Party On, Dudes! The First BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC Trailer Has Arrived!

Most outstanding news for Bill and Ted fans.

Orion Pictures has released the first trailer for Bill & Ted Face the Music, the long-awaited sequel to '80s cult classic Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.  Stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprise their respective roles of Theodore "Ted" Logan and William "Bill" S. Preston, Esq., who are now enduring the monotony of middle-aged life and are warned by a visitor from the future of the need for them to create a song in 78 minutes that will save all life on Earth and the entire universe.

The one-minute, 15-second trailer opens with The Great Leader (Holland Taylor) telling Bill and Ted, "Twenty-five years ago, you played a concert in front of the entire world.  One month ago, you played in Barstow, California for forty people, most of whom were there for Two Dollar Taco Night.  Bill and Ted, what have you got to say for yourselves?"

"Be excellent to each other," replies Bill, repeating himself from the first film.

"And party on, dudes!" adds Ted, also repeating himself.

This time, however, the leaders from the future aren't buying it.  "You were supposed to unite the world," remarks the Great Leader in a voiceover, "and save reality as we know it."

We cut to a scene with Bill and Ted in a white room with their previous guitars hanging on the wall.  "Bill, we've spent our our whole life trying to write the song that will unite the world," remarks Ted.  "Why can't we just go to the future when we have written it?"

We get a quick glimpse of Bill and Ted's daughters, Thea "Little Ted" Preston (Samara Weaving) and Billie "Little Bill" Logan (Brigette Lundy-Paine), watching their dads offstage and Thea clutching her face in embarrassment at what she sees.

"And take it from ourselves!" Bill replies to Ted's question.

"But isn't that stealing?" asks Ted.

"How is that stealing, if we're stealing it from ourselves, dude?"

A quick glimpse of Death (William Sadler) air-guitar riffing with Bill and Ted follows, as Bill and Ted travel to the future, landing in a prison yard where the inmates are chanting "Death! Death! The end!" along with the future Bill and Ted, who are also tattooed and heavily muscled inmates.

The present-day Bill and Ted see their hardcore future selves and are typically stunned.  "No way!" they exclaim.

Future Bill asks the pair, "How'd you like our song?"

"It's a little on the dark side," replies Present-Day Ted with a shrug, "but, you know, that's cool."

If you'd like to check out the trailer, you can view it below thanks to the official Orion Pictures account on YouTube...




Bill & Ted Face the Music is currently expected to arrive in theaters on August 21, 2020.

BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC is Most Official, Alex Winter & Keanu Reeves to Return

Strange things are afoot once again at the Circle K.

In a most triumphant article, The Hollywood Reporter has word that the long-discussed third Bill & Ted movie, Bill & Ted Face the Music, is officially in pre-production and will feature the return of Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Keanu Reeves as Ted "Theodore" Logan.

According to the article, original creators Chris Matheson (Imagine That) and Ed Solomon (Men in Black, Mosaic, Now You See Me) have written the script, with Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest, Red 2, Fun With Dick and Jane) confirmed as director.  Scott Kroopf (Limitless) will produce the movie together with Alex Lebovici and Steve Ponce of Hammerstone Studios, with Steven Soderbergh serving as an executive producer alongside Scott Fischer, John Ryan Jr. and John Santilli.

Bill & Ted Face the Music will reportedly "see the duo long past their days as time-traveling teenagers and now weighed down by middle age and the responsibilities of family.  They’ve written thousands of tunes, but they have yet to write a good one, much less the greatest song ever written.  With the fabric of time and space tearing around them, a visitor from the future warns our heroes that only their song can save life as we know it.  Out of luck and fresh out of inspiration, Bill and Ted set out on a time travel adventure to seek the song that will set their world right and bring harmony in the universe as we know it.  Together with the aid of their daughters, a new crop of historical figures, and some sympathetic music legends, they find much, much more than just a song."

MGM owns the rights to the film and will release it in the U.S. under its Orion Pictures banner, while Bloom is handling international sales, which commenced in Cannes.

Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves said in a joint statement, "We couldn’t be more excited to get the whole band back together again.  Chris and Ed wrote an amazing script, and with Dean at the helm, we’ve got a dream team!"

Bloom's Alex Walton remarked, "Fans of Bill and Ted have been waiting for Reeves and Winter to reunite since their last Bogus Journey in 1991. This is excellent!"

