SFX的July 2023目录

PEAK PICARD Robert MacDonald, email Picard did that rare thing of servicing old fans whilst not alienating the casual viewer and in the process it succeeded on so many levels – the main one being Seven of Nine. Jeri Ryan managed the rare feat of bringing her humanity to the role that she first played way too long ago and also succeeded in adding several different layers to her portrayal. It would have been very easy for the script to have had Seven use her Borg implants to save the day, connecting to the ship’s computer and so on, but they chose the more difficult route and she fought her battles as a human. Mark Howe, email Flippin’ heck, a whopping five stars for Picard season three! Those are some very…

→ TWO DECADES AFTER he and Mark Millar revolutionised comic book storytelling with The Ultimates in ways that would also later have a major impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Bryan Hitch is returning to Marvel’s Ultimate imprint. Teaming up with writer Jonathan Hickman on Ultimate Invasion, he promises that he won’t simply retread old ground. “You can’t repeat what you have done before,” Hitch tells Red Alert. “Back then, it was a chance to fully rethink and represent those classic characters in the Ultimate Universe and much of that thinking and visual approach was certainly highly influential on the MCU later. But now after both that run 20 years ago and the MCU having a huge influence on comics and the Marvel comics that came afterwards, you have to…

→ JUST AS 2000 AD Regened showcases the wider worlds of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic for a younger audience, new one-shot Mega-City Max acts as a Judge Dredd Megazine for teenagers – but don’t expect to see Ol’ Stoney Face himself. “Mega-City Max is all about the people who live, survive and thrive in the bustling metropolis of Mega-City One,” says editor Oliver Pickles. “This is all about those side characters and new favourites starring in epic stories of their own, which means that Judge Dredd – and even Cadet Dredd – are out, as they’re off having adventures of their own.” The one-shot is described by Pickles as “closer in tone to 2000 AD than to Regened”. Writer/artist Hannah Templer’s contribution explores how former Judge-turned-private eye Galen DeMarco is…

♦ Doom is the finest time-travelling assassin in the cosmos. But Death – as in literal Death – is on her tail and she’s only got 24 hours and a vortex manipulator to find the Doctor and save herself. But a lot can happen in 24 hours… ♦ Spread across games, comics, audio dramas and more, Doom – played by Sooz Kempner – will meet a host of familiar faces on her journey, which begins this month. BOOK ♦ Extraction Point, a novel by MG Harris featuring the Second and Ninth Doctors and the Slitheen will be released on 10 August. It also promises an appearance from a Kraal and a visit to Satellite Five. AUDIO DRAMAS ♦ Four From Doom’s Day – a collection of, you’ve guessed it, four…

SUMMER, 1981. BRITAIN IS ALL pageantry and petrol bombs as a royal wedding and inner-city riots dominate the news cycle. Harrison Ford has just flown in, obliged to promote a film with the tantalising title Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Interviewed by a national newspaper, he’s pictured looking characteristically wry beneath a headline that may seem insane to 21st century eyes: “Hollywood Calls Him The New Bogart. London Says Harrison Who?” Raiders will propel Ford from irresistibly watchable ensemble player in the likes of Star Wars and Force 10 From Navarone to bona fide leading man, capable of balancing a blockbuster on his rangy shoulders. And in Indiana Jones he will find the role that defines his entire screen persona: laconic but heroic, an A-list everyman who can land a…

Indy wasn’t the only part of Raiders that evolved on its way to the screen. Originally Marion was a Marlene Dietrich figure, a German tavern singer operating as a double agent. Sallah’s son, a motormouthed pickpocket named Abu, would have provided extra comic relief. Villains in early drafts included Belzig, a jackbooted Nazi cyborg with a mechanical gun arm and a radio antenna embedded in his head. He ultimately mutated into the black-clad Toht, minus the comic strip trimmings. There was also Tengtu Hok, a samurai warlord Indy would have tangled with in Shanghai while raiding a museum for the headpiece to the staff of Ra. Ditched set-pieces included a mine car chase after the opening of the Ark – recycled for Temple Of Doom – and a sequence where…

WIDELY CONSIDERED ONE of the best new Star Trek series – we won’t pick, you can’t make us – the second season of Strange News Worlds is much anticipated. Blending established pre-Original Series canon with a much-loved “story of the week” format, the adventures of the Enterprise crew before Kirk sat in the captain’s chair return this month with 10 new weekly episodes. SFX beams onto the view screen for an audience with Pike and Spock. How does season two up the ante for Strange New Worlds? Anson Mount: In several ways. Starting a TV show has a lot of tripwires because you are trying to lay down footprints that you have to tread for a while. You really can get off to the races after that – the style…

