On Monday, November 12, geekdom lost a legend.  Born in Manhattan in the early 1920s, Stanley Martin Lieber was raised with his younger brother in the Bronx.  Entertained by Errol Flynn’s swashbuckling roles being shown on the silver screen, Stan Lee was influenced by heroic stories.  He began writing obituaries and press releases, as well as working a number of odd jobs.  After graduating from high school, he became an assistant at Timely Comics in 1939, and it was the start of an incredibly long career in comics . . . and geekdom!

Mark your calendars, because Halloween ComicFest is back for its seventh year this Saturday, October 27! Like Free Comic Book Day (held the first Saturday of May), this annual event provides an opportunity to introduce friends and family to the wonderful world of comics! Participating local comic book shops around the country and beyond our shores will be giving away free comics from major publishers such as DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and others.

Last year, Robert Arnold successfully crowdfunded the first two issues of Replicator, a series that he created and wrote. Replicator is a future-noir crime drama liberally seasoned with corporate intrigue. In the first issue, the story focused on border patroller Ryker Jones and his wife Sarah, a scientist, who has discovered a cure for a virus outbreak known as the Red Death. Things go awry and in the second issue, and the story shifts to a military battle with mechs and the introduction of a new character. The latter half of the issue rejoins with Ryker and Sarah.

The Resurrected is an ongoing series set in the near future where science has advanced to the point of ending death and suffering by offering eternal life. As readers learned in the first pages of the series, the cost of this technology was high: the death of 30 million people. In this future-noir series, writer/creator Christian Carnouche critically analyzes the philosophical ramifications of that cost. Additionally, Carnouche draws on the plight of the aboriginal people over the centuries, giving voice to a group of individuals that have had little to no representation in Westernized comics. It is a factor that sets this independent series apart and makes it a worthy read.

In the opening pages of the second issue of Errand Boys, readers catch up with Jace and Tawnk as they are hurled into space via an unsettling slingshot launch. (Catch my review of issue one here.) The half-brothers are headed out on their first mission together in this issue, which is part of a five-issue galactic action adventure tale from writer D. J. Kirkbride, artist/colorist Nikos Koutsis, flatter Mike Toris, and letterer/designer Frank Cvetkovic.

It was ten years ago today that the animated cartoon, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, premiered on the Cartoon Network. The series followed on the heels of an animated film by the same name that had been released in August, 2008. Spanning six seasons, the TV series was set during the prequel films, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and conveyed events that took place in the Star Wars universe during a three-year period of time that was not portrayed in the films. The show has the distinction of becoming the most watched series premiere in the history of Cartoon Network and was nominated (and won) several awards; however, news of cancellation was not well received by fans of the series, and the last episode became available on Netflix on March 7, 2014. Fortunately, at this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, fans rejoiced when Lucasfilm announced that the series would return with 12 episodes which will be released on Disney’s streaming channel in 2019.

Sean O’Neill is back with his second Rocket Robinson adventure (Check out my review of his first volume, Rocket Robinson and the Pharaoh’s Fortune, here.), and I could not be happier! This Wednesday, you will be too when Rocket Robinson and the Secret of the Saint is released from Dark Horse Books.

Welcome to Old Ebb, the rougher side of the proverbial train tracks, and the setting for writer D.J. Kirkbride’s new comic book series, Errand Boys. Scheduled to drop on October 3, this five-issue science fiction comedy is a forthcoming title from Image Comics.

At Power-Con 2018, Fanbase Press' Michele Brittany talks with writer Brian C. Baer (Bad Publicity, How He-Man Mastered the Universe) about his introduction to He-Man and She-Ra, why these characters and stories endure, and more.

The morning of Saturday, August 25, 2018, in SoCal started out rather overcast, but that did not deter fans of He-Man and She-Ra from descending upon the Torrance Marriott Redondo Beach hotel last weekend for Power-Con. Established in 2011, the Saturday/Sunday convention celebrated the Master of the Universe and Princess of Power franchises.