Back when I was just a little boy, I'd get up on a Saturday morning, trudge across the ice sheets to milk the dinosaur for my cereal bowl, and tune into one of the three available television networks to watch cartoons, because this was the only day they would air. Times were hard.

Among those cartoons were SCOOBY-DOO, and once in a blue moon the Mystery, Inc. gang would have someone from the real world show up -- like Batman and Robin. This happened twice, and now as an adult I'm glad to have both of those episodes on DVD.

Now I have them again, because they're the bonus features on this new release, SCOOBY-DOO & BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD.

What did we talk about on Critical Blast this week?

VOTE FOR THE BEST OF 2017!!!

From Entertainment Weekly:

Wakko, Yakko, and Dot are coming back to television. On Thursday, Hulu announced they have partnered with Amblin Television and Warner Bros. Animation to create and premiere a brand-new version of beloved cartoon franchise Animaniacs. New episodes will premiere on Hulu in 2020.

Jon Del Arroz is a serious science fiction author. And by serious, I mean he's taken the time and trouble to join the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America guild, something I've bothered to do, and now probably never will.

Del Arroz, an Hispanic, was planning to attend Worldcon 76, when he received notice that they were disallowing his attendance, stating he had intended to break their code of conduct. "Worldcon 76 strives to be an inclusive place in fandom, as difficult as that can be, and racist and bullying behavior is not acceptable at our Worldcon."

Because nothing says inclusivity and anti-racism like banning an Hispanic author from your event.

What triggered this reaction? What was it that Del Arroz had done to merit sucha response? Had he published a political manifesto? Posted with a frillion AK-47s on Facebook? Publicly burned a picture of Ray Bradbury?

From Marvel.com:

Few matters can force a super hero into exile. And even fewer can cause that hero to return.

But when a mysterious threat puts an alternate future in jeopardy, the teleporting X-Man named Blink—who once fought alongside a classic collection of outcasts, mutants, and strangers—joins a new group in an attempt to save the multiverse. This April, writer Saladin Ahmed and artist Javier Rodriguez leap into the future with EXILES!

In this brand-new ongoing series, the man once called Nick Fury—now known simply as the Unseen—observes Earth from his abode on the moon. When a strange force imperils all of existence, the Unseen recruits Blink, Khan, Iron Lad, Wolvie, and an as-yet-unseen hero to save the past, the present, and the future.

The iconic Charles Bronson film gets a modern remake from Director Eli Roth, and on first blush it looks like the new DEATH WISH is going to be an action-packed thrill-ride audiences are going to love. Bruce Willis takes on the role of Dr. Paul Kersey, a surgeon whose finally had enough of the city's violence when it invades his own home and takes his wife from him.

Let's take a moment to enjoy the trailer, shall we?

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!

January. The first. First day of the first month, and a whole new year laid out ahead of all of us. Many of you may be thinking about what you'll do differently this year, what you'll change from last year. And many of you may have already resigned yourself to the notion that you'll probably fail at it, but what the heck, it's a tradition, right? Think about the gym, the work, the sacrifice, and figure that'll last until February and your first box of chocolates, if you're lucky.

Lucky for you, our January 2018 Critical Blast Bombshell has inspiration to spare! Sure, we love to check out cosplayers and get inspired by their costume designing, their prop-making skills, their ability to pull a character off of a page our out of a game and drop them right into our convention center or special event. But this month, we give you a cosplayer who's a little bit more than that.

Another year has come and gone. The sanitation workers have hauled away the last vestiges of torn Christmas wrapping and boxes, our heads are still buzzing a little from staying up way too late and drinking way to much. And on top of that, the shirt that fit us just fine last October seems to have shrunk in the dryer or something!

But with all that, we've not forgotten that the new year brings with it the voting for the best of last year! So please take a look through the categories below, where the team at Critical Blast has suggested what we think are the Best of the Best of 2017. And because we're not infallible (rumors of selecting new staff members through white or black smoke signals to the contrary), we've got an "other" option in almost every category so you can correct us with what we should have suggested!

When I reviewed the first issue of DOOMSDAY CLOCK, I gave it a bit of a gush. After all, this was my favorite limited series coming into contact with my favorite universe. How could I not be giddy about it?

That review was written by Doctor Jekyll. Mr. Hyde's come to play now, so let's open up the second issue of DOOMSDAY CLOCK and rip it a new one now, shall we?

What's cooler than a LEGO scientist minifigure that comes with two clear beakers filled with different colors? The book she comes with, of course!

