Cover Story - Top 10 Sentinels Covers

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This coming Monday marks the premiere of The Gifted, a new series from Fox tying into the X-Men mythos.  The X-Men have honestly kind of struggled for modern relevance, as the Avengers became Marvel’s moneymaking brand, which has always struck me as odd.  I mean, we live in an age of mass struggle by marginalized groups for basic human rights- that’s always been the X-Men’s greatest element.  It’s just hard to think that in an era of Black Lives Matter, the Refugee Crisis, the Mexican Border Wall, Muslim travel ban, ICE, and the struggle for Trans rights the X-Men can’t find a foothold.  

The Gifted looks to change that by zeroing in on the X-Men’s most topical bad guy- the Sentinels, basically a domestic anti-mutant drone army.  When they were created that particular idea sounded a lot more like science fiction than a real policy that’s probably just around the corner but regardless let’s dig into X-Men history to see why these big purple robots have always been so enduring. 

Meet the Mutants of The Gifted

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We’re mere days away from the premiere of Fox’s The Gifted series, the second live-action X-Men show to hit the airwaves after Legion and fourth overall after Generation X and Mutant X back in the ‘90s and 2000s respectively.  It’s a pretty big event, even if the show proper looks kind of far removed from the X-Men aesthetic and mythos and more grounded in the “hated and feared” narrative.  

I don’t mind them going that route- if ever there was a time for a show about government-sponsored violence and bigotry towards the marginalized it would be now.  Even so, I am intrigued by the collection of mutants they’ve cobbled together for the series an what it suggests about where things will be headed as the main heroes struggle to escape the Sentinels and find sanctuary from humanity.  With that in mind, let’s take a look at the mutants of The Gifted.

Amy Jackson cast as Saturn Girl on Supergirl

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One of the big additions to season 2 of Supergirl was Mon-El, a similarly powerful being to Kara that crash-landed on Earth from the planet Daxam, which neighbored Krypton.  Mon-El ultimately ended up eating up a bit too much of the show’s screen time for a lot of fans but his presence since left a lingering question over Supergirl: what about the Legion of Superheroes?  The Legion of Superheroes are a group of teenage superheroes from the 31^st century that were basically the X-Men before the X-Men. 

They’re a big part of the Superman mythos and their strongest has traditionally been Mon-El.  His presence on Supergirl season 2 combined with a cameo by a Legion flight ring on both The Flash and Supergirl has made it seem like CW has plans for the Legion at some point down the line.  Now, an additional piece has fallen into place with the revelation Saturn Girl will be joining the cast of Supergirl season 3, played by Amy Jackson. 

Static Thoughts - Cop Rock

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Today marks the return of Brooklyn 99, probably the last show we’re going to get for a long while that tries to be a cop comedy.  All things considered, Brooklyn 99 is a lot better than you’d probably expect from a show trying to sell the audience on a group of goofy, fun-loving cops but I really don’t think anyone else would be able to pull off what it does.  The bottom line is that in an age of seemingly endless and incredibly public police atrocities getting an audience to find police work “funny” has gone from entertainment bread and butter to a herculean task. 

Seriously though, cop comedy used to be a major moneymaking genre with massive franchises like Police Academy and Beverly Hills Cop.  The whole thing was so big through the ‘80s that things started to get pretty weird in the ‘90s to try and find new avenues for it.  In particular, 1989-1992 was a great time for just completely bonkers cop comedy genre fusion and as exhibit A in that case, I would present Cop Rock, the musical cop show. 

CW Announces Crisis on Earth-X Crossover

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I don’t think we really appreciate how genuinely good the CWniverse has actually turned out to be.  For a collection of series dramas with wildly variant budgets cooked up by the network that gave us One Tree Hill and 90210, the CWniverse is a staggeringly excellent achievement that I think will be looked back on the same way we remember Adam West’s Batman or Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman.  

It’s a great collection of adaptation that really understands that it’s the characterization and drama that have made superheroes so compelling for 80 years and counting, so it’s only fitting that they would do a wedding episode. 

Yes, this year’s crossover event between The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow has been revealed as a wedding story about the marriage of Barry Allen and Iris West, the central romance on The Flash.  However, in the grand tradition of comic book weddings, this particular matrimony is to be interrupted by unwelcome visitors from the multiverse/CW Seed in the form of the Ray.  

Making his jump from animation to live action the Ray, CW’s first gay character, is set to appear in the wedding episode, hotly pursued by villain’s from Earth-X, a world where the Nazis won WW2 and Supergirl, Flash, and Green Arrow are all Nazi Supermen.  Let’s talk Crisis on Earth-X.

James Cameron's Terminator 6 Update

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By now you’ve probably heard that James Cameron is returning to the Terminator franchise for yet another installment of this moribund film series.  If you’re wondering how that happened after Terminator Genisys was both terrible and a financial disappointment the answer is the rest of the world.  While the film only made back half its budget in the US it took in 350 million dollars overseas, largely from China, so more Terminator films were pretty much locked in.  However, it’s come up now that this new film, which is being pitched as a reunion flick for Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and James Cameron, won’t have anything to do with Terminator Genisys. 