IF YOU LIKE YOUR SCIENCE FICTION TV to feature dense world-building, heady themes and massive scale, then Foundation, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s book series of the same name, surely ticked every box. Developed and showrun by David Goyer, Foundation was the veteran sci-fi screenwriter’s attempt to translate Asimov’s “unfilmable” world into the one medium where it felt possible to undertake it: television. Season one did a lot of work in terms of setting up the core details about a 1,000-year battle of wills to prevent the imminent collapse of the Empire. Two key characters are Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), the creator of the branch of mathematic study called psychohistory, and his brilliant new protégé Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell). The pair can predict the Empire’s fall because of…

UK/US Prime Video, streaming now ▸ Showrunner David Weil ▸ Cast Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Lesley Manville, Stanley Tucci EPISODES 1.01-1.06 A frisson of future shock enlivens this globe-hopping spy drama from Amazon Studios. Agents of the eponymous intelligence network have their memories implanted, deleted and uploaded to a central server. It’s a smart, intriguing conceit, one that promises Mission: Impossible by way of Philip K Dick. A shame, then, that the series feels like a data cloud of audience memories, every espionage tale we’ve ever thrilled to, all flung into the neural blender and whisked into so much secondhand mulch. The inspirations are blatant. An amnesiac hero, just like the Bourne saga. Duelling spy agencies, echoing UNCLE vs THRUSH or SHIELD vs HYDRA. Gadgets straight out of Q branch,…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1959-1963 | 12 | Blu-ray ▸ Directors Rafael Baledón, Chano Urueta, Fernando Méndez ▸ Cast Rosita Arenas, Gastón Santos, Abel Salazar BLU-RAY DEBUT If you think Mexican cinema means wrestling movies, prepare to have your horizons expanded by this fascinating box set of peculiar película – four handsomely restored black and white horrors from production company Alameda Films. The most classically gothic entry, Rafael Baledón’s The Curse Of The Crying Woman, is also the best. Mario Bava’s Mask Of Satan was clearly one inspiration for his morbid tale of a young woman who visits her aunt, only to learn she’s a descendant of the titular folk legend, fated to revive her desiccated corpse. Throwing in elements like a scar-faced servant and a madman in the attic,…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | TBC | Download → A life-changing app promises to get agoraphobic Patrick’s life back on track by turning everyday tasks into a game. As the AI starts to impact on more than housework, however, it becomes increasingly clear he should have read the small print… The futuristic augmented reality tech is smartly realised, while directors Daniel Lazo and Eran May-Raz (expanding on their short “Sight”) never lose, er, sight of the humanity. If only the final act delivered the smart, Black Mirror-esque punch it needed.…

▸ RELEASED 3 JULY 2023 | 15 | Download The scariest thing in this low-budget take on Frankenstein is its opening sequence. Deep in the woods, a young man is tied to a chair by his mother and set in the path of an oncoming car. Turns out it’s a nightmare, but here’s the scary bit: he’s been having it for a long time, unable to wake up from a coma for a year following a car accident. The rest is disappointing. the ever-reliable Steve Oram gives good creepy dad, but it’s all a bit too clinical and obvious to deliver any real chills.…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 9+ | SVOD ▸ Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez ▸ Cast Isaiah Russell-Bailey, Mckenna Grace, Billy Barratt, Orson Hong DISNEY+ Caleb is a teenager in a dystopian lunar mining colony where the miners dream of meeting ever-moving targets so they can earn passage to a near-mythical new Earth known as Omega. When his father dies, he and his mates steal a lunar rover and set out for a mysterious crater where dad once told him he’d discover something his mother had always wanted him to see. On the way the kids argue, bond, face peril and reveal poignant backstories. Yes, this is Stand By Me on the Moon, but without Ben E King and with considerably less charm. It’s a low-budget YA adventure with adequate…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Ann Leckie ▸ Publisher Orbit Books → There are a few rare novelists who, despite clearly being the smartest person in most of the rooms they enter, spend time quietly getting on with things. They don’t avoid the limelight, but they don’t much seek it out, preferring to let their work be front and centre and treating promotion as a kind of professional duty. Ann Leckie is one such understated novelist, a writer whose 2013 debut Ancillary Justice is the only novel to have won the Hugo, Nebula and Clarke awards. In the years since, she’s turned out a series of fine books, all of which twist SF and/or fantasy tropes and reward close reading. It’s therefore no surprise to…

