No facial expressions. It's not animated. It's not live-action. Of all the criticisms out there about Disney's photorealistic update of The Lion King there's one thing it's not: 

A failure.

BRAND is one of many new independent comics coming from the crowdfunding trend that has grown up over the past two years. The brainchild of writer Antonio Brice and artist Caanan White, the comic book is mostly impeccably drawn and colored, and each individual scene is compelling in its narrative.

It's when looking at the book as a whole where things suffer.

The Great Train Show made a stop in Belleville, Illinois this weekend, bringing with it something for train enthusiasts of all ages -- from wooden tracks and LEGO to modern and antique HO scale locomotives.

Vendors displayed their wares up and down the length of the Belle-Clair Expo Center, with something in a price range for everyone. You could pick up display pieces for as little as a dollar, or drop several hundred on a rare engine or a brand new set. And beyond the vendors, several St. Louis area train clubs were on hand with their highly detailed arrays of tracks and scenery, as well as a few surprises we didn't expect, including some video producers who catered to trainspotters with DVDs and Blu-rays.

Click the video below for a virtual experience and meet some of the people behind the event.

There are more than ten, we’re sure, but these are the topmost laughs that just about anyone can recognize with their eyes closed. So here, for grins and giggles, are the ten that stand out above the rest.

I’ve been a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work since 1992’s Reservoir Dogs, a strange little criminal caper featuring a hardboiled mix of miscreants portrayed by the likes Michael Madsen and Tim Roth. Twenty-seven years later, his ninth feature film—if you count the Kill Bill films as one big one released in two parts—is Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. Does the genius who created Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Bastards still have the vision to tell quirky tales of unlikely heroes as only he can?

SAN DIEGO, CA (July 25, 2019) – IDW Publishing is proud to debut Rom: Dire Wraiths, a three-part comic book miniseries about Earth’s incomparable heroes – the astronauts whose mission among the stars brought them face-to-face with the Dire Wraiths, the shape-shifting scourge of the universe!

The 80s anthem, FOOTLOOSE, defined a generation that wanted--nay, needed!--to blow off steam through music and motion. It was a time when we wanted to get physical, to dance in the streets and dance in the sheets, and nothing was going to stop us now.

The classic show became a musical in 1998, and tonight the cast at The Muny delivered the penultimate performance of the show's St. Louis run.

The musical adaptation takes a few liberties with the script, of course, sometimes for time considerations, and sometimes for simplicity of stage direction. Instead of Ren McCormack (MASON REEVES) working at a grain mill, he waits tables at a burger joint. And preacher's daughter Ariel Moore (McKENZIE KURTZ) has her daredevil urges tamed down so that she's screaming at trains instead of in front of them.

Ian Fleming's MI-5 agent James Bond has thrilled and chilled readers and moviegoers for decades. But despite all that history, how well does anyone truly know the man?

Jeff Parker and Bob Quinn team up through Dynamite Comics to give us a Bond we've never seen before; a Bond who could be both shaken and stirred, far from infallible, hardly smooth, but very much showing that diamond in the rough quality that makes him a candidate for a new type of defense program.

When we meet Bond, he is only 17, growing up in a Britain beseiged by Nazi blitzkreigs. A student, he teaches judo on the side, and befriends a German professor who knew his mother from their years at school together. But when the professor is attacked and killed, James takes the initiative to track down the men behind it, causing him to miss his train for a class outing.

The character you are about to see in this movie has a lengthy and rich history, nearly as long as Superman's, and peppered with controversy from the beginning.

And, despite a relatively recent change to the comic book mythos that carried over to this movie, his name is not Shazam. His name is Captain Marvel, and he predates a certain Air Force pilot turned alien warrior turned superhero by leaps and bounds. "Shazam" is what he shouts to change from youthful Billy Batson into his adult hero persona, as he does in this movie. Why would he call himself "Shazam" if every time he introduced himself he ended up changing identies?

Disney made a name for itself in the film industry by plumbing the depths of folk and fairy tales. These days, Disney has found a new path to the box office, by mining the depths of Disney itself. It sounds a bit like an ouroboris, the mythical snake that eats its own tail. But, surprisingly, it's been working, and this latest outing is no exception -- in fact, it probably surpasses all previous live-action remakes of animated classics.

There's something about Veronica. Veronica Mars, that is. The Kristen Bell character won the hearts and minds of fans and marshmallows during the three-season run of the series -- so much, so, in fact, that when showrunner Rob Thomas pitched the idea for a motion picture if he could raise the funds, he set a record on Kickstarter almost overnight.

Now fans have a new reason to celebrate, as the news just broke out of San Diego Comic Con from Bell herself that all eight episodes of VERONICA MARS Season Four are now available for streaming on Hulu!

Here's the trailer as a convincer, in case you haven't already pounced on that link we just provided to begin the crime-fighting binging.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Brandon Routh again!

At San Diego Comic-Con, producers for The CW have announced that for it's upcoming "Crisis on Infinite Earth's" crossover, we'll get to see Brandon Routh return as Superman! While The CW already has a Superman in Tyler Hoechlin, he is currently on an asteroid colonized by Kryptonians raising his child with Lois Lane. 'Crisis' will allow them to open the doors to a lot of different possibilities; including the merging of Supergirl's Earth with the Arrowverse.

