It's Oscar season, so brace yourself for more snubs when it comes to science fiction movies. Speculative fiction has a crummy track record when it comes to the Academy Awards, and even when an iconic scifi flick scores Oscar nods, it tends to be ignored in everything but the technical categories (see: E.T., Star Wars, Avatar). Many unfairly overlooked scifi Oscar nominees have been vindicated by history, but we nevertheless feel compelled to dredge these examples up.

(Note to disenchanted Moon fans: I stuck with films that were actually nominated. Obviously if I had my druthers, the 1997 Academy Awards would've been swept by Starship Troopers, with Casper Van Dien scoring Best Actor and – in an unprecedented move – Jake Busey and Neil Patrick Harris tying for the Best Supporting statuette.)

10 & 9.) Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design - 1982
What Won: Gandhi
What Should've Won: Blade Runner (Art) and Tron (Costume)
Gandhi's 1982 victory sweep left several important scifi films going home empty-handed. And while Gandhi wasn't a bad biopic, its near domination of the technical awards stole the spotlight from pioneering scifi flicks such as Blade Runner - whose set design set the template for cinematic dystopias to come - and Tron , whose now-hokey light-bright costumes framed how future audiences would perceive virtual reality worlds.

8.) Best Original Screenplay – 1985
What Won: Witness
What Should've Won: Back To The Future or Brazil
Witness was a decent action flick about Amish folks versus an evil Danny Glover, but was it really more original than cinema's first Oedipal time-travel comedy or the insane celluloid love child of Terry Gilliam and a typewriter?

7.) Best Art Direction – 1986
What Won: A Room With A View
What Should've Won: Aliens
The Academy sure does love those darling 1900s period pieces. Too bad it couldn't give similar accolades to the blockbuster that catapulted Robert Heinlein's space marine aesthetic into popular culture. By the way, how many copies did Mass Effect 2 sell last week?

6.) Best Original Screenplay – 2006
What Won: Little Miss Sunshine
What Should've Won: Pan's Labyrinth
Little Miss Sunshine had its moments, but the script overall read like Wes Anderson Mad Libs. Steve Carrell played "Bill Murray as Sad Ol' Bastard" and Paul Dano played "Jason Schwartzman as Socially Imbecilic Teen." Heck, the only thing missing were The Kinks songs. On the other hand, Guillermo del Toro's haunting Franco-era fairy tale more or less created its own genre.

5.) Best Supporting Actor - 2000
Who Won: Benicio del Toro for Traffic
Who Should've Won: Willem Dafoe for Shadow of the Vampire
Del Toro delivered a strong performance in Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, but he was overshadowed by an equally talented ensemble cast. Conversely, Dafoe's portrayal of Max Schreck/Count Orlok made Shadow of the Vampire. He's menacing, occasionally hilarious, and totally unrecognizable under several pounds of prosthetic goop.

4.) Best Supporting Actress - 1973
Who Won: Tatum O'Neal for Paper Moon
Who Should've Won: Linda Blair for The Exorcist
A 10-year-old O'Neal charmed Academy voters with her portrayal of a preternaturally mature lil' grifter. Meanwhile, a preteen Blair presumably scared votes away with her MA-rated portrayal of a Satanic Garbage Pail Kid.

3.) Best Actor - 1998
Who Won: Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful
Who Should've Won: Ian McKellen for Gods and Monsters
Why did Hollywood have such a jones for Roberto Benigini for like a year? In retrospect, it's like everyone in Tinseltown lost their minds over Benny Hill or something. Anyway, Benigini's flash-in-the-pan shenanigans yoinked a statuette away from Sir Ian, whose portrayal of gay Frankenstein auteur James Whale was far more deserving.

2.) Best Director - 1968
Who Won: Carol Reed for Oliver!
Who Should've Won: Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey
In the mid-20th century, the Academy was notable for two things: A.) heaping Oscars on yalping, pastel musicals nobody watches anymore and B.) refusing to give Stanley Kubrick the time of day. These two proclivities converged in 1968, when Kubrick lost the Best Director Oscar to a herd of screaming orphans. The failure to honor 2001 is perhaps one of the Academy's greatest oversights, but there's one particular genre snub that I find totally unconscionable, if only for posterity's sake...

1.) Best Original Song - 1984
Who Won: Stevie Wonder for "I Just Called to Say I Love You" from The Woman in Red
Who Should've Won: Ray Parker Jr. for "Ghostbusters" from Ghostbusters
The former is one of Stevie Wonder's more middling songs. You can hear it during excruciatingly sincere karaoke performances. The latter is recorded music's greatest paean to paranormal investigation. And you always hear it during the good times.

This io9 flashback was originally published in February 2010.

