Ralph Azham does not live in the same world as Dungeon . We’re pretty clear on that; this is not Terra Amata. But it’s the same kind of world: whatever Joann Sfar brings to the mix for Dungeon, that style of fantasy seems to be the way Lewis Trondheim operates. (There are some lesser similarities…
Any parent who somehow finds themselves watching HBOâs addictively compelling Euphoria must pray their children know no one like Rue or are raising anyone like her. The series, which debuted in 2019 just as the world locked down, has only grown in popularity. My high school students, apparently, didnât trip over it until season two…
Silver: Of Treasures and Thieves Book OneBy Stephan FranckAbrams ComicArts/224 Pages/$24.99 When you think youâve seen every interpretation of vampires, someone comes along to prove you wrong. In this case, Stephan Franck offers us vampires on a heist caper successfully mixing gothic horror and crime noir. Frank, a supervising animator on The Iron Giant, wrote…
Steven Spielberg is closely associated with science fiction even though heâs really only made two pure SF films. In 1978, he dazzled us with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and then, just four years later, enchanted us with E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The latter turns 40, and Universal Home Entertainment has released a special 40th-anniversary…
I am decades away from the target audience for the just-released Krypto the Superdog: the Complete Series. Ever since the Canine of Steel arrived in 1955, he has been a popular supporting player, and with all-things super-heroic now part of the pop culture zeitgeist, it made perfect sense to give him a series for the…
The live-action Titans series has been flawed from the get-go by presenting us with a Dick Grayson that the writers woefully misunderstand. There is no comic book creator who ever depicted Grayson in this manner so it sets the wrong tone. Its low-budget when created for the short-lived DC Universe streaming service didnât help. And…
Nigrum Malleoleum est omnis divisa in partes tres. Some Black Hammer books have numbers in the title: those are the main series. Before the book I’ll be complaining about today, there’s been Secret Origins , The Event , Age of Doom 1 , and Age of Doom 2 . Some Black Hammer books have the…
In the 1960s, Mort Weisinger ran more than a few stories speculating on what would happen had Superman and Batman married and had offspring, although no two stories were connected. Under Murray Boltinoff, Worldâs Finest Comics in 1973 began a series of stories about Clark Kent, Jr, and Bruce Wayne, Jr., which had its following….
I have to give Jordan Peele credit for original thinking. His stories tackle interesting ideas and premises, but each one comes with a shortcoming in narrative or structure. I wasnât as impressed with Us or Get Out as I was with his BlacKKKlansman. I do give him credit, though, for always trying something different. This…
When The Flash arrived on the CW, it was pitched as the anti-Arrow, a feel-good series about the joy of being a superhero. After all, the title character (Grant Gustin) was wearing a crimson and yellow suit; hard to be moody in that. As with all CW superhero series, it was quickly over-populated with too…
I first discovered Jeff Lemire as an inventive cartoonist was with the Vertigo title Sweet Tooth, and to my delighted surprise, it got turned into an equally enjoyable Netflix series. And now, thanks to Warner Archive, the Complete First Season is now available on Blu-ray. In a near future, the world has gone to the…
I don’t want to say there’s always a sequel…but, these days, it’s the way to bet. Anything that has any degree of success will have a follow-up, telling more of the story or doing as much of the same thing as possible. So when Brenna Thummler’s first graphic novel, Sheets , was an unexpected success…
