Welcome to the first regular round-up of book news, created for you, the literary geek!

Book News

First up, let's take a look at any breaking news in the world of geek fiction...

Gormenghast Rises Again

Any fans of the beautifully crafted Gormenghast series will be delighted to hear there's a new book on the way. I say “on the way”. It's already been written and has been for some time. It's just been mixed up in a line of mishaps and secrecy, not unlike the content of the famous books themselves.

When the author of the Gormenghast series, Mervyn Peake, sadly died of Parkinson's disease in 1968, he left behind notes, which were to become the fourth novel, Titus Awakes. These notes were kept and used by his wife, Maeve Gilmore to construct the book, but when completed, she hid it away in the attic of the family home. It's for this reason the book, has only just come to light, having been recently discovered recently by Peake's own granddaughter.

It will now be published in July 2011, to mark the centenary of Peake's birth, along with new editions of all the previous books, which, in turn, will include illustrations by the author himself. That's definitely a date to set in the diary.

SFFWorld.com  

Walking Dead comes to the smaller screen!

This news has been floating around the interwebs for a few months, but it’s still worth noting. We've seen many things go from page to screen, so it's no surprise that the gruesome yet compelling, Walking Dead comic book series, has been snatched up by a U.S. Cable channel AMC, who have ordered a pilot.

So, let’s cross our fingers and hope this won’t be another in a long line of book/comic adaptations that go horribly wrong and even end up hurting the reputation of the original. We can only hope that the presence of original writer, Robert Kirkman, on set as an Executive Producer, will go a long way to make sure this won't happen.

SlashFilm 

Nebula Award Nominees 2010

Well, the detail’s in the title. The Nebula Award Nominees for 2010 are out and listed on the official website. Go to NebulaAwards.com for more details. 

Out Now

Grave Secret by Charlaine Harris

Prefer True Blood? Then you might like this…

If you're getting into the recent TV hit, True Blood, then you might be interested to hear about another series by the same author. Grave Secret is the fourth book in a series detailing the life of Harper Connelly, an ordinary girl who can find dead people. She wasn't always this way. Being hit by a bolt of lightning gave her this gift, as well as giving her headaches, episodes of weakness and a large red spiderweb pattern all over her body. Not that this stopped her enjoying life, as she's currently dating her step brother. But she's too busy watching cops die and wondering who’s trying to kill her to get too hung up on the logistics of that romance. Zombies? Marvel-lous!

Marvel Zombies Return by Fred Van Lente

Like zombies? Like Marvel comics? Then you're probably already aware of the Marvel comic series. If not, I have some good news for you. Actually, I have good news for you either way. Marvel Zombies Return, is out now and promises to answer where in the world Spider-Man, Colonel America, Power Man, Giant-Man and Wolverine were transported to at the end of Marvel Zombies 2. Written by established Marvel Comics geek, Fred Van Lente, this promises to be a good read.

Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of The Species by Michael Keller, Illustrated by Nicolle Rager Fuller

Comic book Darwin reaches out to a new audience...

If Darwin was still alive, I like to think he'd appreciate his theories on evolution transcending the written word to the drawn picture. First published in 1859, Charles Darwin's Origin Of The Species radically changed people's perceptions on life itself and, to this day, is still one of the most prominent, important and historically significant books of our time. If you'd like to know more, but would like to be told through pretty pictures and colourful drawings, then this is the purchase for you.

Coming Soon

The Boys: The Self Preservation Society (Volume 6) by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson

The Boys are back...

Described as a “horrid, misogynist, juvenile, stupid and thoroughly jolly take on the men-in-tights myth" by The Independent,The Boys are back for their sixth book and are doing things their way. This turns out to annoy the established superhero teams enough to try and take the Boys down. Can Simon Pegg's doppleganger and his team handle the challenge?

Release date: May 28th

Eve: The Burning Life by Hjalti Danielsson

Eve Online – in a book...

Set in the Eve Online universe, the story revolves around immortal pilots called capsuleers and one woman named Drem, who seeks revenge on the evil deeds they have done. However, two problems confront her. Firstly, the fact she aided and profited from some of the capsuleers' evil deeds. Secondly, and perhaps insurmountably, the question, just how exactly do you kill an immortal?

Release date: Hardcover March 1st, Paperback September 9th

Old Classics

Finally, we finish the round-up by looking at old sci-fi classics that are just too good to forget. This week, it's a tear jerking story of science and mice. Well, one mouse in particular.

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes

First published in 1966, Flowers For Algernon won the Nebula Award for Best Novel the same year (although it shared this title with Babel-17) and has been an absolute classic ever since.

The story is told through the diary of Charlie Gordon, a good tempered, well meaning menial worker with an IQ of 68. When Charlie finds himself to be the successful result of an experiment in human intelligence enhancement he is understandably chuffed.

However, his newfound genius is so great that his intelligence soon soars above that of his own experimenters’ and, as a result, Charlie takes over his own case and begins studying what exactly caused his rapid IQ rise. He soon finds out, but at the same time spots a mistake in the original scientists’ working.

This discovery ensures that Charlie not only has to live with the knowledge that his genius is only temporary, but that he also has to watch Algernon’s, the original test subject for the experiment, rapid IQ decline first.

Scientists say, if you don’t get choked at this one, you officially have no soul.

We're planning to run this column on a regular basis - please leave your thoughts in the comments if you want to see more features like this!

After enjoying Harry's great ridiculous costumes in videogames piece the other day, it set me thinking about equivalents in the comic book world. Thus, here are some comic book character costumes that really should have stayed in the closet...

Havok: Sibling rivalry 

The younger brother of X-Men leader Cyclops, Alex Summers has always lived in his brother's shadow but, over time, has become a C-list fan favourite. Decked out in a cool all black costume his simple style should always be in fashion. That is until he thought it was a great plan to stick metal circles strapped to the top of his head...

Black Knight: Unloved Avenger

Having armour is cool, having a sword is cool and having a flying horse is cool. So, you would think that with all that coolness around the Black Knight would be cool too...?

Well, nope. Sorry about that. For all the bits and pieces that make the Black Knight on paper look like a top notch character, for some reason he just doesn't translate to a comic world. It might be that he can't run very fast being covered in armour, or that he sounds like a set of pots and pans as he moves, or maybe he can't hear anything in that massive helmet. But when the world needs saving and the Avengers gather, a lot of the time the Black Knight's nowhere to be seen. Maybe Captain America forgot to text him to invite him to the battle or something.

Nova: Cosmic Space case

Another in the long line of bucket-headed creations (see Black Knight above), Nova is a teenage space-faring policeman, serving out intergalactic justice and stopping aliens and neer-do-wells as part of the Nova Corps (think rip-off of Green Lantern Corps).

Thing is, if you were an intergalactic policemen you would have cool alien riot gear and a space-aged squad car, a laser truncheon or something. But nope, you get a shiny blue and yellow costume with a blurry star thing on it and a great big yellow helmet. Again, not to be funny, but in space maybe a space-suit would help, as this horrendous fashion faux pas looks very much like it would let ‘space' in, which is something you probably don't want if you want to breathe and well,...not die.

Cable: Maxi-pads

Heading back to the 90s now we see all the stereotypes of the age coming into play as Cable, quite frankly, sums up an entire decade of bad costumes. Is it practical to carry that many guns? What if you fall over and shoot yourself in the bum? Still, at least you could stop most of the damage from all the pads you are wearing.. shoulder-pads, groin pads, knee pads, the entire works. I am sure there is a bum pad in there, just in case. Really, if Rob Liefeld wanted the Michelin Man to join the X-Men, I am sure he would have obliged.

Invisible Woman: Just wrong

Now, I am sure that the abbreviaton ‘MILF' should not be used here on DoG, especially as a term about Susan Storm. But she does look like she's stepped out of Spearmint Rhino's a bit here, doesn't she?  Still, it was the 90s, after all, and the fashion comic-wise at the time was ‘less-is-more', and maybe that works. It looks a little bit dodgy from where I'm sitting, though...

Aquaman: Soggy hero

The king of Atlantis, the scourge of the seven seas and erm...he wears orange. You would think a character based in the water would at least dress like he lives in the sea, with blues, blacks or greens, but vivid orange seems to be the colour of choice. No wonder in the Super Friends cartoon Aquaman used to be on ‘guard duty' or something, as any villain seeing this embarrassing ensemble would just crumble in tears of laughter. Before killing him.

Wolverine: Bumblebee Ninja

Nothing says ‘ninja trained deadly assassin inspired by one of nature's most vicious predators' like a yellow and blue get-up with stripes and a winged helmet face mask thingy. You can understand why the original costumes in the X-Men movies were dumped for leather, as Wolverine's costume really is something that should never be seen on screen. Inappropriate, outlandish and truly hideous, if the ‘best he is at what he does' means getting dressed in the dark, then Logan is your man.

Robin: Questions abound

Batman's side-kick you would think would be dressed in shadow-enshrouded clothes like his mentor, intending to use all his stealth, cunning and guile to sneak up on his prey, but no...Robin wears, yellow, green and red shorts. Shorts so short that there should be some law or something to stop them. Also bare legs and little boots? No wonder there are questions raised about Batman and Robin's relationship

Iron Fist: 70s (un)cool

Sounding like a heavy metal band, or something that only ‘consenting adults' could do with each other, Danny Rand's superhero name leaves a lot to be desired, as does his attire, sticking very firmly as it does to its 1970s kung-fu roots. High collars that stop you seeing your opponent coming is only the first of many problems. Really, why fight in pumps and a bare chest in battle? It's just asking for trouble. Added to that fact, it's yellow and green and, really, there is nothing good going for this get-up at all.

Psylocke: Chafing

Another one from the X-Men roster, Betsy Braddock has an origin as convoluted and complex as they come, but when it comes to attire in battle, everything is on show. Now, I understand that comics are seen as male dominated fantasy and that the women in comics are often shown as objects of lust, but the practicalities of doing any fighting at all in a purple thong is beyond me. I am sure that not only would it be uncomfortable to wear, but if you are attacked by an evil mutant anywhere else than a beach at Rio, it would be very cold around the nether regions as well.

Leave your suggestions in the comments below...

It's easy to mumble and grumble about superhero comics: endless reboots, reinventions and wallet-draining events, seemingly tailored to maintain a semblance of a status quo and to not provide something truly different. Some readers have to look to the independent or creator-owned sectors for innovation, but even there it is hard for some properties to stand out.

With its bold premise and off-the-wall concept, not to mention an impressive list of contributors (including artistic powerhouses Jock, Lee Garbett and Sean Phillips), Andi Ewington's Forty-Five makes an intriguing first impression.

Facing the birth of his first child, journalist and soon-to-be-dad James Stanley ruminates over what the world will bring for his son or daughter. This being a society brimming with superheroes, some exhibiting their powers from birth, Stanley is particularly anxious about fathering his own super-spawn. To quell his worries, he engages in an ambitious project to interview dozens of heroes, families and fans, in order to find out if it is possible for these people to live a 'normal' life.

In the process, Ewington recalls graphic novel titans such as Watchmen and Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels, in an attempted representation of super-powered characters in a 'real world' context, bounded by more true-to-life socio-political structures, psychological backgrounds and familial relationships. More tangibly, Stanley's interviewees fill various demographic criteria, are sorted by age, from birth to death, and represent differing pressures and lifestyle choices that these super-beings have to face. 

This approach can feel a little tokenistic and unsubtle at times, with gay couples, working mums and long-lost fathers, but there is a welcome warmth to Forty-Five that is quite endearing. Some of the characters do stick, particularly an Iron Man-esque sell out called Roll Cage, whose high-powered suit and crime-fighting career is bankrolled by a transmedia circus, encompassing books, merchandise and a kids' television show.

Writing in a purely dialogue-based interview style is an unforgiving task - even actual interview articles with interesting subjects can be a slog to read - so Ewington has his work cut out for him. Not only is he tasked with crafting just shy of four dozen distinctive characters, but they have to be defined by voice and narrated through purely expository speech. All the strings are on full view at all times.

This is especially the case as Ewington deviates from the book's stronger themes in favour of highlighting XoDOS, a shady organisation that enlist and exploit heroes the world over in order to further an agenda of conspiracy and domination.

Not only does this development sit uncomfortably within Stanley's supposed project - to get to the heart of super-hero experience - but it inflates Forty-Five, turning something personal, charming and in its own way socially realistic, into something a little more pompous and overworked.

This subplot soon becomes the main narrative drive, as Stanley meets incognito ex-operatives in bars, and experiences a XoDOS-enacted hit on the immortal SkyLine. This is all narrated in bold text and jagged dialogue, the least-suited style imaginable. 

Forty-Five takes the atomic aspects of the comics form, namely, the creative marriage of words and pictures, and splits them apart. A typical double spread is rigidly defined, with slabs of prose and often gorgeous splash page artwork segregated by the Maginot Line of the central gutter. One would think this almost defeats the purpose of sequential art, but in a smart move from Ewington and editor Eddie Deighton, each interview is accompanied by an illustration from a different artist, building up an impressive and diverse roll call of talent from across the industry.

Indeed, the book's most immediate strength is as an interpretive art project, with the artists bouncing off the text as they see fit. Some work more traditionally, providing a straightforward comics page that narrates parallel to the interview, while others opt for atmospheric mood pieces, sumptuous character sketches, or artwork that is a little more ambitious. It's a treasure trove of styles and approaches. 

At their best, they expand the text's restricted perspective, with particular stand-outs including evocative images from Dom Reardon, depicting the terminally ill StateSide in hazy green tones, and Seb Antoniou, whose illustration for Jim Maloney has a homely texture, as the man is dwarfed by his superhero memorabilia collection.

By contrast, the twinned image for BlueSpear, by Calum Alexander Watt, is bright and manga-influenced, and pursues a different angle, reflecting the interview with Akira Tomikawa, brother of the hero, with a progression of snapshots linked by sound that build up a short, touching narrative of estrangement.

However, while Forty-Five is an affirmation of the avenues of expression to be found in comic art, it also highlights how these pieces are, in some integral ways, anchored to the text.

