This contest is completed. The randomly selected winner is MELANIE D. of CORDOVA, TN.  Congratulations!

You've either got one, you know one, or you are one. That's 'The Duff' -- an acronym that stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, the person who's a member of the clique for the purpose of making all the other members look that much better.

But it's nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, you can proudly declare your own Duff-dom by displaying this theatrical poster from the release of this Ari Sandel film starring Mae Whitman and Robbie Amell. All you have to do is enter your 411 in the form below, and elevate yourself from DUFF to WOAPOAIS (Winner of a Prize on an Internet Site).

USA Today anounced:

John Oliver is returning to HBO for two more seasons, the cable network announced today.

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver will have 35 shows each for Season 3, due in 2016, and Season 4 in 2017.

"We are incredibly proud to have John as part of the HBO family," HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said in a statement. "His unique ability to deliver socially significant commentary week after week, along with his innate comedic brilliance, puts John in a class by himself."

BATMAN: BLINK collects two stories from the inventive concept that was LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, a series where Batman stories could be told without regard to where in the current continuity any of the other Bat-books might be.

In this volume, written by the late, great Dwayne McDuffie, readers are introduced to a blind man who has the ability to see through the eyes of others if he touches them. To date, he's been using this ability to live the good life -- just wait until the last 'touch' pays their bills, then use the information about their checking account to funnel money to another account. It was a pretty sweet con... until his last 'touch' puts him behind the eyes of a wanted serial killer, and he witnesses the next victim's capture. He stops this from happening, but in doing so makes himself a suspect.

Welcome back to Critical Blast’s weekly look at what new comics you should check out each week.   Just a warning, I make these picks pretty much a week BEFORE I actually get to read any of these comics, so if something is a stinker, I take no blame on that.  Let's get to it!

Comics Shipping This Week

MPH #5 (Of 5) – I have to admit, I actually had forgotten that this series hadn’t finished yet. When you’re doing a short mini-series, why don’t you just finish the series before you release them? MPH has been an excellent series from Millar about super speed pills falling in the hands of some small time criminals. Starlight and MPH were two of my favorite series last year, so I am really looking forward to Chrononauts in the coming weeks.

It's a big chapter in the (after) life of Lenore, the cute little dead girl, as creator Roman Dirge delves into the Secret Origin of Taxidermy. No, not the art of mounting dead animals (and I don't mean... oh, just for get it!), but Lenore's chilling and sinister friend with antlers, who has a penchant for killing.

I'm lucky to have experienced Beatlemania. Unfortunately, it was thirty years after all the other wild teenage girls. I grew up listening to the music my parent's enjoyed like most children. But I didn't just tolerate it, I loved it...with a passion! Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen played on my tape deck non-stop and my radio was always set to the New York area oldies station, CBS-FM. And then, I can't remember what started it, but I discovered the Beatles. When I did, it exploded. I listened to my parents' vinyls, they bought me the CD's as they were released, I watched the Beatles movies on repeat and tried to get my hands on any form of them performing. Remember, this was well before YouTube. I couldn't just type in “Beatles” into a search box and click through all of the results. I had to seek as much as I could and, trust me, I did. I had been infected with Beatlemania and completely understood the allure. And for me, I never lost that adoration.

Announced on Newsarama over the weekend:

Looks like someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. is getting a promotion.

Deadline is reporting that Adrianne Palicki, who has guest starred recently on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Bobbi Morse (a.k.a. Mockingbird), has been upped to series regular. Palicki debuted in the role in the second episode of the show's second season, and will be seen next in the mid-season premiere on March 3.

In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Palicki's character of Bobbi Morse was introduced as a HYDRA operative who had secretly been working as a double-agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. Morse's ex-husband, Lance Hunter, remains a HYDRA agent.

If the first volume of SECRET ORIGINS makes anything else clearer about the continuity of the New 52, it is this: It's a Batman world, and we're all just living in it.

This set kicks off just the way it should for a new series of origins of DC characters -- with Superman, whose origin comes courtesy of Greg Paks and Lee Weeks. It's a unique way to tell the age-old story, as Paks chooses to come at it from the point of two mothers, each carrying the same message despite being galaxies apart. Tony Bedard and Paulo Siqueira deliver the origin of the other Kryptonian sporting the crest of the House of El, Supergirl. This provides a detailed look into her family history, including the military and scientific roles played by her parents, and how those roles conflicted.

Spider-Verse has been going on for about 30 comics and 6 months now. All together, it was a really good event. It was pretty epic in scale, and you can tell the creative team was having a lot of fun throwing together different versions of Spider-Man and seeing what would come out of it. We got to see some characters I really miss take the spotlight like Mayday. We've also gotten some interesting new characters added to the mix, like Silk and Spider-Gwen, both will be receiving their own series in the coming weeks. And we finally got to see some confrontations between Peter Parker and the Superior Spider-Man. I also thought the Inheritors were impressive villains, and it was great to see something done with the lore JMS had built up during his run. So I was really looking forward to seeing how this story would play out.

Amazing Spider-Man #14 - Spider-Verse Finale

Titan Comics sent us over the following solicit for Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #9, which will be coming out in June...

Doctor Who: The Twelfth Doctor #9 ​(in stores June 3) ​sees the Doctor rub shoulders with Rat Pack members Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin!  A brand-new story begins, as the Doctor and Clara are forced to ally with gangsters on the Vegas strip to combat an even more terrifying foe!

Will the Doctor's morals prove as alien as the unearthly invaders – or can he triumph without compromise... in 'GANGLAND'?

