Not Such A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Pretty Close To Home : Meghan Turbitt’s “Galactic Friends”


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

Billed by its creator and publisher, cartoonist Meghan Turbitt, as “the definitive guide to Star Wars by someone who has only seen the movies once for the first time last year,” the 2018 full-color mini Galactic Friends is pretty much exactly what it claims to be — which makes it the most authoritative shorthand examination of George Lucas’ non-stop license to print money that has likely ever seen the light of day.

There are blessed few outside observers to the entire Star Wars phenomenon left on the planet, of course — they’ve heard of this shit in even the most remote Mongolian steppes — so to find one is something of a rarity in and of itself; to find one possessed of a sharp wit, zero by way of preconceptions, and the ability to draw? Well, heck, that fits the dictionary definition of a “miracle” right there. Or at least…

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“All-Time Comics : Zerosis Deathscape” #1 : I Love It When A Plan Comes Together


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

We’ve certainly spent a lot of time dissecting Josh and Samuel Bayer’s All-Time Comics series on this site lately, and while I’m tempted to say something along the lines of “the beatings will continue until you buy this shit,” in truth I was doing some catch-up work in order to set the stage for the second “season” of this ever-evolving concept. The “zero issue” put out last month by Floating World Comics set the table, but now that All-Time Comics : Zerosis Deathscape #1 has arrived, it’s time for the main course. So — just how tasty is it?

The first few pages — a flashback sequence illustrated by the always-sublime Gabrielle Bell that ties the events of the “prequel” comic in with the series “proper” — are one visually-delicious appetizer, that’s for sure, but for old-time readers, it’s the main 1980s-set portion of the story, drawn by trailblazing “Big…

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Rian Johnson unsheathes the Knives Out Trailer


A filmmaker is sometimes only as good as their last film. If you mentioned director Rian Johnson’s name around 2012, it was probably met with wild applause. After all, he gave us the time travelling thriller Looper, with Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Mentioning Johnson now breeds a bit of contempt after his outing on Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The film was hit with reviews ranging from daring to awful, and most of the Star Wars fanbase don’t think of what he’s done there.

With his newest film, Knives Out, Johnson looks like he’s moving forward. The film appears to be a classic whodunit with a fantastic cast. Christopher Plummer, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Don Johnson, Lakeith Stanfield, Michael Shannon, Katherine Langsford, and Jaeden Martell round out the cast list, which is pretty great overall. The story seems to cover the murder of a patriarch, and a family of suspects which reminds me of the classic Infocom game, Deadline.  Hoping for the best with this one.

Enjoy.

Weekly Reading Round-Up : 06/23/2019 – 06/29/2019, Catching Up With Black Crown


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

With the recent — and, I must say, not too terribly surprising, all things considered — announcement that DC will be shit-canning (excuse me, “sunsetting”) their venerable “mature readers” Vertigo imprint after 26 years, I figured now might be a good time to take a look at what Vertigo alum Shelly Bond was doing with her not-exactly-new-anymore Black Crown line over at IDW —

Say good-bye to Feargal “Fergie” Feguson and the ghost who isn’t really Sid Vicious with Punks Not Dead : London Calling #5, which wraps up the second (and, I presume, final) run of writer David Barnett and artist extraordinaire Martin Simmonds’ decidedly fun little slice of occult/supernatural hijinks with plenty of “fuck you” attitude mixed in. I’m gonna miss this book, but each and every storyline comes to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion here, except perhaps for Fergie’s would-be “romance” with his high school sweetie, and they…

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Hunt Down “Deadly Prey”


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

Prince straddling his iconic Purple Rain motorcycle brandishing a pistol. Robin Williams in full Mrs. Doubtfire drag putting out a dude’s eye with a broomstick. A distinctly Asian-looking Michael Jordan with a basketball in one hand, a gun in the other as he prepares to Space Jam the living shit out of any interstellar baddies. Charles Bronson’s legendary vigilante Paul Kersey taking aim at axe-wielding zombies in Death Wish 4. If these images all sound infinitely more bizarre — to say nothing of more interesting — than the films to which they tie-in by the very thinnest of threads, that’s because they are.

Welcome to the sheer, balls-out insanity of Ghanaian movie posters.

