Each month, we round up the most interesting comics, graphic novels, webcomics, digital comics and comic-related Kickstarters that we think you should check out.

1. A.D.: AFTER DEATH BOOK ONE

By Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire
Image Comics

Most wouldn’t expect formal comics experimentation to come from the writers of Batman and the X-Men, but, to be fair, Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire are two of the most celebrated creators in comics and both have had a lot of success outside of their work for Marvel and DC. In this three-part prestige format series, they are collaborating to tell a story about a future in which death has been cured. Jonah Cooke, the story’s protagonist, has been alive for centuries and in this first chapter, reflects on his life and his culpability in an event that changed the world.

The format of this book is not entirely a comic; it’s a combination of sequential art, prose, and illustrations. Lemire, who lately has been writing for other artists, provides the art in his discernibly loose, outsider art style while Snyder handles the considerable sections of prose with a novelist’s skill. The result is an ominous and contemplative read about memory and mortality.

2. MUHAMMAD ALI

By Sybille Titeux and Amazing Ameziane
Dark Horse Comics

Some biography subjects were born to be in comics and the brash, super-heroic figure of the boxing world known as Muhammad Ali is one of them. He famously appeared in a comic with Superman back in 1978, but in this 2015 French graphic novel, being released for the first time in English, he gets a 128-page bio-comic all his own. Ali’s life—from his youth as Cassius Clay through his storied boxing career, his conversion to Islam, and his rise as an early hero of the civil rights movement to his final battle with Parkinson’s disease—is all covered here. Titeux gives many of the biographical events some proper historical context by providing some details of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and the conflict in Vietnam. Ameziane’s photo-realistic artwork depicts these events with accuracy and an appropriate sense of drama equal to Ali’s legend.

3. SUPER POWERS #1

By Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani
DC Comics

Art Baltazar and Franco Aureliani are responsible for some of the most popular all-ages comics and their work for DC, like Tiny Titans, is just about the best option you can find out there for early reader superhero comics. Their newest series, Super Powers, stars some of the biggest heroes in the DC Universe and begins with a story in which Batman has gone missing, leaving Superman and Wonder Woman to not only find their friend, but to also fill in for him in Gotham City while he’s gone.

4. WHO KILLED KURT COBAIN?

By Nicolas Otero
IDW Publishing

For Gen Xers, Kurt Cobain’s death by apparent suicide in 1994 was a “where were you when…” moment that is forever burned into their memories. Over 20 years later, the mystique around his death has sparked conspiracy theories and a number of books including the French novel Le Roman de Boddah by Héloïse Guay de Bellissen, which focuses on Cobain’s suicide note and its reference to his imaginary childhood friend “Boddah.” French artist Nicolas Otero has adapted that book into a graphic novel that captures the feeling of the ‘90s—both the grunge aesthetic and even the page layout-driven style of the comics from that decade—while depicting a dramatized version of the real events of Cobain’s life. We see Nirvana’s sudden rises to success, Cobain’s passionate relationship with Courtney Love, his struggle with heroin addiction. and his early death, all told from the point of view of Boddah.

5. ETHER #1

By Matt Kindt and David Rubin
Dark Horse Comics 

Writer Matt Kindt isn’t a fan of the supernatural genre, so the protagonist of his new book is himself a skeptic who prefers science over magic. However, Boone Dias is a scientist-adventurer who is often brought from our world to a magical dimension called the Ether to solve a murder. In a world where seemingly anything can happen, the inhabitants of that world lean on Dias to find explanations for the unexplainable. Kindt is one of the smartest genre writers in comics right now and he’s paired with astounding new talent David Rubin (The Rise of Aurora West), whose richly colored art is like an hallucinatory children’s book that you’ll want to spend some time admiring.

6. BLACK PANTHER: WORLD OF WAKANDA #1

By Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, Yona Harvey, Afua Richardson, and Alitha Martinez
Marvel Comics

After his cinematic debut in Captain America: Civil War, an upcoming solo film, and a new comic series written by acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Panther has now become a high-profile character in the Marvel Universe—enough to warrant a spinoff series focusing on his supporting characters. The Dora Milage is the King of Wakanda’s elite all-female guard, made famous during Christopher Priest’s iconic run on the Black Panther series in the 1990s. Two of the members, Ayo and Aneka, have been a major part of Coates’s run and will now be the focus of this book. 