Unfortunately, the word-y side of the equation seems stretched and uncertain. As character ideas and world-building - potential pitches for further series down the line - this is all serviceable, but there's the feeling that Forty-Five could have been a much tighter, consistent read as a Twenty, or even a Fifteen, with a sharper focus and maybe a bit of textual variation to match its artistic scope.

As a community art project, however, Forty-Five is undeniably beautiful.

45 is out now and available from the Den Of Geek store.

Recently, I've been discussing Quirk Classics, specifically their literary mash-up genre. As the company that shot them to the forefront with Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, they're kind of the company leading the way on this thing. I asked my friend, "You're a lover of classic literature. When will they go too far with this trend?" Her response was simple: "When they start picking on authors I like."

While Quirk Classic's latest book is based off of Jane Austen's classic novel of manners, Pride And Prejudice, it breaks from the earlier book by featuring all new content with no recycled Jane Austin. After all, it's not necessarily about the Bennet Sisters or their zombie‑killing prowess this time around. It's about how they become aristocratic killing machines, trained in the deadly art of dreadful disposal.

I have to say, as much as I enjoyed the idea of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies I absolutely loathe Jane Austen. I mean, the idea of 19th Century zombies being dispatched by the middle class Bennet family is amusing beyond end, as is the idea of mashing up the stereotypically girly Austen-type novel with a gory, entrails-dripping zombie gut-muncher is wonderful. In theory. In reality, Seth Grahame-Smith's 15 percent zombie mayhem is overwhelmed at times by the 85 percent Jane Austen content, to the book's detriment. If anything, it's too respectful to Austen's original work and not zombie enough.

Fortunately, Steve Hockensmith's prequel is freed from that requirement to be Austen-y and is worlds better for it. It retains the quirkiness of the original, and most of Austen's characters and settings, but it blasts the whole genre out of the water most efficiently, and it's wonderful. All the work that Grahame-Smith did with Pride And Prejudice And Zombies is carried further forward here, in the all-new prequel.

The various Bennet sisters are still themselves, but the readership witnesses how they progress from the delicate flowers of womanhood they are in the original book to the combination of meek womanhood and warrior steel they are in the mash-up version. While it doesn't quite patch over the unevenness of the first, it helps quite a bit on rereading the original mash-up.

Although, to be honest, the book needs no background in Austen to be enjoyable. It might be better without the Austen, actually. Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, as characters, are strong enough to stand on their own no matter where you might place them. The same goes for fussy Prudence and pragmatic Oscar Bennet. The new characters, from Dr. Keckilpenny and Master Hawksworth on down to Baron Lumpley himself, serve both as romantic foils for the more mannerly portions, but also as zombie movie archetypes recast for the 19th Century. (The Bennets serve as archetypes as well, of a more timeless and less zombie-centric sort.)

Hockensmith's blending of aristocracy and hungry hordes is more even than the original book, because Hockensmith has no Austen to be faithful to. He's free to simply write a book and the end result flows better than the precursor and is much more consistent. Also, it's wickedly funny in several parts, while staying mostly true to the concepts of womanhood and a place in the world that Austen explored.

The 287 pages of the book flew by. When I picked it up and started reading, I didn't want to put it down. I went from the title page to halfway through the book in one sitting at the coffee shop, stifling chuckles with my cup the entire time. The fun Hockensmith is having with Austen is second only to the fun he seems to be having with the unmentionables. The innate comedy of the concept of regency period zombies soars once unshackled from the rotting corpse of Jane Austen.

If you'd like to get your hands on a copy of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: Dawn Of The Dreadfuls, head on over to Quirk's PPZ: DotD website and sign up for the contest. Winner gets a copy of the book Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Dreadfuls, audio books of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies and Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters, a password redeemable for audio chapter samples of Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Dreadfuls, the Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Dreadfuls poster, a PP&Z journal, and a box set of PP&Z postcards. That's over $100 worth of freebies, all for popping onto the forums and mentioning where you read the review! It's open to readers all over the world, so don't hesitate to get your hands on some free swag!

US correspondent Ron Hogan is a big fan of the Pride And Prejudice And Zombies universe of ninjas, zombies, and debutante balls. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.

Russell Tovey's George Sands is an odd choice of coverboy for Mark Michalowski's Chasers, the second in a new series of spin-off novels based on the BBC Three hit, Being Human. An odd choice for an odd plot: still reeling after the events of the series one finale in which werewolf George killed big bad vampire Herrick, and with girlfriend Nina missing in action, George befriends a lesbian couple who, through a series of increasingly farcical events, coax him into donating his wolfy seed so that they can have a child.

It's an odd plot that allows Michalowski to play out some of George's anxieties regarding his ‘condition' without gumming up the works, as it were, by having him discuss babies with Nina. George wonders, for example, whether or not lycanthropy is hereditary.

George is an odd choice because the story of his baby blues is very much the b-plot here. More interesting is Mitchell's run in with Leo, an aging goth who turns up on the cancer ward at the hospital where Mitchell and George work. As these things go, everything is not as it seems, as Leo wriggles his way into Mitchell's life, cosies up to Annie, and even spends the night over at the flat shared by the supernatural chums.

There's an interesting twist in the tale that sheds some light on the excerpts from Mitchell's diary that turn up throughout the book. It's a twist that owes a lot to a particular episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, however, Michalowski's deft handling of Leo's character - treading the fine line between comedy and tragedy all the way through the book - allows him to play out an interesting exchange between Mitchell and Leo in the final chapter.

Michalowski's gift is in capturing the voices of Toby Whithouse's characters and the quirks of the actors who play them. His George, in particular, is spot on, referencing Russell Tovey's tendency towards playing up his clipped pronunciation as George becomes ever more frustrated, with air quotes flying all about the place, even if the author's incessant description of George as ‘chunky' is perhaps a little harsh.

His Annie, too, is as broadly comic as she is on the show, but the prose medium allows Michalowski to play out Annie's eccentricities. There's one scene in particular, with Annie on a rare night out, where she's a bumbling ditz with tendencies towards OCD rather than your standard spook-and-run spectre.

Leo aside, Michalowski's own characters suffer from being thin parodies. Kaz, George's lesbian friend, is particularly grating, which is the point, to a certain extent, but the joke quickly wears thin, as the kind of faddy New Age earth mother particular, it would seem, to the South of England. Her girlfriend is a different type of simpering, a two dimensional doting darling who puts up with Kaz's faddiness despite their, seemingly, having nothing in common.

The book ends with a number of new characters wandering around the extended universe, not all of them having their plots tied up. A new vampire gang, for instance, is introduced towards the middle of the book, serving no real narrative purpose, but hinting at an over-arcing  plot that will play out later in the series.

Spin-off media is a particular niche that is easily done wrong. Michalowski, however, captures the essence of Being Human, playing out plots that fit within the context of the show but wouldn't play out nearly as well within a 60 minute episode of television.

For fans of Mitchell, George and Annie, this one comes highly recommended.

Being Human: Chasers is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

• Being Human: The Road book review

In case you missed our review, we rated the updated version of Russell T Davies' and Benjamin Cook’s Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale as likely to be one of the very best books of the year already. You’ll find a link to the review at the bottom.

As part of the promotion for the book, we got to fire some questions at co-author Benjamin Cook. And here’s how it went…

How far through your e-mail conversations did it become clear that The Writer's Tale would turn into a book?

The correspondence was supposed to last a few weeks. A couple of months tops. It was supposed to be a magazine article, and cover the writing of one of Russell's TV episodes – Voyage Of The Damned or Partners In Crime. Two-and-a-half years later, we were still e-mailing! You know how it is. I think I knew after the first few days that I might have too much material for a magazine article. We'd exceeded any likely word-count by forty-fold. But it was a good six months or so before it occurred to me that maybe I should back-up my inbox! If my laptop had crashed five-and-half months in, we'd have been fucked.

Once you'd embarked on the project, was there a point where you felt the brakes might have to put on it?

Not really. In the beginning, I think I worried that Russell would get bored, or find the e-mails too distracting, or intrusive. But that didn't happen. We e-mailed most days – several times a day, sometimes – for two-and-a-half years. Last February, I was e-mailing Russell, from my iPhone, in the middle of the Margham Desert, in Dubai, in a sandstorm. "The schedule is in tatters! CODE RED! ABORT! ABORT!" If the correspondence could survive that, it could survive pretty much anything.

The BBC is often very protective of its properties. Did it give you much of a free line to discuss the show? Did it ask for much to be taken out?

We removed some of the swearing, because there was far too much by any reasonable person's standards, but not because the BBC asked us to. In both books – the original and The Final Chapter – we took out the occasional spoiler for upcoming episodes, but nothing major. Um, and that's it. Hand on heart, the BBC never asked for anything to be taken out.

Often Russell's e-mails give the impression that you're a sounding board for his ideas. Is that how you saw it, or is that how you felt? Did you feel awkward, particularly when you weren't keen on some of the ideas he was putting across? Because it seemed that the relationship between the two of you changed as the book progressed: from quite light banter and conversation about assorted shows at first, to really quite focussed discussions, particular in the Final Chapter material?

I had planned to be Invisible Ben. An impartial observer. Especially once Russell started sending me extracts of script – whatever he'd written each day. I wanted to resist saying what I thought, or I was worried the whole project would come crashing down around our ears.

In the event, I stayed strong through the writing of most of Series Four, but faltered on Journey's End. Russell's original ending had the Cybermen pop up in the TARDIS – that had even been shot, I think – when I plucked up the courage to say, "Actually, sorry, that ending's rubbish." I don't think I actually used the word "rubbish". I was more tactful. Oh. Hang on, I've just checked – I did use the word "rubbish".

But don't you think Journey's End worked better without another 'What? What?! WHAT?!!' cliffhanger? It didn't need it. The Doctor, alone in the TARDIS, mourning the loss of Donna Noble, that's a far sadder, braver, more affecting climax, isn't it? – and Russell had written it brilliantly. It was magnificent. Why ruin it with Cybermen? And Russell agreed.

I thought he might tell me to piss off, but he didn't. He said, "Hand on heart, when you get a good note, it chimes with something you're already thinking." After that, in our second year's worth of e-mails, I commented on stuff a bit more. Yeah, a sounding board. A little less objectivity. But not much less – because Russell is the Dennis Potter Award-winning scriptwriter, and I'm not. If I'd been making suggestions constantly, I'd have got it right, oh, like once in a hundred times. The other 99, Russell would have known better, and been ten steps ahead of me, so I tried to stay impartial, faltering just very occasionally. I mean, Russell never did bring back the Garm. I asked. Every episode, I asked.

From the reader's side of the fence, it appears that we get very much a warts and all look at the writing process of Doctor Who in particular. Was there any fallout after the book was first published, and did you find yourself slicing much out? How did reactions to the first book shape the extra material that you included this time around? 

The main fallout was that people seemed to like the first book – not everyone, never everyone, but most people did – so we were reasonably confident that they wouldn't baulk at another 350 pages' worth. Except for Private Eye. Private Eye didn't like The Final Chapter, but I didn't care. I was just thrilled to be reviewed in Private Eye. Dream come true!

I suppose the other fallout from the first book was that the new edition had to acknowledge that we'd actually been published. We couldn't ignore the fact that we were on a book tour, or being serialised in The Times, or appearing on Richard And Judy. That would have been silly. And some of these things fed back into Russell's scripts. Even Minnie's malfunctioning camera in The End of Time, when she poses for a photo with the Doctor. "No, it's working, just press the button on top!" That was inspired by our book signings and the constant stream of people whose cameras never, ever worked at the crucial moment.

As a Doctor Who fan yourself, did you find it hampered your enjoyment of the shows when you sat down to watch them, given that you knew so much about them?

Anything I lost out on when the episodes aired was made up for by getting to read the scripts before anyone else. That cushioned the blow.

Given that so much time is spent covering up Doctor Who secrets in advance in the book, it must be odd that you knew so much before everyone else?

I just had to keep track of what had been announced and what hadn't. If I'd accidentally let slip something secret and important live on BBC Breakfast, I'd have been crucified. And then sacked.

Are there any plans to chart the Steven Moffat era in anything like the same way?

Not at the moment. Well, not by me. Maybe Steven's e-mailing someone else! But look, e-mailing me isn't a prerequisite for taking the job of showrunner. I'm not handed down from head writer to head writer, like a soup recipe. Or a genetic disorder. The Writer's Tale sort of came about by accident, really, and it was quite an organic process, at a time when Russell already had three series under his belt. But I enjoyed interviewing Steven on stage a few months ago at the Cheltenham Screenwriter's Festival... so maybe I should start e-mailing him in the run-up to his fourth series, in 2013!

Is there anyone else you'd like to tackle a project such as this with?

Matt Smith would be good. The Actor's Tale. Or The Doctor's Tale! That would be amazing.

Is it likely that we'll see a third book as Russell takes his work to America? Have you kept the correspondence going?

No plans for a third book. Sorry. Despite what I said about this correspondence surviving sandstorms, nuclear fall-outs and God knows what, we finally took a break from e-mailing when Russell left Doctor Who, and the country. Well, we had to step back one day, and that seemed like a natural cut-off point. But we do still e-mail each other now and then. I mean, who else is going to update him on the new series of Skins?

What would you like people to most take out of the book? 

It's funny, I keep getting Facebook messages from students – a couple of lecturers, too! – who tell me that The Writer's Tale is now on the recommended text for their media degree or English degree, or a set text on their scriptwriting course! How brilliant is that? And bizarre?! I mean, it has the Doctor Who logo on it! There are students, at actual universities, studying Adipose, Jackie Tyler, and Midshipman Frame in their seminars. Well, good for them. I'm still waiting for my honorary doctorate.

Seriously, I think The Writer's Tale is a great book for anyone who's ever tried to write anything, or thought about writing something – a script, a novel, a short story, a poem. Steven said, "If you still want to be a writer after reading this book, you probably will be." And I think he's right. The Writer's Tale shows you how hard it is, sat on your own at four in the morning, staring at a blank screen, deadlines looming. Writing is fucking hard, and The Writer's Tale isn't afraid to say so. Equally, I bet most people pick up The Writer's Tale because they want an entertaining read, a bit of a laugh, colourful characters and some fun gossip – so that, more than anything, is what I hope people take out of it. Yeah, or your money back! (They're not getting their money back.)