Maillaro: We decided to double it up with some X-Men this week. 

You might wonder why exactly we picked Uncanny 250.  There is literally NOTHING special about that issue other than the number.  Something we started doing in this column a long time ago was that we made a commitment to review every fifty issues of Uncanny X-Men.  It's take some time, as it just tends to happen when we feel like it, but this is our fifth entry in the series.  1, 50, 100, 150, 200, and now 250. 

On with the reviews!

All-New X-Men #36

Written by: Brian Michael Bendis

My favorite moments as a film critic are the times when I take my seat at a theater and think, “Good grief, why on earth did I accept this review opportunity? This is gonna be awful!” And then I’m completely wrong and I couldn’t be happier. The first time I can really remember this happening was when I saw “Scott Pilgrim vs The World,” a film adaption of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Ameri-manga comic. I sat that mumbling to myself about how bad that movie was going to be, and by the time it was over I declared it the best thing I’d seen in years.

BIRD PEOPLE, directed by Pascale Ferran, is what I call a “boutique” movie: one that will appeal to a select audience, an audience that loves independent, off the beaten path foreign movies filmed outside the realm of traditional Hollywood style; movies that are thick on imagery and symbolism, have periods of no dialog to make you think, subtitles, and in which almost everyone smokes cigarettes.

BIRD PEOPLE centers on Gary Newman (Josh Charles), an American from Silicon Valley U.S.A. in France for business, and Audrey Camuzet (Anais Demoustier), a maid at the Hilton airport hotel Gary is staying at. Gary is burnt out and fed up with everything and, while staying in the hotel, comes to the realization that he’s done with it all and leaves his wife and his job. Audrey it seems is just as tired of the same old life she has too.

LEGO does it again with this humorous treatment of our favorite super heroes.

JUSTICE LEAGUE VS BIZARRO LEAGUE opens with an introduction to who Bizarro is and what his motivations are, as well as how Superman thought he had dealt with the simple-minded creature for good. But a year later, the Justice League -- Superman (Nolan North), Batman (Troy Baker), Wonder Woman (Kari Wahlgren), Cyborg (Khary Payton), Guy Gardner (Diedrich Bader), Plastic Man (Tom Kenny), Flash (James Arnold Taylor), Hawkman and Green Arrow (both voiced by Phil Morris) -- are up against Gorilla Grodd (Kevin Michael Richardson) and his mind-controlled crew of Giganta (April Winchell), Penguin, Deathstroke, and Captain Cold. This was a fun melee battle scene that brings in characters we've never seen in LEGO minifig version before, creating an immediate want in the market for some figures that don't exist yet. Genius! (Because I want my Plastic Man minifig!)

Kate Connors and Kipp Lanham are Senior Account Managers at Media & Communications Strategies, Inc. (http://www.macstrategies.com/)   

Every Sunday night, viewers across the U.S. are getting schooled in early 20th century English lifestyle as they watch the ever-exciting Downtown Abbey. This PBS Masterpiece Theatre follows the lives of the Crawley family and their household staff. It has become a fan favorite across the globe. Although the lessons seem to be tailored towards polite society and upstairs/downstairs relationships, there are often lessons that PR professionals can learn from this vivacious cast of characters.

1)      "I hate to get news second-hand." - Violet Crawley.

To say that the Internet has revolutionized society is a saying so commonly obvious that even the television gecko and camel sneer at me for saying it. But for fans of comics and fantasy, it truly is a whole new world -- or rather a doorway to whole new worlds -- as it allows new artists to have their material seen by millions of people at once. I've seen my share of struggling artists showing off their talents (and, sometimes, lack thereof), but I was particularly taken with the work I started to see from a name I hadn't encountered.

The Ame-Comi vision of DC's super heroines in statue form was so popular that DC brought the characters to the comics. Whether the Ami-Comi girls exist on one of the reserved 52 worlds of the DC multiverse isn't made clear, but the changes are more than simply aesthetic. Almost all of the male characters have been represented as females, including Darkseid. It's similar to the conceit of the gender-swapped reality of Earth 11, but also radically different in regards to the relationships of the characters to each other and their world.

This week!

• NXT Takeover: Rival Predictions
• NJPW: The New Beginning
• NXT Takeover: Rival
• Current Favorite Wrestlers

Mike: My name is Mikey Rage and this is my tag team partner Christopher Truth!  Together, we are Ragin’ Truth!   Let’s get to Truthin’!

WWE NXT Takeover: Rival Predictions

No Disqualification Match:
Baron Corbin vs. Bull Dempsey

Mike’s Prediction: Dempsey

Chris's Prediction: Corbin

You know, being a comic journalist is always a pretty fun gig...but then there are days you get to announce things like this, and it becomes the best job in the world:

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Marvel Studios announced today that Sony is bringing Marvel into the amazing world of Spider-Man.

Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel's Cinematic Universe (MCU). Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next installment of its $4 billion Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.

I've been a fan of The Dresden Files for a while.  Mike Weaver (my co-writer on Open Mike Night) introduced me to the books years ago.  I even liked the short-lived TV series on Sci-Fi.  All that said, this is my first time reading any of the comic series.  

According to Dynamite, this series takes place a few months after the events in the book White Night.

The Dresden Files: Down Town #1 

Written by: Jim Butcher & Mark Powers
Pencilled by: Carlos Gomez
Cover by: Stjepan Sejic
Colored by: Mohan
Lettered by: Bill Tortolini

Published by: Dynamite
Cover Price: $3.99

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!