Neither of the big two comics publishers have been a model for hiring diverse creators—especially when it comes to African American women—but this particular book boasts an interesting creative team of women of color, led by professor and op-ed writer Roxanne Gay who readers of Bitch Planet will know from her essays in that comic. She is joined by artist Alitha E. Martinez, while a 10-page backup story co-written by Coates and poet Yona Harvey features art by Afua Richardson, who made a splash this past year drawing the politically charged Image series Genius.

7. MAYDAY #1

By Alex DeCampi, Tony Parker, and Blond
Image Comics

This is the first issue of a proposed trilogy of mini-series that mix Cold War espionage with unexpected elements like ‘70s drug culture, Alice Cooper, and Krautrock. The series will follow a pair of CIA agents through different exploits in the 1970s. The first issue begins with the murder of a Soviet general while he is in the act of defecting to the United States. Rather than a John le Carré-style of complex spy maneuvering, it quickly veers into the unexpectedly violent and weird vibe of a Coen brothers film when the two Russian assassins hook up with a bunch of hippies and fall victim to some LSD-laced vodka.

DeCampi employs a number of neat writing tricks here, including a clever way of showing how someone trying to understand another language may miss every few words as they’re trying to keep up with a conversation. She also manages to integrate a ‘70s era soundtrack into the story, along with a recommended playlist at the end and some notes about the musical choices.

8. SUGAR & SPIKE VOL. 1

By Keith Giffen, Bilquis Evely, and Ivan Plascencia
DC Comics

Sugar Plumm and Spike Wilson are private investigators for superheroes. When someone like Alfred the butler needs someone to track down a stash of embarrassing zebra and rainbow-colored Batsuits that has been stolen or Green Lantern needs to investigate whether an alien flower on display in a museum is the same sentient being he used to wear on his lapel for a time back in the ‘80s, they turn to Sugar and Spike for help. This series, which ran in the recent Legends of Tomorrow anthology and is now collected on its own in a trade paperback edition, is representative of DC Comics’s new, brighter outlook on its properties; one that embraces the silliness of the past and lets their superheroes be superheroes (Sugar and Spike themselves are meant to be grown-up versions of a couple of toddler characters that ran in a strip of the same name back in the 1950s). It’s a clever yet ridiculous concept that is played for laughs and works well, thanks to the physical comedy and character acting by artist Bilquis Evely. Amidst all the broad comedy, there are also subtle hints at a complicated but affectionate relationship between the two protagonists that leaves you wanting to know more.

9. SUNNY VOL. 6

By Taiyo Matsumoto
Viz Media

The final volume of Taiyo Matsumoto’s award-winning manga series reaches English-speaking audiences this month (it came out in Japan last year). The poignant, slice-of-life series about a group of foster children who only find solace and escape when sitting in an abandoned yellow car they’ve named “Sunny” is considered a masterwork by many. This series has been nominated for numerous awards and won the Shogakukan Manga Award this year, one of Japan’s highest honors for manga.

10. THE PLUNGE

By Emi Gennis
Kilgore Books & Comics

In 1901, Annie Edson Taylor was the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. And she did it at the age of 63. Emi Gennis tells her story in this beautiful new black-and-white comic, released through brand-new publisher Kilgore Books & Comics. Taylor’s life story is both an uplifting example of can-do feminism and an anti-climactic tragedy, as she would eventually die poor and alone, gaining nothing from her death-defying feat. Gennis’s crisply inked cartooning style has an appropriately old-timey feel and her depiction of the horrific ride down the falls is captivating and surreal.

11. LEGEND

By Samuel Sattin and Chris Koehler
Z2 Comics

After humans have been wiped out by a biological terror attack, dogs and cats are left to rebuild the world in their absence. But there is something else out there—a mysterious creature called the Endark—that has killed Ransom, the leader of the dogs, requiring an English Pointer named Legend to step up and take his place. Chris Koehler is an accomplished editorial illustrator who has worked for publications such as The Atlantic and Variety. His style exhibits a high level of photorealism and a designer’s sense of minimal color. He manages to translate that style to his first piece of sequential comics without losing any of his technical polish. This collaboration with novelist Samuel Sattin, also a comics newbie, should please most domestic animal adventure fans of stories like The Incredible Journey or We3.

