Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 169 i SciFi Now

WHAT IS BIG FINISH? Big Finish is an audio production company which has been creating Doctor Who, Doctor Who tie-in material and original audio drama since 1996. Since then it has expanded its range to include titles focusing on Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, Torchwood and original properties. SO IT PRODUCES NEW DOCTOR WHO STORIES? WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST? Among other things, yes! Their stories are full cast, complete with music and special effects and cover everything from occasional visits from the First Doctor all the way to side stories featuring 10, 11 and 12. Length varies, with the ‘Short Trips’ series usually being one narrator and roughly half an hour while full length stories feature a full cast and clock in at roughly two hours. IS THERE ANYTHING BIG FINISH…

“The costume has been an evolution,” Zoë Kravitz says on her Catwoman costume for The Batman. “Jacqueline Durran, our incredible costume designer, has been beautifully collaborative. It wasn’t as though I came to set and she threw something on me. No, it’s been a long process and we’ve had many conversations about what we wanted it to look like. Matt, our director, had specific ideas, so there were many fittings where we would change things here and alter things there. Recently, we got to a place where we would put it on and think: ‘There she is. There it is.’ It’s exciting. There’s no part of me that feels casual about it. They called me to set recently and I was in the outfit – and I looked at everyone…

“I think people did see [A Quiet Place] as a very feminist film and certainly I think John just very naturally is, I think, attracted to writing quite empowered, complicated female characters. Because I hear this term like strong female character quite a lot and I’m always a bit like [cringes]. Because I think the mistake is to then just write someone as sort of hard line and tough and that equals strong. I don’t think that’s the case. I think strength comes from somebody who makes mistakes. “With Evelyn, I think a lot of her power comes from these deep maternal instincts that run so deep through her and what she would do for her children, and her optimism actually, which you see a lot in the first film.…

Despite being packed with swords, magic and castles, The Letter For The King shares an odd connection to one of cinema’s most enduring genres. “In a funny way, this series is both a medieval show and also sort of a western,” explains Davies. “We were having to re-learn lessons that people knew how to do in the Fifties – when they knew how to shoot people on horses and do dialogue on horses.” While it may seem like a canter around the park, capturing these key sequences came with their own challenges: “We’d put actors on a horse and film them walking, but in a minute a horse can cover such a huge distance. We had to start recalibrating all of our sets otherwise we’d run out of space. By…

It’s early January 2020 and SciFiNow is among what’s apparently the first audience to see select full scenes from one of the year’s most intriguing blockbuster prospects. We’re very impressed by the thrilling scale and tender, moving intimacy of the wildly different sequences we’re shown. And this is somewhat surprising because this film is one of those oft-dreaded propositions: a remake. Well, yes and no to it being a strict remake of another movie. Disney’s new Mulan is definitely a live-action update of its own animated film from 1998, but the character of Hua Mulan originates in a famous story first told over 1,500 years ago, in which a young woman, disguised as a man, took her aging father’s place in the army. In paying tribute to various versions of…

TELL US ABOUT YOUR HISTORY WITH COMICS, AND IN PARTICULAR 2000AD AND ROGUE TROOPER? I was never a disciplined comic collector. More of a scavenger, picking things up when opportunity arose. I had a pretty unusual upbringing and I travelled a lot growing up, so I would go through phases of being into American comics and then moving back to the UK and being obsessive about UK ones such as Eagle, Tiger, Commando… I don’t remember when I first started buying 2000AD, but I do remember feeling like my luck was in when I could get Eagle, 2000AD and Tiger at the same time. WHAT APPEALED TO YOU ABOUT 2000AD IN PARTICULAR? There was always something punkish and darkly comic (pardon the pun) about the 2000AD characters. Political and acerbic……

Release Out now Director Jeff Wadlow Cast Michael Pena, Lucy Hale, Maggie Q, Michael Rooker Distributor Sony Pictures Certificate 15 “Da plane! Da Plane!” exclaimed the diminutive Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) excitably at the beginning of each episode of Aaron Spelling’s TV series Fantasy Island, after glimpsing the aircraft that brings guests to their magical resort for fantasy fulfilment. Tattoo is conspicuous by his absence in Blumhouse’s horror reinterpretation of the vintage family show (his iconic line is uttered several times throughout however), and so too is the charm and sophistication that the much-missed Ricardo Montalban brought with his commanding portrayal of island guide Mr Roarke. “Here everything and anything is possible!” assures his cinematic successor (Michael Pena) to his motley guests with far less conviction. It doesn’t help that Jeff…

