It's another Number One issue for Bettie Page from David Avallone and Julius Ohta. And yes, it's continuing the Lovecraftian tale of Secret Agent Bettie Page, who stands against the elder gods and ancient aliens, but it's a new chapter, a new theme, and thus deserving of a new starting point. (Really, the BETTIE PAGE books have all just been standalone reads of a larger arc anyway.)

BETTIE PAGE UNBOUND is something altogether different. That is, it continues the ongoing adventure of Bettie and friends trying to stop Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep from entering our realm, but this time the creative team has an entirely new angle: a dimension-hopping Bettie who winds up in the form of a different adventurer with each hop. In this issue, she's Bettie the Page, chain-mail bikini warrior of Hyperborea.

Yes, Hyperborea. Bettie is a bad-ass, sword-wielding warrior, aka Red Sonja, a property currently under license to Dynamite.

John Barron and Shawn Remulac aren't the first to jump on the presidential parody train, certainly not this administration. But they are certainly doing what they can to milk the satire out of politics and comics as they approach Donald Trump with the raunchy eye of lampoonists. 

Hot on the heels of TRUMP'S TITANS, the Keenspot creators introduce THE DONALD WHO LAUGHS, a dark version of Donald Trump [insert obvious political jab here] who has, with his daughter, Darkvanka, kidnapped the real President and First Daughter so that they can take their place. As President, this evil Donald Trump [insert reflexive coughing fit here if needed] can muck about with the direction of the country while his daughter complains about how boring Jared is as she impersonates Ivanka. 

The village of Berk has become overrun with dragons. For most fictional medieval villages, this would be the apocalypse. But Berk is a dragon sanctuary, and their leader, Hiccup (JAY BARUCHEL), leads a rag-tag band of raiders on rescue missions to save dragons from trappers and poachers, bringing them back to the ever-more-crowded town.

Things take a turn, however, when dragon hunter Grimmel (F. MURRAY ABRAHAM) enters the scene. More than being ruthless and relentless, Grimmel is a strategist who plans three steps ahead, and he has a single minded goal: destroy all dragons. For that, he needs to get his hands on the alpha dragon -- Hiccup's partner, Toothless.

No, your eyes do not deceive you. After having missed May, we have a new cosplayer for our monthly Critical Blast Bombshell feature. This go round, we pull in another member of the male cosplay community (because we're all about equal representation that way).

You might say he's a bit of an outsider. He's built solid enough to take a hit from a crowbar. (Am I robbin' the pun jar too much?) 

Okay, enough with the attempts at cleverness and let's move on to why you're really here: to meet our...

Critical Blast Bombshell, June 2019

Jay Pines

PETER CANNON, THUNDERBOLT wraps up its story arc with this fifth issue, whereupon the titular character takes on the titular character. It's Peter Cannon vs. Peter Cannon, but really it's more Charleston Thunderbolt takes on Watchmen's Ozymandias. But there's more going on here than simple homage from Kieron Gilen and Caspar Wijngaard.

Perhaps one of the things that sets country artists apart from pop ones beyond just the style of their genre is that country artists will almost invariably -- and comfortably -- cross over into the gospel genre. In the past, some pop stars would release an album or two, most notably Elvis Presley, and it was common for R&B singers to have some gospel in their repertoire. But by and large it's the country artists who find church music in their roots and carry it forward into their own music.

ISN'T IT ROMANTIC is an entertaining rom-com that sets out to prove all rom-coms are fomulaic drivel -- and quickly becomes formulaic.

Not that this is a bad thing. Formulas work, and attempting to subvert audience expectations is a tricky business that is more risk than reward. Formula brings people back. I watch every Hallmark Channel Christmas movie with my wife, and within the first fifteen minutes have written the ending, and that still doesn't stop her from watching each and every one of them.

In this film, we meet Natalie (REBEL WILSON) who from a young age has been told by her mother that happy endings don't happen for girls like them. Believing this, Nat has grown up to be mildly successful as an architect but without her own voice and a lack of respect from her own employees. When discussing romantic comedies with her assistant, she ticks off a lengthy laundry list of items that are everything she feels is wrong with them.

When the superheroes became popular, lo many decades ago, an attempt was made to draw in more readers by adding characters that would be (or so the theory went) relateable to girls. There was already Wonder Woman, Phantom Lady, and others, but none of them had quite the popularity of a Superman or a Batman.

And so the quick-and-easy path seemed to be to create female versions of these characters. It was a hit-or-miss process, with more misses than hits. In the Superman comics, a Superwoman was introduced in Action Comics #60 in 1943. She was easily forgotten (although has resurfaced in one incarnation or another over the years), and largely eclipsed when sixteen years later Kara Zor-El made her debut as Supergirl in the pages of Action Comics #252.

So many comic book superheroes passed into the public domain that they have become golden again -- golden for independent publishers that is, who are free to use these characters to tell their stories. They're at the heart of Dynamite Comics PROJECT: SUPERPOWERS series, and have shown up in other various series.

To date, there's only one comic book hero who, at the mere utterance of his name, has the ability to evoke either dreamlike awe or cold fury from the comics fan who hears it. His name is CyberFrog, and he's the creation of comic book artist Ethan Van Sciver.

Originally created in the 90s, CyberFrog is finding new life through an Indiegogo project which has drawn acclaim for its detailed preview artwork, and criticism for it being behind its self-imposed schedule. To date, CYBERFROG: BLOODHONEY is eight months behind. If this were a car, it would be repossessed by now.