12. Off Season

By James Sturm
Slate.com

Acclaimed cartoonist and director of the Center for Cartoon Studies James Sturm (The Golem’s Mighty Swing) has been creating a webcomic for Slate that began in September and will continue through the end of the year. It is about 2016, with a focus on the election and now on its aftermath. Set in New England, it follows a down-on-his-luck divorced dad who was a Bernie Sanders supporter raising a daughter who is excited about the prospect of electing the first female president. Sturm draws everyone—including real-life players like Donald Trump—as anthropomorphic dogs, trudging through the same reality we’re all currently living in real time.

Unless you’re claustrophobic, stepping into an elevator is no big deal; many of us do it several times a day. But prior to 1854, people weren’t exactly lining up to use them, no matter how convenient they were—cables snapped frequently enough that the public viewed them as death traps.

Then, along came mechanic Elisha Otis and his miracle invention, the safety elevator. Thanks to his clever engineering, the cable could snap and the elevator would still hold. Make: has a great demo of how it worked:

However, elevators carried such a stigma that no one was willing to give Otis’s safety elevator a chance. Sales were practically nonexistent. To show the public that his invention worked, Otis orchestrated a stunt that would change the way we build, work, and live.

In 1854, he constructed a 50-foot elevator at the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York, getting P.T. Barnum himself to hype up the crowd. Otis made a show of riding the elevator all the way to the top, then severing the cable that tethered the elevator car to the frame. Shocked onlookers prepared for the inventor to plummet to a particularly ugly death—but when the rope snapped, the elevator dropped only a few inches. “All safe,” he assured the crowd.

Just to get his point across, Otis repeated his demonstration over and over for months, proving to thousands of onlookers that a safe elevator had finally arrived. Today, there are approximately 2.5 million Otis elevators in operation [PDF].

So, the next time you step into an elevator, imagine the cable being cleaved in two—and then breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that if that happened you would be fine.

Robots have already proved their utility in space, cruising landscapes no human could—or should—explore on foot. But they may come in handy in dangerous locations here on Earth, too. Students and staff at Duke University’s School of Engineering and School of Nursing have collaborated on a two-armed robot they’ve dubbed the Tele-Robotic Intelligent Nursing Assistant (TRINA, for short). The robot was designed to assist nurses in high-risk healthcare situations, according to The Chronicle, the university’s student newspaper.

The robot nursing assistant, which features a tablet that shows the face of its human operator, was created in response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014. After some healthcare workers were infected with the virus while trying to treat patients, the National Science Foundation put out a call to engineers and scientists to come up with a solution.

At the moment, TRINA is in the early stages of development and can only perform basic tasks, like picking up a glass of water and moving trays of food from one location to another. A team is now working with TRINA in a simulated hospital at the School of Nursing, exploring its capabilities as well as figuring out what tasks subsequent versions of the bot need to learn, from passing out meds to patients to inserting IVs.

TRINA was not built to replace human nurses, but rather to assist and act as a surrogate body. The robot is remote-operated, requiring a human to drive it and make it work. In the future, Duke scientists and engineers hope to use the “robo-nurse” in contexts outside healthcare services, like the cleanup of toxic spills.

For now, TRINA is getting ready for clinical trials at the Duke Clinical Research Unit. “We need to establish a better interface with the human and the robot to make them work together and be more comfortable,” Duke engineering student Jianqiao Li explained to The News & Observer.

[h/t The Duke Chronicle]

Banner and header image courtesy of iStock

Shopping on Black Friday—or, really, any time during the holiday season—is a good news/bad news kind of endeavor. The good news? The deals are killer! The bad news? So are the lines. If you find yourself standing behind 200 other people who braved the crowds and sacrificed sleep in order to hit the stores early today, here’s one way to pass the time: check out these fascinating facts about shopping through the ages.

1. The oldest customer service complaint was written on a clay cuneiform tablet in Mesopotamia 4000 years ago. (In it, a customer named Nanni complains that he was sold inferior copper ingots.)

2. Before battles, some Roman gladiators read product endorsements. The makers of the film Gladiator planned to show this, but they nixed the idea out of fear that audiences wouldn’t believe it.

3. Like casinos, shopping malls are intentionally designed to make people lose track of time, removing clocks and windows to prevent views of the outside world. This kind of “scripted disorientation” has a name: It’s called the Gruen Transfer.

