Talking to the Scottish Daily Record newspaper, Millar explained that the success of Wanted has taken him one step closer to his dream of reworking the Man of Steel:

Since I was a kid I've always wanted to reinvent Superman for the 21st century. I've been planning this my entire life. I've got my director and producer set up, and it'll be 2011. This is how far ahead you have to think. The Superman brand is toxic after that last movie lost $200million, but in 2011 we're hoping to restart it. Sadly I can't say who the director is, but we may make it official by Christmas. But fingers crossed it could work out, that would be my lifetime's dream.

He elaborated slightly on his messageboard soon after:

In the interests of clarity (because I'm sure this will be picked up somewhere) a very well known American action director heard about my love of Superman, approached my and asked me to team up with he and his producer to make a pitch for this. We've been talking for several weeks now and, if this is going to happen, we'll know by Christmas. He has huge pull at WB so fingers crossed. But this is nothing more than a huge US name pulling me into his fold and making me part of a package.

While some people are getting very excited about this idea, it's worth pointing out that Mark's actually sung this song before. Cut to October 2007:

It's 8.58am right now, my guys at CAA get into the office in about seven hours and my call will be waiting for them to talk about this. I want to revamp Superman like Hillary wants thin ankles. Revamping this franchise is what I as given fingers for and so, invited or not, I'm putting my plan together now. I've been asked to work on half a dozen screenplays lately, but this is the only one I have ever truly wanted.

As most here know, I have literally hundreds of pages of notes and sketches just waiting for this opportunity. This would be my dream gig and, as a fan, I know exactly what this project needs to work. This has to be Superman for the 21st Century, keeping everything we adore, but starting from scratch and making the kids love it as much as the 30-somethings. I would honestly write this thing for free.

He didn't get the gig because, he explained, Warner Bros didn't want to hire a Marvel Comics-contracted writer for a DC Comics project. Which seemed somewhat strange considering Warner then hired fellow Marvel-exclusive writer Marc Guggenheim to write the Green Lantern movie less than a week later, but facts should never get in the way of a good story.

For those who may be interested in what Mark's plans for Superman would be, he's hardly been shy about sharing in the past; in addition to the now-legendary failed pitch from the year 2000 (when Millar, Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer tried and failed to take over the comic franchise), he's also been happy enough to talk about his own plans once or twice. Care to share, Mark?:

I know Superman isn't an orphan in this dreadful period he's been under seige (from 1986 until Hitchy and I fix him again), but the true understanding of the character is, like Bambi, he loses his Mum and Dad again. All the iconic heroes do whether it's Superman, Bambi or Batman... Superman is God, Jor-El is the Holy Spirit and Clark Kent is Jesus. The Kents are Mary and Joseph and Lois is Mary Magdelene.

Yeah, that's the kind of Superman movie that the world is waiting for alright.

So is this latest claim true? Going on past experience (like Mark's Eminem is going to star in Wanted claim or the Jim Caviezel is Superman in Superman Returns bet), I wouldn't bet on it, but stranger things have happened, and that Wanted box office haul has to be pretty persuasive to Hollywood types...

Exclusive: Scots comic writer Mark Millar is toast of Hollywood after Wanted [Daily Record]

Besides the Justice gang, Souders also confirmed the return of Cyborg from the Teen Titans. Will he be a new addition to DC's Super Friends?

Souders also spilled what we've all been been expecting since featured characters have been jumping off the Smallville Titanic one after the other: this season will focus on the relationship between Lois and Clark. Clark gets a job at the Daily Planet (which was hinted at in the season finale). "The camaraderie as they work side-by-side that everyone loves from the DC Comics and all the Superman lore is going to come to fruition this year," Souders told TV Guide. "The two of them are thrown together in some unfortunate situations for Clark. She becomes a little bit of an obstacle to him saving the world, when he's on a deadline."

Sounds like a predictable year. Let's hope they switch things up and let Doomsday murder the doe-eyed Clark Kent and then have his way with feisty Lois.

[TV Guide]

I guess we should start with the only comic featuring the 70-year-old Man of Steel, huh? That would be Superman: Last Son, a hardcover collection of the much-delayed storyline that brought Richard Donner to comics - he co-writes the book alongside Geoff Johns - as well as returned General Zod and the Phantom Zone to current DC continuity. I could tell you more about the story, like the fact that Superman adopts a son, but I know that all you'll really care about is that there's a special 3-D section midway through the book. That Phantom Zone is trippy, man.

Elsewhere in the DC line this week, Superman's oldest rival Captain Marvel gets a new series, with the first issue of kid-targeted Billy Batson And The Magic of Shazam. Less friendly for little tykes, the Dark Knight tie-ins start properly with the first issue of The Joker's Asylum, which makes Heath Ledger's alter-ego into your host as he narrates stories about the other inmates over at Arkham Asylum. Or maybe you want even darker still, with Hellblazer: The Fear Machine collecting some of the earliest stories of magician, former punk and all-round bastard John Constantine from the 1980s, when it was cool to turn yuppies into demons.

More nostalgia comes in the form of the imported Doctor Who: The World Shapers, which brings together the little-seen mid-80s run of Grant Morrison on the British Who comic. On the one hand, yes, it's the Colin Baker Doctor, but on the other, rare Morrison... It's a tough one. Equally tough is Star Trek: Mirror Images, a new mini-series that explores one of the greatest Star Trek concepts ever, the Mirror Universe. IDW's Trek comics have been somewhat hit and miss, so the potential for disappointment here is, sadly, great. But it is the Mirror Universe. I mean, goateed Spock...what could go wrong?

If you're looking for things that will make you much less conflicted, I can heartily recommend the following three books: Boom!'s Station is a murder mystery set on the international space station right as things start to go wrong and it looks like everyone might end up dead. If you liked Greg Rucka's Whiteout, chances are you'll enjoy it. Mike Mignola gets slightly ahead of the movie curve this week with a new Hellboy series, The Crooked Man, illustrated by comics legend Richard Corben. So expect the same great writing and slightly off-putting stumpy figures (I kid because... well, because I can, really. But you'll know what I mean when you pick it up).

Pick of the week, however, is easily Buffy The Vampire Slayer #16, which sees Joss Whedon return as writer, as well as the return of his futuristic slayer, Fray. For everyone who hasn't read the Fray series and wonders why this is a big deal, all I have to say is this: Imagine Faith, but from the far future, and with an even worse attitude. I foresee carnage and futuristic cursing that you can get away with in comics, as well as quite a few battles over that weird scythe that both of them think they own.