A Song of Ice and Fire. For many people, including myself, we thought that meant Jon and Dany would rule the Seven Kingdoms together, happily ever after. A fairytale ending for a fantasy series. Even though nearly every episode in the series bludgeoned us with the idea that there is no truly happy ending.

In reality, this show has done everything to show us there is no "happily ever after" and yet we still held out hope it would happen. There are real consequences to the conquest of a kingdom. Robert Baratheon rose an army to stop the "mad king" and ended up sitting on a throne that was less than rewarding. He hated politics. He was a soldier, a lover, a hunter, a drinker, and was never fit for the throne. However, the Lannister's had other ideas as they saw him as a pawn to have their family sitting on the Iron Throne for all time.

Some of life’s biggest pleasures come from the most unexpected sources. One such pleasant surprise is Come From Away making it’s St. Louis debut at the Fabulous Fox Theatre May 14-26, 2019. It is a rare production without an obvious lead actor—it’s essentially an “all ensemble” show where every actor has a multitude of parts to play. Everyone in the cast is delightful, the music catchy, the vibe surprisingly upbeat for a story about the terror attacks of 9/11. That's right--somebody made a musical about 9/11 and it's brilliant!

Marvel scribe Matthew Rosenberg has warned readers that no X-Man (or woman) is safe during his run. And with Jonathan Hickman poised to reboot the X-Universe, Rosenberg is playing with old toys that are about to be replaced.

He is a bull in a china shop right now. And it's astonishing.

***Caution: MAJOR Spoilers Ahead***

Brian Michael Bendis is uniting a family that has been divided for so many years.

***CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD***

While Batman has enjoyed spending time with his "family" for many years, Superman has typically run solo. It something that's always seemed to separate the two. As Batman leans heavily on his ensemble cast of characters, Superman isolated himself by dealing with his problems alone.

Which is completely opposite of what you'd expect. Batman is the brooding vigilante and Superman is the family loving boy scout. Now, under the guidance of Bendis, Superman is in a fight for the future of his family alongside his father, son, and now his cousin!

Given the amazing success of THE LEGO MOVIE, it was inevitable that there was going to be a sequel, starring the same characters. And sure enough, here comes THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART, with Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, and Will Arnett returning to their roles of Emmet, Wyldstyle, and Batman.

There's just one problem. After seeing the brilliant end of the first movie, the rabbit is out of the hat. We know what's going on. The magic is gone. It's like trying to do a sequel to THE SIXTH SENSE and trying to forget the whole time that Bruce Willis is a ghost. (LEGO Bruce Willis appears in this film, so that's not entirely a non sequitur analogy.) Where we were originally left in the dark as to what "Kragle" was, we now immediately work on the (less-than-inspired) translations of the "Sis Star System" and the "Bin of Sto-Raj."

The landscape of opinion is a shifting mass of quicksand these days. The Internet, once a bastion of free speech -- and all the ugliness that comes with that -- has undergone a transformation to rein in opinions, protecting the eyes and ears of the many from anything that might be deemed offensive by the few.

It began with politics. When the deplatforming of Alex Jones and his InfoWars site occurred, the 1st Amendment let out an "oof" of having been punched in the stomach. No one heard it over all the cheering, however, and the social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter were emboldened to continue their pogrom against information and opinion.

The idea was to stifle politics with which the social media overseers disagreed. The inherent problem with that is this: everything is political. And so we find ourselves at a point where a comic book review website (not this one, yet) loses its presence on Facebook.

The first time I saw the Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil classic Les Misérables, I wasn’t particularly happy. If I recall, I called my experience “very miserable indeed.” Over time and with the encouragement of my brilliant lady, I now greatly enjoy that sung-through musical tale of a failed French revolution. With my recent conversion to being a Les Misérables fan I assumed my first foray into Boublil and Schönberg’s revered Miss Saigon, which made its St. Louis debut when the National tour stopped at the Fabulous Fox Theatre for an April 23 – May 5, 2019, run, that I’d enjoy it right from the start. Perhaps my expectations were too high; perhaps I have developed certain sensibilities about language and attitudes towards different sexes and races that might be appropriate for the time but aren’t quite so acceptable today.

There's a good chance if you didn't post the Mad Max "That's Bait" gif when you saw this article, you're actually wondering why I feel this way. I'll try to explain myself in a way that doesn't sound biased, bitter, or boring.

To start off, my entrance into comic books was with the X-Men. NOT the Avengers. But when Iron Man hit theaters over 10 years ago, I was excited to see it. A comic book property that wasn't Batman was about to be on the big screen. It was something new and refreshing!

And I LOVED IT!

Do you know what else I loved nearly 5 years later? Man of Steel.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe officially began in 2008 with the release of Iron Man featuring the impeccable casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, billionaire futurist and superhero. Now, just slightly more than ten years later, Avengers: Endgame potentially could become the biggest film phenomenon of all time. How do you review something like that? I think the answer is simple: you don’t. You can’t. Anything you say about Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, Thor, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Black Widow, Hawkeye,  Captain Marvel, Falcon, Bucky, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant Man, The Wasp and may other major and minor characters that have graced the silver screen in the “Decade of Marvel” could be a spoiler, even if you don’t mean to spoil anything.

This nature documentary pops right off the screen, thanks tot he IMAX filming of the subjects and their lush settings.

Narrated by Kristen Bell, IMAX PANDAS takes the audience into the world of the endangered Giant Panda, and the efforts to repopulate them in the wild. We get to see baby pandas, born in captivity and nurtured at a panda preserve in China, and learn of the efforts to wean the captive pandas back into their natural habitat. But that is no simple task.