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Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1977) #250
Oh, I’m sorry, I was expecting them to finish the story this issue. What was I thinking? I was actually thinking it’s the 250th issue, and they’d do a double-size spectacular, concluding a lengthy story arc involving an evil Legionnaire plotting against the group. The issue’s got a plot and pencils by Jim Starlin (under… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #18
This issue ought to be good. It’s Marv Wolfman writing, it’s Gene Colan, it’s Tom Palmer. Wolfman’s written Tomb; he’s written Werewolf by Night, so there shouldn’t be any problem doing a crossover. Except Wolfman’s amalgamation of Tomb and Werewolf doesn’t work. Colan and Palmer do a great job illustrating Jack Russell and his psychic… 📖
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Frasier (1993) s07e09 – The Apparent Trap
The Apparent Trap is another episode “Frasier” can only do because it’s been running seven seasons, and there’s lots of back story. Plus, guest star kid Trevor Einhorn has aged enough he can more fully participate in the episode. He’s not quite full supporting, but he’s closer than he’s ever been before. It’s a Lilith… 📖
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Detective Comics (1937) #473
Steve Englehart writes Bruce Wayne as a narcissistic asshole who bullies and psychologically abuses ward Dick Grayson. Grayson, for his part, has drunk the Kool-Aid; at one point, he talks about how mental illness is no excuse, and at another, he waxes on about Batman’s such a great man. It’s such weird, bad writing. Though… 📖
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A Walk Through Hell (2018) #11
Goran Sudžuka made it until issue eleven to rush the art. Before, when he stopped putting effort into the inks, it was noticeable and unfortunate because Walk Through Hell lost its greatest asset. It wasn’t bad; it just lost the charm. Though, obviously, it’s not clear anything could’ve brought Walk “charm.” Anyway. This issue Sudžuka’s… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #14
Marv Wolfman writes the h-e-double hockey sticks out of this issue. Unfortunately, it’s got a lousy ending as Wolfman gets stuck resolving Jack’s subplot with his step-father, Phillip, in a resolution seemingly intended to conclude the aged arc as quickly as possible. But there are some real highlights, including Jack’s moody romance narration for him… 📖
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Kill or Be Killed (2016) #17
Does writer Ed Brubaker actually not see the possibilities he raises with scenes? It’s fascinating. For the second or third time, Brubaker’s started an issue completely invalidating a possibility the previous one raised. There’s an anecdote about a short story being a room in a house, a novel being a house. Maybe Gordon Lish (but… 📖
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Evil (2019) s03e06 – The Demon of Algorithms
It seems like it’s been a while since “Evil” has done a “modern technology will ruin our lives” fear-mongering episode. Or maybe it’s just Algorithms fully integrates “Evil”’s streaming status (f-bombs galore) with the format, making it feel like the epitome of the sub-genre. This episode’s about TikTok and how it ruins everyone’s life. The… 📖
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Dracula Lives (1973) #7
I fear Dracula Lives has reached a turning point and not for the better. While this issue retains the same page count as previous issues, there’s a lot less content. Comics content. There’s still text content, including Tony Isabella finding his voice in his Taste the Blood of Dracula review, but there’s a little bit… 📖
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William Gibson’s Alien 3 (2018) #3
It’s old home week this issue; not only do Newt and Hicks have (relatively) big scenes this issue, but Bishop is also back in one piece. All of a sudden, it feels more like a sequel to Aliens, but only slightly. This Alien 3 hasn’t got any time for a kid, so Newt’s got to… 📖
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Jurassic World Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)
It’s not hard to pinpoint what’s wrong with Jurassic World Dominion, the inglorious (hopefully) end of a twenty-nine-year-old franchise. Director Trevorrow does a bad job directing, he and co-writer Emily Carmichael do a bottom-of-the-barrel job with the script, the actors all seem contractually bound and miserable (even the new additions, with one exception), and Michael… 📖
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Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour (2021) #3
I’m not sure last issue’s protracted Catwoman cameo really put Eat. Bang! Kill. off-track as much as behind, but this issue more than makes up for it. Nightwing’s constant butt shots alone get the series back its goodwill. Harley and Ivy are in Blüdhaven for a date night. It started with a rest stop, which… 📖
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Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1977) #249
The back-up, starring Chameleon Boy, is nine pages, only a page shorter than the feature, which resolves last issue’s shit monster story. Sort of resolves. Also, the shit monster looks leafier this issue, presumably thanks to Jack Abel’s inks (it’s like they’re fighting Oscar the Grouches). Even if the feature weren’t so slight, the back-up… 📖
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The Orville (2017) s03e07 – From Unknown Graves
