Fifteen minutes ago, Rip Hunter (ARTHUR DARVILL) left Sara Lance (CAITY LOTZ) in charge of the Waverider timeship and its crew, the Legends of Tomorrow.

Ten minutes ago, the Legends arrived in modern-day Los Angeles to dinosaurs and futuristic buildings, with Sara announcing, "I think we broke time."

Five minutes ago, a five-years-older Rip Hunter re-appeared to disband the Legends team, having used his intervening five years to establish a buttoned-up, by-the-book secret agency, the Time Bureau, who arrived with him to clean up the time anomalies and remove all memory of it from having occurred.

Six months ago, Barry Allen (GRANT GUSTIN) left the physical world in order to save it, allowing himself to be imprisoned by the mysterious Speed Force that fuels his powers as The Flash. Today, his friends continue to protect Central City as best they can, with Iris West (CANDICE PATTON) taking the lead of the team, tracking metahumans and sending out Cisco Ramon (CARLOS VALDES) and her brother Wally (KEIYNAN LONSDALE) as Vibe and Kid Flash, along with her father, Detective Joe West (JESSE L MARTIN) to do battle. The fourth season opener finds them with a better than Hall-of-Fame record, capturing two out of every three, and having just put the wraps on capturing (again) Peek-a-Boo (BRITNE OLDFORD). But that's not good enough for Iris, who is moving forward with her life with a cold determination that has accepted that Barry is gone forever.

As Lucifer Morningstar (TOM ELLIS) continues his rant about the new villain in town stealing his schtick, the so-called Sinner Man, the LAPD gets pulled in on a homicide involving a second-rate comedian found murdered after publicly claiming another successful comedian had made a career on jokes stolen from him. Detective Decker (LAUREN GERMAN) tries to get Lucifer to focus on the case at hand rather than continue off on tangents about some mythical bogeyman, and warns him not to let their new boss, Lt. Marcus Pierce (TOM WELLING) hear him gon on about that or his 'devil nonsense' or he'll think Lucifer is nuts. At which point, of course, we ominously see that the good lieutenant is watching and listening from afar.

There were several comics titles out there that showcased the unique retro style of Darwyn Cooke, but JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER was definitely his crowning achievement. His signature look was tailor-made for the late-50s, early-60s era of comics, and worked perfectly for his graphic novel. The DC Animated Universe has had some misses in its history, but adapting the graphic novel to the animated movie, while absolutely nailing Cooke's style, was a Grade-A bonafide hit!

The setting for JL:TNF is just after the disbanding of the Justice Society due to McCarthy era paranoia over masked men. The government simply did not trust them, and not without good reason. The only ones left operating openly are Superman (KYLE MCLACHLAN) and Wonder Woman (LUCY LAWLESS), while Batman (JEREMY SISTO) is more of an outcast than ever.

Before I start, WrestlePro Owner Pat Buck has launched his own podcast, The Pat Buck WrestlePro Show.  His old show, “The Pat Buck Show,” was actually the first podcast I ever listened to (and these days I listen to way too many podcasts these days, so I guess you can blame Pat for ruining my life). 

The first episode is features a terrific interview with Impact’s Fallah Bahh, plus some great insight into the training aspect of wrestling.  

Welcome back to Critical Blast’s weekly look at what new comics you should check out each week.   Just a warning, I make these picks pretty much a week BEFORE I actually get to read any of these comics, so if something is a stinker, I take no blame on that.  Let's get to it!

During Monday Night Football, Disney posted up a brand new trailer for STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI along with this poster.  I think it's a wonderful tribute to Carrie FIsher to feature General Leia front and center on the poster.  The poster doesn't give us a lot of new info on the movie, but it does look damn cool.

The trailer itself is pretty cool. Not a lot of spoilers, thankfully, but definitely enough teases to get people hyped up for the movie.  Poor Luke seems to have lost his fricking mind since we last saw him...wonder if we will ever get the full back story there.

During the Summer of ’16, something monumental happened…

Jeff Beck, one of the greatest guitar players rock has ever known, celebrated his 50^th anniversary in the business by having a concert at the celebrated Hollywood Bowl amphitheater, along with some very special guests he’s worked with over the years.

At 72 years of age at the time of the concert, you would think it more of just a tribute concert. Not so at all. This was no going-through-the-motions event. Jeff was in perfect form, and played as astonishingly as he ever had. Think about what I just said: one of the greatest (in anyone’s list of greatest guitar players ever) played as good as I have ever heard and seen him--at 72 years old!

Now, if (like me) you didn’t know about this, or couldn’t even go if you did, the music lovers at Eagle Rock Entertainment wove their magic and were smart enough to capture it for all of us to see and hear.

DC is teaming up with Archie Comics (after teaming up with IDW, Dynamite, and Dark Horse -- gosh is there somebody missing from all the company-crossover fun? Let's marvel over that for a moment...) to bring us the team-up that nobody demanded: Harley & Ivy and Betty & Veronica!

