By and large, most of the horror offerings to come out of Spain in the wake of that country’s post –[REC] genre boom have been hit-or-miss affairs in and of themselves that tend to offer more by way of visual and thematic than actual storytelling interest, but stripping things away and getting back to basics can sometimes yield interesting results, and it doesn’t get much more basic than the set-up offered by director Rafa Martinez (who also co-wrote the script along with Angel Agudo) for his 2015 low-budgeter, Sweet Home (now available via Netflix streaming; no word yet, at least that I know of, on a Blu-ray and/or DVD release in the US) : young real estate agent Alicia (played by Ingrid Garcia Jonsson) happens upon a seemingly-abandoned apartment building and plans a romantic late-night rendezvous there with her boyfriend, Simon (Bruno Sevilla). What they don’t know, though, is…

I admit, when I first saw 2016’s The Curse Of Sleeping Beauty in the Netflix horror streaming queue (it’s not yet available on Blu-ray or DVD but did, at least according to the poster, receive a theatrical release — somewhere), I assumed it was a product of The Asylum, given that they have a penchant for cranking out low-budget Brothers Grimm-based crap. They’re not the only ones doing so these days, however, and it turns out they’re innocent of the charge of having anything to do with this one, as well — which is, believe it or not, kind of a pity, since then it would have had a chance to be of the “so bad it’s good” variety. Instead, this filmed-on-the-cheap-in-the-Philippines snoozer from director/co-writer (along with Josh Nadler) Pearry Reginald Teo doesn’t manage to pass “go” and collect its $200 and remains firmly in the “so bad it’s still…

When a horror flick advertises the fact that its writer/director tandem (Jay Lender and Micah Wright, if you must know) has previously worked on Call Of Duty : Black Ops II and Spongebob Squarepants  you know you might be in for something a little bit different, I suppose, and 2016’s They’re Watching (now streaming on Netflix and coming next month on Blu-ray and DVD), despite being yet another entry in the “found footage” genre, is certainly that. Lender and Wright both have a background in comic books, animation, and video games, and bring a definite comedic and OTT sensibility to the proceedings here, but be forewarned — if you’re looking for a traditional scare flick, this is anything but.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Despite some questionable tonal shifts and beyond-dodgy FX work, I found Lender and Wright’s low-budget opus to be reasonably entertaining throughout and a solid send-up…

Sometimes all that’s necessary for a new project to pique your interest is to see a familiar name in a new and unexpected place, so when I noticed that veteran comics colorist Nathan Fairbairn was going to be writing a new series for Image, my curiosity was sufficiently stoked — doubly so, in fact, given that the first issue of his ongoing title with artist Matt Smith (sorry, Doctor Who fans, not that one), Lake Of Fire, was being solicited as a “double-sized” 44-page comic for only $3.99. Honestly, at that price, they’re practically begging you to give their book a chance — why not take them up on it?

The “pull-quote” featured on the cover from the usually-reliable Comics Bulletin website calling it the “best debut issue to be published by Image Comics in 2016” was high praise indeed considering that said publisher has already given us finely-crafted…

For as long as I can remember, Brian Wood has been one of those writers who has — to his credit — shared copyright ownership on all of his various projects with the artists involved and, in the case of the just-concluded Image series Starve, even the colorist. So if you’re an indicia-reader like myself, the “Copyright 2016 Brian Wood” in the fine print of the first issue of his new Dark Horse-published title, Briggs Land, is something of a surprise. We’re used to the artists being cut out of the action over at Aftershock, but why was Mack Chater — who does a bang-up job on this book, as you’ll see in the art reproduced below — not given co-creator credit here?

Well, the answer to that is simple : this comic has already been optioned for television and is, in fact, being developed simultaneously on the…

Way back in the dim and foggy past — as in, less than five years ago — DC rolled out their “New 52” publishing initiative, and while the then-new line was understandably heavy on books that fell under the loosely-defined “Superman Family” and “Batman Family” umbrellas, a certain amount of space was also carved out for “weird” or “offbeat” titles like Dial H, Frankenstein, Agent Of SHADE, Justice League Dark, I, Vampire, OMAC, All-Star Western, and others that trod a path somewhat less beaten. It was something of a gutsy call, and while most of these series were given a pretty short sales leash (with a good many of them biting the bullet sooner rather than later), I gave ’em props for being willing to throw a lot of shit at the wall in order to see what would stick.

And what stuck, of…

It’s no secret :  apocalypse has always loomed large in the works of Alan Moore — from Adrian Veidt’s duplicitous, engineered “brave new world” of Watchmen to the celebratory “wrap party” of all as we know it to be in Promethea, one way or another, as Rorschach himself would almost certainly put it, the end is always nigh. In Dez Vylenz’ documentary feature The Mindscape Of Alan Moore, the author himself opines that, in his considered view, apocalypse is essentially synonymous with revelation, and that it needn’t be feared in the least — but apparently he didn’t pass that memo along to one of his own characters, the ever-hapless (not to mention clueless) Robert Black, who experiences perhaps the most personal Moore-scripted apocalypse to date, yet also the one with the most profound and far-reaching (not to mention harrowing) consequences, as he comes to find out that he…

If there’s one thing that’s even more pathetic than the “Marvel Guy” vs. “DC Guy” debates that have been raging among comics fans for years, it’s seeing those same arguments steroid-pumped beyond comprehension now that four-color funnybooks have become the go-to “IP source” for multi-million-dollar Hollywood blockbusters. “Marvel movies are the best!” “You take that back, DC movies are the best!” — it’s all so mind-numbingly tedious.

Not to mention fundamentally dishonest. Just as neither publisher deserves to have anyone rooting for them given their sorry ethical histories and largely substandard product of recent vintage, the same is true for both cinematic universes — by and large, they’re entirely unexceptional on their best days, offensively mediocre on their worst. 2016 hasn’t bucked this trend in the least to date, with Marvel’s Captain America : Civil War being yet another bland two-and-a-half hour TV episode with lots of guest stars, and…

In case it’s not already obvious, I’ve been on a semi-massive “found footage” horror kick lately, and while I suffered through a lot of sub-standard crap last week, the weekend brought with it a welcome spate of much-worthier efforts (all of which — including the one under review here — were found on Hulu), and perhaps none have been better (so far,at any rate) than Delivery : The Beast Within, a low-budget indie effort lensed in 2013 in, I believe, the Los Angeles area by director Brian Netto, who also co-wrote the script along with Adam Schindler. The flick got a little bit of play on the horror film fest circuit, but it’s obvious this was intended as straight-to-video fare from the outset, and as such is duly available on DVD (though not, interestingly, Blu-ray), as well as any number of major streaming services (with the notable exception of…