Created in 1989 by Matheson and Solomon, Bill and Ted made their debut in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, where they attended high school in 1988 San Dimas, California as slackers and are told they will fail their high school history class if they don't achieve a good grade on their reports.  Ted's father threatens him with military school in Alaska if he failed, which would end Bill and Ted's dreams of success with their band, Wyld Stallyns.  In 2688, humanity has built a utopia thanks to the music and wisdom of Bill and Ted.  A man named Rufus traveled back in time to 1988 using a time machine disguised as a telephone booth to ensure that Bill and Ted pass their class.  Gathering various historical figures, they returned to the present to deliver their presentation that received a standing ovation and allowed them to pass the class.

In the 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, the music of Bill and Ted's band, Wyld Stallyns, was detested by Chuck De Nomolos, who stole one of the time-traveling phone booths and sent two robots modeled after Bill and Ted back to the late 20th century to prevent Bill and Ted from winning the San Dimas Battle of the Bands.  Evil Bill and Evil Ted arrived eventually replaced Bill and Ted, killing them by throwing the two over the side of a cliff at Vasquez Rocks.  While posting as the real Bill and Ted, the robots behaved rudely to their fiancées and worked to ruin the duo's fame.  Bill and Ted's souls were met by Death, who challenged them in a game for their souls and eventually returned them to Earth.  After defeating De Nomolos and reuniting with their fiancées, they realized they were still terrible musicians and used the time booth for "an intense 16 months of guitar training plus a two week honeymoon".  Before returning to their original point of departure, they married the princesses and are raising young infants named "Little Ted" and "Little Bill".  They began to perform a stunning rock ballad, joined by Death, and Wyld Stallyns' music was played across the globe, creating harmony.

ARROW/FLASH Spinoff Casts Hawkgirl and Rip Hunter

The only question remains, which one's The Brave and which one's The Bold?

Deadline reported yesterday that the upcoming, still-untitled CW superteam series spinning off from Arrow and The Flash has cast Ciara Renée as Kendra Saunders, better known as DC Comics superhero Hawkgirl.  

The article describes Kendra as "a young woman who is just beginning to learn that she has been repeatedly reincarnated over the centuries.  When provoked, her ancient warrior persona manifests itself, along with wings that grow out of her back, earning her the moniker Hawkgirl."

Created in 1940 by Gardner Fox, Dennis Neville and Sheldon Moldoff, Hawkgirl first appeared in Flash Comics #1 as Shiera Sanders, a reincarnation of an Egyptian princess named Chay-Ara who fell in love with Prince Khufu, later reincarnated as archaeologist Carter Hall, the Golden Age superhero Hawkman.  Shiera later became his crimefighting partner Hawkgirl in All-Star Comics (vol.1) #5.

In 1999's JSA Secret Files #1, James Robinson, David Goyer and Geoff Johns reimagined the character as Kendra Saunders, the granddaughter of the Golden Age Hawkgirl's cousin, Speed Saunders.  Kendra committed suicide, which allowed Shiera Hall's soul to enter her body while still believing herself to be Kendra.  She debuted as Hawkgirl using the original Hawkgirl's equipment, which led to her meeting and joining the Justice Society of America.

In the current New 52 continuity, Hawkgirl is Kendra Munoz-Saunders, a professional treasure hunter on the alternate world known as Earth 2 that was hired by the World Army before an event in an Egyptian tomb grafted wings onto Kendra's back.

Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter has word that English actor Arthur Darvill has been cast as DC Comics' time master Rip Hunter, also known as The Traveler in the upcoming series.  Darvill, of course, is best known as companion Rory Williams on the BBC series Doctor Who, and as Revered Paul Coates on Broadchurch.

Rip is described as "a roguish time traveler who hides the strains of being responsible for history itself behind a facade of charm and wit."

Created in 1959 by Jack Miller and Ruben Moreira, Rip Hunter first appeared in Showcase #20 as an ordinary man who uses his invention, the Time Sphere, to travel through time in various adventures with his friend Jeff Smith, girlfriend Bonnie Baxter, and Bonnie's kid brother Corky.

In 2004, Rip was reinvented by Geoff Johns as a time traveler that assists the Justice Society in a battle with time-travelling supervillain Per Degaton.  The name "Rip Hunter" was revealed to be a mysterious alias, designed to hide the details of his history so that his enemies couldn't travel back in time and kill him as a helpless child.