As is the case every single week, you can see the complete list of everything hitting comic stores this week here, and find out where your local comic book store is by clicking here. Do it because Clark Kent would want you to.

Superman appears across multiple series in DC's line, from Justice League of America and Trinity to the kid-centric Superfriends and Justice League Unlimited. But each of his three solo series must've done something to commemorate this rather momentous anniversary, right?

Superman: At least it seems as if he's taken the day off in the first issue of new writer James Robinson's run, hanging out in space with Green Lantern, playing super-frisbee with Krypto the Super-Dog before disaster calls. But where's Lois with his birthday present? Are the rest of the Justice League planning a surprise party while all this is going on?

Action Comics: Everything seems to be fairly quiet for ol' Kal-El over here as well; he's spending most of his time as Clark Kent, in fact, getting reintroduced to all of the Daily Planet crew. Still, I don't see any cake...

All-Star Superman: Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's irregular-yet-entirely-awesome tribute to all that's good about Superman didn't actually have an issue in June, but that's probably a good thing considering that their last issue ended with the Man of Tomorrow's death at the long-term hands of Lex Luthor...

Hmm. Okay, so it's almost as if they've forgotten it's Superman's birthday this month, doesn't it? Wait, wait - I've got it. Last week saw the release of the second issue of DC's big series for the year, Final Crisis. Surely there's something for Clark to cheer about in there...

Man. That's just cold. I know it's meant to be a "never-ending battle," but still. It wouldn't have killed you guys to give him a card or something.

How To Celebrate Superman's Birthday on June 30th [eHow.com]

Ed Boon tells Ripten, "All of the MK characters and all of the DC villains will have fatalities. The DC heroes who don't kill that often will have brutalities that will function just like fatalities but don't actually kill the opponent." Boo, that's just awful. Was there any other reason to want to play this game other than to watch Superman rip out his opponent's spine? Sure spine-ripping may not be in Superman's wheelhouse, but what's the point of teaming up with Mortal Kombat if there will be no mortal combat for half of the characters? [World's Collide and Ripten]

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

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

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

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

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

This summer's superheroic vows of chastity:

Okay, now that you've consented to be spoiled, our two abstinent heroes are the Hulk and Hancock. Actually, in the case of Hancock, it's not strictly true that he can't have sex — according to early screening reports, he simply has to be very, very careful where, and how, he ejaculates. In one scene from Hancock (which had the original title of Tonight, He Comes) Hancock has brought a cute young thing back to his trailer, and they're getting busy. But then Hancock gets close to his climax, and warns the woman to back way, way up. Hancock gets off — and we see his semen riddle his ceiling with holes, almost like bullet holes. (Comics afficionados will not be surprised to learn this scene is ripped off from a Garth Ennis comic.)

As for the Hulk, there's a scene in Friday's new movie where Bruce Banner is in a motel room with Betty. They start to do what the young people do in motel rooms, and Bruce's heart-rate monitor gets more and more bleepy. His heart is pounding with the excitement of making out with a vacant-eyed Liv Tyler, it's too much for him, he's losing his shit, he's going to, oh my god, he's going to... he's going to... Bruce pulls away from Betty just in time to keep from becoming the Hulk. Yes, he can't get sexually aroused without Hulking out. (And I am not going to make any jokes about whether you would like him when he's horny. I'm better that that.)

A digression: Can the Hulk really not get laid?

I'll get to the list of other sexually frustrated heroes in a second. Since I've read almost every Hulk comic ever published (except I admit Bruce Jones lost me after a while) I should stick in a little dissertation about the Hulk's sexual history. Can the comics version of the Hulk really never have sex? We know that the Hulk is Incredibly, perhaps Unfeasibly, well-hung, because the Hulk gets naked in Incredible Hulk #400 and his arch-enemy The Leader remarks on how well-endowed he is. But it's strongly implied, during the "gray Hulk" period, that the gray Hulk — who's working as a Las Vegas leg-breaker — is getting laid on a fairly regular basis.

Bruce and Betty have sex at least twice that I can think of. Once when they first get married, after Bruce has been "cured" of being the Hulk (so there's no danger of Bruce Hulking out.) And once when Bruce gets his pathology backwards, so he's either a peaceful Hulk or a savage, rampaging puny human. In his "savage Banner" form, Betty has sex with him and this calms him down.

There's also the famous sequence in Hulk #300, where the Hulk has gone completely berzerk and Bruce's influence is all gone. The Hulk is trashing New York, and Eros, "the creepiest Avenger" tries to subdue the Hulk using his psychic abilities to generate "waves of pleasure." He learns the hard way that you shouldn't try to pleasure the Hulk in the middle of his rampage. Still more evidence, I guess, that the Hulk and sex don't usually mix. Unless he's gray.

(Update: Commenters have pointed out that the Hulk hooked up with Caiera The Oldstrong in Planet Hulk, the greatest Hulk storyline ever. But she's an alien who's almost impervious to most harm, so it's slightly different.)

I can't have sex, or I'll steal your powers/life/money:

Poor Rogue from the X-men. She's got the cool Susan Sontag hair, and the leather jumpsuit, and the hot boyfriend... but she can never touch anyone. Whenever she does touch another person, she absorbs their memories, strength and physical abilities. She also steals people's superpowers with her touch. She's tragically untouchable. The sexual frustration is so horrendous, it drives her to get rid of her powers in X-Men 3.

I can't have sex because I'm a robot, with non-functioning sex parts:

Beautie is one of the members of the Honor Guard, one of the main superhero teams in Astro City, Kurt Busiek's fictional superhero town. She's always looked like a Barbie doll, but we've never known much about the robot girl — until Busiek published the Astro City Character Special: Beautie last February. There, we see some "pick-up artists" try to hit on Beautie, only to be told that she has no genitalia. None whatsoever.

Other robot or cyborg superheroes who can't have sex include Robotman from the Doom Patrol and Vic Stone aka Cyborg from the Teen Titans. But this isn't true for all robo-heroes, as Star Trek's Data would tell us. The hordes of comic book sex-perverts are pretty certain that the Vision, the android member of the Avengers, did in fact get it on with the Scarlet Witch when the two of them were married.

