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Category: Blasts from the Past


Preview–The truth is out there… The X-Files returns this week with Season 10

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June 18, 2013

x-files-season-10-1-cover-b XFiless10_01_cvrRI

The X-Files are back.  Fox Mulder.  Dana Sculley.  Deputy Director Skinner.  The Lone Gunmen.  The Smoking Man.  Maybe even Eugene Tooms.  IDW Publishing and series creator Chris Carter are taking The X-Files where Dark Horse Comics and Joss Whedon took Buffy the Vampire Slayer after that series ended with Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8.  Starting Wednesday, Mulder and Sculley continue right where they left off after the end of the second movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, with the new monthly comic book series The X-Files: Season 10.  And yes, they are still a couple.  And yes, there will be more strange things lurking in the shadows.  Below check out a borg.com preview of the first seven pages of Issue #1 before its release in comic book stores tomorrow, courtesy of IDW Publishing.

As the first issue reveals, it’s just like the last episode of the TV show was only yesterday…

Previously on The X-Files…  For years FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley toiled in the X-Files Unit, a one-office division of the Bureau dealing with cases deemed unsolvable and related to unexplained phenomena.  During their investigations, Mulder, the “believer,” and Scully, the “skeptic,” delved into the occult, religion, urban legends, conspiracy theories, UFOs, alien abductions, and genetic engineering.  Eventually, both agents left the FBI and began a new life together in peaceful anonymity, which endured until today…

X-Files-Season-10-07   The_X-Files_Season_10_1

Writer Joe Harris promises to bring The X-Files up to date to the realities of 2013–What does modern technology, a world of the Blackberry and Android phones, and the political climate resurfacing Cold War Era issues mean for Mulder and Scully’s quest for the truth?  What new secrets will be behind all the unexplained events they encounter and all the conspiracies?  Artist Michael Walsh provides a familiar look and feel for both the actors behind the characters (David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson) and the often dark and mysterious settings for the series that fans will appreciate.  Harris and Walsh’s first issue is full of the good banter between Mulder, Scully, and Skinner we’re all been missing and jumps right in with the first catastrophe of the series.  Look for several great alternate covers to Issue #1, also (pictured above).

Enjoy this preview of Issue #1:

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Summer of Superman begins with new series and Man of Steel in theaters today

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Movies, Pop Culture, Superheroes — Leave a comment
June 14, 2013

Golden Age Superman Unchained 1   Superman Unchained 1 standard edition

The celebration of the 75th anniversary of Superman is in full swing this week as the new Superman movie Man of Steel opens in theaters across the country today.  DC Comics has coordinated with comic book stores with the release of a monthly Superman titles and a new monthly this week from some of DC Comics’ top creators.   Superman Unchained #1 is in comic book stores this week, bringing together writer Scott Snyder (Batman, Swamp Thing, The Wake) and artists Jim Lee (Justice League, Batman: Hush) and Scott Williams (Batman: The Dark Knight).  Snyder subtly and not so subtly ties in technologies and feats of our own world in his initial chapter of the exploits of the last son of Krypton.  Fans of Lee’s art will appreciate a two-sided, quad-fold pullout poster featuring key moments of the new story.

1930s Superman Unchained   Neal Adams Superman Unchained 1

Satellites circling Earth begin plummeting to the ground.  We encounter Superman as he plunges into a circling international space station, and he must quickly figure out a way to save the astronauts inside and the town below the station is barreling toward.  Superman references Guinness Book free-fall records once he drops off the astronauts.  If you track the actual International Space Station astronauts on Twitter or otherwise, you might find that what was once a passing destructive event in a quick read now carries a greater emotional impact.  Likewise, Snyder includes a prologue from Nagasaki in April of 1945 that reveals the creation of the new series’ ultimate villain–and what the “unchained” in Superman Unchained may be all about.

dc-comics-superman-unchained-issue-1d   Alt Superman Unchained

More than the standard monthly first issue, keep an eye out for a variety of alternate covers (see above and below), released by DC Comics as part of the 75th anniversary.  Look for a 1930s variant by Bruce Timm, a Golden Age variant by Dave Johnson, a Silver Age variant by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, a Bronze Age variant by Neal Adams, a Modern Age variant by Jerry Ordway, a Superman Reborn variant by Dan Jurgens, a Superman vs. Lex Luthor variant by Lee Bermejo a New 52 variant by Brett Booth.  The standard edition features a Lee/Williams cover, complete with DC Comics’ new 75 Years Superman logo.  Compare these re-creations of classic looks of Superman with our previous take on Superman with “The Many Faces of the Man of Steel.”

