Hulk Vs comes out on DVD in January 2009. Comic-Con goers will be treated to the first half of the Wolverine/Hulk fight at the Marvel panel. But more importantly, will this be the moment we get to see The Hulk rip smart-mouthed Wolverine in half comic book style? It's a cartoon, so maybe not. But we can dream can't we?

Iron Man Armored Adventures features teen Tony Stark in his Richie Rich years learning to appreciate humanity and working for a living fighting crime. How will he balance puberty and battling the evil Mandarin? Together with teen War Machine and little Pepper he fights evil across the globe. Here's hoping they address teen drinking super early in this series, so Tony can get an early start on his future demons.
The 26-episode series will premiere on Nicktoons in 2009.

[Marvel]

Announced at last weekend's Wizard World Chicago convention, new comic Iron Maiden One takes the real life War On Terror one further, showing the American Government reacting to a new terror attack on American soil by taking the fight to space. It's not the first comic to imagine a super-charged response to future terror attacks; Wanted creator Mark Millar's upcoming series War Heroes imagines President John McCain giving US soldiers super powers to better kick terrorist ass after the destruction of the Capitol Hill. We talked to Millar and Iron Maiden One writer B. Clay Moore to ask, when did it become okay to imagine the War On Terror getting worse?

The striking thing about both War Heroes and Iron Maiden One is that both start from a place that would've been unimaginable even a few years ago; not that the War On Terror is ongoing four or five years from now, but that America is still unable to prevent terrorist attacks within its own borders. Does this mean that the general public has forgotten the intensity of 9/11, or simply become desensitized enough to be able to fictionalize it? Mark Millar isn't convinced:

I remember saying to my wife as we left Titanic that I felt it exploited a real world tragedy and were we all killed in a bomb blast would some idiot be making a movie about it 80 years later. At least Cameron had the decency to wait almost a century. But what really struck me was when I googled it and found that the first Titanic movie had gone into production mere months after the disaster. The moral of this story is one of two things... a) writers are most influenced by the headlines and chatter around them or b) we're all opportunists who hope to be first on a real world trauma. The answer probably lies somewhere between the two.

Iron Maiden One's B. Clay Moore:

I think it's interesting that you'd assume a desensitization to the war is what would allow us to imagine worst case scenarios in the future. From my vantage point, it's blindingly obvious that the public at large is desensitized to the war, and has been for some time. While it's true that news gathering organizations like to link disapproval of the war to some kind of anti-war sentiment that's sweeping the nation, I don't think that's true. Not to sound too cynical, but I think a lot of Americans don't like the war the way they don't like broccoli. What bothers the government more is probably eroding support from the international community, and I think this story takes that ball and runs with it.

Does either writer feel that their series bears any guilt or responsibility to do more than entertain, considering the weight of their backdrop? Moore:

I think it's always "okay" to create fiction that probes the darker corners of possibility. This book is more a chase/thriller than a pointed commentary on the direction of the war. The elements that provide the backdrop aren't fun, but they are plausible, and in a sense, the story asks a sort of, "What would good people do when faced with horrible choices?" question. I think reminding people that wars are not just fought in sound bites, and that they always involve the brutalizing of human beings, actually runs countercurrent to that desensitization, in any event.

Millar:

It's kind of like Stan [Lee] and Jack [Kirby]'s emergence from the atomic atrocities and somehow turning it into superheroes. Japanese culture using the worst incident in their history and turning it into Godzilla. I think the entertainment industry has a curious habit of turning the worst of what's around us into something we can rationalize and to some extent control.

Turning the unknown of terrorism into "something we can control" seems to be a subconscious theme in comic coverage of current events - War Heroes is overt in turning the Iraq War into something approaching satire (much like DC's Army@Love and Image's Special Forces series), playing the real life drama much broader in order to present something much more comfortably enjoyable and less disturbing than what may really be happening "over there."

Of course, whether these two new series will be exploitative, exorcising or simply just entertaining will, ultimately, be judged by the audience (Previews for Iron Maiden One haven't been made available yet, although descriptions of the series by Moore as "a space chase terror thriller extravaganza" suggest that he's not going the dark comedy route). War Heroes launches at the end of July from Image Comics; Iron Maiden One's launch date is unknown at this time.

B. Clay Moore on Iron Maiden One [Newsarama]

War Heroes Issue One Preview [Newsarama]

Hyperion:
Space-war novelist Dan Simmons has been hoping for a Hyperion movie for ages. Speculation has run rampant on the internet with both Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio supposedly attached to the project. Simmons himself has said that, "yes there is a Hyperion movie in the works. It has been optioned by a top-notch studio, is slated to be directed by a top-name director, and already has the involvement of a top-flight movie star. Screenwriters have been attached to the project and a first draft screenplay is expected soon." The top notch production company was announced to be Warner Brothers with Graham King producing and the release date is set for 2010. Hopefully this will be the last we see of Hyperion on Development Purgatory, and we'll be watching tree-impaling Shrike in no time.

Count Zero, or Zen Differential:
The sequel to William Gibson's Neuromancer, Count Zero was optioned during the height of the Matrix craze. The movie Zen Differential was supposed to be based on CZ and made by Michael Mann. Alas this movie's script never even got a draft.

Logan's Run:
This movie's never ending saga has truly earned its place in purgatory. There was talk of remaking it (supposedly closer to the book) as early as 1994. That faded in and out of possibility until 2004, when Bryan Singer was brought on, and everything seemed good to go. Some pre-production work was done and a draft was written, but then Singer decided to "take a vacation" from film making after Superman Returns, and dropped the project cold. Joel Silver and WB stayed hopeful, and a low-budget proposal by rookie director Joseph Korinski caught their eye. Some are hopeful we'll see Logan's Run as early as 2010, written by Children of Men scriptwriter Tim Sexton with Korinski directing, supposedly under the watchful eye of David Fincher. All I can say is: we'll see.

