Lists

Archie Andrews is so hot right now. With KJ Apa dazzling us on screens in The CW’s Riverdale, Archie is all of a sudden a sex symbol for viewers around the world, and it’s a lot easier to see while the girls of Riverdale have been chasing after the waffle-haired boy-next-door for more than seventy years. While Archie’s known for being part of the most iconic love triangle in fiction, he’s also a bit of a player, who has been known to date around. Take a look back at eight of the most memorable Archie Andrews love interests.

Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's Sex Criminals is way more than the sex romp it advertises itself as; it's one of the most uplifting, sex-positive, and downright fun comics on the stands. This playlist has been tailored to the relationship between Suzie and Jon, and while there are some songs about getting busy, we've tried to make it a bit more well-rounded than that, just as the comic isn't always about boning down!

The LEGO Batman Movie, now playing in theaters (and Palace Cinema LEGO sets) everywhere, works perfectly well for any audience, regardless of their familiarity with Batman, LEGO or otherwise. For viewers who do know the nearly 80-year history of its title character, however, the film is a treasure trove of references. Following his debut in the pages of 1939’s Detective Comics #27, Batman quickly became one of the most famous heroes in all of comics, and eventually spawned television shows, movies, toys, video games, and countless pieces of merchandise, almost all of which get referenced in Chris McKay’s LEGO Batman Movie in some way, shape, or form.

We ranked 75 years of Batman movies in one list.

Batman made his first comic book appearance in 1939, but it wasn’t until 1972 that the Mego Corporation got the bright idea to mass-produce a line of toys featuring the superhero and all his gadgets, vehicles, sidekicks, and adversaries. Ever since then, the character has been a staple of the toy aisle, even during the years when his comics weren’t selling so well.

Since her debut in Alias, the 2001 Marvel Max series by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos, Jessica Jones has become emblematic of a kind of deeply flawed female protagonist that there are far too few of in popular culture. Living with PTSD, a drinking problem, and a self-destructive streak a mile wide, she’s always created as many problems for herself as she solves for others in her job as a super-powered private detective. In recent years, her marriage to Luke Cage and the birth of their daughter has brought more stability into her life, but the current Jessica Jones series, also by Bendis and Gaydos, brings all of that stability into doubt. In assembling this mix tape, I looked for songs that embody the conflicts and contradictions within Jessica Jones and her stories. Songs about flawed and troubled people searching for something to keep them going.

Superhero movies are big business these days, and with so many major heroes already either on screen or making their way within the next few years, the number of top tier characters for feature films is dwindling. But that doesn't mean there aren't some great characters out there waiting for their moment in the spotlight. In fact, some amazing heroes have been forgotten or overlooked. In this list we look at ten obscure, unlikely, or downright quirky Marvel and DC heroes that we believe truly could make a successful transition to the big screen, if given the right approach.

In the tradition of ScreenCrush series like You Think You Know Movies and You Think You Know TV comes a new YouTube series: Top Five! Every two weeks (or so; we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on), ScreenCrush editor and critic Matt Singer will count down a particular topic from the world of movies (and probably write these introductory posts in the third person).

This week, we're casting an imaginary TV series based on the Image Comics series Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour. Southern Bastards would make a fantastic prestige drama for HBO, Netflix, or wherever. It has discrete storylines, but the underlying mysteries are unspooled at a very gradual pace. Film it down in Alabama, and fill the cast with as many craggy old character actors as you can find.

Pretty Deadly, by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Emma Rios, and Jordie Bellaire, is a story about stories. It's a fantasy western about Death's daughter Ginny, but it's truly a gorgeous, lyrical, epic poem about myth itself. And like traditional epic poems, there's love, and death, and vengeance. We've put together a Pretty Deadly mixtape with a vaguely "Americana" style, with songs whose lyrics contain grand narratives about death. Expect murder ballads galore.