Superman Unchained alt cover Issue 1   Alt Bermejo Superman Unchained 1

If the glut of New 52 Superman titles since September 2011 left you walking away empty-handed from not knowing what to start with, and if All Star Superman isn’t your thing, Superman Unchained looks to be a Superman story with more classic elements and non-stop action.  The brief villain reveal indicates we may have an interesting new character and we get to revisit Superman’s relationship with Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, and The Daily Planet.

Jim Lee alt Superman Unchained 1   Alt b Superman Unchained 1

Rounding out the month of June and the Summer of Superman, look for the new Batman/Superman series featuring writer Greg Pak and artist Jae Lee in comic book stores next week.  Look for a “Director’s Cut” of Superman Unchained to be released in July–it will have more original Jim Lee art as we found in the re-issue of his Batman: Hush called Batman: Hush Unwrapped, reviewed here at borg.com earlier, as well as Snyder’s script.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

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Would the G.I. Joe Adventure Team meet its match in the Honey Trap Army?

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Fantasy, Pop Culture, Superheroes — Leave a comment
June 11, 2013

Honey Trap logo

What does the Honey Trap Army have to do with G.I. Joe?  Back to that in a minute.

If you’re not already familiar with Gentle Giant, it’s the toy company that creates several specialty collectible toys and busts.  Most are for the serious collector and not something kids will likely ever get their hands on with the company’s large-sized classic Star Wars line offering action figures at $75 and up.  And Gentle Giant handles several franchises, from Star Wars to Marvel to Harry Potter to The Hobbit.

Previously at borg.com we revealed some convention-exclusive figures and the retro-edition, giant rocket-firing Boba Fett may be the coolest large-sized series action figure ever made.  This past week Gentle Giant revealed its first 2013 San Diego Comic-Con exclusive figure, from its Honey Trap Army line: Whisper, variant:

Whisper variant promo

And the limited-to-100 figures edition sold out almost immediately at a whopping $669 per figure.  What’s the Honey Trap Army?  You won’t find a lot of information about them, other than we saw an excellent display of the four initial character figures at last year’s Comic-Con and artist Kevin Dart either created the comic art that inspired the toy line or was inspired by the toy line to draw the characters.  But there is a video with 1960s music and art design to introduce the toy line:

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Review–IDW’s anthology of Tarpé Mills’s classic Miss Fury

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Fantasy, Pop Culture, Superheroes — Leave a comment
June 8, 2013

Miss Fury first anthology cover

Miss Fury was ahead of her time.  The superhero moniker and nickname of Marla Drake, she was less a femme fatale, cast aside by the males that shared the comic page as with other contemporary tales, instead planted in the center of the action.  She was a true heroine, who, while maintaining her sex appeal and motherly nature (adopting a child during the series run), she was a strategic thinker and always the most cunning person in the room, despite male dominated conventions of the 1940s.  In fact, despite some handsome and well-intentioned male friends and companions, it’s the women of the series that are the most interesting, with oafish and blumbering men left for the supporting roles.

June Tarpé Mills was ahead of her time.  Serving as story writer and artist for the popular nearly decade running Miss Fury comic strip, she created the first costumed super-heroine when Superman and Batman were just getting their footholds in the fantasy realm.  Her character drawing is incredible and modern readers might compare her comic art style with modern-day Wonder Woman artist Cliff Chiang, her compositions with Alex Ross, and her glamour with Adam Hughes.  All of these comparisons are accurate and compliment each of these artists.  Mills’ story arcs collected in Tarpé Mills & Miss Fury: Sensational Sundays 1944 – 1949 anthology hardcover from IDW Publishing are intriguing and compelling–so much so that you could overlook the detailed “costuming” of Mills’ men and women.  But what you would miss.  Men were dressed appropriately in snappy suits, her women sport a historical catalog of designs, fabrics, colors, and styles, as well as a variety of 1940s hairdos.  Miss Fury might as well be a sourcebook for clothing historians.