Release Out now Director Jason Lei Howden Cast Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehy, Rhys Darby Distributor Saban Films Certificate 18 Format On Demand Illegal online game Skism pits armed players in live-action death matches, with the whole city their arena. After casually flaming its users, hapless geek Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is visited by game runners who nail guns to his hands and force him into a deadly contest with reigning champ Nix (Samara Weaving). In Jason Lei Howden’s follow-up to Deathgasm (2015), the high-calibre, over-the-top dynamics of a shoot-’em-up are grounded in the comic normality of an everyday protagonist who prefers flight to fight, and whose voiceover keeps emphasising the un-cool realities of combat (the indignity of haemorrhagic shock, the deafening loudness of bullets and the…

Release Out now Showrunners Jonathan Entwistle, Christy Hall Cast Sophia Lillis, Wyatt Oleff, Sofia Bryant Distributor Netflix Format NETFLIX There’s nothing particularly new about the ‘puberty as superpowers’ trope, but where most of those takes lean into the supernatural elements, it’s rare to see a show where a character is just as concerned with her weird zits as she is with her burgeoning psychic powers. But that’s where I Am Not Okay With This’ interests lie – not in central character Sydney’s special abilities – but in all the other difficult teenage aspects of her life. I Am Not Okay With This focuses on Syd (Sophia Lillis), an awkward 16-year-old grieving for her father and beginning to develop confusing feelings for her best friend Dina (Sofia Bryant), while trying to…

Release Out now Showrunners Greg Berlanti, Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns Cast Brenton Thwaites, Teagan Croft, Anna Diop Distributor Netflix Certificate 15 Format NETFLIX There is clearly some unfinished business when old nemeses Slade Wilson/Deathstroke (played with a disarming charm by newcomer to the series, Esai Morales) turns up in Season Two of Titans, which rocks our superhero gang to its very core. Season Two opens with Titan originals, Kory, Hank, Dawn and Donna, going their own ways and Dick deciding to bring young Rachel, Gar and Todd into the fold to continue doing hero work as a new generation of Titans. However, that plan doesn’t last long when Slade turns up, forcing the gang to begrudgingly reform to take down the assassin. There is a lot crammed into this season…

Release 24 March Writer Zack Jordan Publisher Hodder & Stoughton Price £18.99 How would you feel if you were the last of a species so abhorred that you cannot even say out loud what you are? In a galaxy where different beings are tiered in order of intelligence by a Network of information, Sarya the Daughter has been living a secret life with her adoptive mother Shenya the Widow. Disguised as a different species to hide that she is, in fact, human (a species that was deemed too dangerous to exist), Sarya has struggled to fit in. You see, the majority of beings use the Network to speak to each other and learn about their surroundings, but as her human biology doesn’t quite work with the Network interface, she’s ostracised…

Release Out now Writers Various Publisher Titan Comics Price £35.99 It’s been 20 years since The Matrix exploded on to our screens. For many, the cinema experience was the first time seeing the rich and complex alternate world that Lana and Lilly Wachowski envisioned. But prior even to the shooting of the movie, the Wachowskis had shared their script for The Matrix with some of the greatest modern comic book writers and artists to get their take on the concept. Those that bought into it soon began to create their own tales based in the world of The Matrix, many of which were originally published as online-only, digital comics on The Matrix website. Twenty years later, Titan Comics has released an anniversary edition that pulls all 28 of the original…

Release 24 March Writer Intisar Khanani Publisher Harperteen Price £7.99 Based on the Grimm fairytale, The Goose Girl, Intisar Khanani’s Thorn tells the tale of the Princess Alyrra. She is belittled by her mother and beaten by her brother so she desires an escape from the royal duties she is forced to carry out. When she is betrothed to Prince Kestrin, she finds herself tangled up in a long-standing feud and transformed from princess to lowly goose girl. She is finally freed from the life she wanted to escape, but will duty draw her back in? Thorn was self-published as an ebook back in 2012, but is being republished with a revised text and a very pretty print edition. And it’s easy to see why. There’s a softness to the…