Finally, can you tell us one thing that you know about the next series of Doctor Who that we don't?

Ha, ha, ha – no.

Benjamin Cook, thank you very much!

Doctor Who The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter is out now. Our review is here.

When Marvel announced that the entire Avengers line would be coming to an end, it was pretty clear that they were just heading for a retool.

It didn't take a genius to expect the announcement of "Avengers" to replace "New Avengers" on the slate, and Avengers: The Initiative already had its rumoured replacement in "Avengers Academy" - but "Dark" and "Mighty" Avengers were lacking a counterpart.

This week, it became clear that one (or both) of those books would be replaced by the forthcoming Secret Avengers, written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Mike Deodato. To announce this, Marvel released a clutch of silhouetted teaser images, designed to hint at prospective team members. I dunno about you, but I can't resist a bit of speculation, so without further ado, here are my guesses:

Teaser 1: Beast

This isn't much of a leap. There's already a consensus, partly based on the character's appearance in the recent Heroic Age promo by Jim Cheung. This wouldn't be the first time Brubaker has tackled the character, having already had an extensive run on X-Men a couple of years ago, and the quote - "I focus on the solution" - certainly suggests a scientific, intellectual mind. The pose is also substantially acrobatic, the figure bulky enough, and to cap it off, a disillusioned Beast recently quit the X-Men, leaving him wide open for a position on an Avengers team. However, there are suggestions that this might not be Hank McCoy. Beast's current mutation means he (sometimes) has 3-fingered "paws", not hands - but it's clear that the figure in the picture has five fingers. It's possible Deodato is making a stylistic choice not to use the ‘paw' hands, or that Beast will revert from his ‘cat' mutation back to the ‘monkeyman' form - but it throws enough doubt on things that it could be someone else. If you take the hands as a sign that it's definitely not Beast, then the only obvious alternative is Gorilla Man, who also appeared in the original Heroic Age teaser.

Teaser 2: Moon Knight

Again, not a hard conclusion to reach. The cape, suggestion of a hood and the quote are all pure Moon Knight, and the character's profile could do with a little boost following a recent relaunch of his solo title. The reference to "redemption" seems like a direct nod to Moon Knight's attempt to become more "'heroic' in his new series, after recently killing a man, but it could also suggest a villain reforming. In which case, The Hood could be a fit, and membership of the Secret Avengers could easily spin out of a need to evade Loki, should their deal go sour in the current ‘Siege' storyline. An even longer shot would be Cloak, currently sort of in the X-Men, but he doesn't have any redemption to strive for, as yet, so it's unlikely.

Teaser 3: Valkyrie

This is where it gets a little difficult. There are very few caped female characters in Marvel's canon. The Scarlet Witch could fit the profile, and the quote makes sense in that context, but there's no suggestion of her headgear, and besides which, she's currently depowered and off the board. That leaves Thor Girl, a very obscure character, and not one who's especially ‘secret', and Valkyrie. Unfortunately, Valkyrie hasn't been around much recently, so it's hard to suggest how the quote relates to her, but a connection to Thor/Asgard (and therefore Marvel's next big movie and current big crossover) mean she's the safest bet right now. On an outside chance, some people have suggested the, er, chest protrusions, are actually a folded pair of arms, rather than breasts, in which case this is definitely the Sentry (albeit a rather feminine version of him, from the appearance of the legs/waist).

Teaser 4: Captain Marvel

And if that was where it got difficult, this is where it gets really tough. An armoured(ish) character, and a quote that fits the current incarnation of War Machine to a tee, but another teaser fits him even closer, so who else could this be? If you assume that Iron Man won't be applying for dual-membership of the ‘real' and Secret Avengers, well, the new Captain Marvel is currently looking for a home, and recently received some new wristbands with his new costume that look a little like this image does. It could be him, but it would be out of step with the slender, boyish version of the character that Deodato has previously drawn.

Teaser 5: War Machine

The character appears to be armoured, so it could be a new version of War Machine. After all, Stark's getting a new armour, so why not Rhodey? Every Avengers team needs an Iron Man, and now that Iron Man 2 is about to repopularise the character, it's also a good time to put the ‘other' armoured avenger back to the fore. War Machine is currently a very angry man, so the quote fits perfectly, but there's one problem: where's the weaponry so characteristic of the War Machine armour? Has it been cropped off? If not, the obvious alternatives are thin on the ground. The silhouette does look a little like the Crimson Dynamo, but he'd be a very strange choice.

Teaser 6: STEVE ROGERS

Finally, another easy one. We already know that Bucky-Cap is in the ‘main' Avengers team, so Steve Rogers also needs a home. It's a safe bet he'll be the one assembling the Secret team. There is a slight chance it could be Luke Cage.; he'd fit the silhouette, and as the newly announced leader of the Thunderbolts reform program, leading by example is his new job. But by the same token, he'll likely have his hands full. Rogers, by comparison, is a shoo-in.

Feel free to add your own speculation below, but let's see some proper reasoning rather than wild guesswork if you do!

James previous Alternate Cover can be found here.

The Road is the first of the Being Human novels, published in paperback by BBC books. Why they didn't follow the hardbook examples of the Doctor Who and Torchwood novels is a mystery. The book feels rather short, at 252 pages. I'm not sure if this is a requirement of BBC books or a decision on the author's part, but I'm hoping that this isn't a standard.

Written by Simon Guerrier, it is a multi-faceted story that focuses, mainly, on Annie and the arrival of another ghost, Gemma. Gemma seems to have quite considerable mood swings and a terrible dark side that only comes to the fore when we realise what she had actually done when she was alive. 

Worming her way into the lives of Annie, Mitchell and George, Gemma becomes a divisive element in the house, managing to manipulate those around her with ease.  Throw in the arrival of a new hospital administrator who is intent on cutting costs, improving services and fostering an atmosphere of mistrust, a reporter intent on finding out why a handful of connected deaths have become unconnected, and the need to prevent a road being built through a house linked to Gemma's past and you've got a very good, but too short, story. 

With Gemma's arrival, the three friends are given a mystery to solve that becomes linked to the hospital and the plans to build the aforementioned road. It soon becomes quite apparent that things can't be taken at face value, as we discover the truth behind Gemma leading to a denouement that brings together sins of the past in a touching way.

Guerrier's story is set in early in Series 2 (it's mentioned that Annie can't even keep a job in the pub, she's also invisible to strangers and the vampires are still up in the air over the loss of their leader), yet, it often left me frustrated with descriptions of the characters and their relationships that I am already aware of. I'm guessing that this, as the first of a series, is to allow people who are not familiar with the television series to pick up the book and not feel left out. However, this doesn't help when you consider that the people who are likely to buy these books are people who are fans. 

There's the odd typographical error that jarred the pace of the story as you find yourself sometimes having to read a sentence more than once to decipher the meaning. Obviously, this isn't Guerrier's fault (I hope) and more down to the publisher! Despite these (very) minor frustrations, the story is well paced, with many threads that come together in the final act, including an ending that leads into the second book.

The characters are quite true to their on-screen counterparts and you can imagine the various scenes actually taking place on screen. Of particular note are the scenes where George inadvertently attends a group for gay parents, the interaction between George and Mitchell that leads his colleagues to think there's something going on, and the bombastic, overbearing portrayal of Dr McGough (who I imagined as Brian Blessed.) 

Annie's fear of the doors is explored and her burgeoning relationship of necessity with Gemma is well constructed, with the latter feeding off the energy of the former and creating rifts and divides between the housemates, the nature of which becomes apparent late in the story.

Overall, it's a good book, tells an interesting story and is a fantastic start to what will, hopefully, be an ongoing series. I like the idea of the books leading into each other and hope that this is a recurring theme. 

It would be nice to see each trio of books form loose seasons of their own, referring back to the parent series. Fingers crossed that they continue to build on the strengths of The Road.

Being Human: The Road is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

Over the last couple of years Robert Sellers has quickly become one of the more interesting writers to cover cinematic literature.

Though he started out with some pretty straightforward Hollywood biographies about the likes of Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford or Sean Connery, his Battle For Bond  soon made headline news when its first UK edition was quickly shelved after revealing a little bit too much of some of the confidential court room material regarding the production of Thunderball. His Cult TV book is also essential reading for anyone interested in the classic ITC series.

With the concept for his original Hellraisers book covering the "life and inebriated times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed" he seems to have hit pay dirt as he has now followed this up with Hollywood Hellraisers about the "wild lives and fast times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson".

The format of this new work follows its predecessor's to a tee, so if you enjoyed the first book, you're bound to also like this new entry. And if Hellraisers left you cold, then Hollywood Hellraisers will not make you a convert.

After an introductory chapter dedicated to the actors' early lives, Sellers subsequent chapters deal with the "Methody Fifties", "Drugged-Up Sixties, "Explosive Seventies", "Excessive Eighties" and "Redemptive Nineties" until he misses the obvious pun to deal with the Naughty Noughties and instead names his final chapter "And Then There Were Three" with reference to the fact that Brando had then left us.

Within these chapters he takes turns to deal with each of his subjects' private lives during that period. Though these descriptions can be read as biographical entries, given the nature of this book they very much focus on anecdotes highlighting the excessive nature of their personalities. If there is one genuine difference between the two Hellraiser books it is that the Hollywood fraternity seems to have been more involved with illegal drugs in comparison to their more boozy British brethren.

The anecdotal nature of this work is its biggest strength and also its biggest weakness. Everyone loves a good story about a forgotten weekend or a crazy drunken stunt. As such, this is a perfect book to dive in and out off for a while and learn more about what these guys were up to. All of them appear to have had very tough and unusual childhoods, with Dennis Hopper's being truly bizarre. After having to deal with losing his father at the age of just five due to an accident in basic army training, a few years later he had to come to terms with the fact that his dad had still been alive, but on top secret undercover missions for the Secret Service. But, then again, Nicholson also famously learned late in life that the mother who raised him was really his grandmother and the woman he considered his sister was his true mother.

No wonder that all of them ended up going bonkers at various stages in their lives. Hopper hiding out in a remote New Mexican village living the hippie dream that soon turned into a nightmare when surrounded by furious locals waving guns at the intruder and his drop-out buddies, Beatty being a commitment-phobe and bedding woman after woman, Brando self-destructing after an initially very promising career and Nicholson, well, mainly being Nicholson as we all know and love him.

As entertaining as this all is, have you ever been in the company of a boozer who, for hours on end, tells you story after story of past shenanigans? The first couple, sure, are going to be hilarious, the next still alright, but after a while you realise that they turn into a mighty blur and you just wish that you could hear a little bit more of substance in between. Nothing as boring as listening to prolonged sequences of drunk talk.

And that's the feeling you get after a while with both of the Hellraisers books. They're wildly entertaining in short bouts, but drag on if you spend too much reading time with them in one go. It also sometimes feels a bit unfair to see true giants of 1970s Hollywood reduced to the level of drugged up boozy maniacs, and though there are occasional attempts to explain their creative genius in a bigger picture, overall the focus is on their excesses.

Still, this is a generally entertaining read and, if after finishing this book you still don't have enough of reading up on these kinds of stories, you only have to wait until June when Sellers' next ouevre will be out, an encyclopedic A-Z Of Hellraisers. I'll have a glass on that.

Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

The Internet, you may have noticed, appears to have become awash with word of Watchmen 2 over the past day or so, courtesy primarily of a post from Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool. Johnston has uncovered plans to develop a sequel project to the Watchmen comic book, which is the best-selling DC publication ever.

The idea, reports the site, of a Watchmen 2 had been held off by previous DC head honcho Paul Levitz, who believed it would be against the wishes of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. But Levitz is no longer in that role, and thus the belief is that Dan DiDio, senior vice-president/executive editor at DC, is now investigating the idea of Watchmen spin-offs, with a prequel mini-series in the offing.

Contractually, it seems that Gibbons and Moore have to be offered the project first, but if they turn it down, it can still go ahead. Soundings, Johnston reports, have been taken from those who may be interested in taking on the challenge.

The full story, which goes into some detail, can be found here, and right now, the world seems to be awaiting some kind of formal response from all concerned.

One offshoot of the story, though, is that some speculated another movie may then be in the offing. That, however, won't be happening. Over at Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke quotes an insider as saying "There is no truth to anything related to a movie sequel. Not a chance by a longshot."

The ultimately disappointing grosses from the Watchmen movie, considering how much it cost to make, outright killed any chance of that happening. And that's before the legal spat between Fox and Warner Bros, which, no doubt, covers potential sequels, is taken into account.

We await further developments with trepidation. And kudos, of course, to Bleeding Cool for breaking the story.

Here's what you're not getting. A traditional, three-act autobiography that places some contemporary situation in the first chapter to lure you in, before falling firmly into a strict chronological narrative, detailing the formative years of arguably Britain's most famous film critic. Perhaps the picture of a man clutching popcorn and a chainsaw should give that away, though.

Instead, what you get is pretty much the written movie version of Mark Kermode's life. He's utterly open about this, even casting the whole movie for you, naturally enough drafting in Jason Isaacs to play himself. And, once he's set himself within this framework, Kermode explores - with due confessions that his memory isn't great - the moments that got him to where he is today, and how they've been wrapped around and been influenced by the films that he's seen.

What's more, it's a set-up that works far better than it should. It helps enormously that Kermode has very clearly written the book himself: the voice and style of his radio broadcasts comes across loud and clear in the written word. That also means you get the same digressions, the same humour and the same celebrations of films that you don't hear too many other critics championing. The same love of Julian Sands, too. It's a fairly safe bet that if you don't warm to Kermode on the radio, then you're not going to warm to this book at all.

But if you do, then It's Only A Movie is a treat. And while there's inevitably and rightly diverting talk about films themselves - The Exorcist, as you might expect, isn't bereft of attention (and the story of his meeting Linda Blair for an interview is a warm one), but then neither is Slade In Flame - it's the situations that Kermode has got himself into that deliver the book's gold.

