Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack #2 hits your local comic book store on October 25, but we have an exclusive five-page preview for you courtesy of Boom! Studios.
Last month, Manny Gomez gave the first issue a 3.8 out 5 stars and stated,“Story-wise the book totally captures the spirit, tone, and attitude of the movie. Anthony Burch, with help from filmmaker/creator John Carpenter, nails down the lovable sleazeball we all know as Jack Burton.”
Check out the five-page preview below:
About the series: The year is 2020, and hell is literally on Earth. Ching Dai, sick of relying on screw-ups like Lo Pan to do his bidding, has broken the barriers between Earth and the infinite hells and declared himself ruler of all. Sixty-year-old Jack Burton is alone in a tiny corner of Florida with only his broken radio to talk to, until one day it manages to pick up a message. Someone is out there in the hellscape, and they know a way to stop Ching Dai.
Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack is written by John Carpenter and Anthony Burch, the art is by Jorge Corona, with colors by Gabriel Cassata, and the book was lettered by Ed Dukeshire.
For the 32-page issue two, the main cover is by Stephane Roux, the “Movie Poster” Intermix Cover is by Jeremy Wilson, the Action Figure Subscription Cover is by Michael Adams and Marco D’Alfonso, the Connecting Incentive Cover is by Will Robson, and the Incentive Cover is by Daniel Warren Johnson.
Are you reading Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack? Let us know what you think of the series in the comment section below.
After more than a decade since their creation, DC’s Titans of Tomorrow are coming back. The group created by Geoff Johns and Mike McKone will play a role in Superman #38, as part of a new Rebirth crossover event titled Super Sons Of Tomorrow. Starting in December, both Super Sons and Superman will tell a story involving the Batman of Tomorrow.
An alternate version of the Dark Knight who wants to change the future. How? By eliminating Jonathan Kent. To do so he will call upon the Titans of Tomorrow to aid him in his mission. An alternate adult version of the famous team whose mindsets and beliefs surround violence and fascism.
This crossover will also mark the return of Conner Kent, Bart Allen, and Cassie Sandsmark. Superman #38 will be written by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason with illustrations by Ed Benes. It has a release date of January 3rd. Comment below with your thoughts about the return of these alternate Titans!
The Shannara Chronicles, a future-fantasy show that premiered on MTV moves to Spike TV for season two, and nothing has changed — for better or worse. Shannara premiered on MTV in 2016 with ten episodes. The show, based on a series of books by Terry Brooks, is part fantasy, part apocalyptic future. It centers around the story of a world that’s familiar in both reality and fantasy. It’s an interesting mix, somewhere in between The Road and Lord of the Rings.
It’s thousands of years in the future, and something happened that left most of humanity to history. Evolution created new species of intelligent humanoids such as Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes. The remnants of humanity and these new creatures live together in new towns and cities. Oh, magic is back too, mostly, but so are also new politics and struggles between good and evil.
On Tuesday the 17th Shannara returned to TV with a new season, on a new channel, and from the looks of episode one, the show hasn’t missed a beat. Starting off from the end of season one, the new season quickly picks up on the story of human Eretria (Ivana Baquero) who sacrificed herself in an underground network of tunnels to save her elven friends Wil Ohmsford (Austin Butler) and Amberle Elessedil (Poppy Drayton). Eretria looks doomed, but since her name is in the credits we know, instead, a twist is coming. The twist quickly makes things interesting, introducing new characters and moving a year forward. After Eretria’s story, we catch up with Wil who is learning medicine at a village and hiding from the forces that want him dead.
Perhaps the weakest part of the initial season was the writing which often produced some cringeworthy moments. For the new season, a lot of that sort of thing is ironed out, and while tropes of the genre do pop up from time to time, it’s a step above what came before. Also, the performances by Baquero and Butler, along with the supporting cast, more than makeup for this slight deficiency.
Shannara’s production budget looks a little healthier throughout the first episode too. While season one wasn’t terrible, there was some questionable CG here and there. Nothing like that rears it’s pixellated head here, and the directing style looks a level or two higher than before. Wide-scale shots of the world fill in the overall narrative, making the season two premier feel much richer than any episode from season one. It’s a more cinematic vibe, and while it’s not quite Game of Thrones, Shannara tells a fun, exciting, and intrigue-filled story. Fans of fantasy adventures or sci-fi will find the mix presented by Shannara even more interesting this season.
The bottom line here is, if you liked season one of Shannara, then that’s more than enough reason to continue watching on Spike. The show continues the story about the forces of good and evil battling for supremacy but through the eyes of characters struggling with personal choices. It’s a balanced show and, frankly, one that truly earns the often hyperbolic description of being unlike anything else on TV.
