title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" essentially reprints "Volume 1" of the Dark Horse era "Starstruck: The Expanding Universe": specifically, the original serials that were collected as the "Marvel Graphic Novel", plus the first issue of Epic Comics, and the 100 pages of new story and art that Lee and Kaluta laced through them in 1990. Additionally the art was newly increased by 20% on each page by Kaluta in 2009, and new color was painted by Lee Moyer. The volume ends with "To Be Continued", and various reproductions of Harry Palmer indicate that "Volume 2" will focus on the second and third Epic Comics issues with new, expanded story and art. "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" was designed by Elaine Lee and Lee Moyer.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: IDW published a softcover version of the "Starstruck Deluxe Edition", starting on August 22, 2012 (). The new edition was slightly smaller (7.25" x 11"), with the same contents as the "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" and new cover art by Kaluta.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In June 2014, IDW published "Starstruck Treasury Edition". This reprinted the original Marvel Comics graphic novel collection of 1984 in a 72-page softcover, now in a larger (9.25" x 14.25") format.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Starstruck" stories reference diverse elements of pop culture, science fiction, and international art. Michael Kaluta drew on his varied artistic influences to directly homage or indirectly parallel these inspirations, including Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Golden Age illustrators, Pulp magazine covers, EC Comics, Métal Hurlant, and Anime.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Kaluta references classic fine art and illustrative design often in his work: "My drawing 'style' came from my attempts to draw like all the artists I was impressed with. Although some of them were certainly Comic Book artists, many more were illustrators and designers from the turn of the 19th Century". A crucial event in the finale of the Epic issue #6 features an island that tributes the painting, "Isle Of The Dead" (Basil version, 1880) by symbolist Arnold Bocklin. The use of circle border frames in compositions, serpentine forms in architecture and fabric, and elegant pantomime in characters like Queen Glorianna continue the Art Nouveau poster work of Alphonse Mucha and paintings of Gustav Klimt. His grand panoramas of mountains are in the tradition of Maxfield Parrish. The panoplies of intricate columned palaces recall Art Nouveau cartoonist Winsor McCay's Little Nemo. The fluid body language and theatrical framing of characters is in the spirit of comics innovator Will Eisner: Kaluta specified: "Anybody who doesn't think I've studied this Will Eisner fellow just hasn't looked at my work. He's the man".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The technology he draws pays visual nods to many retro styles of science fiction design, as well as contemporaneous styles. On the classic side, the rockets and pistols of Dick Calkins' "Buck Rogers" comic strip art and from "Flash Gordan" serials; and the spaceship interiors of EC Comics artists like Wally Wood and Roy Krenkel: Kaluta wrote of his mentor: "Seeing what Roy Krenkel accomplished with line, shape and negative space stirred my imagination and set my nascent abilities onto a highway into my future as an artist". On the modern end, the curved plastic modularity of 1960s Italian futuristic furniture design (such as by designer Joe Columbo); the rundown quality of it in films like "Star Wars" and "Alien"; and the linework of Moebius, such as the arid and surrealistic landscapes in his series "Arzach" and "The Airtight Garage", as well as in spacesuit designs like Brucilla The Muscle's pilot suit. Kaluta has a professed admiration for Manga and Anime stalwarts like Katsuhiro Otomo ("Akira") and Masamune Shirow ("Ghost In the Shell"); many of those style hallmarks show in his design for the Samarai-esque droid, Veep 7. Kaluta told an Italian interviewer: "I like Otomo's style, and that of Hayao Miyazaki. I'm a big fan of the work by Shirow and am always looking at Adamo's drawings and paintings".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Starstruck" is lauded critically as a landmark advance in comics storytelling methods, recognized in retrospect for using innovations years ahead of "Watchmen", which is commonly praised for them. Like its parallel descendants "Watchmen" and "From Hell", the series is a large mosaic of seemingly random but steadily interlocking people and events.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The series started in 1982 by eschewing the then standard superhero formula of one male character in self-contained stories, instead using an ensemble of mainly female characters in multiple intwined story threads. The original first 73 pages of serial stories covered a span of nearly three decades, on different planets, with a wide and seemingly unconnected cast, which ultimately led to everyone coming to one space station at the same time. Lee wrote in 1997: "There is no reason why a story written for a comic shouldn't be every bit as involving as the plot of a novel. It's a wonderful form, and it can be stretched as far as creators and publishers are willing to go with it". In one sense, the series was non-linear by the sheer span of its subjects, the episodic glimpses of them in different times and places, their flashback sequences, the element of perceived randomness altering their paths, and the uncertainty of their connectedness: an uncommon narrative strategy that now draws comparisons to critically successful TV shows like "Lost". In another sense, the series is a very particularly linear story - going so far as to detail the births and maturing of pivotal characters - which is too large to be seen all at once: a novelistic narrative now seen similarly in critically praised TV shows like "The Wire". The writer said in 2009: "When we were first published, people were used to comics with linear stories about a main character. But now, with an audience used to shows like "Heroes" and "Lost", with large casts and non-linear storylines, we're hoping that "Starstruck" will find an even larger readership".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Starstruck" used supplement texts as a dramatic expansion of the story. The Glossary, written by one fictional historian, went past defining references in the dialogue to sketching out the past, present, and future of the characters and their universe. Writer Alan Moore would do something similar afterward, more simply in "Watchmen "(1985) and much more extensively in his "League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen "(1999). "Starstruck" can be considered one of comics' premiere hypertext fictions, in the sense of using supplementary texts, adjunct stories, and ancillary art to expand, deepen, and even alter the narrative experience. Comics Journal praised this innovation in 1986: "The (Space) Brigade's origin in the Graphic Novel's glossary section, is hilarious; in general, the "Starstruck" glossaries provide as much mirth as the series itself". The Comics Journal reiterated this supportive praise in 2011: ""Starstruck"'s reputation as a confusing book unfairly implies that it is a confused book, which it emphatically is not. History, culture, family relationships, religions, vernacular speech, and all manner of written texts from this fantastic world accumulate and intersect with perfect consistency". Also praising the innovation, critic W. Andrew Shepard wrote in 2011: "These sub-texts were more than winking references; they foreshadowed major events in the main narrative and, in keeping with the theme of unreliable narrators, called attention to the ways people construct histories".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The series is full of unreliable narrators who embroider the facts to suit their agenda, have their facts wrong, see only their part in events, or who miss out completely on what was important: i.e., another fictional historian is clearly fuzzy on facts that the reader has witnessed differently, though he admits it. Kaluta said they "are the people we have living today, just regular people that have a way of kidding themselves about as much as they kid other people, sometimes maliciously, sometimes unknowingly". Later Lee expanded this thought: "That's something we tried to do throughout "Starstruck". A character like Brucilla may exaggerate, others will outright lie and still others may be misinformed. Like life. When you're looking through the eyes of any one character, you'll only get a fraction of the picture". Much of the humor in "Starstruck"'s dialogue lies in the contradictions of their perceptions and actions, as they improvise their way through erratic situations; this has drawn comparisons to director Robert Altman, who favored loose scripts where character interaction was brought out more naturally by improvisation and the overlap of spontaneous dialogue. Critic David Allan Jones wrote of the intricacies of the "Starstruck" discourse: "The (Robert) Altman-esque dialogue style is also a joy to parse out- as confusing and disorienting as it sometimes can be, it's always witty and clever". The 1984 graphic novel was dedicated to Robert Altman and author Thomas Pynchon, to which Lee explained to an interviewer: "If regular comics are like a Steven Spielberg movie, maybe this one is more like a Robert Altman movie". She stated her admiration of Pynchon's complex allusive style by saying: "It is dense, it is packed with images. When you're reading Pynchon all sorts of doors open up in your brain".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The series operated on multiple levels, many of which came clear only through rereading, and with some outstanding motifs that have yet to be explained. A reading of the serials and the first six issues may give an overview, with the extras like the Glossary or the play script redefining new additional perspectives, while some deeper levels may only come into focus when the series is ultimately finished: e.g., Queen Glorianna's hand symbols, her ultimate plan, and how the main characters fit into the eventual Great Change she intends. In this sense, "Starstruck" is a series that is constantly redefining itself - and the reader's perception of it - as it continues. Lee advised in 1984: "If you want to know everything that is going on, you have to look at the things in the background as well as the figures in the foreground. And just let it roll around in your mind".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Dialogue and sound effects are often used deliberately like a physical element: i.e., two androids converse in four different but simultaneous streams that overwhelm the physical space of the other characters. Elaine Lee told a Suicide Girls interview: "We did include one scene in the graphic novel where Brucilla's dialogue balloons begin to crowd Galatia off the page, in order to show that the character was a loudmouth". Award-winning letterer Todd Klein, who was starting his career when he lettered the first serials, remembers: "They asked a lot from a newby letterer, and I tried hard to deliver. It was the first time I was called on to letter in a wide variety of styles, and it was good practice for (later) books like "Sandman"". During their work for Epic Comics, Klein recalls: "There was a memorable lunch with editor Archie Goodwin and Elaine where she and I went on and on about the minutiae of the lettering while Archie just nodded, looking a bit stunned that there could be so much to say about it".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The panel layouts suggest a widescreen film in their arrangement: from the first page onward, a running layout motif of stacked page-wide rectangular panels suggests a cinematic vista, in contrast to the style of tight, multiple panel grids in average comics more similar to television's ratio and rapid editing. By lessening use of the constrictive grid, much of the series simulates the feel of being wide open and watched from a wide view lens. This complements the story's long view perspective while separating itself from other comics with a unique visual narrative style. Kaluta took care to give perspective panoramas of the "Starstruck" universe, but to fill them with functional details that ground its reality for the reader and stage its complexity: "[A]nyone can walk...around inside, go around the outside, around the back, and know that there's going to be something there".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Starstruck" is consistently lauded for its mostly female cast, the depth and range of the individual characters, and the upending of gender and sexual stereotypes through the series.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The genesis of this was practical: Elaine Lee formed her theater company as a way for women to create and perform better roles than the 1979 New York scene was offering them, and "Starstruck" extended this idea into the universe; she recounts: "The idea was to do something really wild, so that we could all show off and do parts we would normally never be cast for. I was five feet tall and weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet, but I wanted to be an amazon starship captain, so Galatia 9 was the part I came up with for myself". At the same time, Lee was reading a lot of feminist science fiction, which she initially found liberating, but had qualms with the two common themes: the rebel women versus the "'planet of chauvinist pigs' scenario...began to wear me down. If a fictional world presents you with all the same problems that greet you each day in the office, what fun is that?" Conversely, the stories focusing on a blissful all-female utopia left her unmoved: "My main problem with Utopian sci-fi is that nothing ever explodes, and the love scenes are really boring". With "Starstruck" she attempted to lift the discourse out of a dogma of revenge or exclusion into a broader spectrum where personality, skill, and fun drove the characters. In 1997 she wrote: "Science fiction is at its best when it offers us new ways to look at our problems. It is silliest when it offers too many (or too little) solutions. Then it is simply an allegory...or worse, propaganda". In 2011, a critical essay from "The New Inquiry" lauded this approach: "But Lee deliberately eschews the separatist narrative and isn't above mocking the knee-jerk misandry which often colored those stories. Instead, our heroine is forced out into the universe at large, where she is confronted with the task of helping to build a society more congruent with her ideals".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: When "Starstruck" moved into the sights of mainstream comics buyers during the Epic Comics run in 1985, the series had to contend with the attitudes of a predominantly young male market. Lee remembers: "We got quite a reaction to the fact that there were so many female characters in the story ("Is the writer a lesbian? Does she have a political agenda? Is the artist gay? Do they both hate men?"). We had to wonder why everyone was so concerned about our sexuality when no one was wondering what Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez meant by putting all those women in "Love and Rockets"". Lee and Kaluta were vocal advocates of "Love And Rockets", an indie comics success that also earned critical notice for the breadth of its female cast: Kaluta saw it as further evidence of the mature move to escape the gender role restrictions imposed on women in comics: ""Love And Rockets" is an incredibly adult comic strip. You can't fault it, because the characters are real". Kaluta dismissed gender categorizers by saying of the "Starstruck" characters: "They're people that don't pander to what you're expecting a female character in a science fiction play or comic book to be, they're just people. If you don't like them, they're not going to change for you".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Critic Robert Rodi, covering progressive Gay issues in comics for the "Comics Journal" in 1986, wrote: ""Starstruck" is an explosion of alternate sexuality and its phenomenal trappings. Characters are (overtly or not) homosexual, heterosexual, asexual, antisexual, omnisexual - you name it, it's there if you look for it". In multiple examples the series turns gender cliches inside out: Lee parodied the 'whore' role by empowering the former pleasure droid Erotica Ann; commented on the uselessly pliant 'madonna' role with the passive nuns of the Cloister Of The Goddess Uncaring; dealt with themes of sexuality that erased boundaries between genders, species, and machines; included ritualistic amazons who also like a good bacchanal; and featured a starship captain upfront who owned her sensuality and enjoyed it. The underlying themes in "Starstruck" regarding gender and sexuality are consistently sex-positive, anti-sexist, tolerant of sexual preference, anti-misogyny and anti-misandry, and emphasizing the individual person above any categories. In 2011, a "Comics Journal" reviewer wrote: "Lee and Kaluta deserve a special award for appropriating the entire comic book tradition of women as eye candy for heterosexual male readers and setting those bodies free, throwing the reader's desires and expectations for a loop".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In 2011, Lee said: "People thought we had some political agenda, because we had a lot of female characters. Now it's not unusual".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Fate plays an underlying factor in the story: characters who feel that destiny intends greatness for them (Verloona, Bajar, Kalif); those who feel they have been cheated out of a better station (Lucrezia Bajar, Brucilla The Muscle); those that intend to manipulate fate into their own control (Queen Glorianna, Rah El Rex); those that feel fate is meaningless and anything goes (Randall Factor); and those that feel personal focus will get them through random chaos (Galatia 9, the Galactic Girl Guides).