The most gripping, as it turns out, is the tale of a trip across Russia and the Ukraine on the trail of a small horror movie. Considering that the journey Kermode describes sounds both hellish and deathly dull, it's a very, very funny account he tells. Likewise, he and Werner Herzog being shot at can't have been much fun, but the version of the tale in the book is both very well told and hard not to smile at. If you're looking for the comedy highlight, though, then it's worth turning to the segment where Helen Mirren tackled Kermode regarding his review of The Queen. It's a brief, but golden, section of the book, and a beautifully structured telling of the tale.

The smaller stories come across just as well, from Kermode's first fumbled broadcast, through to blagging his way into an unsuccessful stint doing the listings for Time Out. And interspersed with all of that are enough little threads and nuggets to constantly keep things interesting and moving along. Plus, like all good film books of this ilk, there's a to-watch list that develops as you make your way through it.

The off-centre style that Kermode adopts isn't going to appeal to all, and it's arguably the non-film specific moments where It's Only A Movie is at its finest. But the book is nonetheless a witty, engaging and successful collection of anecdotes, stories and asides, delivered in a very personal and engaging way.

It's a very, very good read, and you finding yourself wishing by the end for Mr Isaacs to get on with the job of learning his lines...

It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures Of A Film Obsessive is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

Robots are always a good bet when it comes to looking into the future. We’ve always been fearful of a time when automatons rule our lives, if not run the world. However, I’m not sure Asimov and Kubrick had Robo-Hunter’s reality in mind, but C-3PO, R2-D2 and Wall-E might feel more at home.

Having made his first appearance in 2000 AD’s second year (issue 76, to be precise), Sam Slade proved to be one of the most popular long-standing characters who, even in retirement, came back for more thrill power action, and this volume brings together the earliest tales.

Robo-Hunter is a joyously irreverent look at the dystopian future of the 22nd Century dominated by mechanical men. He’s like some space-weary ancestor of Dirty Harry and Dashiell Hammett, fighting crime with the help of his hot-lipped robometer, Cutie, his dopey assistant, Hoagy, and his pugilistic talking cigar, Stogie, who warns all criminals that Senor Slade will ponch their steekin’ faces in (and it provided an ideal solution to the ‘no smoking’ ban on characters in the progs).

As each story progresses, Slade’s encounters become more bizarre and surreal, satire teetering on the edge of farce. It’s a future full of droids with attitude and robots with personalities, who dominate every walk of life from doing menial tasks to wielding the power of authority. Less Metropolis and more elements from Hitchhikers’ Guide and Dark Star. It’s also populated with gags and jokes, both verbal and visual puns, that will have your rivets rattling in their sockets.

The first misadventure, Verdus, sets the anarchic course for the whole series. Sam and his co-pilot Commander Jim Kidd are hired by Earth’s International Space Commission to find out what happened to colonists who were sent to the paradise planet Earth never to be heard from again. Robots had gone in advance to prepare it for human habitation but they are feared to have malfunctioned.

It’s a journey with risks, not least the fact that the faster-than-light travel causes their bodies to reverse ageing. Slade’s back to being in his prime, made a young man, but Kidd become s a nappy-clad baby. Not a good start to the mission and, indeed, their on-going friendship, as later stories testify. They soon discover that robots have actually taken over the planet, under the rule of the bulb-headed Big Brain.. When it’s revealed he’s impure because parts of him are human tissue, the robot populace divides into two factions and civil war is declared, with our heroes caught in the middle of the insanity.

Back on Earth, Slade takes on Hoagy, an assistant he didn’t know he needed (not as stupid as he appears since he placed the advert himself), and trying to find out who replaced the head of the Public Works Committee with a robot. It’s only the opening move in the Day Of The Droids, the masterplan of the God-Droid and his metal-headed mobsters to take control of the city.

Relocating to Brit-Cit, Slade’s the laughing stock before he’s started because he’s the only human looking for work to be doing so since the Brits are permanently on vacation leaving the robots to do all the jobs.

The Beast Of Blackheart Manor is the first case he’s assigned, investigating the disappearance of many guests at the stately home, something which doesn’t unduly alarm the robot staff. As for The Filby Case, he has special branch and gangsters chasing him when he’s on the trail of a missing robot, who has become the most invaluable of commodities: a free thinker. Killing Of Kid, ends this collection as he’s reunited with his baby-faced ex-colleague, who’s now become a hugely popular soap star. However, someone is trying to kill him and it doesn’t take a detective to deduce that he wouldn’t win a popularity contest between his co-stars.

Grant and Wagner seem to have a ball with their witty irreverent scripts that both parody and continue the best pulp detective traditions. They also take a dig at class and institutions such religion and politics.

Whilst the first three few episodes are drawn by Jose Luis Ferrer and Ian Gibson, emphasising a darker more sombre tone, the strip really comes into its own when Gibson, freed from his Dredd deadlines, takes sole control of the art, giving it a looser sketchier feel, but imbuing the mechanical beings with as much character and personality disorders as the humans.

Prepare yourself for the next century with these encounters featuring the Sewergator, the vampiric Teeny-Meks, the Amalgamated Androids’ Union and the Goonie-Temple cult. You might even want to tune into the Space Family Ogden if you don’t blow a fuse in your funny bone first. Happy hunting, yup!

Robo-Hunter : The Droid Files Vol 1 is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

Bruce Wayne is dead. The criminals from Arkham Asylum are on the loose. Gotham City has become a battleground for gang warfare between the Penguin and Two-Face, with the Black Mask stirring the muddy waters even thicker.  So yes, if Bruce is dead so is Batman. 

Cue a major storyline that redefines the caped crusader as well as guaranteeing to shift a few more copies off the shelf. DC Comics has done it before with the death of Superman storyline and, of course, Marvel has been dramatically teasing us with the aftermath of the death of Captain America.

However, this is the world of superheroes and death is rarely permanent. Critics and Secret Invasion have seen enough heroes resurrected, as well as new ones fall. So it's best to just enjoy this latest saga of the caped crusader for what is: exploring who could possibly inherit Batman's cowl. 

Of course, we have been here before with Bruce out of action after a near-crippling encounter with Bane, which led to someone else filling his bat shoes and also gave birth to Azrael. Battle For The Cowl, however, brings together a whole host of heroes and characters from the Bat-verse. Known collectively as the Network, the main figures include Nightwing, Huntress and Oracle, but the list also includes Robin, Catwoman, Man Bat, and a host of other caped crime-fighters

What these stories also reveal is how complex the Bat legend has become over the years, especially with the character of Robin. It's an identity adopted by a whole succession of people, with the original boy wonder, Dick Grayson, now going by the name Nightwing. But his successors, Tim Drake and Jason Todd (Oh yes, he died once too, but he came back a little more twisted than before) also feature in the struggle to inherit the bat ears. 

Considering the number of characters, Tony Daniel (best known form his work on Teen Titans) manages his ever-expanding cast with great skill. Having worked the Batman R.I.P. storyline with Grant Morrison, it seems only appropriate that he pick up the pieces and pull all the remaining story strands together at the same time as rebuilding Gotham City as well as kick-starting a new chapter in the legend of the Dark Knight. With his hand shaping the images too, he creates an enjoyable traditional comic book with its own bursts of unashamed adrenalin fun.

To complete this volume, and supplementary to the main action, the Gotham Gazette mini-series is included, focussing on some of the pivotal characters whose own lives have reached dramatic turning points.

Famed X-Men and Buffy scribe Fabian Nicieza takes us into the personal worlds of Vicki Vale, who's back in the world of newspapers after her disgraced stint on TV, Harvey Bullock who's determined to solve a murder case now he's back on the force,  Dr Leslie Thompkins, former friends of Thomas Wayne (yes, Bruce's father) has returned from Africa to practice medicine again in Gotham, and Stephanie Brown, daughter of the villainous Cluemaster, resumes her career as the Spoiler.

They're effective glimpses into four inter-related lives, but as stories they're designed to be teaser preludes for greater events to come.

It's a varied assortment of artistic talent that shapes these individual vistas. with established names such as Dustin Nguyen (Wildcats, Detective Comics), Chriscross (Blood Syndicate, Capt Marvel), and Mark Mckenna (Batman/Spider-Man) to newer talent such as Guillem March (Powegirl/Azrael), Alex Konat and UK's Jamie McKelvie. All very different in tone and texture, but serving to enhance the many shades of the one overarching character of the book: Gotham City itself.

Even though the absence of Bruce Wayne is unlikely to be permanent, and despite the benefits of having a practical working knowledge of the Batman universe to know where all the cast members fit into the otherwise confusing bigger picture,  Battle For The Cowl offers a divertingly engaging  journey into the darker nights of the caped crusader's legacy.

Batman: Battle For The Cowl is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

Back in our original review of Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, we concluded that it was as good a book as the dedicated Doctor Who fan could ever hope for. It was a warts and all account - via the medium of e-mail conversations between Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook - of the writing of Doctor Who over the course of a couple of years, and was extremely candid at times.

I wondered, on reflection, whether the number of Christmas cards that Russell T Davies' received in its aftermath was down, but from where I sat - as a fan of the show keen to know more - it was a staggering and very unusual insight. It dragged a little in places, but that was the nature of the beast. And what it did more than anything else was open the door on a world that we never get to see. As I concluded back then, "This is, at best, a riveting insight into not just a terrific television show, but also a modern day television writer, with all the insecurities, highs and lows that go with the territory."

The original text of the book is all included as you would expect in this updated tome. But don't let that moniker of The Final Chapter fool you. You get far more than a token extra chapter bunged in here, in the hope of selling a few more copies when a book hits paperback. You, instead, get a further 300+ pages, charting what's happened in Doctor Who since the first book concluded. So you get Russell T Davies dealing with David Tennant leaving the show, and then the not inconsiderable task of putting together the special episodes of Doctor Who that we got in 2009. Then there's also the small matter of Torchwood: Children Of Earth in the midst of it all, which doesn't get as much attention, but still benefits from its inclusion in the book.

The new material is, to be fair, a little less broad in some of its tone than before, quite simply because the episodes that the extra material covers deals primarily with episodes that Davies was writing himself. We don't get analyses of the likes of Skins this time, but we do get a lot more introspective material (and very welcome it is, too). The reason for this seems to be that in the first chunk of The Writers' Tale, Davies was juggling many writers, who were putting together Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and with the specials, they rest solely on his shoulders.

That said, the feel of the first edition remains very much intact. After all, there was a real sense of a by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation that could come off the rails at any moment. It reminded me of my college days handing essays in at the last minute, only in this case it was handing in scripts for multi-million pound budget television series. It was, and remains, fascinating to see just how close to absolute deadlines Davies frequently sailed, and there's a sense of that too in the new material as he wrangles with the shape and direction of David Tennant's final episodes. Once again, it's as interesting as ever to see just what time many of the e-mails were sent.

The new book isn't shy of tasty titbits. Quite the contrary, in fact. We get the e-mail exchange where the Daleks were considered for inclusion in The End Of Time, and Davies also talks about his reluctance to bring the Time Lords back, and why he locked them away for the duration of his reign (in spite of what I've written before, I couldn't help but end up agreeing with him too). Plus there's the identity of the female Time Lord we kept seeing in The End Of Time, and many bits of script that didn't make the final cut. It's hard to think of anything Davies and Cook haven't covered that a Doctor Who fan would want to know, right down to e-mail exchanges between Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, with the former checking with the latter over things he wanted to put in his final episodes.

My favourite passages, though, are where Davies uses the e-mails to unlock a particularly tricky story conundrum, most notably in his use of the character of Wilf in the specials. You can also feel the steam coming off his keyboard when you read the excitable e-mail he sends to Cook where he hatches his plan. I loved passages like that in the first edition of this book, and I loved them again here. We simply don't get the chance to be any kind of fly on the wall to such material usually, and from an outsider's point of view, this is a real treat.

The other highlight for me was Davies' retrospective assessment of his first Doctor Who episode, Rose, and how he would have dealt with the production of it a little differently now. The book is full of moments like this, and even more so than ever, it lifts the lid on the behind the scenes working of a major show.

Whether you're a wannabe writer, a Doctor Who enthusiast or just interested in the mechanics of putting a TV show together, I've read nothing quite like this, and the additional material is equally fascinating. That it was written when Davies was also planning his move to America is all the more astonishing, and adds to the feeling of controlled chaos.

My ultimate conclusion from it all is that I'll never write a Doctor Who episode in my life. I'm not sure my mental health could stand it. But I'll gladly be re-reading this book. If edition one was my favourite book of 2008, then this is surely the first must-buy of 2010. A superb, fascinating piece of work.

Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter is out now and can be ordered through the Den Of Geek Store.

This week, Marvel solicitations revealed that New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers and Avengers: The Initiative would all be "cancelled" in the wake of the current crossover, Siege.

Now, although Marvel has been known to cancel a profitable book to service the overall brand, there's no way it's going to kill off an entire franchise, especially when it's responsible for two of its strongest selling books.

So the question, essentially, isn't ‘will they relaunch these books?', it's how will they relaunch them?

The smart money says that a book called simply Avengers will be making its first appearance since 2005, probably from a new #1 issue, rather than immediately picking up the old numbering, though. That way they can make a big deal out of #600 a few months down the line.

Dark Avengers is the strangest player in this game. Marvel's biggest-selling ongoing essentially hijacked the concept and cast of Thunderbolts, leaving that book floundering a little, so it's possible they'll fold back into that title and buoy it up substantially. If nothing else, Dark Avengers is a book heavily tied into the current crossover, so it won't be surprising if it gets properly dissolved at the end of Siege without a replacement. Marvel will comfortably expect any Avengers relaunch to outsell Dark Avengers anyway.

New Avengers is a book that originally took the place of Avengers in Marvel's publishing slate, but as the strongest performer, besides Dark Avengers, it's also the most likely to stick around. New Avengers is a strong brand that Marvel won't jettison lightly, and with Thor, Cap and Iron Man back together in Avengers, well, maybe there'll still be space somewhere for Luke Cage, Wolverine and Spider-Man's street-level "New Avengers".

