After having endured the dark debacle that was passed off as TITANS on the DC Universe streaming service, I was once bitten, twice shy about DC Universe's other original series, DOOM PATROL, a spin-off of the TITANS series (having made a guest appearance that season).

Trepidatiously, I began watching the opening season, hitting the play button like clicking the pull/spin switch on video slot games, hoping this one was going to roll up better results than TITANS did.

Jackpot!

Every month the staff at Critical Blast combs the cosplay community for up and coming cosplayers who deserve to have a broader audience for their work, taking into account not only costuming skills and spirit, but also how they use that ability in service to others. Through this, we've not only met some talented cosplayers, but also some fine human beings.

This month our quest carries us across the pond, to meet a cosplayer who's super -- and a little bit crazy! Displaying not only skills and talent, but also an outstanding attitude, our Bombshell of the Month has banded together with other cosplayers to be a part of a fun-filled charity group. Intrigued? Then read on, as we proudly present to you our...

Back in the day when the UNCANNY X-MEN were jumping from one classic arc to the next classic arc, the House of Ideas threw a huge curveball at us when it was revealed Jean Grey had been possessed by a cosmic entity so powerful that it could -- and did -- destroy planets. And even though she was supposedly cured of this, there was still a need to balance the scales of justice. She couldn't just walk away from a genocide unscathed. The death of Jean Grey for the actions of the Phoenix Force was more than just a classic story -- it was a pivotal milestone in the history of the X-Men.

Getting an accurate retelling in a movie was a hopeless case from the beginning. To do it even the slightest justice would have required a season of a live-action X-Men series.

So what we get with X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX is pretty much a standalone film that uses some of those ideas and character names, to tell a completely different story.

John Waters’ film Cry-Baby hit theaters in 1990 to modest fanfare despite an eclectic cast featuring then-rising stars Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe, punk rocker Iggy Pop, future talk show host Ricki Lake, and former adult film actress Traci Lords. It became a cult classic over the years, and spawned a rather unsuccessful musical adaptation in 2007, lasting less than two months on Broadway. Five years later, Scott Miller’s New Line Theatre bought the rights to the show and produced a smaller scale production that ran to strong acclaim. With their well-earned reputation as a theatre troupe that is willing to take on challenging material or Broadway misfires, Miller and company are presenting the second run of Cry-Baby in St. Louis from September 28^th – October 19, 2019 to opening their 29^th season.

When a car is forced off the road and the driver awakens with head trauma and amnesia, he arouses the curiosity of the nurse taking care of him. But this John Doe (JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS) may just be a hunted serial killer who's been leaving a trail of dead young women throughout the Midwest. The lead FBI investigator (MALIK YOBA) thinks they've got their man, but Nurse Diana (FRANCESCA EASTWOOD) sees something in the injured amnesiac that leads her to believe he's innocent -- even if he did have the latest victim trussed up in the trunk of the car he wrecked.

When Karen helps John escape the clutches of the law to prove his innocence, flashes of his lost memories begin to return, making it quite possible he really is the serial killer everyone claims him to be.

Take the family on an exquisite, imaginative tour of Asia courtesy of Dreamworks' newest animated feature, ABOMINABLE.

Yi (CHLOE BENNET, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.) is a young girl with a driving ambition. Her day is spent sprinting from job to job, scrounging up cash and grunging up her appearance. Her mother (MICHELLE WONG) and grandmother (TSAI CHIN) are unaware of how she spends her time, or why she's gone all day long. We quickly learn that Yi is saving up to travel the world, so see all the places her recently departed father wanted to take her. 

While spending some quiet time in the hideout she has built on her rooftop, Yi has an unexpected encounter -- with a Yeti! She names the big fuzzy creature Everest, after the mountain she believes to be his home. But Everest didn't just wander onto Yi's roof by accident. He's an escapee from what was to be a major zoological exhibit, and the man behind his capture, Mr. Burnish (EDDIE IZZARD), wants him back at all costs.