▸ RELEASED 29 JUNE 640 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author RJ Barker ▸ Publisher Orbit → This tremendous story is fresh from the desk of RJ Barker, writer of trilogies The Wounded Kingdom and The Tide Child. Both of those are excellent; this is even better. A triple-threat of world-building, character and plot, Gods Of The Wyrdwood represents the work of an experienced novelist at the top of his game. It introduces an innovative, organic landscape where bloated gasmaw creatures pull airships between crumbling spires. By the time you’ve read a few chapters, inventions like crownheads, bluevein weeds and rootlings become old friends. The realm of Crua is surrounded by trees so big that one fall can provide resources for generations. Factions vie for power, Game Of Thrones-style. A warrior…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 352 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author AY Chao ▸ Publisher Hodder & Stoughton → If prickly narrators aren’t your thing, give this period fantasy a wide berth. Lady Jing, the half-goddess/half-vampire protagonist of Shanghai Immortal, is annoyed by everything, and her constant snarking will infuriate as many readers as it amuses. Adopted by the king of Hell as a child, Jing inhabits an alternate version of ’30s Shanghai full of yaojing – legendary creatures – and she’s expected to take up a place in the royal court when she comes of age. But she chafes against the restrictions of her position: the formal clothing, the flowery language, the respectful hierarchies… all of it. Then she overhears a plot to steal a priceless dragon pearl, and is…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author David Wolstencroft ▸ Publisher Scholastic → We can all agree that squeezing an extra hour into our day would come in pretty handy. It’s certainly the case for Scottish schoolgirl Ailsa Craig, who accidentally wanders into a magical world offering a bonus 60 minutes each evening. Soon she’s smashing her homework, getting ahead on projects and having a jolly time with her new pal, snooty rich type Credenza. But Credenza’s powerful dad might be up to something nefarious, a monster may be about to escape its cage… and are the realm’s magical fae really as friendly as they seem? David Wolstencroft knows how to spin a good yarn – he created Spooks and Versailles for the telly, after all –…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 143 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author Chris Alexander ▸ Publisher Headpress Books → A rather late-arriving product of the pandemic, this slim volume on Roger Corman’s so-called Poe Cycle – a series of eight ’60s films which either adapted Edgar Allan Poe stories, embodied his recurring themes, or were just cheekily marketed under his name – makes use of interviews with the director that were conducted during lockdown. Each movie receives a synopsis – often a tad long-winded – around eight pages of Q&A, and an accessible two-page critique. They are already pretty well-documented, so there are no major revelations. The urbane Corman – who studied at Oxford and discusses his admiration for the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Luis Buñuel – is also too much…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher DC Comics ▸ Writer Dennis Culver ▸ Artist Chris Burnham ISSUES 1-3 Their TV incarnation may have concluded, but the endearingly freakish Doom Patrol show no signs of going anywhere, and they’ve now acquired a higher-profile role in the DC universe with this new seven-issue miniseries. The set-up is that the Doom Patrol are acting as metahuman “first responders” to assist the unusual superheroes created during the recent Lazarus Planet event. This pitches them against heroes like Batman and the Green Lantern Corps, while a government conspiracy is planning to bring down the Patrol from within. Writer Dennis Culver throws in fun set-pieces and lively action across these first three issues, as well as a ton of DC continuity references. As an offbeat superhero title,…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ 133 minutes | CD/download ▸ Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Big Finish’s latest archeological exploration of Tom Baker’s debut season sees them dramatising the John Lucarotti scripts reworked as 1975 classic “The Ark In Space”. Script editor Robert Holmes stripped them for parts, taking the central idea of an ark ship full of humans in cryogenic suspension, plus elements like bodily transformation, a subsidiary ship and Sarah Jane squeezing through a ventilation duct. The rest was binned. You can understand why – light years from Lucarotti’s historical adventures for William Hartnell, it’s deeply odd. For one thing, the writer seems to have had balls on the brain, giving the episodes titles like “Golfball” and “Puffball”. The latter – a mushroom the Doctor happens to have been…

→ TIME TRAVEL IS woven into the very fabric of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series, as well as the hit Starz television adaptation, which returns this month. The epic narrative spans 200 years, telling the love story of Claire (Caitríona Balfe), a time traveller from 1945, and her Scottish Highlander soul mate from 1743, Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). Since season four, the pair have been married and settled with their family in pre-Revolutionary War North Carolina. But season seven brings with it an actual war – as well as a big return to time travel storytelling. Primarily based on Gabaldon’s seventh book An Echo In The Bone, it features 16 new episodes (broken into two blocks of eight). An eighth season will then close the series. With that in mind,…

→ PREPARE FOR A SERIOUS smackdown beneath the Seven Seas with Dreamworks Animation’s new family-friendly animated feature Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. This ’90s-style coming-of-age fable centres on the gangly teenager of the title (Lana Condor) who discovers that she is descended from generations of mythical sea krakens and that her true destiny lies in a fantastic oceanic kingdom. An ancient feud pits krakens against mermaids in an underwater clash of epic proportions, as we learn that appearances are deceptive and mermaids might not be the alluring enchantresses of maritime folklore… Directed by The Croods’ Kirk DeMicco from an original screenplay by DeMicco and Pam Brady, Ruby Gillman is poised to be parent company Universal Pictures’ third animation sensation, after the box office bonanzas of Dreamworks’ Puss In Boots: The Last…