Years later, Rip was revealed to be the future son of time-traveling superhero Booster Gold, and assisted his father in various exploits.  To protect himself and his own history, Rip forces Booster to turn down membership in the recently reformed Justice League and to continue to act like a self-absorbed gloryhound in order to make sure that his father's legacy is one of failure and is ultimately forgotten by history  This is done to ensure rogue time travelers cannot kill Booster in the past, erasing Rip in the process and the various works he and Booster will engage in to protect the timestream.

In the current New 52 continuity, Rip attempted to prevent his father from warning himself that the romance between Wonder Woman and Superman will erase the past of his future from existence.

DAMN Good Television -- THE FLASH: "Out of Time"

In the immortal words of Barry Allen (and Dr. Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap)..."Oh, boy."

Admit it, you watched last night's episode of The Flash and for a good while there, you thought it was another solid but not overly important outing for the CW series.  And then the last ten minutes happened.

In "Out of Time," written by Todd and Aaron Helbing and directed by Thor Freudenthal, we're finally introduced to Mark Mardon (guest star Liam McIntyre), the Weather Wizard and brother of Clyde Mardon, previously killed off in the series' pilot episode.  As you might expect, Mark isn't overly happy that his bro is pushing up the daisies and joining the bleedin' choir invisible, so he returns to Central City to get all revengey on Clyde's killer, CCPD Detective Joe West.

Our hero Barry Allen, meanwhile, is busy taking his girlfriend Linda Park to a bowling alley, where he just happens to run into the love of his life, Iris West, and her boyfriend Eddie Thawne.  Neither Linda nor Eddie are thrilled by Iris' suggestion that the two couples bowl together, especially when Iris starts wiping food schmutz from the corner of Barry's mouth and carrying on as if they are a couple.  Yeah, slightly awkward.

With the prerequisite CW Romance Angst addressed for the week, we then return to the Wiz, who has a much better handle on his powers than Clyde ever did.  He attempts to kill Joe with a lightning strike while he and Barry are driving around, but Barry is fast enough to rush Joe to safety just before the car goes all asplodey.  Joe gets benched by Captain Singh until Mardon is caught, but no worries, the S.T.A.R. Labs team is on it.

Cisco Ramon whips up a Wizard Wand device that looks rather suspiciously like an oversized Sonic Screwdriver from Doctor Who to short-circuit the Weather Wizard's control, which comes in handy when Mardon attacks CCPD headquarters (because hey, just about every supervillain in this series seems to as well).  The supercops who failed to notice Mardon riding up with them in the elevator easily get taken out by a gust of wind, leaving Mardon to attack Joe with another lightning strike.  Captain Singh jumps in front of the bolt to protect Joe, landing him in the hospital and introducing his gay fiancé to Joe and Barry in the process.

Meanwhile, Cisco is becoming increasingly suspicious about Dr. Harrison Wells' shady behavior, so he asks Caitlin Snow to keep Wells distracted at the local CC Jitters coffee shop while he runs some tests to find out what really happened to the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator.  And there's no possible way that could go wrong, right?

Joe and his partner Eddie go looking for Mardon and since the Flash is nowhere to be found, the search ends with Joe handcuffed to a pier and having a seriously broken leg. Instead of simply killing Joe right there, the Weather Wizard calls Iris to let her know he has her dad, although we're not really sure why unless Mardon wants to capture and torture her as well.

Caitlin proves to be absolutely horrible at subterfuge, so Wells finally says screw it and leaves his wheelchair behind at the coffee shop while he races back to S.T.A.R. Labs.  At this point, the episode steps its game up by showing that Wells' pretense is officially over at last.  Wells catches Cisco replaying the recording of the Reverse Flash from "The Man in the Yellow Suit" and confesses that yes, he's actually Eobard Thawne from the future and Eddie is his 21st century ancestor.  

It seems Eobard's been stuck in the past since killing Barry's mother Nora fifteen years ago and that Barry's super-speed is the key to getting him back to his own time.  And as Cisco looks on with sheer terror (rather convincingly acted by Carlos Valdes), Eobard vibrates his hand into Cisco's chest and kills him.  Well...for now, anyway.