Find episode reviews of The Shannara Chronicles
right here every week!
DC Comics has unveiled a double dose of Super-Family covers this week! First up, we have an exclusive first-look at Dustin Nguyen’s variant cover for Super Sons #10:
“SECRET HEADQUARTERS”! In the aftermath of “Planet of the Capes,” big changes challenge both Damian and Jon, as Superboy revels in his new power and a decision by Batman rocks Robin’s world forever. And as promised earlier, the debut of the Super Sons’ new secret headquarters!
Super Sons is written by Peter J. Tomasi, with interior art by Jose Luis.
Also revealed this week was Patrick Gleason’s cover for Superman #35:
“IMPERIUS LEX” part three! Steppenwolf, field general of Apokolips, enlists Superman’s son Jon into his Canine Cavalry to stop Superman from helping Luthor reclaim the throne once held by Darkseid.
In addition to doing the cover, Gleason also writes Superman along with frequent collaborator Tomasi. Stephen Segovia, Travis Moore, Art Thibert will all handle art for issue #35.
Young Jonathan Kent features prominently on both covers, as the new Superboy continues to grow his presence in the DC universe.
What do you think of the covers? Let us know in the comments!
It always seems like a good time to reiterate the fact that Westerns are not dead and they aren’t going anywhere. they’re only getting stronger it seems. This week alone, we got a trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s Godless starring Jeff Daniels. Now, we have The Ballad of Lefty Brown, a straight-up revenge Western with another aging great who is in the middle of a resurgence: Bill Pullman.
This trailer looks like everything fans of the genre would expect. Check it out:
The synopsis is simple and to the point, just like the trailer indicates: “A coming of age Western for a 65-year old man.”
The Ballad of Lefty Brown debuted at this year’s SXSW, and gained proper buzz from said screening. It doesn’t look earth shattering in the plot department, but when it comes to these types of stories it’s not the story as much as what you do with it.
Peter Fonda also stars alongside Pullman, albeit for a just a little while it seems. Director Jared Moshe only has one other credit, the 2012 Western Dead Man’s Burden, to his name, so perhaps this one will be his breakout. A24 is involved, so it’s probably going to be great.
On the eve of the release of The Snowman, a ridiculous serial-killer movie, comes Hangman, another ridiculous serial-killer movie starring Al Pacino as a cop chasing down a killer who uses… wait for it… Hangman as his clues.
Yes, THAt hangman, the game we’ve all played while we’re waiting at the doctor’s office or taking a long road trip. But this guy, this MADMAN, uses the game to tell Pacino and his partner, Karl Urban, he is gonna KILL AGAIN!
Check out this trailer:
If you want my explanation as to why the serial killer subgenre has struggled for years, ever since Se7en‘s release, look here. Or, watch this trailer again and you will have all the answers you need. Hey, also, here’s this poster, where Al Pacino looks like he just stood up from watching the finished product and has immediate regret.
Where’s Nicolas Cage when you need him?
Hangman also stars Brittany Snow, and features a horrific cover of The Animals’ “House of The Rising Sun.” There’s no news regarding release dates but, I mean, c’mon… this one is headed straight to a VOD platform near you. If you’re going to the theater to see this one that’s on you.
Another week, another chapter in the Dark Nights Metal saga. Last week, we had the Justice League searching for Bruce Wayne in the main Dark Nights series, so until the next release, we have more origin stories of the multiversal invaders. We had The Red Death, The Murder Machine, and The Dawnbreaker each taking on their counterparts while we learned their origins. This week we have one of the more curious creations of the Dark Knights: Batman The Drowned. So what could this Batwoman possibly do to the world the others haven’t?
**Some Spoilers Below**
Story:
The Drowned, if not obvious by the name, is an amalgamation between Batman and Aquaman. She comes from Earth -11, a gender-swapped earth, where “Bryce” Wayne has a mistrust for metahumans after losing the love of her life. When Aquawoman first appeared, Bryce charged into battle with the intent to kill her. This attack is successful, which leads to the Atlanteans retaliating by flooding the surface. To combat this threat Batwoman genetically alters herself to gain powers, similar to an Atlantean (water breathing, super strength, etc).
The origin story of this Batman might be the most intriguing one I have seen yet. Continuing the trend of twisting Batman’s qualities, we have Bryce’s mistrust cause the destruction of her city. This leads her to give herself powers to fight the Atlanteans, which is something unseen in most Batman comics. Most members of the Bat-family, in nearly every iteration, can rely on their skills to stand as equals to superpowered heroes. They never admit they need the powers as The Drowned does here.