It's the third year that Turner Classic Movies has held their "Bring TCM to Your Hometown" contest, and for the Gateway to the Midwest, the third time was the charm. After what the network termed an "overwhelming response" from St. Louis residents, TCM prepared to bring the classic MGM film, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS" for a free screening at the historic Tivoli Theatre.

But it wasn't just a free movie the town was getting. TCM host Ben Mankiewicz escorted film star Margaret O'Brien for the event, to make the screening all the more special for fans.

1982 movie The Dark Crystal is probably better categorized as a cult classic rather than as a bona fide classic. So its entrance into 2019 popular culture will have taken many by surprise. The Jim Henson Company collaborated with Netflix to produce a ten-episode prequel to the original film. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance explores the magical world of Thra, in which Gelflings look to rebel against the tyrannous rule of the Skeksis.

Starting out as a B-team of heroes in the CW's Arrowverse, DC's LEGENDS OF TOMORROW has evolved from being a time-traveling adventure story that didn't take itself too seriously to being a full-out sitcom of superheroes who reference the main continuity but who remain unaffected by it -- and, apparently, don't affect it all that much themselves, despite what should be some world-changing impacts -- particularly given the very public appearance of some very supernatural happenings.

In all of comics history, there has perhaps not been a comic so divisive, so defended, and so derided as Ethan Van Sciver's CYBERFROG: BLOODHONEY. And all that before the book was even printed. Seen as one of the hallmark titles of the amorphous ComicsGate movement, the title and creator have taken heat over timeliness and finances. The book raised nearly a million dollars in pre-sales through multiple Indiegogo crowdfunding efforts, and arrived just shy of being one year late of its estimated release date.

This week, the book began arriving in the hands of those who had backed it, and almost immediately new rumors began to pop up: poor paper quality, water damage, digest-sized. None of that is true. CYBERFROG: BLOODHONEY is of standard dimensions, and over 80 pages. The cover is very sturdy, the paper is of better stock than your average floppy, and the ink is smear-resistant.

Has it really been 15 years since Lindsay Lohan and Tina Fey introduced us to The Plastics and the Burn Book? Time has really flown -- but the girls have never looked better than in this 15th anniversary Blu-ray, celebrating this milestone event.

Being the fashion-conscious person you are, you naturally must own this. But you don't have to tell your friends you won it from us -- it'll be our secret. All you have to do is follow a few simple rules (and we do have rules) -- but they're, like, super easy. You can visit our Facebook page, our YouTube channel, or do some Twitter things. Any and all of them will add entries for you and increase the chances that your name will be selected at random as our winner.

So get to clicking below -- and remember: On Wednesdays we wear pink!

They're called the yee naaldooshii. It's a Navajo phrase for "skinwalkers" -- witches who would go about on all fours while dressed in the skins of animals. Basically furries before they had conventions to attend.

And they're the overarching subject of this season of MOUNTAIN MONSTERS, as tne AIMS Team takes on a quest that will ultimately lead them to the mystery of Spearfinger.

Cryptid films were a drive-in staple during the 1970s. None were going to win any Oscars, but the audiences weren't there for that. They wanted cheap chills and theatrical thrills from creatures that haunted the woods like those near their home towns.

Capitalizing on the nostalgia for this genre, Small Town Monsters has faithfully recreated the look and feel of this grindhouse-style of storytelling with MOMO: THE MISSOURI MONSTER.

The film is presented inside the framework of a modern-day television show, with your cryptid-hunting host, Lyle Blackburn, who takes the audience to the town of Louisiana, Missouri, where sightings of a hairy hominid made the papers in the early 1970s. He then takes viewers back to this film, presenting it as the only copy of an unearthed and unreleased treasure loosely based on encounters with the creature and simultaneous reports of UFO sightings.