Mighty Avengers is also a likely candidate to disappear. At the moment, it fills a hole in the publishing slate as the Avengers book for people who liked the original Avengers team, though obviously, it's not quite seen as the equivalent by Marvel because it's being allowed to languish, mid-tied.

Slott is a writer who Marvel is fond of, though, so it would be strange for him to have his ongoing book taken away from him and no new work has been suggested just yet. The jury is still out on Mighty Avengers' fate - but whatever the book returns as, it probably won't be called Mighty Avengers, at least.

Avengers: The Initiative was barely an Avengers title anyway, so it's no surprise that it's getting cancelled, especially considering that the whole Initiative concept will presumably be done with once Norman Osborn falls and HAMMER disbands. It has, however, been given a successor already in the form of the rumoured Avengers Academy book, which, it seems, will fold it into the franchise more definitively.

There is also speculation that the place of New/Dark/Mighty Avengers might actually be taken up by a single Avengers title which, Spider-Man style, comes out three times a month. A bold move, if true, but welcome. Regardless of the marriage issue, Amazing Spider-Man has creatively thrived under its thrice-monthly schedule.

The only dangling thread left, of course, is Allan Heinberg's Young Avengers. Joe Quesada recently confirmed that work on part of the second volume was complete, but it doesn't seem like it'll be ready in time for the inevitable Avengers franchise relaunch - or will the sort-of-announced Avengers: Children's Crusade take its place entirely?

Time will tell, but between this and the coming X-Men reshuffle, it's an exciting time for Marvel fans who are looking for a jumping on point - or, in fairness - a jumping off point.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

2010 is upon us, and that means one thing: it's time for Alternate Cover's look at the top five comics to look forward to this year!

1. X-Men: Second Coming

Regular readers know I can't resist a good X-Men story, and the concluding chapter of the mini-arc that began with the "Messiah Complex" crossover at the end of 2007 is one of, if not the most exciting thing about Marvel this year, if only because there's a good chance it'll finally put to bed the restriction on mutant births imposed by the Scarlet Witch in the 2004 crossover "House of M" AND bring back Jean Grey. It's been long enough on both counts!

2. Demo 2

The 6-issue follow-up series from Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan, the team that brought you the original Demo, was expected late in 2009, but it was eventually solicited for 2010, and the first issue should be with us soon. The original series comprised 12 single-issue ‘graphic novellas' of massively varying tone that wiped the floor with everything else released that year. The concept started out as single-issue stories of teens ostensibly discovering the ‘superpowers' in a realistic context, but by the end of the run had been redefined into something much, much more. If the follow up is even half as good, it's going to be essential reading.

3. Age Of Heroes

I don't much care for Siege so far, but the prospect of the original ‘big 3' Avengers - Cap, Iron Man and Thor - re-uniting to take down Norman Osborn makes me practically giddy with excitement over what'll happen afterwards. The classic Avengers team hasn't been together for years, so there's fun in that idea, but if I'm being honest, it's the suggestion that Age Of Heroes signifies a shift back towards the creator-driven, self-contained stories that made Marvel's output so good in the early part of the last decade that really interests me.

4. The return of Bruce Wayne

I'm not a huge Batman fan, but I am a huge Grant Morrison fan, and only the self-deluded can prevent themselves being excited by the idea of him bringing Bruce Wayne back from the ‘dead'. Yes, this cross-time odyssey has more than a hint of Captain America's recent revival to it, but let's face it - whatever Grant Morrison does, it's going to be more interesting than that. Even his failures (hello, Final Crisis) are, at least, interesting ones. Definitely a must-read for 2010.

5. Scott Pilgrim Volume 6?

There's nothing official yet, but all the signs point to Scott Pilgrim, Volume 6 being released before the end of the year, if only because creator Bryan Lee O'Malley would apparently like the book out around the same time as the movie, which has a tentative release date of this summer. Scott Pilgrim Volume 5 was easily one of the best comics of last year, and with Volume 6 promising to wrap up the story for good, there's no way it can fail to be the best yet.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

Deep in the tombs and catacombs of British history, there was our very own Da Vinci code conspiracy waiting to be unearthed. Putting aside King Arthur, the Bard was the obvious other candidate and, indeed, Rex Richards's Shakespeare's Truth takes fun picking up all the academic debates about the real identity of the playwright and encases them in a wider constitutional conspiracy that stretches back centuries.

The premise is that continuous debate amongst scholars on whether Shakespeare really wrote his own plays and what role Francis Bacon had in their development. Richards examines this riddle through the eyes of his main protagonist, American,  Dan Knight,  but adds a more dramatic twist  to the story: the murder of Prince William  and the kidnapping of the Queen by an ancient cult called the Rosacrucians. And what happened to the hushed-up secret of Elizabeth I's illegitimate son?

Knight has just started working for an advertising agency in London. Little does he expect to be attacked by terrorists from an ancient sect and pursed by both MI5 and police, given the task of unravelling the truth before the clock chimes on New Year's Eve. Otherwise, he will forfeit his own life and Her Majesty's.

Along the way he's helped out by cryptologist Fiona, whose own father had dedicated his life researching truth, only to be confined to a mental hospital for his violent outbursts. The mystery lays in the two words: ‘Shall Dissolve'. It's a journey that takes them from Whitehall Court to Stratford Upon Avon and Westminster Abbey.

Shakespeare's Truth could unfairly be compared to the phenomena of Dan Brown's absurdly popular novels, but considering the starting blocks for Richards's ideas, it is unavoidable. The ambition, however, is not as great, not so obviously designed as a template for a blockbuster movie. It is more intended to create an entertaining adventure yarn that is playful with its material, even to the extent of adding a teasingly apposite Shakespearean quote for each chapter heading.  

His characters are drawn from familiar stereotypes but they are given enough flesh to feel credible rather than appearing simply as one-dimensional ciphers, and proving a solid skeleton to form a good cinematic or TV thriller. Encircling the whole intrigue with the extra layers of Royal family's fate takes it into a wider fantasy realm that is more fun than treasonable, but sure to stir up controversy in certain literary circles. Not sure if it will line the shelves of the Buckingham Palace library, though.

The greater delight comes from sowing your own curiosity about those hidden Bacon references in Shakespeare's existing heritage. Maybe your own doubts about the Bard's work shall dissolve once you reach the end, but it's a novel which is set to have you scrutinising statues and portraits for any hint of the truth, a mischievously enjoyable read that is unfussily told.

Shakespeare himself is probably laughing in his grave. Or is that Francis Bacon rattling his funny bones?

Shakespeare's Truth is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

It's the last Alternate Cover column of 2009, and that means it's time for a barely traditional look back at the year in the form of 12 months' worth of opinion pieces, rants and lists that make up Den Of Geek's overview of the comic industry!

In January, I picked out 5 comics I was looking forward to in 2009. Never one to miss from point-blank range, the comics listed were, of course, among the best. Not perfect, but certainly well-received. All except Demo 2, which despite initial noises of a 2009 release date, ended up being scheduled for 2010. Still, that just means it can go on next year's list!

In March, I outlined exactly why I wasn't interested in the Watchmen movie. In case anyone doubted me, I've avoided the movie to this day and feel perfectly fine with that. Life's too short for me to watch films I know I'll hate. That doesn't excuse the time I spent watching Wolverine, though.

And, of course, what would 2009 be without all those Barack Obama Comics? A celebrity comics fan himself, Obama's name has probably sold as many comics this year as Wolverine's. It's just a pity Wolvey's Canadian, otherwise they could've maybe worked out some kind of exchange scheme. Obama-mania has dialled down a bit recently, and it's unlikely we'll see that level of fervour again - but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

The summer saw the return of two very different comic characters announced. In June, new of Captain America's inevitable resurrection was delivered in a fairly botched "early shipping" stunt that upset fans and retailers alike. And me. However, in July, we saw the announcement that Marvelman (aka Miracleman) was coming back. While the collective jaw of comicbook fans hit the ground, the rest of the public barely registered. So I explained why it was a big deal. As it turned out, neither return had much of an impact on the rest of the year. The story of Cap's return is STILL ongoing and looks set to just inch into 2010, and elsewhere, all news of Marvelman has faded into the background while Marvel figure out exactly what they can do with the character. A little disappointing, to be fair.

Come August, I decided to turn my ire on the Hulk line, which was (and still is) in some disarray. Long-time readers of Alternate Cover know I love talking about the Hulk, but regretfully, even I've had to swear off the current crop of comics. In September, Disney bought Marvel and Warner Bros. remembered they own DC comics, but more importantly, I could no longer restrain my irritation over the growing phenomenon of Motion Comics. I've yet to see one that works.

October saw me breaking rank as a Marvel fan and getting completely bowled over by the Batman: Arkham Asylum game. A list of comics to read after playing it remains valid today, especially for anyone who picks the game up as a Christmas present - get these to go along with it!

And that, more or less, brings us up to date. I'll be back here for the first column of 2010 (or, to give it its full name, 2010: the year we make contact.)

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

Gold Town and Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman creator Sam Johnson spoke to me about his latest creation Ruby Kaye, aka Geek Girl, a Heathers- style social diva made superheroine after a game of strip poker gone awry. After winning a pair of dorky glasses, Ruby soon discovers that, along with the specs, she has inherited superpowers, and erm, super-klutziness.

Sam spoke to me about Geek Girl’s origin, where he plans on taking Ruby next and exactly why Ruby is more accessible than the morally ambiguous Catwoman and the all American Wonder Woman and why writing supergirls is way more fun than writing superboys.  

When did you come up with the Geek-Girl concept? – It’s pretty neat, an insanely popular girl going from social heroine to geekdom…

Image’s Shadowline imprint ran a ‘Who Wants to Create a Superheroine’ contest last year, where (as a starting point) people were invited to submit one-paragraph pitches for supergal concepts. An early version of the Geek-Girl idea was one of two I submitted. I felt it was a really solid concept and it’s been developed and strengthened since then and is now firing on all cylinders!

That concept being, when 'Little Miss Popular' Ruby Kay lands a pair of super-tech glasses - invented by brainiac college geek Trevor Goldstein - in a game of Strip Poker, she's granted flight, super-strength, and - due to a flaw in the glasses' programming -super-klutziness.

How long have you worked on Geek-Girl?

Pretty much the last two years; Geek-Girl #0 is out now, and I’m working on the upcoming mini-series with a terrific artist, Pablo Martinena; there’s a preview of it in GG #0. We’ve got big plans for Ruby!

Geek-Girl is so much fun, with some hilarious one-liners and an overall tongue-in-cheek vibe. You collaborated with Sally J Thompson on it (who did the illustrations). Can I ask, do the illustrations or the script come first? I’m curious as to how the artwork influences the content and vice-versa.

The script came first. While Sally is normally more a slice-of-life artist, she illustrated Geek-Girl’s origin in issue #0 as it’s a character-centric story that introduces us to Ruby’s world and clique, and she did a great job with the facial expressions. The mini-series’ll see Ruby launched headlong into the world of tights ‘n’ capes, which is where Pablo’s niche lies.

What are your plans for Ruby in future issues of Geek-Girl? Where do you see yourself taking her?

Well, right off the bat in issue #1, THE biggest super-hero in Maine - where Ruby studies PR at Acorn Ridge college - gets her ass handed to her by a major new super-villain and Ruby has to step up. This is before Geek-Girl’s never even had a fight! (Although she does knock someone out in issue #0 .)

Ruby’s kind of fallen into the whole super-hero thing. She wins these super-power-imbuing glasses - but kind of on a drunken whim. It’s her friend Summer who’s really pushing her into using the glasses’ powers for good; Ruby just got them because she fancied having them and she ‘gets what she wants.’

But the next thing she knows, fashion student Summer’s made her a costume and she’s flying the skies looking for crime. Not that she’s entirely opposed to that idea, she loves the powers the glasses give her, but obviously she hasn’t experienced what it means to be a super-hero - and when she does, especially as she’s encumbered by the ‘super-klutziness - she’s gonna get a wake up call.

I was only thinking recently that there hasn’t been a superheroine who could beat up a hundred men in a bar-fight since Xena or Sydney Bristow or Buffy. What do you enjoy about writing tough girls?

A lot of the characters I write are strong female heroines and I find them fun and interesting to write. I don’t think the gap - and I would say need -in the market for these characters has been filled properly.

Doing research ahead of releasing Geek-Girl #0, I was looking into why there are so few super-heroines that have sustained a successful series, and if you look at the characters that are out there, you can generally see why. The most recognizable female super-characters are Wonder Woman and Catwoman; now, while these do well, they haven’t hit as big as your ‘Supermans’, your ‘Spider-Mans’, etc. And I think part of the reason for this is they’re hard to relate to. Ruby is a much more down to earth character, that I think people will be a lot more easily able to identify with, and I know from being on MySpace and Facebook that people are digging the ‘geek factor.’

What gets your creative juices flowing?

Any number of things. People talking passionately and enthusiastically about comics; watching a great movie/TV show; seeing other creative people doing their thing; a great idea striking. But generally just sitting down and getting on with it! [laughs]

Can you tell me a bit about your Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman Cabra Cini?

Cabra Cini, another female character of mine, is ‘The Bitch Packing Heat.’ An ex-crack-whore who discovered voodoo in searching for a way to take down her abusive pimp/boyfriend without killing him (although she wound up killing him anyway [laughs]). Cabra’s a sweary bitch that doesn’t take any crap from anyone and employs voodoo in the hits she’s hired to carry out. She’s made a couple of appearances in H!M Comics’ IF-X anthology, and I’ve got more plans for her; hopefully a one-shot coming… You can check out more on her at www.cabracini.com.

Who are some of your favourite comic/writers/artists on the comic book circuit?

Right now, I’m digging Brian Michael Bendis and Christos Gage. I’ve found the whole Dark Reign thing very enjoyable, and what Gage is doing in Avengers: The Initiative - you just don’t know where this book is gonna go - he brings tons of obscure characters out of the bag, the cast and direction keeps changing without you ever feeling it’s losing anything - and it remains fun and intriguing throughout.

