HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CLINT EASTWOOD!

The cinematic powerhouse that is Clint Eastwood turns 95 today, and in tribute Marc Reynard of the Just Westerns Youtube channel has put together this dirty dozen of Clint's coolest Western scenes.

New Fantastic Four Artwork Spectacular

I may have bitched and moaned about Marvel "restarting" the numbering of the Fantastic Four in the middle of the current Ryan North run, but that doesn't mean I won't be picking it up like the loyal little Marvel zombie I am.

Check out some sample pages of Humberto Ramos's artwork from the issue here:

And, of course, there's a dozen variant covers (because aren't there always these days?), which you can see below:

foil variant by Mahmud Asrar

remastered variant by John Buscema

wraparound variant by Claudio Castellini

Cliff Chang

Alan Davis

Jeehyung Lee

Jerome Opeña

Disney What If? Fantastic Four Homage variant by Lorenzo Pastrovicchio

Retrovision Variant by Leo Romero

Alex Ross

connecting cover variant by Skottie Young

Marvel Rivals connecting cover variant by Netease Games

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Ben

Back in 2016, Rachel was trying to sort out my disorganised paperwork and came upon some lovely photographs that had belonged to my parents.

Amongst one collection were a pair of tiny prints (9cm by 6cm), enlarged above by the power of modern science, that depict our old labrador Ben and our garden in Western Road, Tunbridge Wells.

I'm guessing these date from the mid-60s, either before I was born or just after, as we moved to Pembury when I was about three, and I have no memory - just stories from mum and dad - of Ben, who supposedly was my great protector, growling at anyone who approached my pram, or our house in Western Road.

This was the first time I had, consciously, seen pictures of either Ben or our old garden.

Cynthia Rothrock? That's A Name I Haven't Heard In A While

Black Creek is a dark, gritty, dystopian, western action martial arts drama featuring a strong 'no-holds-barred' female protagonist portrayed by action film star Cynthia Rothrock. The plot centres around a sheriff’s sister who seeks revenge against the terrifying leader of a group of outlaws after discovering he brutally murdered her brother, his wife, and other family members in a gritty southwestern town.

TALES FROM THE VAULT: Action Comics #499 (1979)

It's the end of the world (again) in Action Comics #499 and I feel fine... because Superman is on the case.

"As The World Turns... For The Last Time!" (written by Cary Bates with pencils by Curt Swan, inks from Vince Colleta, colours by Gene D'Angelo, and letters by Todd Klein) starts out as a typical day in Metropolis but things are soon heading to Hell in a handbasket after a flying figure is spotted in the sky.

It's not actually the Man of Steel, but his newest chum, the bare-chested, moustachioed Vartox, former protector of planet Valeron and latest "getting-over-Superman" love interest for Lana Lang.

Kids these days, don't know the hardships of the 1970s!

The crowd's apathy to another Superman sighting won't last long though.

Vartox, having failed to save his planet from destruction, now believes that the Earth is going to suffer the same fate because of the dread "x-element" (that he brought with him) which will, very soon, cause the oxygen in the atmosphere to explode.

However, Vartox's unfortunate part in our imminent destruction is even larger. His "hyper-abilities"(which generally mirror Superman's superpowers) are psychically-powered, and he is radiating apocalyptic fear around the globe!

It starts with a "mental plague" in Corleyville, a small town in northern Wisconsin, where the townsfolk plead with Superman to take them away (that's the cover picture for the issue), then rapidly spreads until it seems most of the world's population believe they are facing impending doom.

The Last Son of Krypton, however, isn't convinced and his experiments at the Fortress of Solitude back up this belief. However, Vartox is sticking to his guns and stages a bizarre "intervention" after knocking out Superman with a "hyper-brain blast".

When Supes awakens, Vartox is dressed as Jor-El and has constructed a jury of mannikins dressed as Kryptonian Science Council - re-enacting Jor-El's vain attempts to convince the council that Krypton was about to explode!

This misguided attempt at psychological torture backfires as Supes goes a bit crazy and smashes through the wall of the Fortress.

However, once outside, in the fresh Artic air, he senses that the "x-element" is actually starting to take effect, and deduces that there must have been something in the Fortress preventing this chemical reaction.

Of course, it turns out to be the radioactive fragments of the planet Valeron!

So, Superman and Vartox speed off through space to gather more fragments, grind them up and seed Earth's atmosphere... thus saving the day.

Around all this bonkers Bronze Age chaos there's an awkward romantic sub-plot for Lana, who really has the hots for Vartox (since she first met him in the previous issue), even once he reveals his secret identity (she initially believed him to be Vern, a security guard at the Galaxy Building, where Clark Kent is working at this time).