“It’s astonishing to see,” promises Frank Marshall of the dazzling sequence in The Dial Of Destiny that showcases Indy in his Nazi-punching prime, reborn onscreen. “I like to feel we shot it back when we were doing The Last Crusade. We did a little sequence with Harrison that we saved until now!” In fact cutting-edge digital sorcery was used to de-age Ford, who played the wartime flashback scenes in his late seventies. “The technology was improving almost daily. It made a big leap from what ILM had done on the Star Wars movies. We were able to see our dailies with a younger Harrison. That was new. It used to take all this time to make someone younger but now we could see a young Harrison right away. “The key…

LACK MIRROR HAS DONE SPACE BEFORE, BUT not like this. Set in the ‘60s, “Beyond The Sea” tells the story of two astronauts, played by Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett, who embark on a long space voyage. Their mission? We never find out. However, the pair have access to onboard technology that allows them to control mechanical bodies back home on Earth. Their second selves interact with their families and feel the breeze on their faces – and, as you would expect from a show as twisted as Black Mirror, it’s all too good to be true. With the episode’s spaceship making such a prominent appearance, SFX has exclusive behind-the-scenes imagery showcasing the vessel’s creation, while production designer Udo Kramer talks us through creating a structure that fits writer Charlie…

At the end of season one, Gaal arrives on Synnax and meets Salvor Hardin, the daughter she never knew. How does that open up Gaal’s story in season two? ● I always laugh about the fact that in season one I did it as pretty much just me acting by myself, opposite Hari/Jared Harris. I was so excited that I was getting not only to add someone else to act opposite but to explore this storyline, which is such an intimate, personal thing. It’s almost a little glimmer of hope. But then it’s also understanding the complexity of what that means: finding someone that has your DNA, your blood, but you don’t know them. You don’t seem to have anything in common with them, and you’re stumbling, when you’re meant…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED 19 JUNE 2022 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download ▸ Director Ti West ▸ Cast Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Emma Jenkins-Purro → The prequel to Ti West’s surprise horror hit X is both entirely different and a perfect complement to the original. Mia Goth once again fully inhabits the role of killer Pearl, albeit this time playing her as a young woman in Texas, 1918, trapped on her American gothic farm with only her angry mother and ailing father for company. “Mia Goth once again fully inhabits the role of killer Pearl” Hope seems to arrive in the form of a handsome young projectionist (David Corenswet) – but he’s not quite as clean-cut as her first appears. More a tragic cine-literate melodrama than a slasher, it’s both hilarious…

▸ RELEASED 26 JUNE 2023 | 15 | Download ▸ Director Daphné Baiwir → Does anyone consider themselves a fan of Stephen King adaptations in the way they might the author himself? The field is so sprawling, and so variable in quality. Still, if you’re scowling at the impudence of the question, this documentary should keep you entertained. It features an impressive line-up of directors (27 in all), including the likes of Tom Holland (Thinner, The Langoliers), Lewis Teague (Cujo, Cat’s Eye) and Greg Nicotero (Creepshow). Mike Flanagan (Gerard’s Game, Doctor Sleep) has insightful observations about how King’s writing operates, Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist) a treasure trove of production anecdotes. It feels like director Daphné Baiwir struggled to organise the material. Chronologically speaking we…

▸ RELEASED 3 JULY 2023 | 12 | Download → “What the hell is going on here?” demands the hero of Marianna Dean’s wilfully elliptical debut feature. You’ll share his bewilderment: waking in hospital with a glitchy memory, he’s beset by visions, fragmented in time and seemingly implicated in nothing less than the end of the world itself. Clearly made with limited resources, Breaking Infinity’s conceptual ambition is admirable. There are hard SF ideas here and enough intrigue to keep you hungry for the answers.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW 1986-1989 | 15 | Blu-ray ▸ Directors Ricky Lau, Lam Ching-ying ▸ Cast Lam Ching-Ying, Yuen Biao, Wu Ma, Richard Ng BLU-RAY DEBUT How to make multiple sequels to a hit without repeating yourself? Well, you could always make movies that are almost totally unrelated. This was, it seems, Hong Kong distributor Golden Harvest’s strategy when it came to their 1985 horror-comedy Mr Vampire – the film that introduced most Western viewers to jiāngshī, the hopping corpses of Chinese folklore which are their nearest equivalent to Dracula and his ilk. The four follow-ups in this box set share similar themes, and some of the same cast (Lam Ching-ying, a taoist priest in the original, plays similar characters in three films), but otherwise go their own way.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download ▸ Director David F Sandberg ▸ Cast Zachary Levi, Helen Mirren, Jack Dylan Grazer, Lucy Liu → The first Shazam! was a good-natured, goofball delight about a teenager transformed into a grown-up superhero (Zachary Levi) who’s still a kid at heart; by the end all his adopted siblings are superheroes too. This follow-up struggles to capture lightning twice, despite some wonderfully silly moments and heaps of charm. The problem is the villains; Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren are wasted as vengeful Greek gods in a dreary plot that only belatedly kicks into gear. But the juvenile superheroes are huge fun, as are some quirky action sequences, and a sentient pen called Steve. While other “family” fantasy films are injecting…