“Honestly one of my favourite films. Just incredibly enjoyable and fun. A lovely blend of satire and earnestness (it seems anyway). Larger than life characters, cheesy sci-fi. Love it.” @Bolt_451 “It’s a masterpiece that also somehow foretold the ‘war on terror’.” @eds209 “Genius sci-fi from the master. The Bugs are only defending themselves and their right to exist, but they’re not as pretty as the collection of daytime American soap stars fighting for the other side. A brilliant take down of fake news and fascism, so clever that many didn’t notice!” @KeithMansfield “What if the Bugs didn’t even launch the meteorite which wiped out Buenos Aires? What if the Federation used an accident to spark a race war?” @Danny11M “Classic. I hope PV gets to direct at least one more…

Q. What Disney + programme are you most looking forward to? RACHAEL HARPER EDITOR A. The Mandalorian It’s a western-esque Star Wars show full of intergalactic dodgy deals and… okay fine it’s because of Baby Yoda. ABIGAIL CHANDLER DEPUTY EDITOR A. WandaVision Looks trippy and original, and an exploration of Wanda and her powers is long overdue! MARCUS FAINT ART EDITOR A. The Mandalorian Prince Oberyn battling across a galaxy far, far away. Add in to the mix a fully animated Funko figure and I’m sold! ANNIE MCKENNA SUB EDITOR A. The Mandalorian Mysterious galactic bounty hunter, funky tech and a good measure of original Star Wars nostalgia – I’m in!…

VIVARIUM This is a weird, gorgeous puzzle-box of a poster, and a perfect summing-up of the film the poster is promoting. It is both twee and deeply unsettling, and more sinister the more you look at it (which we have... alot...). The poster raises so many questions. Who is that woman in the doorway of the top face of the house? Why does Jesse Eisenberg have a spade? This, ladies and gentlemen, is how to do a poster. THE NEW MUTANTS The New Mutants is finally coming to cinemas in April and this poster marks a statement of intent: we’re coming. SPIRAL Spiral is a spin off from the Saw franchise. It could (perhaps should) be a dumb and schlocky poster. Instead it looks like a prestige crime thriller. Intriguing.…

“That opening shot of me in the car, there is no CGI, there is only one shot and there is a real bus,” remembers Blunt. “And it was the first take that we used. No one wanted him to do this shot but [John] had dreamt of this shot, he had it in his head. And everyone said it can’t be done. And they designed this special piece of camera equipment in Germany that came in through the roof of my car. And so it starts on me, back to the boy, from the bridge and it’s all in one shot. And then back to Noah [who plays Marcus Abbott] and you see him briefly but that was a highly choreographed shot that they spent two weeks rehearsing with the…

BEYOND THE VALE Plucky journalist Vicky Vale sets off to shed her tabloid reputation and use her platform for good as she tackles organised crime in Gotham. Slam Bradley as reluctant sidekick?? ICE ICE BABY COLD AS ICE Terminally ill Nora Fries just wants to work through her bucket list, but begins to be concerned by her husband’s growing obsession with cryogenics. TWEENAGE DIRTBAG Life’s a drag when you’re hitting puberty and your mum’s an evil bitch and your granddad’s Ra’s Al Ghul and no-one’s taking your vegetarianism seriously. Also, you’re a child assassin (maybe lead with that?). PENNY FOR EM? Alfred Pennyworth takes a job as a high school guidance counsellor. Things soon get out of hand. School of Batmen?…

Tiuri’s quest might be pretty daunting, but the cast and crew also had their work cut out for them whilst bringing The Letter For The King to life. Thankfully, they quickly discovered that ignorance is bliss. “It’s funny because none of us had made a TV show like this before,” reveals Will Davies, the show’s writer. “We really didn’t know what we were doing so we bit off far more than we could chew – but in a funny way precisely because we didn’t know what we were doing, nobody who knew anything about television would have tried to do what we tried to do,” he laughs. “We tried to do something that was hopelessly over-ambitious and as a result it’s got this scale that’s out of proportion to the…

An action sequence we’re shown – which appears to be the first encounter between Bori Khan’s forces and the soldiers with whom Mulan has assimilated herself – impresses but also surprises for a Disney family-aimed blockbuster: while it’s not gory, we see arrows make contact with soldiers’ bodies, and those soldiers subsequently falling to the ground, without the film cutting away from that. The battle looks like something out of The Lord Of The Rings but with a pinch of the style of very different action films. “That’s the commitment of the studio to an authentic retelling of this classic tale,” Caro says of the lack of sugar-coating in the battle sequences. “And that it is essentially the story of a girl on an epic journey to war and back.…