Instead, I discovered almost every single trustworthy adult I knew - save my preschool teacher, Chief Halftown, and Babar, King of the Elephants - wrapping presents. My pharaonic French grandmother shooed me away, and my mom ushered me back upstairs wordlessly. Once tucked in, I stared at the ceiling and silently reconfigured my mental constellation of Presbyterian notables, unsure where Jonah's friend the sperm whale fit in this new world order.

The next morning, I received a shitload of Dino-Riders, so I didn't really care that Santa was a sham. Those Dino-Riders broke almost immediately, which did deeply upset me.

Incidentally, this isn't too far from the truth. As reality would have it, Crowe (a main character in Iron Fists) spent all of ten days on set, channeling legendarily unhinged and deceased Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. Said Robert "RZA" Diggs — the film's director and famed Wu-Tang producer — in the movie's press packet:

"My cousin's not here anymore, but I wanted his spirit in the film. Russell and I talked about it, and he loved the idea." The mysterious Jack Knife, an opium-addicted soldier enamored of China named for his weapon of choice, even has a signature jaw harp audio cue reminiscent of ODB's "Shimmy Shimmy Ya."

Yes, we now live in a world in which Academy Award-winner Russell Crowe is making entrances to musical strains of "Ooh baby, I like it raw," eviscerating henchmen with a clockwork pistol/knife/chainsaw and undulating his mug like Kermit the Frog does when he's upset. This is definitely something that happened.

Later, he canoodles with a trio of brothel workers, sporting a pince-nez and some The Insider-ish body mass, an ensemble that gives him the mien of a stoned Benjamin Franklin. And after that, we see Crowe in the most vaudevillian fake Asian disguise since Sean Connery and his eyebrows went undercover in You Only Live Twice.

It's a performance on par with Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, the kind of performance where you can imagine the actor peering over the horizon and exclaiming, "What ho, I do believe they are making a motion picture over yon. Time to gesticulate like the talkies haven't been invented yet!"

Crowe's jolly Big Baby Jesus impersonation aside, The Man With The Iron Fists is entertaining if uneven. I finally had the chance to check it out once New York's post-hurricane transit system went back to quasi-normal. The plot — some RZA-narrated wuxia boilerplate about governors, gold robberies, and warring clans — swings between the weirdo solemnity of Ghost Dog with the flamboyance of Kool Keith's Sprite commericals.

The film definitely knows it's over the top, but it doesn't 100% commit to the camp, perhaps in fear of alienating those uninitiated viewers unaware that kung fu cinema can fly off the rails in goddamn spectacular ways.

We therefore end up with goofy-great scenes of the "Gemini Killers" fighting with deadly piggyback rides interposed with deathly serious sequences of the RZA as an American ex-slave making ends meet as a chi-channeling blacksmith.

These two instincts don't gel entirely, which I suppose is part of its charm, depending on your tolerance for B-movies that teeter on the edge of super-fan self-awareness and endearing cluelessness. In any case, Crowe's a hoot, RZA's instrumentals mostly deliver (save the occasional and baffling metal guitar), and I left the theater not lamenting that this movie exists. Good hustle, everybody.

Rather than wax florid and spin a rickety, sappy analogy concerning Frederik Pohl's Heechee Saga — as I initially planned — I will instead use the cast of Aliens to spin an even ricketier, sappier analogy as a paean to my coworkers and you.

● Annalee Newitz, you are Ripley. Your boundless enthusiasm and leadership got me into this racket, just as your zeal for flamethrowers kept me in line.

● Charlie Jane Anders, you are Hicks. You are io9's rocksteady constant, standing strong when the rest of the staff gets Cristal-spritzed in hydrosulphuric acid and starts griping. (You also share Hicks' penchant for Funkadelic, as expounded upon in Aliens' deleted scenes.)

● Meredith Woerner, you are Hudson. You are blithe, loud, and willing to jump on grenades. I am lucky to be your friend. (PS: I am Vasquez for the purposes of this analogy.)

● Robert Gonzalez, you are Bishop, because you are a frighteningly competent, stand-up dude with tzatziki sauce flowing through your veins.

● Alasdair Wilkins and Keith Veronese, you are collectively Apone, as he kicked the bucket early in the movie and we didn't hang nearly enough. Still, your respective stores of Doctor Who audio tape knowledge and granola bars kept me sane and not dead during Comic-Con. You both deserve tuxedos made of fancy medals.

● Lauren Davis, you are the surprise guest appearance of Carl Weathers from Predator, as Carl Weathers makes everything immediately more interesting.

● George Dvorsky, Esther Inglis-Arkell, Garrison Dean, Josh Wimmer, Hank Hu, and Stephanie Fox, you are all not Paul Reiser. Working with you was a pleasure, regardless of the internet gulf between us.

● Nick Denton, you are James Cameron, as you are a magnanimous commander who merely exiles his staff to bathyscaphes when they misbehave.

