DC's STARGIRL has been nothing short of stellar throughout its 13-episode freshman season. The latest entry into the Arrowverse (the show was teased at the end of the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover, so we're counting it), the show has been one of the most consistently fun, fresh, optimistic, adventuresome, straight-up superhero shows to have graced the CW network. There's a respect and an adherence to the source material -- not just to the STARGIRL comic book heroine herself but to much of the DC Universe in general. The costumes, the props (there's a green lantern seen more than once that I'm still waiting to see get fired up!) and the name-drops have all been enough to make a comic book fan giddy to his core.

Dave Sim, the man behind the legendary run of CEREBUS, has a new project wrapping up on Kickstarter, with artist Carson Grubaugh. YOU DON'T KNOW JACK! TWO-FISTED COMIC STORE MANAGER is a by-product of the collaboration of Sim and Grubaugh on his other work-in-progress, THE STRANGE DEATH OF ALEX RAYMOND. During the latter project, Grubaugh, an art professor, drew on one of his students as a model for the piece -- Jack VanDyke, a comic store manager.

The Joker has struck his biggest blow against the Dark Knight -- he has taken all the billions of Bruce Wayne and has assumed control of Wayne Enterprises, including all the attendant Batman technology. Bruce Wayne has been exposed as an embezzler, redirecting Wayne Foundation funds into financially supporting Batman's war on crime -- which is, in fact, true, since Bruce Wayne set up several shell companies to hide the fact he had been doing exactly this for years.

Now Gotham City is under seige, with Batman and the police being the last line of defense against the Joker and his minions, armed to the teeth with Batman-weaponry. The new Wayne Foundation lawyers are also pressing things on the legal end -- against the police and the press, silencing all opposition as best they can.

RAVAGE: KILL ALL MEN began as a Kickstarter campaign under the Cautionary Comics banner. It was loudly heralded and brought with it high expectations, due to the gravitas lent to the series by writer Chuck Dixon who joined Benjamin Henderson in crafting the story. The dynamic and sexy cover by Geebo Vigonte and Lorenzo Thellier D'Auzers also no doubt moved units to the success of the crowdfunding campaign.

Since then, the title has shifted its masthead to Fanatic Comics, and is getting a second "redux" printing through an Indiegogo, which is still in the offing.

So lets dig into this offering, both external and internal, and deliver the breakdowns.

The premise of Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS is one with a lot of promise. It's theological at its core, positing an alternate world much like our own, with an identical creation story of Adam, Eve, and Serpent. But beyond that, things diverge. The world is one of dirigible and balloon transport, and the architecture seems older and more industrial revolution era. But beyodn the trappings of technology, there is more: humans are born with a "daemon" -- a spirit animal that can change its form until the human host reaches puberty, at which point it settles on one specific animal. The connection between human and daemon is considered sacred, and indeed what effects one is felt on the other. When humans die, their daemons disintegrate.

I've greatly enjoyed the movies adapting Tom Clancy's novels. There was plenty of action and suspense, and you felt the character was always in a (wait for it) clear and present danger.

Now, I admittedly missed the first season of the JACK RYAN streaming series, and honestly I wasn't lost entering the second season without it. The storyline here was clearly a new beginning bringing back the titular character (played by John Krasinski) with James Greer (Wendell Pierce), and introducing Mike November (Michael Kelly). The setting is Venezuela, where the current corrupt leader, Nicolas Reyes (Jordi Mollà), is having his position challenged in the upcoming election by Gloria Bonalde (Cristina Umaña).

If you haven't watched any STARGIRL by now, you are lucky. Because you're only one week away from getting to binge the entire first season.

It's been a shortened first season -- only thirteen episodes in total -- but it's been a fun and enjoyable ride. DC and CW have given viewers the family-friendly super-hero show that its lineup had been sorely missing, and fans have responded positively to it. Brec Bassinger's portrayal of Courtney Whitmore, the teenager who becomes Stargirl, is fresh and optimistic, always appealing to the good in people. It's with this determined outlook that Stargirl recruits a new Justice Society from the unlikely group of social outcasts at Blue Valley High: Doctor Mid-nite (Anjelika Washington), Hourman (Cameron Gellman), and Wildcat (Yvette Monreal).

In the first season of THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY, the quirky sibling superhero group failed to prevent the world-shattering apocalypse that they themselves caused, leaping through time at the last moment through the powers of their brother, Five (Aidan Gallagher), to wind up scattered across the early 1960s in Dallas, Texas, with the last of them arriving in 1963, days before the Kennedy assassination. Diego (David Castañeda) sees this as an opportunity to prevent the assassination, but somehow -- a mystery for the season -- this leads to yet another world-ending apocalypse of global nuclear war. Diego ends up committed to an insane asylum. Luther (Tom Hopper) is forced to become a bare-knuckle brawler for Jack Ruby. Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman) settles into a marriage to a local civil rights activist, Ray Chestnut (Yusuf Gatewood), Klaus (Robert Sheehan) starts a cult, and Vanya ends up without her memories living on a farm with a family raising a disabled child.

Every month the staff at Critical Blast combs the cosplay community for up-and-coming cosplayers who deserve to have a broader audience for their work, taking into account not only costuming skills and spirit, but also how they use that ability in service to others. Through this, we've not only met some talented cosplayers, but also some fine human beings.

With summer now in full swing, the heat is definitely on -- but it has nothing on the cosplay of this month's featured cosplayer! With her ability to bring to life our favorite characters but also place them in settings that complement the scene, as well as finding ways to make a character cosplay uniquely her own, we find ourselves awed at the talents on display, and we think you, dear reader, will be similarly blown away by our...

