Title: Cinderella: Age of Darkness (1 of 3)
Publisher: Xenoscope
Creative Team: Joe Brusha and Pat Shand (story), Pat Shand (writer), Ryan Best (artist), Renato Guerra (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer), Nicole Glade (editor)

The latest offering by upstart indie company, Zenescope, is a Cinderella story like you've never heard before. Of course ALL of their fairy tales are unlike any you've heard before; that's kind of the point. In this version of the tale, 'Cindy', has drawn the ire of the Dark Queen for her repeated failures as an assassin. Rather than just kill Cindy herself, the Queen has decided to task her with a suicide mission: Hunt down and kill Hades, the last living God. Armed with her own sword, three 'gifts', and repeated advice to just run away, Cindy is out to prove once and for all that she's not an idiot...

This contest has ended. The randomly selected winner is:

Diane V of Chesterfield, VA.

Ah, the digital life! We no longer have to set aside valuable space in our homes to store our movies. Now they can reside in cyberspace, or on our hard drives.

And that's the crux of our giveaway this time: One lucky entrant will win a Digital Download code for THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. Just enter your information in the form below and be entered into the contest. Be sure to review all the rules regarding eligibility. CriticalBlast.com will not, does not, doesn't plan to, and will never share your personal information, and all entries are deleted upon confirmation of prize delivery to the selected winner's address. (Thank you, U.S. Postal Service, for online tracking!)

In this issue... someone dies!

Oh, sure, big deal. Happens in comics all the time. It's even happened in this comic series before. In fact, someone dying is the reason this comic has a protagonist -- Lenore, the "cute little dead girl" who flits through life with her otherworldly friends with all the innocent macabre of a zombie Harveytoon.

Where else can you find living pickle hats? Or see the absurdly logical and lethal extension of the Austin Powers peeing scene for someone who's been asleep for thousands of years instead of just tens? Only in the darkly comic tale of Roman Dirge's Lenore.

“Dirty Dancing” is the quintessential chick flick. Patrick Swayze’s Johnny represented the archetypical bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, while Jennifer Grey’s Baby was the wide-eyed ingénue whose heart could never be filled by the merely ordinary. The Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis opened their 2014-2015 season with Dirty Dancing: The Classic Story on Stage, a rather unusual bit of phrasing that hides the truth of it: this show barely qualifies as musical theatre. 

She says she's not seeing him, and hasn't seen him for ten years, says "Mama" June Shannon in a video posted to the family's Facebook account. But ever since TMZ first broke the news that Shannon had been seen with convicted child molester, Mark McDaniel, the photographic evidence has been mounting up, and all of it seems to back up the fact that the two are definitely a couple, most recently seen "house hunting" together and smiling for the camera. (See picture, inset. Copyright 2014, TMZ.com.)

Sometimes, very rarely, I have my faith restored in the humanity of reality television show producers.

TLC, which has brought us such "learning" opportunities as 19 Kids and Counting, The Little Couple, and Breaking Amish has cancelled Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a spinoff of Toddlers and Tiaras, which focused on the family of child pageant contestant, Alana Thompson, and some over-the-top redneckery and gross-out moments, replete with farts, poop jokes, almost-vomits, and things that make you want to bleach your mind.

John R. Dilworth's cowering canine, Courage, is the reluctant hero of this fun cartoon series that blends the styles of Schoolhouse Rock and John Kricfalusi. He's ostensibly a "cowardly dog," and yet he shows degrees of bravery all the time that exceed that of your average dog. He just shows it without any external bravado. He doesn't run around saving those he loves with a grow, but with a tiptoe and a whimper -- but he still does it, because it needs doing.

This Friday night, DC Comics' John Constantine makes his first live action appearance in the NBC series, Constantine. So far, it appears that the writers are doing the series right this time, eschewing the "Hellblazer in name only" platform that was established with the Keanu Reeves vehicle.

Constantine is played by Matt Ryan, whose resume includes such titles as The Tudors and "Layer Cake." In Constantine, however, producers are relying on him to carry the series as the lead -- something he seems quite capable of handling, if the trailers are any indication.

A haunting version of Pinocchio's "I've Got No Strings" trills chillingly through this trailer for "Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron" trailer, and the action we are seeing here is the most intense of any Marvel movie to date. Thor vs. Tony Stark. Iron Man (in the Hulkbuster armor) vs. The Hulk. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in action. The broken shield of Captain America, symbolizing, perhaps, the broken S.H.I.E.L.D. post "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."

It's the kind of trailer that makes you want to run out right now and buy a ticket, then wait in the front row for the lights to dim -- until you realize there's still six months left to go before you'll see the actual film.

James Spader's narration over the trailer is convincingly menacing, as we watch the separate stories our heroes have just completed converge into a connected arc, with the world falling down around them. You will believe this could be the end of the team as we know it.