● Lux Alptraum, Kyle Wagner, Tommy Craggs, Dodai Stewart, Erin McGill, Kaila Hale-Stern, Brian Moylan, Julia Schweizer, Megan Gilbert, Rose Annis, Stephen Totilo, Chris Person, and Matt Hardigree, you are some of the people, past and present, who made Gawker Media a lovely place to work. (Somebody can also call dibs on Newt if they want.)

● And finally, the commenters. Without you, I would just be a shut-in proselytizing nonsense to the mailman instead of lobbing it into the world wide æther. You may simply be an elaborate hoax orchestrated by the Kree Supreme Intelligence, but I can live with that. To LightningLouie, 99TelepodProblems, Braak, Ruthless, Kaelath, Eridani, Celia, Yankton, Gods-N-Clods, and ManchuCandidate, and countless others — you are the motherfucking power loader of this operation.

Should you choose to delight in future vowel-and-consonant combinations by yours truly, see my mostly neglected Twitter account, this Tumblr I started a week ago, and Cracked, where I'll joining up as senior editor. Thank you for reading.

See you at the Gathering,

C.

Don't let the headline lead you astray — we actually enjoyed this week's installment of The Walking Dead, just as Glenn and Maggie enjoyed each other's unwashed bodies in the prison's newly anointed Sex Tower.

But the show did something absolutely unforgivable last night, with a plot twist that drove the thumbscrews through my heart. Or shall I say, "heartscrews." So yes. Screw you and your screwy, screwy heartscrews, Walking Dead. Spoilers fucking on.

About a zillion things happened last night in "Killer Within," most of which made for ripping television. Michonne was caught investigating The Governor's National Guard shootout, and it was fun to see two obviously crazy people politely plan to kill each other while "Powerhouse" began playing inside their respective skulls. Also, Michonne wants to reenact the ending of the Shawshank Redemption with Andrea. How nice!

Also, the show finally figured out that Michael Rooker is a good actor and gave Merle some depth. The surly scoundrel warmed our hearts when he tried to drop everything and search for Daryl. He also made our genitalia atrophy when he hit on Andrea. (Remember, he's putting the moves on Andrea after accusing her of being a lesbian in a pill-addled rage! That's some Level 10 Mystery Method shit right there.)

So yeah, good job, Walking Dead — you've made several million people imagine intercourse with the show's resident screaming yokel. (Incidentally, lovemaking with Merle Dixon does not occur in a normal bed — it takes place on a coleslaw-stained spruce bench, with Slim Whitman on a staticky AM radio for ambiance and hush puppies in places where hush puppies do not belong.)

Heck, even Lori's left-field death by Caesarean section in the fourth freaking episode of this season was brutal and emotional and sad and Carl will never be right again. That final hug. Oof. In the span of ten minutes, Carl saw his mother give birth, splayed her like a pimento loaf, and then put a bullet in her head so she wouldn't try to devour him like Saturn the Titan. Even in neolithic times, this would be astoundingly depressing. Seriously, an inauspicious event like this in caveman days would be cause for the entire clan to lie facedown under a wobbly menhir or a nearby auroch stampede.

Note that we don't see Carl shoot Lori. Of course, that would be totally screwed up if The Walking Dead gave us zombie Lori with a umbilical lasso. But hey, we didn't see Andrew die two episodes ago, and he returned to ruin everybody's day. Also, Merle disappeared for a season to work on his night moves. In the zombie apocalypse, you must die on camera or you didn't die at all. (Also, I wonder where The Governor's daughter is? Are they going to throw us a loop here, comic book fans?)

When Rick hears that his son has moonlighting as an obstetrician/divorce attorney without the proper certification, Sheriff Grimes does the "Stupid, stupid, stupid, I locked my keys in my Camry" dance. He's so shocked he barely seems upset. And who can blame him, when THE WALKING DEAD KILLED GODDAMN T-DOG. T-DOG. T-DOG. T-DOG.

T-DOG, THE UNANSWERED PROMISE. T-DOG, THE NEWLY MINTED MUSCLE. T-DOG, THE SILENT FRIEND. T-DOG, THE BODHISATTVA OF SORT OF BEING ONSCREEN. T-DOG, THE RELIGIOUS GUY WHO WE DIDN'T KNOW WAS RELIGIOUS UNTIL 30 SECONDS UNTIL HE DIED BECAUSE SOMEONE ACTUALLY TALKED TO HIM. T-DOG, THE GUY WHOSE THREE SEASONS WORTH OF DIALOGUE COULD COMFORTABLY FIT ON A CAMPBELL'S SOUP CAN. T-DOG, WHOSE ONLY WEAKNESS IS CAR DOORS. T-DOG, THE MUTE BACKBONE OF THIS SHOW.