That’s because even though ticket sales are important they aren’t the ultimate qualifier of the franchise age- that would be audience interest.  The way online engagement in fictional universe translates into coverage and speculation as a kind of free publicity and hype is what now drives the box office world, that’s why Marvel is still king, and Genisys did not manage to win anyone’s hearts or minds.  So, with the slate wiped clean and the franchise beginning again for its third attempt at a new trilogy what can we expect from the new Terminator? 

Static Thoughts - Beauty and the Beast (2012)

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Back in March, I took a look back at the 1987 Beauty and the Beast live action TV show.  If you need a refresher on that I said that it had some charming elements but was ultimately too much of a product of its time.  At the end of that article, I mentioned that there was a reboot of the show in 2012.  Well, now seems about the right time to tackle that particular piece of bizarre TV ephemera, especially given it’s the anniversary of the release of the animated Beauty and the Beast adaptation. 

However, the show itself has left me a little stymied.  It’s not exactly a bad series it’s just not interesting enough on its own to actually discuss so this will be less of a review than the previous article.  Instead, think of this as a retrospective as I think the way Beauty and the Beast (2012) actually happened is way more interesting than the show itself.  It’s a strange one-shot of a series that embodies the last moment in time when its various trends could come together in this way. 

Cover Story - Top 12 Star Trek: The Next Generation Covers

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And so we come to year two of the Star Trek celebration.  If you haven’t been following along, 2016 was the 50^th anniversary of Star Trek’s first airing, an event I celebrate with a whole bunch of articles.  2017 marks both the 30^th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as the premiere of the all-new ongoing series Star Trek: Discovery.   

As both of those events are in the upcoming week I’ve elected to honor them the only way I know how: a deep dive into cover art.  I already dedicated a whole Cover Story to Star Trek covers last year but the great thing about Star Trek is they keep giving you options so while last year I looked at Original Series related covers this year will be Next Generation related covers.  Presumably, come 2021 we’ll mark Enterprise’s anniversary the same way- assuming we make it that far.  And on that oh so cheerful note let’s dive into the top 12 Next Generation comic covers.

Netflix' Punisher Gets Full Trailer

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I don’t think it’d be unfair to say that it’s been a difficult year for Marvel Netflix.  First, there was the costly disaster of Iron Fist, then the shocking news that Marvel would be relocating its streaming rights to a Disney-centric new platform, and finally the very disappointing Defenders, which no one really tuned in for.  A lot has gone wrong or Marvel’s streaming service division, continuing the theme of Marvel having a lot of trouble finding lasting success outside the cinematic arena.  However, the year isn’t fully over yet and the house of ideas has one last release up their sleeves- The Punisher. 

Introduced to the MCU in 2016’s mixed bag of Daredevil season 2, Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is one of the real standouts of Marvel’s Netflix foray alongside season 1’s Kingpin and Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones.  He pretty much single-handedly made Daredevil season 2 worth watching so his solo series has been long in the anticipation, especially given the cult status afforded to Frank Castle’s previous adaptation Punisher: Warzone.  Now, we finally have our first real look at the upcoming series and boy does it leave one wanting. 

Tomb Raider Trailer Breakdown

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I think it’s fair to say video game movies are at a crossroads.  Video game films have had a weird, long, unrewarding history despite coming from a medium that’s in its relative infancy.  After making a big splash in the ‘90s with the likes of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter the genre was more or less banished to the realm of direct-to-DVD for the majority of the 2000s and even the early 2010s.  Basically, we spent the decade in which games became a snowballing phenomenon slogging through flicks like Blood Rayne, DOOM, and Hit Man. 

Lately, though, the video game film has come cautiously crawling back to the mainstream blockbuster scene, most pertinently with last years Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed films.  Neither of those were a big successes stateside but the ongoing Hollywood scramble for viable IP and the growing global market seems to have translated to renewed interest in this moribund genre, with a new standard bearer emerging for this new age of video games and women-oriented genre flicks- Tomb Raider, now finally coronated with a shiny new trailer for next year’s film. 

Jamie Lee Curtis Joins the Cast of Halloween (2018)

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One of the curious trends of the 2010s has been the stealth “return” of horror as a dominant force in cinema.  I use air quotes there because horror, as a genre, has never really gone away as it’s fundamental to storytelling as a craft, same as drama or romance.  However, horror has undeniably changed in how it’s perceived and how its made in the 2010s versus previous genres.  

There are a lot of factors to this like the rise of indie art-house horror hits like Babadook, It Follows, and The Witch as well as the return of summer horror blockbusters like The Conjuring and Purge franchises.  The biggest changeup, though, is in the spread of horror influences and how we’re making new films. 

Despite the 2010s as an age of franchises and cinematic universes horror has doggedly rejected those trends, settling more into a ton of very individualistic and different films between one or two actual franchises.  There’s not a lot of common ground between stuff like Lights Out, IT, You’re Next, and Krampus but they were all sizeable horror hits.  

