During Sunday’s EXTREME RULES Pay-Per-View, Kurt Angle accounted that Brock Lesnar needed to appear on the July 16, 2018 episode of Raw to set up a match for SummerSlam or else Brock would forfeit the WWE Universal Championship.  Brock wasn’t there, but Paul Heyman was, and he did agree to have Brock face anyone of Kurt Angle’s choosing.

Kurt set up two triple threat matches with the winners going on to have a number one contender’s match on next week’s Raw.

The two matches featured some of WWE’s hottest talent.

Welcome back to Critical Blast’s long-running 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!

I am ever leery of films that are directed by their lead actor; they tend to be showcase films, and having an actor direct himself is rather like having a writer be his own editor -- you're often too close to the situation to see the flaws.

JOHN KRASINSKI (JACK RYAN) does better than most, however, in overcoming the obstacles inherent in that dynamic with his work on A QUIET PLACE. Krasinski plays Lee Abbott, the patriarch of a family surviving a little over a year into an apocalypse that has devastated most of the population. The audience isn't privy to how the apocalypse happened -- whether the creatures came from outer space, from deep beneath the ground, or from a genetic experiment gone wrong. What we do know is that there is a new species on the planet that cannot see or smell, but can hear and is drawn to noise as its method of locating food.

From WWE.com:

STAMFORD, Conn. — After a three-year suspension, Hulk Hogan has been reinstated into the WWE Hall of Fame. This second chance follows Hogan’s numerous public apologies and volunteering to work with young people, where he is helping them learn from his mistake. These efforts led to a recent induction into the Boys & Girls Clubs of America Alumni Hall of Fame.

Hulk Hogan also Tweeted:

LONDON, UK, July 13, 2018 – Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski announced today that Focus has set production with Carnival Films on the Downton Abbey movie.  The original principal cast from the acclaimed television series have assembled to return for the feature which will begin production later this summer.  Also returning from the series is its creator Academy-Award® winner Julian Fellowes who wrote the film’s screenplay and will produce alongside Gareth Neame and Liz Trubridge.  Brian Percival (The Book Thief, About a Girl), who directed the series’ pilot, will direct the film.  Nigel Marchant will also return to executive produce. 

The summer season is the perfect time for you to relax at home while enjoying a movie with your family or buddies. This summer, make it a must to catch newly released top gambling movies. These movies offer you a lot of things at once, they are entertaining while at the same time educative. Watch one or more and you can learn gaming skills to help you make some profits the next time you visit Novibet to play casino games.

Runner Runner (2013)

It's difficult to translate a videogame into a film. It's tempting, sure, and the good games provide a lot of inspiration. But ultimately, what happens in the game is brief, and hard to extrapolate into a 2-hour film without throwing in a lot of supposition and side plots.

So that's what directors do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

And sometimes even if it doesn't "work" it's still a whole lot of fun!

RAMPAGE is the latest collaboration between Director BRAD PEYTON and actor DWAYNE JOHNSON. The two have worked together on JOURNEY 2: THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and, more recently, SAN ANDREAS. Johnson portrays Davis Okoye, a primatologist at the San Diego Zoo with a military background. His pet project is George, an albino gorilla whom he saved from poachers and taught to sign.

Back in 1998 gamers were being introduced to the true power of graphical technology. Dedicated graphics cards were the talk of the industry, and their ability to massively improve graphics the stuff of legend. A race arose among video game developers to create the best looking games, and PC gamers scrambled to afford a graphics card.

Many games at the time made use of accelerated graphics, but one game stood apart for delivering a next level gaming experience. Unreal. Created by Epic Games and released in 1998 the game made use of the most advanced graphics technology available, blowing minds with coloured and volumetric lighting. It was an incredible sight in 1998, so much so that many could scarcely believe their eyes.

Social networking has become the new form of communication. We live online; constantly entangled with the web as we go through daily life. It’s on nearly every pc and smartphone/device. Social networking is not just a way to stay in contact with family and friends, it’s become a platform to see and be seen. 

Users build a social presence online, that presence is the deeply echoed mirror of how we like to be perceived. All social networking has done, is set standards for clicks and groups that you as a person aspire to be apart of. So, social networking is a platform that is a part of our daily lives in various ways. We aspire to different standards and keep up to date with the latest news and trends around the globe. 