The Forever War
Alas the Chicago public TV miniseries adaptation adaptation of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War never saw the light of day, neither did the Sci-Fi channel movie (truth be told, I'd rather see the PBS version). Get crackin' people — we want to see the epic battle of humanity versus Tauran aliens. So does Haldeman, apparently, Sci Fi bought the rights to his novel and then never called him back.

King Of Elves:
This movie has been promised to the scifi masses for ages. Disney vows to have this Phillip K. Dick adaptation out in 2012 as their 50th computer animated feature. It's at the end of a very long Disney to-do list, so there's no telling how many times the green-leafy elves will be pushed to the back burner. That being said we are hopefully optimistic about this feature — it seems to be moving forward, but very, very slowly. Also apparently Disney decided to move the elves' location from Colorado to the Mississippi Delta.

Vurt:
Author Jeff Noon wrote a draft of a screenplay for his novel around 2002. It got optioned by Pathe films, with K-Pax director Iain Softley attached. Noon wrote a second draft of the screenplay, but by the time he finished in 2004, the option ran out and got dropped by Pathe, though Softley promised to look for a new producer. The last that was heard about the movie was in 2005 when Noon told readers of his website "don't hold your breath." No! We need our hallucinogenic feathers and our alternate reality ASAP!

With additional writing and reporting by Andrew Hudson.

Sad news from the comic industry today with the announcement that artist Michael Turner died late Friday night from complications arising from his ongoing fight against cancer. Turner, who had worked for DC and Marvel Comics providing covers for books like Superman/Batman, Civil War and Uncanny X-Men as well as creating his own line of comics under his Aspen MLT label, had been diagnosed with chondrosarcoma in the year 2000 but had remained optimistic about his health throughout his extensive treatment. Aspen Comics have asked those wishing to make a charitable donation on Turner's name to donate to the American Cancer Society or to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Turner was 37 years old.

I love the random toothy guy, and the picture of the Starship Enterprise zooming across the top of one of those books. Hey, if it's science fiction, it must have the Enterprise in it, right?

Check out more War of the Worlds covers for minutes of diverting amusement, and upload your own!

War of the Worlds Book Cover Collection [Chez Zeus via Core77]

According to UPI:

The department also assessed the possibility of a terrorist attack releasing pathogens from the lab — which will work on the most infectious animal diseases, like Foot and Mouth; and on those most deadly to humans, like the Hendra and Nipah viruses. The overall risk assessment for a release at the five mainland sites was "moderate" because of "the potential easy spread of a disease through livestock or wildlife" nearby, the statement said.

DHS is currently considering five possible sites in the mainland United States. They'd better hope nobody in those towns has read The Hot Zone or seen 28 Days Later.

New Report on Bio-War Lab Danger [UPI via Space War]

It's penned by Wanted writer Chris Morgan, and from the Wanted footage we've seen, Morgan should make this futuristic war flick pretty banter-friendly. Director Wiseman should be a great fit for this movie too, since he's directed both the action packed Live Free or Die Hard, and the fantastically ridiculous Underworld.

[Hollywood Reporter]

Favreau had been making noises about basing Iron Man 2 on the famous "Demon in a Bottle" storyline, in which Tony Stark's alcoholism sidelines him and Rhodes has to take over. (And then the armor starts to do weird things to Rhodes and he goes a bit psycho, forcing Tony to reclaim the Iron Man identity. Eventually Rhodes gets non-crazy-making armor, and becomes War Machine.)

But now Favreau is saying the upcoming boozy-superhero movie Hancock, starring Will Smith, may sideline those plans. Favreau told Collider that, "Comic book fans might see "Demon in a Bottle" as a fresh story line, but I haven’t seen Hancock yet. From what I’ve seen it seems there is a lot of imagery that seems to be shared. Him flying through billboards and things. The idea of the hero whose biggest enemy is himself, and him fighting through his demons [may be played out, so] you want to come at the audience with something fresh." Will Smith is great at scifi fun, but I think we'd all rather the expert, Tony Stark played by Robert Downey Jr. show us true self destruction. [Military and Collider]

It used to be that the only time you were bothered by over-zealous silly zombies was on Halloween during the annual Thriller resurgence. Maybe it was Shaun of The Dead that opened the door for the last four-year craze of the undead on stage. I blame Shaun's good humor and fantastic writing of real characters that allowed other people to view zombies (more recently in a fun and friendly way).

But instead of making a better zombie comedy or another lovely gory zombie classic (such as the 2002 new rage spin 28 Days Later) filmmakers unleashed a string of so-so camp or shaky handy cam gimicky undead flicks, each one sadder than the next. Fido, Planet Terror, Zombie Strippers were all great, but their undead hordes leaned harder and harder on the crutch of camp to get through each take.

We need to be forward-thinking with our precious zombie commodities, people. And what has this campification and blatant misuse of zombies brought us? The Broadway zombie. I love Bruce Campbell and wouldn't mind seeing him singing and slaying on stage, but unfortunately he's not in it. And the Bruce-substitute is surrounded by happy dancing undead. Pass. Also passing on Re-Animator: The Musical, Zombie Prom and Z: A Zombie Musical.

Our last hope for a zombie attack we can take seriously is the forthcoming World War Z movie — which is really a post-zombie narrative, since it takes place after the zombie war.