At first blush, Robin Gerber's BARBIE FOREVER: HER INSPIRATATION, HISTORY, AND LEGACY might appear to be another beautifully designed coffee table book, packaged to appeal to fans of the Mattel maven whose fashions and careers have delighted and motivated children for decades -- six of them, to be precise! My expectation was the cursory introduction, maybe four or five pages of text delivering a succinct history of the doll and her creator, and then a veritable book full of photographs of Barbie through the years.

SUPERGIRL is one of the Arrowverse shows that stands apart from the rest of the CW shows. First of all, it's not strictly a part of the Arrowverse as it is part of the Arrow-MULTI-verse. Kara (MELISSA BENOIST) lives on a completely different Earth than The Flash and Green Arrow, but crosses over whenever there's a crisis at hand, such as with this fourth season's ELSEWORLDS event, and the upcoming CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

Director Yedidya Gorsetman and Screenwriter Mark Leidner have put together a sleeper hit of masterpiece proportions.

EMPATHY, INC. starts out simply enough. Joel (ZACK ROBIDAS) is a successful silicon valley executive, about to make a fortune with the release of a new technology. But his partner has been falsifying the results of the tests, with devastating financial results for Joel and the company he worked for. He is scapegoated into ruin, and he and his wife Jessica (KATHY SEARLE) are forced to move in with her retired parents.

We spent two weeks hunting for the Waya Woman, an upright-walking wolf creature. We didn't find her, but we did stumble over an urban legend about a murdered family, resulting in some ghost sightings and the appearance of an old photograph. While the AIMS team is leaving that area behind now, the events still have a direct bearing on tonight's episode, as we enter Boone County, West Virginia to hunt a giant bear called the Silver Giant.

While Huck was in the closet of ghosts, he saw the women whose photograph he found -- the woman who murdered her family. She spoke to him, and he knew the langauge. In English, she was saying she was a "skinwalker," and the only way one can become a skinwalker is to perform a heinous act -- the murder of a family member.

I remember seeing Todd McFarlane at the Chicago Comicon in the late 1980s. SPAWN was still a new thing, and Todd was talking up how the symbol would one day be as ubiquitously recognized as a black bat in a yellow oval.

I gave it a year, two at the max.

Thirty-plus years later, here we are, with the milestone issue of SPAWN, one issue away from setting the record as the longest-running creator-owned comic, with a wide array of supporting characters, good and evil, and a twisted morality play that treats Heaven and Hell as competing corporations.

I will say that one of the things that made SPAWN intriguing to me was that he had been giving a finite amount of infinite power. Starting wtih 9:9:9:9, every expenditure of eldritch energy caused the Spawn-o-Meter to decrement. Which meant that, at some point in the character's run, he was going to bottom out, and things would be over.

DCEASED is a comic series I can get invested in. Why? Because despite utilizing the characters of the DC Universe, it's self-contained. It doesn't promise to have any impact on the DCU as a whole -- unlike, say, books that have that promise stolen from them like DOOMSDAY CLOCK.

In this pocket universe, Darkseid has unlocked the much-sought-after Anti-Life Equation. But it has been corrupted, and turns whoever sees it into a mindless undead creature who can infect others into becoming the same. And with Darkseid's death, the equation gets broadcast through Cyborg to every television, computer, and phone in the world. An epidemic ensues, and even the world's greatest superheroes are not immune from its effects.

Zoe Quinn is no stranger to controversy. One might even argue her entire career has been built on the house-of-cards foundation of accusations of sexism and abuse, setting her up as a heroic overcomer in the male-dominated industries of video games and comic books.

But Internet controversy turned to real life consequences barely two weeks ago when Quinn took to Twitter to make public accusations against former fellow game designer, Alec Holowka, claiming sexual abuse and false imprisonment. The immediate fallout for Holowka -- the loss of his career and the shattered public perception -- drove a man who already suffered from emotional troubles to take his own life.

#MeToo had been successfully weaponized--and the weapon was deadly.