Even among the heavily sequalized horror series like Insidious, they don’t have the same spread and impact as predecessors like Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, or Saw.  Now, in the waning days of the 2010s, that seems like it might be on the road to change with the coming of Danny McBride’s Halloween reboot, which will see the return of series star Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. 

Cover Story - Top 15 Basil Gogos Covers

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This weekend the world lost a titan of illustration and horror- Basil Gogos.  Gogos was one of the fundamental names in horror artwork; his style was unique and widely influential in a way that few others have ever managed.  He’s also one of a lot of artists that don't get brought up nearly enough due to how much his work was instrumental in defining a previous era.  Gogos’ greatest volume of published work with the farthest reaching impact was unquestionably his huge collection of cover art produced for Famous Monsters of Filmland.  

Famous Monsters was a horror/monster/schlock magazine that first saw print in 1958 and basically invented the horror movie subculture.  In the days before the Internet stuff like Famous Monsters was the only way horror fans could interact with other fans or even get a hint of the horror landscape beyond their own personal borders and it helped inspire a lot of fans turned creators over the years.  So, today we honor a great man and his great legacy with the top 15 Basil Gogos covers of Famous Monsters of Film Land.

Filmland - The House at the End of the Street

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This Friday marks the premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s latest opus to surrealist quasi-horror Mother!  The film promises to be another bizarre and terrifying offering from Aronofsky, who has built his career on similar works like Pi and Black Swan, but it also seems like something of a return piece for Jennifer Lawrence.  I’m hard-pressed to think of an actor that embodies the kind of rise and fall we only really see in New Hollywood like Lawrence.  

First emerging onto the critical radar in 2010 with Winter’s Bone she managed to claw her way into the realm of true movie star thanks to starring roles in X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games.  However, her fame was not really to last as almost immediately after 2013 everyone started getting a lot sicker of her. 

Partly it was roles, I don’t think Silver Linings Playbook or American Hustle really did her any favors, also the Hunger Games series abruptly dropped in influence and importance after the second film.  Really though, it was Passengers that sapped the public interest in her, partially from the content but mostly it’s because this seems to be where we all soured on her projected persona as America’s platonic crush/bff.  

Since then she’s rolled back a ton on her public image and Mother! looks to be taking her style of films in a radically new direction…well, maybe not entirely new.  Yes, back in 2010 before anyone really knew who she was Jennifer Lawrence made another horror film and we’re going to look at it today with The House at the End of the Street. 

Panel Vision - 10 Possible Wonder Woman 2 Developments

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So, Wonder Woman has become the seminal superhero of 2017 and will probably the ambassador of the entire genre for the next few years.  What’s more, the sequel has been now locked in for 2019 with Patty Jenkins set to return and heavy rumors it will be some kind of Cold War set story.  That could mean a lot of things in the long run so I’ve compiled a list of 10 heroes, villains, storylines, and developments we might see in Wonder Woman 2.  

Pretty much anything and everything is on the table at this point, especially with how the first film opened with 3 villains so it’s not like there’s a clear formula for how to proceed.  What’s more, Wonder Woman’s franchise history has always been kind of a much so there’s really not as much source material to draw from as you might think, though there’s certainly plenty of very interesting and rewarding directions they could take- here are 10 of them. 

Cover Story - Top 15 House of Mystery Covers

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This year has marked the second season for Syfy’s shockingly excellent new horror anthology series Channel Zero, a show that takes Internet Creepypastas and transforms them into riveting, experimental, and challenging horror stories.  It’s really an excellent show and this season’s story, The No-End House, has managed to surpass season 1 in every way.  Given that it’s a show blending together a creepy haunted house and horror anthology I figured the time was right to dig into one of my favorite comics: The House of Mystery. 

The House of Mystery was a horror/weird science anthology comic published by DC Comics starting in 1951 and running to 1983.  During the ‘50s the anthology format ruled the comics medium and House of Mystery was a very popular title.  Eventually, the format shifted from horror stories to superhero tales in the ‘60s when the book started publishing Martian Manhunter comics.  However, when the ‘70s rolled in and comics became a bit freer and more mature the book returned to its horror roots with a vengeance and that is what I come to honor today. 

Sony Considering Nightwatch Film

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So, one of the developing superhero universe stories of the late 2010s has been that Sony is looking to continue their own movie-verse that’s adjacent to Marvel’s.  If you haven’t been obsessively following superhero copyright disputes and rights agreements, I’ll try and provide an abridged version.  Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man as well as his attendant mythos of characters but the box office failure of the Amazing Spider-Man films coupled with the North Korea hack eroded the studio’s confidence.  In the wake of dwindling returns, Sony elected to strike a shared custody agreement with Marvel Studios and Disney whereby Marvel would produce a new Spider-Man as part of their universe and Sony would get a share of the profits. 

However, the rest of the Spider-Man stable of characters would have their rights determined on a case-by-case basis, which means Sony can make movies out of those characters without sharing the profits with Marvel/Disney.  So far Sony’s confirmed they’re making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy and Gina Prince-Bythewood is on tap to direct a Black Cat & Silver Sable film.  Now the latest hero rumored to be added to that line-up is a bizarre blast from the past in the form of…Nightwatch.