendant who's afraid of flying - and Zayn, who is as much a mystery to himself as everyone else. But Air is much, much weirder, and more interesting, than that: For one thing, Blythe is a natural hyperpraxis pilot, which means that she can travel to places, times and ideas that don't, theoretically, exist... a skill she's honing with the help of Amelia Earhart, who by the way is still alive. For another, there's a war brewing between terrorists over control of the skies, and for a third, certain people may be very interested in that whole "hyperpraxis" thing. A series that's gentle, human, full of wonder and emotion, and at times just beautiful, Air is unlike most comics - and television shows and movies, for that matter - out there.
Where To Start: Two collections are available, Letters From Lost Countries and Flying Machine. Pick both up; the series is great, but the first collection (Letters) stops at a frustratingly bad point, and you need to read the second to fully appreciate what's going on.
Click here for a preview of Air.

Post-Invasion SF
Resurrection
What It's About: We've all seen stories about aliens invading Earth, but what happens after they leave? FlashForward producer and Green Lantern movie scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim's series starts with that idea and spins out a series that's part Y: The Last Man, part Lost and all-over fascinating. Why did the aliens invade? Where did they go? No-one knows yet, but considering they've left behind technology and even one of their own, you can sure that we'll probably find out somewhere down the line... but along the way, you can get sucked into the more down to earth stories of the humans left behind. Even if one of them is former president Bill Clinton, who was revealed to be more alive than everyone thought at the end of the most recent issue.
Where To Start: There's already a collection of the first black and white series out there, but we'd actually recommend waiting until the start of next year, when the 368 page Resurrection Vol 1: Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete first series and the first seven issues of the current series, hits the shelves.
Click here for a preview of Resurrection.

Urban Fantasy
Locke & Key
What It's About: Ignore the punniness of the premise - The Locke family move to the family estate of Keyhouse, wherein there are magic keys that can do various weird and wonderful things, which puts them right in the middle of some bad things that're about to happen - and instead, embrace and enjoy those weird and wonderful things that the keys can do: like open doors that turn people into ghosts or even open their own heads so that you can reach in and take out unpleasant memories. Mixing horror, fantasy, comedy and family drama and featuring moments that are genuinely unsettling, Locke & Key deserves all the praise it's gotten, and a lot more.
Where To Start: There're two collections out already; Welcome To Lovecraft and Head Games. Start at the beginning (Lovecraft), bearing in mind that Head Games is the better, and also the more freaky.
Click here for a preview of Locke & Key.

Nostalgia Done Right
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka
What It's About: A reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (with some nods to his other work thrown in), Naoki Urasawa's Pluto is inventive, dramatic and in almost every single way, a lesson in how to take reboot and update an old concept the right way. Instead of retreading the old status quo, the series centers around robot detective Gesicht, who's investigating the murder of various high profile robots around the world... Murders that may have been committed by another robot. Even if you don't get sucked in by the economy and subtlety of the writing, there's no way you could fail to admire Urasawa's amazing artwork.
Where To Start: Unsurprisingly, Vol. 1. The seventh volume of the series is due in January, but that's still too far away; when you finish the first volume, you'll be hooked and get through the other five in days.
(No preview available, due to licensing issues. Sorry.)

Crime/Romance/SF/Everything
King City
What It's About: I've written before about Brandon Graham's stunning future crime book, but now that it's being re-released in an easier-to-find serialization by Image Comics, I'll use the opportunity to gush again; the bastard child of an orgy that included Moebius, Vaughn Bode, Jamie Hewlett and Osamu Tezuka (and maybe a little Alex Toth, come to think of it), King City is the tale of one thief, his broken heart, his cat that can literally do anything if given the right drugs, werewolves with war trauma, stolen organs, sidekicks in wrestling masks and pretty much all that's good in the world, all wrapped in something that takes noir's cliches and gives them a makeover laced with enough absurdity and love that it all seems new again. The whole thing manages to be both laid back and electrifyingly kinetic, and your heart will break for multiple reasons while reading it. Really, really worth tracking down.
Where To Start: The serialized reissue is on #2, so picking up back issues from the start really shouldn't be a problem. The original Tokyopop release may offer more story in one sitting, but the Image re-release comes with bigger pages and brand new material to accompany the serialized reprint.
Click here for a preview of King City.

