Toil and Trouble #5 is a must read with its continually wondrous and awesome art. The writing is perfect too as the tale comes near its close.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? does its job fairly well as an interpretation of the novel. Parts have been changed from the prose of the novel. Nor does it have the cleaner world of the movie version. But the comic has much to offer for readers and can serve as a good introduction to the tale.

Hive of Scum is a column dedicated to the search for, critique of, and promotion of indie comics. N0! Not the fancy dooky “indie” rags over at Image, Dark Horse, Boom!, Black Mask, Action Lab, Vertigo, Oni Press, Top Shelf, Fantagraphics, IDW, and Dynamite. I’m talking about small press comics, stuff put out by jerks that gathered whatever scraps they could gather and published it themselves, or got some bottom feeder nobodies to publish it for them.

Taken together, the two Lady Snowblood films most assuredly live up to the associative reputation, and more at that

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June, 15, 2015. David Bowie has never played an actual deity on film, although as Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), he does get to hang out with Jesus for approximately three minutes. This fact seems almost surprising, considering how his musical personas often …

Batman Europa #3 is stunning and fun. When I reviewed the last issue, I stated that the art was the reason to pick up the book. This issue really turned around my view of what writers Matteo Casali and Brian Azzarello were trying to accomplish with the arc. They’ve really found their footing, and I am anxiously waiting for next issue’s conclusion if it finishes anywhere near as strongly as this issue.

Swamp Thing is one of the very best series from DC Comics in the past five years, from Scott Snyder’s revival of the character in 2011 to Charles Soule’s grandiose world-building years later.

Paper Girls #4 continues to be mysterious, genre-mixed, and sometimes surprisingly dramatic in its weirdness; beautifully and evocatively illustrated and colored; and marvelously fun to try to decode the references to figure out. I remain completely enamored with it.

The funny thing about watching older films is how the credits fade slowly in and out during the opening minutes when swelling music plays. The final credit, as is always the case, is awarded to the picture’s director. In the case of Behind Green Lights, the first fraction of a second proves misleading when viewers start to make out the given name Otto as it slowly fades in. The first immediate auteur that comes to mind for anybody knowledgeable of old school Hollywood is Otto Preminger.

The Last Contract starts off with a heavy foot to the pedal, creating a world quite quickly with characters that have a real sense of history. It is very difficult to take a hitman as a character and produce a story that feels fresh and exciting but it appears that this title is in more than capable hands.

Spider-Man/Deadpool #1 is filled with jokes, sexual tension, gross out gags, and slightly self-aware supervillains galore all from the wacky mind palace of Deadpool legend (and basically daddy) Joe Kelly. Ed McGuinness and Mark Morales’ art is slick with a side of disgusting and helps the story move on at a bouncy pace. There may be an overreliance on bathroom humor due to this issue’s villain, but there’s also jokes about Uber’s labor practices and some great puns for folks whose eyebrows are glued on higher than the rest of us. Early on, there seems to be a gap between the Hydro Man battle and Deadpool accidentally teleporting him and Dormammu to Hell, but by the final page all his revealed along with the series’ hook. It’s another Deadpool redemption story, but this time with Spider-Man as his goofy guardian angel. But his path isn’t as simple as that last sentence. (Deadpool does have a handy morality choosing gadget that is McGuinness’ best visual funny.)

The creative team for Ultimates definitely works in unison. While Ewing gives us the character beats and the story that will keep us coming back, Rocafort and Brown continue to assault our eyeballs with all manner of splash pages, colors, and inter-dimensional transport stars that are greeted by many styles of alien remains and a purple dragon to greet them. The Ultimates #3 proves that a team of past B and C list Heroes can be the next great thing in the right hands.

Archie #5 lacks the visual panache of its first four issues and makes the interesting, if unfortunate story choice of focusing on its least likable character. Villain-centric stories can be supremely fascinating (See Hannibal, Breaking Bad, or even Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca’s Darth Vader), but this is the equivalent of spending an entire issue on the douchebag lead of an Axe bodyspray commercial. And touching moment between Veronica and Archie and closure for Betty aside, the issue has really to add to the teen genre and falls behind both Jughead and books like Giant Days in the surreal humor department.

James Bond 007: VARGR #3 Written by Warren Ellis Art by Jason Masters Letters by Simon Bowland Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment After two issues during which writer Ellis and artist Masters supplied fans with ample set-up, issue number 3 of the VARGR storyline finally kicks into higher gear. Bond takes up on Kurjak’s invitation to inspect …

Overall, Invincible Iron Man, which is the flagship Marvel title, has concluded its first arc with definite promises of change for several characters and that will almost likely include pushing Iron Man and Tony to their limits especially since seeds are being planted for Civil War II during the next arc!

So every year in SWTOR around the festive season, Life Day comes around in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and usually it is jammed packed with lots of fun: new decorations, raving revelers, overheating gift droids, snow ball fights, tinsel bombs, while everything else runs smoothly. Well this year, Life Day broke everything! Okay maybe …

Like most of the “Vader Down” crossover, Star Wars #14 is filled with plenty of epic moments, like BT taking out a squad of stormtroopers with a flamethrower, every time Darth Vader gets a line, or the fact that R2D2 has some kind of poison antidote needle in his chassis. And Jason Aaron makes these moments cohere into some kind of a whole with the shared Obi Wan Force Ghost voice for Luke and Vader. (For all of its fun, the Han and Chewbacca vs. Krrsantan plot is just filler in the larger scheme of things.) Add slightly improved art from Deodato and Martin, and the “Vader Down” finale can’t come soon enough. (It comes out today as well and will be quite the family affair.)

It’s been four months wait since we last got a Bitch Planet fix. Despite that length of time, issue #6 does not disappoint. In fact, it amplifies the sound and fury of issue #5, offering ironic contrast to the characters of the present narrative by flashing back to the time of their innocence before the Protectorate squashed their dreams of building a better world. Guest artist Taki Soma brings a delicacy of line to the story, emphasizing that hope is a thing with feathers, but also hollow, fragile bones.

The Black Superheroes are actually based on heroes from African-American slave folklore, a fact that intrigued me. I set up an interview with Tangela and we met at a local café in the bustling art community of Riverside to talk about superheroes, diversity, and the positive power of fiction.

The presence of several storylines causes some to be handled poorly and not given the time they warrant, but the character motivations of two of Supergirl’s key antagonists are further fleshed out, leading to potentially exciting developments.

An avid student of the depiction of youth in movies, I’ve taken to calling the twenties, as we live them nowadays, the benties, after the British word “bent,” for messed up. And, while I realize not everyone will have found this decade of late adolescence / imposed maturity as disconcerting as all that, I know …

Narratively trying to follow Black Magick from point A to point B to point C and beyond may give off the impression that Rucka and Scott are moving slowly with the plot, only inching it along. That type of reading basically ignores the forming of the characters that is happening on each and every page. Rucka, always an economical writer, let’s Scott’s artwork tell so much of the story here as she visually fills in all of the elements of a life that reveals character. Whether it’s a flannel t-shirt tied around her waist when she has to cast some protection wards around her house or the fire extinguisher that seems to be placed to satisfy some municipal ordinance in some secret, shadowy lair, Rucka and Scott are shaping real lives for these characters that exist beyond the boundaries of the comic page.

Anomalisa Written by Charlie Kaufman Co-directed by Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman U.S., 2015 Weird is rarely used as a good quality in film criticism, but few words so completely describe Charlie Kaufman’s work as weird does. All of his films are a window into his very particular worldview, and that p.o.v. is certainly unlike …