▸ RELEASED 6 JULY 416 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Emma Törzs ▸ Publisher Century → If you’re reading this, you probably like books. Maybe you enjoy nothing more of an evening than curling up with your Kindle. Maybe you’re constantly pushing your favourites onto long-suffering friends. Maybe you spent the past decade buying books faster than you can read them, and your TBR pile has now taken over your house. (Ahem.) Even so, you probably aren’t as obsessed as the characters in Emma Törzs’s debut novel. As in murder-level obsessed. But then, these books are literally magical. Hand-written with ink made from the blood of individuals known as Scribes, their spells take effect when read aloud (and fed more blood). Those who produce and collect them are cut-throat and…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 528 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author Kritika H Rao ▸ Publisher Titan Books → Massive moving cities – as distinct from city-sized spaceships – are one of the great SF high concepts. From the space-faring spindizzies of James Blish’s Cities In Flight to the earthly, town-eat-town steampunk of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines, they offer a brilliant jolt of wonder and estrangement. In Kritika Rao’s debut, flying cities have been humanity’s last refuge from a hostile planet for a thousand years. Teams of architects pilot plant-based settlements above the surface’s deadly earthrages, all the while communing with the flora to shape and reshape the contours of the urban landscape to citizens’ needs. As a piece of worldbuilding imagination, it’s breathtaking; add in the Hindu philosophy driving it…

▸ RELEASED 22 JUNE 400 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Liz Hyder ▸ Publisher Manilla Press → Stage magic and early moving pictures share many attributes, particularly the appearance to an audience of something impossible – whether that’s a disappearing assistant or reappearing dove, or the image of a moving train projected within a building. Set in 1896, The Illusions combines magic and movie-making with a charismatic array of characters struggling to make their mark in the world. Photographer and filmmaking pioneer Eadie Carleton enthrals talented magician George Perris with her creations, sparking ideas and possibilities of a combined stage act. Meanwhile, young Cec Marsden struggles to break free of a more sinister magician and medium, while also beginning to understand and accept her more otherworldly magical talents. This is…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 272 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Tony Santorella ▸ Publisher Atlantic Books → Turns out becoming a werewolf can really derail your life plan. Poor Brian dropped out of college after getting cursed, abandoning his former ambitions to do the bare minimum in a restaurant job and turning to Grindr hook-ups instead of trying for anything more committed. After all, when you wolf out once a month, what’s the point? Then he meets Tyler. Rich, good-looking and supremely confident, Tyler’s everything Brian wants to be – and he promises to change Brian’s life. He’s starting a werewolf-only members club, offering personal training sessions, life-coaching, and a little build-your-own-werewolf-dungeon support. In exchange, Brian will handle the admin… and recruitment. Inevitably, things go a bit Jordan Peterson slash…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 463 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author GN Gudgion ▸ Publisher Second Sky → GN Gudgion’s Rune Song Trilogy kicks off in thrilling style with Hammer Of Fate. The story is set in a world modelled on medieval Europe, where power-hungry priests hunt heretics and an order of knights called the Guardians faces persecution from an avaricious king who is coveting their wealth. In this world ruled by men, Adelais is a novice sister in the Ischyrian faith, which secretly worships the old pagan gods. Seeking to escape to her distant northern homeland, she becomes entangled in the struggle for possession of a sacred relic that the Guardians hope to protect from the sadistic inquisitors issued by the church. Adelais is a terrific lead – passionate, intelligent…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Titan Comics ▸ Writers Fred Duval, Jean-Pierre Pecau ▸ Artist Stevan Subic ISSUES 1-4 While his name heads up the title, Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy doesn’t actually turn up until around halfway through this fourparter. And despite its steampunk trappings including some sinister automatons, Fred Duval and Jean-Pierre Pecau’s story is very much a traditional Holmesian tale. With shades of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the sleuths are pitted against Dr Jekyll and a fearsome, Hulk-like Mr Hyde, who present them with an intriguing locked room-esque scenario. There are also appearances from or allusions to a young Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, Alfred Nobel, Nikola Tesla and John Merrick. Considering Holmes’s penchant for explaining his deductions, you can forgive the occasional bit of exposition, while there are…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Marvel Comics ▸ Writer Tini Howard ▸ Artist Vasco Georgiev ISSUES 1-3 While her name’s in the title, Betsy Braddock’s first solo book is actually more of a group effort, with the supporting cast including not only her brothers Brian – now calling himself Captain Avalon – and Jamie, and her partner Rachel “Askani” Summers, but yet another Captain Britain in Faiza Hussain. With the series spinning out of last year’s Knights Of X, it’s advisable to read the numerous text pages to catch up on the often convoluted past occurences. With Betsy having controversially refused to make the Union Jack part of her costume, Tini Howard gets in some wry political satire, opening issue one as she is grilled by a GB News-style channel…

