Speculative fiction is full of stories about people who've lost their identity – AMC just gave us a dreamlike remake of The Prisoner in which Number Six forgets who he really is, and Dollhouse returns Friday with more mind-erasing fun. But it's weird to see the trope of "fighting for selfhood" merged with that action-movie staple, the entertaining killing spree.

Recently, I was re-watching chunks of X-Men: Origins: Wolverine and thinking about that movie's insane body-count — both before and after Logan starts trying to regain his elusive humanity. In Wolverine, the mutant known as Logan is caught between his bestial nature and his dignity as an individual. For a hundred-odd years, he is a slaughter machine for the military, and then he joins a super-secret mutant taskforce. But in mid-atrocity, he suddenly starts questioning orders, and then he goes… rogue. (No, he doesn't bleach part of his hair and start talking in a Southern-girl voice. He just wanders off the reservation.)

The point is, Wolverine is just as much of a killing machine after he starts asserting that he's not just part of the machine, or not just an animal. He never makes the connection between the sacredness of his own personhood, and the sacredness of human life in general. I get that you have to fight for your freedom sometimes, but the movie makes a big point of showing Wolverine killing when he could just as easily disable his opponents — one of the movie's few great fuck-yeah moments involves cold-blooded murder. (Sure, he's killing scumbags. But he was just as much of a scumbag twenty minutes earlier.)

Likewise, Terminator Salvation (newly on DVD) gives us Sam Worthington's tormented cyborg Marcus, who discovers that he's basically a reanimated corpse with metal parts — and he makes the choice to be human, slaughtering several of John Connor's men in the process. (During his heroic escape from the resistance compound.) But it's okay, because Marcus' emergent selfhood is more important than any sense of self all of those dead people might have possessed. (Actually, I might need to — shudder — rewatch this sequence. I know a bunch of the rebels die, but some of them die due to hydrobots that attack afterwards. Does Marcus actually kill anybody directly, or just cause their deaths by tearing apart their security?)

And then, of course, there's District 9, in which Wikus also fights to regain his humanity — by putting on a battlesuit and shredding people with alien weapons. This film at least subverts this trope a bit, by having Wikus use alien weaponry that he's only able to use because he's losing his humanity — and the film doesn't exactly reward Wikus for his mass murder.

This odd combination — the hero who devalues human life in the process of exalting his own — has been around for ages, but seems to be on the rise. RoboCop and the Universal Soldier movies give us cyborg heroes who struggle to re-humanize while killing lots of other humans. Michael Bay (surprise!) gave us The Island, in which a clone grown as an organ donor kills his "original" self, along with a number of other people, on the way to becoming a full-fledged person.

For almost as long as there have been action movies, there's been the high body count: watching a Rambo movie in the 1980s, you don't stop and think that everyone of these bodies flopping to the ground is another person who won't come home to his/her family. It's one of the conventions of action movies that we accept that this carnage isn't really happening – even as the movie expects us to suspend our disbelief about a guy falling out of a helicopter on fire and surviving, it asks us to maintain full disbelief that mass murder is taking place in front of us.

On some level, too, we stop thinking that those people dying in front of us are really people – especially in a movie with tons of bad CG (like Wolverine). We can watch the corpses piling up because we know they're not human.

But the action-movie body count and the "search for identity" plot are great separately — I love a good John Woo bloodbath — but they sit uneasily together. The more people we see your cyborg or mutant kill — and the more casually they're killed — the less we can identify with our hero's quest for selfhood. The whole thing starts to feel more like a first-person shooter, and the main character more like a video-game avatar, rather than an individual who Deserves Human Rights and all that stuff.

If life is so cheap, then who really cares about Logan's quest for self? Not to pick on Wolverine, but these questions keep coming back as you watch the movie, as if they have a mutant healing factor.

How do you square the contrast, between the hero's inalienable uniqueness and everyone else's disposability? Maybe it's because Our Hero is a Nietzschean ubermensh, whose will to power makes his individuality more precious than everyone else's? What do you think?

If you liked Star Trek... And who didn't like J.J. Abrams' breezy reinvention of the 1960s space adventure show, focusing more on the coming-of-age of Kirk and Spock, and their journey from rivals to friends? Anarcho-syndicalists, that's who.

...You'll Love Ringworld by Larry Niven. The defining "big object in space" novel, Niven sees your scary Romulan drilling platform and raises you a huge ring-shaped world orbiting a star, with "shadow squares" to provide a day/night cycle, and many weird ecosystems and cultures thriving on it. And if you enjoy that, delve into more classic space opera by Heinlein, Clarke, E.E. "Doc" Smith, David Weber and Lois McMaster Bujold.

If you liked Wolverine... Maybe you enjoyed the way the latest X-Men spinoff used the experiences of a lonely mutant to talk about the ravages of war. Maybe you just liked the purer distillations of mutant angst and feeling like an outsider in non-mutant society. Or perhaps you just liked the sexy mayhem.

...You'll love Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. The tale of a lonely mutant in a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, this novel's young female version of Wolverine named Loup blew us away. She's been genetically engineered not to feel fear, and she becomes her town's secret superhero.

If you liked The Dark Knight... Who didn't love The Dark Knight's reinvention of superhero comics' "grim and gritty" cliches in an even more noir, even more mind-blowing vein? Whether you were into the portrayal of a Gotham City that destroys the best among its citizens, or you just liked the brooding, this film was instantly iconic.

...You'll love Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, or just about anything by Richard K. Morgan. If you love noir anti-heroes squaring off with madmen for the future of a city that doesn't deserve saving, then you'll want to spend some serious time with Sandman Slim — sure, the city in question is L.A., and that's automatically less cool than the fictional Gotham. But still, the hero who's crawled out of Hell and now fights his power-mad former friend is the best fix for your Nolan Batman addiction right now. And for more noir, check out Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels as well as his noir fantasy The Steel Remains.

If you think you'll like James Cameron's Avatar... Okay, you can't really know if you're going to like Avatar yet, since it's just a couple of trailers and one preview day so far. But a lot of us are pretty pumped up about the cool concept, of a human put into a hybrid alien body to interact with cool blue aliens... not to mention all the war-machine technology and battle scenes.

...You'll love The Color Of Distance by Amy Thomson. Why not try another take on the idea of a human who's transformed into an alien-human hybrid to live among aliens? Juna is a human who lands in the rainforests of the planet Tendu, whose pollen gives humans deadly allergies. Juna's atmosphere suit gets ruptured and she nearly dies, but the planet's elders save her by transforming her into something like one of them. She learns their skin-color-based language and grows to understand their weird culture, and accept her own half-alien self.

If you liked Hancock... Maybe you liked the look at a more flawed superhero. Maybe you liked the alienation, or the feeling of futility in spite of great power. Maybe you enjoyed the cynicism.

...You'll love Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. In any case, you should definitely check out this smarter, cooler look at what superheroes would be like in the real world. Where Hancock fobs you off with repeated gags and muddled mythology, Grossman (an io9 contributor) gives you real psychological complexity and sharp characterization.

If you liked The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button... It sure did look impressive: a love story involving a man who ages backwards, and somehow keeps finding the same woman over and over again as she ages forwards in time. Set against the backdrop of history as it was, maybe you liked the epic feeling.

...You'll love Confessions Of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. This is definitely a case where a book did it first, and way better. (Yes, Button was nominally based on a HAITE story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.) Greer both pioneered and perfected the "backwards-aging love story" concept, without ignoring the potential creepiness of a boy who looks like an old man having a crush on a girl his own age. Heartbreaking and epic, this is the story Button should have been.

If you liked Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen... Umm... Well, you might have enjoyed the battle scenes and huge robots fighting alongside military hardware. You might have been into the love story between Shia and Megan, or Shia learning to grow up and accept responsibility. Oh, whatever. Let's assume you liked this movie for the big robots and military hardware.