The latest in the line of LEGO ADVENTURES IN THE REAL WORLD is LEGO SCIENCE, and where LEGO FARM was a Level 1 reader for beginners, LEGO SCIENCE is a emBIG book with sections devoted to chemistry, matter, space, inventions, physics, and much more! You'll be building water molecules from LEGO, learning how things work, why they work, and the often amazing ways things were discovered. You'll be given build challenges along the way -- but not just to create something, but answer science questions about them, like the kind of energy used to build your pair of racecars, and what things you could apply to make them faster.

What do you do if you're a teenager whose father is an evil villain intent on conquering the ciy, and everybody knows it? And what if you also lived a secret life as a masked ninja, looked up to by everyone because you're constantly thwarting your father's plans?

That's the life of Lloyd Garmadon, aka the Green Ninja. He's one member of an elite teenage fighting force that uses their giant mechs to ward off Garmadon's invasions (that usually have some sort of shark-theme to them). With his friends Cole, Jay, Kai, Nya, and Zane (a robot who, for some reason, hides the fact that he's a robot), he fights the daily invasions that come across Ninjago bay from Garmadon's easily-visible volcanic island where he fires his failing generals -- literally.

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!

What did we talk about on Critical Blast this week?

Interview

After defeating the evil jumbie Severine, you'd think the people on Corinne LeMar's island home would be praising her. Instead they fear her. She's half jumbie after all and can't be trusted because of it. And when children start disappearing Corinne is the first suspect on everyone's list. To clear her name and rescue the missing children, Corinne must tag up with her old friends and seek out a water jumbie, Mama D'Leau. But Mama D'Leau won't help Corinne and her friends without aking a bargain. Her friends must travel with mermaids across the ocean to Ghana to retrieve a magical object before Mama D'Leau will tell Corinne what happened to the missing children. With everything against her, Corinne must once again rely on her friends and her courage to save the missing kids and her reputation.

I grew up watching SHA NA NA as a television variety show. And I was into it. Somewhere there exist blackmail photos of me with my (brown) leather jacket, my hair slicked back with Alberto VO5, and my oversized sunglasses. I was the most bad-ass 12-year-old you'd ever seen! So I was more than happy when the offer came to interview band frontman Jocko Marcellino. But it turned out there were things about SHA NA NA I did not know.

My first introduction to SHA NA NA was the television show, and I never looked back farther than that. But you guys actually played at Woodstock! What kind of tentpole was that in the band's history?

That was an extraordinary opportunity that was given to us by Jimi Hendrix. When we were starting out, we had stayed in school that summer. Then we decided to try and make it with the act. We had done eight professional gigs, and our eight professional gig was Woodstock.

If you're a reader of Marvel's comic book line (you know, those things they keep producing in order to maintain the trademark over the characters that make bank in the movies), then you're probably already aware that the publisher has elected to cancel a good sized handful of their titles.

One of the titles on the chopping block is ICEMAN, the solo adventures of one of the original X-Men. Drake's character first courted controversy when a time-traveling younger version of himself was outed in ALL-NEW X-MEN as gay. This contrasted with nearly 40 years of history where the character was demonstrably -- in word, deed, and (because this is comics) thought -- heterosexual. But Brian Michael Bendis threw in the twist, and there we had it. Bobby Drake was now gay, past and present.

Not a dream! Not a hoax! Not an imaginary story! The superheroes that have populated the four-color tales of the comic book pages have made the transition into reality. They go by names like Thanatos or Mr. Xtreme or Phoenix Jones. They have costumes and missions that drive them. And you may even have one operating in your city!

Author Nadia Fezzani has spent time with several of these crimefighters across the United States and Canada, and has chronicled her experiences in REAL LIFE SUPER HEROES from Dundurn. As anyone who frequents CriticalBlast knows, we have an affinity for the super hero as well as for those who appear publicly in costumes. So we were eager to speak with Ms. Fezzani and dig up a few more answers about the addition of these characters to real life society.

Is the Real Life Super Hero (RLSH) movement a fad, an extension of cosplay, or something larger--a step for societal evolution?

When the solicits came out for March 2017, there were several Marvel books MIA.  This led to a lot of speculation about series being cancelled.  Over the last few days, various creative teams have confirmed the cancellation of several books, and there are rumors of more to come. CAPTAIN MARVEL was one of the books now solicited for March, but series riter Margeret Stohl tweeted out, ""Concerned Citizens: nope Captain Marvel has not been canceled & we are hard at work on all things Carol Danvers even now!"

Confirmed Cancelled: