What characters were rip-offs of others? Are comics and pro wrestling actually tied together? Is the story from the comic better than the story in the movie? Just what the heck was happening in comics in the 90’s?

These are some questions any reasonable human being who contributes a portion of their weekly salary to the funny books may ask. The Flickcast alumni Jonathan ‘Wally’ Weilbaecher and I join forces with Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles to answer these and more.

With regulars Joe Slepski of The Joe on Joe podcast, Pablo Romero-Estevez and Alan ‘Sizzler’ Kistler of Crazy Sexy Geeks and some guests like Lucha Underground’s Joey Ryan and The Flickcast co-founder Matt Raub, we haven’t come to many conclusions but we have had a ton of fun arguing our way there.

After a brief hiatus Doctor Who returns this week to comic books stores, this time courtesy of Titan Comics. Doctor Who‘s history in comics is pretty much as storied as the Television version, starting a year after the show debuted. The long-running UK published Doctor Who Magazine has been running comic strips based on the show since 1979.

In the US, however, the Doctor didn’t see any four-color adventures until the mid-1980s with Marvel Comics reprinting some of the British strips. That was short-lived and it wasn’t until 2007 that an American published comic book was made available. Now the US gets the best of both worlds with Titan Comics being a British publisher, but with full distribution in the US. As if to reward us for our eternal patience this week sees the debut of two new Doctor Who comics with a third on the way soon. Here’s a look at the first two titles.

With Sam Keith recently tapped to relaunch a remastered version of his cult hit The Maxx through IDW, it only makes sense that the publisher would try to bring the famed creator in on another one of their franchises. While licensed titles with most companies fall flat, IDW is one of the few to take them and run to success by staying true to the original content but working well within the confines of comics. It ends up seeming like a natural pairing to put the man who created a purple clad giant with perpetual middle fingers that roamed the outback to take on one of the most comically messed up invasion forces ever.

Mars Attacks: First Born takes place in the aftermath of the failed Martian invasion. With the world devastated, people must begin to rebuild but the Martians have left something behind in a secluded neighborhood. Found by a group of kids, there is a Martian infant left amongst the rubble and the aftermath that follows it. The miniseries was written by Chris Ryall and coplotted by Sam Keith and Ryall with Keith taking sole duties on the covers and artwork.

Trailers for comic books? Yes, and really cool ones! These books were released last week from Dynamite Entertainment and are selling fast. Get to your local comic book shop immediately and pick a copy or two of each.

Buy one for you and buy one for a friend. To find a comic shop near you, call 1-888-comicbook or visit http://www.comicshoplocator.com/.

Dynamite was founded in 2004 and is home to several best-selling comic book titles and properties, including The Boys, The Shadow, Vampirella, Warlord of Mars, Bionic Man, A Game of Thrones, and more. Dynamite owns and controls an extensive library with over 3,000 characters (which includes the Harris Comics and Chaos Comics properties), such as Vampirella, Pantha, Evil Ernie, Smiley the Psychotic Button, Chastity, Purgatori, and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt.

Normally, we are too busy to be able to come back and do reviews on DLC for game,s but as you saw in my recent review of the Deadpool game, I really enjoyed it and was looking for a reason to go back. That reason came from a download code for the Merc with a Mouth map pack.

For $2.99 on the PlayStation 3 or 240 Microsoft Points on the XBox 360, players can download two additional maps for the game’s challenge mode along with two new costumes. Spoiler alert: This DLC pack was actually a preorder bonus from Gamestop upon the original Deadpool release so if you already did that, then you probably don’t need to make this purchase… or read this review… so… sorry!

So first off, let’s talk about costumes. For some reason which isn’t ever really discussed, the costume options are only available in the Infinite mode which is a wave based level of the challenge modes. Still not entirely sure why these special outfits are only available in the challenge mode when it is just a skin swap over the character so keep that in mind if you didn’t go through (or like me just didn’t spend a lot of time) in the Challenge mode. The D-Pooly costume resembles Deadpool’s selfstyled MC look while the X-Force outfit represents the grey and black from when Deadpool joined up on Wolverine’s black ops team… but they are only available to the challenge mode.