Atari has been through many ups and downs. The company will hopefully be able to pull itself up and join the ranks of popular console video gaming.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation

• Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
• Written by Genndy Tartakovsky & Michael McCullers

Starring

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Billy Dee Williams is returning to a galaxy far, far away.

The actor, who famously played the galactic gambler Lando Calrissian, will reprise the role for Star Wars: Episode IX, the next Star Wars installment from Lucasfilm.

Welcome back to Critical Blast’s long-running 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

Quite a few series getting relaunched this week...

It's bee a truism for a while now that Country and Pop have blended together so much that there's not much of the old school Country left. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as it's produced a lot of great music. But it's also come at the cost of the original sounds -- the steel guitars and the honky tonk piano -- that you maybe didn't realize you'd been missing until you hear it.

Fortunately, there are still country artists who still walk the walk, and draw inspiration from their music from the lived life.

A prime example: Paul Bogart, whose just released his latest single, George Jonesin', off his CD, LEATHER. If you've even a passing reference with the genre, you get the reference, and Bogart deftly encapsulates the zeitgeist of the Silver Fox with this story-song of lost love and drowned sorrow lyrically and melodically.

WONDERLAND rears its ugly head once more in the Grimm Fairy Tales universe, with Raven Gregory at the helm of the crazy train.

A new madness is coming, and it begins in the form of Mr. Monarch -- a.k.a. Caterpillar. I don't know what evil he's about just yet, but I know it's vile because he begins his plans at a day care center.

That's the first of many hooks that are being set in this first issue, that finds Calie Liddle and her daughter, Violet, estranged from each other. Calie is doing the book tour thing as a famous fiction author, retelling her Wonderland story as a work of the imagination rather than a horrifying reality, and Violet is purposefully ignoring all her calls.

You know, sometimes you can actually tell a book by its cover--or, in this case, a DVD by its jacket.

The GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS is one of those movies that, if you pick it up to look at it, you’re already classified as one of those who likes weird and strange things...which kind of classifies you as weird and strange yourself. I freely admit I am one such person, drawn to this DVD by the sheer strangeness, nay goofiness, of its title, and upon reading the jacket I was compelled to to take it home to watch.

Believe me, I make no assumptions that I’m going to see something other than what I expect when I choose one of these movies, so I am rarely disappointed; and I’m not here. This movie was everything I thought it would be. Its everything you would think it would be. This movie, by great movie standards, is bad--but by bad movie standards, it's great!

From the pen of Keith Champagne and the pencils of Tom Nguyen comes THE SWITCH: ELECTRICIA, a superheroes and supervillains saga in the tradition of KICK-ASS and THE AUTHORITY and made possible through the use of Kickstarter.

Electricia is a bad girl. Very bad. She controls electricity and uses it to commit crimes with her fellow criminals, collectively known as Murderer's Row. They have a satellite and everything, and an array of powers that dwarf Electricia's own. Like their leader, Lover Boy -- a mullet sporting tub who controls you with his voice, Dr. Hate -- an evil genius trapped in the body of a purple cat, Interstellar -- a boy possessed by an alien space god, and... Vladimir Putin? Yes!

Welcome back to Critical Blast’s long-running 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!

The month has just gotten underway, and it's already getting hotter! 

Our Critical Blast Bombshell for July enjoys the unique opportunity to design costumes both as a hobby and as a profession, adding emphasis to the adage, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."

With a portfolio of cosplay that runs through several genres (and mixes some of the together in the best of all possible ways), Critical Blast is pleased and proud to present to you the...

Ah, the comic art pin-up. What once used to be a one or two page bit in KATY KEENE grew into full-blown books in the 1990s from Image and Marvel when they turned pen and ink to ride the popularity of the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED SWIMSUIT issues.

Zenescope is continuing that tradition, but with a fan twist. Instead of a swimsuit issue, their pin-ups are dedicated to cosplay. It's something that's become a bit of a trend. And to make sure you're not just plunking down coin for a collection of art pages, Zenescope includes a short story to serve as the lead-in, with Skye Mathers costume shopping and then  having to take out a demon while wearing a LEGEND OF ZELDA costume. (Spoiler alert: Shang prefers Poison Ivy to Harley Quinn!)