When American popular culture is exported, something is always lost in translation, and thank goodness for that, because markets abroad tend to take the pablum we spew out way too literally and end up turning the…

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ATC Week Epilogue : “All-Time Comics : Zerosis Deathscape” #0


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

After giving you, dear readers — and myself! — a bit of a breather from all things “All-Time,” we’re back for one more round, this time putting the not-quite-first installment of “Season Two” of Josh and Samuel Bayer’s ongoing post-modern take on super-heroics under our metaphorical microscope, that being All -Time Comics : Zerosis Deathscape #0.

Direct “Bronze Age” call-backs are still here to be found, but you’ve gotta do a lot more digging for them as the brothers Bayer, along with new collaborator Josh Simmons and returning “usual suspects” Ken Landgraf and cover artist Das Patoras, have widened the scope of the project considerably, with the art and story this time most clearly hearkening back to the EC “hosted” horror comics of the 1950s, while the “zero issue” hustle is something straight outta the 1990s “speculator bubble” playbook.

The question, of course, is — are all of these changes for…

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Professor Marston and the Wonder Women- (Dir. Angela Robinson), Review By Case Wright


PMWW.jpg

What does Wonder Woman, S&M, and Polyamory have in common?  Pretty much everything.  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (PMWW) was…dull.  You’d think with all the whips and ropes that the movie would pull some interest, but the scenes were shot hamfisted and clinical.  I guess that makes sense to a degree because the stars were playing Harvard nerds who liked kinky sex, but man what a snore!

The movie was a Biopic about Professor Marston the creator of the lie detector test and I will forever know this because it was repeated over and over and over and over again.  UGGHHHH.  Professor Marston was a Harvard Professor who was married to fellow professor Elizabeth Marston.  They are social psyche professors who are developing a lie detector test and are determined to bring Olive Byrne into their cult-like love life.  This would be considered very creepy today, not for the S&M stuff, but because of the professor/student boundary crossing.  They aren’t shy at all about their relationship, causing everyone to get expelled/fired.  Honestly, I don’t blame Harvard on this one.  He not only seduced a student, got her pregnant, and they all lived together.  It reminded me of those separatist compounds.

Since no one is working, money gets tight. Eventually, Professor Marston puts his kink into high gear with ropes etc and this gives him the idea of Wonder Woman.  He uses the two personalities of his two wives to give Wonder Woman a dual identity.  It’s not a terrible analogy, just a terrible movie.   Their unconventional marriage is discovered by their suburban neighbors and as a result; they split up for what seemed like 6 days.  I blame the director on that.

There’s nothing wrong with being into an unconventional marriage or bondage, but I just didn’t expect it to be so boring.  If anyone has an interest in S&M, just watch this film and you’ll be so bored of it, you’ll try something much more exciting like papier-mache!  The movie concludes with a bookended plot line of him being investigated for using Wonder Woman to normalize bondage and polyamory and he even admits as much.  So??  I don’t know if I’m supposed to care or not.  Basically, I might be done with sex for good because I like a little excitement in my life and this apparently is a dead end.

HMM2

Same As It Ever Was – “Dybbuk Box : True Story Of Chris Chambers”


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarTrash Film Guru

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. And you may find yourself in another part of the world. And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife.

Or, you may find yourself browsing through the recent horror offerings on Amazon Prime and giving Texas-based writer/director Joseph Mazzaferro’s Dybbuk Box : True Story Of Chris Chambers a go simply because any movie that’s so sloppy as to omit an obvious “The” from its title is bound to at least be an interesting mess — and then, and only then, will you ask yourself “Well — how did I get here”?

That’s because this movie, in truth, isn’t interesting, occasional fuck-ups aside, such as our protagonist, Chris Chambers (played by — shit, you already know. The film’s only other “character,” Sarah Bently, “stars”…

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“Bad Ben : The Way In” – Nigel Bach’s Very Own Never-Ending Story


Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarTrash Film Guru

Okay, so in truth I wasn’t aware that Nigel Bach had cranked out a sixth film in this, the most unlikely “franchise” series in cinematic history, and I usually pride myself on being on top of these sorts of things, but hey — when I learned that Bad Ben : The Way In had shambled its way from Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey all the way to Amazon Prime back on May 1st, I can’t honestly say that I was surprised or anything.

And, really, why should Bach stop? When he sub-titled one of his films “The Final Chapter,” it looked like maybe he was going to retire this admittedly played-out concept, but let’s be honest : these things cost no money to produce, he doesn’t necessarily “need” anything other than his iPhone to make them (although he’s expanded the cast a couple of time in the past, it’s not…

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