Since they've been able to open portals with the click of a button, at this point why keep the Earth's separate? Let them merge. Including Batwoman, who can take the place of the departing Arrow as the brooding hero.

Symptoms include low energy, headaches and irritability. If you don’t think you’re suffering that last one, ask your family or friends. They may have an answer different than yours.

But here’s some news that may cure your ills: Filming of the GAME OF THRONES prequel has begun in Belfast. It won’t have Jon Snow or Arya Stark, but maybe you can be satisfied that you’re dealing with the same bloodline, albeit a bloodline that is thousands of years older.

Before you place any bets on the prequel, such as which of your favorite characters turned out to be chips off the (very) old block, read an Intertops review, one of SBR’s top rated sportsbooks for entertainment wagers.

And be warned, there will be speculation and spoilers in this article.

I've been reading comic books for nearly fifty years. It's not just a fandom for me, it's a lifestyle. In all that time, there are characters I've grown to love, teams I've rallied for, and storylines that have served as touchpoints in my life.

The Teen Titans were always more than that. The Teen Titans were special. They were the sidekicks, given a chance to stand on their own. It was a one-off idea, putting Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad together for an adventure in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, arguably a filler series, but it struck a chord. The next time these three got together, they were joined by Wonder Girl as the Teen Titans, quickly getting their own series. Those Bob Haney and Nick Cardy books were elevated in some way from the other titles--more culturally relevant, and definitely more relateable to the younger audiences.

Vampirella has gone through a number of origins through the years. She's been an alien from Drakulon, an escapee from a realm of Hell, a daughter of Lilith. Through it all, she has been a force for good, standing against the agents of Chaos. And she has become an icon.

The creation of Forrest J. Ackerman, Trina Robbins and Tom Sutton, Vampi first came Drakulon to survive the blood drought on her planet. Attempting to blend in to human society, she caught a flight to take her to a television contest. The plane crashed, and she survived by drinking the blood of all the victims.

I grew up in an era where baseball cards were things to chase, where sealed packs kept you from knowing what you were going to get. The cards smelled like bubblegum and the bubblegum tasted like cardboard.

So the "mystery package" concept isn't new to me as a collector. But the "mystery toy" package is something of a more recent development (said mystery toys found in cereal and Cracker Jack boxes notwithstanding). Hot Wheels has their mystery car concept, and Zerboz delivered mystery plastic superheroes for a while.

The most recent development in this collectible craze is Lost Kitties, from Hasbro. I know this because I have the LOST KITTIES COLLECTOR'S GUIDE, written by Maggie Fisher with design work by Hasbro. That is, from this book's title, I know there are these things called Lost Kitties and that they can be collected. As to how well I am guided in that effort, well, that's another matter.

Luke Lieberman and Sergio Davila continue adding to the idylls of Red Sonja with this second issue of BIRTH OF THE SHE-DEVIL.

On the hunt for Raka, the man who took her childhood friend Shoshanna, Sonja finds herself reunited with her foster father, Ozzyus, who has information on Raka's last known location. The reunion is far from a happy one, however, and with the flashbacks to Sonja's childhood in this the reader comes to an understanding of why she harbors such animosity toward Ozzyus -- and how it involves Shoshanna's fate!

David Avallone and Julius Ohta are taking the iconic Bettie Page to places she has never been before -- alternate worlds, alternate dimensions, and ultimately alternate Betties, as she races against time to stop Yog-Sothoth and the Elder Gods from invading our dimension and bringing about the end of...well, pretty much everything.

Fortunately, there's a key to stopping this invasion. More precisely, there are five keys, spread across five different dimensions. Bettie has acquired two of them, having picked up the second key in the first issue of this miniseries, where she found herself embodying a she-devil with a sword. Now she finds herself on a new planet, in a form where she's even stronger and stranger--a fanged vampire woman who can sprout wings and kick ass!

Oh yeah, and she's kind of hungry. For blood.

Many years ago, I attended a viewing of CHESS when it came to St. Louis. I had enjoyed the soundtrack so much, I could not wait to see it performed. That was when I learned that scripts could be changed from the originals depending on the situation. In the post-Glasnost environment of the time, CHESS had been altered so that it was no longer the same story I had learned from the album.

That's not quite the case with RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN'S CINDERELLA, although the musical is surprisingly obscure enough to surprise and/or disappoint viewers who expect the more commonly known Disney version of the magical romance. Indeed, I overheard conversations in the parking lot afterward comparing the show to prior Disney-based musicals like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and THE LITTLE MERMAID, stating how they had remained closer to the source, and there were a handful of young girls who had arrived to the show wearing their best pale blue gowns and tiaras.

Gather round, children, while grandpa tells you about this thing comics used to do way back in the 1990s called Swimsuit Editions. Taking a page from Sports Illustrated, these annual books were a showcase for artists new and established to show off what they could do with the company's character by giving them the chance to do a full page shot of them at their sexiest. Marvel did it. Image did it. Omaha the Cat Dancer did it, and she was usually naked in her book so this was a step up in wardrobe. (Don't just take our word for it. ComicVine has a pretty good collection of these gems.)