I also have to name check Grant Morrison. His run on Doom Patrol is among my favourite comics and a big influence -including being an influence in the creation of Geek-Girl villain Mr. Mash-Up (who pops up in Geek-Girl #0) - and now the DP are back, I’d love to take a crack at them.

I love that theme – teenage girls who weave myths around themselves, though in Ruby’s case it just happens to be true! When Ruby confesses to her friends that she is a superhero,  it backfires and she is left friendless. The world of teenagers seems like such a brutal setting – especially if you’re considered a geek. For Ruby, though, fertile ground for any number of adventures. Will there be any risqué storylines?

Well, she’s not entirely friendless - her ostracism from her clique actually makes the bond with her friend Summer (the only non-bitch) stronger, and things are gonna develop with waitress Mariella: someone she meets during issue #0. Ironically, Mariella is who college geek Trevor invented the super-glasses to impress - as he has a huge crush on her - and now it’s Ruby that has them and saves her from danger!

As for ‘risqué’. Yeah… there’s some ‘girl-on-girl’ action of a sort in the mini-series, coming from über alt. girl Nina Dante. Although it may not be ‘action’ in exactly the way bisexual Nina would like.

What advice would you offer someone who wanted to create a comic, but couldn’t illustrate?

Advertise on sites like Digital Webbing and Penciljack; get a good team that you have good communication with and that you can count on to deliver. It’s not easy to do, but it absolutely is do-able.

Sam Johnson, thank you very much!

Geek-Girl #0 is available to buy at www.geekgirlcomic.com and www.indyplanet.com.

Just as Hansel and Gretel walked into a forest and discovered a house of candy only to encounter something more sinister inside, so the reader of Salem Brownstone is drawn into a magical world that holds dark secrets. This is a lively, stylish fable from two new young British-based comic book talents that carries with it the spirit of independent creators such as Dan Clowes and Bryan Talbot.

Returning home to reclaim his heritage after his father's death, Salem Brownstone discovers many family secrets, not least the fact that his father was a magician who fought extra-dimensional demons. Salem is soon expected to take up the mantle to continue the fight against these archaic beings. With the help of his guardian familiar, and the weirdly wonderful performers of Dr Kinoshita's Circus of Unearthly Delights, he remains this world's only hope against  this alien invasion.

A life-long fan of comic books, writer John Harris Dunning has shaped a hero that has been shaped from the realms of mystical and gothic fantasy. He has siphoned off elements of Tim Burton's cinematic realms,  Aleister Crowley,  and  popular magically powered heroes such as Dr Strange, Zatanna and  Mandrake. There are also echoes of Victorian faerie fiction and the nightmare world of childhood and the Brothers Grimm.

Nikhil Singh's artwork seems perfectly bonded to the words, weaving its black and white spidery line drawings into a visual briar patch that grafts words and  images indelibly together on the page. The wiry elongated figures are reminiscent of  Henry Selick's designs for Jack Skellington in A Nightmare Before Christmas, as Simon Bisley's work on Nemesis. However, there are stronger, and indeed, favourable, comparisons with  the delicately erotic darkness of Aubrey Beardsley's work, emphasised further by the book's plush purple cover that shadows the fin-de-siècle decadence of  the Yellow Book in which Beardsley's work was originally published.

Salem Brownstone is a fairy tale for adults, proving that graphic novels can still harness the imagination beyond mere muscle-bound superheroics.   Confidently told and imaginatively realised, this is a haunting cosmically aware Alice In Wonderland for the new century. I suspect that there are more adventures to come after All Along The Watchtowers. For now, this is a spellbinding beginning.

Salem Brownstone: All Along The Watchtowers is out now and available from The Den Of Geek Store.

When comics were true periodicals, you could guarantee you'd get a Christmas issue popping up every once in a while. These days, though, it's hard to drop a Christmas issue as part 3 of a 6-part story, and similarly, beginning your Christmas-themed story in August isn't going to make it feel particularly timely or relevant. So, while I'm not a fan of recurring gimmicks, we should perhaps learn to cherish those Christmas stories that we do get as a dying breed.

Now, I'm not saying that Christmas stories are universally good. Indeed, far from it. Most are overly-sentimental, schmaltzy, generic affairs. Indeed, that's best evidenced by the way Christmas stories are tackled these days. Marvel and DC generally restrict their Christmas stories to rather dutiful ‘Holiday Special' anthologies. There's nothing there that suggests we'd be better off if the Christmas specials made a roaring return. But still, there were some good Christmas stories in the past. Last year, I wrote about the top five X-Men Christmas issues, So this year, I'm picking a few from the wider Marvel Universe to give the review treatment!

Avengers #157 (1976)
Scripted by Gerry Conway with pencils by classic Avengers artist Don Heck, A Ghost of Stone! tells the story of the stone statue of the Black Knight coming to life and attacking the Avengers. Being from the 70s, it's got all the flaws of that period, but it also manages to tell a sufficiently Christmassy story of remembering old friends without reverting to stereotypical Christmas tropes.

X-Factor #27 (1987)
Although it's very similar to an X-Men Christmas issue, this is very different in one major way: it happened in the pages of X-Factor. Walt and Louise Simonson tell a Christmas story about the five original X-Men (and the mutant kids they were looking after) that has everything you could possibly want : festive cheer, a Christmas tree made of ice on the cover and, er, an appearance by Apocalypse.

Spectacular Spider-Man #173 (1990)
It's another Conway Christmas as the writer teams up with David Michelinie and artist Sal Buscema for a seasonal Spidey treat. The issue is a fairly traditional take on the problems of Peter's responsibilities as Spider-Man, with the Christmas theme acting as background material. Still, an appearance by Doctor Octopus as the villain gives it a fairly classic feel. Not particularly original, but a decent enough example of its story type.

Ant Man's Big Christmas (1999)
This comic was a bit of an oddity, being a traditional one-shot using decidedly un-gritty Marvel characters, but released by Marvel Knights, which was then a newly-created, edgy and gritty imprint. Written by Bob Gale (Writer of Back To The Future) and drawn by Phil Winslade, Ant Man's Big Christmas features Hank Pym as Ant-Man, and co-stars the Wasp as the pair pays a visit to a fan's house for Christmas. The holiday itself plays a major part in the story, and if you're in the mood for a Christmas story, it's worth tracking down this curio.

Blade #4 (2006)
Marc Guggenheim and Howard Chaykin do Christmas, Blade-style, as the Daywalker fights a department store Santa (amongst others) who has been possessed by a demon. The spirit of Christmas, indeed. To be honest, it's a pretty depressing read for a ‘Christmas' issue as Blade eventually discovers that the only way to kill the demon is to kill the current host - and duly does so. The Blade series (like every Blade series) wasn't very long lived, but if nothing else, this issue's worth it just for Chaykin's artwork!

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

The humble DVD Easter egg has certainly had a hell of a decade: from obscure novelty to the centrepiece of one of the most acclaimed pieces of television drama in recent years, Doctor Who's Blink, all in the space of ten years. Indeed, there are few who couldn't admit to idly fiddling with the arrow buttons on their remotes in the hope of discovering a hidden documentary or a rare blooper.

As the first decade of the 2000s draw to a close, with DVD slowly but surely passing the baton over to Blu-ray as consumers' format of choice, former Empire journalist and Channel 4 list show stalwart Jo Berry has compiled a selection of the very best in The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide.

Ultimately most, if not all, of the information given in the book can be found easily online. However, the personal touches that Berry has made throughout this anthology, and the care she has taken in its compilation, make this a worthwhile companion to have for your DVD collection.

DVDs, from films to TV box sets, are listed alphabetically, making it incredibly easy to find the title you're looking for. Each listing consists of a concise and honest review, followed by a detailed catalogue of eggs found on the disc, and how to find them. Each individual egg is given a rating out of five stars, indicating how worthwhile or entertaining it is.

Some of the best eggs discussed include a breakdancing Yoda, the animated cast of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within recreating Michael Jackson's Thriller dance, and a naked Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development. Among these more quirky examples, absorbing interviews and fascinating behind-the-scenes footage can also be found lurking deep within your copies of The Godfather Trilogy, Moulin Rouge, and Lost.

It's Berry's reviews, though, that will more than likely keep drawing you back. Whether lavishing praise on Blake's 7, or questioning the motives behind Disney's Dinosaur, her sadly all too brief insights make this book work just as well as a catalogue of recommendations as it does a collection of Easter eggs.

The only major drawback is Berry's choice of DVDs. Many obvious or more interesting omissions - such as the newly recorded audio footage by the cast of The Day Today, or, indeed, the inclusion of the aforementioned Blink Easter egg in the season 3 box set of Doctor Who - have been oddly overlooked in favour of relatively obscure titles and Region 1 imports.

But, as a fun, handy guide for those who simply can't be bothered to trawl the internet for such information, The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide makes for a more than useful purchase.

The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

This week, Marvel released the first chapter of the Siege crossover to bear the name. A decent introduction to the story, Siege: The Cabal tells us how Norman Osborn's alliance of villains is faring under the weight of internal backstabbing and conniving (the answer: poorly) and explains both how and why he's going to regard the Earth-bound Asgard as such a threat. But all that's just the story. The comic also contains a Siege checklist. Judging by online reaction, I wasn't the only person whose heart sank when they got to that page.

Siege, after all, was promoted as the first of Marvel's new ‘smaller' event comics. After spending the best part of a year reading comics about Norman Osborn (Dark Reign), and the previous year having Skrulls show up in almost every comic I read (Secret Invasion) I was looking forward to a short, focused story. The truth isn't quite what I wanted.

Admittedly, Siege - the core series - has been scaled down to a nice, manageable 4-issue run, so the story won't drag on for months like Secret Invasion and Civil War before it. But far from being smaller, the number of related tie-ins, crossovers and one-shots brings the total number of Siege comics to 37 - assuming no more are announced.

Annoyingly, the vast majority of the tie-ins are books I'm already reading. We were already warned that Dark Avengers and New Avengers would tie in fairly heavily, and you can't fault Thor for being a tie-in - but add to that list Mighty Avengers, Avengers: The Initiative, Thunderbolts, issues of New Mutants and Dark Wolverine and the tie-in series Siege: Embedded and suddenly the ‘small' crossover doesn't look so small. Admittedly, it's shorter than most, but the results are a checklist that's still twice the size of the similarly small-scale event, Fall Of The Hulks, which runs through the Hulk books at the same time.

Marvel's Sr. Sales VP David Gabriel recently said that he doesn't believe that the phenomenon of "event fatigue" exists. The problem isn't the events themselves, but that the ones that exist are too long. In a sense, it's a fair observation that I actually did agree with, but only up until this week. Just the sight of the Siege checklist has left me feeling that familiar weariness that Secret Invasion (and, to an extent, Dark Reign) brought on, and Siege has barely begun! If that's not event fatigue, I don't know what is.

Whether I'm alone in this, of course, is another question entirely. The numbers show that these sprawling crossover events boost sales significantly across the board, but arguably in the form of diminishing returns, as comic sales sink to new lows again and again, with even top-selling books struggling to crack the 100,000-units barrier according to sales estimates.

It's easy to sympathise with those who want to prop comicbook sales up with events in an attempt to get more readers, but in my case, it's actually having the opposite effect, making me less and less interested in series that I've otherwise been happily reading for years.

Certainly, there's a sense that Siege is going to bring the Marvel Universe full circle, re-assembling the Avengers and ending a meta-arc that began seven years ago with the dissolution of the ‘classic' Avengers line-up. If that's the case, then maybe Siege will lead to a few years of smaller, creator-driven stories. And if not, then maybe we'll see how real the phenomenon of event fatigue truly is.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

Considering what a global phenomenon James Bond has become, it’s difficult to imagine a world without him. The books are never out of print and the films keep hitting the box office jackpot and never seem to be off TV. But in simpler times, he offered a thrilling escape, a hint of the exotic, of intrigue, of danger and adventure over a morning bowl of corn flakes and sticky marmalade fingers. His exploits were told in a daily newspaper strip, the tale making progress three or four panels at a time.

This first bumper volume collects those early strips that, unlike the films, adapt the novels in chronological order. An introduction by Sir Roger Moore sets the scene. So we’re introduced to Bond in Casino Royale, trying to outwit the international gambler, Le Chiffre moving through another ten adventures.

As a novel it was first published in 1953, but this strip made its appearance in the Daily Express in 1958. Many of them have appeared in separate volumes but now Titan is reprinting them in more compact omnibus editions, so that Bond’s exploits are told in the right order, adapted by writers Anthony Hern and Henry Gammidge, with Peter O’Donnell taking on Dr No.

It enables readers to see the growth and development of the strip, too, in particular the art of John McLusky, who manages to build the tension and drama at a measured pace and with draughtsmanship economy. It may seem at odds with much of the dynamic visuals of modern comics, but the accumulative effect of reading each tale is in its uninterrupted whole rather than the anticipation of the continuing story next day.

Knowing how thorough Miss Moneypenny is with her filing (despite her absence from these tales), the adapted stories in this volume are: Live And Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia With Love, Dr No, Goldfinger, Risico, From A View To A Kill, For Your Eyes Only, and Thunderball.

Much closer to the original novels, they indicate Bond’s growing popularity and early exploitation away from the written page. High on espionage, and Boy’s Own-style global adventure but with grittier, more brutal villains, these strips appeared before Connery and Ursula Andress first hit the screen (and yes, the beach scene appears in the strip but with more modesty), and whilst the Cold War was heating up. They feel like condensed storyboards for those cinematic exploits which are reimagined differently, but they are still the stories we’re familiar with complete with exotic locations, hi-tech gadgets (in moderation) and beautifully coiffured women.

Just create your own theme tune as you read each strip and you’ll be in 007 heaven once more.

The James Bond Omnibus: Volume 1 is out now in flexi-bound paperback.