Great ending, right?  Guess again, because just when you think you can't handle any more, Mardon creates a tsunami to level Central City, just as Barry and Iris finally have their first kiss.  This forces Barry to quick-change to the Flash right in front of Iris, officially revealing his identity and his powers to her.  And as Iris stands there going "Wait...what?", the Flash races off to counter the tsunami with one of his own, moving faster and faster.  So fast, in fact, that he ends up breaking the time barrier and travels back to see himself running earlier in the episode.

So.  Much.  Flash goodness.  The wait over the next six days is going to be ridiculously slow and agonizing.

THE FLASH's Greg Berlanti Discusses Grodd & Time Travel

During last night's episode "The Flash is Born," fans of the CW series The Flash finally breathed a sigh of relief when Barry Allen formally adopted the identity of "The Flash" instead of the rather embarrassing name "The Streak."  So the big question is, what's coming up next in the Scarlet Speedster's future?

TVLine spoke with executive producer Greg Berlanti about that very thing, discussing a number of topics including the introduction of Grodd, new super-speed abilities, time travel and more.  Here's the exchange...

TVLINE: Am I wrong in reading the situation as it just being a matter of time before Barry has to tell Iris either that he loves her or that he’s The Flash in order to salvage their relationship?

Berlanti: One hundred percent. I think that’s a fair assessment. One of those two things will be revealed soon enough.

TVLINE: You had a pretty juicy tease there at the end of the last episode about Grodd. Is that something that’s going to be more teased rather than introduced?

Berlanti: I wouldn’t say teased. I would say we’re going to deal with it this year. The comparison I make is a little bit to Slade the first year on Arrow in the sense of we started with the mask in the pilot and then we saw which way we were going. He was, ultimately, in the back half of that first season even more than we would ever do with Grodd this first year because…We’re going to have to get the technology right and all the stuff right to make it look and feel real. But a lot of times, we do this stuff not as a tease as much as a challenge to ourselves of, “Can we do it?” Grodd’s definitely one of those, so we hope we pull it off.

TVLINE: We saw so many different abilities with the last episode — running on water, running up a building, changing his voice. Are there other special abilities still to come?

Berlanti: Oh, he has tons. Definitely. We’re holding back on some big ones still. He famously can phase through things. We haven’t seen him do that yet.

TVLINE: And time travel?

Berlanti: That is the one that we deal with directly in the winter. We, obviously, hint at it from the pilot episode. That is a big — “theme” is the wrong word for it — but that is a big part of the DNA of who The Flash was, so we do deal with that.

TVLINE: And with his suit being destroyed by the bomb (in "Plastique"), is now the time when you’re going to evolve his costume?

Berlanti: We’ll keep evolving it and tweaking it as we go. I think people are waiting to see when it’s going to be a white emblem versus a red.

TVLINE: Are there any big crossovers with Arrow planned for the second half of the season?

Berlanti: We just started talking about that. It’s so much fun to do. They’re so hard to do. But I think they’ll be so rewarding for everybody, ultimately, that that’s our hope, for sure.

The Flash airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. EST on The CW.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX Trailer Debuts

"World War III...Maybe I could've stopped it, if I just ran a little faster..."

The trailer for Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox debuted on IGN earlier this week, giving us our first solid look at the upcoming animated film based on the DC Comics limited series Flashpoint.  When time travel changes an event for Barry Allen, The Flash, and his family, the event’s temporal ripples prove disastrous, creating a fractured, alternate reality where the Justice League never formed, and Superman is nowhere to be found.  Trapped in an alternate Earth being ravaged by a fierce war between Wonder Woman’s Amazons and Aquaman’s Atlanteans, Flash must team with a grittier, more violent Batman and government agent Cyborg to restore the continuity of Flash’s original timeline.

"The Speed Force allows the Reverse-Flash to travel through time," The Flash (Justin Chambers) tells Batman as we see the Reverse-Flash (C. Thomas Howell) detonating an explosive device.

An alternate Batman, voiced by Kevin McKidd, says to Barry Allen, "He changed something in the past."  Barry replies, "We have to find out what he changed and change it back before they kill everyone on the planet."  We then see Alternate Batman attempting to restore Barry's lost super-speed powers using an electric chair.

"In my world, I'm a hero," Barry says to his mother Nora Allen, who was never killed in this alternate timeline.  "You mean like Batman?" replies Nora.