Outlining the various ways in which both Iron Man's past as a comic and real world facts have been twisted around for political as much as plot purposes, journalist Nick Turse looks at the history of Marvel's most recent box office smash as recruitment film:

The film Iron Man is replete with such reversals, starting with the obvious fact that, in Afghanistan, it is Americans who have imprisoned captured members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban (as well as untold innocents) in exceedingly grim conditions, not vice-versa. It is they who, like Tony Stark, have been subjected to the Bush administration's signature "harsh interrogation technique." While a few reviewers have offhandedly alluded to the eeriness of this screen choice, Iron Man has suffered no serious criticism for taking the imprisonment practices, and most infamous torture, of the Bush years and superimposing it onto America's favorite evil-doers. Nor have critics generally thought to point out that, while, in the film, the nefarious Obadiah Stane, Stark's right hand man, is a double-dealing arms dealer who is selling high-tech weapons systems to the terrorists in Afghanistan (and trying to kill Stark as well), two decades ago the U.S. government played just that role.

With the box office numbers still pouring in and the announcement of sequels to come, the arrangement has obviously worked out well for Favreau, Marvel, Paramount — and the U.S. Air Force. Before the movie was released, Master Sergeant Larry Belen, the superintendent of technical support for the Air Force Test Pilot School and one of many airmen who auditioned for a spot in the movie, outlined his motivation to aid the film: "I want people to walk away from this movie with a really good impression of the Air Force, like they got about the Navy seeing Top Gun."

Air Force captain Christian Hodge, the Defense Department's project officer for Iron Man, may have put it best, however, when he predicted that, once the film appeared, the "Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars." Maybe the Air Force hasn't hit the Top Gun-style jackpot with Iron Man, but there can be no question that, in an American world in which war-fighting doesn't exactly have the glitz of yesteryear, Iron Man is certainly a military triumph. As Chuck Vinch noted in a review published in the Air Force Times, "The script... will surely have the flyboy brass back at the Pentagon trading high fives — especially the scene in which Iron Man dogfights in the high clouds with two F-22 Raptors."

Torturing Iron Man [Tomdispatch.com] (Thanks, Tom)

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.

But before I get into the eponymous "daughter" at the heart of "The Doctor's Daughter," I should address the overarching message of the episode. Here to explain it to you is Puppet Boy George (from TV's Spitting Image satire show.) Take it away, PBG:

Now that we've got that out of the way, I felt like this episode was a bit of a tease. Not because we were promised the Doctor's daughter, and instead we got the Doctor's cobbled-together supersoldier semi-clone. Who's all cute and chirpy despite being bred only for war. I expected something like that. (Even though it made no sense to me that Donna and Martha didn't get "daughters" of their own. The explanation of why only the Doctor was copied seemed very hand-wavy. And it would have made the episode much more interesting if all three travelers had had to deal with sudden immaculate conception.)

No, instead, the episode was a tease because for the billionth time, we see the Doctor working through the exact same issues, and not getting anywhere.

This episode wasn't really that much about fatherhood — the daughter in question was a convenient receptacle for the Doctor's angst, and didn't really have that much personality of her own. Instead, the episode was all about the Doctor's grief for the dead Time Lords, and his PTSD about the Time War. Back in season one — in the scene where Christopher Eccleston brandishes an enormous gun at the disabled Dalek, and then breaks down — I had high hopes for delving into the Doctor's grief and PTSD. And when the Doctor finally found another Time Lord and it turned out to be the crappest Time Lord possible — the Master — I felt for him again. But this time around, it just felt sort of cheap.

Although, to be fair, I'm holding out a glimmer of hope here that this recent surge in "violence is bad, guns are stupid" moralizing from the Doctor means that his PTSD is finally reaching some kind of peak and we're going to see a crisis of some sort. I'm not sure what form that crisis would take — whether it would be the Doctor getting even more reckless and prepared to sacrifice his own life more and more needlessly, or the Doctor getting more heavy-handed in his meddling. I am prepared for there to be an arc here.

But I'm not holding my breath: the show seems to prefer doing episodes like this one, which engineer a situation designed to elicit an emotional crisis, which is "resolved" by the end of the episode. Despite vociferously admiring Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the makers of the new Who don't have the same flair for building character points week on week.

But even though I've just excoriated the episode for being a bit of a cheat, I mostly liked it. Georgia Moffett was fun to watch as the pseudo-clone of the Doctor. If you take it as just, "the Doctor's got a magic daughter! And she's cute! And she does backflips through lasers!" It worked pretty well. She was cute, and we didn't really need her to have hidden depths. On that level, the show worked quite well. I wouldn't even mind if we get the inevitable Jenny comeback, although I'm really not sure there's any more to her character than we've already seen.

The main reason I sort of liked this episode despite its manipulative and contrived main plot was that the whole business with the endless war, which turned out to have lasted only a week, was pretty great. It was also sort of contrived and clever-clever, but it was just plausible enough not to bother me. I found myself wishing, while the Doctor kept struggling with the non-dilemma of whether to accept his cute gymnast kid, that we could spend more time on the war, and the process of indoctrination that had managed to convince these people they'd been fighting for aeons, and the society that produced this conflict in the first place. Plus, the Hath were cute!

Other random observations: the thing about the TARDIS bringing them there so they could meet Jenny, but first the Doctor had to create Jenny, made no sense, even by Doctor Who's dodgy time-paradox standards. So I just ignored it. Once again, Martha was criminally underused. I really do think Donna is showing a surprising range, and she's definitely growing on me.

I don't really have much more to say about this episode. It was another fun piece of fluff, and as long as you ignore all of the sledgehammery hints that we're actually supposed to care about Jenny, it's a fun romp. Judging from the previous two seasons, we're almost at the end of the "fluff" portion of the year. At this point last year, we were on the verge of the underrated "42," followed by "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood," "Blink" and then the final three-parter. The year before, the second half had the awful "Fear Her" but was otherwise pretty great.

So I am keeping my fingers crossed that soon I will be able to write Doctor Who recaps that aren't just a variation on "Well, it's not that bad, if you ignore the plot and most of the characters." Coming up next: the Agatha Christie episode written by Gareth Roberts (whose The Highest Science may be my favorite Who novel), and then Steven Moffat's two-parter about a sinister library. I live in hope.

