When science-fiction anime series Cowboy Bebop first appeared on Japanese television in 1998, it didn’t even complete its run of 26 episodes. Broadcasters were concerned that the show’s violence and adult content made it unsuitable for a general audience. Aired on a channel targeted at older viewers, though, it became both a commercial and critical success. And […]
Rumors of a Shazam movie have been circulating for years — draft screenplays existed in the early 2000s, and persistent chatter identified Dwayne Johnson as villain/antihero Black Adam. Recently, more concrete news has emerged: the Shazam! film is slated for a 2019 release, with Zachary Levi playing the hero and Asher Angel as his child alter […]
Critics are already making encouraging noises about the CW’s new superhero series, Black Lightning, which premieres January 16. Created by Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil, the series stars Cress Williams as the DC Comics character. But although he was one of DC’s first major black superheroes, Black Lightning isn’t a very well-known character, having been overshadowed […]
Marvel’s latest superhero film, Black Panther, is garnering both critical and fan accolades. In part, this is because it’s a Marvel movie: a big-budget action spectacular with the usual collection of fights, chases and set pieces. In part, this comes from how rare (indeed, practically unheard-of) it is to see a Hollywood blockbuster with not only […]
August 28 marked the 100th birthday of probably the most important creator in superhero comics history, Jack Kirby. Born Jacob Kurtzberg in 1917, Kirby had a decades-long career in comics and animation, starting in the 1930s and ending only in the years before his death in 1994. Perhaps no other artist has had a more […]
Comics fans have a love-hate relationship with their past. A huge hit in its day, the 1966 Batman TV series was widely cited as something the character needed to move away from in subsequent decades, even by people who loved the equally absurd, if not as colourful, Tim Burton films. Recently, though, the absurd take on […]
The trailer for Blade Runner 2049 is out — what does it tell us about the hotly-anticipated movie? Watch Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner today, and it’s easy to overlook how revolutionary the film was when it came out. So much of Scott’s dystopian neo-noir setting has been absorbed by other science-fiction movies that it can be hard […]
After many twists and turns, Peter Parker is back in the Marvel Universe in his own film, following his appearance in Captain America: Civil War. And Tom Holland’s first star turn isn’t shy about tying the wall-crawler into the broader Marvel pantheon. What follows is a brief run-down of the connections between Spider-Man: Homecoming and the Marvel universe, […]
This spring and summer have seen lots of new publicity about Marvel’s forthcoming Inhumans TV series. But although the characters have been around since 1965, they don’t have the name recognition of characters like Captain America or Spider-Man. So who are the Inhumans and what can we expect to see in their series? The core cast […]
By now, most of us are finished binge-watching the new Netflix Marvel series, The Defenders. In its eight episodes, we’ve seen four street-level MCU characters bond into … well, something. Not a team, certainly. At least, not in their view. We’re used to seeing Marvel’s cinematic offerings differ from their comic-book counterparts to a certain extent. […]