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The artist said: "You have to become your own law in a way. There are self-appointed protectors of humanity, some of whom are protecting it for themselves, and some of whom have the idea that there is a better way and will stop things that are against the peoples' interests".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: These include religion (a science fiction author who invents a front religion with converts who passively fund a scheme of power and control, and the March Baptists who ally with corrupt corporate dictators for power); gambling (the idle rich who will gamble everything on the mere chance of someone perhaps coming into the room); vanity (a villainess who may have sacrificed many young girls just to stay youthful, and salons where hours of one's lifespan are sold by the poor to rich patrons who want a longer life); militarism (half of Earth was disintegrated in an act of militaristic paranoia, and then covered up by a hologram, and jingoistic Space Brigades who feel the universe is only there for them to thrust their agenda and control onto); and the arts (conceptual art assassins who eliminate creators of really bad plays, and a conjoined trio of actors turning self-absorbed frilliness into high drama).


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Reviewer Richard Caldwell wrote: "The plot is fast-moving and puzzle-like, with strong elements of political intrigue and satire alike cavorting about the omniverse in a futuristic setting where multiple clans struggle for dominance over a mix of cultures as boggled by the theologies of the day as they are by the sensory overload of sensationalistic commercialism that passes for status quo".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Starstruck" initially began its creative life as a stage play spoofing time-worn tropes of science fiction. Kaluta recalled his reaction to Lee's script: "Oh God, I was amazed at how many genres she was actually poking fun at, without being a dyed-in-the-wool science fiction fan. She was poking fun at Andre Norton, she was poking fun at everybody, all the Doc Smith stuff, without ever having read Doc Smith".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Starstruck" laces its drama and intrigue with bouts of surrealistic farce, ludicrous slapstick, absurd non-sequiters, random weirdness, cross-communication, cultural parody, and one-liners.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The writer clarified: "Of course, it includes some social commentary - people often comment on the feminism - but it's all comedy. I want people to enjoy it. People accept new ideas and commentary more readily if they're funny". Lee points to the feuding Bajar twins, Kalif and Lucrezia, whose sibling jealousy gets out of hand due to their wealth and power: "In real life they probably would have just annoyed people in a bar; in comic books they blow people up". The writer saw absurdism as a philosophical antidote or survival perspective in the "Starstruck" universe, as well as in its creative process: "We get real serious about showing the humanity of our characters, and at the same time, we feel that life is silly, and something that seems horribly embarrassing and horribly important is really silly at the same time". Critic Robert Rodi wrote: "Lee has reinvented Camp as a new sensibility; it isn't Camp in that it violates all known laws of drama and internal logic for the sake of flamboyance or effect. Rather, she's taken the space opera form and, while respecting the limitations of physics as we know them, pushed the genre's more baroque aspects to their absolute limits".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The series takes gender-bending liberties with many iconic female and male roles of world history and popular culture. They include the Cowgirl (the Medea women on their space ranch); Amazons (Galatia 9 and the Omegazon tribe who christened her); bimbo/sex dolls (Erotica Ann and the 333 Annie pleasure droids, and the male droid, Handi Andy); valkyries (Brucilla The Muscle, the flying warrior whose uniform makes her resemble Brunhilda); the White Queen (Queen Glorianna, the tough revolutionary posing as a shining monarch) and the Black Queen (Verloona Ti, the devourer of little children); and hardboiled detectives (Harry Palmer, the tough pug with a wounded heart).