Release 3 April Director Emily Harris Cast Tobias Menzies, Greg Wise, Jessica Raine Distributor Republic Film Certificate 15 Director/writer Emily Harris whips up an intoxicating affair between two women in Carmilla, as she takes her turn at adapting the 1872 Gothic novella by Sheridan Le Fanu. It’s a text that has inspired many directors over the course of cinematic history, from the likes of Carl Dreyer in 1932 with Vampyr, Vicente Aranda with Seventies cult classic The Blood Splattered Bride, and even British director Phil Claydon with the complete piece of trash, Lesbian Vampire Killers in 2009. In 2020 Harris takes a discerning stab at the book, with a sensual tale of first love and sexual awakenings packed full of beguiling and provocative imagery. Harris relocates the story to 1780s…

Release Out now Director José Ramón Larraz Cast Clark Tufts, Greg Rhodes, Claudia Franjul Distributor Arrow Video Certificate 18 Format Caught short a long way from their destination and with a storm approaching, six teens and their hitchhiker decide to drive off the beaten track and hold up in a spooky, seemingly derelict, mansion for the night. Yep, we would have found a hotel as well. This is just the first in a bunch of bizarre decisions the characters of Deadly Manor make during the film (‘let’s go down into the basement of the creepy barn!’, ‘I’m going off on my own in the scary woods!’). Once in the mansion, the teens find all sorts of weird things such as walls plastered with the pictures of the same woman, scalps…

Release 23 March Director Richard Attenborough Cast Anthony Hopkins, Ann-Margret, Burgess Meredith Distributor Second Sight Certificate 15 Format When struggling magician Corky (Anthony Hopkins) finds fame with his new ventriloquist act, his self-doubts come to the fore and he runs away to his childhood town with his dummy Fats to figure things out. There, he hooks up with old flame Peggy (Ann-Margret) but Corky soon finds himself talking to Fats more and more, even when they’re alone, and Fats doesn’t like sharing Corky with anyone… Written by William Goldman (who also wrote the novel the movie is based on) and directed by Richard Attenborough, Magic has legends of cinema behind it. The cast, too, take solid turns – Hopkins doesn’t quite go into the realm of over-crazy (he gets pretty…

Your debut The Watchmaker of Filigree Street received critical acclaim, how did it feel to hear such great things about your novel? Terrifying! But also great. I now have an ego the size of Mount Everest. What is it like coming back to the characters and world for its sequel The Lost Future Of Pepperharrow? Quite difficult at first. I started writing Watchmaker when I was 21, and the characters reflected my age. When I came back to them years later, it felt like trying to go back in time, which was uncomfortable, because I don’t actually like past-me very much. It took a long time (and several drafts) to make those characters mine again. Had you already planned where the story would go next? Inefficiently, no. I know some…

Light Of Impossible Stars “I’m just finishing Light Of Impossible Stars by Gareth L. Powell. Stunning conclusion to an incredible series.” @STBwrites Quest Of The Shadow-Forge “The book Quest Of The Shadow-Forge is a delightful fantasy. #questoftheshadowforge” @StephenJBauer1 Children Of Time “Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children Of Time. Clever story-telling with space spiders… yup, you read that right space spiders!!! #BookClub” @andyangel44 Bobiverse “The Bobiverse books by Dennis E Taylor. Just super fun reads!” @Craigsg1…

What have you been reading this month? “I’m reading The Undead. The First 7 Days by R R Haywood. Great book!” @FuckOffBlondie “Children Of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky – just as good as I’d expected it to be #BookClub” @andyangel44 “Just finished A Little Hatred. It’s great, but I do wish Joe Abercrombie would describe how the characters look at the BEGINNING of the book.” @HamSpanner “@unamccormack‘s Picard prequel novel. She absolutely nails Picard as a character. Enjoying it immensely.” @Rozza1210 “Currently re-reading The Dresden Files in anticipation of Peace Talks being released in July!” @DiscoDuck_78 “Almost finished The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by@neilhimself. It’s excellent.” @Oscarfinnmedia “Reading Cage Of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Taking a few chapters to get into. Love the way the world is…

