Superheroes

The Flash returns to The CW with its seventh season, and -- for the most part -- it's back to firing on all cylinders.

The concept of Barry being on the precipice of using up his remaining Speed Force had drawn on overly long in season six, so it was a relief that the problem finally gets a resolution in this episode, even if it did come at the sacrifice of a major character. Or... did it? We'll get to that in a little bit.

Superman and Lois finally gives Tyler Hoechlin a chance to fully flex his inner Superman. Sure, he's been okay in Supergirl and the other Arrowverse crossovers, but now he's got the whole show to himself -- shared, of course, with his family: wife Lois (Elizabeth Tulloch) and twin 13-year-old sons Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) and Jordan (Alex Garfin).

The universe of Hero Tomorrow comics is a small but very cohesive, tightly-knit one. The hero -- Apama -- is an everyman imbued with the animal powers of a creature from myth, and since his emergence the supervillains have sprung up to oppose him -- some odd, all bizarre.

But there is one who is deeply connected to Apama's origins, yet pre-dates his arrival by nearly forty years. Regina, who first appeared in Apama, The Undiscovered Animal #5, gets her origin story with Bloom #1, coming soon to comic shops and currently funding through Kickstarter.

Set in 1969, Bloom begins with Ramsey, an auto mechanic and would-be comic book artist obsessed with the idea of his comic book villain and the arcane glyphs that came to him in a dream state while tripping in the forest -- at a location that will be quite familiar to fans already following the Apama comic.

I've wanted to like Batwoman. Wanted to from the very launch of the series. But the first season steadily tanked midway through, and this second season hasn't done much to right the ship.

The new Batwoman, Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) is personally moved by a missing boy when she sees the location from where he was taken. It turns out Ryan herself had been taken as a young girl at the exact same location -- a comic book shop -- by a woman who called herself The Candy Lady (Linda Kash). She would keep the children in her attic with a bowl of jellybeans, and then take a jellybean each day as a sort of countdown for two months to prove the child didn't matter to anyone -- as nobody would come looking for her.

And the Candy Lady isn't seen as a threat to her potential victims, because she's a nice white woman.

The misguided attempt to turn Vampirella into Supervamp continues with this second issue of Vampirella: The Dark Powers. The Dynamite Comics concept of "plural worlds" is the tableau against which Project; Superpowers gathers all its members from various alternate Earths, finding Vampirella on Plural Earth 0666. The majority of the membership isn't comfortable with her being on the team, partly because in their last adventure her methods of attack was responsible for one of their members being put in critical condition. Also, plunging in without knowing the facts about the enemy allowed the enemy to regroup with an even larger threat, adapted to what it has learned of Vampirella's power set.

Alice (Rachel skarsten) takes the next step in her plan to bring terror to Gotham. As she leans over the dead body of her former cohort, Mouse, we get a flashback to a scene where bats invade her hiding spot so that we can be reminded that 'bats eat rats.' This is important to what Alice is doing now, which is catching a rat and duct-taping it to Mouse's dead chest so that it will attract bats to come take nibbles of Mouse as well.

Cut to two months ago, and a pre-Batwoman Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) being rescued from a Halloween night mugging by Batwoman (in shadow, so it's not a Ruby Rose cameo). We then see Ryan interview for a security job and being turned down for it because she pled guilty to 18 months in Blackgate. This is all to establish more of Ryan's backstory to provide motivations for why she would want to take over the role of Batwoman and what she might do with the title.

With the second season of Doom Patrol, I was hoping to see the team come together in... well, in any fashion. We learned who they were as individuals in the first season, so now it was time to start actually using these abilities and getting the independent members to work as part of a team.

When Ruby Rose decided to leave the role of the lead character on the CW's BATWOMAN, it put the writers into a bit of a tailspin. The easy thing to do would have been to recast the character with a different actress. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the proper thing to do would have been to recast the role, because now you have to invent a whole new reason for why Kate's gone, who takes over being Batwoman, and next thing you know there'll be more actresses in the suit than have flown a Tardis.

A great deal of the Batman animated movies (and the live action ones, for that matter) have focused on the technological advantages Batman has and how he uses them to fight crime: the car, the armor, the gadgetry. "Where does he get those wonderful toy," indeed.

With BATMAN: SOUL OF THE DRAGON, the producers take Batman and make him a character -- and not even the central character -- of an animated grindhouse kung-fu flick.

Before Marvel had a "cinematic universe" into which it could debut Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Wesley Snipes was staking out his claim as a Marvel hero -- literally -- as the half-human, half-vampire Blade. He would go on to portray the character three times before the MCU even took its first baby steps with IRON MAN.

Blade's origin is succintly told. His mother was attacked by a vampire while she was pregnant with him. While being treated for the attack at a hospital, her son was born, possessing the traits of vampirism -- but the ability to walk in the daylight like a human. Found as a teenager by Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), Blade was taught how to curb his preternatural thirst and seek out the ones who murdered his mother -- the many (many!) vampires living among us.