When it comes to the action, like the past stories, the heroes have a hard time trying to keep The Drowned down. While it was fine at first, especially considering the heroes now have the weakness in the main storyline, I’d actually to see the Dark Knights struggle a bit. These are the world’s greatest heroes they’re going up against, you’d expect them to have some sort of difficulty.
Art:
In terms of art, the pencil work succeeds on all fronts. The design of The Drowned and her minions are terrifying, reminiscent of the sea monsters that sailors would fear centuries ago. Her powers of corrupting sea life are evocative as you watch the details cover their faces. It’s small details that help art feel more alive.
There is a downside to the art and it’s very distracting: the colors. As hilarious as this might sound, the issue gets too dark sometimes. I know this is supposed to be an evil Batwoman, so the colors are expected to be dark, but most of the colors have the suit form into one black blob when seen at a distance.
This is not to say that the all of the color work is terrible. The colors of Aquaman, Mera, and during the battle of Batwoman and Aquawoman are fantastic and allow the pictures to pop off the page. It’s just the rest of the issue tries to be dark, which works, but is difficult for the reader to take in what is on the page.
Conclusion:
I think it’s safe to say that this Dark Knight is worthy of its title and another fantastic chapter in this event. The origin is as compelling as Murder Machine and Red Death while adding its own twist. While the pencil work is fantastic, the coloring ends up being too dark at times to truly enjoy it. If you’ve been a fan of the saga so far, Aquaman, or multiverse stories, this comic is for you.
When the Green Lanterns series was first announced, I was worried. These two protagonists, Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, have only been introduced within the last five years, where the other Green Lanterns have been around for decades. How could two characters who have only been in a handful of storylines headline during a relaunch that dedicates itself to honoring the past? The answer is simple: The characters are compelling and human. Every adventure with them may not be galactic threats like the other Green Lantern books, but it succeeds in keeping stories on Earth, both figuratively and literally.
**Some Spoilers Below**
Story:
This issue finds our favorite Lantern rookies heading to a planet in risk of destruction to save its inhabitants.
While that might sound exciting, that is only half of the issue. The other half, told in flashbacks, have our characters fighting a more difficult battle: Job hunting. These flashback sequences show that Jessica and Simon are indeed human with real-world issues.
In the case of Jessica, a woman with social anxiety, she is recommended for getting a job to help combat it by experiencing “the whole wide world.” While I can’t say if this is an actual therapeutic practice, it’s good to see that she is actually trying to remedy her anxiety.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the bold Simon Baz searches for a job to help provide for his family. While that may not seem that compelling, his fear for trying to find one is. He reveals that he might be denied jobs due to his history of being wrongfully labeled as a terrorist. Simon is afraid of profiling due to his past and his middle eastern heritage, a real-world issue.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Lantern action sequences, and the few we have here are great, but the meat of this story is focused on the human side of the Lanterns.
Art:
As expected, the art for a Lantern comic stands out, but there is one aspect that affects the book negatively.
The pencil work of Eduardo Pansica is extremely creative in this issue. The designs of the aliens that the Lanterns were sent to save are unique, and unlike anything I have seen in this universe. The constructs created are creative as well. Instead of it being a net that stops rocks from falling, it’s a spider making a web. It might feel unnecessary to go into such detail, but it actually speaks to the characters considering one of them couldn’t make a construct at the start of the series. To see the pair using their powers in such detail with fantastic art shows that the series has truly grown.
Looks a bit like Batman in the shadows…
While the pencil work is phenomenal, the colors of Alex Sollazzo make the issue feel haunting. When the Lanterns are on the planet, we get close-ups of their faces with energy forming around them. The shadows from their light make the faces more menacing, making them look like the antagonists rather than the heroes. On the one hand, this was used to show the intensity of their powers. This effect does work, but it also makes them frightening.
Conclusion:
This issue was spectacular. The story might not be as action-packed as one might hope but shows a more relatable human route. The art is creative and beautiful, albeit a bit haunting at times. If you’re interested in learning about these new heroes, now is the perfect time to hop aboard.
I Love You, Daddy, Louis C.K.’s new film which he made in semi-secret but managed to get an all-star cast, seems problematic. It looks and sounds like a Woody Allen film, it looks and sounds like Woody Allen’s personal life, and the subject matter sure does feel awkward given the current climate.
See for yourself:
There isn’t any “official” synopsis out there, but you get the gist, no? If not, here’s what The Playlist had to say about it:
Yet, the film follows C.K. as a rich TV writer Glen and Chloe Grace Moretz as his 17 year old daughter China who comes to live with him during her senior year of high school. While Glen and China go on a trip to the Hamptons, they encounter revered film director Leslie (John Malkovich), who has a legacy for seducing minors (making the parallels to both Woody Allen and Roman Polanski quite obvious). You can guess what happens between China and Leslie.
