Star Trek/Doctor Who: Assimilation 2 #1
Written by Scott & David Tipton with Tony Lee
Art by JK Woodward
Lettering by Shawn Lee & Robbie Robbins
Covers by JK Woodward, David Messina & Joe Corroney
IDW Publishing
Release Date: May 30, 2012
Cover Price: $3.99

As the world’s first and foremost NON fan of Doctor Who, I went into Star Trek/Doctor Who: Assimilation 2 #1 expecting to like the Star Trek parts and hate the Doctor Who parts. Well, you learn something new every day, right? While I’m not going to go out and buy one of those weird R2-D2-like trashcan things from Doctor Who, I now have a different view of the franchise than I did before.

What I loved about this issue is that it starts off with NONSTOP action, something that’s not really the norm in the Star Trek universe, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun. This issue, the Star Trek part anyway, takes place in the Next Generation universe. Writers Scott & David Tipton, accompanied by Tony Lee, lay out a really interesting comic here. There’s two big A-List villains teaming up, but we’re not sure how or why – a nice mystery that will come into play later in the series, I’m sure. Then, we switch over to the Doctor Who half of the story. I found this surprisingly entertaining. Again, I know next to nothing about Doctor Who and I came away from this issue actually liking the character of The Doctor. Now THAT’S writing! If you can make a reader interested in a character that they had NO interest in, you’ve done your job and then some.

Ridley Scott‘s sci-fi noir masterpiece Blade Runner (my second favorite film by the way) will be celebrating its 30th anniversary next month, a few weeks after the theatrical debut of Scott’s long-awaited return to tentpole idea-driven science-fiction Prometheus. Now that Scott is currently at work on a sequel to Blade Runner alongside original screenwriter – and the man who first gave the project life back in the late 1970’s – Hampton Fancher and a three-disc Blu-ray collector’s edition set of the original hitting stores later this year (no release date has been set but you can pre-order your copy here), a reappraisal of one of genre cinema’s landmark achievements is in order.

Several months before Blade Runner‘s June 1982 theatrical release the Los Angeles-based company M.K. Productions assembled a short 16mm behind-the-scenes promotional film to be screened at sci-fi, fantasy, and horror conventions across the country to drum up buzz about the much-anticipated movie. You can check out the full 13-minute featurette here below.

Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual
Written by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood
Titan Books
Release Date: May 29, 2012
Paperback

“All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal’s a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!” — Sgt. Apone, Aliens

Originally published by HarperPrism in 1996, Aliens: Colonial Marines Technical Manual serves as a guide to the equipment and procedures of the United States Colonial Marine Corps – those bad-ass Space Marines from the Aliens franchise. Written by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood, a revised edition of the technical manual has been re-released by Titan Books today as a tie-in to Ridley Scott‘s upcoming science-fiction film, Prometheus.

The book is packed with sketches, diagrams, technical schematics, and plans, taking a detailed look at the weapons, vehicles and ships of the USCMC, and the men and women who use them.

Every day here at Doom HQ we receive tons of tips from our readers about really cool stuff from the world of geek, as well as promotional materials for new films, comic books, collectibles, and much more. While we do our best to bring you as much of it as possible, we don’t always have enough geek manpower available to cover it all on a daily basis. But we hate the idea of all of this really cool stuff wasting away in our inbox. How could we NOT cover it? Hence why we’ve resurrected our long-defunct column Bits Of Doom, now rebranded and revamped as Doom Digest, a collection of easily digestible bits of news, videos, photos, and other goodies.

Today: Dean Pelton’s outfits on Community, a trailer mash-up for Total Recall, William Shatner sings, a Star Trek Voyager cake, a scene from Men In Black 3, plus Bits Of Doom.

With success of The Avengers well behind us, it’s time to look ahead at what could be appearing in future entries of the Marvel cinematic universe. Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 are all scheduled to hit theaters next year and we pretty much know who the villain is going to be in the former, but we don’t know to much about the villain in the latter. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige teased us on who the villain could be in the sequel about the god from Asgard.

In an interview with Empire (via Comic Book Movie), Feige says that we will see an Asgard that was left out of the first film and his description of the holy place isn’t as pristine as once thought.