We've seen many fictional American Presidents fight off all manner of alien and/or monster invasions - Who could forget Independence Day's President Thomas J. Whitmore, who suited up and flew a fighter jet himself just to show how much he loved his country? - but the addition of the very real William Jefferson Clinton to Resurrection still seems a surprise, something that writer Marc Guggenheim seems to be enjoying:

I believe we're charting new territory here... For me, the challenge is remembering to write him the same way I would write any of the other characters in the book and not shy away from moments that make him seem real, human and/or vulnerable. The whole point in bringing Clinton into the book as a regular cast member is to treat him like a regular cast member. It's tempting to put him on some kind of presidential pedestal, but even the 'real life' Clinton is, after all, just a man. I'm not making it a story point or anything, but he puts his pants on one leg at a time, y'know?

But we can't help but wonder: Would Clinton be the best President to rely on in an alien invasion? Aren't there better Presidential choices to be made when selecting someone to lead us in out ongoing battle with an extra-terrestial army?

Click Here To Start Our Countdown Of The Presidents We Think Would Manage To Keep Humanity Alive.

Grant understood topography, the importance of supply lines, the instant judgment of the balance between his own strengths and the enemy's weaknesses, and above all the need to keep his armies moving forward, despite casualties, even when things had gone wrong-that and the simple importance of inflicting greater losses on the enemy than he can sustain, day after day, until he breaks. Grant the boy never retraced his steps. Grant the man did not retreat-he advanced.

Plus, he's called US Grant. For symbolic purposes alone, that can't be beaten.

Click To Find Our Choice For Final Presidential Protector!

Click To Continue Our List Of Leaders Trying To Keep It A Free World - From Aliens!

Click To Discover What Other White House Residents Could Keep Us Safe From Death From Above!

Click For More Presidential Hopefuls Ready To Face Down Any House Of Intergalactic Congress!

Oh, and there will be some spoilers for recent TV episodes here — most notably Fringe.

This is mostly a list of people whose characters died or departed forever, but then they went on to play a totally different character. This doesn't include people whose characters died and then came back to life, which is a totally different trope. (And I'm not including actors who played more than one minor character in a show, or a minor character followed later by a major character.)

Garret Dillahunt on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

This amazingly versatile actor plays Cromartie, a Terminator sent from the future to kill John Connor. And after a season and a half of cat and mouse games, Cromartie finally gets blowed up good. But then his body gets repurposed and used as a UI for the childlike AI known as John Henry. (You could also say the same for Brian Austin Green, but that's slightly different — he came back as the exact same character, Derek Reese. It was just a different timeline where Derek hadn't died (yet.))

Sheryl Lee on Twin Peaks.

Laura Palmer dies (as you may have heard), but then actor Sheryl Lee shows up as Laura's nearly identical cousin Maddy. Good thing they wouldn't kill off the same actor twice... right?

Ali Larter on Heroes.

Larter plays the troubled webcam girl Niki, who's also the psychotic killer Jessica sometimes. But then Niki/Jessica dies... but it turns out Larter has an identical sister named Tracy. (And another one named Barbara, but apparently we'll never actually meet her.) And there's a mad scientist guy involved, who decided to give one sister weird water powers, and the other sister weird "psycho mirror" powers, because hello, mad scientist!

Doctor Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis

This jolly Scottish doctor is great at cooking up retroviruses and coming up with last-minute saves... but after he died at the end of the third season, fans were outraged. Good thing he was able to come back as his own clone. Also notable: Elizabeth Weir dies, but comes back as a machine intelligence (although I'm not sure if Torri Higginson ever played the mecha-Weir.)

Kirk Acevedo on Fringe .

This is the somewhat spoilery one: Acevedo's character, Charlie, dies at the end of the first episode of season two. But he's been replaced by an evil (or at least morally suspect) shapeshifter from an alternate world — where, presumably, there may also be another Charlie Francis running around. So we could eventually see Acevedo playing a third character. (And then a fourth, when the shapeshifter impersonates alt-Charlie?)

Amy Acker on Angel.

We were heartbroken when Fred died, but then chilled and shocked when she was reborn as the psychotic demon god Illyria. And then we learned to love her new persona almost (well maybe half) as much as her original one.

Terry O'Quinn on Lost.