A series doesn't have to be long-running to be long-remembered. For evidence of that, look to Welcome Back Kotter, the Gabe Kaplan comedy vehicle which starred Kaplan as Gabe Kotter, a high school remedial education teacher returning to his Brooklyn alma mater, Buchanan High, to educate and mentor a class of misfits who've named themselves The Sweathogs.

The series only ran for four years -- fitting, since that's how long high school should last -- but the Sweathogs, the irascible Mr. Woodman (John Sylvester White), the recipes of Julie Kotter (Marcia Strassman), and Kotter's endless supply of uncles who inspired so many stories, made an indelible impression on American audiences. Lunch boxes, comic books -- the usual marketing machine engines were fired up to feed the audience as much Kotter as they could handle.

Saint Louis is a town of quirks and traditions. We toast our ravioli. We warsh our cars before driving them down Route farty-far. We make little trick-or-treaters tell us jokes when they come to our door. And if we have a radio, we tune in Dave Glover on FM 97.1 for his annual Halloween show.

Dave's first Halloween show began on a lark, based off of his fondness for the Don Knotts classic film, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken." And since St. Louis and the surrounding area is host to a plethora of historic haunts, he thought it would be fun to find some people who profess to be chickens and have them face their fears in a rumored haunted house.

Who doesn't love a free film, even if it's a short one? Disney•Pixar has released online the new Monsters University short, "Party Central," part of a Halloween Spooktacular! The film is currently available for iPhone or iPad, or at DisneyMoviesAnywhere.com. (Psst! You can download the app at http://di.sn/hvV.)

Billy Crystal and John Goodman reprise their roles as Mike and Sully, who return to Oozma Kappa for a party with their frat brothers. When nobody shows up, the two buddies hatch a plan to make sure "Party Central" is the most epic party the campus has ever seen!

Check out the clip below for just a taste.

I love anthologies. The stories are short, there's enough of them that you're likely to find a handful that you really enjoy, and they're ultimately re-readable, and on second and third passes, you may find the stories you skipped the first go-round end up surprising you later when your mood shifts.

Archon 38 is a science fiction convention that ran from October 3 through 5, 2014 at the Gateway Center in Collinsville, Illinois. I had intended on attending for at least two days, but unfortunately some personal matters prevented me from meeting that goal and I was only able to attend until mid-evening on October 3^rd.  I was able; however, to draw some good impressions from the show and am excited to return for next year’s event, assuming my luck is a little more cooperative.

Next Monday, truTV debuts a new competition that could bill itself as "So You Think You Can Interpretive Dance?" Except that wouldn't truly cover all the bases of the art form known as "Faking." This demonstrates to me just how far off the Cool Meter I've fallen in my dotage, as I had never heard of such a thing before. Apparently, faking is "a mix of theater, acrobatics, black light and illusion." It's kind of like Cirque du Soleil, but more street.

Inspired by his own kids, Jason Ringenberg of Jason & the Scorchers fame developed the persona of “Farmer Jason,” entertaining children with rocking tunes based on his own childhood growing up on a farm. Three albums later it's time for a Christmas album!

The record contains 12 Christmas songs featuring six new original compositions that conceptually deal with the farming connections to Christmas.

“I think ‘Eat Your Fruitcake’ is my favorite original on the record,” he laughs. “Let’s face it folks: throwing those holiday fruitcakes away is using up our landfills!”

When it ends, change the article to include this at the top:

This contest has ended.

The winner is JIM L. of So. Lyon, MI.

Dark Sky Films delivers a Swedish treat that explores all the dark corners of the average put-upon man. In LFO (which stands for low frequency oscillations), sound engineer Robert Nord (Patrik Karlson) is a socially inept Walter Mitty personality who discovers a combination of sound frequencies that serve to immediately bypass and shut down the brain's sensory receptors. It not only puts the body into a state of complete relaxation, but it opens the mind to accept commands. In short, LFO's conceit is the ultimate in mind-control fantasy, put into the hands of a man with no immediate long-range plans on how to use it.

Archon 38 continues to be the gift that keeps on giving! Nestled amongst the many vendors set up in the expansive dealers room, I chanced upon a chillingly familiar looking couple: The Joker and Harley Quinn!

But there was no need to scream or fire up the Bat-signal: this was the booth for Michelle Benz, the creative genius behind BatSpats.com, and some intriguing and refreshing takes on familiar comic book characters as well as other pop culture icons and tropes.

Here's a snippet of the encounter. Enjoy!

“Witching & Bitching” is a campy, off the cuff, over the top sci-fi comedy that just screams to be the next cult classic. This film by Alex De La Iglesia is made in Spain with English subtitles and is available on DVD from IFC films.

A picture, so the expression goes, is worth a thousand words. That being the case, the political cartoon is worth a thousand words and change, the art form being one that conjoins the satirical image with paucity of pithy text. Which brings us to one of the pioneers of the form: the magazine called Puck, the subject of this lavish (and heavy!) compendium from IDW and The Library of American Comics.