I'm too distraught to actually discuss T-Dog's passing, so I've turned to art therapy to describe his demise. Note that he and Lori are represented by elk, prancing free through the hologram glades of elysium.

Lori's death was some tear-jerking stuff, but as a main character, her heartstring-tugging croak makes sense. But T-Dog? That just smarts. It was like watching Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, only to have the script rewritten such that Brutus jumps off-stage and stabs the guy selling Jujubes in the lobby.

We've been waiting so long for T-Dog to become a fully rounded character. This seemed like an extremely real possibility with this season's first two episodes, until the writer's room just Gumball 3000ed him into a shallow grave for cheap thrills. Rassum and frassum. Well, Oscar and Axel have gained the survivors' trust. May each of them deliver a 30-minute, commercial-break-annihilating eulogy at T-Dog's funeral next episode. If T-Dog can't get a biography (or lines) in life, he may as well earn them in death.

Courtesy of DC Comics, here's a first look at this Wednesday's issue of Animal Man, which sees Buddy Baker stuck in a hellish nightmare future known as "The Rotworld" alongside mutated corpse versions of Deathstroke the Terminator and Grifter. Here's the rundown:

ANIMAL MAN #14
Written by: Jeff Lemire
Art by: Steve Pugh, Timothy Green, II, Joseph Silver
Cover by: Steve Pugh

• "ROTWORLD: THE RED KINGDOM" part two!
• How did The Rot infect the DC Universe? Guest star John Constantine is here to tell you the hideous truth!
• The Red Kingdom faces an all-out attack by an army of the Rot, led by Felix Faust!

Courtesy of Katayama Takuto, comes Dissimilated Vision, a gorgeous animated segment about fingers turning into eyes and follicles transmuting into faces and other lovely polymorphing weirdness. (Hat tip to Morris.)

We've discussed yōkai — or supernatural monsters from Japanese mythology — on io9 before, namely the disgusting, turtle-like kappa. But the yōkai artwork of Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788) will introduce you to some even weirder monsters from Japanese folklore, such as the mokumokuren (a blinding eyeball demon that dwells in paper walls), the oboroguruma (an oxcart with a human face that haunts Kyoto), and the me-kurabe (an angry pile of skulls).

As the yōkai website The Obakemono Project explains of Sekien and his monsters:

Sekien, whose real name was Sano Toyofusa 佐野豊房, was an artist of the Kanō school who had studied under Gyokuen (Kanō Toshinobu). He was born to a family of wealthy Buddhist priests, and became an artist late in his life, seemingly as a post-retirement hobby rather than a profession. Not much of his artwork remains aside from his yōkai drawings […]

The Gazu Hyakki Yakō series itself consists of four books of three volumes each, containing altogether about two hundred illustrations. Unlike previous hyakki yakō monster collections and processions, which all took the form of illustrated scrolls, Sekien's works were published in book format, similar to the natural history manuals that were popular at the time. Despite this similarity to materials intended for reference and education, and the fact that many of his monsters were in fact based on Japanese folklore or taken from old texts, more than 80 of them were invented by Sekien himself and others were lifted from older monster scrolls produced by Kanō school artists. Many of Sekien's invented yōkai poke fun at depraved monks and the shogunate-approved Yoshiwara red-light district, making his work less a serious natural history tome and more a grotesquely light-hearted parody.

You can see extensive galleries of Sekien's monsters on Wikipedia (1, 2, 3, 4).

[Via Eff Yeah Asian History]

This is the very question io9 asked Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson (The Natural, Bugsy) about his new horror flick The Bay, which sees a bucolic Chesapeake Bay town overrun by a breed of pollution-mutated parasites.

Spoilers ahead...

io9: What were the challenges of filming The Bay in the found footage format?

Barry Levinson: First of all, we had to expand on the idea of "found footage," as we had thirty different scenarios playing out, rather than a single camera. What we had to do was tell the story and choreograph the scene without cutting to a two shot, a single, an over-the-shoulder - you can't do any of those things. You have to honor the credibility of [the format].

If you have only one camera, how do you tell a story? Well, we have a scene where we have two teenagers filming by the water. He's filming her, then she gets bored, and she films him. It's a single shot, but the camera exchange hands. It changes hands again when she jumps in the water. Something then goes wrong, he drops the camera, and follows her in. The camera goes loose, and this all has to be orchestrated in one shot.

io9: What sort of design cues went into the design of the isopods?

Barry Levinson: They're real, but we tweaked them for our needs. But we had a biological model instead of something fictitious.

io9: So they're like real isopods, but revved up?

Barry Levinson: Yeah. Originally I was approached about doing a documentary [about pollution in the Chesapeake Bay] but there already was a documentary. But the facts of this all were fascinating. If we took this real, factual information and moved it into storytelling, it could be very frightening. It likens back to the science fiction form of [integrating contemporary commentary into] these kinds of story.