...You'll love Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. This 1979 story collection, as much as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, is a landmark in the history of military science fiction. And it has the big hardware in spades — most notably the giant super-tank that the Slammers roll around in, which comes equipped with a massive 20 centimeter power gun that fires high-energy copper plasma. You might also really dig the Jon and Lobo novels by Mark Van Name, which are about a guy who makes friends with a giant artificially intelligent battlesuit, and they go off having adventures together.

If you liked Knowing... Maybe you liked the weird clues and all the numbers that secretly predicted all the disasters in the world. But most likely, you liked it for the same reason people seem to be liking 2012: for the apocalypse.

...You'll love Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. For a somewhat more light-hearted look at the end of days, you really can't beat this book. Or if you want a post-apocalyptic novel which shows how America continues after everything has collapsed and we've reverted to slavery and other nineteenth century institutions, try Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery.

If you liked Monsters vs. Aliens... With its A-list cast and zany monsters banding together to save the world, who didn't like this movie? Plus, it had a super-basic, but still welcome, message about being yourself and how it's OK to be different and all that stuff.

...You'll love Monster by A. Lee Martinez It's got the same spirit of fun, and a similar misfit cast of characters who save the day despite being weirdos. But it's maybe a little less kid-friendly, and the eponymous Monster is more of a slob who gets rid of the paranormal creatures threatening all the normal people, even though he'd rather just crash on the couch and drink beer. His paper gnome companion will definitely remind you of a cartoon character, and could easily be voiced by Hugh Laurie or Will Arnett in the movie version.

If you liked District 9... With its look at otherness, and the predicament of a human who accidentally gets infected with alien DNA and starts losing his privileged status, District 9's alien-ghetto tale was full of metaphors for the way humans treat each other.

...You'll love Mind Of My Mind by Octavia Butler. Nobody wrote about hierarchy, oppression and otherness better than Butler. And Mind Of My Mind deals with the idea of losing your humanity and becoming something unfamiliar and terrifying with incisive brilliance.

If you liked Moon... You probably got into the chilling depiction of loneliness on our only satellite and the slow madness that overtook our hero, played by Sam Rockwell. But you probably also loved the depiction of two Sam Rockwells, and the questions of identity this doppelganger story raised.

...You'll love Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley. If you want a really thought-provoking tale about cloning, you'll definitely want to check out Ophiuchi Hotline. Varley deals with a far-future society where only the dead can be cloned legally, then plunges us into a world of outlaws whose cloning goes far beyond the permissible.

If you liked Wanted... It probably wasn't for any vestigial supervillain trappings. In its movie version, this film was mostly about a man realizing he's inherited his dad's gunman powers, and getting inducted into a society of super-assassins. But more than anything, it was about becoming an ubermensch and realizing that the "little people's" rules don't apply to you.

...You'll love Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. If you really want a story of a super-assassin who has gone beyond traditional morality, you should check out the tale of Horza, a shapeshifter who has rejected the super-advanced Culture and is willing to do whatever it takes to win. Or if you just want the tale of an ubermensch who comes into his power, read Frank Herbert's Dune for the tale of Leto Atreides II.

Those are our book recommendations for the movie addicts in your life. What are your suggestions?

Thanks to Graeme, Meredith and Annalee for suggestions!

Comics have a grand problem of continuity. Long-lived characters have been starring in multiple monthly titles for years, amounting to thousands of issues, not counting guest stars, crossovers, and tie-ins. And every single one of those issues counts. With retroactive continuity, maybe our heroes fought a clone; or it was a dream; or the whole thing took place in a parallel reality; or someone didn't die, and instead someone took their unconscious body and healed them. Sometimes it's handled well, with good characterisation and a soft touch. But mostly, it isn't. Here are some of the worst, most ham-fisted and generally clumsy ways of dealing with problems in the history of your character.

One More Day/Brand New Day

During the events of Marvel's Civil War crossover, Spider-man revealed his secret identity to the public, making him and his family a massive target for all the would-be assassins, crime-lords and supervillains around. At the same time, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Queseda had been publicly expressing his distaste for Spider-Man's marraige to Mary Jane for years, on the grounds that it aged the character too much.

Quesada wanted to return Spidey to his roots, bring back down-on-his-luck Peter Parker, still living with his Aunt May, still struggling to pay for webfluid and get by day-to-day. And of course, he did it in the clumsiest way possible. He took over writing this series when outgoing writer, J. Michael Straczynski didn't want to pen the revisions Quesada proposed. In "One More Day," Aunt May gets accidentally shot by a sniper, and lays in hospital, on the verge of death. And Spider-man makes a deal with the devil, literally. Mephisto, Marvel's Satan stand-in, saves Aunt May, but in exchange he would take the happy marriage of Peter and MJ, and make it as though it had never happened. So, Peter gave up his beautiful, loving wife in order to extend the life of his already elderly and frequently ill Aunt. In the process, the entire planet forgot his identity, and Peter and Mary Jane's daughter would never come to be. Well, to be fair, MJ made the final decision, but the whole concept made no sense, and avoided any explanations by just saying "it's magic!"

Xornneto

When Grant Morrison took over X-Men, he introduced some radical changes, including the concept of secondary mutations, and the idea that at their current rate, Mutants would soon out-populate normal humans. He also introduced into Xavier's school the character of Xorn, a Chinese mutant with a star for a head, who had spent years imprisoned, and became a teacher for some of the more troubled students at the institute. Xorn eventually revealed he was Magneto in disguise, and died in a giant battle, along with Jean Grey.

However, almost immediately afterwards, it was decided that Magneto was too high-profile to kill for real — so a retcon established that Xorn was NOT Magneto (who was alive and kicking in Genosha). Instead, Xorn was a real person under the influence of another mutant. Then, just for kicks, they introduced another Xorn, a twin to the first, so they could keep the character around. So rather than sticking with a dramatic and powerful moment, as originally written by Morrison, the new writers tossed out the crux of his final arc to preserve the status quo.

Superboy Prime Punches Reality

DC's continuity has always been plagued by issues of multiple realities, which were used as the original way to differentiate Golden Age versions of characters from the Silver Age. During DCs Crisis on Infinite Earth, through the cataclysmic arrival of the Anti-Monitor, all of these timelines were merged into one, dealing away with all the confusion once and for all. Several characters from these dead universes were tucked away in a pocket universe, including Superboy Prime, who came for a reality where he was the only superpowered character. He and Kal-L, the Golden Age Superman, eventually become so angry at the dark and gritty nature of the current DC universe, that Superboy Prime punches a hole through reality. Yup, he punches reality so hard, that it shatters, creating the multiverse, and retconning various story problems, including bringing the 1980s Robin, Jason Todd, back to life. That is the power of the retcon punch.

As a side note, an absolutely excellent version of the Superboy Prime story was told a few years ago in Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen, which is well worth tracking down.

Power Girl's Origin
Originally, Power Girl was the Earth-2 version of Supergirl, a cousin to Superman who arrived long after he did, but with the same sort of powers. However, after the aforementioned Crisis on Infinite Earths, there was no more Earth-2, nor had there ever been. However, Power Girl existed on the main Earth, so she needed a new origin. So instead of making her another Kryptonian survivor (or something similar),she was revealed to be a descendant of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion, who lay in suspended animation for a thousand years before being revived in the current day. Did this make any sense? Nope. Did it gel at all with her old background? Not in the slightest. This stupidity was thankfully forgotten, and during Infinite Crisis, they just decided she was Supergirl from another dimension, and left it at that.

Gwen Stacy Slept With Norman Osborn

Gwen Stacy's death at the hands of the Green Goblin is considered one of the pivotal moments in Spider-man's history, and remains an incredibly poignant scene. However, during JMS's run on Spider-man, he gave her two children. Originally, his plan was that they be Peter's, and that she had them in secret. However, the editorial team decided that giving Spider-man two grown children would — wait for it — age Peter Parker too much.