4. According to a study in Social Influence, people who shopped at or stood near luxury stores were less likely to help people in need.

5. A shopper who first purchases something on his or her shopping list is more likely to buy unrelated items later as a kind of reward.

6. On the Pacific island of Vanuatu, some villages still use pigs and seashells as currency. In fact, the indigenous bank there uses a unit of currency called the Livatu. Its value is equivalent to a boar’s tusk. 

7. Sears used to sell build-your-own homes in its mail order catalogs.

8. The first shopping catalog appeared way back in the 1400s, when an Italian publisher named Aldus Manutius compiled a handprinted catalog of the books that he produced for sale and passed it out at town fairs.

9. The first product ever sold by mail order? Welsh flannel.

10. The first shopping cart was a folding chair with a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs.

11. In the late 1800s in Corinne, Utah, you could buy legal divorce papers from a vending machine for $2.50.

12. Some of the oldest known writing in the world includes a 5000-year-old receipt inscribed on a clay tablet. (It was for clothing that was sent by boat from Ancient Mesopotamia to Dilmun, or current day Bahrain.)

13. Beginning in 112 CE, Emperor Trajan began construction on the largest of Rome’s imperial forums, which housed a variety of shops and services and two libraries. Today, Trajan’s Market is regarded as the oldest shopping mall in the world.

14. The Chinese invented paper money. For a time, there was a warning written right on the currency that all counterfeiters would be decapitated.

15. Halle Berry was named after Cleveland, Ohio’s Halle Building, which was home to the Halle Brothers department store.

16. At Boston University, students can sign up for a class on the history of shopping. (Technically, it’s called “The Modern American Consumer: the Commodification of Boys and Girls.”)

17. Barbra Streisand had a mini-mall installed in her basement. “Instead of just storing my things in the basement, I can make a street of shops and display them,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. (There are photos of it here.)

18. Shopping online is not necessarily greener. A recent study at the University of Delaware showed that “home shopping has a greater impact on the transportation sector than the public might suspect.”

19. Don’t want to waste too much money shopping? Go to the mall in high heels. A 2013 Brigham Young University study discovered that shoppers in high heels made more balanced buying decisions while balancing in pumps.

20. Cyber Monday is not the biggest day for online shopping. The title belongs to November 11, or Singles Day, a holiday in China that encourages singles to send themselves gifts. According to CNN, this year’s event broke all previous records with $17.8 billion in sales.

A heaping handful of these facts came from John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin’s delightful book, 1,234 Quite Interesting Facts to Leave You Speechless.

 
Anywhere from 60 to 100 tons of material falls to Earth every day. Most of it is in the form of dust and grain-sized particles and is harmless, but it’s a reminder that a lot of stuff is out there. The weathering on the International Space Station provides startling evidence of that.

So what do we do if a not-so-harmless object is hurtling towards us?

Although a doomsday asteroid is a frightening prospect, don’t worry—NASA has a plan. The agency actively monitors space for dangerous objects and has conducted research into the best way to repel or destroy a space invader. Today, it is actively developing missions to do just that, and even has a department to deal with the problem: the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. But just how fast could the agency deal with an actual catastrophe? Here’s an inside look into NASA’s emergency planning system.

FIRST WE FIND IT.

NASA has several ongoing projects to survey the solar system for new celestial objects. In 2009, the agency launched an infrared telescope called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Its mission, run by NASA’s astrophysics division, was to create an infrared map of the entire sky. After the completion of its primary mission, NASA’s planetary science directorate asked to extend the life of the spacecraft, re-purposing it as an asteroid hunter in 2013. NEOWISE was born. Over the course of its life, what the spacecraft has found is terrifying―hundreds of new near-Earth objects, and scores of potentially hazardous ones. In other words, the solar system is a lot scarier than we thought. Here on Earth, there are several observatories that work together with a goal of discovering, tracking, and characterizing this population of renegade asteroids and comets.

A small body called TB145―the “Great Pumpkin asteroid“―exemplifies how the discovery of a potentially hazardous object works in practice. On October 10, 2015, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PAN-STARRS) in Hawaii spotted an object approximately 600 meters across that was speeding perilously toward Earth. The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia imaged it, and the Goldstone Deep Space Network telescope also took radar images. The Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii provided spectrometry. In a very short amount of time, scientists knew a lot about this scary new cosmic neighbor. The object was soon identified as the dead nucleus of a comet, its volatiles having been burned away. Moreover, scientists identified boulders several meters in size sitting on the object’s surface. Those boulders matter because they can help steer the object away from Earth. We weren’t in danger from it; its trajectory was well understood, and even at its closest pass, it was 300,000 miles away from the Earth.