It was the cover that grabbed my interest. The first time I saw a copy of “High Society” – volume two of the indie comics epic Cerebus – I was in a comic shop in 1989, and I didn’t know what I was looking at. Most comics scream for your attention, but “High Society” was enigmatic: a chunky, 500-page black-and-white collection with no blurb on the back, just a wraparound cover showing a weird-looking animal (wait, was that an aardvark?) arriving at a massive building. Going the mystery route is understandable, since Cerebus is almost impossible to classify. A 300-issue story self-published by writer/artist Dave Sim between 1977 and 2004, it started as a Howard The Duck-influenced fantasy spoof (the basic pitch: what if Conan the Barbarian was a talking…

→ ANY DIRECTOR attempting a shark movie is going up against some truly great films (Jaws, The Shallows, Kon-Tiki, Open Water) and some exceptionally bad ones (Sharknado). But how to make your shark flick unique? “There’s a social message in this film about what we’re doing to our planet,” director Adrian Grünberg tells Red Alert, explaining what marks out The Black Demon from other elasmobranch-themed movies. “Then there’s the whole mythology behind the creature…” That mythology is the legend of “El Demonio Negro”. In the film, “the Black Demon”, as the shark (or more precisely, megalodon) becomes known, is summoned after the construction of an oil rig off the coast of Baja California. A killer it may be, but the question The Black Demon poses is what is worse: the…

→ JUST AS YOU’VE OVERCOME YEARS OF sleepless nights after shuddering in sterile space station corridors avoiding a xenomorph in 2014’s survival horror game Alien: Isolation, here comes more sci-fi fright fuel in the shape of Aliens: Dark Descent. The game steers clear of the stealthy evasive format of Isolation. Developer Tindalos Interactive has instead designed its tactical-style gameplay to feature aggressive order-based team deployments, time-displacement functions and action-orientated story missions – plus plenty of biomechanical beasts. The game’s storyline sees players leading a crew of Colonial Marines to ambush a savage alien invasion on the hostile moon of Lethe. Gamers command a crack unit of gung-ho soldiers in real-time combat against acid-spewing monsters, rogue infiltrators from the heartless Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and a menagerie of never-seen creatures making their debut…

→ IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT A STORY idea gets to make the adaptation rounds in multiple media, but that speaks to the delightfully twisted premise of The Horror Of Dolores Roach. Aaron Mark originally developed it as a one-woman show that gender-inverts the 19th century melodrama Sweeney Todd. It became a stage hit with Daphne Rubin-Vega playing ex-con Dolores Roach – who stayed in the title role when it was turned into a Spotify podcast drama of the same name. Now The Horror Of Dolores Roach is an eight-episode Prime Video horror-comedy series starring Justina Machado (Jane The Virgin) as Dolores, a young woman who takes the fall for her drug-dealer boyfriend and does 16 years in prison. When she gets out, that boyfriend has vanished, and she has no…

Boxing Clever The 30th anniversary may have been and gone, but that’s no reason to stop celebrating the best Batman film of all time. That’s Batman Returns, in case anyone’s not clear. Lego is helping keep Burton’s gothic Christmas on your mind all year round with a new Shadow Box set – which opens up to reveal the Batcave and lots of special features. As you might expect, it comes with minifigures of Catwoman, Penguin and Max Shreck. Available now, £344.99, lego.com/batman Rocket Man A special staged reading of the 1953 serial The Quatermass Experiment will be held in London later this year. Mark Gatiss will star as Professor Bernard Quatermass in this unique event to mark the 70th anniversary of the largely missing six-part broadcast. The first manned flight…

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UP ON THE SCREEN, A horse gallops in pursuit of a speeding truck. Its rider wears a hat and is armed with a coiled whip. As beast and vehicle draw level the man in the hat leaps from the saddle of his mount. We’re witnessing an electric piece of stunt work – the smallest error in timing could be fatal. One heart-stopping second later he clings to the side of the truck as the wheels race and rattle beneath him. Our daredevil hero has dazzled us again. Familiar? Of course. But this isn’t a celebrated action beat from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. We’re watching Chapter 11 of Zorro Rides Again, the 1937 Republic Pictures serial that promised “12 punch packed episodes” for the Saturday matinee crowd. George Lucas knew…

Where do we find Geralt in season three? From the very beginning, Geralt has talked a lot about being neutral. He is very clear that he doesn’t want to get into politics. He exists for one reason – to kill monsters. This season, with all the parties that are after Ciri, his neutrality really comes into question. When Geralt loses the two people he loves so deeply, it causes him to give up on his neutrality because he will do anything to get them back. From this point on, he actually has an agenda. He is not reacting to the world. He is proactively seeking to change something. What about Yennefer? When she realises there is no escaping the forces that are closing in on Ciri, Yennefer decides to take…

