Marvel Comics is all about the collections this week. There are some more Secret Invasion collections — don't forget, there'll be over twenty in the end, so it's not like you have to rush out and buy them this week to get the full story. Marvel is also putting out hardcovers of Mark (Wanted, Kick-Ass) Millar's Marvel 1985 series (in which Marvel characters cross over to the "real" world twenty-four years ago), Jeph Loeb's Ultimatum: March on Ultimatum prelude (in which various characters prepare for the end of the world, even if they don't know it) and X-Men: Original Sin (in which Marvel starts putting out product ahead of the Wolverine movie later this year).

DC isn't entirely letting Marvel corner the hardcover collection market this week; they're putting out the lengthily-titled DC Comics Classics Library: Superman — Kryptonite Nevermore, which collects the classic 1970s storyline where DC did the unthinkable and let Superman get over his weakness of Kryptonite... well, for a few years, at least. That's not the only thing of note that DC's releasing this week, however. In terms of single issues, the first issue of a tie-in to the amazingly enjoyable Batman: The Brave And The Bold and the final issue of confusing-yet-enjoyable Final Crisis are both arriving in stories tomorrow, and both will be worth your time.

That said, there are two books that really should be added to your shopping list no matter what; Jonathan Hickman and JM Ringuet's Transhuman finally makes it into collected form, allowing you to swallow the sly superhuman corporate satire in one sitting. And as a perfect chaser, Dark Horse's Star Wars: Vector Book One collects the first half of this 2008 crossover event, which follows one character through four different time periods in George Lucas' galaxy far, far away, and manages to make you not only a Star Wars fan again, but also kind of curious as to whether the Expanded Universe really is as exciting as it appears here.

If you're looking for a place to find your personal genetically-modified force, then the Comic Shop Locator is always a good place to start... And once you've found your nearest comic store, double check this week's shipping list to make sure that there's nothing you've forgotten. But remember: The force needs to be within your shopping basket. Always.

Artificial Intelligence and Transhuman Law: When Zoe-R comes online, the legal profession is gong to have to ask a lot of hard questions. Is she the same person as Zoe Graystone? Is she a person at all? Can Daniel Graystone hold intellectual property rights in a sentient being? Is he her owner or her parent? And, if she goes on to commit genocide against humanity, is Daniel legally culpable?

Who is working on it: The Terasem Movement, founded by lawyer and satellite communications entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt, explores practical and philosophical issues surrounding nanotechnology and cyberconsciousness. It publishes two journals to that end, The Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology and The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness, and this December, Terasem will hold its Fourth Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons.

Mental Privacy: Sure, you’ll want to keep the details of your genome safe from insurance companies and future employers, but the next battlefield of personal privacy may be your mind. Researchers are working to develop remote EEGs and other brainwave detectors that could one day be used as stealth lie detectors or a new layer of airport security. Brain fingerprinting technology, which tests whether suspects have knowledge of a specific crime, is currently admissible in court. And with mind-wiping drugs, psychotropic weapons, and skull-directed advertising entering the arena, your brain may soon need its own attorney.

Who is working on it: The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, headed by UC Davis professor Wrye Sententia, investigates the impact of new technology on mental liberty and aims to develop policies that will preserve privacy, autonomy, and choice with regard to thought, memory, and cognitive development. And certainly there are firms whose associates are busily researching legal ways to get inside your head.

Extraterrestrial Property: For several decades, the field of space law was focused on the extraplanetary actions of governments and the placement of satellites in orbit. But as private enterprises turn their sights on the stars, legal scholars have been forced to ponder just who will own the final frontier.

Who is working on it: Virgiliu Pop, a researcher at the Romanian Space Agency who once jokingly claimed ownership of the sun, has written extensively on the perils of allowing individuals to stake extraterrestrial claims without the recognition of the entire international community. Others, like Space Settlement Institute executives Alan Wasser and Douglas Jobes, have written about approaching a real estate framework from a perspective of colonization.

Cryonic Trusts and Estates: Sure, you could wake up from cryostasis like Philip J. Fry did, with a waiting job and a thousand years of interest in your savings account. But you might also end up like Transmetropolitan’s Revivals, cast at your most mentally fragile upon an uncaring society. Don’t take any chances. Before you step into that freezer, set up a cryonic trust to ensure that you’re still rich once you’ve thawed out.

Who is working on it: If you’re planning on going into deep-freeze, there are attorneys prepared to do your cryonic and personal revival estate planning. Travel along the Beltway to contract the services of John Dedon at Odin, Feldman & Pittleman in Fairfax, Virginia, or Christopher Sega at DC firm Venable.