I’m not one to be offended easily, and I love Louis C.K. and his brilliant standup and TV shows, but wow does this feel like the wrong time to release this movie. Of course, Louis didn’t realize the whole Weinstein thing was around the corner, but he’s also sort of thumbing his nose at his own rumored transgressions.
In 1995, David Fincher’s nightmarish crime thriller Se7en exploded on the scene, shocking and stunning audiences with something they had never before seen. It was, and is, an incredible film, a mixture of horror and police procedural and violence and despair, a literal journey into the circles of hell thanks to the elaborate plan from the film’s killer, John Doe -played by a relatively unknown actor at time named Kevin Spacey.
Se7en, despite being the hardest of R-rated films, full of nihilistic brutality and gore, managed to crack the top ten at the box office in 1995, more than tripling its budget. Part of that was due tot he star power of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, part of it was the incredible word of mouth and stunning final act, which left audiences staggering speechless from their auditoriums, imploring their friends to see this movie so they could discuss. Naturally, the success of Fincher’s film meant the imitators would be just around the corner, and the serial killer genre has never been able to step out of the shadows of John Doe.
No matter how hard studios tried, they could never replicate the visceral power of Se7en, mostly because they went about it all wrong. There was Kiss the Girls, perhaps the most direct echo of Se7en, and not just because Morgan Freeman was involved. The first film to try and make James Patterson’s Alex Cross character a “thing,” Kiss the Girls had police chasing down a serial killer with an elaborate method and an equally spooky lair. It was a moderate success in 1997, but has mostly faded into the ether of late 90s wannabes.
Then there was The Bone Collector, another story about cops chasing serial killers, this time with Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington. You can guess this killer’s bit. Phillip Noyce’s thriller tried to trick things up, having Washington’s character confined to a hospital bed at home, having been paralyzed in the prologue. It wasn’t enough to separate the film from the gaggle of films that tried their hardest to make this new subgenre flourish. The Bone Collector didn’t make its budget back upon initial release, and has become somewhat of a punchline.
This was the case with the serial killer wave in the years following Se7en. The next Alex Cross adventure Along Came a Spider, or the OTHER Ashely Judd psychological thriller Twisted (perhaps the nadir of the entire subgenre), or the Keanu Reeves thriller The Watcher, never caught on. They all tried to imitate the elaborate gimmick at the core of Fincher’s film, but they ignored what made that film brilliant to begin with. Despite the common acceptance that Se7en is “gritty and realistic,” the truth is it is anything but realistic when you back up and take in the entire scope.
The world in which John Doe is wreaking havoc is a nondescript city, a hellscape of rain and dirt and disparate existential crises all crashing into each other. The location is never given, though it is meant to resemble New York or, perhaps, Chicago. But it’s not these cities, it is a world that does not exist in the real world, made all the more disorienting and “unreal” by the third act’s journey into the desert. Though it is filmed in Los Angeles, it is never intended to be as such, and it is never filmed to represent the City of Angels, which might be the only place where a desert would be close enough. The juxtaposition of the concrete jungle and the barren sun-bleached finale give Se7en a sense of nightmarish uncertainty.
All the films in Se7en‘s wake leaned into the elaborate gimmickry of their killers, but they never tried to make the setting anything but real. Kiss the Girls, The Bone Collector, these films took place in places the audience could all recognize, in real cities on the map. It stole from the horrific skewed reality, teetering on the brink of dystopia, in Se7en. The fact John Doe was carrying out such gruesome crimes against the backdrop of a nondescript landscape allowed the audience to detach from the killings themselves and subsequently get swept up in the minutiae of Detective Mills and Somerset as they tried desperately to not only solve the crimes, but psychologically survive their world.
For years, these types of serial killer films faded from the zeitgeist. In the post-9/11 world, real horrors were more popular (for lack of a better term) than some serial killer collecting bones or toying with police officers. Serial killer films tapped into true stories with some success, most notably David Fincher’s masterpiece Zodiac. Even his adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, arguably a distant cousin of Se7en, didn’t resonate the same.
Enter The Snowman, this weekend’s Michael Fassbender thriller about a killer leaving goofy messages taunting police officer and carrying out elaborate murders. It seems, judging by the reviews, that the serial killer subgenre has still never found a way to replicate the raw power of Fincher’s 1995 film. Maybe The Snowman never had a chance, or maybe everyone involved wanted to try and make their own Se7en but missed what made that one so special. It’s probably, as is the case with all the wannabes in Se7en‘s wake, a little bit of both.