I can't have sex because my super-strength will end you:

Hancock sort of belongs in this category, since his sperm are deadly to human females. So, too, does Superman, according to Larry Niven, who famously thought way too much about the implications of Krypto-sperm. Besides the speeding-bullet properties of the sperm themselves, there's the fact that Superman might cause an injury if he got too excited during intercourse — and according to the movie Mallrats, the sperm would probably tear Lois Lane's fallopian tubes apart as well. Some self-proclaimed experts also believe Wonder Woman is incapable of having sex with a normal human, for similar reasons.

Spider-Man, meanwhile, has a slightly different problem: He can have sex. But prolonged exposure to his ummm... radioactive bodily fluids eventually kills his wife Mary Jane in a future dystopian story, Spider-Man: Reign by Kaare Andrews.

No sex, please, I'm dead.

There are a surprising number of superheroes who are dead, either undead or ghosts... and most of them never get laid. I'm thinking of Deadman, who's insubstantial except for when he takes control over a living body. (And his ethics might prevent him from using someone else's body as a vehicle for sex, I'm guessing.) And the Spectre, who's basically the spirit of vengeance — he can become tangible, but I'm highly doubtful he ever gets any. (Although the Ostrander run on The Spectre did get a bit saucy at times.)

Basic incompatibilities:

And then finally there are a number of superheroes whose bodies are just not compatible with anybody else, for various reasons. Like Mogo, who's an entire planet and a member of the Green Lantern Corps. Who can Mogo have sex with? Element Lad from the Legion of Superheroes was celibate for a long time because he was the last of his kind, but did finally find love with a member of the Science Police who took a sex-change drug. There's Negative Man from the Doom Patrol, who's basically a radioactive mummy who has to wear protective bandages at all times, and (I think) can never touch anybody without the bandages in the way.

Update: I totally forgot I was going to write a whole thing about Ben Grimm from the Fantastic Four in here, because it's hinted at various times that he has nothing but more rocks under his little shorts. His girlfriend, Alicia, dumps him and starts dating Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. She makes it pretty clear that this is the first time in ages that she's gotten any action — meaning she wasn't getting any when she was with Ben. Poor Ben.

Thanks to Douglas Wolk for research help!

One of the most feared and revered characters in the Superman universe is Brainiac. So when you bring him back, it's got to be in a big way. And from the sounds of the first issue, it could be an epic starter filled with flashback scenes. John's revealed that we'll learn more about the history of Krypton and Brainiac's involvement with its destruction. The first issue even deals with a flashback where you see General Zod defending Krypton from Brainiac.

John's also explained what Brainiac is going to be like after being gone for a while:

We wanted him to be very unsettling, very alien and feel different then the other adversaries that Superman has. The idea is to make Brainiac one of the villains that Superman dreads when he has to face him, rather than just another slot in a long line of villains. I think our first issue has a real creepy vibe to it and Gary did a really great design on him.

[Comic Mix]

Specifically, Oregon's Dark Horse Comics — publisher of Star Wars, Serenity and Buffy comics, alongside non-media tie-ins like The Umbrella Academy — are planning on a couple of fixes for your Jones jones. In addition to the first issue of their adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you can also pick up the collected, complete, edition... before the other issues have been published. Curious scheduling decision, or way to blow your mind? Find out on Wednesday.

(While you're at it, you may also want to pick up Dark Horse's Hellboy Companion, a 200-page "definitive guide to the Hellboy Universe", ahead of what's sure to be the sleeper of the season. Am I the only person who thinks that this may be the best summer for comic movies?)

If you'd rather read about other comics-turned-celluloid, then there's always Batman Vs. Two-Face, a collection of stories designed to prime you for the Christian Bale/Aaron Eckhart face-off in The Dark Knight. Or Marvel's hefty $100 Incredible Hulk Omnibus hardcover, reminding you that the first forty-nine issues of the Jade Giant's existence were actually pretty crappy (There's also Hulk Visionaries: John Byrne Volume One, which is a somewhat unusual choice for a movie tie-in considering its... uh... interesting quality).

You can also revisit former celluloid greats with DC's Superman: Escape From Bizarro World, which sees Geoff Johns and Superman: The Movie's Richard Donner co-write the return of Superman's mentally disabled clone brother.

Maybe you're wanting to read something new, though. In that case, Casey Blue: Beyond Tomorrow could be your bag. Casey may have a name like a pornstar, but really she's just your average teenager. There are boy troubles, school troubles and being the only person who can stop an alien invasion troubles. That's right, it's Buffy The Alien Slayer, but admit it - That kind of sounds just a little bit fun, right?

More kick-ass female leads can be found in Tank Girl: Visions of Booga, Alan Martin's second series reviving his 90s-zeitgeist-shagging Australian heavy-artillery fetishist. Meanwhile, Image Comics puts out Invincible Universe Primer, collecting the first three issues of Robert Kirkman's superhero series Invincible, Brit and The Astounding Wolf-Man for the low low price of $5.99, and giving you a jumping-on point for one of the more quietly successful superhero lines of recent years...

Just like every single week of the year, you can find out what's hitting the stores in its entirety by looking at the weekly shipping list, and then go and find out the ending of the new Indy movie two days early by finding your local store and picking up the collected adaptation, just to ruin it for all your friends. You're such a schmuck sometimes.

The alien visitor from a doomed world:

The most famous refugee in science fiction is probably Superman, who gets sent to safety when his home planet Krypton is destroyed. It's no coincidence that Superman is also the posterboy for assimilation — his "real" family is the Kents of Kansas, and he thinks of himself as an American. He gets to live the refugee's dream, being totally accepted into a prosperous new world — plus he's physically and mentally superior to everyone else around him, which is a plus. He's the embodiment of the melting pot, even as he has the power to melt you. (And of course, his creators Siegel & Schuster were the sons of poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, mainly Lithuania and Ukraine.)

Doctor Who, meanwhile, has the same alien-world story as Superman, but without the assimilation. The Doctor, in the early episodes from 1963, drops hints about being on the run and in hiding, but doesn't explain further. The show's creators had a vague sense, originally, that he was fleeing a space war. But by the time it's explained in 1969, the explanation is much more benign: the Doctor's species are dicks. (No, not Terrance Dicks. Just dicks.) It's not until the show's 42nd birthday that we get back to the idea that he's fleeing a space war (upgraded to a time war.) And his planet has been destroyed, just like Superman's. But like I mentioned, he doesn't assimilate with Earth/British culture — even though he constantly takes on weird British affectations like jelly babies or cricket, they only make him seem like more of an outsider. He's like those Indian immigrants in the TV show Goodness Gracious Me, who anglicize their names and try to be more British than everyone else, only to look more out of place than ever. In many ways, the Doctor is the anti-Superman.