I’m not sure if this episode’s the best “Orville” of the season, but it’s definitely the best constructed. The script—credit to David A. Goodman, who’s written “Orville” in previous seasons; this episode’s his first “New Horizons”—is magnificent in every respect. There are four perfectly balanced plots. First, the Orville is on a diplomatic mission to… 📖
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Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981, John Badham)
Director Badham intended Whose Life Is It Anyway? to be black and white, which would probably help with the staginess. It’s a play adaptation. Badham handles the relatively big, busy cast well, but he doesn’t know how to shoot lead Richard Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss is playing a recently paralyzed sculptor who, after approximately six months, realizes… 📖
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Ms. Marvel (2022) s01e06 – No Normal
“Ms. Marvel” wraps up with its inevitable MCU third act finish, with Iman Vellani teaming up with her friends to save Rish Shah from the racist Damage Control agent (Alysia Reiner, who seems strangely unconcerned with the type-casting). Reiner starts the episode explaining it’s not just brown people she doesn’t like; it’s teenage brown people… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #17
This issue isn’t my favorite Tomb of Dracula (though I’m not keeping track), but I think it’s the most impressively written one so far. Writer Marv Wolfman does an espionage on a train thriller, just with Dracula and his supporting cast. And tying into the big Doctor Sun subplot he’s been working on for five… 📖
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Detective Comics (1937) #472
I’ve the sneaking suspicion last issue, when the evil nurse commented on Hugo Strange and Batman complementing each other’s physical and mental prowess when they should be fighting, it wasn’t writer Steve Englehart acknowledging the absurdity of the machismo; it was him making fun of the silly woman for not getting it. There’s a scene… 📖
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A Walk Through Hell (2018) #10
I’m not sure this issue takes more than five minutes to read—there’s a lot of dialogue to pad it out—and, at this point in A Walk Through Hell, it’s fine. The shorter the read, the better. It’s a flashback issue to FBI agent McGregor’s high school years and something terrible. But the something terrible isn’t… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #13
Has Frank Chiaramonte gotten better at inking Mike Ploog, or am I just so happy to see Ploog pencils, I’ll take whatever I get, inking-wise. The inks cut into some of the pencil’s roundness, making people more angular—Phillip Russell in particular. But the werewolf’s still nice and Ploog-y, plus there are plenty of great page… 📖
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Kill or Be Killed (2016) #16
Well, writer Ed Brubaker is not overcomplicating matters with a last-minute reveal. He’s just stumbling along, as usual, the comic suddenly with far less momentum as Dylan’s in a mental hospital. The slowing down makes sense—after confessing to being the vigilante and finding out there’s still a red-masked vigilante in New York (a copycat, Dylan’s… 📖
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Superman for All Seasons (1998) #4
I just realized… with writer Jeph Loeb leaning heavily on the Protestantism for this final issue (in addition to the pastor giving a sermon, Pete Ross is getting churchy), there’s no good reason to not have some Christmas in it. Clark is back in Smallville, having run home after discovering Lex Luthor can kill people… 📖
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Evil (2019) s03e05 – The Angel of Warning
The sad thing about this episode is Matthew Kregor’s direction is good. The episode starts with Mike Colter getting called to his first emergency crisis intervention; a building collapses, and he’s there to talk to the Catholics. He doesn’t remember his collar; everyone thinks he’s a cop; it’s fairly amusing despite the grim circumstances; it’s… 📖
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Dracula Lives (1973) #6
I’m trying to decide if this issue is lackluster or if I’m just peeved I’ve managed to outpace Tomb of Dracula in my Dracula Lives read-through. The first story refers to future issues of Tomb, which would be spoilers if the comics weren’t fifty years old and I hadn’t read them already. Well, except this… 📖
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All Rise (2019) s03e05 – It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
Last season we got a plot about Wilson Bethel’s relationship with Lindsey Gort getting unsteady as college crush Ryan Michelle Bathe started hanging around. It got very soapy. This season, it’s Simone Missick’s turn. And it again involves Bathe. She’s in L.A. (for the first time this season) with her new beau, Sean Blakemore. Blakemore… 📖
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Ms. Marvel (2022) s01e05 – Time and Again
While director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy continues to have action scene problems, the rest of the episode’s direction is so spectacular it doesn’t matter. There are only a couple minutes of superhero action, with the rest being child-missing-in-crowd stuff. Obaid-Chinoy’s perfectly fine with the latter; it’s just the superhero stuff. Last episode left Iman Vellani stranded in… 📖
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The Boys (2019) s03e08 – The Instant White-Hot Wild
So, before getting started with the episode itself, I just want to say it’s a very good episode, with excellent direction from Sarah Boyd, a great script (credited to David Reed and Logan Ritchey), and fine performances from most of the cast. There aren’t any bad performances. Well, maybe Cameron Crovetti as Antony Starr’s superpowered… 📖