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In 1980, Michael Kaluta told "Future Life "magazine: ""Starstruck" is a big bundle of potential. It has the potential for being a film, a play, a big-budget thing; who knows what".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In various interviews Lee and Kaluta have each spoken of different plans through the 1990s to continue "Starstruck" on film or television, consistently emphasizing retention of copyright ownership and creative control. Kaluta said in 1993: "We own the characters, and we can do whatever we want with to do with them, but when you do what you want with them, the people you do it with will want to own them. Somebody will want to come in and fool with them".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In 1990 through 1993, Kaluta worked on a project adapting the concept into movie form, but this came to naught; Kaluta noted in his career biography: "For Limelight and Largo Entertainment: (1990 - 91): Character, setting, mood and toy prototypes for 'The Adventures of Brucilla the Muscle, "Galactic Girl Guide"/Guard', sometimes called 'Maddie McPhee and the "Galactic Girl Guides"' -- a movie spin-off of ("Starstruck")-- in development by Pet Fly Productions for Walt Disney Productions, October 1992".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In 2000, Kaluta told to a Spanish interviewer that he hoped his "Starstruck" comic book will make its way to TV or film.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Lee has spoken of negotiations for a TV series circa 2003, where a network bought the option to turn "Starstruck" into a live action show in the spirit of "Firefly" or "Farscape": "I wrote (and was paid for) pitch documents, several scripts and I outlined a season of episodes for them. But when it finally came down to the deal, they asked us to renegotiate our contract, giving them much more control of the property than made us comfortable. We bowed out".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: An audio reading of the original play took place at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, in part to help pay the medical bills of comics legend Gene Colan, the bills stemming from his bout with liver failure in 2007 and 2008, and partly as a warm-up to a subsequent recording, launching a new "Starstruck" radio series.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The reading took place on August 15, 2009, with Elaine Lee and Lee Moyer in attendance, along with other comic artists from around North California and original members of the 1983 "Starstruck" production.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The official recording of the play occurred in May 2010, produced by the AudioComics Company; it was recorded in Portland, Maine, with a full cast and sound effects, in collaboration with WMPG radio. The role of the villainous Verloona Ti was portrayed by Denise Poirier, known for being the voice of the animated Aeon Flux. The audioplay production was made available for sale as MP3 downloads from iTunes, Amazon MP3, Amazon MP3 UK, CD Baby, ZBS, Napster, Microsoft Zune, and the AudioComics Company in October the same year. A double-disc CD was also made available through CD Baby and ZBS.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: A second audioplay, from a new story by Elaine Lee called "Running Scared", was recorded in conjunction with I-CON, on April 16, 2011, with the plan of releasing it as a free download later that year. April 16 has been a recurring date for "Starstruck": the start of the 1980 play; the start of the 1983 play; and this recording. This recording returned Denise Poirier as Verloona, and marked the debut of Michael Kaluta playing a "Starstruck" character.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In the final issue of the IDW series, Elaine Lee alluded to other impending audioplays with "all-new episodes in which Galatia, Bru, and Annie fly missions for the U4F (United Federation of Female Freedom Fighters)". This reiterated a previous interview statement where she said: "We're thinking that the new audio pieces will happen, chronologically speaking, in that space of time between end of the comic series and the events of the play, when Galatia 9, Brucilla and the reprogrammed Erotica Ann are flying missions for the U4F".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Additionally, the idea was announced of doing "an all-ages series of short audio plays featuring the "Galactic Girl Guides"".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: In February 2012, an official "Starstruck" website was launched, designed and supervised by Elaine Lee and her son. The site announced it would post the entirety of the "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" graphic novel's pages across the span of its first year, in serialized posts three times weekly. The site also included the complete contents of the series glossary; quotes of acclaim from famous creators and journalist reviews; an historical overview of the series; and merchandise links.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Elaine Lee launched a Kickstarter campaign in April 2013 to raise funds to expand Harry Palmer's story within the Starstruck story. Lee and Kaluta established a goal of $44,000 to produce a 176-page graphic novel in black and white, and a stretch goal of $69,000 for full color. The graphic novel included reprints of the Epic Comics series with expanded content, but consists mainly of new story and extras.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The Kickstarter campaign raised $67,777, and although short of the stretch goal, Lee has committed to produce the book in full color.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The graphic novel Harry Palmer: Starstruck was estimated to be delivered by spring of 2015, but the project struggled with delays. In 2017 IDW published the new "Starstruck" story, first in a series of six issues (February - July 2017), later that year as a one-volume graphic novel.


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Writer Clive Barker has stated: "I was, and am, a huge fan of "Starstruck", which I think was one of the most brave and elegant experiments in comic book story-telling".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Writer Mike Carey, when asked to name his favorite comic of all time, responded ""Starstruck", by Lee and Kaluta". He was later asked to write the introduction to the "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" with his wife Lin Carey, known by her pen name as the Fantasy author, A.J. Lake (The Darkest Age series): "The truth is, there just never was another book out there that did what "Starstruck" did". They praised the progressive innovations of the series by stating: "So how cool is it that at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it still reads as being ahead of its time?"


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: "Publishers Weekly" opined in 2009 that "the cult classic comic "Starstruck" [was] well ahead of its time when initially released in 1985", pointing particularly to "a cast of strong female characters—a rarity in comics then and now".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: After the 1984 graphic novel was published, Kaluta remembers "a few letters, coming in saying: 'My, this is really too clever'. The writer and artist are being very, very clever, here, obviously clever, it's too convoluted to follow". The Epic Comics series won critical acclaim and a cult audience, but similar letters followed. Kaluta was proudest of one from an angry reader that took the creators to task for making him take longer than 15 minutes to read a comic. At the same time, the writer and artist realized they had a series that appealed to a growing segment in the mature market, but was being dismissed by the mainstream superhero audience. As a joke, Kaluta asked Epic to run an ad for Starstruck saying, "Readers of The World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Use But Your Brains!", an idea they enjoyed but passed on. Addressing their concern for the future of the series, Lee said: "People have called this a cult book. I hope it's more than that. I hope people will bother to read it and go, 'This is different. Let me give it a try', rather than 'This is different. Let me throw it on the other side of the room from my X-Men comics'". The Epic series was cancelled in 1986 after six issues, and in its wake within the same year, innovative series like "Watchmen", "The Dark Knight Returns", and "Maus" earned acclaim and success for the mature qualities and sophisticated innovations that "Starstruck" was initially resisted for. In the wake of the cancellation, "Comics Journal" critic Robert Rodi wrote: "That "Starstruck" should owe more to "Gravity's Rainbow" and "M*A*S*H*" than to the Galactus Trilogy means that many people who are exclusively comics-literate won't have the necessary aesthetic vocabulary to read it. But, whose fault is that, if not their own? And whose loss is that, if not their own?" In 1985, Kaluta had predicted: "But they might, years later, pick up (books like Love And Rockets)...and go, 'Damn it, why didn't I read these things back then?' Because they weren't ready for it, right? They weren't ready to be entertained in that sphere of their life". In retrospect, book distributor and art historian Bud Plant hailed the series as "an exotic, erotic, obtuse and wildly humorous space opera".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The recent 2009 IDW remastering of "Starstruck" has garnered critical acclaim that has bolstered its reputation as a timeless and essential work in the modern comics pantheon. Pop culture critic David Allan Jones wrote of the republished series that it would be a challenge to new readers who would "have to work a little to follow along, but believe me, it's worth it, especially if you enjoy experiencing the unique. A+". Comics reviewer Greg McElhatton wrote "...it's definitely one where a slow burn is going to pay off. "Starstruck" isn't quite like anything else out there, but I think that's part of the attraction". Joe McCullough of Comics Comics wrote: "In fact, I like literally everything about this cleverly revised, nipped & tucked edition, apportioning and expanding upon Lee's modular, time-skipping vignettes with text features crammed right between the 'main' story and Charles Vess-inked backup material..., creating a kind of call and response between different characters from different points in time, walking you carefully through Lee's collage of varied femininity in a hazardous future. World (universe!) building like you don't see so often..." Alex Dueben of the Suicide Girls site found the series' progressive story and art to be timeless: "Now "Starstruck" is a pretty nonlinear project, which I love, and I have to say that the structure and the feeling, the complexity, how it moves around, it really feels contemporary". Greg Burgas of Comic Book Resources also concurred with: "It's exciting reading something from 30 years ago and realizing how, even today, it feels ahead of its time".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The British Science Fiction Association's journal "Vector" listed "Starstruck" among six groundbreaking comics, and praised it for "...overall myth-building on a par with that of "Dune"..." Also, much of the praise given to works like "Lost" and "Watchmen" featuring "...non-linear graphic storytelling, use of supplement texts for story expansion, overlapping dialogue, unreliable storytelling..." employed these techniques that were pioneered by "Starstruck".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: Similar praise accompanied the release of the collected IDW remastered issues as the "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" hardback graphic novel in 2011. Comics media critic Paul Gravett called the collection "a wondrous, ebullient SF epic and it all comes together in this delectable package. Prepare to be transported!" John Hilgart of The Comics Journal considered it an essential classic, advocating that readers should "pick up this book, because not having read it is sort of like not having read Pogo, or listened to Trout Mask Replica, or seen a Hayao Miyazaki film". W. Andrew Shephard of The New Inquiry wrote of the collection: ""Starstruck" could be both silly and smart, was progressive but unpretentious, and clever but not so impressed with itself that it ever forgot to entertain. IDW's reprint of the series is a service to fans of science fiction, aficionados of comics as an art form, and anyone who loves a good story".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: After the "Starstruck Deluxe Edition" softcover was released in 2012, reviewer Richard Caldwell wrote: "You know how most folks peg the "Watchmen" as the greatest work of the sequential arts? Yea well, in comparison, this baby is far more progressive, in scope and in message, as it's a magnum opus science fictional tale full of sound and fury, signifying everything to end all magnum opus science fictional tales full of sound and fury, signifying everything".


title: Starstruck (comics)

text: The Starstruck world was adapted in 2022 in a season of "Dimension 20", CollegeHumor's TTRPG actual-play show. The show was notably created by and features Elaine Lee's son Brennan Lee Mulligan as its Dungeon Master.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The National Security Council (NSC) (IAST: "Rāṣṭrīya Surakṣā Pariṣad") of India is an executive government agency tasked with advising the Prime Minister's Office on matters of national security and strategic interest. It was established by the former Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee on 19 November 1998, with Brajesh Mishra as the first National Security Advisor. Prior to the formation of the NSC, these activities were overseen by the Principal Secretary to the preceding Prime Minister.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: Besides the National Security Advisor (NSA), Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the Deputy National Security Advisors, the Ministers of Defence, External Affairs, Home, Finance of the Government of India, and the Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog are members of the National Security Council. PM can chair the meeting of NSC (for eg - PM chaired the meeting of NSC Post Pulwama to discuss heightened tension with Pakistan). Other members may be invited to attend its monthly meetings, as and when it is required.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The NSC is the apex body of the three-tiered structure of the national security management system in India. The three tiers are the Strategic Policy Group, the National Security Advisory Board and a secretariat from the Joint Intelligence Committee.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The Strategic Policy Group is the first level of the three tier structure of the National Security Council. It forms the nucleus of the decision-making apparatus of the NSC. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval is the chairman of the group and it consists of the following members:


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The Strategic Policy Group undertakes the "Strategic Defence Review", a blueprint of short and long term security threats, as well as possible policy options on a priority basis.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The brainchild of the first National Security Advisor (NSA), Brajesh Mishra, a former member of Indian Foreign Service. The National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) consists of a group of eminent national security experts outside of the government. Members are usually senior retired officials, civilian as well as military, academics and distinguished members of civil society drawn from and having expertise in Internal and External Security, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Science & Technology and Economic Affairs.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The first NSAB, constituted in December 1998, headed by the late K. Subrahmanyam produced a draft Nuclear Doctrine for the country in 2001, a Strategic Defence Review in 2002 and a National Security Review in 2007.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The board meets at least once a month, and more frequently as required. It provides a long-term prognosis and analysis to the NSC and recommends solutions and address policy issues referred to it. Initially the Board was constituted for one year, but since 2004-06, the Board has been reconstituted for two years.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The tenure of the previous NSAB, headed by former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, ended in January 2015. It had 14 members.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The new board has been re-constituted in July 2018, with P. S. Raghavan, former Indian Ambassador to Russia (2014–16), as its head. It has a tenure of two years.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) of the Government of India analyses intelligence data from the Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing and the Directorates of Military, Naval and Air Intelligence and thus analyses both domestic and foreign intelligence. The JIC has its own Secretariat that works under the Cabinet Secretariat.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: National Cyber Security Strategy is formulated by the Office of National Cyber Security Coordinator at the National Security Council Secretariat. The National Security Council and National Information Board headed by National Security Adviser are at working under the cyber security surveillance helping in framing India’s cyber security policy. It aims to protect the cyber space including critical information infrastructure from attack, damage, misuse and economic espionage.


title: National Security Council (India)

text: In 2014 the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre under the National Technical Research Organisation mandated the protection of critical information infrastructure. In 2015, the Office of National Cyber Security Coordinator was created to advice the Prime Minister on strategic cyber security issues. In the case of nodal entity, India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in) is playing a crucial role under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology(MEITY).


title: National Security Council (India)

text: On 15 June 2021, the Government of India launched the Trusted Telecom Portal signalling the coming into effect of the National Security Directive on Telecommunication Sector (NSDTS). Consequently, with effect from 15 June 2021 the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) are mandatorily required to connect in their networks only those new devices which are designated as "Trusted Products" from "Trusted Sources".


title: Priyanka Nair

text: Priyanka Nair (born 30 June 1985) is an Indian model-turned-actress who predominantly works in Malayalam film industry. She made her debut in the Tamil film "Veyyil" in 2006. She gained critical acclaim for her roles in "Bhoomi Malayalam", "Vilapangalkappuram" and "Jalam".


title: Priyanka Nair

text: Priyanka completed her Higher Secondary School Certificate studies and studied Physics at the Mar Ivanios College, Trivandrum. During that time, she was also acting part-time in several Malayalam television series, including "Umakkuyil", "Megham" and "Akashadoothu". She considered acting in serials as "just time pass" and went on to add that she never intended to act in films, but rather wanted to be a lecturer.


title: Priyanka Nair

text: Priyanka married Tamil film director and actor Lawrence Ram on 23 May 2012 at Attukal Temple in Thiruvananthapuram. They have a son Mukund Ram, born on 18 May 2013. The couple filed for divorce in 2015.


title: Priyanka Nair

text: She made her feature film debut in the Vasanthabalan-directed Tamil drama film "Veyyil" (2006) that was produced by director Shankar, in which she starred along with Pasupathy. Her debut Malayalam film was "Kichamani MBA" (2007) that featured her in a supporting role. The following year she starred in T. V. Chandran's "Vilapangalkkappuram" along with Suhasini and Biju Menon; her performance earned her the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actress. Rediff named her the top Malayalam actress of 2009, citing that she "came up with a scintillating performance". She rose to popularity after appearing opposite Mohanlal in "Ividam Swargamanu". Priyanka loves riding her Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle.


title: Pie and mash

text: Pie and mash is a traditional working-class food, originating in the Docks of London. It typically consists of a minced beef pie, mashed potato and a parsley sauce known as liquor. Pie, mash and eel shops have been in London since the 19th century, and are still common in East and South London, and in many parts of Kent and Essex. The shops may also serve stewed or jellied eels.


title: Pie and mash

text: During the Victorian era, industrial air pollution tended to be worse in the east and southeast of London because of the prevailing westerly wind, with the result that the East End was settled more by the working classes, while the western part of the city was home to higher social classes.


title: Pie and mash

text: The savoury pie had long been a traditional food, and its small handsized form also made it a transportable meal, protected from dirt by its cold pastry crust, and filled with cheap minced meat, usually mutton.


title: Pie and mash

text: Jellied eels are often associated with pie and mash, as European eels cooked in gelatine also became a common worker's meal, since eels were one of the few forms of fish that could survive in the heavily polluted River Thames and London's other rivers at that time. Supply was plentiful through the late 19th century, particularly from the Dutch fishing boats landing catches at Billingsgate Fish Market.


title: Pie and mash

text: Since 2010, as revealed in a joint study by the Zoological Society of London and the Environment Agency, the number of eels captured in research traps in the River Thames fell from 1,500 in 2005 to 50 in 2010, meaning most eels used in pie and mash shops are now from the Netherlands and Northern Ireland.


title: Pie and mash

text: While eel consumption continues to go down in the 21st century (in 2000, there was only one stall selling live eels in Billingsgate Market), the number of eel and pie shops has not gone down very much: there were 87 eel and pie shops in Greater London in 1995, compared to around 110 at the end of 1800.


title: Pie and mash

text: The main dish sold is pie and mash, a minced-beef and cold-water-pastry pie served with mashed potato. There should be two types of pastry used; the bottom or base should be suet pastry and the top can be rough puff or short. It is common for the mashed potato to be spread around one side of the plate and for a type of parsley sauce to be present. This is commonly called liquor sauce or simply liquor (liquor as in a liquid in which something has been steeped or cooked), traditionally made using the water kept from the preparation of the stewed eels. However, many shops no longer use stewed eel water in their parsley liquor. The sauce traditionally has a green colour, from the parsley.


title: Pie and mash

text: Before shops became common, trading took place from braziers or carts. It was not until late Victorian times that shops began to appear. The first recorded shop was Henry Blanchard's at 101 Union Street in Southwark in 1844 which was described as an "Eel Pie House". The shops have become part of the local community and heritage of their area; for example, L. Manze in Walthamstow became Grade II listed by English Heritage in 2013 due to its architectural and cultural significance.


title: Pie and mash

text: Traditionally, pie and mash shops have white tile walls with mirrors, and marble floors, tables and work tops, all of which are easy to clean. They give the shops, never called called restaurants or café, a late Victorian or Art Deco appearance.


title: Pie and mash

text: Because of the large number of pleasure boat steamer companies offering Sunday trips on the River Thames, many Eastenders used them to explore the more gentrified west of London. The result was that many also wanted their traditional foods of ale and pie and mash, resulting in the renaming of both a hotel that they frequently visited and the island on which it sat in Twickenham to Eel Pie Island in the early 1900s.


title: Ray Meagher

text: Raymond Francis Meagher (born 4 July 1944) is an Australian actor, who has appeared in Australian film and television since the mid-1970s. He is notable as the longest continuing performer in an Australian television role, portraying Alf Stewart on "Home and Away", having played the role since the first episode in 1988. Meagher won a Gold Logie Award for his role in "Home and Away" in 2010 and currently played the role of Alf for over 35 years.


title: Ray Meagher

text: Meagher was born and raised on a sheep and cattle station in Queensland, before attending a boarding school on the Gold Coast from the age of nine. He became a keen sportsman at high school, Marist College Ashgrove in Brisbane, representing the school at a number of sports including rugby union, a sport which he ultimately played at state level.


title: Ray Meagher

text: Meagher played at first five eighth for Queensland at senior level in the late 1960s, including playing against France.


title: Ray Meagher

text: His early film roles included appearances "Breaker Morant", "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith", "Newsfront", "My Brilliant Career" and "The Shiralee." He also had a cameo in the 1979 war comedy "The Odd Angry Shot".


title: Ray Meagher

text: He first appeared on television as host of the late night ABC folk music programme "Around Folk" in June–August 1973. His first regular acting work on television was in the soap opera "Number 96", briefly appearing as Fred Shrimpton in 1977. Subsequent television acting roles included three different roles as villains in "Prisoner", including Geoff Butler between 1979 and 1980, Kurt Renner in 1984, and Ernest Craven in 1986. He also had two different guest starring roles in "A Country Practice" and substantial roles in several 1980s miniseries, including "A Fortunate Life".


title: Ray Meagher

text: Meagher joined the cast of soap opera "Home and Away" in 1987 and has appeared in the role of Alf Stewart continuously since the first episode aired in January 1988. Meagher holds a Guinness World Record as the longest-serving actor in an Australian serial.


title: Ray Meagher

text: In September 2009, Meagher was the third-highest paid personality on Australian television, behind Eddie McGuire and Rove McManus.


title: Ray Meagher

text: Meagher won the Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television at the 2010 Logie Awards, where he was also nominated for "Most Popular Actor". Meagher subsequently won that Logie Award in 2018.


title: Ray Meagher

text: In 2007, Meagher took over the role of Bob the mechanic in "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" from Bill Hunter. From 30 September 2010, he took over the role of Bob in the West End production of "Priscilla" until March 2011. In June 2011, it was announced that Meagher would be returning to the West End production from October. He then rejoined the show for its New Zealand tour in 2016.


title: Ray Meagher

text: Meagher regularly travels to the United Kingdom to take part in the traditional Christmas pantomimes. In December 2008, he played Abanazar in a production of "Aladdin" at the Anvil Theatre in Basingstoke and in 2009 he performed as Captain Hook in "Peter Pan" at the Assembly Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Wells.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen in the Netherlands. Founded in 1614, the university is the second oldest in the country (after Leiden) and one of the most traditional and prestigious universities in the Netherlands.