The protagonist who's fleeing war or genocide:

There are also tons of characters who flee a doomed or destroyed Earth, including Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series. And John Varley's novels frequently take place in a universe where humans have been forced to flee an Earth invaded by aliens, and have colonized the rest of the solar system as a result.

And then there's Hope Hubris, the hero of Piers Anthony's Bio Of A Space Tyrant series. As the first book's title, Refugee, suggests, Hubris starts out as a humble refugee from the moon Callisto, fleeing to Jupiter, where his family gets killed horribly. This starts him on his path towards becoming the "Tyrant of Jupiter."

The rag-tag fleet of humans:

And then there are plenty of stories in which a straggling mob of people flees from a disaster or massacre in space. Maybe the most critically acclaimed SF show right now — if not the most popular — is Battlestar Galactica, where the Cylons drive the humans out of their homeworld not once, but twice: on Caprica, and then on New Caprica. At the end of season three, Lee Adama makes a huge speech in which he says this has changed humanity from a civilization to a "gang," on the run and doing whatever it takes to survive.

Less organized rabbles also turn up, fleeing wars or political unrest, in books like C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station, where swarms of refugees pack into Pell Station in the wake of conflict between the Earth Company and outer stations. And a mob of refugees from a disaster that befalls the H9 colony swarms aboard a cruise ship, only to be exploited by the media, in Eric Idle's The Road To Mars. The TV show Babylon 5 is also full of refugee crises, like the people fleeing the Vorlon attack on Ventari III in "Falling Towards Apotheosis." (We also see a ship full of refugees under attack in the first regular episode, "Midnght On The Firing Line.")

Eco-refugees or disaster survivors on Earth:

Every eco-disaster narrative or post-apocalyptic story includes some kind of refugee motif, with people fleeing the destroyed cities or trying to find a safe haven. Like The Day After Tomorrow, The Postman, Waterworld, or Mad Max. Or Steven Gould's novel Blind Waves. The Martian attacks in War Of The Worlds spawn a huge fleet of refugee ships running away from the carnage. Islanders flee rising sea levels, only to drown or wind up in horrible refugee boat camps, in the 2002 young adult novel Exodus. And of course, there are tons of refugees from the collapsing nations of the world, seeking sanctuary in the U.K., in Children Of Men. Not to mention the Raft of refugees organized by telecommunications magnate L. Bob Rife in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

One of the most arresting moments in the TV show Jericho is when our heroes find the remains of a refugee train a mile wide, made by people fleeing the frozen north. The refugees have left their icy dead where they lay. (Not to mention the whole gaggle of refugees who settle in Jericho, only to face expulsion again.)

Survivalists:

And the survivalist narrative is a huge part of science fiction. Robert Heinlein not only wrote the novel Farnham's Freehold, about people surviving a nuclear war, but according to the source of all lies, he also wrote "How To Be A Survivor" and other essays on surviving nuclear war. Frederik Pohl deals with similar themes in his story "Fermi And Frost." Also, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle write about a group of survivors barricading themselves into a mountain retreat after a deadly comet strike, in Lucifer's Hammer. Plus there's The Survivors, the TV show Terry Nation made between his work on Doctor Who and Blake's 7 (which is also a refugee show, sort of.)

And then there are the narratives about people going on the run from repressive regimes. Like Logan's Run, where Logan flees the non-stop beautiful-people orgy where they kill you when you reach 30, in search of the mythical Sanctuary. (And in the Logan's Run TV series, he's just on the run, every week, with a rogue android. In Roger McBride Allen's The Ring Of Charon, Marcia MacDougal can only escape from the repressive Naked Purple movement, which has taken over a lunar penal colony, by being declared a refugee when her house burns down.

Fleeing from the future:

And finally there are refugees in time — sort of like the Doctor, except they're fleeing a particular oppressive future through time travel. Just type "refugee from the future" into Google (with the quotation marks) and you get a bunch of weird stories — including various X-Men who have journeyed back to our time to escape one of those Mutants-in-concentration-camps dystopian futures.

I feel as though I've just scratched the surface of science fiction's nearly endless store of refugees here — this post could be twice as long. But these seem to be the main types of refugees in science fiction, and I was somewhat surprised by how many of them I turned up when I started looking.

History is full of mass evacuations and displacements, and we've gotten pretty used to the sight of streams of humans struggling across an unforgiving landscape with whatever they can carry, trying to escape from something or other. But it seems pretty likely the 21st century will see more refugee crises than ever before, as the number of humans on the planet continues to skyrocket and there are more ecological disasters and wars over scarce resources. There will be more and more refugees — possibly including you.

And science fiction is uniquely suited to tell the stories of these fleeing people, because the stark reality of the refugee condition is so awful, we need metaphors to cover it. It's easier to think about people running away from an exploding planet than it is to think about grabbing what you can and running from your home before you get ethnically cleansed. A dollop of escapism — or, in the case of Superman, a truckload — helps us swallow the unthinkable.

Note: The illustration up top comes from Wagner James Au's New World Notes blog, from a report about a virtual "Camp Darfur" in Second Life, which was being vandalized by asswipes spouting racist slogans. So a team of Green Lanterns, most of them extraterrestrial, took it upon themselves to guard the site.

Superman.
He's the last survivor (or one of the half-dozen last survivors) of the exploding planet Krypton. And he's invulnerable to just about everything in the universe, including nuclear bombs and the vacuum of interstellar space — but he can't come anywhere near a radioactive fragment of his own planet without dying. Or, if it's a red fragment, it'll turn him into a dwarf or a dragon. Of course. Also, Superman's pal, the Martian Manhunter, has a terrible vulnerability to fire — but it turns out to be mostly psychological.
Why it's poetic: Come on, he's lost his home planet... and now whenever he encounters part of it, it nearly kills him. The loneliness, the desolation.

Sontarans.
On Doctor Who, the Sontarans are cloned super-soldiers from the distant planet Sontar. They're almost unstoppable (although in their latest appearance they turned out to be pretty darn stoppable once you used non-copper bullets.) And their only weak spot is a small vent in the backs of their necks, which they use to recharge.
Why it's poetic: They're super-warriors, so they must always face their enemies. I mean, they could put a cap or a shield onto their neck-holes, but they choose not to. Because they need their fatal flaw to remind them who they are.