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The Orville (2017) s03e06 – Twice in a Lifetime
I was expecting a lot more from a time-traveling romance episode written by Seth MacFarlane. “The Orville: New Horizons” seems to be focusing on a character an episode, sometimes a character and a half, but usually a character. There are nine principal cast members. There are ten episodes. They should get to everyone (it’s going… 📖
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William Gibson’s Alien 3 (2018) #2
Apparently, William Gibson’s Alien 3 was going to be one of those sequels where the franchise lead spends a bunch of time off-screen or unconscious; Ripley’s knocked out this issue, so Sigourney Weaver would be doing the Jamie Lee Curtis Halloween II thing in extremis. We get a couple scenes with Newt, but some more… 📖
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Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour (2021) #2
It’s a much quicker read than I’d like, which is the nature of a licensed title. Even a circularly licensed one like Harley Quinn: The Animated Series. It’s following the source media’s plotting. The issue amounts to about a seven-minute segment of TV; between commercial breaks. Harley and Ivy get to Selina’s, with Gordon in… 📖
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Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1977) #248
So while this issue has Mon-El going around declaring Shadow Lass is “his woman” and people better recognize, cultural mores of the late seventies didn’t allow writer Gerry Conway to point out the Legion is fighting a shit monster. The Legion is helping with post-Earthwar rebuilding, and something strange is going on down in the… 📖
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Tomb of Dracula (1972) #16
It’s a horror mystery starring Dracula. Some skeleton is coming to life and terrorizing people, only he’s after specific people, not just everyone. Based on writer Marv Wolfman’s descriptions, it’s more a zombie than a skeleton, but there’s still such a thing as the Comics Code, so it’s a skeleton in the art. The text… 📖
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Five Nights in Maine (2015, Maris Curran)
So, it turns out sometimes you do actually need a story. No matter the locations, no matter the photography, the music, the actors, the editing, even the directing, sometimes you can’t get away with eighty minutes without some kind of narrative. Five Nights in Maine is the story of newly widowed David Oyelowo. He becomes… 📖
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Detective Comics (1937) #471
So, I figured out where Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers’s Detective Comics belongs. As a comic strip in late seventies Playboy. Seriously. Rogers’s art is detailed but plain, intricately designed but not artsy. Englehart’s exposition is childish—“comic book-ish”—and treats Batman as a fascist action figure, but it’s incredibly consistent. Lots! Of! Declarative! Statements! Plus, this… 📖
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A Walk Through Hell (2018) #9
Umm. I feel bad for writer Garth Ennis. I feel bad he did this issue. There are desperate ways to stretch out a series, to pad an issue, to make the right count for a trade. But somehow, Ennis surpasses all of them with this unconditional waste of time issue. I feel bad for Goran… 📖
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Evil (2019) s03e04 – The Demon of the Road
“Evil”’s original conceit was a supernatural procedural. Hot priest-to-be Mike Colter, hot-but-appropriately-aged psychiatrist Katja Herbers, and funny and cute tech guy Aasif Mandvi investigate cases and prove they’re either not supernatural, or their solution gets left up in the air, but the danger abates. It’s changed over the seasons, though this episode leans in heavy… 📖
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Werewolf by Night (1972) #12
Don Perlin makes his first appearance in the Werewolf by Night credits, and I felt the tinge of inevitability. He’s inking Gil Kane’s pencils; about the only okay thing ends up being Wolfman Jack. Kane and Perlin’s regular people are pretty bad, Perlin’s fault, but Kane’s layouts for the action aren’t very good, not Perlin’s… 📖
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Kill or Be Killed (2016) #15
But, wait, what if Dylan’s a ghost and he’s been dead the whole time? Okay, writer Ed Brubaker doesn’t end the issue on that reveal, but he ends it on one much more similar to it than I’d have thought. It’s definitely an intriguing cliffhanger, though Brubaker’s either going to do something interesting with it,… 📖
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Batman ’89 (2021) #6
Batman ‘89 ends far better than it should, but still disappointingly. Writer Sam Hamm doesn’t go for an action-packed Batman finale, instead letting Bruce Wayne do the final showdown, which ought to emphasize Billy Dee Williams’s Harvey Dent, only doesn’t. It very strangely reduces Michael Keaton’s Bruce Wayne material as well. Hamm seems to know… 📖
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Superman for All Seasons (1998) #3
Well, I misremembered this issue, and not for the better. I thought Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale were going to do Bizarro. And although they use some of the same characters from the Bizarro origin in Man of Steel, Lex has a very different plan to humble Superman. Lex is this issue’s narrator. It opens… 📖