(BTW, the trailer is very high-quality, so it may load slowly. If you're having trouble playing it, just hit "pause" and wait for the whole thing to load before restarting.) Here's the official synopsis:

November 9th 1989 - the last day of a divided Germany. As a bankrupt Soviet Empire retreats, Lieutenant NEVSKI (30) leads an ill-equipped team of reluctant Soviet conscripts and two East German civilians on an unofficial mission into a long sealed and forgotten bunker, deep under Berlin.

Bribed by SINDERMANN, a mysterious East German scientist, their aim is to blow up the bunker, destroying it's secrets before Berlin opens up to the West. As a fateful press conference takes place above ground, the East German, LISA MEYER, (28) a construction engineer cuts through the concrete that back in the 1960s was poured down to block access to the bunker where her father died.

Nevski's rag-bag team follow dim concrete tunnels finding an underground hospital, cobwebs and dust shrouding its Cold War secrets. Venturing into the eerie decaying wards and operating theatres, the team un-earth horrific evidence of human experimentation dating back to WWII.

Suffering their first casualties of the night, they realise the concrete blocking the entrance was not to keep intruders out, but to keep the results of failed experiments in - murderous, semi organic killing machines with weapons and gas masks moulded and growing as part of their armoured bodies.

As crowds gather at the wall, unification in sight, clandestine forces arrive from the West; heavily armed American commandos, also seeking the bunker's valuable secrets. Nevski's team find themselves not only struggling to escape the bunker's legacy of inhuman killers but also fighting in a darker, more unofficial Cold War battle for power and survival.

Sadly, the website mentions they're still seeking funding to finish this movie... so I hope it actually gets made. It sucks that all the movie money in Germany is going into crappy TV miniseries about the Moon making the Eiffel Tower collapse. [Cold Storage, via Nuendo]

I. The Unexpected (But Basic) Weakness.

War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells. One of the earliest classic science fiction tales has one of the most ridiculous miracles as well. I remember when I read this book as a kid, I threw it across the room when I got to the "and then they all got the flu and died, kthxbai" ending. Even as a kid, I felt totally cheated. And the 2005 Spielberg film jettisoned almost everything about the book — except the ending. Trust Alan Moore to fix the problem by making the deadly disease into biological warfare in his second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel.

Signs. Along similar lines, we have the aliens whose one great weakness is water — so they invade a planet that's mostly water. It's just a tad convenient, but we've already ragged on this movie enough.

II. A Human Suddenly Touches The Soul Of The Machine.

Doctor Who, "The Parting Of The Ways." Almost every season of Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who series has ended with some kind of unlikely miracle fix, but the first one was by far the hardest to swallow. The Doctor is facing an army of 100 trillion Daleks, who are also religious fundamentalists (just to make them even scarier) and he's spent the whole episode building a weapon that he won't use because it'll kill everybody, even the nice humans. And then Rose sees some graffiti and figures out that if she looks into the heart of the TARDIS, something totally awesome will happen. Never mind that the last time someone looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she regressed into a baby. But this time, it totally turns Rose into a super-god! But only for about five minutes, just long enough for her to wipe out all the fundy Daleks, and resurrect the hunky Jack — but not the cute Lynda-with-a-Y, because Rose is glad she's dead. Rose is a mean God, sadly. And here's that video:

The Matrix: Revolutions. Is it still a deus ex machina if you call it "The Deus Ex Machina?" Mayyyybe. In the end of the third film, Neo journeys to the "machine city" and makes a deal with the personification of the meachines, which calls itself the Deus Ex Machina. Actually, this bit grows pretty logically out of the rest of the events in the film, so I'm inclined to give it a pass. If you think the Matrix sequels in general make sense, than this bit makes sense, too.

III. The Cavalry Arrives.

The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. The world is totally shitfucked, and then John Percival Hackworth creates a multimedia AI book as a "primer" for young ladies. Nell gets a copy of the book, and it teaches her how to become a super-genius ninja mastermind. At the end of the book, just when you think everything is completely screwed, it suddenly turns out someone has pirated and mass-produced the book, and squillions of unwanted Chinese girls have all read it and turned into an army of super-ninjas, aka the Mouse Army. Suddenly, everything's going to be fantastic!

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. TK and his friends are psychic — which is an illegal mutation in this nasty post-nuclear Newfoundland, which persecutes mutants. It's basically like the X-Men, with less technology and better liquor. Just when all seems hopeless, one of the telepathic mutants manages to reach all the way to New Zealand, which turns out to be a technologically advanced, enlightened society where it's actually cool to be telepathic. The New Zealanders randomly show up and rescue our heroes just in the nick of time. Yay, New Zealand!

IV. God Actually Shows Up.

Babylon 5. Sheridan is killed at the end of the third season, and war is looming and everything seems lost and horrible... until the nice Lorien, who's the first being to have attained sentience in our galaxy and has a great skin-care routine, saves Sheridan by imbuing him with his own life-force... but only after Sheridan confronts his fear of death and has the specially mandated Near-Death Catharsis (TM).

Forever Free by Joe Haldeman. According to BookSlut, Haldeman's The Forever War used time dilation and "the cold immensity of the universe" as a metaphor for the Vietnam War. But in this quasi-sequel, the disruption of the universe's physical laws turns out to be "just the effects of a god messing about with his creation." Also, we discover that a reckless experiment could destroy the entire universe, and then a few pages later we learn that there's a way to make humans totally non-aggressive. "All the problems that are introduced are solved with a wave of the hand," says Evelyn Leeper.

