What did we talk about on Critical Blast this week?

Bombshell of the Month Sofy Frezer

From EW:

The doors of Cobra Kai have reopened in EW’s exclusive teaser trailer for the Karate Kid sequel series, named after the infamous karate dojo.

“I just don’t know why you’d ever want to bring back Cobra Kai,” Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso tells his former high school bully, William Zabka’s Johnny Lawrence.

It’s been nearly 34 years since moviegoers saw these two face off at the All Valley Karate Tournament in 1984’s The Karate Kid. They met again on screen two years later with The Karate Kid Part II, and now Johnny is seeking redemption.

From Comicbook.com:

Saban Brands is making a big shift in its toy business and has decided to part ways with Bandai.

Bandai America has created the Power Rangers toys for 25 years, but Saban Brands announced today that it will not be renewing its partnership with Bandai as of April 2019. The official statement is included below.

The hit animated series on Netflix, Voltron, continues to push out seasons quickly so fans never have to wait too long for the next chapter.

After having only been out for two years, season 5 is arriving in shocking fashion. When we last left the paladins the Galra empire seemed to be in dissaray as Prince Lotor severed himself from Zarkon's command.

Now it appears he may be offering his services to the paladins of Voltron. As the rebellion begins to solidify itself as a viable threat to Zarkon's rule, the paladins wonder if Lotor can be trusted.

Get ready for some more rip-roaring action and intrigue as season 5 of Voltron comes to Netflix on Friday, March 2nd. Check out a teaser of what's to come in the trailer below.

Fidget: 101 Ways to Boost Your Creativity and Decrease Your Stress by Heather Fishel

Paperback - $14.99 ($10.99 on Amazon)

At the tender age of 9, young Clod's future is already written for him. It's not just that he's overly large and clumsy, but in a world where everyone has some magic, it is determined that Clod has none. That's the decree of his teacher, the Learned Yugen, who thinks it best that Clod's mother prepare him for a life of menial labor. But the cruel headmaster is wrong: Clod does have magic, it's just magic that Yugen cannot sense, and when Yugen discovers that, things get even worse for Clod, as his label gets upgraded from "worthless" to "evil."

Bullied at school, Clod takes refuge with the clay his mother brings home daily after working. And in a fit of loneliness and longing, Clod makes a friend: literally. Ada is a small girl at first, made from clay but being so much more than that while she is alive. She lasts a while then turns to ash until Clod remakes her, each time a little better and a little bigger, and each time she lasts a little longer.

BURBANK, CA (February 13, 2018) – Prepare to witness the Dark Knight, alongside many of his most famed allies and infamous foes, in an eye-popping anime display you’ve never seen before when Warner Bros. Japan, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment present Batman Ninja. The all-new, feature-length animated film arrives on Digital starting April 24, 2018, and Blu-ray™ Steelbook ($29.98 SRP), Blu-ray™ Combo Pack ($24.98 SRP) and DVD ($19.98 SRP) on May 8, 2018.

The film will be available in 4K UHD for Digital only in a release planned for Summer 2018. 

Batman Ninja is PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and for some suggestive material.

From Marvel:

Wolverine is back… or so it seems. Ever since MARVEL LEGACY #1, we’ve gotten glimpses of what appears to be Wolverine popping up across the Marvel Universe. But is it really Logan?

For a character with as rich a history as Wolverine — even though he sometimes couldn’t remember it all himself — telling the tale of his potential return can’t be contained to just one series. In April, THE HUNT FOR WOLVERINE #1 one-shot will be released, and then in May, four different four-part series will debut that will continue the story. As Wolverine’s past comes back to haunt many a mutant, each story will harken back to an old school adventure.

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 first became aware of Bosch Fawstin's work when I reviewed TABLE FOR ONE back in 2004. I knew then that I would be seeing the name again, and when the book was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2005, I was proven correct.

It took over a dozen years for our paths to cross again, and during that time Fawstin had made the news by winning the controversial "Draw Mohammed" competition organized by Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer. If you didn't know he won, it's probably because the more reported moments involved the attack on the event, and the editorializing that accompanied it.

Fawstin's latest work is an impassioned serial called THE INFIDEL, FEATURING PIGMAN. On its face, it seems a jingoistic, puerile response to Islamic terrorism, akin to many comments that circulated shortly after September 11, 2001 about soaking bullets in pig blood or serving bacon on all future flights. Seriously, a comic book about a man who dresses as a pig to go after Islamic extremists?

Some days, we all have a little trouble putting on our pants.