Mills accomplished something many modern comic book readers beg for–less costumed character stories (i.e. Batman stories) and more secret identity doing the detective work out of the costume (i.e. Bruce Wayne stories).  In fact, you will hardly see Marla Drake appear in her catsuit in the pages of Miss Fury.  And it won’t bother you one bit.

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Book review–Bazooka Joe mini-comics’ 60th anniversary celebrated in new book

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June 4, 2013

Bazooka Joe 60th Anniversary

Review by C.J. Bunce

Until only a few years ago every gas station across the country and every local supermarket had Bazooka bubble gum on the counter as a point-of-sale purchase item and at last look three cents was a pretty fair price for the flavor packed into that loud pink rectangle of gum.  And until last year each of those pieces of gum was wrapped in a mini-comic wrapper featuring Bazooka Joe.  As nostalgia goes, what single item compares to the smell and flavor of Bazooka gum—that same smell and flavor tied to baseball cards.  Topps, the gum and trading card company, and Abrams Publishing have released a celebration of the gum and its mini-comic art with Bazooka Joe and His Gang 60th Anniversary.

On first look it’s the design that really hits this new collectible book out of the park—the book jacket has the appearance of a piece of Bazooka gum, complete with the see-through wax paper where you can almost peek at the comic on the back side.  The edge of the paper is all bubble gum pink, creating a perfect package for this coffee table look back at 60 years of the small “throwaway” comics that everyone eyed before wadding ‘em up and throwing them into the trash.  How many if these did you go through in your lifetime?  Literally thousands of the mini-comics were created, most by artist Wesley Morse, including so many in inventory that new comics were being wrapped around gum decades after Morse created them, and decades after he passed away.  This explains why kids in the 1970s were exposed to the 1950s style of artwork on the wrappers.

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Book Review–Stephen King’s new novel, Joyland

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Fantasy, Pop Culture — Leave a comment
June 3, 2013

Joyland cover

Review by C.J. Bunce

Tomorrow Stephen King’s newest novel, Joyland, hits the shelves already a pre-release #1 Bestseller.  Come back to borg.com Friday, June 7, 2013, for information on how to win copies of an exclusive edition of Joyland or canvas cover prints of the novel’s artwork from Titan Books, publisher of the Hard Case Crime imprint, as part of the Stephen King-Joyland online book tour.

As a fan of many Stephen King movies and TV series based on his books, strangely enough I never made it through a Stephen King novel before now.  Because King’s adapted visual works have been so consistent, I found the easy-going storytelling in Joyland to be very familiar.  Joyland contains themes found in the innocence of Stand By Me (based on King’s novella The Body) and Silver Bullet (based on King’s novella Cycle of the Werewolf), the supernatural of The Green Mile (based on King’s serial novel of the same name), and the Northeast U.S. town-life found in the TV series Haven (based on King’s The Colorado Kid) and The Dead Zone (based on King’s novel).  King’s storytelling is very recognizable–you’d know his style anywhere.  And Joyland is not horror, but a blend of true crime-type drama mixed with King’s signature violent/explicit/graphic accounts of not just the crime that is the focus of the story but the life of the protagonist.  Yet it is also a coming of age story for the 20s set–written in a manner similar to classic middle grade and young adult works, like S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and Tex, and even some of Judy Blume’s works.

Old Joyland Amusement Park

Old Joyland Amusement Park (King’s is a fictional park)

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First look–So how long until “Machete in Space”? Trejo is back in “Machete Kills”

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June 1, 2013

Machete-Kills-Poster

So how long will it be before we see Machete in Space?

Danny Trejo fans (you know who you are), take note.  This one is for you.

In 2010 Danny Trejo was asked whether his 1960s throwback, Robert Rodriquez-directed Grindhouse film Machete was all there was or whether it would be the beginning of a series.  Trejo answered that he wanted to make Machete Kills, Machete Kills Again, and finally Machete in Space.  The first of those sequels is finally real, and yesterday the first trailer was released in all its great, intentionally low-budget quality glory.