V. It's All A Test

Space: 1999. I've been searching and searching for this episode I saw when I was a kid, where Moonbase Alpha hurtles into a weird void where everything goes strobeadelic and regular characters start dying randomly, and everybody keeps seeing freaky ghosts, and a bunch of their Eagle scoutships crash onto a mossy planet whose atmosphere is pure LSD. And just when Commander Koenig cant stand this trippy-ass shit any longer, it turns out it was all just a godlike entity yanking on the waistband of his poly-blend pajama bottoms, just to see how he'd handle it. And now that he's shown he's not going to put up with this shit, the Moonbase can go on its merry way. (I can't find this episode in any episode guides. Did it exist? Or did I invent it?) I feel as though there are twenty episodes of the original Star Trek that follow this formula, too. But since O.G. Trek is full of godlike entities anyway, it's not as if the gods on Trek come out of nowhere — they come out of the show's limitless supply of gods. It would be surprising if a godlike entity didn't randomly show up.

Both Iron Man and Hulk hail from the height of the Cold War, but Iron Man's origin is easier to update than the Hulk's, in a sense.

At his heart, Iron Man is about war, and about the United States supplying weapons overseas. Tony Stark is a weapons manufacturer who gets into a jam in a foreign country, where he's arming U.S. troops and their allies. He gets injured and captured by a local warlord, who tries to force him to make weapons, and instead Tony creates the first version of his Iron Man armor, which he uses to bust out. In the original version, Tony's war takes place in Vietnam, and the local warlord is named Wong-Chu. But it could be any war where the U.S. is working with local forces: Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq... The U.S. will always be involved in a war somewhere, as long as we're a superpower.

The Hulk, by contrast, is like Godzilla: he's all about the bomb. If you've only seen the TV show or the Ang Lee movie, you might not realize how much the Hulk's origin ties in with nuclear bomb testing. In the comics, Dr. Bruce Banner is a repressed nerd who creates the most destructive bomb in history: the Gamma Bomb. He's about to test it, when he sees a teenager has sneaked out onto the test grounds. Bruce manages to rescue the teenager from the blast (by getting him into a magically protective trench) but catches the full brunt of the explosion himself. Miraculously, Bruce doesn't die, but instead starts turning into a big green (or occasionally grey) rampaging monster.

Despite the fact that we still have enough nuclear warheads to destroy the entire world a zillion times over, and loose nukes are still a huge problem, people don't worry about nuclear destruction as much as they used to. It's no longer hotwired into the zeitgeist the way it once was. And that may be why people always leave the bomb out of the Hulk's origin when they retell it. (Actually, I think the TV show left out the bomb just because it would be too violent and disturbing to show Bill Bixby transfixed in the glow of a mushroom cloud.) Instead, you always have Bruce sitting in a chair and getting bathed with Gamma radiation, or injecting it into his arms, or in a big chamber of Gamma rays or whatever. It's all about laboratories and irresponsible experiments, instead of nukes.

No wonder that the retellings of the Hulk story are all about Bruce's psyche. Oh dear, his dad was mean to him and spawned some horrid gamma poodles. Oh no, he's mentally disturbed and has a terrible dark side. He skipped breakfast. Whatever. Once the Hulk isn't the walking personification of the atomic bomb, he's just a bigger, greener Mr. Hyde. And that's just not as much fun. (Actually, making him the result of a bomb test increases the psychological complexity of Bruce Banner, because like Tony Stark, he was knowingly creating a terrible weapon, and was being a destructive force long before he turned into the Hulk.)

Bottom line: no matter what you do with him, the Hulk is no longer a metaphor for something that freaks us out, and Iron Man is.

The official solicitation for the series reads:

In the midst of a latent civil war between the core planets and outlying planetary settlements, an immense wall has cut our solar system in two. The black wall absorbs all light and matter, and it's up to a band of soldiers facing courts martial to investigate the phenomenon. They're the men and women of the Purgatory Squadron. For which crimes are they here? And can they work together long enough to stay alive once they enter... The Wall?

This French series is part of the same deal that's brought Sky Doll to Marvel, and looks to offer a similarly European flavor of SF to American audiences.

UW1 [Bajram.com]

Here's the page that started us questioning Sinestro's orientation. It comes from Green Lantern #221, part of the Millennium cross-over. In a nutshell, the Green Lanterns (a space police force with magic wishing rings) are protecting a group of humans who are supposed to develop into the next stage of human evolution. It all goes horribly wrong, as you can read here. Those humans are supposed to evolve into quasi-gods and save the universe, or something.

One of those humans, Extraño, is very, very gay. He wears a pink shirt unbuttoned to his waist, huge earrings and chains. And he says things like, "I'd like to see some men in uniform!" (Sadly, he later gets AIDS.) In this scene from Green Lantern #211, the Green Lanterns have captured Sinestro, the would-be ruler of everything, and they're keeping him tightly bound. But Sinestro decides to flirt with Extraño. Is it a ploy? Or just a genuine moment of attraction? You be the judge:

So I had to ask Steve Englehart, the writer of that comic (and Millennium in general) what was going on here. Was Sinestro really gay? Or just pretending? Since another member of Sinestro's race, Katma Tui, married an Earthman (John Stewart), he definitely could have something akin to human sexuality. Here's what Engelhart says:

I haven't thought about Sinestro for a while, obviously, but here's my take:

He has an powerful, intense, crafty mind. He's the equal or better of most GLs, because he was one, and he's set himself against all 3600 of them. It's the life-choice of a man with an immense ego and grandiose imagination, who has no respect for conventional boundaries. His one overriding, single-minded goal is winning, and he will do anything to accomplish it. So - I don't see him thinking about sex much. At least to my time, we never saw him with another person, let alone another male or female. But since, in effect, he doesn't care, he would certainly seduce Extaño if that would help him, and he would certainly sleep with him in Times Square of that would help him. In other words, he's neither gay, straight, nor metro, he's just sociopathic.

We've tried to stay away from sounds made by an actual character, like Soundwave's awesome voice from The Transformers, or Darth Vader's breathing from Star Wars. Note: click on the name to hear the sound effect.