Locke appears — emphasis on appears — to be stone dead, although maybe he's alive in another timeline? In any case, after Locke died, someone (or some thing) impersonated him, allowing O'Quinn to stretch his acting muscles and play Locke as, well, kind of a dick.

Denise Crosby on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Oh. The pain. Tasha Yar dies, but then Crosby later reappears as Tasha Yar's daughter (from an alternate timeline) with a Romulan. You see, Picard sent alt-Tasha back in time to the Enterprise-C so it could be destroyed by Romulans and the timeline could be repaired, but alt-Tasha didn't die, and so she shacked up with the Romulans, and... oh, whatever. It's Crosby with pointy ears. Look!

Steve Bacic on Andromeda.

He plays Gaheris Rhade, who betrays Dylan Hunt and is killed in the show's pilot episode — although Gaheris reappears several times in flashbacks and one alternate history episode later. And then in later seasons, Bacic takes on a new character Telemachus Rhade, who's the descendant of Gaheris. (Thanks to Xicer for the heads up!)

Lalla Ward on Doctor Who.

Okay, so Ward's character, Princess Astra, didn't actually die — but she did get written out of the show forever. And then the Doctor's Time Lady companion, Romana suddenly decided to regenerate, and randomly chose to refashion herself into the guise of Princess Astra. You could also mention Anthony Ainley, who played Tremas in "Keeper Of Traken." Tremas died — but then his body got taken over, and he became the new incarnation of the Master — but Tremas was always just intended to be a new host body for the Master.

Katee Sackhoff on Battlestar Galactica.

This is another edge case — Starbuck definitely died, because there was a body. But did she come back to life? Is Sackhoff playing a different character in the final season of BSG? Your theory is at least as valid as mine, because I haven't a clue. Like the video says, "You Will Know The Truth."

Thanks to Alexis Brown, Meredith Woerner, Sam J. Miller, Paul McEnery, Sean Passmore, Katrina James, Rus McLaughlin, Kathleen Warnock, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, S.J. Edewards, David Daw, Debcha, Barclay Sylvester, Karen Meisner, Brooklyn Erica, and "Dillahunt News" on Twitter (is that actually Garret Dillahunt, or a fan?), plus anyone else who helped out.

Dipping our collective toes into the cross-media area of the pool for awhile, Doctor Who: Autopia is a new one-off story to keep you in the Who mood while you're waiting for The Waters of Mars. Also, Joss Whedon's Runaways run gets a cheap ($9.99 for six issues!) collection as Runaways: Dead End Kids Digest.

If you're looking for a new take on old science fiction tropes, the second series of Warren Ellis' Anna Mercury launches with a different look at the multiverse. And Marc Guggenheim's Resurrection also launches a second series, letting you return to an Earth post-alien invasion, where no-one is quite sure what kind of world they're living in any more.

For those needing their superhero fix, DC's Red Robin takes Tim Drake - the former Robin - off around the world as he tries to prove that Bruce Wayne isn't as dead as many people think he is. (Go, Tim! But you may need a time machine before you're finished!) And you can find out Bruce's true fate in the hardcover collection of Final Crisis (and pick up some other stories from the same era in the Final Crisis Companion coming out the same day).

Marvel, meanwhile, are indulging a Chris Claremont jones, with the X-Men: The End Trilogy collection of Claremont's 18-issue finale to the franchise. (Be warned: He spun another series out of it, so it's not a final finale.) There's also the first issue of X-Men Forever, a new series that lets Claremont pretend that he never stopped writing the characters in 1991, by ignoring every story that came afterwards. If you'd like something less wordy and more bloody, Christos Gage's Absolution offers up another take on the "When a superhero crosses the moral line and decides that doing so was kind of fun" story.

But let's face it; everything else this week may pale beside the release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan #1, a movie adaptation 27 years in the making (Yes, the movie was that long ago); IDW, realizing that STII was the one movie that had never been made into a comic, have finally fulfilled someone's dreams and offered a chance to see Spock die again.

But if you'd rather watch something come back to life, Dynamite's Buck Rogers #1 brings back the classic pulp hero for an all-new audience, offering space thrills and even some spills along the way. But sadly, no Twiki.

All of these books - and many more, as evidenced in this week's shipping list - can be found at your local comic store, which can be found using the Comic Shop Locator. Just do us a favor and spend a quiet moment when ringing up your week's purchases for the loss of Buck's annoying metallic friend. Bidi bidi bye, old buddy.