THEN WE TRY TO MOVE IT.

 
Two of the rapidly maturing projects of the still very nascent asteroid deflection program are the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment and the Asteroid Redirect Mission. These programs use two different techniques to attempt to change the orbit of space objects, kinetic deflection, and enhanced gravity tractoring.

The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency. It recently completed its concept study phase and has moved into design. The goal is to build a rendezvous spacecraft called the Asteroid Impact Monitor (AIM) that would fly to an asteroid called Didymos, which is easily reached from Earth but does not cross our orbital path. (In other words, if something goes terribly wrong with this experiment, we don’t risk creating the potentially hazardous object we want to deflect.) Didymos is about a half-mile in diameter, and even has its own small moon, informally called Didymoon. Then NASA will launch a spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). DART is a “kinetic impactor”: It will plow into Didymoon and demonstrate how much energy can be imparted, and how much it changes the moon’s orbital period. The hope is to test the effectiveness of a technique called “kinetic deflection,” which would enable scientists to redirect an asteroid were it on an impact trajectory with Earth (provided they discovered the asteroid quickly enough).

Another such project in development is the Asteroid Redirect Mission, run by NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations directorate. That mission is an element of NASA’s “journey to Mars,” and will further the development of solar electric propulsion, a technology designed to push large masses around the inner solar system—things like Mars habitat modules and cargo and, as a bonus, asteroids.

 
In fact, the near-Earth object observation program of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office helped identify places to test out the Asteroid Redirect Mission’s capabilities. When it launches, a robotic spacecraft will fly to asteroid 2008 EV5, a potentially hazardous object close to Earth that has been tentatively selected as the mission’s target. The spacecraft will approach the asteroid’s surface and survey it for boulders. Once scientists identify a suitable boulder, the robot will touch down on the surface using long landing legs, and then deploy grappling arms to grab hold of the boulder. With the boulder firmly in hand, the spacecraft will lift off from the asteroid surface.

Before flying back to Earth’s orbit with the asteroid (for astronauts to study safely once it’s in a new, safe, lunar orbit), the spacecraft will first perform an “enhanced gravity tractor” maneuver—another kind of asteroid redirection. By flying near one side of the asteroid, the mass of the spacecraft and the tens-of-tons boulder will use gravity to gently and gradually alter the trajectory of the asteroid.

AND IF THAT DOESN’T WORK, WE BLOW IT UP.

In a pinch, there’s the nuclear option [PDF]. If scientists discover an asteroid on an impact course with Earth and find that there’s no time to build a spacecraft, study the object, and adjust its course with “slow push deflection/migration” techniques such as the gravity tractor, they can crack their knuckles and resort to “impulsive migration” techniques. The beauty of using a nuclear device on an asteroid is that you don’t need to know much about the asteroid in advance. In a time-sensitive situation, this is your go-to option, and there are four ways of deploying it.

A standoff nuclear detonation involves a flyby of a hazardous object and using a proximity sensor to detonate a nuclear device. The explosion would push the asteroid off course. This technique is orders of magnitude less effective than plowing the nuke into the asteroid and pressing the red button, but it has the advantage of not fragmenting the asteroid. Fragments are bad. Remember the meteorite explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia?
 

 
That rock was a dinky 20 meters in diameter. If we created a sustained bombardment of such asteroid fragments, we would be in for a pretty bad time.

The standoff technique also allows for a progressive adjustment of an asteroid’s course. We wouldn’t be limited to launching a single nuke; we would launch several. (It’s not like we’re running low on nuclear weapons.) Rather than correct the asteroid’s course in a single dramatic blast, we could more precisely adjust its course with a series of detonations.

Other nuclear use tactics are surface, subsurface, and delayed. A nuclear surface is like dropping a nuke on the asteroid. When it touches the asteroid’s surface, it detonates. Subsurface is like the DART half of the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment mission―the impactor drives a nuclear explosive deep into the asteroid, and it detonates. A delayed nuclear technique is just that: The nuke is landed on the asteroid and waits for scientists to detonate it when the time is right.

All of this can be done with conventional explosives as well, though it’s unlikely that conventional explosives would pack enough punch to make much of a difference.

Countries are not products, so it’s weird to think of having to “sell” them, but that’s exactly what tourist bureaus exist to do. In order to entice potential travelers, many countries have taken a cue from the corporate world and adopted their very own slogans.

FamilyBreakFinder decided to compile a list of all the known tourist slogans and throw them onto one big map. Each of the grey countries shown have an official slogan, while the purple countries do not. Some are vague (like the United States’s “All within your reach”), some are enthusiastic (like Brazil’s “Brasil—sensational!”), and some are confident (like Uganda’s “You’re welcome”).

If you know of a slogan that’s not on the map, let us know in the comments. 

[h/t Digg]

The Afternoon Map is a semi-regular feature in which we post maps and infographics. In the afternoon. Semi-regularly.

RABBIT HASH HAS A NEW MAYOR

In an election story that was buried under national news, the town of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, elected a new mayor after current mayor Lucy Lou declined to run again. The winner of the election was a pit bull named Brynneth Pawltrow, or Brynn for short. Retiring mayor Lucy Lou is also a dog, as were her two predecessors as mayor of Rabbit Hash. The mayoral election in the unincorporated community takes place by votes that cost a dollar, which goes to the Rabbit Hash Historical Society. Community members are encourage to vote early and often. The duties of the new mayor will include guarding the porch of the Rabbit Hash General Store and greeting visitors. Brynn indicates that she is up for the challenge.  

DRUNK DRIVER RUNS OVER HIMSELF

An unnamed man in Orlando, Florida, became a drunk driving victim when his own truck ran over him. He left a strip club despite bouncers trying to stop him. A soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, he fell out of his truck, and the back wheels of the vehicle ran over him. The truck continued until it hit a house. The man got up and ran away. However, authorities were able to find him because he left his driver’s license at the bar. He has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident. 

SQUIRREL TAKES REVENGE ON POLITICIAN

Howard Brookins Jr. is an alderman for Chicago’s 21st ward. He recently went on record as an opponent of the city’s squirrels. At a city meeting in October, he complained about the damage that squirrel do to garbage cans. According to the Chicago Sun Times:

“It’s a pet peeve. It does invoke some giggles. But we are spending too much money on replacing garbage carts because the squirrels continue to eat through ’em,” Brookins, former chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, declared.

His stance added extra irony to an incident last week when Brookins was riding his bike and a squirrel jumped into his front wheel. Brookins was thrown to the pavement. The alderman lost several teeth and will require plastic surgery for a facial fracture. He was able to joke about the squirrels taking revenge on him.

BRITAIN BANS BEAN AD OVER SAFETY CONCERNS

A television ad for Heinz beans has been pulled from the air in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for safety reasons. The ad shows people using bean cans as percussion instruments to tap out a song. The ASA ruled that viewers might try to recreate the ad in real life and cut themselves on the cans. Heinz is not going to fight the order because the ad campaign was already near its end.   

HOME INVADER WAS DRESSED AS A GORILLA

Group of women college students in Rexburg, Idaho, were frightened by a man who burst into their apartment last Friday. They couldn’t identify him because he was dressed in a gorilla suit. The gorilla came in through the front door, ran around the apartment, knocked over a few things, and left. Police said it was the second incident of its kind, as a gorilla did the same thing at another student apartment a week earlier, that one occupied by men. Rexburg Police Capt. Randy Lewis told East Idaho News:

“We don’t care if it’s a prank or if he was just monkeying around. We’re taking this serious and the perpetrator could be charged with unlawful entry.”

BIRD THROWS SNAKE AT CAR

Australia is often the butt of jokes about wildlife that is out to kill people. A dashcam video shows evidence that this might be true. A group of people were traveling on a highway near Wivenhoe Dam in Queensland when a bird of prey crossed their path and tossed a snake! The snake hit the windshield of the vehicle while the passengers screamed and then laughed. The driver did not lose control of the vehicle.

Millions of people watch Jeopardy! religiously—the game show has been popular since it first aired in 1964. But even if you never miss an episode, there’s a lot you might not know about what the winners do behind the scenes. We talked to a few previous Jeopardy! winners about betting on Daily Doubles, learning how to time the buzzer, and surviving awkward small talk with Alex Trebek.

