Review by C.J. Bunce
Sometimes a movie is exactly what you’re looking for. If you’re a fan of the coming of age or teen horror genres and the Xavier school superheroes weren’t exactly your thing, you have a new darker team of superheroes arriving on home streaming platforms this month in The New Mutants. The most eagerly awaited movie in years is here, one we’ve previewed and re-previewed new trailers for so many times we’ve almost lost count, all due to the 20th Century Studios merger into Disney and a pandemic. Much better than X-Men: Dark Phoenix and X-Men: Apocalypse, those who are bored with over-the-top, end-of-the-world plots and love the personal stories of the X-Men in the pages of Marvel Comics–and were really, really patient–will find it was worth the wait.
Review by C.J. Bunce
Comic book readers knew him first when he was created in 2011 from the mind of Brian Michael Bendis in the pages of Marvel Comics, then in 2018 Miles Morales took the world by storm in the groundbreaking animated movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, one of the best animated films that year. A new novel for teens fleshes out the young superhero as he moves to a new neighborhood and experiences a new generation’s take on the teen angst once exhibited in the comics pages of newspapers everywhere by his mentor, Peter Parker. Spider-Man Miles Morales: Wings of Fury is a prequel novel (not a comic book) to the new PlayStation game Spider-Man: Miles Morales from Insomniac Games and Sony, but it’s a story that can appeal to anyone beaten up and battered around by life and circumstance.
Another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, first scheduled for release in theaters in May 2020, then pushed to next May, Marvel’s out-of-sequence movie Black Widow will eventually arrive in your local theater. Until then you can take a look inside the film with Titan Magazines’ Black Widow: The Official Movie Special, a look at the characters, creators, and production of the movie, being released in three editions, one via newsstands, one via comic shops, and a hardcover version you can pick up here at Amazon and brick and mortar bookstores. We have a preview for borg readers below.
Review by C.J. Bunce
Anna Holmwood and Gigi Chang continue their landmark English translation of Jin Yong′s Legends of the Condor Heroes novels in A Snake Lies Waiting, now available in bookstores and here at Amazon, the first English translation of Volume 3. Another expert translation of Jin’s breathtaking adventure, full of wit and wisdom, expect to find the most action in the saga, as well as the single best scene of the entire series. In the spirit of Homer, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, Akira Kurosawa, and George Lucas, A Snake Lies Waiting is among the world’s greatest fantasy novels. It doesn’t fall into the trap of many major fantasy series: losing the steam built up in the first two installments. If Book Two was The Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers or The Godfather II, consider this volume another The Empire Strikes Back. The 1950s series has sold more than 300 million copies internationally over the past 60 years, but the books are finally being made available to U.S. and UK readers as part of this series.
It’s been an entire year since we last saw a new publication from TKO Studios, the company that brought the Netflix trademark binge to comic books. Though not as striking and punch-packed as Round 1 from the publisher early last year, the second round of titles had promise. At last Round 3 is on its way, and pre-orders are now available. So what does the next incarnation of TKO hold? First, none of the original series will see their sequels just yet. But you will have the option to check out three new mini-series, and two new concepts: an illustrated prose horror book and three TKO “shorts.” Check out previews for all below.
Currently housed in a Tudor-style mansion in Manhattan, The Explorers Club is a real place with a legacy of adventurers among its ranks. Parodied in The Freshman, the club is a meeting place established in 1904 for the purposes of promoting scientific exploration around the planet, and it does host an annual dinner with unusual flair. A table can cost you $100,000 and features food including tarantula and other exotic animals that would be a nightmare for animal rights advocates, not to mention the taxidermy displays (Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was filmed there). Honorary members include the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, John Glenn, Sir Edmund Hillary, Buzz Aldrin, and the club has bestowed its highest award to notables including Mary Leakey, Jane Goodall, Robert Ballard, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Not quite a secret society, the members have circumnavigated the world, flown, sailed, driven, and walked across each continent in search of the next discovery, returning back to the club to share the stories of their accomplishments. In one of his last projects before his death in 2003, journalist and noted personality George Plimpton (himself a member) collected 51 first-hand accounts of these journeys from the club’s ranks and published them as As Told at the Explorers Club: More Than Fifty Gripping Tales of Adventure, available now in a new edition from Lyons Press.
Founded in 1939 by Martin Goodman as Timely Comics, then re-branding as Atlas Comics, becoming a household name in 1961 thanks to the inspiration of creators Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, hitting its low in bankruptcy, but rising like the Phoenix to become a movie franchise and Disney property in the 21st century, Marvel Comics has seen eight decades of change. A new hardcover book aims to chronicle all that. Marvel: The First 80 Years–The True Story of a Pop-Culture Phenomenon is coming your way next month.
Although it wasn’t renewed for a second season, streaming service DC Universe’s Swamp Thing was the 2019 adaptation of a comic book series that stood apart in a year where every other series seemed to be based on a comic book. On the small screen, from The Umbrella Academy, The Boys, and Watchmen, to the last seasons of Netflix’s The Punisher and Jessica Jones, plus new seasons of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Gotham, and Legion, and new Batwoman and Doom Patrol series, 2019 meant a lot of comic book adaptations that either looked the same or they fought hard to try to be grittier and different. And that’s great–that means there’s something for everyone. But none compared to Swamp Thing. For our money, if you’re looking for fun, creepy timed for Halloween and not cartoony, soap opera-ish, or comic booky, and a series that earned its way to be one of the top 10 comic book adaptations of all, give Swamp Thing a try. Moving from DC Universe to the CW network where anyone can watch it, the first episode of Swamp Thing begins again tonight at 7 p.m. Central.
Two of television’s best genre actors are soon going to be donning superhero garb for the two major comic book movie franchises. First, earlier this month Disney+ announced Emmy-winning Orphan Black lead actress Tatiana Maslany will be expanding the realm of the Marvel Universe as She-Hulk in her own series. Then today Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson announced Leverage co-star Aldis Hodge will be joining him to fill bring into the fold one of the last members of the classic Justice League of America to have a major series or movie role. Hodge will play Hawkman in the Black Adam movie. Both will be live-action shows.