The first film, Machete, starred Trejo in the lead role along with an all-star cast, including Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, and Don Johnson.  Machete Kills again stars Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriquez, and Electra Avellan, adding to the cast both big and little known actors like Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, Cuba Gooding, Jr., William Sadler, Amber Heard, Sofia Vergara, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexa Vega, and Lady Gaga.  And, as you’ll see in this preview, Machete Kills introduces the actor born as Carlos Estevez following in his father Martin Sheen’s footsteps as a U.S. President.

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On video–Tim Burton revisits Dark Shadows

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May 28, 2013

Dark Shadows

Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Seldom does a preview really do a bad movie justice.  Remember those unappealing trailers for last summer’s campy remake of the classic ‘70s cult soap opera, Dark Shadows?  Well, they kind of nailed it.  It’s not actually as gaudy and silly as the ads made it out to be, but it is fairly boring, one actor turned in the worst performance of a career, and it runs out of plot about 30 minutes in.

But those first 30 minutes!  They are so, so very watchable.  Tim Burton & Co. absolutely nailed the period gothic revival flair, calling to mind films like Burnt Offerings and anything written by Shirley Jackson.  The mood is perfectly set by a marvelous flashback sequence to the 18th century and the founding of the Collins family fortunes—and misfortunes.  When wealthy Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) rejects his housemaid Angelique’s (Eva Green, The Golden Compass, Casino Royale) advances in favor of a more suitable mate (Bella Heathcote), Angelique reveals her witchier side, luring Heathcote’s Josette to her death and somehow cursing Barnabas into a vampire, then leaving him locked in a coffin for the next 200 years.  This segment beautifully launches the film, which jumps ahead to the “present” (1972) and a mysterious young woman (also Heathcote) alone on a train—practicing her interview, and her alias, for a post as governess at the Collins manor house.

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Howard Chaykin goes retro in 2013 with two new titles

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Sci Fi, Superheroes — Leave a comment
May 20, 2013

Buck Rogers banner

There’s no rest for the weary, and one of borg.com‘s favorite writer/artists, Howard Chaykin, seems to be proving that, producing new stories and art everywhere you turn.  In 2013 he is working on two new comic book series that take a nostalgic look back to the middle of the 20th century.  Chaykin is serving as series artist on Satellite Sam, and artist and writer bringing Buck Rogers and the 25th Century back to comics.  Where the Buck Rogers monthly will be a straightforward classic take on the character, Satellite Sam will look at a TV serial character like Buck Rogers and the actor behind the role.

Satellite Sam Issue 1 cover

Chaykin and writer Matt Fraction (Hawkeye) take a dark look at the Golden Age of television with Image Comics’ Satellite Sam.  The innocence portrayed in 1950s television is contrasted with real life Hollywood when Carlyle Bishop, star of the TV series Satellite Sam is found dead in the not so glitzy part of town.  His son Michael finds a box of sleazy photos, which opens up a detective story into a life far different from that portrayed on TV.  It sounds a bit like it may reflect the type of short and complex lives of real-life actors George Reeves (The Adventures of Superman) and Bob Crane (Hogan’s Heroes) in a Sunset Boulevard setting.

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BOOM! Studios plans adaptation of Frank Miller RoboCop screenplay

Filed under: Blasts from the Past, Comics & Books, Movies, Sci Fi, Superheroes — Leave a comment
May 17, 2013

Declan Shalvey RoboCop cover excerpt

BOOM! Studio announced this week that Steven Grant will be writing an adaptation of Frank Miller’s unproduced original RoboCop 3 screenplay, in an 8-issue mini-series titled RoboCop: Last Stand.  The series will be illustrated by Korkut Oztekin with cover art by Declan Shalvey and is expected to wrap up Miller’s early vision of the future cop.

Boom RoboCop panel from early comic book series

Grant also wrote an adaptation of Frank Miller’s script for Robocop 2 with Avatar Press.  Now holding the RoboCop rights previously held by Dynamite Comics, BOOM! is planning on releasing that earlier series as a deluxe hardcover.  Marvel, Dark Horse, Avatar, and Dynamite have all previously published RoboCop titles, making BOOM! the fifth publisher to take on the classic borg policeman.

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