The Klowns.
In Killer Klowns From Outer Space. It turns out you can kill a killer klown by popping their red nose — it makes perfect sense!
Why it's poetic: They wear their most vulnerable part right in front of them, so they can see any attacks coming. Plus, it's like slapstick and murder rolled into one. Dude!

The Martians.
In War Of The Worlds, the invaders can clobber everything that humans can throw at them, and they scoff at our huge weapons systems. But then they're felled by the smallest enemy of all, the common cold.
Why it's poetic: Mostly because H.G. Wells gets so fancy and flowery talking about the "smallest and humblest of all God's creatures" and how it stomped the monsters' asses. (How does he know germs are humble?)

The Fithp
The Fithp are sort of weird super-intelligent elephants who use superior, if borrowed, technology to invade Earth in the 1986 novel Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The humans are hopelessly outclassed, but they have one advantage. In the Fithp culture, when two herds fight, one eventually surrenders and gets absorbed into the other herd — so they're not prepared for humans to surrender and then mount a resistance or plan sabotage.
Why it's poetic: Because these super-elephant guys fail to understand the most human of behaviors... sneakiness.

The Colonists
In The X-Files, the aliens seeking to invade the Earth create super-soldiers who have only one weakness: their bodies are torn apart by the magnetic fields of large deposites of magnetite.
Why it's poetic: The alien soldiers are super-human because of their metallic bodies — but those same bodies make them vulnerable to magnetite. Woah.

The Crawling Eye.
Aliens who are basically just huge eyeballs with tentacles invade the Earth and nothing can stop them — until one human figures out the aliens have no defense against the awesome power of fire!
Why it's poetic: Because the eyes are burning! It's a tremendous metaphor for the blindness of power. Or maybe it's just a metaphor for how much you'll be rubbing your eyes with sleepiness as you try to pay attention to this movie.

The Signs invaders.
We've already talked about this a fair bit, but the aliens who decide to attack/invade/kidnap kids in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs have a terrible vulnerability to plain old water.
Why it's poetic: The humblest of beverages! Or maybe, the fact that the aliens can't protect themselves against water without giving up their shape-shifting abilities. So they rely on the chameleon thing, to the exclusion of protecting themselves.

The Alien Teachers
Aliens replace the teachers at Henderson High School in Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty. And it turns out the aliens' only weakness is Zeke the drug dealer's "homebake."
Why it's poetic: It's the humblest of drugs! Oh, wait. I mean, come on. They're impersonating teachers, and they're vulnerable to the students' drugs. That's awesome. Plus, it's proof that drugs really are good for you. And the school drug dealer is your friend. Etc.

Leto Atreides II
In Frank Herbert's God Emperor Of Dune, Leto lives for 3,000 years and becomes nearly unkillable because he's part sandworm. But then it turns out that he's gained the sandworms' vulnerability to water.
Why it's poetic: He inherits the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the worms. Dude, come on!

Stitch:
Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, is a super-awesome alien koala creature. Except that he can't swim.
Why it's poetic: Stitch's super-dense body makes him indestructible, but also means he sinks like a rock. Oh noes!

The Tenctonese.
The aliens from Alien Nation could be burned, and even killed, if they came into contact with salt water. What is it with aliens and water of various types? (Thanks Roraz!) Science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer has an incredibly complicated explanation of how the Tenctonese's weakness actually makes sense.
Why it's poetic: You can't cry on their shoulders... or if you do, they'll definitely feel your pain.
Note: In the course of putting this blog post together, I found this post at Everything2, which was pretty helpful in coming up with some examples.

TV Guide reports that Mack still hasn't signed on for season eight. She was using Rosenbaum's departure as leverage, because the studio knows if they lose her, there aren't very many characters left. Michael Ausiello quotes one insider:

If Allison leaves, they've essentially got Lois and Clark left... And that show's been done before.

In fact, the writers will be really screwed if Chloe leaves the show. Who's going to further the plot with her witty reporting and computer hackery? Who will Clark save every now and again when they introduce a pointless, one-episode villain? But most important, who's going to give Jimmy Olsen some lovin'? Sorry it doesn't matter how many Doomsdays you bring in, if Chloe leaves it's only a matter of time before the real money makers walk out the door... oh wait, he already did. [TV Guide]

Don't get us wrong: EW's Final Crisis preview was apocalyptic enough to get us excited to see what's going to happen to Superman and friends when evil takes over the world at the end of the month - especially with gods dying in dumpsters and lines like "Let the space cops handle the fallout" - but it's almost more exciting to see Wizard Magazine's four page preview from Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, showing us another twisted version of Clark Kent's arrival on Earth... Except that, this time, Clark is the insane fanboy-made-bad "Superman Prime," and the people who discover him in a Kansas field 31st-Century bigots who try to kill him. Obviously, that isn't going to end well.

Hitting several comics fanboy G-spots at once in this preview alone, the series is intended to, in the words of writer Geoff Johns, "show fans and readers how awesome the Legion [of Super-Heroes] can be."

The series launches in August.

DC's 'Final Crisis' [EW.com]
Legion of Three Worlds #1, Exclusive Sneak Peek [Wizard Universe]

The board - a callback to a subplot from DC's successful 52 series - is made up of multiple phrases or, weirdly enough, math problems that tie into already-announced, rumored or completely unknown stories for Superman, Batman and their (super) friends. Some of them are obvious:

Submit and Resist are both titles tied in with the upcoming Final Crisis storyline, as already announced by DC. Same with Evil Won (Final Crisis taking place after evil has apparently beaten good in that traditional never-ending battle), First Boy/Last Boy (Crisis will, according to writer Grant Morrison, start with Anthro, the first boy on Earth, and end with Kamandi, the last boy on Earth), Girlfight (Morrison has promised a fight between Supergirl, the teen girl personification of all things good, and Mary Marvel, newly-appointed pin-up girl for evil) and Loneliness + Alienation + Fear + Despair + Self Worth (etc.), which is one possible version of "the Anti-Life Equation," DC's mythical way to remove free will in people (This version appeared in Morrison's 2006 Mister Miracle series, which has been named multiple times as the key book to read before Final Crisis).