Release 26 March Writer N.K. Jemisin Publisher Little, Brown Book Group Price £16.99 Every once in a while, a genre novel comes along that is determined to floor you with its brilliance and imagination. N K Jemisin’s The City We Became is one such novel; a bold, inventive urban fantasy that deserves all its praise. It began life as a short story (which can be read in Jemisin’s fantastic collection How Long ’Til Black Future Month), which forms the introduction here. New York City is about to be birthed; achieved when a city reaches a certain level of maturation. But there are powers at work that would see the birth fail, a disastrous thing for the city. To protect the city and its inhabitants, human representatives of the five boroughs…

Most film adaptations of Frankenstein have jettisoned the novel’s epistolary format and narrator, along with most of the work’s emotional depth. Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 version, which he both directed and starred in as the doomed scientist, took a very different approach, as Sorcha Ní Fhlainn points out. “All the Hammers completely run away with it and go in very different directions! There are some great ones, especially 1957’s The Curse Of Frankenstein. What I like about the Branagh one – and I don’t think it’s a particularly great film – is that it’s very fleshy, it’s very sticky, and it’s very homoerotically charged. Lots of adaptations have tried to avoid that, but there’s that great sequence where the creature’s been tipped out of what is essentially a birthing vessel full…

RAID A VENDING MACHINE Look, no-one’s going to care if you take some goodies from a vending machine. Everybody else is a zombie. Don’t go too heavy on those sweets though, watch out for that sugar high! FIND REFUGE IN A PUB AND WAIT FOR IT ALL TO BLOW OVER Think about it: you have a source of liquid sustenance and bar snacks for days. Besides, that old gun behind the bar definitely works. GET A BADASS CAR Even though the world is running out of oil and your Nissan Leaf may be the responsible choice, surviving an apocalypse is far more fun with a V8. FIND YOURSELF A BAND OF MISFITS You may not have been friends with them before, but this is an apocalypse man and you have…

Can you tell us more about your new show Evil? It’s a story about a clash between belief and scepticism. There’s a team of three people who work for the catholic church who investigate what appear to be supernatural events, including demonic possession, exorcism and clairvoyance. The leader of the team is a priest in training, but he works with a forensic psychologist and a technician who’s an expert at debunking false events. So they get involved in these cases but the answers are never as easy or as cut-and-dry as they expect them to be. A lot of questions get raised but they don’t necessarily get answers. I would say there’s a horror dimension to it which you would have unlikely previously seen on the CBS network, so it’s…

Release 7 February Director Leigh Whannell Cast Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge Distributor Universal Certificate 15 Universal’s classic monster movie The Invisible Man, directed by James Whale in 1933 and based on the H G Wells novel, was a hugely influential horror thanks to John P Fulton’s impressive special effects. In 2020, this Blumhouse-produced reimagining, written and directed by Leigh Whannell, proves to be a success thanks to a smart script that takes its subject matter of domestic abuse seriously and turns it into a terrifying nightmare. Elisabeth Moss stars as the film’s heroine, Cecilia, who we first meet running away from her tech entrepreneur partner Adrian, intimidatingly played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen. After her escape, the long-term effects of violence persistently haunt her every move, even in the safety…

Release 27 March Director Johannes Nyholm Cast Leif Edlund, Ylva Gallon, Peter Belli, Katarina Jakobson, Morad Baloo Khatchadorian, Brandy Litmanen Distributor Picturehouse Entertainment Certificate 18 On a day out in Denmark just before her eighth birthday, young Maja (Katarina Jakobson) tells her parents, Elin (Ylva Gallon) and Tobias (Leif Edlund), that she wishes the day could last forever. The day will end up playing in her parents’ minds in perpetuity, though not for the reasons that the happy child intends. And in Swedish writer-director Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-di Koko-da, a literal never-ending quality will take effect for another dreadful day in the aftermath. Tragedy follows, and three years later the couple are back on the road once more. Taking a trip to find their way back to each other from a…