"No matter how fast you run, you can't save everyone," remarks the Reverse-Flash, as we see quick images of Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Captain Atom, Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Cyborg.

"War's over, everybody lost," remarks the alternate Batman as we see the Rogue known as The Top and the exterior of the Flash Museum.  "You'd be amazed the monsters this world can create..."

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox is scheduled to arrive on DVD, Blu-Ray, On Demand and digital download on July 30, 2013.  If you'd like to see the trailer, you can view it below thanks to DC Comics on YouTube...

DAMN Good Comics -- AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #678

Amazing Spider-Man was a bit wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey this week...and that's definitely a good thing.

In the cheerily-titled "I Killed Tomorrow Part 1 of 2: Schrödinger's Catastrophe," writer Dan Slott gives Peter Parker just three hours to prevent the destruction of New York City.  This isn't the typical "ticking clock" story, though, because Peter only learns about New York's destruction by stepping through a Doorway to Tomorrow (Morrow...Morrow...).

It seems Grady Scraps, his fellow creative engineer at think-tank Horizon Labs, has invented a gateway field of chronoton particles with a 24-hour window.  When Grady shows off his new invention, Peter steps through only to discover that tomorrow's events have suddenly been altered and all of New York City has been completely demolished.  Peter quickly finds an abandoned wristwatch frozen at the exact time of the destruction, while Grady uses a newspaper from before Peter's presence altered the timeline to help Spider-Man fix the timeline and stop the devastation before it happens.

Everybody got that?

Slott indulges his love of time-travel stories here, even revealing that Grady, like Slott himself, is a fan of Doctor Who, adding another Whovian to the Marvel Universe.  (Hmmm...I wonder if Grady ever hangs out with Mr. Fantastic and his daughter Valeria...)  And as the story's title suggests, the quantum mechanics paradox known as Schrödinger's cat comes into play, with New York City being simultaneously undamaged and completely destroyed.  The story's real heart though, is the pairing of Spider-Man and the unconventional Grady, making it feel as if Spidey traveled to Lost Island and spent an entire episode teamed up with Hugo "Hurley" Reyes.

As for the art, Humberto Ramos turns in a mostly-solid issue of his distinctive exaggerated style.  He puts a great deal of effort into giving his characters individual hairstyles and specific fashion choices, but rushes a bit through scenes involving buildings and the devastation.  However, if you're a fan of Ramos on Amazing Spider-Man, as I am, you're probably willing to overlook this and concentrate more on the story instead.

The cliffhanger works nicely, giving Spidey mere seconds to identify what needs to be done (or not done) to avoid catastrophe.  Something tells me he'll figure it out, but that wait for the next issue to see what happens...Duuuuude...

DAMN Good Comics -- SECRET AVENGERS #20

I can't believe we only have one more of these.

Over the past five issues of Marvel's Secret Avengers, writer Warren Ellis has produced some of the best single-issue stories in recent memory and this latest, "Encircle," certainly exemplies this.  Black Widow, described at the start as "the world's greatest secret agent," gets the spotlight here in a masterful time-travel tale that rates as one of the best ever for the character.

In a timey-wimey structure feeling quite a bit like a Steven Moffat Doctor Who script, Ellis starts the issue off with the deaths of team members Steve Rogers, War Machine and Sharon Carter, and then sends Black Widow back in time five years to figure out a way to prevent it.  Of course, Natasha Romanoff's background is in espionage, not temporal physics, but with the help of her "Escape Hatch" wrist device, some hints from teammate The Beast, and forty years of scientific research by a man named "Count" Oscar Khronus, she figures out a game plan.

This issue has several wonderful touches -- Black Widow's hatred of time travel, her hatred of the "Escape Hatch" device, Khronus' dimwitted henchman Kongo, weaponeer Harry Grindell "Death-Ray" Evans, the very Ellis line "My time gun will send your heart to be eaten by dinosaurs," a brief chat with Doctor Druid thirty-six hours before his death, among others.  Over the course of "eighteen weeks, two days, nine hours and three minutes," or over four months of Black Widow's actual time, she implements a mission that spans decades in order to achieve her objective.  Each temporal encounter has a specific purpose, it seems, and you, you lucky reader, get to see everything fall neatly into place over just twenty pages.