But this is also a horror movie, we're not getting bogged down with facts and figures here. First and foremost, we have to hope that people enjoyed it. There are so many issues going on in this world, that all that we can really do is approach it from an entertainment sensibility and hope it activated some thoughts. Sometimes serious topics need to be presented in different ways. For example, there were serious films about humanity's capacity to blow ourselves off the face of the Earth, and then Dr. Strangelove - this dark, twisted satire -came along.

io9: Your films historically haven't been of the horror genre. Was there any point where you thought, "Well, we're certainly doing this."

Barry Levinson: There are a few things, but I don't want to give too much away. But I really wanted to play with creating tension and anxiety. At one point, we do a sequence where cops enter a house, but the camera does not enter - we only hear what's happening. We tried to unnerve the audience and their imaginations.

io9: Some of your prior films like Wag The Dog and Good Morning Vietnam explore the interplay between the media and media consumer. The Bay also seems to be of this trend. What's the dramatic appeal of this relationship?

Barry Levinson: Well, it's so much part of our lives. I never really thought of The Bay as a found footage movie, honestly. This is the first time in history we can now collect the information inside everyone's digital phones and get a pretty good picture of what people were like, in an almost archaeological sense. Conversations, texting, pictures - in the midst of this crisis, we're getting this small talk in the context of larger events. For me, it's less found footage, more archaeological.

io9: How would the plot of Rain Man be different if there were these isopods in it?

Barry Levinson: [Laughs] It would be very similar.

The Bay opens in theaters and on video on demand tomorrow.

Under the rule of Russian tsar and notorious beard-hater Peter the Great - which ran from 1682-1725 - men sporting facial hair were subjected to a beard tax that afforded them a token informing strangers that they were honest, tax-paying hairballs. As Erik Jensen explains in a 2003 article from the journal Tax Notes:

For those who elected to forgo the foreplay and keep their beards, one of the nice touches of the beard tax was that payment "entitled the owner to a small bronze medallion with a picture of a beard on it and the words TAX PAID, which was worn on a chain around the neck to prove to any challengers that his beard was legal."

You can read more about the history of Peter's beard tax here.

[Via Neatorama]

Last week's episode of The Walking Dead saw team leader Rick Grimes rely on some particularly extreme measures. And Sunday's episode,"Walk With Me," focused solely on the adventures of Andrea and her taciturn samurai traveling companion, Michonne. But the women aren't alone on their journey across post-apocalyptic Georgia. No, they made some tremendously dangerous new friends and reacquainted themselves with familiar mugs. Spoilers ahead.

NOTE: This recap is later and shorter than usual because of all things Sandy-related, but we're posting it for posterity.

In "Sick," audiences saw erstwhile moral templar Rick Grimes murder one prisoner and consign another to a zombie-groped demise, all in an attempt to establish order. This was completely shocking, and this week we saw where such unilateral decision-making can lead. Cue "The Governor" (actor David Morrissey) another charismatic leader who's carved out a comfortable existence for seventy-odd survivors in his (extremely) gated community of Woodbury.

And guess what? In many ways, he's the Bizarro Rick Grimes. Whereas Rick sweats for justice and has a crap relationship with his wife, the Governor maintains a maniac cool and beds his post-apocalyptic commune's PR director. Rick has Daryl Dixon as his right-hand man, The Governor has Merle Dixon as his right-hand man. Or his left-hand man, as Merle's currently sporting a metal stump (with a removable blade) after he was marooned on that Atlanta rooftop way back in the show's second episode.

The inverse doppelgänger syndrome doesn't end there. Rick's hanging out hardscrabble in a dirty prison with the best intentions. The Governor's living large in suburbia behind fences and guns. Sure, The Governor's also off his fucking rocker and likes to kick back in his private zombie head aquarium room, but nobody seems to know that, save the Woodbury militia. And hey, they're not entirely comfortable with his violent edicts either!

After The Governor and his gun-toting gang slaughter a National Guard outpost, there are many an awkward glance shared between his troops. The Governor may be trying to carve out a new world in his own unstable image, but at least he gives the remaining 11 senior citizens a Main Street to roam free. At the end of the world, people are willing to accept an unhinged megalomaniac for a modicum of order.

The Governor is a man divested of family, a respect for the now-archaic rule of law, and even a real name. He's Rick Grimes without Carl, Lori, and his hometown sheriff morals. In other words, he's Rick's very own living, breathing, after-school special about the temptations of power and swinging machetes.