Instead, they decided that Norman Osborn would be the father. That's right, Gwen Stacy hooked up with creepy old billionaire Osborn, got pregnant with twins, and kept them from Osborn — which is why he killed her. Then, he trained the twins to become assassins, to hunt down Spider-man.

Wolverine

Wolverine's entire history is just one crappy retcon piled on top of another. How's this for a start? Wolverine was originally meant to be an actual wolverine, who had been turned into a human by the high evolutionary, and his claws were part of his gloves. Then the claws became implants created by Weapon X, and he was a mutant. Then he was meant to be Sabertooth's son. Then it turns out he'd had bone claws all along, and they were just covered up with metal. Recently, however, things have started getting even weirder for Logan.

It turns out Wolverine now isn't a mutant, but rather a Lupine, a human looking species that evolved in parallel to humans — but from wolves, not apes. And there are two tribes: one with blond hair, the other with dark hair, and they hate each other — which is why Sabertooth hates Wolverine so much. They're not the only two, either — other Lupine's include Wolfsbane, Feral, Wild Child and Thornn. So pretty much ever feral mutant isn't actually a mutant, but a wolf person. They're all being manipulated by an almost immortal elder Lupine called Romulus.

Wolverine's healing factor has also suffered from major power creep over the years, expanding from "he can heal faster than most", to "was left as a skeleton after a major explosion, and healed completely within seconds." So to de-power him slightly, a retcon established that every time he dies, Wolverine has to fight the spirit of death to return to the living. Since WWI, he has been in constant combat with a being known as Lazaer (the worst anagram since Alucard), and his soul cannot return to his body unless he defeats Lazaer in limbo, each time. After some jiggerypokery with the resurrected version Shingen, Lazaer and Wolverine ended their constant battle — so if Wolverine dies again, it's for real.

Jean Grey and the Phoenix Force

This one is the great Grandaddy of weird retcons. Phoenix/Jean Grey took her own life after losing control of the awesome magnitude of the Phoenix Force, and accidentally devouring an inhabited planet. Cyclops was unsurprisingly bummed, hooked up with a clone of Jean, had a baby, which was then sent to the future to become Cable. However, a few years later, the writers wanted to bring Jean Grey back. So they decided that she was never Phoenix, instead the Phoenix Force created a simulacrum of her, and the real one was kept in stasis, deep beneath the ocean. Problem solved.

The Third Summers Brother?

Two of the X-Men, Cyclops and Havok, are brothers. At one point, the villainous Mr. Sinister dropped hints that there was in fact a third Summers brother, which would throw another powerful energy user into the X-Men universe. The originally planned extra brother was to be Adam X the X-Treme, also known as "the 90s personified". He had the power to combust blood, but only if someone was already cut, so he covered himself with blades (and wore a totally rad backwards cap). He was meant to be half human, half an alien Shi'ar, a product of the rape of his mother by the Shi'ar Emperor.

This origin story was used, instead, for the actual third Summers brother, Vulcan. He was retroactively introduced in 2006, when it was revealed that Charles Xavier sent him and a team to go rescue his missing X-Men decades ago. Unfortunately, the whole team was lost, and Xavier mind-wiped everyone to forget about it. The end product? Xavier was a dick, and Vulcan flew into space to become the Emperor of the Shi'ar.

Nightcrawler Is A Demon

Chuck Austen's run on X-Men is regarded by many readers as the low point for Marvel's mutant titles. In addition to adding a Mary Sue version of his wife, as well as making Havoc his own avatar; and having Angel have sex with the then underage Husk in front of her family, he also tweaked a couple of characters in a rather odd way. The most notable of these was to explain Nightcrawler's demonly looks as a result of him actually being part-demon. Turns out that Nightcrawler's mother, Mystique, hooked up with the demon Azazel, who sired a number of teleporting mutant babies, in the hopes of them breaking him out of Hell. So, Kurt Wagner, the almost priest and one of the most religious of the X-Men, was actually half demon

Rape Makes You Deep

Black Cat, Catwoman, Sue Dibny. What links these characters? They had rape retconned into their background as a way of making them edgier. It's lazy writing, offensive, and a cheap ploy to pad out the background of the characters. Sue Dibny's was particularly bad, because it was used as part of the Identity Crisis crossover, which helped turn DC into a far more dark 'n' gritty place, with almost no place for frivolity or fun.

Hal Jordan and The Space Bug

When Hal Jordan turned into the maniacal Parallax, it was originally a story of a superhero who cracked under the weight of his responsibilities. The entire population of his hometown, Coast City, was killed by the villainous Mongol, and Hal Jordan was driven mad with grief. Convinced that with more power he could bring them back to life, Jordan slaughters his way through the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians of the Universe, and absorbs a huge amount of power, becoming the villain Parallax.

Hal eventually redeems himself, re-igniting the Sun and thus sacrificing his life, during a storyline called Final Night. The retcon was that Hal Jordan didn't break under the grief of the deaths of 7 million people that he'd sworn to protect, but rather he was under the influence of a yellow space bug called Parallax, which was the personification of fear. Thus, Hal Jordan came back as an unblemished character, who never did anything wrong.

Cassandra Cain Goes Evil, Gains Mastery of English Language

Cassandra Cain was the modern Batgirl. Trained as an assassin from a young age, she rebelled against her past to join the Bat family. She kicked ass and took names, but couldn't speak, read or write. Eventually, she managed to learn basic English, and became a core figure in the Bat books, and a tireless crime fighter. Then, during the One Year Later timeshift, she suddenly had a perfect grasp of English, and was the leader of the League of Assassins, the same organization that had brutally trained and abused her since her childhood, and from which she had escaped. This was eventually explained through mind control drugs, but was still completely out of character.

Hawkman, Reincarnated Egyptian or Space Cop?

Originally, Hawkman was an archaeologist who turned out to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince. He flew around with wings made of the mysterious Nth metal, and hit things with a mace. Accompanying him was his reincarnated girlfriend, Hawkgirl. Then, in the Silver Age, DC made Hawkman and Hawkgirl space cops from the planet Thanagar.

Following this, there were multiple interpretations of the characters, sometimes simultaneously — the Hawks were reincarnated Egyptian lovers, alien police officers, or some combination of both. New background and retcon piled on top of one another, until no one knew what the actual background of everyone's favorite flying violence users. Just when you thought they couldn't get any more confusing, a 1990s comic explained that Hawkman was actually a Native American shaman who talked to spirit guide animals.

Presently, it's been established that all incarnations, regardless of origin, are the reincarnated souls of those Egyptian lovers, who were then exposed to Thanagarian technology. Their love is so powerful that it's become the source of all energy for all the Star Sapphires, superpowered women, in the current run of Green Lantern.

Teenage Tony Stark

At some point in the terrifying decade of comics known as the 90s, we learned that Iron Man (Tony Stark) had been under the control of Kang the Conqueror for years. Tony turned evil and killed someone. (Later, it was retconned that this wasn't actually Kang the Conqueror, but another villain, Immortus, in disguise.)

So, naturally, the Avengers went into an alternate timeline, and brought a teenaged Tony Stark forward in time to the present to fight the older Tony. Don't ask. So for a while, Tony was a teenager, until teenage Tony was killed fighting Onslaught, and adult Tony was brought back to life in another parallel universe, during the Heroes Reborn event. Eventually, this was folded in to normal Marvel continuity, and everyone forgot it ever happened. Bad writing, covered with bad retcons, and best forgotten.

Spider-man, Avatar of The Spider God

Spider-man was originally a science hero. Bitten by a radioactive spider, Peter Parker gained the proportional strength of an arachnid, the ability to cling to walls, and the uncanny ability to sense danger. Fashioning mechanical web-shooters, he fought crime as the Spectacular/Amazing/Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man.