If there’s one thing in this last decade that nearly everyone’s taken part in, it’s the enjoyment of superhero-related content. It isn’t the first time the superhero trend has made its way into the mainstream in history, but this time it’s certainly had the biggest impact. It seems that these days no matter where we turn we see an iconic hero character proudly showing off their emblem, but for newbies that aren’t too familiar with the genre, knowing where to start can be a bit daunting. If you’re looking to ride along with the superhero trend, here are a few things to get you started.

Casino Games

Sometimes when an actor finishes a film, he or she retains a prop of some kind, a souvenir or memento they can look to in the future for a conversation piece.

Zachary Levi seems to have come away from his stint on SHAZAM with the coolest and most valuable vestige ever: The Wisdom of Solomon. (The superhero character more commonly known as Captain Marvel gains his powers by shouting out an acronym, which gains him the combined powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.)

During the trying and tiring time of the last few days, as votes were being tabulated with deliberation and states were switching colors more slowly than leaves in autumn, Levi interected a thought onto Twitter -- a place designed ostensibly just for that purpose but, ironically, in abject opposition to the ideal on most days.

Of my forty-five plus years of reading comic books, my list of favorite characters has never really grown beyond two. The first to make my list was Batman. I've always told myself it was because he was just a normal guy who proved you could do anything with the proper training, mindset, and a billion dollars laying around, but truthfully it was because the television show kept me glued on my little four-year-old butt every time it came on.

The second was The Flash. The iconic yet simple costume, the thinking that went into the multiple applications of what was essentially a single super ability, and the Flash Facts that instilled a curiosity for science.

Robert Greenberger once again takes on the unenviable task of distilling eight decades of adventures into a concentrated list of 100 greatest memories, a task made even more daunting when taking into consideration the fact that there have been a handful of people to wear the mantle of the scarlet speedster.

There's a lot to unpack here, so get comfortable. You may want to order in, have a drink ready. Maybe even go pee first. But the tl'dr of this review is this: Cecil Castellucci sent Batgirl out on a self-centered, narcisisstic, self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, solipsistic whimper of a comic book that was less written than it was defecated.

So let's start with the first story of this terrible trio, "Little Wonders" with art from Emanuela Lupacchino with inks from Wade Von Grawbadger, Mick Gray, and Scott Hanna. As you can surmise, the art style is going to shift throughout this tale due to the amount of cooks in the kitchen. It shows as we go from scene to scene, following Barbara from the graveyard with her father, to the Batcave with the Bats, to the streets of Gotham that are in chaos.

Warning: This review will contain major spoilers for BATMAN: THREE JOKERS #3.

There's a part of me that wants to review BATMAN: THREE JOKERS based solely on the three issues of the series. That may sound odd to some, but you have to place the story in its original context: that it has been anticipated story for several years now, ever since writer Geoff Johns first dropped the hint when he was writing JUSTICE LEAGUE. But more on that in a little while.

This week's giveaway is a double bonus for whomever is selected at random as our winner.

Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) is the electrifying hero of Freeland in this CW series based on the DC Comics character BLACK LIGHTNING, created by Tony Isabella with Trevor Von Eeden. Together with his super-powered daughters, Black Lightning struggles to keep his city free of violence, both from low-level street gangs and high-level authoritarians.

Critical Blast now offers our readers the opportunity to win both Season 2 and Season 3 on Blu-ray with this special 2-for-1 promotional giveaway. Use the options on the form below to enter, and maximize your odds by taking all the options you want. Be sure you are familiar with Critical Blasts Rules and Regulations for these giveaways.

Lightning can strike twice.

I can't recall the last time two seasons of an ongoing television show have been released back-to-back, but that's what Warner Brothers is doing with their CW superhero show, BLACK LIGHTNING, a series that began outside of the Arrowverse of their other DC Comics-inspired series that later became incorporated, loosely, through the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover event -- an event that, while it didn't have an official crossover episode with BLACK LIGHTNING in the proper sense, still made its presence felt.

Superhero movies are mostly seen as overly expensive special effects flicks that carry a fraction of artistic value. Nevertheless, even through their simplified narrative, superhero movies and tv shows point out the value of friendship, positive attitude, and persistence towards achieving a goal. All these messages are vital for college students because they can provide a guideline for overcoming the challenges of academic life.

We asked students for their opinion, and here is a list of 10 favorite superhero flix among college students.

If you've seen any of my livestream rants on our YouTube channel, you know I regularly decry the loss of the "one and done" comic books, issues that contain a fully realized story--no continuations, no reference to extra-titular events. So, seeing as how Robert Venditti has complied with that in his delivery of "Death Trap," the story contained in JUSTICE LEAGUE ANNUAL #2, it behooves me to not only read it but to review it for others as well.

With an event as big as Joker War, spanning as many titles as it did, it's easy to slip in a few stories here and there, some shorts that just didn't fit into any of the established titles. That's where the one-shots come in, like BATMAN: THE JOKER WARZONE, telling stories that happened behind and between the scenes.