How will Andrea and Michonne extricate themselves from this tenuous safe haven? Will Andrea even want to leave? Will she be forced to compromise her human decency to stick around? How many episodes until Michonne breaks into the Woodbury armory, retrieves her katana, and gets into a Zatoichi-style duel with Merle and his knife-stump? It's all up in the air, but we know this much - The Walking Dead has been on a golden tear lately, and we can't wait to see what happens next.

What happens when you mix Johnny Cash with haunting photography of one of America's best preserved ghost towns? You get this absolute doozy of a video by Colin Rich, who captured the forlorn beauty of Bodie, California. Explains Rich of walking among the ruins of Bodie:

Gold was discovered back in 1859 by William S Bodey and at its apex, the town had a population of 10,000 residents through the 1880's. Bodie was replete with the makings of old west folklore; gunfighters, saloons, miners, gambling halls and prostitutes, a rough place through and through. But the town's success didn't last and faded from ‘glory' prior to World War I and was finally down for the count during WWII once all mining operations were halted due to the war effort. It was effectively abandoned with many of the structures retaining the inhabitants belongings because the roads out were toll and weight based; many people simply decided to leave their belongings behind to avoid large fees so the ghost town was born.

Today, after two fires, around 100 structures remain, (5% of the original town) some of which are filled with furniture, lined and matted with layer up on layer of rotting and sagging wallpaper. Some buildings are seemingly untouched time-capsules to the once treacherous lives of the miners and other inhabitants of the town. Kids toys sitting by the window, a ball peen hammer on the ground, strewn gears in a machine shop, and rusted hangers hanging in a closet.

[Jason Sondhi via Colin Rich]

Courtesy of IDW Publishing, here's over twenty pages of sneak previews of this week's issues of Doctor Who, Godzilla, and 30 Days of Night. All of these issues hit shops this Wednesday, October 31. Here are the synopses:

Doctor Who #2
Andy Diggle (w) • Mark Buckingham (a & c)
A shadow being has emerged from a machine used to view alternate realities, and is stealing time from those he touches in order to become "real." Can the Doctor save the Hypothetical Gentleman's latest victim?

Godzilla #6
Duane Swierczynski (w) • Simon Gane (a) • Zach Howard (c)
Having tasted serious defeat-and having been branded outlaws by the world's governments-Boxer and his crew scramble to catch up to Godzilla before he destroys Seattle! There's just one major obstacle in the way... Mothra!

30 Days of Night #11
Steve Niles (w) • Christopher Mitten (a & c)
Fright-master Steve Niles continues the all-new, critically acclaimed 30 DAYS OF NIGHT ongoing series! The Euro vampires have brought in a secret weapon in the shape of a gigantic coffin. What rests inside could be the end of the line for Eben Olemaun and his growing flock of militant bloodsuckers. Meanwhile, Alice Blood has lost her closest ally in the war.

Two years and one music video later, The Venture Bros. made their return to basic cable with "A Very Venture Halloween," a special the show's masterminds proclaimed would hearken back to the heartwarming Halloween specials of yesteryear. Was it a veritable It's The Great Mecha Shiva, Charlie Brown? Not exactly, but it was a frequently funny (and extremely welcome) episode nonetheless. Spoilers ahead.

Ever since Hank's discovery last season's that Dermott is more than the underachiever next door, the show has been parcelling out life-shattering revelations to the boys at a steady tack. This time around, it was Dean's turn to learn some hard truths — namely, that he was but one clone in a long line of clumsy, dead clones.

How did he learn this? By stumbling across the "haunted" house that abuts the Venture Compound's potter's field. Yes, for their entire lives, the boys were oblivious to the fact that their dad's cloning expert buddy Ben (voiced by J.K. Simmons, modeled on Jeff Lebowski) lived around the corner.

I really enjoy the ongoing gag of how sprawling and poorly maintained Doc Venture's property is — remember how oblivious they were to the S.P.H.I.N.X. headquarters and Dr. Paul Entmann? Also, the mass grave on the Venture property really reflects the Venture clan's cavalier attitude toward death (Jonas because of scientific inquiry and pulp derring-do, Rusty because he's an asshole).

One can imagine Brock perpetually out there in the backyard with a shovel, joylessly burying the umpteenth dead henchman to wander into the Compound's defense grid. (The Venture men's causal acceptance of death extends to the boys — says Hank to Dean by episode's end, "Hey, I thought you died.")

The show's now focusing on the boys' transition into manhood, and reality's dropping some truth bombs on the naïve duo. But unlike idealistic Hank — who eradicated the memory of losing his virginity to his half-brother's mother using S.P.H.I.N.X. technology — Dean's bearing the knowledge that he's Dean #16 (I think) alone.

Dean's decision makes sense and adds a welcome dollop of complexity to each brother. Hank's a S.P.H.I.N.X. agent in training, but his success as a human being depends on unflappable and completely demented bravado. Dean on the other hand has been the meeker of the two, but his decision not to share this sanity-smashing secret with Hank reflects both his understanding of his unhinged brother and some downright grizzled emotional strength. He also has a natty black speed suit and a new haircut. New haircuts are always signifiers of character development.