After the massive success of the first Spider-man film, though, he was given biological web shooters, to make him more in line with the movie version. Under the stewardship of writer J. Michael Straczynski, it was revealed that the bite that brought Peter his powers wasn't a coincidence, but rather Peter was linked to a totemic Spider God who influenced him. Shortly after, Peter was mortally wounded, built a cocoon, and came out with additional powers, including wrist stingers, a poisonous bite, the ability to talk to arthropods, and night vision. Another side effect of Brand New Day was everyone, including Spider-man, forgetting about his new powers.

This has been the dream of science-fiction fans and science-fiction authors since the days of "Clone Of My Own" (which is usually attributed to Isaac Asimov, but who knows if it's actually by him?) "Clone Of My Own" goes:

Oh, give me a clone
Of my own flesh and bone
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And after it's grown,
Then my own little clone
Will be of the opposite sex.

Clone, clone of my own,
With its Y chromosome changed to X.
And when I'm alone
With my own little clone
We will both think of nothing but sex.

There are about 29 versus more, but you get the idea. Actually, after reading authors like John Varley and Ursula K. Le Guin, the whole idea of the "opposite" sex has been thrown into question — surely, once we can all reconfigure our bodies at will, eventually we'll have some sort of sex tesseract.

But for now, here are the ways that science fiction offers, for us to meet our opposite-sex duplicates (and in some cases, have sex with them):

1) Cloning.

House Of Suns by Alastair Reynolds:

Abigail Gentian, a wealthy woman, decides to explore the vastness of the stars — she she has herself cloned a number of times, and some of the clones are male while others are female. They all share Abigail's memories, and Abigail herself joins them without knowing which of them is the "real" her. And these "shatterlings" have sex — a lot. Especially in the novella Thousandth Night, there are tons of orgies in which all of the clones get together, making it a certainty that the "real" Abigail has been with her clones.

Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein:

Lazarus Long is the world's oldest human, and he decides not to undergo rejuvenation therapy, thus sentencing himself to death. His descendants convince him to keep on living, but he'll only do it if he gets to have a new experience — so two of his descendants become impregnated with opposite-sex clones of Lazarus. And after the opposite-sex clones of Lazarus are born, Lazarus raises them as his own daughters... and then has sex with them, of course.

"Nine Lives" by Ursula K. Le Guin:

This Nebula-nominated novelette, first published in Playboy, features a set of clones of a man named John Chow who died in a car accident, and some of them are female:

"All chips off the old block," Martin said valiantly. "But how can . . . some of you be women . . .?"

Beth took over: "It's easy to program half the clonal mass back to the female. Just delete the male gene from half the cells and they revert to the basic, that is, the female. It's trickier to go the other way, have to hook in artificial Y chromosomes. So they mostly clone from males, since clones function best bisexually."

Sadly, nine out of ten clones are killed, forcing the remaining clone to deal with unaccustomed solitude.

The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley:

The character Tweed has clones who are male and female clones of the same individual, called Vaffa or sometimes Hygeia. They're super-strong, super-big and lethal.

NYX and various other X-Men comics:

X-23, a female clone of Wolverine, first appeared in the X-Men: Evolution animated series, but then made the leap to comics, just like Harley Quinn. Despite looking kind of silly, she's manage to stick around long enough to get her own miniseries and have her backstory explained. I don't think she and Logan ever hooked up, but they have fought, which is almost the same thing when you come down to it.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:

As Zaphod Beeblebrox explains, the girl Lintilla "has now been cloned over five-hundred-and-seventy-eight-thousand-million times - and has thus created a problem in some quarters." All of the Lintilla clones are female — but the anti-clones, sent to get rid of the infestation of female clones, are male versions of Lintilla called Allitnil. When a Lintilla and an Allitnil come together, he gets the Lintilla to "agree to cease to be" — but Arthur Dent takes a liking to one of the Lintillas, and kills her particular Allitnil.

Hunted by James Alan Gardner:

Edward York is an illegal clone of one of the Admirals on the High Council, and due to genetic problems he's a bit stupid. But a female clone of the Admiral, named Samantha, turns out super-smart and resourceful. Together, Edward and Samantha travel, as brother and sister, travel to the planet Troyen to try and negotiate a peace between two alien species, the Mandasars and the Fasskisters.

Kyle XY:

Kyle and his fellow vat-baby Jessi aren't strictly speaking clones, because I think they had different genetic stock — as far as I can remember, Kyle came from Adam and Jessi came from Sarah. But they do come from the same vat, and they resulted from the same super-baby program. So they could be considered akin to clones, sort of. Worth mentioning, anyway.

Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Clone Saga:

Can't believe I forgot this one, since I have the trades at home. In the Ultimate version of the Clone Saga, they clone Peter Parker several times... including a female version called Jessica Drew. And Jessica has all of Peter's memories — S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to erase Jessica's memories and set her up with a new identity, but she escapes and takes on the identity of Spider-Woman. Thanks, kwschuttler!

2) Alternate universes

Parallellities by Alan Dean Foster:

Max, the main character of this novel travels through the multiverse, and finally meets an alternate female version of himself — and has sex with her. Later, he manages to find an entire planet populated by copies of himself. As the back cover copy explains:

Now Max was lost in a virtual sea of collateral worlds, confronting man-eating aliens, dinosaurs, talking frogs, dead Maxes, girl Maxes, old Maxes, even ghost Maxes. His only chance to escape the space-time continuum was to find Boles and hope the loony genius could rescue him. But how could he be sure which world was real, which Max was Max, and which Boles was the Boles who could stop the madness—or trap Max in the wrong world forever. . . ?

Red Dwarf, "Parallel Universe":

Our gang finds a device that's supposed to transport them home to Earth instantly — but instead it zaps them into an alternate universe. There, they meet alternate versions of themselves, including female versions of Lister and Rimmer (and Cat's counterpart is a Dog.) Rimmer has to fight off his female counterpart's sexual advances, while Lister actually does wind up in bed with his female version, Deb. And because in this alternate universe, it's the men who get pregnant, Lister winds up carrying his alternate self's baby.

Sliders:

Thanks to Xicer for pointing out this one: in the episode "Double Cross," Quinn meets an evil female duplicate of himself from (of course) another universe, and almost makes out with her:

Transition by Iain Banks:

This dimension-jumping novel mentions that it's quite common to enter the body of your alternate-universe self and find that the alternate self is the opposite sex. This is a known syndrome, which causes some discomfort or confusion among the universe-hoppers whom it happens to.

3) Time travel

"All You Zombies" by Robert A. Heinlein:

This story features a young man who's tricked into impregnating his younger, female self — because it turns out he had a futuristic sex change at some point, which the reader doesn't realize at first. And then it turns out that he's actually the child of that union, meaning that he's his own mother and father — the mother of all time paradoxes, in other words.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold:

Daniel Eakins travels backwards and forwards in time many times, meeting himself and having sex with himself — over and over and over. But after a ton of trips, he actually meets an alternate-universe version of himself who was born female, and they shack up together at the beginning of time. It goes great for a while, until they get fed up with each other, and then Daniel's time-traveling female counterpart manages to erase herself completely from Daniel's timeline, so Daniel can never find her again.

Needless to say, this post would not have been nearly as fascinating without TVTropes.org, the fountain of all greatness. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Let's start with Electropolis, the new Dark Horse collection of Dean Motter's Retrofuture Deco Noir story (Preview here). Filled with robot detectives, femme fatales and the power of electricity, it's just one of many off-beat genre books appearing at comic book stores this week.

And if Electropolis' pulp fiction is your thing, then maybe the Batman/Doc Savage Special (Dark Knight Detective versus Man of Bronze!) will also float your boat, after all. Or maybe Sky Doll: Doll Factory, a collection of unseen material from the awesome European strip Sky Doll, will provide your reading material for the next few days.

But if you prefer your heroines a little less suggestible than Sky Doll, the first issue of Tank Girl: Skidmarks is probably more your speed. Unsurprisingly, we'd also point you in the direction of the debut of Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows, but we're biased.