Interspecies Family Law: When first contact happens without a condom and ends in a shotgun wedding, you and your multigenetic kin might find yourselves in murky legal waters. What do you do when your sweetie’s marriage laws require a third partner and your state won’t budge past the binary? Will you have to participate in those pesky father-son rituals that involve male bonding through meditative pain? And do you duke out the inevitable divorce in court, or fend off alimony claims in far more humane hand-to-hand combat?

Who is working on it: We’re sure that many big and famous law firms are hard at work on the hypotheticals of intergalactic jurisprudence. For now, we will forward all otherworldly complaints to the attorneys at Crane, Constable, McNeil & Montero, the law offices of Sebben & Sebben, and the senior partners of Wolfram & Hart.

Crappiest speculations about futuristic security threats to the United States, according to the U.S. Government: Watch out kids, because the melting arctic ice sheet could lead to trouble for U.S. national security! Luckily, the military has a solution, and it's totally cyber.

Image Comics' Transhuman is a new series by Pax Romana and The Nightly News creator Jonathan Hickman and artist JM Ringuet that oozes potential joy for the faithful. A "mockumentary" about genetic engineering, superheroes and the effort to mass-market a combination of the two, the series looks set to confirm Hickman's reputation for both visually-arresting work and an ability to play well within the SF genre. If you want to know more, you can find a 5-page preview of the first issue here (PDF).

Another premiere that's worth paying attention to this week is the first volume of Flight Explorer, the kid-centric spin-off from popular anthology Flight - It may not all be science fiction, but with a new story about the top-heavy monster Jellaby, and another strip called Zita the Spacegirl, this should be considered for the childlike near you. Even if that happens to be you yourself.

(You can read some more about the book, including seeing preview pages, here).

The third book appearing for the first time on Wednesday is Star Trek: New Frontier #1, a new mini-series tying into the New Frontier novel series. Both the novels and the comics are being written by Peter David, allowing for both coherent continuity and full-on nerditry, both of which are heartily approved around these here parts.

Elsewhere, it's all about the collections. Marvel is putting out hardcover collections of their popular time-travelling 1980s Iron Man versus Doctor Doom stories in Iron Man: Doomquest and their not-so-popular "The Devil annuls Spider-Man's marriage" story in Spider-Man: One More Day.

Meanwhile, DC pulls in some of the best of their 1980s output with the complete run of Dan Jurgens' greedy jerk anti-hero in Showcase Presents: Booster Gold, and then reprints some comic history with the fourth and final volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, which not only reprints Kirby's final stories starring Orion, Mr. Miracle and Darkseid, but also does its best to return Kirby's final work with the characters, graphic novel The Hunger Dogs, to the way it was before editorial forces demanded rewrites and changed the ending to make the production of more Super Powers figures that little bit easier. Previously unseen, reworked and re-inked art, and restored script and structure on the strip provides something like a Director's Cut version of one of the lost masterpieces of superhero comics by one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived... which has to be worth a look, right?

As ever, a full list of the week's releases can be found here, and the place to find your personal comics emporium can be found here. Now go and buy the Fourth World book and make a dead comic mastermind a happy ghost already.

To-Do List for Futurists: Become Posthuman

1. Today: Download the Rosetta@home program, and let your computer crunch data on protein shapes while you're not using it. Like the SETI@home program, Rosetta@home is designed to harness the power of thousands of PCs to take the data that scientists have gathered about how proteins in our bodies are shaped, and churn quickly through that data to figure out how we could design new proteins that might fight disease or turn us into posthuman, flying, megabrainiacs who don't need to sleep.

2. This week: Read all about what posthumans and transhumans want in James Hughes' fantastic book Citizen Cyborg.

3. This month: Volunteer to participate in neurological experiments at your local university. No, we don't want you to get the zapper, we just want you to volunteer to sit inside an MRI brain imaging machine and do various tasks so that neuroscientists can learn more about which parts of your brain are responsible for which activities. The more we understand the neurology of the brain, the better we'll be at preventing its degeneration through age or disease. And maybe we can get closer to those awesome Google brain implants. Most labs and universities have helpful websites that explain who can volunteer and how.

4. This month: Get a high-tech implant. Want to feel electro-magnetic waves? Get a magnet implanted in your finger. Want to be machine-readable? Get an RFID implanted under your skin. You can save all kinds of useful data on that RFID, but just be sure you keep it encrypted!

5. This year: Get your genome sequenced and donate the data to a public research institution. Companies like Knome and 23andMe will do it for some cash, and then you can take the data they get and give it to the International HapMap, an open database of genomic information used by researchers all over the world. The more data they amass about human genetic diversity, the sooner you can get a drug tailored specifically for you to cure your cancer, or make your legs move at super-speed.