Recently, Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort teased on his Twitter account that there would be "Three deaths" in Marvel's forthcoming Siege crossover - at least one of which would "surprise" us. In my eyes, that's nothing if not a call for speculation. So, let the games begin:

Ms. Marvel
We know from the solicitations that AN AVENGER WILL DIE - and Ms. Marvel's low-to-mid-selling book is ending with #50. Writer Brian Reed has been suspiciously silent on the issue, suggesting that a relaunch will be announced in due course, but perhaps the book isn't going to relaunch because Ms. Marvel herself is going to die. She's prominent enough that it would be a significant moment, but not so important that she can't be shuffled off, and after a 50-issue run, Marvel can't be accused of failing to give her a chance.

Captain America
Surprising death? How about Captain America? You won't get more surprising than that. After all, Steve Rogers is barely fresh out of the ground, so shoving him back in it would certainly be...surprising. Still, there's also Bucky-Cap, who hasn't formally renounced the role of Cap, and his death might give us a decent answer as to who gets to be Captain America in the long run without forcing someone to quit. Unlikely, but possible.

Norman Osborn
Given the number of heroes who have been declaring that they'll KILL NORMAN OSBORN, well, it'd be oddly appropriate (though surprising) if one of them actually did. We know that Siege is the series that, to an extent, signals the end of Dark Reign, and where can Osborn go after this? Over the last year, Osborn has taken the concept of ‘over-exposed' to an entirely new level, perhaps taking him off the chessboard ‘permanently' would make sense. On the other hand, he's cheated apparent death several times before; would it really be worth trying to kill him off again? Who would believe it?

Iron Man
Norman Osborn might be Spider-Man's nemesis, but he's increasingly been positioned again Iron Man during the events of Dark Reign - not just because he stole his armour, and nicked his job, but because Stark also fled with the database containing the secret identities of all the registered super-heroes. Siege is the series that re-unites the Avengers trinity of Thor, Cap and Iron Man. It'd be a bittersweet re-union if Stark's death capped it off. Still, with Iron Man 2 released in almost the same month that Siege finishes, Marvel would have to be incredibly bold or incredibly stupid to kill the character off too, though it would finally prove once and for all that their publishing division doesn't take its cues from the movie studios...

Luke Cage
Cage has put a lot at stake recently. He's effectively leading the New Avengers, he's personally squared off against Osborn more than once, and currently has a bomb (or similar) in his chest as a result. Clearly, if he survives through to Siege then there'll be a certain amount of confrontation with Osborn. As one of Bendis' favourite characters, it certainly would be surprising for Cage to get killed off by the writer who clawed him back from the realm of blaxploitation footnotes, but in a story about Asgard, would such a focus on Cage be a little too out of left-field?

As ever, we'll just have to wait and see... though feel free to comment with your own guesses.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to Brighton. Spandex is a brand spanking new superhero comic with sporadic explosions of rainbow coloured flourishes. Martin Eden, creator of the much lauded The O Men has created a band of superheroes that just happen to be gay or lesbian or hovering somewhere in between.

The fabulous group consists of "Liberty (a glamorous transvestite superhero) Prowler (absorbs the abilities of gay people), Glitter (male Dazzler), Indigo (beautiful French teleporter), and Mr. Muscles & Butch (strong twins)." 

Martin Eden spoke to me about Gay Zombies, his plans for forthcoming issues of Spandex and the graphic novel he has planned. There are gay ninjas, 50-foot lesbian and super evil geniuses called Muscle Mary and Pussy. And they're going to kick ass...

When did you decide to create a superhero comic with an entirely gay group?

It was never really a decision or plan - I was just working on my O Men comic and some new supporting characters started to really stand out, and the idea just developed and evolved from there. On the one hand, the project seemed unique and fresh to me, and also it was something I knew I could have a lot of fun with, and do in a fairly tongue-in-cheek way.

The first issue sees the superheroes battle the terrifying 50-foot lesbian and I heard a rumour there will be gay zombies - what other villains and heroes can readers expect to be introduced to in later issues?

Yes, issue three is Gay Zombies. Issue two is Pink Ninjas. My villains are crazy. I'm just having fun with the concept and coming up with foes like Muscle Mary, the Gay-Bashers, Les Girls (formerly known as something else, but I thought that tongue in cheek 'joke' might not go down too well)... To be honest, the ideas are coming through thick and fast, a phrase or name will come into my head, and I will form the character around that.

How has Spandex been received so far?

Amazingly well! Before the media became involved, it was getting a good response. I think people just liked something new and different and quite colourful. Kids love the colours, which is a bit unfortunate, as Spandex isn't for them. After Spandex got into the Metro and the Sun website, it all went crazy, but the general response is that it is making people smile. The gay community seem very happy and proud to have something like this. I did a comic convention up in Leeds at the weekend and everyone was so, so nice. It seems to be getting a big female readership, which is what I wanted with O Men, but never seemed to get, and even straight guys weren't afraid to buy a gay comic. Good for them.

Where did you find your heroes and what other influences factored in while creating the comic?

Most of my heroes just start with a name. Or when I'm developing a team, it's a question of balance, and working out what kind of parts would make a good whole. Liberty, Diva and Glitter were background characters in The O Men, and they were obvious picks for the team.

Butch and Mr Muscles came to me quite quickly. It's almost as if these people exist, and they just introduce themselves to me. Prowler and Indigo took ages to develop though. Prowler is quite complex - he went from being just an agile monkey guy with a tail, to having the power to absorb the abilities of gay people, and his name went through about 10 changes too. Indigo came into my head fully formed, but then I developed the idea of her Indigo Room, where she teleports in and out for costume changes, make-up and weapons.

As for influences, well I think I always carry those around with me and they probably affect the comic subconsciously. All the old 80s Marvel Comics, Grant Morrison's comics, things like that.

You've wrote on your blog that a Spandex graphic novel is in the pipeline, can you tell me a little bit about this?

I couldn't just do one story with these guys, because you have to build the characters. So I decided to take a break from The O Men and focus on a different comic for a while. I found with O Men, that individual issues didn't work so well, people preferred to buy trade paperbacks, so I decided to collect five stories straight into a graphic novel. It'll be fun, because it's not a linear story, I'm telling the stories for issues 1, 4, 8, 12 and 15, and you can fill in the blanks of what happened in-between with fake covers and Editorial references.

So that will definitely happen, and to keep the ball rolling, I'd planned to release some mini-comics, 'Spandex Shorts', every now and then. But to be honest, I am so excited by Spandex that I am thinking of actually releasing issue two in the new year, or even do all five as individual issues. I'll have to see how it goes, financially.

What do you think of current depictions of gay people/culture in television/films/comics?

It's quite hard really... Look at EastEnders... I've lost count of the amount of gay characters they have had, and I think they run out of things to do with them so they dump them.. There's one at the moment, but he doesn't seem particularly likeable. I don't know, I don't watch it. I think people are less afraid to show gay characters now. I was watching FlashFoward the other week and there was a big lesbian storyline (not a Giant Lesbian) but it did seem a bit over the top and in-your-face... 'Look at us, we're portraying lesbian characters...gosh we need to have a big snog again'. It didn't seem very natural.

I think the trick is to introduce lesbian and gay characters without anyone batting an eyelid. Batwoman and Rictor/Shatterstar are kind-of achieving that, but by the same token, I don't feel their writers are doing anything particularly exciting with the gay aspect of it. It seems almost ignored. Maybe it's because the writers are straight, and they're not sure how to handle it. Write what you know, they always say! What I'm doing, is using the gay aspect as the set-up, and having fun with that, but I'd also want people to read it as an exciting story, with characters who just happen to be gay.

From what I've seen so far you seem to be having a lot of fun with Spandex while still exploring dark territory - do you think a lot of comic books deliberately take a darker route?

I think you have to explore the dark side of things, because life isn't always rosy. But then you don't want to go down the Eastenders route, which is too depressing. I think people will be surprised by Spandex. It's lighter than The O Men, but some very shocking things happen. Someone picking up issue one expecting a bit of camp nonsense is in for a big surprise.

Who are some of your favourite superheroes and villains?

I used to love the X-Men and I still do, but some of the characters seem to have lost their way. Look at Storm now, she's just uninteresting. I pretty much like most of Grant Morrison's stuff. Doom Patrol, The Invisibles - amazing. I wish they'd bring Crazy Jane back. Favourite team of all time though was Alpha Flight (R.I.P.)... I kind of like the Marauders in the X-Men, but they were really under-developed for some reason. They just look good.

Are you planning on returning to The O Men?

I put O Men on hiatus for Spandex, and I actually put it into a quiet little shelf in my mind, forgetting all about it so I could invest all my energy in Spandex. But when I did a London comic show the other week, it was clear that people wanted more O Men, and it did make me want to do more. So yes, my mind did start to think about more O Men stuff, but now of course Spandex has become fairly big. There won't be any O Men comics for at least a year, but I might try to do some drawings. I'm planning to do a fun, joint O Men/Spandex pic - where they're all in a nightclub or pub.

Which do you prefer doing, the artwork or the writing?

That's a tricky question! I don't even consider myself a writer. I just think about my comics a lot, and the stories and plots just pop into my head, or follow a logical conclusion. Or I'll watch a movie or listen to an album, and it'll create an image in my head of something that should happen in Spandex. So I write all these random notes down, and then when it comes to writing an issue, I'll have a vague idea of the important things that need to happen, but a lot of it is about connecting the dots, and adding in the cool lines of dialogue I've been thinking about and making sure I don't forget to include something important.

I love drawing - I've been drawing since I was about three. I'm completely self-taught. I'm kind of aware that people prefer my writing to my drawing, so it's a weird situation to be in! One guy the other day said I draw like a four-year-old! Some people think the art is too simple. I don't know, I'm too close to it. I do my best, and it is what it is, and I hope people like it. I think I'm a storyteller, above anything else.

Martin Eden, thank you very much!

If you're an X-Men fan like me, you're probably already salivating over the prospect of the next big X-Men crossover, Second Coming - the conclusion to the trilogy that began with Messiah Complex and continued (after a fashion) in Messiah War.

Messiah Complex ended with Hope, the first mutant born after M-Day, being spirited into the future by Cable. Second Coming will, with some certainty, be the story that brings her home.

Running through several of the X-Books released in the early part of next year, the events are, naturally, shrouded in mystery. We know that it concerns the return of Hope to the present. We know it'll likely mean that we finally see a victory in the fight between her protector, Cable, and former X-Man Bishop (who wants Hope dead). But it will definitely answer one question that's been on everyone's lips: who is Hope?

So far, it's been kind of an open secret that Hope - the mutant child whose birth precipitated the events of Messiah Complex - is actually Jean Grey. Of course, it's so open a secret that it's hard not to wonder if there's actually a little bait-and-switch at work. Perhaps Hope isn't Jean at all.

In which case, we have to ask again: who is she? The safest non-Jean bet is that she's actually Madelyne Pryor, Jean's embittered (and long-dead) clone. This, however, seems ruled out as an answer by the fact that Pryor recently appeared as the villain in a recent Uncanny X-Men arc where she was still dead and most definitely not in the future, although she was a psychic ghost. Still, this seems to take care of that question, unless it was actually designed to set up her reappearance...

But if not her, then who else? Could Hope instead be Rachel Grey? Again, it's possible, but not probable. The "real" Rachel is alive right now, albeit in space. Still, she's got the same red hair and green eyes as Jean, and similar powers. But if Rachel isn't the daughter of Scott and Jean, she's lost what made her interesting in the first place, and there was never any suggestion that Rachel herself would be special. It could be made to fit, if editorial rewrites so demanded, but it wouldn't be the answer anyone wanted.

It could be that Hope is actually Phoenix - a separate, Jean Grey-esque entity with a predilection for women with red hair and green eyes. It could be that Second Coming, with all the religious connotations that title offers, is referring to the resurrection of the Phoenix. And certainly, Bishop's insistence that Hope will kill millions of humans and doom the mutant race forever makes sense when you consider that the Phoenix has happily fed on entire stars before, with no regard for those her actions killed. That's the kind of disregard for life that you'd expect would upset people.

Of course, maybe Hope isn't Jean, or Madelyne or Rachel or Phoenix. She's just Hope, a new character. It makes the "Second Coming" title work in a different way, but it does explain why so much emphasis has been placed on developing Hope as an independent character recently. Maybe she's supposed to be new. After all, Hope is now fully distinct from all the other characters mentioned on this list.

If their memories are forced into her corporeal body, Hope herself will essentially cease to exist as a character and person. Is that right? If she was an existing character like Jean coming back to life, why doesn't she have her ‘own' memories?

Still, after years of waiting, there isn't long left until we know. Of course, while I'm here, I'm going to throw out a couple more predictions for Second Coming and see how close I get things.

Prediction 1: Cable is going to die. He's aged almost 20 years since he left the ‘present' with Hope, and he was already old before that. As a time-traveller, he's easy to bring back, but in the meantime his alternate reality counterpart, Nate Grey, just came back to life. With Cable's own title apparently coming to an end with #25, the decks are clear for the conveniently-living Nate Grey to have a little time in the spotlight.

Prediction 2: Bishop will almost cause the massacre he's trying to prevent - and Hope will stop him. Since Messiah Complex, Bishop has sacrificed everything in his attempt to kill Hope, in a potentially misguided attempt to save human lives and change the future. Perhaps it's that determination to kill Hope that actually leads to the deaths of thousands. It'd be a classic tragic-hero twist in the story.

Still, those are just guesses, mind. See you all back here once the story's out?

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

As long-time Stephen King readers know, you should avoid Maine, New England at all cost, lest you want to meet a rather nasty demise.

On paper, the latest horror to befall the US state isn't as terrifying as, say, a rabid Saint Bernard or a teenage girl with telekinesis. In fact, the plot shares a striking similarity with that of The Simpsons Movie.

One autumn morning in the small town of Chester's Mill, Maine, an invisible ‘dome' inexplicably descends upon the town, sealing it off from the rest of the world. A woodchuck is chopped in half; a gardener's hand is severed at the wrist; cars smash fatally into the invisible barrier and a plane explodes in mid-air.