Maybe you're looking for something you've already seen in major motion pictures? That's okay; not only is there a preview issue of the new series of Wall-E, but there's also Star Wars Purge: Seconds To Die, which follows a young Darth Vader killing off as many Jedi as possible, post Revenge of The Sith. And that's not all! There's also a paperback collection of DC/Wildstorm's recent The X-Files series.

For those who can't get enough of those superheroes, then I'd recommend the first issue of Warren Ellis' Supergod, his latest "What if superheroes were bastards?" series. Or, on the opposite end of the superhero spectrum, the Absolute Justice hardcover, collecting Alex Ross' expansive love letter to the Super Friends (No, really).

In between those two extremes, there's Dynamite's Project Superpowers: The Black Terror Vol. 1 collection, DC's Green Lantern: Agent Orange collection, which leads into the current Blackest Night storyline, Supergirl: Who Is Superwoman? (in which Sterling Gates and Jamil Igle manage to undo years of abuse and make Supergirl a likable, working character again - good job, people) and the Authority: The Lost Year Reader (reprinting Grant Morrison and Gene Ha's two completed issues of their abandoned run, ahead of Keith Giffen and other artists aiming to complete the story in their absence).

There's also Marvel's PunisherMax (Yes, one word. It's the new "mature readers" title for the character, and maybe Marvel thinks pushing words together is more adult?), Green Hulk/Red Hulk collection (Heroes' writer Jeph Loeb writes a couple of gamma-irradiated monsters in a couple of adventures), the first issue of Strange (Mark Waid's reboot of the former Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme). And also, there's all manner of X-Men books: the Dark Avengers/X-Men: Utopia collection, as well as collections of Wolverine: Tales of Weapon X, Wolverine Weapon X: Adamantium Men and Wolverine/Gambit. All your Wolverine needs should definitely be met this week, let's face it.

If there are any other needs looking unserviced, I'd recommend checking out the complete list of books shipping from Diamond Distributors this week, and then remembering that your local comic book store can be found here. If this week seems overly expensive, don't worry; there's an entire skip week at the end of the year to get some of that money back. Look at it as a loan. Or something.

While present-day Marvel finds itself beginning to tie up their uber-story Dark Reign with this week's Dark Reign: The List - Wolverine and Dark Reign: The List - Punisher, the future presents itself in the form of the Wolverine: Old Man Logan hardcover collection, which can best be described as "What if Mad Max met The Unforgiven, only it was about Wolverine and took place in the future and guest-starred lots of over the top parodies of other Marvel characters as their own 'descendants'?" A particularly guilty pleasure, perhaps, but definitely one that hits a particular target.

Similarly on the "If you like this kind of thing, you'll love this," DC's Ambush Bug: Year None finally finishes its six-issue run with this week's seventh issue - which replaces the much-delayed and rumored-to-be-so-controversial-it-was-killed-by-editorial sixth, originally due out months ago... and that explanation is, oddly enough, one of the best examples of the sense of humor required to enjoy Keith Giffen's weird affectionate superhero parody. More straight-ahead DC thrills can be found in Arkham Reborn - which begins the reconstruction of Batman's favorite lunatic asylum, destroyed after Bruce Wayne died/went time-traveling involuntarily - and World's Finest, which brings together characters from Superman and Batman's supporting casts to solve crimes and compare sales figures.

Elsewhere, Dark Horse has a special issue of the Hellboy spinoff Abe Sapien, as part of its new initiative to get readers to try out new series and franchises (or comics, in the first place; the upcoming Doctor Horrible special is likely to entice some newbies into the fold, I think.)

And those who like that kind of thing are highly recommended to also pick up SLG's Pinnochio: Vampire Slayer graphic novel, wherein Gepetto's little boy realizes that life without cutting your nose off to stake the undead with just isn't worth wishing for. Yes, it's as odd and wonderful as that sounds.

Those looking for nostalgic thrills updated for a new cynical age could do a lot worse than the collection of GI Joe: Cobra, the mini-series I raved about recently (It really is very good.) And for those looking for a beautifully illustrated, touchingly gentle piece of storytelling, the hardcover collection of P. Craig Russell's adaptation of The Sandman: The Dream Hunters can't be beaten; I'd even argue that it's better than Gaiman's prose original.

Just like every week, the complete list of comics reaching comic stores tomorrow can be found here, and your local comic store can be found here. And, if you happen to have some spare change left in your pocket once you've picked up everything you're looking for...? Grab a copy of Boom!'s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep #5; I've got a text piece about Philip K. Dick in the back, and I need all the help I can get, coming after Warren Ellis, Matt Fraction, Rockne S. O'Bannon and Ed Brubaker's efforts...

Well, watching the movies? Not necessarily a bad idea. Watching Ultimate Avengers: The Movie, Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise Of The Panther (Well, kind of. See below), The Invincible Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Next Avengers and the Hulk Vs. movies in one sitting? One of the dumber ideas I've had in a long time. I love superheroes as much as the next man - even if the next man is Stan Lee himself - but I now believe that the human mind has a limit when it comes to this kind of thing. And that that limit is somewhere around four hours... Which, considering these DVDs average 70 minutes each, is a shame.

Ultimate Avengers: The Movie


On the one hand, I can understand why Marvel went with this for their first direct-to-DVD animated movie: It's pretty much a straight adaptation of the first volume of a critically-acclaimed reworking of the origins of a franchise featuring some of their biggest names. On the other, much of the reason for that critical acclaim had to do with the "mature" tone that's pretty much stripped away in this movie, leaving what really feels pretty much like a particularly grim, overlong episode of a generic superhero cartoon show. There's no real excitement here in the writing, performances or visuals; it's just... there. I have the feeling that, if I was fourteen and hated the world but still thought Captain America was awesome, it might be better, but as it is...? Not the greatest start to the viewing marathon.

Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise Of The Panther


And here's a bad sign for the rest of the movie marathon. Perhaps sensing how little I enjoyed Ultimate Avengers, the DVD Gods took pity on me: The review copy of this disc wouldn't play. But judging by the trailer, this is a weird mash-up of the Black Panther's first appearance in Fantastic Four and a retread of the Ultimates villains, which is... um... interesting, perhaps? I'm not feeling too bad for missing this.

The Invincible Iron Man


If nothing else, this movie makes you appreciate Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. just that little bit more by how clumsily it handles Tony Stark's origins at That Guy In The Robot Suit. Yes, bringing in the Mandarin gives the movie more visual impact, but almost everything else that they change - whether it's the "I'm under investigation by the FBI so I'll just hang out in the alley beside my work" scenes or the "I hate you, Dad! I hate you I hate you I've bought the company somehow and you can run it because I love you" plot - would bring you as close to nerdtears as it did me. It's at this point that I start to wonder how much Marvel Animation is/was being used as a testing ground for the live-action movies, and whether the Iron Man movie was so good because they looked at this and saw what didn't work. Meanwhile, visually, everyone still looks very generic. For a comic book company with such strong artists, it's really surprising that Marvel seemed to be happy with such dull visuals for their animated movies (Compare and contrast with any of the DC animated projects of, what, the last two decades? Or most of Cartoon Network's output, for that matter).

Doctor Strange: The Sorceror Supreme


Here's the first piece of magic about the Doctor Strange movie: It seemed like it would never end. Also, and maybe it's because I was struggling to pay attention at this point, I'm not sure that it really made sense. It's another origin story with additions to make it more like a movie and less like something Stan Lee and Steve Ditko came up with in a mix of inspiration and deadline sweat but, just like in Invincible Iron Man, the new stuff - like the addition of a magical super team that recruits Strange so that he can learn about magic - just serves to confuse and bog down the movie and fill it with non-descript characters it's hard to care about. Watching so many of these in a row, I've started to realize how bad the characterization has been in these movies so far - either it's pretty much non-existant (the super team here are cannon fodder, really) or done with no subtlety whatsoever (Strange's switch from asshole to good guy, complete with "What about the children?" dialogue). Fans of the crazy Steve Ditko designs of the original comic will want to stay away; this is another - and, thankfully, the last - of the visually boring movies, completely lacking the off-kilter plasticity of the comic at its best.

