The 24-hour comic started in 1990 as a creative exercise Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) posed to his friend Steve Bissette as a speed challenge. The goal is for an artist to create 24 pages in 24 hours. Since then, it’s become a day for cartoonists to gather, stretch their talent, and commiserate. (It’s now held the first Saturday in October.) Milan Erceg has made a documentary about the phenomenon, 24 Hour Comic, that follows eight cartoonists trying the challenge at […]

Last night, Marvel Studios released the first trailer for the upcoming Black Panther movie starring Chadwick Boseman. It’s framed as a conversation between Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue (seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron) and Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross (previously seen in Captain America: Civil War and familiar to fans from Christopher Priest’s epic run on the Black Panther comic). I like the way they’re engaging the contradiction of Wakanda head-on: outsiders think it’s a third-world country, but […]

Coming out July 28 in New York and Los Angeles is an odd little film starring Kyle Mooney (Saturday Night Live) called Brigsby Bear. James (Mooney, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kevin Costello) is obsessed with the kids’ show Brigsby Bear, having seen all of its hundreds of episodes. His life is isolated, residing in a bunker with only his parents and the show for company. Then it’s all uprooted, and James decides to make a movie to finish […]

Shout! Factory, bless them, has issued on Blu-ray Streets of Fire, the 1984 bad movie classic, a self-described “rock and roll fable”. I loved it. It’s a mashup of motorcycles, guns, macho posturing, fights, DA haircuts, 50s cars, over-the-top romantic gestures for a doomed relationship, and retro-flavored music. Diane Lane plays Ellen Aim, local girl made star, who’s returned to her old bad neighborhood for a concert. She’s kidnapped by a hoodlum (Willem Dafoe, first appearing in rubber overalls and […]

Get Out is the best-reviewed movie of the year, and it’s well-deserved. Writer/director Joran Peele stretches from comedy into horror, using the genre to create a very human portrait of fear of seemingly normal people with horrible secret motivations. I don’t normally watch horror movies, but I loved this, because it had so much relevant to say (and there isn’t anything visually terrible or bloody until the end). It’s more suspenseful — what’s going on? — than full of gross […]

Out Tuesday is the latest collaboration between Warner Bros. Animation and WWE Studios. Following in the footsteps of Scooby-Doo! Wrestlemania Mystery, Scooby-Doo! and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon (which gets a one-line callout), and The Flintstones and WWE: Stone Age Smackdown comes The Jetsons & WWE: Robo-Wrestlemania. (I’ve previously posted the trailer.) We open at a WWE show in Denver. Big Show comes out bragging about being the next champion by defeating Sheamus, but a massive snowstorm is shutting […]

This coming Tuesday, the forgettable TV movie Sabrina Down Under will be available on DVD. (Why? Probably trying to cash in on interest in live-action Archie properties now that Riverdale has launched.) This 1999 film was the second companion to the Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV show, which ran for seven seasons from 1996-2003. Both of the TV movies aired on The Wonderful World of Disney. This one consists of Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) going to the beach and learning […]

I’ve never been a fan of the art style popularized by the Image Comics founders, because I’m a story-first reader of comics, but I can’t deny that their actions, self-centered and egotistical as they might have been, changed the comic industry. If you’d like to see a thorough (if congratulatory) summation of the founding of the company, what lead up to it, and what happened after, check out The Image Revolution, an hour-and-20-minute 2013 documentary with participation from all of […]