In the hotly anticipated second installment of Bleeding Fool's exposure of the Women In Comics Facebook group, colloquially referred to as the "Whisper Network" came surprise allegations from FABLES creator Bill Willingham against Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Stephanie Cooke of embezzlement "in excess of ten thousand dollars."

The claim dates back to 2015 and references the period when Cooke was Willingham's assistant. Willingham reconfirmed that this is still an open case, hampered by the fact that Cooke had since moved back to Canada.

In the distant future, long after the humanity has fled planet Earth, people live in a desert environment threatened by gigantic reptilian monsters. Water is a precious commodity, rationed and dole out by an elite faction called Celestials, who live in excessive luxury and fashion themselves after the zodiac.

On this world, a team of archeologists has recovered an artifact from the days of arrival, a metal head found in the face of a mountain near the site of the rusted out shell of a crashed spaceship. The discovery is taken as a prize by the team leader, Ichabod, to a plucky young engineer -- called an engineward in this evolution of the English dialiect -- named Joss, who is excited about the relic and what it might teach them about early Earth -- or "Oert" as it has etmologically transformed.

The arthouse horror film YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT has more than a few good elements to work with when crafting a haunted house story. Unfortunately, it doesn't make as much use of them as it should.

A former banker, Theo (Kevin Bacon), and his actress wife, Susanna (Amanda Seyfried), rent a house in the Welsh countryside while Susanna films a movie there. If you're immediately thinking about the age disparity between Bacon (who has apparently grown up to become Randy Travis) and BIG LOVE actress, it's actually acknowledged in the plot, when one of Susanna's co-workers question if Theo is her father.

While HBO's THE OUTSIDER was based on a singular novel, and while the series wrapped up an entire story arc within its confines, I find it comforting to see that the home video release of the series is listed on Amazon as "The First Season." This doesn't appear anywhere on the box art, so whether or not this cast -- or parts of this cast -- will return for another mystery is anyone's guess, but it's a ray of hope nonetheless.

The show kicks off with the gruesome murder of a child, where video, eyewitness, and even DNA evidence point to the killer as being the upstanding citizen and Little League coach, Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman). Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), who knows what it's like to lose a child, wants to make an exampe of Maitland and arranges his arrest to be made very publicly.

With the exception of a few sports like WWE, sporting events are unscripted. It’s this unpredictability that leaves people at the edge of their seats until the last seconds of a game. Additionally, the success of underdogs can be a big plot twist that no one sees coming.

For example, the Toronto Raptors won the NBA Championship in 2019, even though no one even considered them a contender at the start of the year. In Formula 1, the 2009 championships were won by Brawn GP and Jenson Button, and yet the team had no sponsors and almost didn’t make it to the first race of the year.

These factors make sports a great subject for movies. Some are complete works of fiction, while others are based on real events. Here are some of the greatest examples of these films.

Rounders

One of my favorite books of my childhood was Caroline Rush's TALES OF MR. PENGACHOOSA, in which a young girl housebound with scarlet fever suddenly finds that in the stillness of her room the chirping of her hamster, Hammy, sounds like tiny little words. Eventually she begins to understand him, and he regales her of tales of his grandfather, Mr. Pengachoosa, whose magical encounters always tied to something in the house. It was such an impacting story that, as an adult, I had to seek out a copy on eBay for my personal collection.

Matilda Anderson is having the best day of her life: she's been accepted into the Coalition of Heroes' intern program as a sidekick under her new code name, RepTilly, due to her lizard-like physiology.

The Coalition of Heroes is a vast organization, and the super-powered people working for it get tasked to do jobs from the mundane to the extraordinary. When RepTilly gets assigned to the most high-profile hero of the team, Showdown, she's over the moon -- even when she finds her training program includes things like taking out the dry cleaning, dusting the office, and sending flowers to his many girlfriends. Whatever it takes, she'll do it to become a full-fledged superhero and do battle against the evil Shadow Order.

The first trailer for SCOOB! looked promising. We saw a stray pup find a friend, and we saw a lonely kid find a team. If this had stayed with that, an adolescent version of Mystery Inc, things might have gone a lot better, because it really was one of the better parts of the film.

Are you bored at home during quarantine?  Tired of scrolling through social media?  Is there nothing interesting to watch on TV?  If you said ‘yes’ to any of these questions, perhaps, a rousing game of cards will pique your interest. But, which card game should you play?

The following are three excellent card games you can play at home while on quarantine:

Crazy Eights

Before anything else, make sure that you have a complete set of playing cards at home. If not, you can buy online from trusted retailers. Use keywords, like ‘buy playing cards Australia,’ to help you find reputable online sellers.

There's a lot happening in this episode of STARGIRL, and the title -- "Brainwave Jr." -- is a promising one. I've been hoping that Henry King Jr. (Jake Austin Walker) was going to come out a hero instead of following in the villainous footsteps of his father, the Injustice Society's resident telepath, Brainwave (Christopher James Baker), and I was right. Sort of.

But before we can deal with that, we are thrown into the family chaos that has erupted in the Whitmore-Dugan household. Barbara Whitmore (Amy Smart) has seen the cosmic staff in action, and now it's up to Pat (Luke Wilson) and Courtney (Brec Basinger) to tell her the truth about what Stargirl, and Barb does not take the news well at all. In fact, she's so angry she makes Pat leave for the night. Mike (Trae Romano) overhears, and decides to go with his dad to spend the night at the repair shop.

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