title: University of Groningen

text: The institution has been consistently ranked among the top 100 universities in the world, according to leading ranking tables. In the 2022 Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities, RUG is ranked fourth in the Netherlands.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen has eleven faculties, nine graduate schools, 27 research centres and institutes, and more than 175-degree programmes. The university's alumni and faculty include Johann Bernoulli, Aletta Jacobs, four Nobel Prize winners, nine Spinoza Prize winners, one Stevin Prize winner, various members of the Dutch royal family, several politicians, the first president of the European Central Bank, and a secretary general of NATO.


title: University of Groningen

text: The institution was founded as a college in 1614 in an initiative taken by the Regional Assembly of the city of Groningen and the "Ommelanden", or surrounding region. There were four faculties – Theology, Law, Medicine, and Philosophy.


title: University of Groningen

text: The coat of arms of the university was confirmed by The Estates of the City and County of Groningen in 1615. It consists of the provincial arms, charged with an open book inscribed with the abbreviated words VER/BVM/DNI LV/CER/NA, short for "Verbum Domini Lucerna Pedibus Nostris". The shield is surmounted by a golden crown of five leaves and four pearls.


title: University of Groningen

text: In the first 75 years of its existence about 100 students enrolled every year. Almost half of the students and lecturers came from outside the Netherlands – the first "rector magnificus", Ubbo Emmius, came from East Frisia in modern-day Germany, for instance – but at the same time there was already a close relationship between the University and the city and the surrounding region.


title: University of Groningen

text: The development of the University came to a standstill at the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth century because of theological differences of opinion, a difficult relationship with the Regional Assembly and political problems that included the siege of the city by ‘"Bommen Berend"’ in 1672. On average two to three hundred students were registered with the University at any one time during this period.


title: University of Groningen

text: During the French occupation between 1775 and 1814 the University of Groningen was administrated by the Imperial University of Paris. Unlike Leiden University, it was not shut down and the institute was renamed Imperial University of Groningen ("Keizerlijke Universiteit Groningen"). During this time period, it remained the only open university in the Kingdom of Holland. In 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars, at the same time as Leiden and Utrecht, the university gained recognition as a national college of higher education, but this was followed by discussions about closure. The situation improved when a new main university building, the Academiegebouw, was constructed in 1850, a building that was largely financed by the people of Groningen. A fire completely destroyed the building in 1906.


title: University of Groningen

text: In the meantime, the Higher Education Act of 1876 had radically improved the position of the university, which was renamed the ""Rijksuniversiteit Groningen"" (RUG). Teaching took place in Dutch and Latin and the university was given a research as well as an educational duty.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen developed during the first decades of the twentieth century. The number of faculties and courses grew steadily while the number of students grew rapidly. When the university celebrated its first 300 years in 1914 there were 611 registered students; this had grown to 1,000 by 1924. After a drop back during the Depression, and in particular during the Second World War, the number of students grew rapidly from 1945 to reach 20,000 in 1994. In recent times there are about 32,700 students registered at the University of Groningen with the number of foreign students again growing steadily, and following the tradition set by the first Rector Magnificus, the number of German students and researchers has grown strongly in recent years.


title: University of Groningen

text: In March 2015, the RUG signed an agreement with the China Agricultural University to establish a campus in the Chinese city of Yantai. This would have made the RUG the first Dutch university to open a campus in China. The plan was heavily criticised, mainly due to worries about the restriction of academic freedom caused by censorship in China. In January 2018, the plans were cancelled by the Executive Board of the UG, based on the "insufficient support for the project".


title: University of Groningen

text: The university operates under the BSA system, under which a first year undergraduate (bachelor) student must achieve a certain number of ECTS in order to progress to the second year. This varies from 30 ECTS to 45 ECTS among various degrees.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen is a member of the so-called Excellence Group of universities in Europe. The Excellence Group has 56 members, which is 1.3 percent of the approximately 4,500 European institutions of higher education.


title: University of Groningen

text: The university's Center for Information Technology (CIT) houses an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer and data center of Target used by the LOFAR project as well as a Virtual Reality and 3D-visualisation center.


title: University of Groningen

text: The university library was renovated between 2013 and 2017. The RUG has a branch in Leeuwarden. Plans to establish a "branch campus" in China's Yantai were called off in January 2018, and the University Museum is now in the process of being established.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen is represented in the Academic Heritage Foundation, a foundation that aims to preserve university collections and cultural treasures.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen is organized in eleven faculties that offer programmes and courses in the fields of humanities, social sciences, law, economics and business, spatial sciences, life sciences, and natural sciences and technology. Each faculty ("cf.", College in the USA or School in Europe) is a formal grouping of academic degree programmes, schools and institutes, discipline areas, research centres, and/or any combination of these drawn together for educational purposes. Each faculty offers Bachelor's, Master's, PhD, and Exchange programmes, while some also offer short certificate courses.


title: University of Groningen

text: Since 2014, the RUG also has a partly independent liberal arts college, University College Groningen (UCG).


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen engages in many types of international cooperation throughout both teaching and research. The main networks and partners of the university are:


title: University of Groningen

text: The various faculties are housed around the city. Most of the faculties- including the faculties of Law, Arts and Philosophy are located in and around the city center. The university's original building, which acts as the main administrative building, lies exactly in the center of the city at the "Broerstraat". The faculty of medical sciences is located close by at the University Medical Center Groningen(UMCG). The Faculties of Economics and Business, Spatial Sciences, and Science and Engineering are housed in the northern outskirts of the city, at the Zernike Campus, named after Nobel Prize winner Frits Zernike. The Zernike campus is also shared by the Hanze University of Applied Sciences, the other big university in the city, making the total number of students studying there around 40,000.


title: University of Groningen

text: The university has libraries in three locations: the main one at the city center, one in the Duisenberg building in Zernike Campus, and one in the faculty of medicine, that includes a vast array of books and online material for students. The library at the city center also has a Starbucks on its premises. The university has also recently opened another campus in Leeuwarden, Friesland, referred to as "Campus Fryslân", that offers multiple disciplines in both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.


title: University of Groningen

text: The city of Groningen is known as the student city of the Netherlands; around one-third of the city's residents are students at either The University of Groningen or at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. The university, through ACLO, offers a wide range of sporting activities, and courses. Almost each sport has its own association, and offers the use of its facilities at discount rates for students.


title: University of Groningen

text: The university also has multiple student societies that organize social events for its members, as well as student and study associations, that are mostly concerned with specific faculties and courses.


title: University of Groningen

text: The use of bicycles as the means for transport is particularly prevalent for locals and students alike, and has integrated, labelled bike paths from the city center to Zernike. The city is popularly referred to as "The World Cycling City" because of this.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen does not have student accommodation. It does, however, offer students with accommodation via SSH Student Housing, which operates student houses in various locations in Groningen, and various other cities within the Netherlands. A significant number of students live in private accommodations within the city, however, a recent addition to the housing options for students is The Student Hotel as well. In an effort to combat the annual housing shortage, the city of Groningen has incentivized the construction of short-term accommodation such as The Village which is made of shipping containers for international students. The Dutch government has strict laws for private accommodations for both tenants (students) and the landlords, so that fair rent prices, and renting conditions can be maintained.


title: University of Groningen

text: In 2018, the university received national attention due to the housing crisis in the city of Groningen. Due to the fact that most incoming students at the university are primarily from other parts of the country, or the world, there has been a lack of housing options for students. Especially in the fall semester of 2021 the housing crisis hit its peak with hundreds of students reportedly not having any accommodation and resorting to emergency shelters. The housing shorting evoked a protest in the city centre which culminated in the Academy building being temporarily occupied by students to put pressure on the city to extend emergency housing.


title: University of Groningen

text: In 2019, 708 PhD students were admitted to a PhD programme (compared to 816 in 2018). Around 50% of the admitted PhD students came from abroad. In 2019, a total of 546 PhDs took place, 22 of them cum laude. The national share was thus around 11%.


title: University of Groningen

text: The University of Groningen's Graduate Schools are organized somewhat different from its international counterparts. The main difference is that the Graduate Schools do not contain all Master's programmes; Graduate Schools manage and facilitate the two-year Master's programmes: top master's degree programmes and Research master's degree programmes.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Loktak Lake () is a freshwater lake in Northeast India. It is the largest freshwater lake in South Asia along with Manchar Lake in Pakistan. It is a pulsating lake, with surface area varying from 250 sq km to 500 sq km during rainy season with a typical area of 287 sq km. The lake is located at Moirang in Manipur state, India. The etymology of "Loktak" is "Lok" = "stream" and "tak" = "the end" in Meitei language (Manipuri language). It is famous for the phumdi (heterogeneous mass of vegetation, soil and organic matter at various stages of decomposition) floating over it. The largest of all the phumdis covers an area of and is situated on the southeastern shore of the lake. Located on this phumdi, Keibul Lamjao National Park is the only floating national park in the world. The park is the last natural refuge of the endangered Sangai (state animal), "Rucervus eldii eldii" or Manipur brow-antlered deer ("Cervus eldi eldi"), one of three subspecies of Eld's deer.


title: Loktak Lake

text: This ancient lake plays an important role in the economy of Manipur. It serves as a source of water for hydropower generation, irrigation and drinking water supply. The lake is also a source of livelihood for the rural fishermen who live in the surrounding areas and on phumdis, also known as "phumshangs". Human activity has led to severe pressure on the lake ecosystem. 55 rural and urban hamlets around the lake have a population of about 100,000 people.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Considering the ecological status and its biodiversity values, the lake was initially designated as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention on 23 March 1990. It was also listed under the "Montreux Record" on 16 June 1993, "a record of Ramsar sites where changes in ecological character have occurred, are occurring or are likely to occur".


title: Loktak Lake

text: Of the two river systems which drain the Manipur state—the Barak River and the Manipur River—the Manipur River flows through the Manipur Valley. The river rises in the north at Karong, flows south of Imphal and hence is also known as the Imphal River. Along its course through the valley downstream of Imphal, the bed slope of the river is gentle. The drainage pattern is sub-dendritic, sub-parallel and sub-radial, dictated by the structure and lithology of the area. Imphal, Iril and Thoubal River valleys also exhibit a meandering river course.


title: Loktak Lake

text: At the Ithai barrage outlet of the Lake, the direct catchment area draining into the lake is out of which is under paddy cultivation, under habitation and under forest cover. The area of the lake is , comprising large pockets of open water and marshy land formed at the southern part of the Imphal valley up to the confluence of Manipur River and Khuga River in the district of Imphal West. The Lake is divided into two zones, namely, the "Core Zone" which is the no-development zone or totally protected zone comprising and the balance area is called the "Buffer Zone".


title: Loktak Lake

text: Within the lake and on its periphery, there are 14 hills of varying size and elevation; in the southern part of the lake are the Sendra, Ithing and Thanga islands.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Geographically, in terms of biodiversity and pressure of human activities, the lake is broadly divided into northern, central and southern zones as elaborated below.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The Northern Zone, extending from eastern side of Nambol River near Ngaikhong Khunou to Phabakchao including Maibam Phumlak, has five main streams/rivers namely the Manipur river, Nambul, Yangoi river, Nambol river and Thongjaorok flowing into the lake. The zone is separated from the central zone by large phumdis (varying thickness of ) that stretches from the northwest to the southeast. During January to March, phumdis in this area are usually burnt for construction of fish cum paddy farms; many large fish farms with raised levees have been built.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The Central Zone, extending from Awang Laisoi pat (western side of Nambol River near Ngaikhong Khullen) to Laphu pat (between Khordak channel and Imphal River) encloses prominent islands of Thanga, Karang and Ithing. It has some sub zone viz Laisoi, Awangsoi, Yennapat, Tharopat etc. It is the main open water zone of the lake, which was relatively free from phumdis in the past, but over the years 'athaphums' (artificially created phumdis for fishing) constructed by villagers for fishing have proliferated choking the entire lake. The State Fisheries Department has established a fisheries centre within this zone at Takmu pat for fisheries development


title: Loktak Lake

text: The Southern Zone encompasses the Keibul Lamjao National Park, Ungamel and Kumbi pats at the southern part of the lake and the zone is linked with Khuga River by the Ungamel channel. The Imphal River is also linked with this zone by the Khordak channel. The western catchment drained by the Kangshoibi River flows into this zone. Proliferation of phumdis has been observed near the mouth of Ungamel channel, Kumbi pat, Nongmaikhong and Khordak area.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Cretaceous limestone, the Disang with serpentinites (Lower to Middle Eocene–Upper Cretaceous), the Surmas and the Tipams (Miocene) are the dominant rock formations in the catchment of the Manipur basin. Higher reaches of hills have the Disang and Tipam groups of rocks while Surma group occurs in the lower reaches. Grey sandstone–grit–conglomerate–limestone sequences intruded by serpentinites containing minor amounts of enstalite, chromite, amphiboles and magnetite constitute the Disang formation. Argillaceous and arneceous sequence represents the Surma and Tipam groups, respectively.


title: Loktak Lake

text: With an average annual rainfall of tropical monsoon climate prevails in the valley. Temperatures range from 0 to 35 °C (32 to 95 °F). February and March are the driest months.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Loktak Lake is fed by the Manipur river and several tributaries and ‘Ungamel Channel’ (Ithai Barrage) is its only outlet now. The origin of the Manipur river system and its tributaries, which flows in a north-south direction and drains into the lake is from the hill ranges immediately to the west of the lake. The five major rivers with indirect catchment area of are the Imphal (also called the Manipur River), the Iril, the Thoubal, the Sekmai and the Khuga. The other major streams which drain into the lake and which bring in lot of silt are the Nambul, the Nambol, the Thongjarok, the Awang Khujairok, the Awang Kharok, the Ningthoukhong, the Potsangbam, the Oinam, the Keinou and the Irulok. The Lake, located on the southern side of the Manipur river basin, is at the lowest elevation in the valley and no other major river flows into the lake, except a few rivulets.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Though hydrological data on river basin has not been adequately monitored, the Department of Earth Science, Manipur University has in its report of 1996 assessed the average runoff of Manipur River as 519,200 ha·m (4,209,000 acre·ft; 5.192 km) from a total catchment area of at the Ithai barrage. The ground water potential has been assessed estimated around per annum.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Several water resources development projects have been built in the Manipur River basin to meet growing demands for irrigation. Seven river valley projects have been completed; these are the Singda Dam Project, Thoubal Dam Project and Khuga Dam Project which are of multipurpose type, the Imphal Barrage Project and the Sekmai Barrage Project—both medium irrigation projects. The most discussed project is the Loktak Multipurpose Project, which provides hydropower, irrigation and water supply benefits but has attracted adverse criticism for the drastic alteration caused by the project to the hydrological regime of the Loktak Lake and associated wetlands.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The Loktak Hydropower Project on the Manipur River or Imphal River, with the Loktak Lake forming the head waters to provide regulated storage for power generation, was built in 1983 as a multipurpose project with power generation of 105 MW (3x35 MW) for power supply to Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura, and lift irrigation to an area of in the Manipur valley. The main components of the project, as built, are, a) the Ithai Barrage, across the Manipur river of height and length with three spillway bays, b) water conductor system for trans-basin diversion comprising an open channel of length, a cut and cover section of length (bed width , followed by a Head Race Tunnel of diameter (horseshoe type) and long to carry a discharge of () for power generation and for irrigation), c) a surge shaft, d) penstocks and e) a surface powerhouse and a tailrace channel on the right bank of the narrow Leimatak River with three units of 35 MW capacity each generating an annual energy of 448 GW·h (1.613 PJ). The downstream Loktak Power Project in cascade to utilize the regulated releases from the upper project for further power generation of 90 MW is proposed to be taken up for joint implementation by NHPC and the Government of Manipur.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The project has invited severe criticism since the water level in the lake at the Ithai barrage is maintained throughout the year at FRL from considerations of power generation from the well planned water conductor system. The problem in the lake is, however, diverse; economic activities in and around the lake, and encroachments by 50,400 fishermen for extensive fishing activity are also cited to be some reasons. Other reasons for the distress situation in the lake are a) jhum (shifting) cultivation, b) extensive deforestation and unscientific land use practices in the catchment areas which bring large amount of silt into the lake and c) undefined ownership of the lake where the stakeholders are the districts of Imphal west district, Bishnupur and Thoubal causing lack of integrated approach to the lakes potential for providing benefits.


title: Loktak Lake

text: A rich biodiversity with habitat heterogeneity has been recorded during a scientific survey carried out between January 2000 and December 2002 in different habitat patches of the lake. The lake’s rich biological diversity comprises 233 species of aquatic macrophytes of emergent, submergent, free-floating and rooted floating leaf types. But in the declining trend of vegetation, the important flora recorded are as under.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The important vegetation of the phumdis recorded are "Eichhornia crassipes", "Phragmites karka", "Oryza sativa", "Zizania latifolia", "Cynodon" spp., "Limnophila" spp., "Sagittaria" spp., "Saccharum latifolium", "Erianthus pucerus", "Erianthus ravennae", "Leersia hexandra", "Carex" spp.; "Phragmites karka" is reported to be the dominant species.


title: Loktak Lake

text: In the habitat patch with rooted floating plants, vegetation comprises the a) "Nelumbo nucifera", b) "Trapa natans", c) "Euryale ferox", d) "Nymphaea alba", e) "N. nouchali", "N. stellata" and f) "Nymphoides indica".


title: Loktak Lake

text: 57 species of waterbirds and another 14 species of wetland associated birds have been noted in the lake including 28 species of migratory waterfowl (most migrating from different parts of the northern hemisphere beyond the Himalayas). Also recorded were 425 species of animals—249 vertebrates and 176 invertebrates). The list includes rare animals such as the Indian python, sambhar and barking deer. Keibul Lamjao National Park is the natural habitat of one of the most endangered deer, the brow-antlered deer ("Cervus eldi eldi") which was once thought to be extinct, which was declared a national park only to preserve and conserve this species of Eld's deer.


title: Loktak Lake

text: But the avifauna recorded in different habitats of the lake is reported to be declining. Briefly, the details of the avifauna recorded now are elaborated.


title: Loktak Lake

text: In the central part of the lake waterfowl, including dabbling ducks and diving ducks are reported but their numbers are declining due to proliferation of phumdis.