The artist paired with Ellis for this issue is Alex Maleev, who somehow escaped from his usual creative partner Brian Michael Bendis long enough to turn in some terrific work for Secret Avengers.  Maleev proved long ago he could depict a formidable Black Widow during his time with Bendis on Daredevil, but here he makes us wish Marvel would put him on a monthly Black Widow series, preferably one written by Ellis.  A sequence set forty-four years in the past is made particularly memorable, drawn as a serial comic strip similar to Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon.

But yes, there's only one more issue of Warren Ellis' Secret Avengers to go and no, I'm not happy about it.  Six issues is far too short for something this wonderful and I'm sorry, but not even the promise of "the end of the world" next issue is going to make up for it...

DAMN Good Comics -- SECRET AVENGERS #16

You know, for a guy who supposedly thinks superheroes are silly, Warren Ellis seems to be really good at writing them.

In a week dominated by the ending of the Post-Crisis DC Universe and the launch of the new Post-Flashpoint DC Universe, it's interesting that Marvel managed to sneak in and release such an attention-grabbing issue of Secret Avengers by Ellis and artist Jamie McKelvie.  This thankfully self-contained story, "Subland Empire," comes off like the illegitimate offspring of The Avengers and Ellis and John Cassaday's Planetary and we're all better off for it.

With a scaled-down team consisting of Steve Rogers, the Black Widow, the Beast and Moon Knight, Ellis throws out an insane amount of big ideas like he just reached into a bag of Lay's potato chips and casually flung them all over the floor.  This issue features nothing less than a secret city over a mile under Cincinnati, Ohio, time-travel emissions named Von Doom radiation after Doctor Doom's time platform, atomic-powered Cadillacs, guns that fire flechettes that dissolve within a few minutes to become untraceable, using a city-sized time platform to turn Cincinnati into a bomb that can be dropped onto other cities, and turning said atomic-powered Cadillac into a neutron bomb to destroy said city-sized time platform.  As ridiculous and impossible as such concepts may be, they're exactly what makes for great superhero comics.

One of my favorite things about this issue had to be the Beast's explanation that a time machine also has to be a space machine.  Ellis, through the Beast, very astutely points out that as we move forward through time, we also move forward in space as Earth revolves and orbits around the sun.  Therefore, in order to go back in time, you also have to calculate where your target will be positioned at that time in the past or the future.  Otherwise, as the Beast remarks, "you would materialize in deep space and be dead in thirty seconds."  A lot of time-travel writers, especially in comics, never seem to think about this rather obvious necessity and after reading this, you're probably going to be very annoyed whenever some other writer drops the ball in this regard.  Welcome to my wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey world.

As for the art, Jamie McKelvie produces some clean, distinct artwork that complements Ellis' script nicely in a way very similar to John Cassaday.  The two-page spread of Moon Knight soaring above the underground cityscape is particularly stunning and McKelvie's action sequences are very stylish and cinematic.  I was a bit disappointed to learn that McKelvie is only one of a rotating series of artists, but if the talented scheduled roster can keep up the high standard set here then Ellis' Secret Avengers run, however long it turns out to be, should be a genuine highlight every month.

The Future of Comics is Futury Futuristic

It's been a pretty eventful week for comics, with publisher DC Comics announcing their reboot/relaunch/reset/rewind/restart/reload of the DC Universe and making these titles available digitally the same day they arrive in comic shops.  This, of course, has sent readers and retailers into an understandable tizzy, as everyone struggles to figure out what's changed and whether they can live with it or not.

So being the dutiful Doctor Who obsessed fan that I am, I left a timey-wimey note for my future self to let me know how things are going to turn out and if the future of my beloved hobby is indeed assured.  Thanks to a handy-dandy crack in the fabric of time and space, I just received a response from my 2021 self and here's what he (or is that I?) had to say...

Hello, Charles!  Greetings and salutations from Future Me in the year 2021!

Having remembered you sending me your note, I was more than glad to know that you hadn't somehow forgotten to write it and somehow affected the course of my history/your future/whatever.  So I take it that you're quite concerned about the future of comics.  Perfectly understandable, considering everything that happens in 2011, but I'll try to give you some idea of what you have to look forward to in the years ahead...

First of all, DC and Marvel still print some comics on paper, if you can believe it.  Oh, it's nothing like it was in your day, but they're still around here and there.  They've become something of a niche market for certain collectors, kind of like those people who preferred vinyl records over CDs in your time.  They like to think they're offbeat and hip, while most of us realize they just want to be different for the sake of being different.