Next Avengers: Heroes Of Tomorrow


Is it so wrong to want to kiss a movie? Probably, particularly an animated movie full of kids. But, really; after the last four movies, Next Avengers seemed like the greatest thing in the world - Fast-moving, original (Well, as original as a mash-up of Young Avengers and Avengers Next could be, but not an adaptation, at least) and with some interesting character design? I'll take several, please. Yes, it theoretically skews younger than the other movies, but somehow felt like it was pandering less (And, really, starting a movie with "Oh, all your favorite superheroes? They're either dead, abandoning their offspring - Yeah, really, nice move Thor - or enslaved by the bad guy" shows that this isn't exactly the most comforting movie you can imagine for kids) and if skewing younger means more enjoyable, then I'd be happy if Marvel kept doing movies for young'uns. The first genuinely good movie of the bunch, although I may be grading on a curve and/or lost whatever critical faculties I've had by this point.

Hulk Vs.

Easily the best of the bunch, Hulk Vs. is a weird split-DVD, offering two 45-ish minute movies, Hulk Vs. Wolverine and Hulk Vs. Thor and both of them are better than... well, everything else I've watched so far, apart from maybe Next Avengers. Ignore the title, though, because in both cases, the Hulk is kind of a bystander/McGuffin for the guest-star to jump off've and shine, and of the two episodes, the Thor one is by far the best. With a plot straight out of a mid-1970s issue of Marvel Team-Up (Loki brings the Hulk to Asgard to fuck with Thor! And it all goes wrong!) and a couple of unexpected twists (The death of one of the title characters, for example) packed into its short running time, it offers the kind of fast-paced thrills and spills I'd been looking for all along. Hulk Vs. Wolverine, meanwhile, feels like an odd mix of the comic book and movie versions of the character's history, as the rest of Weapon X try and take Wolverine back "home" and the Hulk complicates matters. It's... interesting, I guess, but feels more like the middle chapter of something instead of a standalone story by itself. But, again, it's better-written and more enjoyable than the earlier movies, and both Thor and Wolverine edge ever closed to a distinct visual style that the movies have lacked up to this point. Of the six DVDs, it's the only one I'd really recommend to anyone other than a Marvel completist, or animation masochist.

Watching all six of the movies so close together, you can see their evolution and understandable growing pains, from adaptations to all-new stories with Next Avengers and Hulk Vs., and also visually and in terms of trying to work out how to tell their stories - Both Next and Hulk feel rooted more in fan-friendly continuity, but that also makes them less bogged down with the need to explain everything, making them more enjoyable to watch for new viewers, ironically. Even though the movies are clearly improving, there's still a reverence to the original comics that holds the cartoons back in a way that, say, Batman: The Animated Series or The Brave and The Bold don't share - The people involved seem too concerned with keeping the spirit of continuity alive, at times, instead of the spirit of the characters, and the result is writing that feels lifeless at times, even in Hulk Vs. Wolverine. As soon as they can work out how to replicate the live-action movies' ability to pick and choose what works, and as soon as the powers that be look for bolder ways to visualize those stories, then they'll be in good shape. For now, what's there is a public growth from awkward beginnings to... well, an only slightly less awkward present.

The Marvel Animation 6 Film Set is available now.

Unsurprisingly, the second Wolverine movie was considered the furthest along in terms of pre-production, with Donner saying,

What's cool about this part of the saga is that Wolverine will be fighting in a different style to what we've seen before. Mariko's father has this stick-like weapon, so Wolverine will have to fight against that. There'll be samurai, ninja, katana blades, different forms of martial arts - mano-a-mano, extreme fighting. We're going to come up with a new style of fighting. It's going to be awesome.

When it came to Wolverine's spin-off, Deadpool, however, Donner offered up a surprising bit of news:

I want to ignore the version of Deadpool that we saw in Wolverine and just start over again. Reboot it. Because this guy talks, obviously, and to muzzle him would be insane... We're right in the thick of talking to writers right now, and hopefully by November we'll have decided who's going to do it. We need someone really imaginative because we want to do some really innovative, ambitious stuff. Ryan's mentioned this in an interview already but there are parts where he's going to break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience in the cinema. We have to work out how to do that. I don't know that Fox will agree with all our decisions, but we'll see!

Equally surprising was her take on the delay in making the long-discussed X-Men Origins: Magneto:

I'm not sure that film is going to be made. The studio has a wealth of potential stories, and they have to stand back and decide which ones to make. And Magneto, I think, is at the back of the queue. Maybe it'll get made in five years - who knows? I can tell you that Ian McKellen won't be playing the character the whole way through. We used Lola technology in X-Men 3 to de-age Ian and Patrick for one scene, but it's very expensive. To do that for a two-hour movie would be prohibitive financially.

Meanwhile, Gossip Girl and The OC creator Josh Schwartz's X-Men First Class may be heading in a different direction to what we'd been expecting:

Harry Potter is a bit of a role model for us, absolutely. But we want it to be like the recent, darker Potters. It should not be a kiddie movie - we're in the X-Men world so you can't suddenly change the tone... We want to make this a franchise, following these kids at the school, so the casting of the child actors will be all-important.

No more Magneto movie, and seven years of First Class? Here's hoping Donner manages to convince Fox of her plans...

The Future Of The X-Men Franchise [Empire Online]

Perhaps because Marvel were worried that we'd be bored otherwise, the House of Ideas is putting out a star-studded week of new releases this week, with the special Deadpool #900 issue, a new Spider-Man anthology series (Web of Spider-Man), the one-shot Iron Man: Iron Protocols (written by Surrogates creator Robert Venditti!) and the collected edition of long-running-but-that's-only-because-it-was-horribly-delayed-in-the-middle Ultimate Wolverine Versus Hulk, as written by Lost's Carlton Cuse.

IDW keeps the big name action going: The publisher puts out Star Trek: Countdown (the surprisingly enjoyable prologue to the JJ Abrams movie, starring the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) Also, there's Star Trek: Crew (Another surprise, as John Byrne follows the early career of Number One - from "The Cage" - and makes it work.) Plus Seduth 3-D from Clive Barker (as previewed yesterday) and Left Undead, a new take on that old "cop-killed-then-brought-back-by-voodoo" idea from Lost writer Paul Zbyszewski.

If you'd rather read some George Lucas-inspired comics, Dark Horse has a special #0 issue prologue for Star Wars: Invasion, as well as the deco noir of Dean Motter's Mister X: Condemned.

DC, meanwhile, corners its own version of the horror market, with the massive Absolute Death slipcovered collection of Neil Gaiman's goth avatar of release, a new collected edition of Judd Winick's vampire story Blood And Water, and the fun House of Mystery Hallowe'en Annual, showcasing some of Vertigo's current and upcoming series.

All of that, however, is just an appetizer to the Act-I-Vate Primer, a hardcover collection of work from the self-styled "premier webcomics collective". Offering 16 original stories by some of webcomics' brightest and best, it's easily the best of a strong bunch this week.

As usual, you can see the full list of everything reaching comic stores tomorrow here and then find your local comic store here. Just remember to support the internet in your analog purchases, if you know what I'm saying.

These images aren't some kind of Marvel sell-out, however; for one thing, artist Murphy works for the competition, under contract to DC Comics. Although that hasn't stopped Marvel from making overtures nonetheless:

I've been approached by two Marvel editors who want me to "switch teams" once my DC exclusive is done, so maybe something with the ABCs can be worked out if that happens. But if you're looking to buy something then find me at a convention next year. My art dealer Paolo at Cadencecomicart.com is looking to make up prints. I'm thinking either prints of the whole alphabet, single prints of each letter, or custom prints for people who want their child's name spelled out for the nursery (which is why the series isn't too violent). Maybe all three. I'll do a poll at some point to see what people would be interested in.