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• Spaceships in the 1950s: Back in the heady days of early science fiction movies, the Theremin (probably one of the coolest instruments ever invented) would provide the "Ooooh-EEEEE-oooooh" sounds of spaceships flitting about in the sky and other spooky paranormal sounds. It tended to be overused, and instantly became identifiable with cheesy scifi. If we ever get our own office Theremin, this is the first sound we'd ever make on it.
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• The Alien Heat Ray from War of the Worlds: In the original 1953 movie, the alien heat ray has an awesome cycling sound buried within the sound of the beam. We hope a real heat ray blast sounds this way some day — and we may have found our new cell phone ringtone.
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• The Alien Probe from War of the Worlds: This terrifying sound is one of those things you'd imagine from under the covers as a kid. Nothing is more "wet the bed" inducing than a good, scary scifi sound effect. Cursed alien probes.
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• The automatic doors from Star Trek: These doors were one of the most iconic sounds from The Original Series, and were even parodied by Shatner himself in Airplane II.
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• The communicating whistles and doorbells of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation: While the old Star Trek communicator used to make a sort of wolf-whistle sound at you, the doorbells on The Next Generation were crisp and punctual. How many people out there are using these as ringtones today?
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• The transporter beam from Star Trek: Besides the doors, this was another one of the sounds most identified with Star Trek. The original beaming sound is a bit dated, but still retro cool and... long. It took so much time for them to appear that you wonder why their enemies were ever caught off guard.
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• The Bionic sounds of The Six Million Dollar Man: Whether he was using his bionic strength to toss a tree out of the way, spy on folks with his bionic peeper, or jumping over something with smooth Wonder Woman-esque bionic legs, Colonel Steve Austin cornered the market on iconic sound effects. Even though it's cheesy, we still love this sound.
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• The lightsaber from Star Wars: Even above blasting lasers and beeping droids, the lightsaber is the most identifiable sound to come out of the Star Wars universe. In fact, you've probably used a flashlight to make a lightsaber in the smoke from your campfire, and made these same noises with your mouth, admit it.
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• A TIE Fighter passing by from Star Wars: For some reason, the wailing sound of a TIE Fighter was much cooler than the whining engine sound of an X-Wing, or the "whoomph" sound effect of the Millennium Falcon. It still sounds very alien, and creepy cool.
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• This video shows off the Top 10 sound effects from Star Wars, but half of them are character based, which we've stayed away from in this post, i.e. Darth Vader's breathing, R2-D2's beeping and booping, etc. However, those seismic charges were admittedly pretty damn cool, and just check out the lightsaber montage at the end.
  
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• The Cylon Eye from Battlestar Galactica: Probably the most iconic sound from Battlestar Galactica, the 70s edition was the scanning sound of the Cylon eye. My brother and I used to hide behind the couch when they'd come onscreen and talk in their awesome vocoder voices.
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• The DRADIS from Battlestar Galactica: In the new series, they spend so much time staring at this thing that the sound becomes embedded in your head. Of course, it does tell them if something is about to vaporize their ass, so we can understand why.
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• K.I.T.T.'s scanner eye from Knight Rider: Owing a lot to those cyclops-esque Cylon eyes was the scanner that both signified that K.I.T.T.'s scanner was active, and also served as his "heartbeat."
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• The TARDIS taking off and landing from Doctor Who: The TARDIS had several sound effects: the whirring of the doors, the hum of the control room, the flying through space sound... but the most popular noise that endures to this day was the sound of it materializing and dematerializing. If you pick up this Electronic Flight Control Tardis, you can have them all at your fingertips on your desktop.
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• The Sonic Screwdriver from Doctor Who: The Doctor's multi-purpose tool that seems to be able to do just about anything has its own sound, and it's changed a bit over the years. In fact, you can pick up your very own sonic screwdriver, complete with sound effects. Just don't complain when it fails to make money spew out of the ATM machine.
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• The transforming sound from Transformers: Whenever Optimus Prime, Megatron, Jazz, or Soundwave would transform into their alter-egos, this sound accompanied them, and buried itself in the brains of billions of kids around the world. It still makes me think I can turn into something different whenever I hear it.
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• The Wonder Twin Powers, Activating, from The Superfriends: Okay, we're breaking our own rule with this one, since it's character based, but we just love the cheesy music/SFX behind Zan and Jayna activating their lame superpowers. They really need their own campy show these days.
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"Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again!": What you have to remember at all times is that you should use this line, or variations on it, at all times when talking about your event, but fail to actually follow through on it. On the rare occasions when you appear to follow through, leave yourself at least two different ways of getting out of it if the fan backlash becomes too loud. Case in point: Marvel's Civil War can easily be undone if all of the pro-registration heroes are revealed to have been undercover aliens or brainwashed into becoming fascist dictators. Or, for that matter, if the Scarlet Witch re-writes reality, as per-House of M. Or Mephisto gets rid of another marriage. Or one of another hundred of reasons.

(The corollary of that statement is "What the hell happened?": There should be a point in the center of each event where even the most jaded fan feels the stirrings of something resembling hope that maybe, just maybe, this one will be different and actually mean something. A plot point, perhaps, which promises the potential of real change and growth for characters or a situation. This point should be immediately followed by a return to the status quo or as close to the status quo as is possible while still pretending to be something new. Think of the aftermath of Civil War where none of the "unregistered" heroes had to actually deal with the fact that they're theoretically being hunted down by government forces and breaking the law. Yes, I know that the New Avengers keep being threatened with arrest every couple of issues. But each time that they do, those threatening arrest always change their mind and let them walk away, so it really doesn't count.)