If you've been craving some superhero action but don't know what's going on with your old favorites, DC's Blackest Night #0 and Marvel's Free Comic Book Day Avengers both offer all-new stories that'll bring you up to speed in a fast and stylish manner; both books are written and drawn by the company's top talent (Night boasts story by Geoff Johns and art by Ivan Reis, while Avengers is a Brian Michael Bendis and Jim Cheung co-creation), and hint at what's to come fairly effectively. Other superhero thrills can be found in Wolverine: Origin of an X-Man (Just in time for this weekend's X-Men Origins: Wolverine release), Image's Savage Dragon #148 and Cyberforce/Hunter Killer Preview, and new indie comic Fist of Justice.

If you'd rather look for some more familar characters, Dark Horse and IDW have you covered; the former are putting out two books, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Aliens/Predator, while IDW have a Transformers/GI Joe flipbook ready and waiting for you. If that's not enough, the Dabel Bros. Showcase offers a new Dresden Filesstory as well as - weirdly enough - a preview of an upcoming Star Wars novel from publishing partners Del Rey, while Boom! have a new Warhammer preview (as well as a reprint of the first issue of their Cars series) and Mirage reprint the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to celebrate the characters' 25th anniversary.

Of course, there's also all manner of new work out there for you to discover tomorrow as well. Our pick would be Oni Press' Resurrection #0 (tying in with this week's Resurrection collection, offering up a view of life post-alien invasion), the Comics Festival collection of Canadian cartoonists and, of course, Fantagraphics' Love and Rockets Sampler... which may be neither new nor sci-fi, but is still some of the best comics out there.

A full list of the books available for Free Comic Book Day is available here, and as ever, your local comic book store can be found by clicking here. Visit, find some new favorite things to read, and take advantage of the freebies.

I say "at least," because there're actually a few books worth checking out this week. Dark Horse leads the way with Star Wars Adventures: Han Solo and the Hollow Moon of Khorya, the first in a new series of "graphic novellas" about George Lucas' favorite charming smuggler. You can read a preview here, but I have to admit that I was pretty much sold once I found out it was a pre-A New Hope Han story. What can I say? I'm a sucker for rogues.

Similarly charming - and arguably a little dumber - are the Winchester boys who star in DC's Supernatural: Rising Son, a collection of the recent mini-series of the same name that gives you some backstory to our favorite television demon hunters. Also on the television front, Boom! Studios have the first issue of a new Eureka series, Dormant Gene coming out as well, which should tide us over nicely until the new season starts on SyFy in a couple of months.

If superhero thrills are your thing, then DC has an oversized hardcover edition of Superman: For Tomorrow, the not-what-you'd-expect story by 100 Bullets' Brian Azzarello and Batman/X-Men/Wildcats wunderkind Jim Lee. There's also a much more affordable Green Lantern Chronicles collection of Hal Jordan's earliest appearances.

Marvel, meanwhile, has the obligatory X-Men Origins: Wolverine tie-in before Friday's movie, and the still-surprising Guardians Of The Galaxy: Earth Shall Overcomehardcover that collects the first appearances of Marvel's obscure 1970s future space heroes from various titles like Marvel Two-In-One and The Defenders.

But if you're really jonesing for some alien invasion drama, you can't go wrong with Oni Press' Resurrection, Vol. 1, the first collection of a series by Marc Guggenheim, the Eli Stone creator (and Amazing Spider-Man writer... oh, and the guy who co-wrote the upcoming Green Lantern movie.) Resurrection is all about what happens to Earth after the aliens leave. If Y The Last Man or Lost is your kind of thing, then you'll want to pick this one up, and Oni's making it easier for you by offering this 184 page book for just $6, ahead of Saturday's Free Comic Book Day prologue for the next series (starting in June). Need more to convince you? Oh, alright; here are the first 26 pages to tease and tantalize, but personally I think it's the book of the week.

Even if you're willing to pass up great bargains, you can check out the complete shipping list of what's making it to stores this week to look at what else will be making it to your local comic book store this week, and start setting up your sleeping bag in advance of Saturday's avalanche of free comics, just in case. But, really, come on: $6.00 is a great price for 184 pages.