We admit, we're up for a print of the whole thing, but we'll settle for whatever we can get - and look forward to Murphy finishing the series in the meantime.

Sean Murphy's Gallery [DeviantArt] (Via)

You can't turn on the TV with out running into a little bit of Furry fodder these days. The fur love is practically being courted in Hollywood. So I rounded up the best of the best, and tried my darndest to rank them by Furry sex appeal. Do you agree with the winners and the furry losers?

Variety reports that Jackman is in talks to star in Shawn Levy's movie, based upon a short story by I Am Legend author Richard Matheson, where a former boxer becomes a robot boxing promoter who discovers both a son he never knew he had as well as a seemingly-unbeatable robotic boxing champ.

While we have no doubt that Jackman will kill in the role, we're concerned that he's milking his Wolverine geek cred for all it's worth... and it's working. Suddenly, we're finding ourselves interested in the movie for the first time ever. Maybe it's us that need the intervention.

Jackman Tests Mettle with "Real Steel" [Variety]

MTV's Splash Page blog noticed that Tim Pocock, who played the young Cyclops in this summer's retro X-Men movie had left the following update on Twitter:

currently shooting Australian TV series till February 2010...then X-men first class ;)
If true, this is the first hint that Fox's much-discussed semi-reboot to the franchise — Following X-Men Origins: Wolverine continuity, but flashing back to before the first X-Men movie — will be shooting as early as next year, but with no announcement concerning director or stars of the movie, it's possible that Pocock may just be being hopeful with his tweet. We'll wait and see whether Fox sneaks any news out before the end of the year.

Deadgirl
What to do when you find a corpse chained to a table, and then discover that said corpse isn't actually dead? If nothing else, this dark comedy horror will make you realize that any answers you'd come up with to that question would be better than what happens here.

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor
Davids Tennant and Morrissey team up to take on Dervla Kirwan's villainous Miss Hartigan as the BBC mysteriously release last year's Christmas special after the already-out Planet Of The Dead special. Well, it is all time-travel, I guess...?

Primeval Vol. 2
The unintended end of the series can be found in this 3 disc box set that, despite the confusing title, actually contains the third season of the now-canceled show.

Sanctuary: The Complete First Season
See? This is how you name your DVD releases, clear and simple. Although, if they'd wanted to be completely descriptive, they would've called it The Complete First Season With Commentaries On All The Episodes, The Original Webisodes And Some Other Special Features. But that may have taken up too much room on the packaging.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Clone Commandos
A second selection of episodes from the first season of the Cartoon Network show that reminds people that, while war may be hell, Star Wars is just a pretty bad heck. Or perhaps a goshdarnit, at most.

X-Men Vol. 3: The Marvel Collection
X-Men Vol. 4: The Marvel Collection
Two more collections of episodes from the 1990s cartoon to remind people that, before there were X-Men movies that didn't match up to the Batman ones, there were X-Men cartoons that didn't match up to the Batman ones. But then again, I liked Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, so what do I know?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Talking of X-Men movies, here's this summer's installment, allowing you to study the acting talents of Will-I-Am at your leisure. Also, with the ability to skip chapters, you can pretend that Gambit doesn't exist, which will immediately make the movie better.

Sept 22
Battle for Terra
It was the CGI movie you kept seeing trailers for, but don't actually remember seeing in theaters - and now it's out on DVD for you to ignore at home, too.

Clive Barker's Book Of Blood
Yes, yes; it was Books of Blood when the books were originally written, but times are hard for everyone, and movie didn't have the largest of budgets, so some cutbacks were inevitable (It's actually premiering on Syfy this week, for those who want a preview).

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto
If the idea of an animated movie based on a comic book about a superheroic masked wrestler created by Rob Zombie doesn't interest you, maybe the cast list - which includes Paul Giamatti, Rosario Dawson and Brian Posehn - will. Otherwise, we can't help you.

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins
Because, sometimes, you need a live action reboot of the Scooby Doo franchise by the man who directed the Flintstones live action movies. Of course, when we say "need," we may be using that word incorrectly. Nonetheless, this direct-to-DVD epic shows the first meeting of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scoob, and without the disturbing presence of either Sarah Michelle Gellar or Freddie Prinze Jr. So... potential win after all?

Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection Box Set
Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection Box Set
Paramount finds a new way to recycle the Star Trek movies with these new era-specific box sets. We look forward to the inevitable Star Trek: The Good Ones, You Know What We Mean box set within a year (Also: Am I the only one who was surprised to find out that there were four TNG movies, even though I've actually seen them all? I think I subconsciously try to pretend that Insurrection and Nemesis don't actually exist).

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete Second Season
Your chance to relive the only Terminator that mattered this year, despite that whole cancellation thing, with six discs full of episodes, commentaries and special features. Buy it in the hope that someone at Fox will change their mind when they see the sales figures.

Sept 29
Batman Collection: 4 Film Favorites Box Set
Those "film favorites" would be the Michael Keaton/Val Kilmer/George Clooney movies, by the way. It seems fair, because to add in either of the Chris Nolan-era movies - or even the 1966 Adam West one - would make any of these four seem somewhat lacking in comparison (Okay, maybe not Batman Returns).

Blade Collection: 4 Film Favorites Box Set
I know what you're thinking: "There were only three Blade movies, how can they have a 4 DVD box set?" The answer lies in including the pilot for the short-lived TV show in there, which seems like a slight cheat to me, but that's why I'm not a Warners Home Entertainment executive.

Hardware
Finally making it to DVD, Richard Stanley's 2000AD-inspired robot horror movie from 1990 finds a new, uncut and uncensored form to ensure that old-school fans will want to pick it up as well. If nothing else, how often do you see Iggy Pop and Lemmy in the same movie?

Monsters Vs. Aliens
Dreamworks Animation's love letter to old school B-movies proved to be much better than expected when it was released in theaters earlier this year, and the DVD - with special features on the making of the movie, deleted scenes and, bizarrely, a Dreamworks Animation Video Jukebox - aims on taking even more advantage of the impressionable hearts, minds and wallets of kids of all ages.

The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection Box Set
25 discs of animated paranormal activity, as the entire five year run of the 1980s (and early '90s) cartoon (including Slimer spin-off) gets collected in this insanely comprehensive box set that also has twelve hours of special features. You may never have to leave the house again. Or, at least, not for a few weeks.

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
The latest DC animated movie adapts Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness' fun, over the top tale of President Lex Luthor trying to turn the world against our favorite superheroes, only to (a) go insane in the process and (b) lead to the creation of a giant Superman/Batman composite robot. If they've not changed too much, this could be the guilty pleasure of the fall.

Ultraman: The Complete Series
...Or, perhaps, it could be this: A 4 disc box set collecting all 39 episodes of the mid-60s Japanese TV show that brought the madness and production values of Godzilla movies to television on a weekly basis. Robot superheroes versus monsters courtesy of Eiji Tsuburaya? Works for me.

Like the movie preview, we've split this preview into months (and, inside those months, into weekly releases), but with releases still unconfirmed and unannounced, we've pushed November and December together. Don't worry; it'll make sense when you click on the links below.

September
October
November/December

Commenting that the sequel to this summer's X-Men Origins: Wolverine will be closer to Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's 1982 mini-series than the original movie was to comic continuity - In part because, according to the producer,

there was a lot of different source material, a lot of different legends in Victor Creed's relationship to Logan and Logan's background. There were some choices we had to make

- Donner talked about the potential longevity of the movie series:

There's enough comic book material to support [a long-running series]. If we were to make up our own story, which we've never talked about, personally I would do it with Chris Claremont. I would stick with the creator... Chris is writing an amazing series right now where Wolverine's killed, Storm is the villain. Sure, one day I'd love to [do] that.

