This Week in Geekdom

Happy weekend everyone and best wishes for a happy remainder of your con to all those attending Celebration right now. I'm not jealous at all...ok, who am I kidding? I so wish I could be in Anaheim right now. Sigh. Since we can't be in California right now, let's distract ourselves with Steam key giveaways and This Week in Geekdom!

Comics

Marvel executive editor Mike Marts has left the powerhouse label to join forces with writer (and fellow Marvel alum) Joe Pruett to begin their own comics label: AfterShock Comics.

Archie Comics gleefully takes its titular hero into the patently insane with Archie vs Predator. 

Also, Archie vs. Sharknado is going to be a thing.

Books

It's one of the all-time young adult classics, and this week we got a 3-page snippet of A Wrinkle In Time that had been cut from the final edit of the book.

Games

There are plenty of video game titles that have a celebrity's name attached to them, but here are nine of the weirdest times that a game got a celebrity cameo. 

F1 2015 is still a work in progress, but it's already gaining quite a bit of acclaim as a well executed and fundamentally fun racing simulator.

And, of course, we have the brand new trailer for Star Wars: Battlefront. Battlefront will be available on November 17th on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Movies/TV

Rumors abound following the release of an internal Sony memo that stated that Doctor Who will be made into a major motion picture.

Flash Gordon is also apparently going to be made into a movie, with Matthew Vaughn in talks to direct the project.

Celebrity Deathmatch will be coming back to MTV. 

Olivia Munn will be joining the ranks of the X-Men as Psylocke.

This week was the week of all the new trailers. Below are the teasers for Episode VII, Star Wars: Rebels, and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Science/Technology

On Thursday Central Japan Railway announced that the newest incarnation of their line of maglev trains reached a speed of 366 mph (590 kph) during a test run. If these tests continue to turn out well, this new shinkansen will be taking passengers as soon as 2027.

We all know that space is mind-bogglingly vast, but here are some helpful infographics to help us wrap our heads around just how much space is out there in space.

A new study out of the University of Durham indicates that what we've been calling dark matter may not actually be completely dark after all.

You may know of someone who treats their dog as though the canine were their child (this someone may even be you), but it turns out that there's a growing body of scientific evidence that indicates this attachment isn't complete hyperbole.

On Tuesday SpaceX came this close to successfully landing their reusable Falcon 9 rocket. The company then provided this breakdown of exactly what went wrong (and right).

Could this Vulcan rocket give the Falcon 9 a run for its money?

While SpaceX was coming a hair's breadth away from success, Boeing and Lockheed Martin (with a little help from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin) released these images of their forthcoming potential rival to the Falcon 9: the Vulcan rocket.

Meanwhile, the New Horizons probe sent color images of Pluto back to Earth. Here are said shots along with a breakdown of just what it takes to send the pictures from 2.9 billion miles away.

2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's introduction of the General Theory of Relativity. Here is a thorough and interesting accounting of why the Theory is so important and how it continues to have a massive impact on theoretical physics a century later. 

Just one more reason to fear your future robot overlords: they now know how to use swords (with bonus robot swordfighting video goodness!)

Your pain reliever of choice may also be relieving you of happiness.

General Awesomeness/Feats of Nerdery

Meet Ronald Mallett. He's the theoretical physicist who's trying to bring us the first functional time machine.

Chauvet Cave contains some of the most detailed and astounding examples of Paleolithic art known to humankind. It's also one of the most tightly guarded places in all of France. One Smithsonian reporter was among the few individuals given access to the Cave and this was his experience.

As always, best wishes for an excellent week ahead!