Similarly, Ben's explanation of why the boys are being cloned constantly gives the ever-callous Doc further depth. Rusty could afford to be dismissive with the boys (and go on drug-fueled journeys of self-discovery) because he could always brew up a new batch. This is a completely messed up way to raise your kids, but at least Doc cares. With Rusty, the lowest common denominator is all you can ask for. What else would you expect from a guy whose childhood was so screwed up he tortures trick-or-treaters with laser cannons? Also note his half-assed, uncomfortable attempt at parenting with Dermott. "Ring the doorbell" is the best he can do considering his guilt and general incompetence.

As far as the episode's B-plot went — Orpheus' magical coffee klatch with The Outrider, Tatiana, and the two-headed councilman, among others — that was good for plenty of gags, especially the Outrider's toast-obsessed Cenobite trick. But the obvious comedic elements notwithstanding, the deus ex machina that was The Master in the form of Santa Claus felt tossed in to wrap up the zombie anarchy and get around network time restraints.

Venture Bros. head honchoes Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have mentioned that this episode falls in the middle of Season Five's continuity. This episode is too steeped in the show's mythology (and ends too abruptly) to stand alone as a Halloween special, but it makes for a tantalizing apéritif of what's to come in 2013. And hey, the boys now have a new relative who's a naked, ball-obsessed, genetically modified hominid! That's the best Halloween miracle a boy adventurer can ask for.

The very first clip from Fox ADHD's upcoming Axe Cop cartoon show has hit the internet. Check out how the hero — who is the creation of a thirtysomething cartoonist and his elementary-school brother — celebrates Halloween like a lunatic for justice. Axe Cop will air next summer on FOX. Remember, always play it safe on October 31 and pack your poison-detecting goggles.

When most people think of Evil Dead cosplay, Ash Williams wielding a chainsaw hand is the first thing to come to mind. But Kiersten Essenpreis and her friend Marc flipped the script by dressing as the cabin itself and the dreaded Necronomicon. Gold stars all around. [Via Super Punch]

RECENT AND RELATED: Another recent and mind-bending short about an astronaut crashing on an exoplanet.

We've examined nineteenth century photographers' obsessions with cats before, but these portraits are a whole other brand of ridiculousness. Behold Monsieur Louis Coulon, born in 1827, the owner of a 3.3-meter-long beard, and the progenitor of the "Hirsute Kitten Cathedral Look." I wonder how his mighty mane smelled?

It's unclear why Coulon grew his beard into some sort of follicular sling, but he was certainly proud of it enough to pose for multiple pictures in the early 1900s.

You can see more extraordinarily lengthy beards of yore here, and tremble before the hairy majesty of Linus The Wonder Horse (who is not to be confused with "The Educated Horse").

[Via Fantaisies Bergeret and Boing Boing]

This is The Origin of Creatures, a bizarre 10-minute film by Floris Kaayk about a post-apocalyptic future where human beings have devolved into swarms of appendages. Here's the synopsis and making-of this charmingly twisted short flick:

The Origin of Creatures is based on one of the most well-known tales about collaboration, the Tower of Babel. This tale is transformed and twisted and is set in an imaginary future, after the world is hit by a catastrophe. Among the remains of a devastated city lives that what is left of humanity. Human bodies are divided into separated parts of the body and are fused to special beings. Together, these creatures form a colony, they can only survive when collaborating. In the rubble of destroyed buildings they are trying to build a nest as large and as high as possible, so that the colony's queen gets enough sunlight to reproduce, but due to miscommunication this mission is doomed to fail.

[Via Short of the Week]

You may remember Bob Larson, the exorcist-for-hire who conscripted his karate-chopping teenage daughters into his for-profit war with Satan. But did you know that Reverend Larson has experience expelling the dreaded "gay demon"?

Obviously, everything about this is sad and weird and depressing, but it does lead one to wonder what the heck the warning signs of gay demonic possession are. Do you think one of these actual grown-ups has cobbled together a gay demonology codex in a Lisa Frank binder or something? ("WARNING SIGN #58: Victim has 'New York City Boy' by the Pet Shop Boys stuck in his head. Induce therapeutic elephant seal mating calls immediately.")

[Via Buzzfeed]

In case you were psychically scarred by the now famous stingray photobomb, here's some pareidolia to soothe your mind. And now, a baby stingray from the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport Oregon set to music. Enjoy. [Via Arbroath]

Every now and again, comic book writers try to infuse superheroes' foibles with societal relevance or their own personal political beliefs. But in fictional worlds where Galactus the World Devourer tries to eat the biosphere every two weeks, these attempts can get downright baffling.