Things quickly go from bad to worse, and the death rate escalates. As residents speculate about what may have caused the dome, egomaniacal selectman and all-round bad guy, Big Jim Rennie, the man who holds the town in his powerful grip, sees an opportunity to further his political - and criminal - agenda. He quickly becomes a ruthless tyrant, seizing control of the town's resources and manipulating events to suit his nefarious plans.

Standing in his way is Dale "Barbie" Barbara, a short-order cook and an Iraq war veteran, who was leaving town for good on the morning the dome came down. As children start having seizures, with premonitions of a terrifying Halloween filled with murder and mayhem, it's up to Barbie to take on Big Jim and his personal police force.

Just as Big Jim has Chester's Mill in his vice-like grip, King will have you in his. King's usually a fan of build up and back-story, but he's straight into the action here, and it seldom lets up.

At nearly 900 pages Under the Dome is a hefty tome, but he manages to keep it interesting. There are numerous intersecting sub-plots, and the town of Chester's Mill is so well realised that you genuinely feel as if you live there, becoming increasingly desperate as the US military tries and fails to break through the invisible barrier.

As frightening as events inevitably become, however, it's never truly terrifying. It has more in common with Needful Things, King's twisted social commentary on 1980s excess, which was set in a small town with a similarly large cast of characters, than it does with Carrie, for example. It's like an epic episode of The Twilight Zone, offering a deep mystery, the best and worst aspects of human nature, and some not-so-subtle themes, namely religion, the environment and, of course, politics.

The political metaphors, in particular, can be a bit on the nose, and the religious speak can become rather irksome. But for the most part Under the Dome is an interesting, darkly ironic fable, with something worthwhile to say about the environment and human nature, even if its primary characters are remarkably one-dimensional.

King's never been one for writing complicated, morally-grey characters. They generally fall into one of two camps: goodies or baddies. There are no shades of grey. Take chief baddie Big Jim, for example: he's an evil, sexist and racist Republican, not to mention a hypocritical religious fanatic. He's even a used car salesman.

Barbie, on the other hand, is your typical square-jawed G.I. Joe. Besides a minor character-arc where he seeks redemption for an atrocity he stood by and let happen in Iraq, he fits the standard action-movie hero archetype: he's calm in the face of death, he's resourceful and he knows how to fight, even taking on several guys by himself. He can even dodge bullets shot at close range.

The peripheral characters are more interesting, and serve to ground the otherwise far-fetched premise. It's a human horror story. The real horror isn't the dome, but what it brings out in the characters trapped beneath it.

It's a shame then, that King ditches the humanity in the final act for the metaphysical, even if it does raise a few interesting moral questions. The ending is just not satisfying enough for a novel of this length, which until then has you captivated by the seemingly hopeless plight of Chester's Mill and its inhabitants.

King has been considering writing Under The Dome for more than 25 years, but hadn't written it until now for fear of "screwing it up". He says in the author's note that he first tried writing it in 1976, but was overwhelmed by the technical issues the story presented, especially the "ecological and meteorological consequences of the dome". He went on to something else, but the story never left his mind.

It was worth the wait. It's a very good novel, a riveting read and a welcome return to King's spiritual home of Maine (his last novel, the creepy Duma Key, was set in Florida).

It's not vintage King, and not nearly as good as The Stand, his best work to date, but fans won't be disappointed.

Order Under the Dome now from the Den of Geek Amazon store.

With this week's news that Dollhouse has finally gone to the great schedule in the sky, fans are already beginning to wonder: will there be a Dollhouse comic? After all, Dollhouse's showrunner and all-round genius Joss Whedon has brought all his other TV creations to the printed page. Financials aside, why shouldn't the series go on in printed form?

However - and I say this as someone who enjoys Dollhouse far more than most people would willingly want to admit - I don't think a Dollhouse comic is a good idea.

Contrary to what some people would believe, creating a comic isn't purely about storyboarding a movie and slapping on a few speech bubbles. The medium is good at some things and bad at others. On the surface, Dollhouse was a show about people having their identities removed and replaced, and the possibilities and consequences of that. But that was just the story. We should not forget that the point of Dollhouse wasn't just to tell that story. The show was literally brought into existence by a plan to showcase Eliza Dushku's acting range.

No matter how good comics are, that's one element of the show that can't be translated to comics. Without it, the logic of the presentation falls apart. Echo, for all her originality, isn't so interesting that we need to see her on every engagement. The main reason the show follows Echo so closely is because we need a reason to watch Eliza Dushku. Without that constraint, the stories and format would make less and less sense, which, for a show as tenuously constructed as Dollhouse, might be more strain than it can handle.

The TV-to-comics transition can work, of course. Dark Horse's official Buffy Season 8 comic proves that much. But, then, even when it was on TV, Buffy, with its teenage metaphors, secret identity angst and colourful cast of villains, always owed more to comic superheroes than it did to the televisual teenage dramas that were its contemporaries.

Buffy, then, was a natural fit for the printed page. Even Buffy's spin-off show Angel, which hovered around a noir-tinged detective show format for the majority of its TV run, doesn't immediately lend itself to the medium of comics. IDW's often lacklustre Season 6 comic adaptation demonstrates perfectly that even the most Angelesque stories can't make up for the gaping void of charisma left in characters like Wesley and Illyria when their actors are removed from the equation.

Of course, there's no reason to say that the story of Dollhouse defies continuation in any medium, or even necessarily in comics. It's just that the show, at present, is so built around the TV format that it would need a radical overhaul for a comic to do it justice. Such a rework would require considerable input from Joss Whedon, and with all the goodwill in the world, he's probably got bigger fish to fry.

Buffy gets additional attention by virtue of being his first and greatest masterpiece, but Angel and Firefly are already being consigned to history as he pursues new opportunities.

So, as much as I loved it and will continue to tune in for the final episodes, let's hope that Dollhouse gets the ending it deserves, in live-action, rather than the undignified, zombie-like re-animation of a comic series.

And if Whedon does feel like writing more comics, well... Sugarshock! deserves the attention far more than Dollhouse does.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.

I am, in all honesty, a huge fan of the book-to-movie trend. I can name at least three friends who dislike Hollywood's habit of recreating beloved books for the big (or small) screen very much, but I don't mind it at all.

For one thing, it's not as though the book disappears. The book will always be there, even if the movie blows. For another, sometimes something really great happens and the adaptation turns out to be...well, great.

It's always been Hollywood's fallback plan, from the early days onward: if you don't have a good story, get it from somewhere else. Okay, so sometimes the partnership isn't always a good one, and sometimes people adapt the wrong books (enough Nicholas Sparks, please!). The rising trend toward adapting fantasy books in particular hasn't gone unnoticed.

I'd be very surprised if there weren't more movies to be seen soon from novels like Harry Potter, The Lord Of The Rings, The Golden Compass, and so on, and so forth, etcetera... There are so many, though, that Hollywood is missing.

I'm certain this list will be disputed, and it's by no means comprehensive. But these are the books that should be movies, if someone would just get around to it.

10. Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block

I have a thing for young adult fantasy, and I also have a serious thing for Francesca Lia Block. Lyrical and bright, with just enough shadows thrown in, Block's writing is nothing less than an ambrosial feast for the imagination.

The Weetzie Bat series, her most poignant and often playful work to date, follows a ‘family' (not all strictly related, but far more of a family than most relatives are) who live and, more importantly, love in Los Angeles.

The books' fantasy elements are so subtle and seamlessly incorporated into what would otherwise be simply a stunning work of modern fiction, that the reader takes for granted that they are there, in much the same way people take for granted the magical elements of the classic fairytales. This is, in every sense that means something, a modern fairytale, and to see the glittering world of Block's Los Angeles put to screen is a thought just too good to be true.

9. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

I know, I know... ‘But Something Wicked This Way Comes is a movie, you silly duck! It was made in 1983 starring Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce!"

Silly duck I may be, but I know it's a movie. I enjoy the movie. I could listen to Jonathan Pryce talk for days (preferably in conversation with Jeremy Irons, but that's beside the point). The problem is, the book is much, much better than the movie, and while a) that's not uncommon and b) the movie isn't a very bad one, it is still not quite the book.

So even though my favourite creepy carnival story of all time has been a movie already, I would still like to see it attempted again...only better. The darkness that was left out of the original movie sorely needs to be replaced, even at the expense of also probably having to replace Jonathan Pryce.

8. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Rumors of this being made into a movie have been bouncing around for years now. Years, okay? And it's not getting any done-er. This is, in my opinion, utterly lamentable.

Granted, the books get progressively more out-there as the series goes on, but they certainly don't get worse, and fact remains that the first is the simplest, most interesting, and most filmable. So why has nobody gotten around to depicting Colfer's whimsically dangerous take on fairies and his cunning genius of a teenaged protagonist? Nobody knows. (Well, somebody knows, but it's all so complicated and silly and disappointing, it's hardly worth thinking about.)

But really, done well and blockbuster-big, this could be a great success. And once upon a time, before complication ensued, somebody knew that. Hopefully, one of these days it'll be picked back up, dusted off, and put into action.

7. Vellum by Hal Duncan

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure how this would be filmed in a way that gets the full concept of the story across. There would have to be some damn creative scripting going on, as well as multiple storylines and a lot of flashbacking to deal with, which is probably why this will never happen.

As a sucker for creative use of mythology, however, I would still love to see someone try.

I would explain what it's about, but since I read it twice, love it, and still have no clue, you may just have to read it yourself. Then, come back here and tell me I'm insane. I think this is probably the only book on this list that may well be unfilmable, but one can dream, no?

6. Valiant by Holly Black

I say Valiant and not Tithe, which is the first of the series, for two reasons. One, I'm biased. I like it better, end of story. Two, I feel it is the better introduction into Black's world.

Taking place in the streets (and subway tunnels) of modern New York, runaway Valerie Russell is taken under the wing of a gang of homeless teens, only to be exposed to a world she was unaware existed, finding herself entwined in it so deeply she can't get out. And, whether she should or not, probably doesn't want to.

The novel is a beautiful one, descriptive and even lyrical at times, and somehow manages to retain its gritty feel. The characters are both unique and believable and people who, onscreen, would be easy to fall in love with, for one reason or another.

I don't believe anything of Holly Black's has been optioned for filming other than the younger audience's The Spiderwick Chronicles, which is a shame, and a surprise.

5. Bitten by Kelley Armstrong

This is another one that has been considered, played about with, and subsequently dropped flat on its pretty, potential-laden face.

Armstrong's story of a female werewolf and the Pack she has been trying desperately to avoid being a part of is a surprisingly good one. I was never one for the lycanthrope crowd, but Armstrong's werewolves got me hooked. They're strong, they're powerful, they're smart (most of them), and they are utterly badass.

They are werewolves the film world hasn't really seen yet, and anything the film world hasn't seen yet is a good thing. Besides that, the storyline is straight, cohesive, and doesn't involve any of the more complicated weirdness of any of Armstrong's likewise filmable, but more fiddly novels.

4. The Eyes Of The Dragon/Tears Of The Dragon by Stephen King

I have never seen a version with the former title, but my friend reminded me to include it, just in case. Anyway, this is my favourite Stephen King novel. And, despite his massive repertoire of books/stories-that-have-been-movies, this has not been one of them, nor the commonly associated Dark Tower Series (which I almost put instead of this and probably should have, but I like this one better).

Riding a classic, and surprisingly (unless you're a King fan) clever fairytale arc, Eyes/Tears Of The Dragon is unlike most of his work in that, fantasy-wise, it's pretty traditional. Dragons, kings, magicians, unjust imprisonings, a dollhouse as a plot point, and done by Stephen King.

So, why has adaptation King not had this one scooped up? Good question. That's what I said.

3. Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This is another one that's been bandied around, sometimes quite hopefully, even to the point of casting rumors, until finally it fell with a sloppy squish on the studio floor. Who knows, maybe it's still being bandied. Maybe it's being made! After repeated bandying, I kind of stopped following. Either way, it still hasn't been done, and needs to.

Pratchett and Gaiman's (a match made in the highest echelons of Heaven) hilarious, and oddly thought provoking, take on the Apocalypse is the premise of what, I believe, is the funniest book I have ever read. I've read it eight times and still can't read it on the train because I still keep laughing aloud.

There is no especial reason this book should be a movie other than the fact that it is a really, really, reallytimesPi good book. Also, it's the trickiest and most fun book on this list to fantasy-cast, not that I engage in such activities.

2. Jonathan Strange And Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke

I think I read this once, and I don't remember exactly what it was about because it's been a long time, but I do recall distinctly thinking that it would be a great movie. The atmosphere is perfect for the silver screen  - 19th century England with a bit of a kick to it.

Throw in two magicians, some good old-fashioned intrigue, and a historical figure cool enough to be called the Raven King, and you have a recipe for what could potentially be a very good movie. With a very good title.

EDIT: I just double-checked, and it turns out this is currently being scripted and is supposedly slated for 2010. So, I'm keeping it in the list because I'm very pleased to discover that I was, apparently, correct.

1. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

If you've noticed this is the second time Gaiman has ended up on this list, the reason is that he is my favourite author and I would see any movie he were remotely associated with, novel, script, or otherwise. That aside, American Gods is also my favourite book of forever, and for good reason.

The combination of ancient mythology with modern America is intriguing enough, but taking that and throwing in characters you can sink your teeth into Dracula-style and a penchant for bizarre roadside attractions, it makes me salivate just thinking about it. And I've read it at least twice a year since 8th grade.

Filmed, it might come across on a common theme as a typical ‘road movie', but it would be a road movie the likes of which audiences have ever seen.

I also believe that it's an important book for Americans (I may be biased since I am one, but I do appreciate the irony that a book capturing the soul of America so well was penned by an Englishman, though it doesn't really surprise me), and nothing broadens an audience like Hollywood.

Of all of Gaiman's books, this is not only the best, it is the most evocative, the most intriguing, and the most true. And just begging for a little screentime love.

Thoughts? Disagreements? Petty disdain or otherwise scoffing clacking of tongues? Feel free to add your own.