Release Out now Director Sam Liu Cast Jason Isaacs, Amy Acker, Diedrich Bader Distributor Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Certificate 15 Format What if all-American hero Superman wasn’t actually American but born in Soviet Russia instead? That’s the question being muted in Superman: Red Son. The theme of nature versus nurture is an underlying thread throughout the movie because, as a character who’s always been a symbol of truth and justice, just how will his morals fare after being raised under the ideals of the Communist Party? Well… let’s just say they’re pretty murky. Once Superman finds out his country’s dark secrets he goes on a journey that will test those virtues and put a whole new and interesting spin on the character. The film also brings in fellow DC heroes…

Release Out now Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gilletts Cast Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Andie MacDowell Distributor 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Certificate 18 Format So, it’s your wedding night and you’ve discovered that your new husband’s family has a tradition of playing hide and seek with the new spouse. But in this version of the game, if you’re found, you’re dead. Sounds like the plot of a terrible movie, right? Well yes… but Ready Or Not is anything but. When Grace (Samara Weaving) marries into a wealthy gaming dynasty, she finds herself at the mercy of this tradition – pick a card and play a game, just don’t pick the ‘hide and seek’ card because that means if the new spouse isn’t killed by midnight, the family will die. Of…

Release Out now Writers Lana & Lilly Wachowski Publisher Titan Comics Price £31.99 The new complete collection of Doc Frankenstein opens with a heartfelt introduction from Lana Wachowski. It’s made clear from the outset how personal the following story is to its writer. It’s a story many years in the making, and, having been left unfinished for the best part of a decade, we are at last able to read the complete story in a single, uninterrupted volume. This is the interesting tale of what happens to Frankenstein’s monster once Mary Shelley’s book finishes… now calling himself ‘Doc Frankenstein’, he becomes an immortal genius scientist/cowboy/ vigilante, who is just trying to find his place in the world. Doc is a monster hunter and this time the monsters are an especially…

Release 5 March Writer Natasha Pulley Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing Price £12.99 If you’ve read Natasha Pulley’s first novel The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street, about clairvoyant samurai Keita Mori, you’ll be prepared for just how strange its sequel is. There’s a lot to take in. Juxtaposing Victorian England with Meiji era Japan, The Lost Future Of Pepperharrow follows Thaniel Steepleton, a civil servant and part-time musician, as he travels to Tokyo to investigate a spate of hauntings at the British embassy. With his adopted daughter and clockwork octopus in tow, he finds himself navigating a complex political maze: Russian warships are inching closer, and the Japanese prime minister is spoiling for a fight. Mount Fuji is on the verge of eruption, and somewhere past the Aokigahara forest, a scientific outpost is…

Release 3 March Writer Sara Holland Publisher Bloomsbury Price £7.99 Wanting to take over the family business as a teenager is ambitious. But when the family business is running an inn at the end of the world where annual peace summits are held between the ruling classes of other dimensions? That’s a whole other level of ambition. Maddie Morrow isn’t a normal teen, though. Her mum’s on death row for the murder of her brother, though Maddie knows she’s innocent; her uncle is the innkeeper, responsible for ensuring the accords between the worlds hold; and her crush is a soldier from another world. When the long-sealed portal to a realm of monsters cracks open and Maddie’s uncle falls ill, it’s left to her to stop everything falling into chaos. The…

Novelist Victor LaValle took his very first steps into comic books with his brilliant Destroyer back in 2017. This story features Dr Josephine Baker, a black American doctor grieving her dead son, who was murdered by the police. She’s also Victor Frankenstein’s last surviving descendant. The stage is set for a tragic and emotional narrative that Shelley would doubtless have loved. LaValle tells SciFiNow about the comic book’s inception and its development. HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME ABOUT, AND WHAT DID A COMIC BOOK ALLOW YOU TO EXPLORE THAT A NOVEL WOULDN’T? Being a comic book reader since childhood, I’d been trying to kick my way into the medium for years. But previous attempts failed. I just didn’t know how to tell a story visually when I was younger. I…

THE FLY THE FLY The Brundle Fly is a formidable foe with increased strength and stamina. Bad fingernails though… EDGAR THE BUG MEN IN BLACK A giant cockroach disguised as a farmer – don’t kill bugs around him. VENEZUALAN SPIDERS ARACHNOPHOBIA A nasty new species of drone spider – don’t mention the lack of sex organs. CETI EEL WRATH OF KHAN Warning: do not let their larvae in your ear. It WILL wrap around your cerebral cortex. THE JUDAS BREED MIMIC Trying to eradicate a disease caused by cockroaches? Don’t play with genetics.…