Last week was all about first issues, but this week sees a mix of debuts and very notable finales —

Berlin #22 concludes Jason Lutes’ 20-year epic, and I think it’s going to take awhile for those of us who have been following this series from the beginning to fully comprehend the quietly gaping hole its absence will leave in our lives. This comic has spanned two publishers (Black Eye — remember them? — and Drawn + Quarterly), three decades, even two centuries, and the idea that it’s over is really only just beginning to sink in. You’d expect a suitably poignant finale, of course, and Lutes delivers : the final fates of all our principal characters during the waning days of the Weimar Republic are revealed — Silvia, David, Marthe, Kurt, Anna, we have loved you all — but more than that we are given a privileged glimpse…

Everyone from casual horror fans to hard-core “found footage” aficionados was sufficiently impressed with co-writer/co-star/director and co-writer/co-star Mark Duplass’ 2014 indie horror effort Creep — this armchair critic included — to form a sort of impromptu “whisper campaign” in its favor that saw it end up punching well above its weight class and really leaving a strong and distinct mark among the always-bulging throng of low-budget horror offerings overpopulating the various streaming services we’ve all come to rely on to meet our entertainment “needs” on a monthly basis. It became, in short, a nice little success story. But I’m not sure that anyone — even, and perhaps especially, Brice and Duplass themselves — figured that an honest-to-God sequel would ever be in the offing. And yet here we are, three (okay, closer to four now) years later,  and Creep 2 is upon us — backed by Netflix and Blumhouse financing…