title: Loktak Lake

text: In the habitat part of the rooted plants, "Hydrophasianus chirurgus", "Metopidius indicus", and others were reported; once abundant now show a declining trend.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Small hillocks (though showing degraded condition) in the lake show big trees; birds of prey such as "Milvus migrans lineatus" and "Circus aeruginosus" have been recorded on these trees.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Species of hornbills found are the brown-backed hornbill, rufous-necked hornbill, wreathed hornbill, the pied hornbill and the great pied hornbill.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Fish yield from the lake is reported to be about 1,500 tonnes (6,600,000 lb) every year. The State Fishery Department has introduced millions of fingerlings of Indian and exotic major carps. Natural capture fishery without the requirement of any lease or licence was also in vogue in the lake. The lake fishery is now a mixture of capture and culture systems. Nine mini-hatcheries opened by the State Government has the capacity to produce one million fish fingerlings in a day. Fifty percent of the fingerlings produced were released into the Loktak Lake and the balance were distributed to beneficiary fishing committees. The new fish varieties introduced in lake were grass carp, silver carp and the old varieties of the local fishes like "Channa punctata" (ngamu), "Anabas testudineus" (ukabi), "Anguilla" (ngaril), pangba, tharak, and ngashap stated to be under serious decline.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Fauna recorded in the precincts of the Lake in the Keibul Lamjo National Park are the Indian python, sambar, barking deer, the endangered sangai species of Eld's deer, wild bear, "Muntiacus muntjak", rhesus monkey, hoolock gibbon, stump-tailed macaque, Indian civet "Viverra zibetha", marbled cat and Temminck's golden cat.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The Loktak lake and its precincts have faced serious problems due to loss of vegetal cover in the catchment area and construction of Ithai barrage at the outlet of the lake for multipurpose development of water resources. The issues are further elaborated below.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The degradation of the catchment area has occurred. Deforestation and shifting cultivation in the catchment areas have accelerated the process of soil erosion resulting in the lake’s shrinkage due to siltation. The annual silt flow into the lake is estimated to be 336,350 tonnes.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The nutrients from catchment area and domestic sewage from Imphal city carried by Nambul River are discharged into the lake affecting its water quality, thus encouraging the growth of water hyacinth and phumdis. All these activities have direct bearing on ecological stability of the lake. Interference in navigation and overall aesthetic value of the Lake are other reported adverse effects.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The construction of Ithai barrage and maintaining constant water level at full reservoir level (FRL) has led to a) changes in hydrological regime thereby affecting ecological processes and functions of the wetland, b) inundation of agricultural lands and displacement of people from flooded lands and c) loss of fish population and diversity.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Recent analysis of the concentrations of some elements with FAO limits showed non detection of toxic elements like As, Cd, Hg, and Pb. To a certain extent the water of the lake can be considered fresh in terms of trace elemental pollutants.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The thickness of phumdis has decreased in the Keibul Lamjao National Park thereby threatening the survival of sangai deer and interference in the migration of fishes from the Chindwin–Irrawaddy River system of Myanmar resulting in changes in the species composition.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The population of a number of economic plants such as "Saccharum" species, "Setaria pumila", "Alpinia nigra", "Hedychium spicatum" and the major food plants like the Zizania, Latifolia, "Carex" species, "Coix" species, Narenga has decreased resulting in starvation conditions for the endangered sangai deer. With the phumdis becoming thinner, the hoofs of the limbs of sangai get stuck in the marsh and results in their drowning. Production of the edible fruit and rhizome ("thamchet" and "thambou") of lotus plants has decreased to a great extent. Plants have also degraded due to polluted water.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Livelihood of people dependent on the sale of edible fruit and rhizome of lotus plant products and "Euryale ferox" (thanging) has suffered due to steep decline in the growth of these plant species.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Today, Loktak Lake is at the highest level of eutrophication and the only brow-antlered deer is at the verge of extinction.


title: Loktak Lake

text: To address all the issues raised on the health of the lake, as detailed above, Government of Manipur has set up the Loktak Development Authority (LDA) under "The Manipur Loktak Lake (Protection) Act, 2006 (Manipur Act 3 of 2006)" with the objective "to provide for administration, control, protection, improvement, conservation and development of the natural environment of the Loktak Lake and for matters connected with as incidental thereto."


title: Loktak Lake

text: In order to address the various issues plaguing the functioning of the lake and the project dependent on it, a detailed project study was instituted by the Loktak Development Authority (LDA) & Wetlands International Asia (WISA) with funding provided by the India Canada Environment Facility (ICEF). A Project Report titled "Sustainable Development & Water Resources Management of Loktak Lake (SDWRML)" has been prepared. The report gives a review of its activities on the project done for over six years (from 1 February 1998 till the end of March 2004) with the following pertinent observations.


title: Loktak Lake

text: In an interdependent multiple socioeconomic cum historical cum technological/scientific milieu, the problem of the Loktak lake is multi-dimensional and complex.


title: Loktak Lake

text: LDA, basically an engineering organization, addressed several developmental activities with due involvement of local communities and its capacity to address the situation is well organized.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Even though the Ithai barrage and its operation by NHPC have contributed to the deterioration of the lake environment and the surrounding people, the mind set of the people (conditioned by the water level and submergence) that operation of the project needs drastic change to solve the lakes' problems had prevented examination of feasible alternate solutions, given the situation that drastic change of NHPC approach to operate the project was not feasible.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The project design was sound but focus on ultimate goal was not adequate. Participation of NGOs in the project was not sufficient. The design of a fish hatchery (a Chinese design) was too large and had to be scaled down. Documentation, communication activities of the project and MIS system were good.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Based on all the analysis, the future approach suggested involves mitigation measures as elaborated are: i) The Nambol River carries sewage of nutrients of Imphal town into the lake which results in prolific growth of phumdis and deteriorates water quality. This is an urban problem and there is urgent need to treat and control this aspect, even if it is expensive;


title: Loktak Lake

text: ii) Reduce soil erosion and sedimentation of the lake by enlarging the scope of micro-watersheds in the catchment area treatment plan;


title: Loktak Lake

text: iii) Construct a channel through the Keibul Lamjao National Park to enable phumdis to settle at the bed of the lake;


title: Loktak Lake

text: iv) Resolve the encroachment problem, by demarcating the lake boundary, which would result in a targeted and concerted action plan;


title: Loktak Lake

text: v) Implement action plans that are economically viable and technically feasible resulting in livelihood enhancement such as evolving an attractive resettlement plan for the phumdi dwellers backed by remunerative livelihood program; and


title: Loktak Lake

text: vi) Examine introduction of fishing net instead of Athapum (Athapam means phumdis in circular shape floating in the lake, planted or cultured artificially for catching fish) practiced presently to be dismantled. In November 2016, Environment ministry has taken keen interest in preserving loktak lake and has formed a panel of five members for this purpose.


title: Loktak Lake

text: Well connected by road and air, Imphal, the capital city of Manipur is away from the lake, by road. The lake is a unique destination for tourism. The lake offers excellent opportunities for visitors to enjoy the beauty of the lake and its several islands located inside it that are studded with floating phumdis of different geometrical shapes. The important islands which offer facilities for visitors are the Sandra and Phubala.


title: Loktak Lake

text: The Sendra Tourist Home on the island with an attached Cafeteria in the middle of the lake is an ideal tourist spot. Visitors get a bird's eye view of life on the lake—small islands that are actually floating weed on which the lake people live.


title: Loktak Lake

text: At Moirang town on the fringe of the Loktak is the Indian National Army (INA) Museum which will be of interest to tourists. The exhibits include letters, photographs, badges of ranks and other articles associated with the INA. A bronze statue of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose in uniform stands in the lawn.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The Puerto Rico Trench is located on the boundary between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The oceanic trench, the deepest in the Atlantic, is associated with a complex transition between the Lesser Antilles subduction zone to the south and the major transform fault zone or plate boundary, which extends west between Cuba and Hispaniola through the Cayman Trough to the coast of Central America.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The trench is long and has a maximum depth of or 5.20 miles. This constitutes the single deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. This point is commonly referred to as the Milwaukee Deep, with the Brownson Deep naming the seabed surrounding it. However, more recently, the latter term has also been used interchangeably with the former to refer to this point. The exact point was identified by the "DSSV Pressure Drop" using a state-of-the-art Kongsberg EM124 multibeam sonar in 2018, and then directly visited and its depth verified by the crewed submersible Deep-Submergence Vehicle "DSV Limiting Factor" (a Triton 36000/2 model submersible) piloted by Victor Vescovo.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Scientific studies have concluded that an earthquake occurring along this fault zone could generate a significant tsunami. The island of Puerto Rico, which lies immediately to the south of the fault zone and the trench, suffered a destructive tsunami soon after the 1918 San Fermín earthquake.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The Puerto Rico Trench is located at a boundary between two plates that pass each other along a transform boundary with only a small component of subduction. The Caribbean Plate is moving to the east while the North American Plate is moving to the west. The North American Plate is being subducted by the Caribbean Plate obliquely at the trench while to the southeast, the South American Plate is being more directly subducted along the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. This subduction zone explains the presence of active volcanoes over the southeastern part of the Caribbean Sea. Volcanic activity is frequent along the island arc southeast from Puerto Rico to the coast of South America.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, and the Dominican Republic do not have active volcanoes; however, they are at risk from earthquakes and tsunamis. The Puerto Rico Trench has produced earthquakes greater than magnitude 8.0 and is considered capable of continuing to do so.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: According to NASA, beneath the trench is a mass so dense it has a gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean, causing it to dip somewhat. It also has a negative effect on the accuracy of navigational instruments.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Knowledge of the earthquake and tsunami risks has not been widespread among the general public of the islands located near the trench. Since 1988, the Puerto Rican Seismic Society has been trying to use the Puerto Rican media to inform people about a future earthquake that could result in a catastrophic tragedy.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Following the 2004 tsunami that affected more than forty countries in the Indian Ocean, many more people now fear the consequences that such an event would bring to the Caribbean. Local governments have begun emergency planning. In the case of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the United States government has been studying the problem for years. It is increasing its seismic investigations and developing tsunami warning systems.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: On 11 October 1918, the western coast of Puerto Rico was hit by a major earthquake which caused a tsunami. The 1918 earthquake was caused by an old left-lateral strike-slip fault near the Mona Passage. In 1953, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, was affected by the Santo Domingo earthquake. The actual subduction zone (Puerto Rico Trench) has not ruptured in over 200 years, which is a major concern to geophysicists, as they believe it may be due for a major event.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Puerto Rico has always been an area of concern to earthquake experts because, apart from the 1918 episode, there are frequent tremors in and around the island, indicating activity. A 1981 tremor was felt across the island, while another in 1985 was felt in the towns of Cayey and Salinas.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The January 13, 2014 M 6.4 earthquake north of Puerto Rico occurred as a result of oblique-thrust faulting. Preliminary faulting mechanisms for the event indicate it ruptured either a structure dipping shallowly to the south and striking approximately east-west, or a near-vertical structure striking northwest-southeast. At the location of this earthquake, the North America plate moves west-southwest with respect to the Caribbean plate at a velocity of approximately 20 mm/yr, and subducts beneath the Caribbean plate at the Puerto Rico Trench. The location, depth and mechanism of the earthquake are consistent with the event occurring on this subduction zone interface."