1. THEY DON’T GET MUCH TIME TO REST.

Because of Jeopardy!’s tight filming schedule—five 30-minute shows are taped in a row, with minimal breaks—winners don’t have much time to bask in victory after conquering their competitors. “You only have about 10 minutes between winning your first show and appearing in your second,” explains Jelisa Castrodale, who won a 2010 episode. Castrodale tells mental_floss that winners are taken backstage to change clothes and get makeup reapplied, then they begin taping the next game.

“When I won, I honestly almost passed out from the shock of it (I had just beaten a seemingly unstoppable six-time champion) and was still so unsteady afterwards that I swear I almost had to ask a member of the production crew to double-check the spelling of my name for me when I wrote it down again,” Castrodale says.

2. SOME OF THEM SPEND YEARS PREPARING FOR THE SHOW.

Some contestants spend years studying before they even try to qualify. After passing an online test, aspiring contestants are invited to an in-person audition. If they do well, they may be invited to appear on the show. In the interim, some winners prepare by watching Jeopardy! each night and making flashcards to memorize facts about everything from U.S. presidents and state capitals to ancient Greek gods and Shakespeare’s plays. Others study J-Archive, a fan-created database of prior clues, answers, and contestants.

3. IT’S ALL ABOUT TIMING THE BUZZER.

Even if a contestant knows the answer to every question, that knowledge won’t do them any good unless they press their buzzer at precisely the right time. “So much of the game comes down to buzzer speed and skill. I think that’s hard to appreciate unless you’re actually on the show,” David Walter, the winner of Jeopardy!’s 2007 Teen Tournament, explains. Contestants must buzz in as soon as Trebek finishes the question, when lights flash on the side of the game board. “Buzz in too early, and you’re locked out of ringing in again for a crucial split-second. Buzz in too late … and, well, you’re too late,” Walter says. Because timing the buzzer is a crucial part of winning the game, prior winners have written in-depth articles offering advice on how to master it with proper thumb placement and hand position.

4. IF YOU’RE ON A WINNING STREAK, IT HELPS TO BE AN INTERESTING PERSON.

Whether you love or hate the show’s small talk segment, in which Trebek spends a few seconds chatting with each contestant, Jeopardy! winners need to have a new, interesting anecdote to share for each game they play. “Coming up with ideas for that portion of the show is probably the hardest thing about being on the show,” Julia Collins, who won 20 shows in 2014, revealed in a Reddit Q & A. One month before taping, coordinators for the show send potential questions to contestants to determine interesting facts about them. On show day, Trebek chooses which fact to ask them about for the segment, which airs after each episode’s first commercial break.

5. THEY’RE COMFORTABLE WITH BETTING.

Whether they bet all their money on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy! or are more cautious, winners need to be okay with wagering large sums of cash. Because making smart bets can mean the difference between winning and losing, some contestants approach the game with a math script, knowing how they’ll bet no matter what happens in the game. “Because I had this scripted play, I wasn’t making the big decisions, I was just doing the math. I knew what the play was supposed to be … Other people were still making the decision. I think a lot of times, it made people think I was more confident in the category than I was,” Jeopardy! champion Arthur Chu told mental_floss in 2014.

6. THEY REHEARSE IN REALISTIC CONDITIONS.

Walter attributes his win to practicing with a mock buzzer for a few months before the taping: “I would stand up in front of the TV with a pen in my hand to simulate the buzzer. That got me used to the rhythms and speed of Trebek’s speaking voice, and made me less nervous around the buzzer during my actual tapings.” Other winners have practiced by shining a bright light in their faces (to simulate TV studio lights) and playing along with a group of friends watching, to mimic the added pressure that an audience brings.

7. THEY DON’T ACT LIKE TYPICAL GAME SHOW WINNERS.

Contestants on game shows such as The Price Is Right and Wheel of Fortune are demonstrative: they often jump, shout, and clap when they win. “The contestant coordinators at Jeopardy! want enthusiasm, but they know they’re hand-picking the nation’s smartest academics, tech geeks, and librarians … generally introverts, in other words. So they lower their expectations and just ask winners for big smiles,” Jeopardy! superstar Ken Jennings (of the mental_floss Kennections quiz) explains.