A few years ago, this crossover would have resulted in a fab foursome, and I'd have chunked over good change for it. (Forgive me while I dream over what a Dan DeCarlo page of that story would have looked like.) But this is the new Archie, the now Archie, the edgy-and-hip Archie, and Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are much more friendly with each other than Riverdale's former best buds, who spend their time snipping at each other. The old rivalry has evolved into a cooler-than-chilling frenemy relationship that's built more on tolerance than friendship.

Your name is Bruce Wayne. You're just a kid. And you're kneeling over the broken, bleeding bodies of your parents as their murderer runs away down the alley.

At that particular moment, something happens. Something formative.

A ring appears floating in the air, green, glowing. And it selects you as the next Green Lantern, just as your body is coursing with rage and a desire for vengeance. You catch the criminal, and you exact your will upon him -- a will so strong it overloads every safety protocol built into the Green Lantern ring, allowing it to employ lethal force.

WARNING!  THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS TO DUCKTALES EPISODE 4 - THE BEAGLE BIRTHDAY MASSACRE

So, in all the promotional material for the new DuckTales series, we never saw Magica De Spell.   It seemed like the writers were suggesting that we would not see Magica until season 2. I will admit, I was kind of disappointed.  Magica was always one of the best parts of the original DuckTales series and the comics.  \

As a result, I didn't see the plot twist at the end of Episode 4 coming...it was revealed that Webby's new friend, Lena, is Magica's niece and she was tasked by Aunt Magica with infiltrating the McDuck family.

What did we talk about on Critical Blast this week?

October’s Bombshell of the Month – Old Fashioned Nerd

From DC Comics:

Today, at New York Comic Con, DC Publisher Jim Lee, writer/producer/director Reginald Hudlin and Milestone co-founder and artist Denys Cowan announced the return of popular characters of the Dakota Universe in a new collaboration called Earth M in spring 2018. Cowan, Hudlin and Lee were joined by Milestone co-founder Derek Dingle and Earth M collaborators Alice Randall, Ken Lashley and Greg Pak to share details of the re-emergence of classic Milestone characters, including Static Shock, Icon and Rocket, as well as brand-new character creations which will debut in a series of different titles under the Earth M imprint.

The fourth season of GOTHAM finds Bruce Wayne (DAVID MAZOUZ) finally taking up the notion of protecting the innocents on the street while wearing a mask and a suit. It's not the Batman costume yet, but it's a giant step in the right direction. And that's not the only disguise Bruce Wayne has been crafting. He's also been taking cues from Alfred (SEAN PERTWEE) on creating a mask out of Bruce Wayne as well, as he tries out the spoiled billionaire brat routine that eventually will become the billionaire playboy public persona.

Hollywood is a funny place. Where else would you go to find a movie like 1992’s The Bodyguard starring cinema superstar Kevin Costner and pop diva Whitney Houston, which somehow manages to be mediocre at best but still manages to have the best selling soundtrack of all time? I know where else: Broadway. There isn’t a single property in Tinseltown that someone, somewhere, isn’t writing a book or songs for to turn that film into the next smash hit in Manhattan. Some of them work reasonably well—Bring It On and Sister Act were both pretty entertaining. Others, like Dirty Dancing and A Christmas Story, well, the less said about those the better. I’m not sure why someone thought The Bodyguard: The Musical would succeed where the film fell short, but nonetheless someone did and now its national tour has arrived to kick off the Fox Theatre’s 2017-2018 Broadway Series.

From Variety:

Netflix has again raised the monthly price of its most popular streaming plan in the U.S., with the two-stream HD tier now $10.99 per month for new subscribers — while existing customers will be moved to the new rate over the next several months. That’s up $1 per month from the previous $9.99 monthly fee.

The company also increased the monthly fee for its four-stream “family plan,” from $11.99 to $13.99 per month. That “premium” tier also includes select content in Ultra HD 4K format.

This Blu-ray/DVD/CD set from Eagle Rock Entertainment covers the Stones in an intimate setting at the Fonda Theater in LA in 2015, at the start of the North American Zip Code tour, and captures the first time the band had ever (and, so far, has ever) played the entire STICKY FINGERS album in concert (along with some other great Stones' songs).

When we left Lucifer Morningstar (TOM ELLIS) at the end of Season 2 of LUCIFER, he awoke in the desert to find the wings he had cut off had been replaced. This, after he had been knocked out from behind  just as he was preparing to tell his partner, Detective Chloe Decker (LAUREN GERMAN) the truth about himself -- that he's literally the Devil of the Bible.

Which is funny, because Lucifer has never made any bones about who he is to anyone. That's the one thing interesting about his character: the "liar and the father of lies" tells nothing but the truth. It's a unique commentary on humanity from the writers that nobody ever believes he's precisely who he says he is. The only one -- the only human -- who knows for certain is his therapist, Dr. Linda Martin (RACHAEL HARRIS), who learned it last season when he revealed his true face to her.

Darkness. Deep dark despair. Can you imagine not being surrounded by the light, truth, knowledge of the Gospel as we know it today?

I was enthralled by the vivid displays in words and art of the plight of Martin Luther. Truly this remarkable man suffered much for years before his mind was enlightened by ignoring the benighted teachers of his time. Showing boldness without regard for life, he desired to not just find fault with the misuse of power by the Church, but to declare a new interpretation of the scriptures based on his beliefs.