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Several exploration cruises carried out by USGS in the Puerto Rico Trench have for the first time mapped the entire trench using ship mounted multibeam bathymetry.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The seafloor was visited for the first time by French bathyscaphe Archimède in 1964 and then by a robotic vehicle in 2012. The most conspicuous aspect of the footage was the swarm of benthic amphipods. Some of these amphipods were collected by bait bags attached to the vehicle and were brought to the surface for further analysis. The samples recovered were "Scopelocheirus schellenbergi", a species of lysianassid amphipod that have so far only been found in ultradeep trenches in the Pacific.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: Two invertebrate creatures were also observed in the video. One soft dark individual, estimated to be long, has been identified by Dr. Stace E. Beaulieu of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a sea cucumber, tentatively assigned to genus "Peniagone". The other individual, a small crustacean, is tentatively identified as a munnopsid isopod, based on morphology and similar walking and jumping movements observed for other hadal munnopsid isopods. Because these individuals were not collected, it is not possible to obtain species-level identifications. However, these sightings likely exceed the deepest known records for genus "Peniagone" and family Munnopsidae.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The American explorer Victor Vescovo dived to the deepest point of the Puerto Rico Trench and therefore the Atlantic Ocean on 19 December 2018, as part of the Five Deeps Expedition. He reached a depth of ± at 19°42'49" N, 67°18'39" W by direct CTD pressure measurements with the Deep-Submergence Vehicle "DSV Limiting Factor" (a Triton 36000/2 model submersible) and thus became the first person to reach the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean while also making the second-deepest recorded solo dive in history at that time. Many media outlets referred to the deep as Brownson Deep, in opposition to past references to the area, where the term Milwaukee Deep was used instead.


title: Puerto Rico Trench

text: The operating area was surveyed by the support ship, the Deep Submersible Support Vessel "DSSV Pressure Drop", with a Kongsberg SIMRAD EM124 multibeam echosounder system. The gathered data will be donated to the GEBCO Seabed 2030 initiative. The dive was part of the Five Deeps Expedition. The objective of this expedition is to thoroughly map and visit the deepest points of all five of the world's oceans by the end of September 2019.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: Dreamcatcher is a 2001 science fiction horror novel by American writer Stephen King, featuring elements of body horror, suspense and alien invasion. The book, written in cursive, helped the author recuperate from a 1999 car accident, and was completed in half a year. According to the author in his afterword, the working title was "Cancer". His wife, Tabitha King, persuaded him to change the title. A film adaptation was released in 2003.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: King has since soured on the book, as, in 2014, he told "Rolling Stone" that "I don't like "Dreamcatcher" very much," and also stated that the book was written under the influence of Oxycontin, which he was on to control the pain from his accident.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: Set near the fictional town of Derry, Maine, "Dreamcatcher" is the story of four lifelong friends: Gary "Jonesy" Jones, Pete Moore, Joe "Beaver" Clarendon and Henry Devlin. As young teenagers, the four saved Douglas "Duddits" Cavell, an older boy with Down syndrome, from a group of sadistic bullies. From their new friendship with Duddits, Jonesy, Beaver, Henry and Pete began to share the boy's unusual powers, including telepathy, shared dreaming, and seeing "the line", a psychic trace left by the movement of human beings.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: Jonesy, Beaver, Henry and Pete reunite for their annual hunting trip at the Hole-in-the-Wall, an isolated lodge in the Jefferson Tract. There, they become caught between an alien invasion and an insane retired US Air Force Colonel, Abraham Kurtz. Jonesy and Beaver, who remain at the cabin while Henry and Pete go out for supplies, encounter Richard McCarthy, a disoriented and delirious stranger wandering near the lodge during a blizzard talking about lights in the sky. The victim of an alien abduction, McCarthy grows sicker and dies while sitting on the toilet. An extraterrestrial parasite eats its way out of his anus, after gestating in his bowel, and attacks the two men, killing Beaver. Jonesy inhales the spores of the strange reddish fungus that the stranger and his parasite have spread around the cabin, and an alien entity ("Mr. Gray") takes over his mind.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: On the return trip from their supply run, Henry and Pete encounter a woman from the same hunting party as the strange man at the cabin. She is also delirious and infected with a parasite. After crashing their car, Henry leaves Pete with the woman and attempts to return to the cabin by foot. From there, his telepathic senses let him know that Pete is in trouble, Beaver is dead, and Jonesy is no longer Jonesy. Mr. Gray, manipulating Jonesy's body, is attempting to leave the area. The aliens have attempted to infect Earth multiple times, beginning with the Roswell crash in the 1940s, but environmental factors have always stopped them, and the US government has covered up the failed invasion attempts every time. With the infection of Jonesy, who can contain the alien within his mind and also spread the infection, Mr. Gray has become the perfect Typhoid Mary—and he knows it. Mr. Gray hijacks a truck transporting a spore-filled alien corpse while Jonesy, trapped inside a mental stronghold, is powerless to stop him.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: It becomes up to Henry—by now a quarantined prisoner of the Army—to convince the military to go after Jonesy/Mr. Gray before it is too late. Jonesy himself, now a prisoner in his own mind, tries to help. Both of them are convinced that their old friend Duddits may be the key to saving the world. Using telepathic powers gained from the alien fungus, Henry alerts Army officer Owen Underhill of a plan by Kurtz to kill most of the Army personnel to maintain secrecy. The two stage an escape by telepathically inciting a riot among other prisoners, destroying the base in the process. As they flee, the pair is closely pursued by a vengeful Kurtz along with his subordinates Freddy and Perlmutter. Perlmutter is infected with a telepathic parasite and is being used to track Owen and Mr. Gray down, despite his personal reluctance and pain.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: Owen and Henry follow Jonesy/Mr. Gray to Derry, Maine and along the way share their childhood memories, including a time when Duddits and his friends tracked down a missing girl. Henry and Owen unite with Duddits, who is very sick with leukemia. After a tear-filled goodbye with Duddits' mother, the trio use Duddits' powers to follow Jonesy/Mr. Gray southward to Quabbin Reservoir. Mr. Gray intends to infect the local water supply with a dog he has infected with the spores, giving it a parasite. Jonesy is able to slow down Mr. Gray's progress considerably by getting the presence to strongly crave bacon, which it eats raw after obtaining it from a convenience store. The uncooked meat greatly sickens Jonesy's body, giving the trio just enough time to catch up and confront Mr. Gray at the reservoir.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: Using the last of his powers, Duddits helps Henry and Jonesy mentally overcome Mr. Gray as well as help Owen shoot the parasite that emerges from the dog. Duddits dies from the effort, but has prevented Mr. Gray's plans. Kurtz and his men arrive, leaving the infected soldier in their vehicle. They ambush and fatally shoot Owen, but Kurtz is killed by Freddy, who fears that Kurtz will shoot him next. Freddy flees, returning to their vehicle, but is killed by the parasite that was growing inside the now-deceased Perlmutter's body. Exhausted and half-insane, Henry sets the car on fire by shooting its gas tank, destroying the last of the alien presence on earth. He reunites with Jonesy, who passes out from exhaustion.


title: Dreamcatcher (novel)

text: Months later, Jonesy and Henry reminisce about their time in an underground military compound where they were held following the events at the reservoir. It is revealed that Jonesy was immune to the alien fungus all along, and Mr. Gray was only able to take over his mind because he believed it could - the idea being caught as in a dreamcatcher.


title: No Mercy (pop band)

text: No Mercy is a trio of American singers who were originally brought together in Germany by producer Frank Farian. The group consists of Bronx-born Marty Cintron and twin brothers Ariel and Gabriel Hernández, who hailed from Miami.


title: No Mercy (pop band)

text: In 1995 the group released their single "Missing" which was a cover version of Everything but the Girl's 1994 hit. No Mercy released their debut album "My Promise" on October 21, 1996. "My Promise" was the original title chosen by the trio's German record company, Hansa, BMG. The album was released in the U.S. only a week later under the self title "No Mercy" on October 29, 1996. The album, however, was released in most areas of the world with its original title "My Promise", including Australia where it received two times platinum sales accreditation. "My Promise" which became a top-5 album in countries like Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, produced two internationally popular singles, including "Where Do You Go" and "When I Die", the first being a cover of La Bouche's "Where Do You Go" from 1995. This was followed by the single "Please Don't Go", which entered the top 5 in Austria and the U.K. The trio released a re-worked version of the band Exile's number one song from 1978, "Kiss You All Over", which was a moderate success on the charts but still managed to enter the top 20 in Austria, the Netherlands and the UK.


title: No Mercy (pop band)

text: No Mercy's second album, "More", which was released in Germany on October 12, 1998, included singles such as "Hello How Are You", "More than a Feeling" (originally recorded by Boston) and "Tu Amor" (originally by Jon B., and later covered also by RBD). Although "More" was not as successful as its predecessor, it still managed to achieve success in the GSA region (Germany, Switzerland, Austria), peaking at No.7, No.9, No.9 respectively.