But some contestants struggle to find the right balance between showing too much emotion and not showing enough. After Josh Hager won an episode in 2014, the show’s producers came over to him once the episode had wrapped and told him not to be afraid to show his winning smile. “Apparently my endeavor to stay composed was too successful and they wanted just a little more emotion,” Hager says.

8. SOMETIMES THERE IS NO WINNER.

Although one of the three contestants in each episode almost always wins, several episodes have ended with no winner. Most recently, in January 2016, all three contestants answered incorrectly in the final round, losing all the money they had earned during the first two rounds. Because there was no winner, the next episode—with no returning champion—introduced three new players.

9. THEY HAVE TO KEEP QUIET UNTIL THEIR EPISODE AIRS.

Most episodes don’t air until several months after they’re taped. This lag time means that winners need to stay quiet about how they performed, and it can force repeat winners to habitually lie to their coworkers, family, and friends. In 2004, Jennings taped 48 shows before his first episode aired, so he had to keep his commute (every few weeks) from his home in Utah to Los Angeles a secret. “My boss told my co-workers a series of increasingly implausible lies about my whereabouts every other Tuesday and Wednesday. You think computer programmers are all geniuses? No one ever caught on,” Jennings writes on his website.

10. THEY DON’T GET PAID FOR A WHILE.

After patiently waiting for their first episode to air, winners must also wait months after their show’s air date for their prize money. And yes, they have to pay taxes on their winnings. Hager reveals to mental_floss that he got paid about six months after his episode aired. And although he won $27,100, he netted approximately $20,000 after federal tax, California tax (where the show is taped), and North Carolina tax (where he lives).

11. SOME OF THEM CAN BUY A HOUSE WITH THEIR PRIZE MONEY.

Big winners can earn tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, which may allow them to pay off student loans, put a down payment on a house, or travel abroad. Even winners of more modest amounts can benefit from the extra cash, putting it toward a family vacation or college fund for kids. Hager, for example, used his prize money to pay off almost all of his student loans, and he and his wife moved out of their studio apartment into a spacious house. “Jeopardy! really did change my life and I can’t be more grateful,” he says.

12. FEEDBACK FROM JEOPARDY! FANS CAN BE MIXED.

Thanks to social media, winners face public scrutiny over everything from their appearance to the questions they answer incorrectly. Many internet commenters criticized recent winner Buzzy Cohen for his seemingly smug attitude and flippant responses in Final Jeopardy!, while others liked his sense of humor. Although some winners face a stream of harsh words on Twitter, they may also receive praise. “Lots of people on the internet compared me to Fred Armisen, which I take as a compliment,” Sam Deutsch, the winner of Jeopardy!’s 2016 College Championship, tells mental_floss.

13. WINNING THE SHOW PROVIDES LIFELONG PERKS.

Some winners include their Jeopardy! win on their resumes and LinkedIn profiles, hoping it will make them stand out to potential bosses and colleagues. After winning the show 74 times in a row, Jennings published a series of books, read a Top Ten list for David Letterman, and appeared on Sesame Street. “But the most gratifying thing lately has probably been the letters I get from kids … They all seem so smart! I’m doing my part for the nerd-ification of America’s youth,” he says.

14. WATCHING THE SHOW MAY STRESS THEM OUT.

Chu says that while he was studying for the show, his life centered on watching and reading about Jeopardy! to the detriment of his other activities. But after winning, he stopped watching the show to give himself a mental break. And Jennings admits that winning so many episodes has changed his reaction to seeing it on TV. “I find that I have a hard time sitting on my couch and lazily shouting out answers at Trebek, like I used to. Everything about the show—the music, the graphics, the sound effects—causes some fight-or-flight adrenaline spike in my blood and I become hyper-aware of every detail of the show. Maybe I have post-traumatic stress disorder,” he says.

15. THEY CAN’T ESCAPE THE CATCHY THEME SONG.

According to Terry O’Shea, who won first place on the show’s 2014 College Championship, winners can’t escape the show’s instantly recognizable theme song. “When you go on Jeopardy!, people WILL taunt you with the theme song. It’s an unavoidable fact of life. If you do well enough, this will persist for several years afterward,” O’Shea explains. After appearing on the show, other winners face unrealistically high expectations about possessing encyclopedic knowledge. “I always watch [the show] with my friends, and they love teasing me when they know something I don’t,” Deutsch admits.