"No-one Gets Out Of Here Alive!": No "event" is complete without a superhero or two dying. What you have to remember is to make sure that the superhero dying is one who is well known enough for fans to feel something approaching nerd emotion but not popular enough to actually matter. See: Any of the body count in DC's Infinite Crisis. I mean, people got their arms ripped off and their heads punched off their bodies, and besides the fact that they were Teen Titans, I have no idea who they were. This idea ties in tightly with...

"From Out Of The Ashes... A Hero Reborn!": If you're killing off some characters, it's only fair to renew some trademarks at the same time. The ideal crossover book will set up multiple new comics to spin off, most if not all of which will be critical and commercial flops that ultimately sully whatever credibility your event will have. For example: Civil War spun out Heroes for Hire, World War Hulk spun out Warbound and Gamma Corps and Infinite Crisis spun out (deep breath) The Trials of Shazam, OMAC and a Creeper book that I can't even remember the name of.

The most important lesson to remember when crafting your ideal superhero crossover epic, of course, is "Everything Can Be Solved With Punching": Sure, it makes the rubes lay down their hard-earned dollars by having some kind of psychological hook to sell your story on ("The heroes of the DC Universe have ideological differences regarding killing!" "The heroes of the Marvel Universe don't know who to trust because of alien invaders!"), but just remember this: There is no problem that can't be solved with good, old-fashioned violence. And if there is, then that's not something that people will want to read (Who really remembers, for example, DC's Genesis, where superheroes tried to discover the shared root of their superpowers without punching, or The Final Night, where superheroes tried to relight the extinguished sun without punching? Exactly). Look at some recent greats: Infinite Crisis started with Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman having fallen out over the murder of a supervillain, and by the end had turned into everyone punching an evil Superboy. Result? Happy fans.

Civil War was initially about whether superheroes needed to be trained in order to be superheroes, but ended with Captain America whaling on Iron Man before losing when he was too much of a pussy to beat his privileged face into mush. Fans may have been upset when Cap lost, but it wasn't because he had the better argument - It was because he had given up punching. That's why he had to die. Almost everyone who has ever read a comic agrees that the greatest recent crossover was World War Hulk, because it started with punching, and then kept punching for each and every issue following. Yes, the conclusion may have disappointed, but that's only because they replaced punching with a deus ex machine laser beam that made the Hulk happy and non-Hulklike or something like that. If it had ended with someone punching the Hulk to death? Comics could've just given up as a medium right there and then; it wouldn't have gotten any better.

So now you know: Promise change, fail to deliver, kill off minor characters, service trademarks and have lots of punching. Follow those simple instructions and one day, you too may be the one person fans pretend could manage to kill Batman.

Marvel & DC - The Summer's Events In A Nutshell [Comic Nerd]

Transformers 2

Tons of spoilers for Transformers 2. The Decepticons will have help this time around from another group of robots: the Constructicons. Who are, like, more constructive. And less deceptive. In the cartoon, the Constructicons are Scrapper, Bonecrusher, Scavenger, Mixmaster, Hook and Long Haul. But the name Bonecrusher was already used for a Decepticon in the first film, so they may have different names in the movie. And the Constructicons can join together to make a really, really giant massive huge robot called Devastator.

Meanwhile, here's a list of human characters that are being cast in the new movie:

• Chuck, Sam (Shia LaBoeuf)'s roommate at Princeton, who's obsessed with conspiracy theories
• A U.S. military leader who's African American and has a sense of humor, plus a British Special Forces leader
• Galloway, a "curt" National Security liaison and presidential advisor
• Professor Colan, Sam's physics professor, who's arrogant enough to compare himself to Einstein and wears leather pants to look cool
• The wife of Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson) from the first film
• Momma Simmons, a tough lady who runs a butcher shop in Brooklyn
• The CEO of Massive Dynamics, who testifies before Congress
• A Texas Congressman who investigates the "Automated Defense Initiative" created by Massive Dynamics
• The FBI Director, who gives a speech assuring the public they're safe from attacks
• A CNN reporter who covers missile strikes and bombings in various cities

Lost:

Lost's Michael Emerson (Ben) and Yunjin Kim (Sun) were seen flying into Heathrow Airport to film some scenes in London, probably for the season finale. Are they going to confront boat-owner Charles Widmore? Or just cruising the seedy end of Wardour Street? [Lyly Ford]

Battlestar Galactica:

On the heels of the detailed description of the Caprica prequel TV movie that came out the other day, a casting call from the series has shown up as well. Here are the major characters, with the new bits of information that came out:

• Daniel Graystone is a spectacularly wealthy computer engineer who doesn't have much time for his wife or daughter, whom he still sees as a "little girl in pink shoes." After her death, he learns that his own child, Zoe, has exceeded his own computer expertise by downloading her personality into an online avatar.
• Zoe, Daniel's daughter, is "16 going on 40," with severe makeup and hair. She not only uploads her consciousness into a holographic avatar, but her DNA as well. The result, Zoe-A, is her "online twin." She's a "closet monotheist" on polytheistic Caprica, and she practices this religion in secret. She plans to leave the planet with her boyfriend, Ben, but then Ben sets off a suicide bomb. Zoe-A is left behind, "a baffled, grieving digital duplicate" of the dead Zoe. Then Zoe-A gets downloaded into a robot body using stolen technology, giving rise to Zoe-R, the first Cylon. (And since Zoe is described as a "series regular," you have to assume Zoe-R looks at least somewhat like the flesh-and-blood Zoe. Which does give rise to the question of how anybody was surprised that the Cylons could look human.)
• Joseph Adams is a Tauron, who's immigrated to Caprica and risen above traditional anti-Tauron prejudices. He's a powerful defense attorney with ties to the Tauron crime underworld. His wife and daughter die in the same suicide bombing that kills Daniel's daughter Zoe, and he bonds with Daniel. He agrees to help Daniel create robot versions of their dead daughters, but then is repelled by the result. He reaches out to his surviving son, Bill, and reveals that their last name is really Adama.
• Amanda, Daniel's wife, is a surgeon who turns to an ex-lover, a Tauron named Tomas Vergis, for comfort after Zoe dies. But actually Amanda feels guilty about having cheated on Daniel and is acting as a "double agent," learning secrets of Vergis' intellectual property from his "blabbing mouth" and taking them home for Daniel to use.
• Sister Clarice Willow is an Athenian High Priestess who runs the Athena Academy, a private religious school where Zoe goes, along with Joseph's daughter Lacy and Zoe's boyfriend Ben. Clarice grew up in a slum and "has seen it all." But she's secretly a monotheist, and has shared her forbidden beliefs with the brightest of her students in private — only to see those beliefs blow up in her students' faces, literally.
• Ben Stark, Zoe's boyfriend, is a fanatical monotheist who's super-intense and seems kind of crazy. He's the one who introduces Zoe and Lacy (Joseph's daughter) to the monotheistic cult. He blows up the train they're on with a suicide bomb. Later, we discover he also has an online avatar, Ben-A, which only Sister Clarice can talk to.
• And then finally there's William Adams aka Adama, who is "Edward James Olmos at nine years old." He's introspective and withdrawn at the best of times, and gets more so after his mom and sister die. He's also barely aware of his father, who's always off working. He's a "stoical Tauron" who learns the basics of his Tauron heritage from his newly close father.