Equally clear are Best Woman For Job - A Man, which ties into this summer's Wonder Woman storyline where it's decided that Wonder Woman has failed in her mission to bring peace to the world and needs to be replaced with a man called The Olympian; 1,000/3 = 1, a reference to Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, which brings three different worlds of 1000 years in the future together; You Can Go Home Again, tying into this summer's Justice Society of America Annual, which takes Power Girl back to a version of her home planet, Earth 2; I Am Batman?/I Am Bruce Wayne?, about Wayne's identity crisis in Batman: R.I.P.; The Dead Shall Rise, the already-announced tagline of next year's The Blackest Night storyline; and Sightings All Around Us, which is a shout-out to DC's new "Sightings" branding for declared-important comics.

Everything else, though, is a little more shaky - 52 - 1 = 0 could be about DC's 52 alternate Earths, or simply pointing to last week's DC Universe Zero. Kings Reborn may be a reference to the potential return of the original Aquaman, who was, after all, King of Atlantis, and Rockin' Robins just might be about which Robin gets to become the new Batman. But the other ones...? Here are our entirely baseless guesses:

100% Alien - Something to do with the rumored death of 1950s alien-amongst-us, the Martian Manhunter.
Who is Wonder Dog? - Well, it used to be Rex, Nazi-fightin' pup, but for some reason, I'm seeing a Wonder Woman tie-in here...
There is No-One... Yet - Probably a Final Crisis mention of some sort, as is He Is The Force (The "astro-force" being a Jack Kirby invention as is Crisis badguy Darkseid) and He Wakes The World Ends.
The Son Rises - I'll be very surprised if this isn't a reference to Damien, Batman's bastard son, in the wake of Batman R.I.P.. Same with Murder/Suicide, Father/Son, although that one could also apply to Final Crisis villain Darkseid and his good guy son Orion.
The Traitor Among Us - Who better to have traitors (and, for that matter, an "us") than a gang of villains? It's either something to do with Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge or Gail Simone's new Secret Six series.
No 2 For You is more than likely another Power Girl/Earth-2/Justice Society of America Annual reference, as PG has to end up back on regular Earth in time to launch her own series this summer, but 1 (JSA) 2 probably has more to do with the team's rumored break-up this summer.
Mercy Ruling and Who Questions the Question are both very likely to have something to do with Greg Rucka's Final Crisis: Revelations series, where God's spirit of retribution, the Spectre, meets lesbian private eye the Question.
TT Have No Reception reminds us all that there isn't a Teen Titans cartoon any more. Or, perhaps, that the Titans comic will be spinning off something called Terror Titans this Summer, about some unpopular teenage badguys... whereas Titans, the other TT-spinoff book is dealing with the eeeevil reborn Trigon, who just may be 4 Times As Red in his new incarnation.
No Glory No Gold seems to be a shout-out to the Booster Gold series in some way, while Paper Not Plastic feels suspiciously like a reference to a revived Plastic Man for some reason... Better than Rocket Vs. Satellite, which suggests that the JLA's spacebound headquarters is soon not going to be alone up there.

The last two, however, are just weird: Superman: Red or Blue? is, I hope, hints that we'll finally investigate Superman's political preference (Let's face it; he's an Obama man. You know it, I know it, it's pretty obvious) instead of rehash the old Superman-gets-split-in-two storyline we've seen at least twice before, and I am convinced that Post No Bills is there purely to fuck with us.

But now that we've put ourselves out there, why don't you tell us what you think the board is all about? We shouldn't be the only ones embarrassed about how off-base our suggestions are this time next year, after all.

Dan DiDio on DC Universe #0 [Newsarama]

This year's FCBD - set, as usual, the day after the summer's big comic-related movie opens - has 41 different freebies for you to read, as well as two additional miniature figures to collect (If you really, really want that Iron Man Heroclix figure, get yourself to your local comic store early Saturday morning, people) and all manner of creator signings galore (Go here for a complete list of who is signing where). If nothing else, it's a good chance to pick and choose some new things to read and get hooked on; here's our pick of what you should be spending your free time and nothing else on.

While DC Comics and Marvel Comics are both putting two books out each for the event, Marvel distinguishes themselves by both of their books being brand new material: X-Men: FCBD 2008 Edition offers Mike Carey and Greg Land giving you the start of "the future of mutantkind", while the more kid-friendly Marvel Adventures features movie franchises Spider-Man, the Hulk and Iron Man teaming up to fight crime and reduced box office potential. DC's also splitting their books between "regular" and kid books, offering reprints of the very, very good first issue of All-Star Superman and the not-as-good-but-still-worthwhile kid book Tiny Titans, which sees Puffy Ami-Yumi's favorite underage superteam as even younger kids in school. Don't ask, just pick it up.

Other all-new material includes Dark Horse's Hellboy/BPRD issue, with new stories by creator Mike Mignola and friends, Project Superpowers resurrecting public domain superheroes courtesy of Kingdom Come's Alex Ross, Del Rey's Dabel Bros preview book of novel adaptations (including previews of work by Dean Koontz, Jim Butcher and George RR Martin's Wild Cards series) and Red5 Comics' fun retro throwback SF series Atomic Robo.

Most worthy of the reprinted material are the EC Comics Sampler - reprinting several stories from the publisher that made Frederic Wertham go apeshit and bring congressional hearings into the comic book industry in the 50s - and Oni Press' Maintenance #1, which follows the unlucky janitorial crew of an evil scientist think tank. There's also classic Disney duck action in Gyro Gearloose and a couple of international anthologies worth looking into with Drawn and Quarterly's Gegika: A Drawn+Quarterly Manga Sampler and Fantagraphics' IGNATZ: International Graphic Novels At Their Zenith.

There are many more books available tomorrow - go here for a full list, including some previews - but why not just find the store closest to you and pick up whatever looks most interesting to you, even if it is Sci-Fi/Virgin's The Stranded? It's not like it's going to cost you anything, after all...

The Super Sons series, which ran on-and-off in the pages of Superman/Batman team-up title World's Finest from 1973 through 1976, was yet another creation of Bob Haney, the man who also gave the world Teen Titans and the Doom Patrol. Apparently feeling as if Superman and Batman themselves weren't hip enough for the kids of the '70s, Haney randomly created a series of stories that saw both heroes married to women whose faces were never seen, and both of them with nearly identical children - you could only tell them apart from their fathers by the size of their sideburns - called Clark Kent Jr. and Bruce Wayne Jr. Two kids with parental issues the size of Canada, and a desire to show the world how "hip" to modern "jive" they could be.