Of course, this means that some comic shops are still around as well.  In an economic form of natural selection, the really good ones survive to become quaint shops for those "too cool for the room" paper comics collectors.  The rest, especially those dingy hole-in-the-wall stores staffed by fat thirty-year-olds with no grasp of underarm deodorant technology, gradually blink out of existence.  Losing them was a bit sad, in a way, almost like seeing old drive-in movie theaters slowly fade into history.

Comic book conventions also take a considerable hit.  With digital comics becoming the norm, there's little need to go to convention centers or hotel ballrooms to buy something you can just download.  As a result, conventions have shifted their focus to creator appearances and Cosplay, along with DC and Marvel giving presentations about upcoming movie and TV projects.  You sometimes find the occasional dealer that actually sells paper comics, though, and yes, Adam West, Burt Ward and Lou Ferrigno are still signing autographs.  Seriously.

Oh, and watch out for ComiXology.  As demand for digital comics increases, their servers have a hard time keeping up and...well...what ultimately happens isn't pretty.  This triggers a huge debate about digital comics storage, but the good news is that it eventually results in comics you can store in your own collection instead of accessing them from a company's website.  Some prefer cloud storage, some prefer portable storage devices, but at least there's a sense of collecting comics once again and that's definitely a good thing.

See?  Not the end of the world, after all.  This whole digital comics thing is still pretty new to you, so there'll be some bumps along the way as adjustments are made and technology advances.  You're going to love your iPad 4 and especially the--Ah, but that would be telling.  Just enjoy the ride, okay?

Oh, and because I know you're already wondering about this, yes, Doctor Who is still on and still the greatest show in the galaxy.  The Fourteenth Doctor is brilliant!

Be seeing you...eventually,

Charles

Should the U.S. Government Subsidize Time Travel Research?

Okay, the way you hear many politicians going on about the United States budget on various news shows and whatnot, we really shouldn't be spending federal tax dollars on...well...anything.  But as we all know, no matter who's in executive or legislative power, we're still going to find a way to keep on spending no matter what.  We're Americans...We love to buy stuff. 

So presuming America finds another way to get its credit card limits raised again or cuts out something obviously useless like Medicare coverage or Social Security payments, should that new source of funds go toward time-travel research?  Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution ponders that very question, in an article titled Should we subsidize or tax research into time travel?  His reasoning:

I believe no one understands the underlying science much at all.  But there is some chance that the old science fiction movies are correct and that by time-traveling you alter the course of history, thereby obliterating the universe we used to have.  I'll count that as a net negative, while noting there is some chance we end up with a better universe.

On the plus side, the human race will die out anyway.  Time travel seems to yield a fairly safe haven.  As disaster approaches, keep going back in time a few days, or decades, and that asteroid will never hit you.  This is especially appealing if you are transporting back a body (upload?) which is programmed to be more or less immortal and you can take the technology with you, so as to keep on going back as time progresses.

On one side: immortal life for many of the last humans and thus immortality for the human race.  And with time they may learn how to thwart the asteriod.(sic)  On the other side: some probability of swapping universes.

There are certainly those issues of national security to consider.  After all, if time travel was possible, we could go back in time and prevent things like JFK's assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, or the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center.  Not to mention it would be an effective deterrent against future aggressive actions against our country, which could be rewritten and erased in some sort of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey fashion.  If you thought that bombing someone with a nuclear weapon was effective at keeping them from invading you, imagine what preventing their leaders from being born could do.

Oh, and don't forget the economic advantages as well.  That 777-point drop of the Dow Jones market in September of 2008?  Prevented with a stock trading software patch.  Bernie Madoff's investment scandal?  Can't happen in Madoff gets hit by that car that missed him when he was sixteen.  Hell, funding time travel research will pay for itself in no time.

Okay, sure, there may some questions we need to answer.  Do we really want to give our government the ability to erase people from history?  Or change the historical outcomes of other nations?  Or alter the results of our own elections?  Or tell Sarah Palin not to do that interview with Katie Couric?  Definitely things that need proper consideration.

But think about one thing...If we don't start funding time travel research, what will happen to America if other countries start funding it themselves...?

(Cue the Doctor Who cliffhanger sting music)