THINK YOU KNOW Nick Fury? Think again. The character has been a consistent presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever since sneaking into Iron Man’s home and discussing a certain initiative. Yet despite his screen time across 11 movies, Fury remains an enigma, an international man of mystery with no known home. That’s about to change. Secret Invasion, Marvel’s six-part espionage series, puts the spotlight firmly on Samuel L Jackson’s tough-talking leader, offering a look at Fury’s world beyond the superheroes with which he normally surrounds himself. “Sam Jackson would say we knew the working part of Nick Fury, but we never knew anything about his personal life,” Ali Selim, the series’ director, tells SFX. “We never knew what his demons were. We never knew what his home life secrets…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 140 minutes ▸ Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K Thompson ▸ Cast Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Jason Schwartzman, Daniel Kaluuya → “Every time I hear ‘The fate of the multiverse’ my mind melts,” moans one of the seemingly several trillion Spider-Men in Across The Spider-Verse. If you are also suffering multiverse burn-out, this supercharged sequel will either fry your brain completely or reignite your passion for pan-dimensional madness. Across The Spider-Verse explodes with a breathtaking visual and narrative anarchy that sometimes feels like a bold reinvention of cinematic storytelling and sometimes feels like a hot mess. But it never fails to be exciting, at least. This time Miles Morales (Earth-1610’s Spider-Man) is sucked into multi-world shenanigans again when Gwen Stacey (Earth-65’s Spider-Woman) unexpectedly returns…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 94 minutes ▸ Director Robert Rodriguez ▸ Cast Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, William Fichtner, JD Pardo → Following the family  friendlier likes of Alita: Battle Angel, We Can Be Heroes and his contributions to the Star Wars TV galaxy, Robert Rodriguez dug out an unmade script he first wrote in 2002, handed it to Godzilla’s Max Borenstein to rewrite, and convinced Ben Affleck to star in something for the older crowd. We’re guessing there was some mind-trickery involved along the way there, because Hypnotic is a bland, moderately entertaining thriller that has pretensions of brainy Christopher Nolan-style filmmaking – although the concept predates the likes of Inception. Affleck scowls and growls his way through the role of detective Danny Rourke, who is haunted by…

▸ UK/US Disney+, streaming now ▸ Showrunner Michael Olson ▸ Cast Jamaal Avery Jr, Emma Berman, Juliet Donenfeld, Dee Bradley Baker EPISODES 1.01-1.07 Lucasfilm and Disney make a bid to entice younglings to a galaxy far, far away with an animated series targeted squarely at pre-schoolers. With its far-flung worlds, aliens, bounty hunters and even a recurring role for a (relatively) youthful Yoda, Young Jedi Adventures features everything you’ve come to expect from Star Wars – albeit in a cuted-up, peril-free form. In this sugar-rush of brightly coloured CG visuals, three young Padawans are relocated to a remote Jedi temple for the next stage of their training. Alongside their pilot chum, they end up on a series of mildly diverting standalone adventures, where the stakes are rarely higher than helping a…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/download ▸ Directors Scott Beck, Bryan Woods ▸ Cast Adam Driver, Arianna Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King → Resisting the urge to pull a Rod Serling, 65 is absolutely upfront that “It was Earth all along!”. Crashing into our primordial world, starship pilot Adam Driver must navigate an escalating series of Cretaceous-era hazards in the company of fellow survivor Ariana Greenblatt, whose self-possessed performance has a touch of the young Dafne Keen. It’s a sharp, appealing premise, abetted by a lean running time, but while there’s heart and atmosphere, the prehistoric perils feel short on genuine bite. The imminent arrival of a certain epoch-ending asteroid feels like a ticking clock too far, given the jeopardy already baked into the film’s premise. +…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2023 | TBC | SVOD SHUDDER In this real-time chamber piece, set a few months after VE Day, a bunch of veterans carry out a seance. While a spirit is materialised, it’s more about dealing with metaphorical demons. Through the figure of a German neighbour, the film also explores how difficult it can be to let go of hate. Some superb performances crank up the tension, and the twists keep coming – though the final one seems strangely at odds with the message of tolerance put forward previously.…

EXTRAS ▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1963 | PG | 4K Blu-ray ▸ Director Jerry Lewis ▸ Cast Jerry Lewis, Stella Stevens, Del Moore, Kathleen Freeman → Jerry Lewis first saw Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde as a teen and was, he says in one of the extras here, “enthralled by the tennis match, the good and the evil.” It’s not hard to see why he was drawn to the idea of a comic version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s horror classic. As the buck-toothed scientist whose serum transforms him into a ladies’ man, not only does he get to essay his usual prat-falling, goofy-faced schtick, he also gets to be the well-tailored Don Juan sophisticate, playing – in effect – both Martin and Lewis. The Nutty Professor is certainly overlong at 107…