The stories themselves are dated masterpieces of failed relevance - The two teen heroes have a tendency to try to find themselves and/or 1970s "America," only to fuck up and have to be saved by their dads on a regular basis - and apparently hated even by others working at DC Comics at the time; three years after their creation, writer Denny O'Neil wrote a story that explained that all of the stories were the product of some malfunctioning computer simulation that the "real" Superman and Batman liked to run, after being given the job by his editor of coming up with some way of killing the characters off once and for all. Not that it did that job - in 1999, Haney revived the Sons for one last story, and a collection of the entire run was published last year as Saga of The Super Sons, giving everyone the chance to relive the adventures of two boys on two motorbikes trying to escape the shadows of their more famous fathers... by dressing and acting exactly like them.

Crazy in Love: The Saga of the Super-Sons [Living Between Wednesdays]

Superman

One of the producers of the Batman and Superman movies told some students that he hopes the sequel to Superman Returns will portray Superman more as an "angry god." [Comics2Film]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Sarah Connor Chronicles producer Josh Friedman talked to reporters for a conference call, and was customarily tight-lipped. He did say season two would be "more action-packed," and we won't be seeing any more of that mystery about the high-school prankster and the girl who committed suicide at John Connor's school. (Which is too bad, because that was my favorite part.)

Summer Glau will be back "full force" in spite of that car bomb in the season finale. And Brian Austin Green will be a series regular.

This will be John Connor's "growing up year," and he'll need his mother less than before. Sarah Connor's ex-boyfriend wlll be back, and so will Agent Ellison, who is starting to be less of a "doubting Thomas" when it comes to Terminators. We will not see Michael Biehn (who played Kyle Reese in the original Terminator movie.) And Friedman is hoping to show more of the "future war" at some point, but those episodes are expensive to make because of the large amount of CGI. You can read a complete transcript here: [The TV Addict]

Lost:

As we already heard, Lost recently shot a funeral scene involving all of the Oceanic Six. And the two-hour season finale, besides featuring Greg Grunberg as the pilot of the crashed Oceanic 815, also introduces a new character, a "Top Gun"-esque hotshot pilot who doesn't like it when his copilot brings a lucky charm aboard. [Ask Ausiello]

Oh, and the kid who played Dan Vasser's son on Journeyman will also play the young Locke in his upcoming flashback episode. Also playing a teen Locke is Caleb Steinmeyer, who was on Veronica Mars. That's the episode where Nestor Carbonell turns up, and is supposedly present at Locke's birth. [Doc Arzt]

Doctor Who:

Digital Spy is doing that annoying thing once again, where they list real spoilers for Saturday's Doctor Who episode, along with a couple of fake spoilers thrown in. It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to link to it. Plus, all of the spoilers for this Saturday's Sontaran episode, whether real or fake, make the episode sound a bit pants. Here they are anyway. [TARDIS Newsroom]

Meanwhile, Rose's die-hard fans are freaking out that Rose appears not to be in the Christmas special. They're coming up with all sorts of wild theories to explain her absence, such as that she's temporarily off in her alternate universe but will be back real soon. Or she and the Doctor are about to get married, but he's taking one last trip without her. Or she's in the episode, but isn't on set right now, so they're using a "hand double" for her. Feel free to come up with your own ideas. [Sunny Tyler 001]

Battlestar Galactica:

In the Battlestar Galactica prequel TV movie/possible series Caprica, we learn that the Caprican mafia funded the education of Joseph Adama (Admiral Adama's dad) and they expect a little something in return occasionally. [Ask Ausiello again]

Somebody posted a scene from episode 18 of Battlestar Galactica's final season on a closed Livejournal community, and somebody else was kind enough to email it to me. I'm not sure if this is an actual scene from the episode, or a "casting side," written for auditions. (It is of course possible it's just a fake.) But anyway, it answers our questions about the piano-playing devil that Starbuck finds herself opening up to... and thank the gods it's not Leoben. Instead, it's a new character named "Slick," who plays the piano in Joe's Bar and philosophizes about the meaning of music and destiny and stuff. He's surprised by how much Starbuck knows about music, thanks to her musician dad. [Livejournal, via the Booted Lady]

"Give me some sugar, I am your neighbor!" Morrison growled as we started. He jumped right in, happily answering even the most controversial questions from the audience; we've got a recap below.

To what extent do drugs play a role in your creative process?
They were very big in The Invisibles. I was a very straightedge kid until I was 30 years old — I didn't touch anything, and I was anti-drinking, anti-drugs, everything. But I got to 30 and I kind of decided to treat myself as a laboratory and become something else — I wondered how much you could mess with your own personality. I became a tranny for awhile; I used to dress up as a girl, and I was beautiful! I just started to take tons of psychadelic drugs, though I was never into amphetamines or anything. But I'm getting old now, so I don't do so much of that.

Did that also have a role in your experience in Kathmandu?
The Kathmandu thing was really weird. I had taken a little bit of hash — but just a very little bit. That experience was so profound — nothing like that has ever happened to me again. Part of taking so many drugs in the 90s was trying to recreate the experience: the clarity of everything was so much more real, the way things are made ... all this is just cheap dream compared to the place I was. I've taken DMT, high doses of mushrooms, high doses of acid — nothing took me back. I've never been able to go there again.

In the script for Arkham Asylum there's a joke about two nuns and a donkey. Is that a real joke?
That is a joke. Two nuns find this gigantic penis, and they're working away, and the Mother Superior says "Oh my God! Look what's happened to Flannen McCafferty!" The idea is that some old guy's donkey dies and the donkey's got the biggest dick in the wall, so he cuts it off and throws it over the nunnery wall, which takes me back to the punchline, and ... I can't tell jokes. That's the only joke I know and I still can't tell it.

What writers have inspired and influenced you?
There's a ton of 'em. A lot of playwrights: Peter Shaffer, David Sherwin, Alan Gamma, Timothy Leary, Tolkein, the Beatles, the Buzzcocks, the Sex Pistols ....

What's going on with the film for We3?
The film's script's actually better than the comics script. There's a lot of stuff happening at New Line right now, though. We've been through like 16 different directors, because none of them just really got the movie for me, but they've been really good about it. They really want to create the book. The animals will be CGI, but everything else will be real.