Donner's referring to the alternate world series X-Men Forever, in which Wolverine dies in the second issue - just like Claremont always wanted:

I always planned to kill him [during Claremont's original 16-year run on the X-Men series], but The Powers That Be wouldn't allow me to walk down that story path. I am so glad that I can take the characters on this particular journey now. It allows for real growth and change, and exciting possibilities. Doors that were locked can now be opened. Unfortunately, the general consensus in comics is that a character's death means The End. It's my strong belief that through such an emotionally fraught event as one character's death, the characters, the storyline, and the concept find new regenerative power and can grow stronger, for the future.

But would Fox really kill off Hugh Jackman to refresh the X-Men movie franchise?

Gavin Hood and Lauren Schuler Donner Talk Wolverine Blu-ray and Sequel [Latino Review]

Launching today, US visitors to Vringo's website can download video ringtones starring Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine, the X-Men and many other characters for video-ready mobile devices (Well, aside from iPhones, but additional devices are said to be coming soon) for just $1.99 each. We have to admit; we're suckers for the old 1960s Marvel cartoon theme songs, so it's kind of tempting...

Marvel Video Ringtones [Vringo]

We know, we know: the Hollywood development cycle is a slow, lumbering beast. It can take anywhere from a couple years (for a "fast-track" project) to a decade for a movie to see the light of day. But given how many people were saying, this time last year, that The Dark Knight had changed everything, you'd expect there to be at least some films in development, if not in pre-production or actually filming.

And there don't seem to be any movies in "the pipeline" that seem consciously influenced by TDK. Here are a few possible contenders:

• Super-Max. Written by TDK co-writer David S. Goyer, this film has obvious elements in common with Knight. From the scraps we've gleaned, it's about the snotty trust-fund superhero Green Arrow, who gets sent to prison, probably for a crime he didn't commit. And he has to escape from the world's toughest, most advanced prison by teaming up with a host of DC Comics supervillains. Gritty dark action? Check. Moral ambiguity? Check. Heroes who cross the line? Pretty much. Too bad that every time we hear about this film, it sounds more and more like it's stuck in limbo.

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• Superman Returns (Again). Every time someone mentions doing another Superman movie in the wake of 2006's underwhelming Superman Returns, they say it'll feature a "dark" take on the Last Son Of Krypton, influenced by Christopher Nolan's take on Batman. Says Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov, "We're going to go dark, to the extent that the character will allow." More recently, rumored Super-director James McTeigue said something similar. But this "darker" Man Of Steel movie is still stuck in limbo, and Warner Bros. execs told a courtroom that they don't see much box-office potential in another Superman movie. (Granted, they were trying to get out of having to pay Superman's creators' heirs tons of money for Hollywood rights.) In fact, when they talk about doing a "darker" Superman movie, it's usually said with an air of "Well, nobody really wants to make a Superman movie, but if you put a gun to our heads, we'd do a darker one." The confusing copyright situation with Superman means they have to start development on a new Superman film in the next few years, but assuming Warners gets more enthusiasm for the cinematic Man Of Steel again, they'll probably rediscover their love for his fun, escapist side.
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• The Fantastic Four. News sites started claiming last spring that Fox was considering rebooting this super-family series as a darker, "less bubble-gum" version. And now, just the other day, Fox announced it was definitely rebooting the Fantastic Four. On the other hand, they tapped the decidedly non-dark Akiva Goldsman (Batman And Robin, I Am Legend) to produce the new movie, and
  Michael Greene, writer for Smallville, Heroes and the upcoming Green Lantern movie, will write the script. I am having a hard time imagining that team creating a "dark" FF movie. Plus everyone assumes Fox's sudden interest in moving forward with Reed Richards & Co. was motivated by Disney's purchase of Marvel, and the fact that Disney reportedly wants to take back all of the Marvel properties' movie rights as soon as outside deals expire. If Fox wants to impress Disney, a misguided "dark" Fantastic Four doesn't seem a likely approach.
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• Shazam. It's hard to believe, but yes, they were talking about a dark Shazam movie in the wake of The Dark Knight. This is the story of a little boy who discovers a magic cave full of statues of the Deadly Sins, plus an old wizard who teaches him a magic world that will transform him into a big galoot whose nickname is The Big Red Cheese. And then he fights an evil mad-science worm with the help of a talking tiger. Actually, screenwriter John August and director Peter Segal wanted to do a fun, upbeat take on Shazam, but Warner Bros. wanted something more like The Dark Knight. So August rewrote his fun script to make it darker:

  This wasn't "Big, with super powers" anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn't the action-comedy I'd signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made.

  But then Warners pulled the plug on the Shazam movie altogether — remember how I said the enthusiasm for "dark" stories often seems to coincide with a lack of enthusiasm for making the movies at all? And now Shazam is back on track, with Bill Birch writing and comics scribe Geoff Johns pitching in. Says Variety, "The studio is now looking to go back to the original DC Comics source material for inspiration." Going back to the original comics source material is slang for "not fucking it up with a dark reimagining."

So what happened? There are a few theories.

Watchmen happened. You could argue that The Dark Knight changed everything, and then Watchmen changed it all back. Zack Snyder's movie version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel was everything the studios were saying they wanted: dark, controversial, morally gray, challenging — and it didn't resonate that well with audiences. It had a so-so opening weekend, followed by a steep drop-off. (Sample headline from the L.A. Times: "Watchmen is going largely unwatched.")

Another "dark" movie that came out this summer, Terminator Salvation, did similarly badly. (It wasn't strictly a superhero film, but it had superhero-ish themes, and starred Bruce Wayne himself, Christian Bale.) And while Frank Miller's The Spirit was more goofy than dark, it did have a noir-ish look to it and was the handiwork of the original "Dark Knight" reinventer.

Meanwhile, movies like G.I. Joe and Wolverine, which were fluffy and bubbly and only challenged you to avoid giggling at their ridiculous dialogue and acting, did great. Audiences didn't suddenly stop liking braindead fun just because they liked one smart, bleak movie.

Also, the economy happened. Suddenly, people were hurting and depressed, and there were a spate of news stories saying that people in an economic shitstorm want upbeat, happy films. They want escapism and a pick-me-up, not a dreadful reminder that life is full of no-win situations and suffering. Whether that theory is true or not, it's one that seems to have a lot of currency in Hollywood.

And finally, looking back through those articles where execs are saying "I want a dark Shazam! I want a dark Dazzler! America needs a dark Howard The Duck!", I can't help noticing that this is usually accompanied by a lack of enthusiasm for whatever superheroic properties they're discussing. Sure, superheroes are big right now, but not every superhero movie is a huge hit, and characters like Superman and the Fantastic Four have fallen squarely into the second or third tier of big-screen spandex-flexers in the past decade or so.

Execs cast about for ways to make those lame fillies run again, and the "dark" thing is one of the ideas they hit on. But at this point, nobody seems to think "dark" is a cure-all for tired superheroes. At least, let's hope not.

Naturalists have known for well over a century that the ribbed newt is capable of exposing its sharply pointed ribs when threatened, but it is only recently that zoologists at the University of Vienna have looked into the mechanism by which the creature protects itself. Using x-ray imaging, the zoologists have determined that the newt is able to move its rib cage while keeping the rest of its body still, creating enough pressure for the newt to pierce its own skin, so that the ribs can be used as a weapon against would-be predators.

Much like the X-Men mutant Wolverine, the ribbed newt is able to pop its bones back inside its body and quickly heal the skin after an attack, but this amphibian has an extra feature Logan doesn't. When stressed, it secrets a highly toxic poison, which coats the points of the rib bones as they pierce the skin. Thus, the ribs can deliver a quick shot of poison to any animal that tries to grab the newt, leaving the attacker to retreat in great pain.

Bizarre newt uses ribs as weapons [BBC via Reddit]