Lists

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.

This week, I'm looking at one of my favorite DC comics of the moment: Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye from the Young Animal line. Co-created by Gerard Way, Jon Rivera, and Michael Avon Oeming, it breathes new life into Cave Carson, a Silver Age spelunker who was so forgotten that he was even on a team called the Forgotten Heroes, which you probably also don't remember.

Every month, comic publishers release their solicitation announcements to provide information to readers and retailers on comics that are coming out in three months’ time, but there’s so much information dropped at once that a lot can slip through the cracks. This month in Marvel's April solicitations, some long lost character make big leading role returns, Marvel gambles big on the success of its latest event, and Jubilee goes to the mall.

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).

Every month, comic publishers release their solicitation announcements to provide information to readers and retailers on comics that are coming out in three months’ time, but there’s so much information dropped at once that a lot can slip through the cracks. This month in DC’s April solicitations, we’ve got guest artists galore, fan-favorite team-ups and a clue towards the incoming return of a classic DC super-team.

Whether old standards of DC lore or simply sensible to what we’ve seen going on in the Injustice storyline, any one of these characters would bring an awesome wrinkle to the game that we’d love to take against our friends. These are the 10 characters we’d love to see in Injustice 2.

Archie Andrews has always been quite the musician, and there are several stories involving him pursuing his dreams of rock stardom --- but his friends and family (and Reggie) have been in the musical spotlight too. For this playlist based on the current incarnation of the monthly Archie series by Mark Waid, Thomas Pitilli, Ryan Jampole, Joe Eisma, Veronica Fish et al, I decided to look at all the most beloved characters (and Reggie) and choose one song that fits each of them.

Today is Inauguration Day, and Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States. And really, it's obvious why he won. After eight years with one of the most qualified and accomplished presidents in generations, what America really needed was a vain, egotistical, thin-skinned braggart with a long history of bullying and abusive statements, absolutely no experience in public service, and a track record of astonishing failure. If you voted to Make America Great Again, here are some comics to dig into while you wait for all those manufacturing jobs to come back, and for those pesky SJWs to finally be put in their place.

Shade The Changing Girl --- part of DC's Young Animal imprint --- tells the story of Loma, a rebellious alien who steals a magic coat of madness, runs away to Earth, and possesses the body of a comatose teenage Earth girl. Along with Cecil Castellucci's trippy script, the space-bending, psychedelic visuals from artists Marley Zarcone and Kelly Fitzpatrick are a core part of what makes Shade the Changing Girl so fantastic. When planning the playlist, I wanted to find weird, intense tech/pop songs, less focused on the lyrics and more on the mood of each song.

When superheroes make the transition from comics to TV animation, it's always interesting to hear what kind of theme music they get. Songs with lyrics that explain who the heroes are can be fun, but they can also go awry. Instrumental tracks can be boring if you're not careful, but if they're well-executed, they can do a great job of creating just the tone you want for your cartoon. I've put together a chronological list of nine memorable theme songs from TV superhero cartoons. Obviously I can't include them all, but I expect to see in the comments which of your favorites I've left out.