1. Daniel Jackson (Stargate SG-1)
While pretty much the entire team has died and come back, Daniel wins the prize for doing it the most. He gets shot, he gets radiation poisoning, he gets killed, he gets killed again. And then again. And then again. You know, it's hardly any wonder he's gotten compared to Kenny from South Park.

2. Ellen Ripley (the Alien movies)
As far as resurrections go, Ellen doesn't totally adhere to the strictest definition. But when she's brought back as a clone in Alien Resurrection, it's in order to bring Sigourney Weaver back. This time with enhanced strength and acidic blood. So she's not only back, but she's also even more badass than she was before. (Which actually seems to be a trend with scifi resurrections.)

3. Captain Jack Harkness (Doctor Who and Torchwood)
In "The Parting of the Ways," the finale of Series 1, Jack is killed by the Daleks, but is brought back by Rose Tyler, who's essentially ingested the power of the time vortex, making her pretty much all-powerful. When she brings him back to life, however, she kind of overdoes it, and now Captain Jack cannot die.

4. Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
In the hundredth episode, "The Gift," Buffy sacrifices herself for her sister Dawn. After she's been dead for five months, she's brought back by her friends in "Bargaining." Whoever said you can't get by with a little help from your friends?

5. Charlotte "Chuck" Charles (Pushing Daisies)
Really, every single dead person Ned touches comes back to life. (Remember the Resurrection Glove in Torchwood? That's basically Ned, only Ned bakes pie too. And has a few more rules about how long he's allowed to keep the dead alive.) Well, he breaks those rules to let his dead childhood sweetheart, Chuck, remain in the land of the living, making her the most permanently resurrected character on the show.

6. Pretty Much Every Dead Superhero Ever
It would take forever to even tip the iceberg here. I figure it's a pretty fair assumption that if a superhero's died, they've also come back, maybe more than once. And if they haven't, you just have to wait a few years and they will. (Or they'll somehow manage to keep showing up in death. Exhibit A: The Dibnys.) Superman, Jean Grey, Batman, Jason Todd (Robin II), Hal Jordan (Green Lantern I), and on and on and on . . . No wonder they say death is a revolving door in comics.

7. The Iron Giant (The Iron Giant)
Now, once you open the list to robots, it gets a little messy. You can, after all, repair and rebuild them. (You have the technology.) In this case, however, the Giant sacrifices himself in order to prevent the entire town getting destroyed by a nuclear missile from the USS Nautilus sent to destroy the Giant. Several months pass, and everyone thinks the Iron Giant is dead, but we see him in pieces at Langjökull glacier in Iceland, slowly calling all his parts together, ostensibly to reassemble. (On top of that, I still hold that voicing the Iron Giant is Vin Diesel's greatest role to date.)

8. Sam and Dean Winchester (Supernatural)
In the finale episodes of Season 2, Sam is killed by Jake, another "special" kid ("special" being "potentially demonic"), who really does think he's doing the right thing. Dean, however, feels that killing Sam is decidedly the wrong thing, so he makes a deal with a Crossroads Demon: Sam back to life in exchange for one year left of life for Dean. That's Winchester Resurrection #1. Unfortunately, Dean only has a year left to live, so at the end of Season 3, he, er, dies. Lucky for him, however, he gets dragged back by an angel named Castiel. (Unlucky for him, it's because it's his job to stop the Apocalypse.) And that's Winchester Resurrection #2. (Actually, it's probably also the second or third time Dean's died. But still.)

9. Captain James T. Kirk (The Return, a novel by William Shatner)
While the canonicity is most definitely in question, The Return also most definitely has Kirk coming back from the dead. He's resurrected by the Borg and implanted with false memories designed to make him hate the Federation. The goal is, of course, to destroy Picard, but at the end of the day, Kirk sacrifices himself in Picard's place, thereby making it seem that he is once again dead. Spock, however, does not believe that.

10. Pat Henry "Hobbit" Hobbins (The Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin)
Pat Hobbins was the frontman for a rock band called The Nazgul, but was assassinated at a 1970 concert. When the band reunites with a young lookalike singer named Larry (who's even had the cosmetic surgery to look like Hobbins), they begin noticing a change in Larry at concerts, but only when they perform songs off their aptly named last album, Music to Wake the Dead. Larry, for all intents and purposes, becomes the once-dead Hobbins. Maybe it could be argued more as possession, but the novel's title is taken from one of the band's songs, the second half of which is "The Resurrection Rag."

11. Aslan (The Narnia series, C. S. Lewis)
Hey, what better way to end a post in honor of Easter with a little allegory? He's tortured, humiliated, and murdered by the White Witch and her followers, but come dawn and he's back in all his glory, which he explains thus:

"But if she could have looked a little further back, [...] She [the White Witch] would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

Resurrection

Q: Do you have any dreams for directors or cast in Resurrection yet? Have you spit balled a few ideas?

Not just yet. I hardly ever develop 'pie-in-the-sky' sort of ideas for directors. There are so many great directors out there. I wish I could say that I had a particular wish list, but that's not how my brain operates.

Q: Why did you decide to write Resurrection ?

I love science fiction, and like anyone who loves science fiction I've been watching TV shows and movies and reading comics about alien invasions for my whole life, practically. At the conclusion of every one of them I was always left with the question: "Well, what now?" You have a world that is fundamentally changed. Changed infrastructure-wise but also sociologically, politically, and economically. I'm really sort of fascinated by how we would rebuild things. What survives and what doesn't in terms of our ideals and our beliefs?

For example, if aliens were to invade, it would throw our whole religious system for a loop. Because we're supposed to believe that man was created by god and that we are the only life in the universe what happens when that belief is not just challenged, but completely proven false. There are a million questions just like that about a world post-alien invasion and post-contact with an alien race. What happens to America if there's no president? What happens to America if there's no line of succession any more? We take democracy for granted in this country, but democracy doesn't just exist because we want it to. It was fought for and constructed very deliberately hundreds of years ago. If you got rid of all of the things that were keeping that system in place, how would the vacuum be filled afterwards?

Q: How will this be different from other post-apocalyptic movies coming out like The Road?

I loved The Road. I read it and I thought it was incredibly gripping and moving. The world that Resurrection is in is very different from The Road. As bad a shape as the world is in at the beginning of Resurrection, it's in much, much worse shape in The Road... There are all sorts different projects that are out there that deal with life post-apocalypse. What makes Resurrection different is they are dealing with life post-alien initiated apocalypse. And as a result I'm getting into a couple of things that you can't do, post-nuclear, post-zombie or post-natural disaster. Pick your brand of apocalypse. We are going to be showing some pieces of alien technology, some alien cells. We've got the whole mythology of, "Why were the aliens invading us in the first place?"

Q: What are you most excited to see be brought to live on screen from Resurrection?

One of the things that's in the comic that we're excited about seeing on the film are the carriers. They are these massive, massive ships. I'm excited to see these on a huge scale.

Young X-Men

Q: Where did you get the idea to start the comic with a flash-forward?

I love the flash-back and flash-forwarding. In comics, I feel like have the most license to play along with that stuff. It's something I like to do a lot. In case of Young X-Men it was actually a very practical thing. I knew that I wanted that first issue to be an homage to the first half of Giant-Size X-Men Number 1, where Professor X went around the world and gathered up the team of new X-Men. And I knew I wanted to do the same thing with Cyclops. The problem is that as a whole first issue goes, if I were to just come in and just do Cyclops assembling the team, you would never get a chance to see the team in action. As a fully formed team in costume, doing their thing. The solution was the flash-forward. Then I get to do my homage to Giant-Size X-Men while at the same time not making readers wait until issue 2 to in order to see this team fully formed and kicking butt. And then of course since one of the characters is a precognitive it just seemed natural to make the flash forward something that she was predicting that would happen in the future.

Q: Are any other X-Men making an appearance?

In the second arc for sure we'll have a lot of the tried and true characters. Basically, this first arc is all about putting the team together and setting them up. Once I've accomplished that I'm going to start integrating them pretty tightly into the X-Universe.

Q: Any characters that will be coming back that you want to tell us about?

I would definitely expect to see Anole, who is a very popular character, a character I certainly like. I don't want to spoil too much, but you can definitely expect to see Anole and a few other characters from the past. Including one X-Man that I don't think anyone knows about just yet.

Q: Tell us more about Ink, the character that can take on powers from his tattoos. Are there any other tattoos he will be getting in the future?

If you go back to the first issue and you look on the cover in that flash forward. You can see that he's shaved his head and he has two lightening bolt tattoos on the side of his head so those are new powers that he'll be getting. My goal with Ink is to constantly be changing him by giving him new tattoos, thus giving him new powers. So he's going to be pretty dynamic.

Q: Why did you choose to bring Dust into the group? I know that it is a timely subject matter but were there any other reasons?

When you are trying to fit characters for a team you want a mix of a lot of different things. You want a mix of genders and powers. It wouldn't make sense to have three bruisers on the team. You want a mix of ethnicities and beliefs and what not. I also didn't want there to be just one token woman, I wanted a couple female characters. And having a character who is Muslim and from Afghanistan, in today's political climate, I think is interesting. It's not dissimilar to having Colossus having on team X-Men during the height of the Cold War. But mostly I thought her power worked really well in connection with everyone else's powers. She's has this really cool power in terms of being able able to turn herself into a sandstorm, I think she has a lot of different potential, in terms of spinning it. I thought it fit with the whole team.

Q: A lot of writers have started incorporating timely matters with the Middle East into their writing such as prejudices and terrorism, are you?

I have an idea for a Dust-centric story, that doesn't actually deal with terrorism but deals with prejudice against Muslims. That's a story I'm kind of dying to tell. I'm envisioning a self contained story with her. The idea is a little incompatible with another character I've got so I have to make some choices in terms of which story I want to tell and how I want to tell it. They also have a lot of plans for Dust that have nothing to do with her heritage. I don't mean to be coy but I like to keep my options open. Particularly if I make my way through another book I want to be able to allow inspiration to strike. It drives my editors crazy.

Q: What are your plans for Cyclops? A lot of people have problems with this character and I know you are planning to do new things with him.

Everyone sort of has issues with Cyclops. Ironically I think a lot of people are changing the way they feel about Cyclops because of Messiah Complex and these other big events that rocked him to his core. He's changed. He's become a different person. He's become ruthless. All of that is in service of a personal evolution. He's been becoming his own man for years and years. His whole adult life he's lived in the shadow of Professor X. I think what people are reacting to, both positively and negatively, is [the fact that] he isn't reacting the way he used to because it's sort of like a child that leaves a parent. That is very much the type of relationship that he had with Professor X, it was a father and son type of relationship. And in here you have him moving out and charting his own course. And like anyone else who has done that, sometimes the parent doesn't like it, or the people around you don't like it. You have to take risks and try different things. He is trying to discover who he is. He spent all of these years living in someone's shadow, only servicing their agenda.

Q: Well he does seem to have a lot more personality than before.

I think he's a fun character. I think Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon over the years have done some really amazing things with him. I think it has gone a long way towards making him a more interesting and dynamic character.

Q: What do you think about Jason Schwartz the writer for Gossip Girl going to write the new Young X-Men?

Yeah I heard that the news and I thought, 'Really, the Young X-Men movie, you don't say.' I'll be really curious to see how that movie turns out. I'm really glad that they are making all these comic book movies now. It's a great time to be a comic book fan.

Spider-Man

Q: Now that Peter Parker is single, what are Black Cat's chances with him?

Oh yeah that's funny. A lot of people ask about Black Cat. I can tell you right now we just don't have any plans to bring her into the book. It's not like we don't like her or anything, we've just got a lot of balls in the air right now and she just doesn't happen to be one of them. One of the big things that is different after One More Day, [is that] Black Cat no longer knows his identity. So the whole nature of a Spider-Man, Black Cat relationship will be very, very different, just because she doesn't know who Spider-Man is.

Q: How did you decide what to change in One More Day?
A lot of it was decided before the other writers and I were brought on. There was some discussion of do we resurrect Gwen Stacy while we were at it? And we collectively decided that obviously we wouldn't. A lot of it was decided before we got involved so I can't really speak as why they decided to change this or that. Most of it is just the natural outcome, of okay, Spider-Man is no longer married and the world no longer knows his identity.

Q: How have you dealt with the fan reaction with One More Day? Does it ever change your writing?