Meet Baby Monkey, Private Eye, the cutest little sleuth in the business and presented in a format that will entertain littles and literati alike. Caldecott medalist Brian Selznick (THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, WONDERSTRUCK) teams with debut children's author David Serlin to launch a wonderful set of stories that are whimsically silly and chock-full of highbrow Easter eggs.

Baby Monkey's office is brimming with a different set of artwork and knick-knick nacks for each new adventure, themed to match the story. Older readers will appreciate this, even as they chuckle at Baby Monkey preparing for each job that is brought to him, said preparation always involving the important tasks of looking for clues, taking notes, eating a snack, and putting on pants.

What can be said about Madonna Louise Ciccone, aka Madonna, that hasn’t been said, seen, or written dozens of times before? Nothing really, I suppose, so I’m just going to focus on this CD/DVD set what it is and what it does.

This set shows that despite the passage of time, Madonna at 59 is still the Queen of Pop she was in the eighties, able to put on a pop show unlike any other, still the consummate professional who knows what she is doing and what needs to be done to turn an already frenzied audience into a frenzied mob. What helps makes this possible is the technical advances enabling the “off the charts” stage show that they could only hint at back in those “dark ages.”

What did we talk about on Critical Blast this week?

Bombshell of the Month Sofy Frezer

I grew up in books. They were all over the place. There were the slim hardbound Weekly Readers that regularly found their way into my collection. There were the dog-eared paperbacks in the classroom library. There were the well-read Readers' Digest anthologies and unabridged classics and Big Little Books and (yes) more comic books than a reasonable person could count (and I knew exactly how many there were).

Annabelle DiMarco has a secret -- a secret life passed on to her from her mother, and her mother before her.

Because Belle is a beast hunter, someone who keeps humanity safe from the things that go bump in the night; or, more precisely, the things that eviscerate whole communities and swallow them up in eternal torment.

If Diogenes ever carried his lantern into the city limits of Riverdale, he'd be gone on to Greendale before the day was out.

Let's start with the Cooper household. Not only has the arrival of eldest brother Chic (HART DENTON), whom IMDb now lists as "Chic Smith" so we can better understand some of Hal's resentments, created discord with the Coopers, now he's also brought murder to their doorstep. And Betty (LILI REINHART), poor Betty, instantly jumps in to help her mother clean up and dispose of the body. We don't even know who killed him yet. We may not think it's Chic, with that heroin-thin frame of his, but surely Alice didn't just become a murderer? Regardless, Betty gets involved in the cover-up, moving the body to a disused sewage pipe.

I never expected DEADPOOL could be as good as it was, but Fox really nailed it perfectly.   The teasers and posters for DEADPOOL 2 have definitely shown that we can expect more of the absurdity of the first movie.  The newest trailer features unfinished special effects, mocking the blind, a very unexpected returning character, and a parody that Disney ain't going to be too thrilled with.

The plans of The Thinker (currently played by KENDRICK SAMPSON) are further revealed, and further complicated, in this episode of THE FLASH. With Barry's powers having been revealed to Warden Wolfe (RICHARD BROOKS), he's been locked away in an "off the books" metahuman wing. It's off the books because the warden has secretly been selling metahumans to Amunet Black (KATEE SACKHOFF), and now he knows that Barry Allen (GRANT GUSTIN) is The Flash and locks him away with his most recent captures: Becky "Hazard" Sharpe (SUGAR LYN BEARD), Mina "Black Bison" Chayton (CHELSEA KURTZ), Sylbert "Dwarfstar" Rundine (DEREK MEARS), and Ramsey "Kilg%re" Deacon (DOMINIC BURGESS). But when Barry learns that they are up for sale to Amunet Black, he begins working on a breakout. This is a great scene for Barry, as he's working without powers and showing what he's capable of as a scientist going full MacGuyver.

No one would ever guess that the secret identity of Sparks, a heroic super-dog...

...is actually two cats!

August and Charlie are two escaped felines from a laboratory that is definitely up to no good. Their intelligence has been boosted, but August's is off the charts. So much so that when she ran back to her original home with her new friend, Charlie, only to find the house abandoned and up for sale, she sold some of the leftover items in the house online, parlayed the money in the stock market, and then bought the house for herself, all using a laptop.

But August has one irrational fear: grass. This keeps her from ever going outside unprotected. And so she built a robotic dog suit for outdoor adventuring. With her running the computer in the rear and Charlie navigating from the front, they take Sparks out to rescue babies and perform good deeds.