By Dayton Ward A while back, I was asked by the good folks at ComicMix to submit myself to watching the “complete” Blue Thunder TV series in honor of its release on Blu-ray. Although I was and remain a fan of the original 1983 film on which the series is based, I’d never seen the…
The success and excellence of the Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault series is an encouraging sign that we may finally get the complete library on disc for collectors and fans. The third film arrives on Tuesday and is just as strong as the first two. The two-disc set presents the cartoons alphabetically by disc, which isn’t…
Quentin Tarantino has built a distinctive body of work by drawing phenomenal performances from his casts and daring to be audacious in both story and style. No two of his films are alike, and sitting down to see one for the first time still comes with a charge of anticipation. Viewers can argue over which…
Salvage By Renée Nault 256 pages/Ten Speed Press/$19.99 (sc) Class conflict has powered countless speculative stories, and Salvage uses that familiar tension to frame a near-future romance with an ecological warning beneath the surface. That setup gives Nault plenty of visual and thematic promise, but the book never develops its social divide or ecological premise…
The Hammer horror film revival was well underway by the time Dracula Has Risen from the Grave arrived in 1968. This was the fourth film starring Bram Stoker’s notorious vampire and the third with Christopher Lee wearing the fangs (he skipped the second one), and it is a mixed offering. On the one hand, screenwriter…
Keeping 007 Alive: Conversations with James Bond Continuation AuthorsBy Mark Edlitz232 Pages/Self-Published/$49 (hc), $29.99 (sc) Pop culture historian Mark Edlitz conducts good interviews, bringing passion and deep knowledge to each of his subjects. Of late, he has focused on Britain’s greatest spy, James Bond. He’s previously written The Lost Adventures of James Bond and James…
In 1958, this was as cutting-edge as it got. Ray Harryhausen took his stop-motion special effects wizardry and applied it to his first full-color film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, recognizing that the fantasy setting was ideal for his Dynamation creations. Viewed today, the effects can appear dated and, at times, quaint, but for those…
I’m sure I’ve re-read this story since 1986. You can’t prove it from this blog, though. And my copy of the trade paperback is the original 1987 edition, with minimal credits and supplemental material, from the era when the Big Two were still figuring out the whole reprint-floppies-in-a-permanent-format thing. (I’m not sure how I can…
I try to treat books on the level I find them; it’s only fair. This one is the first of a decent-length series of Western comics by two French creators. It collects the first two, very closely linked books in the series, both originally published in 2015 and translated by Tom Imber for this 2026…
I regularly read books of funny comics by creators I’m not familiar with. This is usually great – new funny stuff! new perspectives! potentially new favorites! – and there are lots of books out there by lots of funny people. But then I come to write about them here, and I worry that I’m saying…
The early 1970s were a transitional period for feature films. A new generation of filmmakers was making their presence known, alongside actors still unfamiliar to mainstream audiences. Content was evolving away from escapist fare toward more serious, provocative material. MGM, however, seemed slow to catch up. When Herb Solow, formerly of Desilu and Paramount, took…
There was a time when slackers were hip. Especially young slackers, particularly in Seattle or thereabouts. I don’t know why. I don’t remember the sequence, thirty-some years later – I think it was a “scene” first, even before Nirvana hit big, with breathless media coverage about what all these wacky young people were doing. But…