In Young X-Men there was a lot of negative reaction to the first issue. I think what you have to do is set your course and stick to it....I'm at the point where I'm almost immune to criticism. When you're working on something that is just starting out like Brand New Day is or Young X-Men, we're plotted out for the next year and a half at least. So we know what's coming down the road, the fans don't. There's no reason to change because people's reactions are based on a couple of months worth of reading. Those are not necessarily the same reactions they will have a year from now or two years from now. It's like trying to govern by the polls from a poll that was taken a year and a half ago. The problems that we are dealing with on Spider-Man in terms of story and things that we are trying to work out are about a year and a half removed now from where the books currently are. So you really can't react to people's reactions. You have to go forward to what you have planned in the first place.

Q: Why doesn't the Green Goblin know Spider-Man's identity?

Simply put everyone who knew Spider-Man's identity after One More Day, doesn't. So there would be no way for him to keep that knowledge. It would be like everyone forgot his identity except for this person or that person. This was something we had to decide very early on was, who knows and who doesn't know it and the thing that we all agreed upon was best to keep it simple. Let's come up with one bright light rule: nobody knows. And anybody that we want to know, it turns into a story about how they found out. Because now everybody has to rediscover that information.

The Flash

Q: It's an old question, I know, but why did The Flash (Bart Allen) have to die?

That was another thing that was decided before me. I killed him but it wasn't my decision. Basically DC came to me and said look we're killing off Bart Allen, we're going to do it in five issues, do you want to write those five issues? And I said yes and even though I didn't necessarily think that Bart needed to be killed off. I was determined that if I was going to make it the most meaningful death possible.

Q: Was it hard for you to write that, the end to a character?

It was actually a lot of fun. I really, really enjoyed writing those. Those five issues were a really pleasant writing experience. Maybe because I've never really worked with anything quite like that before. Because I knew my character was going to ultimately die, I could do crazy things. Like reveal his secret identity in the second issue, and have him break up with his girlfriend. I could blow up a lot of things knowing I would never have to put them back together. I wouldn't have to put any genies back in the bottle. It was very educational for me to be able to write with abandon like that. I tried to do this a lot in Resurrection. That is, sort of write like each issue is the last issue. So it creates this sense of unpredictability so you never really know what's going to happen. Anyone can live or die. The book can go in any direction and it's going to be a wild ride. And I learned that by doing The Flash.

Nowhere Man

Q: When are we going to be able to see your Virgin Comics series Nowhere Man?

My editor was just asking me that very same question earlier today. I've got to finish the scripts, it will still be a couple of months. I'm not quite far enough to be able to solicit the book yet, but hopefully there will be a release date shortly.

Q: What can you tell us about it?

Basically what is exciting to me about it is that it's science fiction. Like all good science fiction it has a lot to say about out present society. Right now in the post 9/11 world we are asking more than ever, how much privacy are we willing to sacrifice for security. And Nowhere Man is set in a society where they have answered that question in an ultimate way. It's a world where there is very little black and white, there are a lot of shades of grey. Even our protagonist will discover that he might be on the wrong side. So the characters are constantly asking themselves questions, that hopefully people will start asking about our world today.

Resurrection takes place after "The Bugs" have left, but not without forever changing the face of the planet and its inhabitants forever. The attackers may be gone but now the characters have to deal with establishing order, power struggles, left-behind alien technology and decide what to do with alien stragglers and POWs. Finally an alien invasion movie that's going to focus on the people and not the fireworks. Watching downtown NYC get destroyed by monsters and aliens is always a treat but what happens afterwards? Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road (which is also being made into a movie) deals with these questions but it's exciting to see what veteran comic writer Guggenheim comes up with.

• 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.

When he's not writing for such TV shows as CSI: Miami, Law & Order or Brothers & Sisters, Guggenheim dabbles in comic book script-writing. Following runs on Blade, Wolverine and a new regular gig on the thrice-monthly Amazing Spider-Man, he's ditching the world of big-budget superheroes for his own creation, Resurrection, for indie publisher Oni Press. The monthly series - which launched last month - starts with a take on a familiar idea: What happens the day after an alien invasion?

Beginning as humanity discovers that the aliens they've been at war with for years have mysteriously disappeared, the book follows the survivors of a decade-long war as they try to return to something resembling normality while also wondering just what happened to the aliens in the first place. With this kind of high concept - which the writer likens to dearly-departed Y: The Last Man in terms of post-apocalyptic atmosphere - and Guggenheim's TV connections, how long before we see this series on an upcoming network fall schedule?

Judge for yourself whether this could be the next cult thing: the entire first issue is online for free here.

Resurrection [Oni Press.com]

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