Magneto throws garbage at Wolverine for disagreeing with him

As the revolutionary figurehead for mutants in the Marvel Universe, the X-Men nemesis Magneto has delivered fiery oratory out the wazoo, some of it tremendously overwrought. (For example, there's a fantastic two-page splash page in 1991's X-Men #1 of Magneto screaming a small pamphlet at the X-Men while frozen in place.)

But more recently, in the 2012 Neal Adams series The First X-Men, Magneto pleads that Wolverine tread the path of prudence by threatening the clawed one with a receding hairline and rusty taxis, all the while preening like Tim Curry in The Worst Witch.

Batman becomes a mouthpiece for the Expanding Earth hypothesis

Speaking of Neal Adams, he's a proponent of the Expanding Earth theory, a scientifically derided hypothesis that claims the Earth is slowly growing, plate tectonics be damned. It's good to have hobbies I suppose, but Batman recently became a spokesman for the movement in a 2012 issue of Batman Odyssey.

Steve Ditko's Objectivist comics

Steve Ditko is famous for three things — A.) co-creating Spider-Man and basically promulgating all of his early mythology; B.) staying out of the public eye; and C.) his later Objectivist comics, in which he traded superheroics for Ayn Rand. When dealing with a protagonist like Mr. A, villains weren't necessarily thrown in the pokey. No, they were occasionally subjected to long-winded philosophical speeches followed by painful deaths.

Mr. T tackles hot-button issues in his comic book

In reality, crack-addicted babies and racial profiling are serious topics. But when such social problems are brought to the fore by world-famous gymnastics coach and fashion maven Mr. T? Well, the rules of reality generally don't apply to Mr. T. (Incidentally, this is the third Neal Adams comic we've mentioned thus far, this time by accident.)

Lois Lane becomes a black woman with Superman's help

Yes, Superman once transformed Lois Lane into an African-American woman using technology because 1970s. Read more about it here.

SEE ALSO
- The 9/11 Truther comic, The Big Lie
- Spider-Man, asking readers to commit voter fraud and prevent teen pregnancy
- Archie rejects Satan's prostitutes, accepts Jesus
- The famous Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams Green Arrow/Green Lantern stories where the superheroes discover America, try to cure its ills, and witness Green Arrow's sidekick get addicted to heroin. (They win points for ambition and historical significance, even if the execution gets mighty curious.)

What are your favorite comics where the writers attempted sociopolitical commentary and everything backfired like a Wile E. Coyote rocket sled? Is this Wonder Woman panel a metaphor for anything? Does it need to be? Sound off in the comments below.

"Thriller," Screaming Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell on You," and "Halloween Shindig" by Ed Twilley and the Creepers are obviously Halloween classics. But few songs balance "eternal sleep" and "clean holiday fun" quite like the late Sheldon Allman's 1961 tune "Children's Day at the Morgue." (Allman was also the singing voice for Mr. Ed.)

It's further worth mentioning that Allman composed a number of toe-tapping, Cold-War-era ditties about nuclear apocalypse, which are pretty spectacular in their own right. [Via WFMU]

What debuts are in comic shops tomorrow? First off, there's the funny book adaptation of Bravest Warriors, the new cartoon from Pendleton Ward of Adventure Time. ("Join Chris, Wallow, Beth, and Danny, four 16-year-old heroes-for-hire, as they warp from galaxy to galaxy, saving alien races with the power of their emotions.")

Other first issues on the stands are Wolverine MAX, A-Babies vs. X-Babies, the horror book Let's Play God (preview here), and a re-envisioning of the DC character Madame X for National Comics. Sergio Aragones of Groo fame also writes a comic about Maggie Simpson, curiously enough.

Finally, Brandon Graham of the completely boss King City continues his on-again, off-again title Multiple Warheads with the miniseries Alphabet To Infinity. Here's the synopsis of that:

Sexica and her Werewolf boyfriend Nikoli travel across a sci-fi, fantasy Russia smoking singing cigarettes. Meanwhile the organ hunter, Nura is sent out with a severed head and instructions to find its body.

Returning books on the stands include Dark Horse Presents, Adventure Time, Batman Incorporated, Flash, Justice League Dark (preview here ), Talon, The Unwritten, and Star Trek/Doctor Who.

For graphic novels, there's a bunch of paperbacks worth a gander, namely the fourth volume of Showcase: The Flash, the first volume of Wolverine and the X-Men, and the John Ostrander-penned Star Wars: Agent Of The Empire - Iron Eclipse.

Hardcovers out include a full slipcase edition of Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield's webcomic Freakangels and Came The Dawn, a Wally Wood retrospective. And as usual, here's the list of everything being released to comic stores tomorrow, and you can find your nearest comic retailer here. Happy reading, gang!