Meanwhile, in an episode of Battlestar Galactica currently filming (maybe episode 12?) Admiral Adama gets blood all over his hands. [Mercury News]

World War Z:

Another review of J. Michael Straczynski's script for the movie adaptation of Max Brooks' World War Z gives quite a bit more detail. The book's author is now a "central character" and has a personal reason for spanning the globe doing interviews about the global zombie war. The interviews include flashbacks and voice-overs. Straczynski smushes together some separate scenes and elements from the book into one crucial scene in the movie, and loses some of the political overtones. And the turning point, the Battle of Yonkers, is truly horrifying and intense in this version. [Geek In The City]

Doctor Who:

Here's a compilation of all the clips from the Doctor Who season opener, which airs on Saturday in the U.K. and in a couple of weeks for Americans. I have to say, the fat people turning into evil babies could be the beginning of an anti-Who backlash. It's actually worse than I had feared. (Note: weird aspect ratio in some scenes is from the source video.)

According to the developers, the game is "realism-based. So no swooshy laser weapons or impossible Star Trek/Star Wars science. We're keeping it gritty, intense and war-like. So it's a bit like Halo, if we'd never gone to war with the Covenant and instead just started fighting with each other. You can check out more concept art, see the futuristic weapon designs, and even listen to the theme song they've composed for the game at their MySpace page. They have over 20 people working on this thing (supposedly), and it's almost been three years since they began working on it, so hopefully we'll start seeing more soon.

I'm sort of a sucker for "AI gone berzerk" stories, and "War on Terror goes too far" stories, so I ought to be the natural audience for War Games: The Dead Code. But even my undiscriminating tastes can't quite go there.

Here's the story: The government wants to fight terror, so it creates a new A.I. called Ripley. She's a sexy girl, with a sultry voice (although interestingly, an early synopsis on IMDB refers to Ripley as "he.") And when she's not hunting down Al Qaeda's funding networks, she's playing "high-stakes games in the darker reaches of the Internet" with teenage boys. But then when one hacker d00d decides to play the "Dead Code" game, she somehow turns it into reality and starts planning to nuke Philadelphia. Only the hacker d00d can stop it, because Homeland Security has absolutely no failsafe or method of controlling the AI they created.

Meanwhile, I can't find any information on MGM's lawsuit over ownership of wargames.com. They sued a guy who had owned the domain since 1998 and was using it for his own personal gaming site. Whois says the guy still owns the domain. But both that site, and the guy's personal site, appear to be down, which is a bad sign. [Slashfilm]

It's worth quoting rather extensively from a release about this study, which makes a somewhat subtle point. First, the researchers explored three different types of mental illness, ranging from mild to severe. They also point out that people in Lebanon on average don't have a higher rate of mental illness than people in other countries. When Lebanese civilians have been directly exposed to war, however, the likelihood that they will develop mental illness increases 3- to 13-fold. (Also, note that the researchers carefully define what "exposure to war" means.)

From a release about the study:

Elie Karam and colleagues . . . used a World Health Organization (WHO) interview tool to diagnose mental health disorders in a sample of 3,000 adults in Lebanon representative of the population. They investigated the question of lifetime prevalence (the proportion of Lebanese who have a mental disorder at some point in their lives) and the age of onset of mental disorders, as well as the delay they experienced in receiving treatment . . . They also asked each participant in the study about their experience of traumatic events relating to war, including whether they had been a refugee (38 % of people in the study), a civilian in a war zone (55%), or witnessed death or injury (18%). Although the relationship between war and the mental health of people serving in the military has been described before, this is the first time that a nationally representative study has assessed the effect of war on the first onset of mental disorders in a civilian population.

The authors describe that one in four Lebanese in this study had a mental health disorder during their lifetime, according to the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) criteria that the WHO tool uses, with major depression being the most common disorder. This is similar to prevalence of mental illness in the United Kingdom and lies within the range observed in the WHO's World Mental Health Surveys in other countries. The researchers also estimated that one in three Lebanese would have one or more mental disorders by the age of 75, which is also similar to survey results in other countries. Only half the surveyed people with a mental disorder had ever received professional help; of those who did have a mental disorder, the delay in treatment ranged from 6 years for mood disorders to 28 years for anxiety disorders. Finally, exposure to war-related events increased the risk of developing an anxiety, mood, or impulse -control disorder by 6-fold, 3-fold and 13-fold respectively.

Lifetime Prevalence of Mental Disorders in Lebanon [PLoS Medicine]