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…
Power Trip By Jason Young 160 pages/$25/Oldtimes Blue Ribbon Digest Growing up in the 1970s, comic book readers didn’t have a lot in the way of extensions of their favorite characters. There was the occasional novel and ABC’s Super Friends, but really, little else. As a result, getting new stories or new versions of stories…
Unsuspecting comic book readers raised on the EC-inspired black and white horror magazines from Warren Publishing had no idea what to make of Heavy Metal when it debuted on American newsstands in 1977. We came to understand it was a domestic version of France’s wildly successful Metal Hurlant, and introduced us to European talents and…
It’s interesting to note that the two Marvel Cinematic Movies of the fall are the ones that hew furthest away from the source material. In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, out now in both streaming and disc, it makes the most sense because the original Master of Kung-Fu comic was very much…
Comic fandom has crossed so thoroughly into the mainstream, that mass media is proving elastic enough to encompass what was previously considered the obscure. Case in point, the just-released Justice Society: World War II direct-to-video film. Here is a story focused on the first comic book team that finally gets the spotlight after making cameos…
The Teen Titans have proven remarkably flexible since their mid-1960s debut as a collection of sidekicks. They appealed to the young readers with Bob Haney’s laughable “hip” language and as the readership grew up, so too did the members of the team, addressing adult issues with changing times and tastes. They were propelled from mid-list…
When DC Comics revived Captain Marvel in the 1970s, it was out of step with the audience and struggled to find success. Ever since, the publisher has been trying to find a formula to make the character and his world relevant to the readership. With Carol Danvers’ popularity as Captain Marvel ascendant, DC finally capitulated…
On September 18, 1964, a serious animated adventure series, demonstrating cartoons didn’t have to always be comical such as The Flintstones (still airing then on ABC). Instead, Jonny Quest captured the sense of exploration Americans were longing for thanks to the Mercury astronauts and the rising tide of espionage films, headed by James Bond. However,…
One of the smarter moves the DC Animated Universe did was begin to build interlocking storylines, characters, and voice artists. This has allowed them to build off previous events and let the status quo consistently evolve rather than feel static. (Amazing animation can do this far more easily and effectively than the film division.) As…
In 1980, I joined Fangoria just as the horror genre was switching from the supernatural to the slasher. I had missed John Carpenter’s Halloween, the granddaddy of them all, only catching it later as I prepared to interview P.J. Soles, who was the topless babysitter to die early on. By the time the sequel gave…
I was ten when I was taken to see 2001: A Space Odyssey for a friend’s birthday. I was coming to love all things science fiction by this point, but the film both dazzled and baffled me. I got most of it up until the final twenty minutes or so and was left utterly confused….
It feels as if Mark Wahlberg is casting about for a franchise to call his own. The actor, who recently bailed on the remake of The Six Million Dollar Man, may have found it in his fourth outing with director Peter Berg, Mile 22. This action-adventure film, out now from Universal Home Entertainment, introduces us…