The works of JG Ballard were an inspiration for Brandon Cronenberg’s INFINITY POOL (26 June, Blu-ray/DVD), which sees a novelist and his heiress wife holidaying at a luxury resort. When James kills a man, he’s given the option of having a clone executed in his place… We said: “Has all the hallucinatory flair and gnarly gore of Possessor and Antiviral… The characters’ descent into hell takes compelling twists and turns.” Disappointingly, there are zero bonuses. Boo! The gloomy tale of two children who wake in the night to find the windows and doors in their house have disappeared, SKINAMARINK (3 July, Blu-ray/DVD) received rave reviews in some quarters, but “Emperor’s New Clothes” was our verdict. We said: “Getting photos back from the chemists to find accidental snaps of carpet may…

▸ RELEASED 22 JUNE 352 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author JR Dawson ▸ Publisher Tor Books → Ever felt like the world is dark and scary in a way that’s only ever going to get worse? Of course you have – have you seen the news lately? – which is why The First Bright Thing is exactly the novel we need now. In the aftermath of the First World War, circus master Rin has created a safe haven for misfits: her Circus of Fantasticals is a spectacle created by performers who’ve all mysteriously developed superpowers. Dubbed “Sparks”, these powers run the full gamut of X-Men abilities; Rin’s own power is teleportation, which she uses to keep her troupe safe from the persecution that always seems to come along with being…

▸ RELEASED 20 JUNE 240 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Kalynn Bayron ▸ Publisher Bloomsbury YA → Just when you thought you’d read (or seen) every possible spin on the postmodern meta-slasher, along comes a new one to bring the genre bang up-to-date. This YA book centres on seventeen-year-old Charity Curtis, who works as the Final Girl at Camp Mirror Lake, an immersive terror attraction where guests pay to be menaced by a masked man with a knife. Thanks to her absentee manager, it’s her job not just to play the lead role in the nightly horror LARP but also to make sure the whole production runs smoothly. She’s good at her job, so it mostly does… until the night a stranger shows up with a dire warning about the…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 256 pages | Paperback/ebook ▸ Author Jeremy P Bushnell ▸ Publisher Melville House Publishing → Jeremy P Bushnell’s third novel looks, at first glance, like a slightly generic, Lovecrafttinged urban fantasy. Like its protagonist, however, there’s more to Relentless Melt than meets the eye. By day Artie Quick works in department store Filene’s. By night she puts on her missing brother Zeb’s clothes and attends a class in criminal investigation. She gets the chance to put her new skills to practical use when girls start going missing in the area, and soon Artie and her occultist friend Theodore find themselves entangled in a sinister supernatural mystery. Bushnell reimagines early 20th century Boston as a fundamentally romantic city, all magic colleges and detective night classes. Still, there’s…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! 224 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▸ Author Natasha Calder ▸ Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing → The near future. Kit lives on an island, hunkered down in a prepper’s well-stocked bunker beneath a tumbledown castle. Back on the mainland, Kit tells us, society has broken down. Antibiotics no longer work. Plastic-eating bacteria is rampant. Kit’s one companion is Crevan, both father figure and someone, disturbingly, to whom Kit appears to be sexually attracted. In broadest outline, Natasha Calder’s solo debut – she previously co-wrote The Offset as one half of “Calder Szewczak”, with Emma Szewczak – could easily be mistaken for a generic exercise in dystopian fiction. Until, that is, a half-dead woman appears in waters off the island and the sense that Kit is an unreliable narrator begins…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Publisher Marvel Comics ▸ Writer Al Ewing ▸ Artists Scott Eaton, Tom Reilly, Adam Kubert, Ramon Rosanas ONE-SHOT It’s 60 years since everybody’s favourite tough-talking, eyepatch-wearing superspy made his first comic book appearance, and Marvel is toasting six decades of Nick Fury with a new one-off special. Unlike virtually every other recent anniversary one-off, this doesn’t go the anthology route. Instead, writer Al Ewing serves up a largely self-contained tale that hops between the modern day, the Second World War and the swinging ’60s, while also reuniting the original Nick Fury and the current Samuel L Jackson-inspired Nick Fury Jr for some properly old-school Marvel intrigue. The plot sees Fury Jr facing off against the mysterious Scorpio, and the special is at its most fun…

▸ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▸ Reviewed on PlayStation 5 ▸ Also on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch ▸ Publisher Daedalic Entertainment VIDEOGAME Tolkien’s Middle earth stories are of course timeless fantasy classics, which unfortunately makes playing this dated licensed game from indie German studio Daedalic all the more painful to grind through. Set just before The Fellowship Of The Ring, The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum fills in the gaps of its title character’s backstory, answering the question of what he was up to while being held captive at Barad-Dur and Mirkwood respectively. This was a question no one was really asking in the first place, and for good reason, as it turns out the answer boils down to a lot of manual prison labour (manifested here…