What kind of music do you listen to?
I started out as a punk, I used to play in bands. I was a weird punk, a psychedelic punk. My three favorite bands are the Beatles, the Buzzcocks, and the Sex Pistols. We used to play psychedelic music and speed it up really hard. Just psychedelic pop is my favorite music — stuff that lasts three minutes but transports my head.

Where will you be taking Batman?
To the grave. [laughs] There's a new Batmobile, and it's one of the greatest drawings ever — Daniel really surpassed himself on this. I kinda wanted to humanize the guy, 'cause he's been such a dick for awhile. But if you were Batman, you would be a dick, so that's fine. But underneath it all there's Bruce Wayne, this aristocratic kid who was just growing up and probably going to be a doctor, and then suddenly BANG BANG — so there are psychological weaknesses underneath that superman. It's a total deconstruction of Batman. I've just written the second part, where the bad guys actually take him down, and I'm thinking, "how's he going to get back from this?!" The way I'm doing this is possibly the most shocking Batman revelation in 70 years.

You mentioned putting a lot of autobiographical stuff in your comics. Have you ever considered doing a real autobiography?
Nah, you wouldn't believe it. It makes more sense in comics. They were always more like real life to me. David Lynch is more real life to me than any soap opera. All of our lives have weird shit. British kitchen sink cinema in the '60s was like that, about people having abortions and everything, but what they missed was the weird stuff — everyone has dreams and fantasies, everybody's mother's seen a ghost, everybody's got a weird witchy relative. Like — have you seen the South American dwarf on the internet? Have you guys seen that thing? That's the world we live in — filled with gaps and weirdness and strangeness. I'm just trying to be realistic. This is realism to me.

How did you get into comics?
I took some pages that I'd drawn to a convention in Glasgow — a convention just like this one — and I showed it to a bunch of guys doing a magazine called Near Myths, and they paid me for it! They paid me like 10 pounds a page. I was a poor kid, so to me that was like I was a millionaire. "Hey, I can do this, I can make money!" I thought, and then, twenty years later ... [laughs]

What do you think about the fact that you're a character in the DC Universe?
I think it's pretty cool. And they tried to kill me, but I just keep coming back!

When you were young, who did you want to be?
The Flash — he was the coolest. He was always getting turned into puppets and paving stones and stuff. It was like he was constantly tripping. Also, he's got the greatest suit — the way Carmine Infantino would draw his ass in the books! And the boots, those inch-thick treads. I still want those boots. If anyone here can make boots like that, please.

What do you find most enjoyable about your work? What are you reading right now?
The Filth is my favorite all-time thing I've written. It's the most consistent. It's really wrapped 'round its themes quite well. What am I reading — just superhero comics. I'm a boring guy. Geoff Johns' Green Lantern, Davis' Avengers. Just basic stuff. I'm just like everybody else — I like what's cool and popular.

What do you think of the different Batman movie versions?
Something like Batman can be interpreted so many ways — I love the Adam West Batman, and I love the Christian Bale Batman more than ever. That guy is good — I think that's the best Batman ever. Batman's so adaptable, you can do almost anything with it and it still works. I don't like every version. There are a lot of really good superhero movies, and a lot of really bad ones. [someone yells "Batman and Robin!"] Batman and Robin — Yeah, but the colors are brilliant! Just switch off your brain and think, "okay, I'm watching the gay Batman"!

I heard that Final Crisis begins with the funeral of Captain Marvel ...
Yeah, that's true. It was originally in a thing called "Hyper-Crisis" which I pitched years ago, at the time when I was leaving X-Men — not to say Marvel is dead, 'cause it's a colossal industry, but for me it was kind of over, so I wanted to do this thing where everyone was standing at Captain Marvel's grave. I wanted to do this thing with the Chronovore, where he had eaten the first years of the 21st century, so there was no 21st century, and Superman and his allies had to build a bridge of events across this abyss. It means you have to go tell Batman, "if you don't do this, we're all gonna die, 'cause we need this event to be rivet 205." It was kind of interesting, but I'm glad they went with Identity Crisis instead.

What are you doing next?
Next year I'm doing this thing called War-Cop, this other atomic bomb thing which is kind of psychadelic — back to being me again, a little bit.

Can this really be THE final crisis?
It's definitely the final crisis for me. But who knows? You cannot predict what these people will do in the future. If Final Crisis sells, then there will be more crises — there's no stopping it.

Your characters tend to escape the comic book and go into the real world. Does that happen in Final Crisis?
I was always fascinated with dimensions as a kid. I was five years old, trying to draw the fourth dimension: "I know I can draw a point, a line, a square, a cube ... arrgh!" There won't be any of that in Final Crisis, no. But the idea was: Superman, Batman, they're much more real than we are — created long before any of us were alive. Superman is still vital and young and communicating to people. When we're dead and gone and dust, there will probably still be a Superman. And the world that they inhabit is a two-dimensional world. You can pick up different comics from his whole span of existence, but it's all still there. I began to imagine: what if there were things above us, on a hyper-cube level, if there were people who could look down on us like we look down on Superman, and see the entirety of our lives? The same way we can see the entirety of lives in the second dimension? The experience of The Invisibles in Kathmandu was kind of an actualization of that reality — that there are things up there that can see the entirety of Earth time and Earth space like that. It's an ongoing fascination for me.

What happened in the last issue of The Invisibles? I've read it like 20 times and I have no idea.
Yes, you have. Of course, you have! What happened was that thing you read and all those words. That's what happened.

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

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

More news:

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

A series that will not only tie in with the eight-part Final Crisis series that runs the entirety of DC history from the first boy on Earth to the last (Yes, Anthro and Kamandi will both appear), but also celebrate the Legion's 50th anniversary and sort out once and for all what's going on with all those multiple versions of the same characters may look like a tall order for most people, considering that that would mean upwards of 50 characters to deal with. Unless, apparently, you're Geoff Johns:

[T]here's a focus on a group of characters. Certain characters will really get the spotlight. A lot of other characters will be in the background. That's what George [Perez, artist on the series as well as 1980s "everyone in the DC universe" series Crisis on Infinite Earths] does. When you have these big epics and you have dozens and dozens of characters, it can get overwhelming, but there's a focus on a group of characters that have their goals and missions that really represent to me the heart of the Legion. And those characters will be getting most of the attention. But everybody will be in there. Just about everybody.

[Y]ou don't have to know anything before you read it. This is Superman and the