In the end, she has to let him go, though, as he declares that Earth has enough superheroes and he has an obligation to find a planet to protect with his "hyper-powers". Or it's just an excuse to get away from the very clingy Lana.

"It's not you, it's me!" (But it really is you)

If you've ever wondered what Superman would look like if he had been created in the 1970s - or joined The Village People - you have to check out Vartox's Who's Who entry from March, 1987 below.

Created by Cary Bates and Curt Swan in Superman #281, Vartox was actually inspired by Sean Connery's memorable appearance in 1974's Zardoz, in case you hadn't realised.

This "older and more experienced" iteration of the Superman archetype has reappeared post-Crisis (thanks to the multiversal shenanigans of recent DC event storylines) and even cameoed in the pilot episode of the The CW's Supergirl show (played by by Owain Yeoman) as a short-lived villainous escapee from Fort Rozz.

MONSTER MAYHEM: Tarot (2024)

A clichéd group of generic college students have AirBnB-ed a spooky mansion in the Catskills for a drunken (yet, admittedly, rather tame) birthday party for one of their number: Elise (Larsen Thompson).

Low on drink, the group search the house and discover - behind a "keep out" sign - a basement reminiscent of the Warren's 'storeroom of evil' from The Conjuring franchise.

Of course, the kids poke around. Of course, they find a deck of creepy, hand-drawn tarot cards in a wooden box. Of course, one of the students - Haley (Harriet Slater, aka Fran from Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny) - knows how to do readings.

Breaking the 'golden rule' of tarot (that you don't use someone else's deck), Haley does tarot readings - tied to the subject's horoscope - for all her friends and herself.

They all have a good chuckle, except Haley's ex-boyfriend Grant (Wrong Turn's Adain Bradley), and then settle down for the night.

After a long drive back to the university, the gang all go their separate ways... and that's when the killing starts.

Elise is the first to die, then Lucas (Wolfgang Novogratz).

Only then do the survivors realise that their friends are being bumped off in ways that are literal interpretations of Haley's vague, metaphorical tarot card readings.

Searching for answers online, the first name their Google search throws up is a discredited - and kooky - expert called Alma Astrom (Olwen Fouéré, the most recent Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Sally Hardesty).

Alma, of course, knows all about this cursed deck of tarot cards and their origin, and even has a personal connection to the cards - as a survivor of a similar murder spree to the one our protagonists are caught up in.

In a nutshell, the cards were cursed by a Hungarian peasant - known only as The Astrologer - who transferred her essence into the cards so she could kill any who receive a reading from them.

Now, our heroes have to find a way to remove the curse before too many of them are brutally slaughtered by The Astrologer's manifestations of the demonic forms she drew on the Major Arcana.

Written and directed by Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg - based on the 1992 novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams - Tarot feels like an '80s throwback, direct-to-VHS, monster flick.

However, as the film is really on-the-nose with its unsubtle, supposedly spinetingling, goings-on it also comes across as a parody of the genre for the most part.

The characters are so two-dimensional that we can't really get invested in their fates beyond a surface level, yet - for some reason - all the kills (essentially the 'selling point' for this kind of teen flick) are either off-camera or overly shy about showing anything resembling gore.

The script oscillates between wanting to be the foundation of a serious horror franchise, stylistically suggesting Final Destination and Nightmare on Elm Street during its 92-minute runtime, and being a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the same.

As the plot gets increasingly silly, characters are forced to exposit about how these unconvincing twists could actually have happened, which compounds the suggestion that this really could be a parody.

To be fair, Tarot isn't awful (we've all seen a lot worse), but the most terrifying thing about this would-be horror movie is its mediocrity.

Thought Bubbles, Silver Age Easter Eggs, and A Super-Bunny - This Fun New Supergirl Comic Has It All!

I had every intention of reviewing the latest Supergirl #1 - part of DC's Summer of Superman initiative - but Sasha of Casually Comics got there first and has done a far better job than I ever could have.

In the absence of "editor's notes", I'm always impressed by Sasha's ability to spot Easter Eggs, especially those that are deep dives into the Silver and Bronze Age.

And Supergirl #1 appears to be full of these.

Turns Out You Will Need Your Eyes After All... To Read The New Event Horizon Comic Book Prequel

Issue one cover art by Jeffrey Love

Underrated cult sci-fi horror flick Event Horizon is finally getting some well-deserved comic book love this August - 28 years after it began terrifying audiences.

IDW will be publishing a five-issue prequel miniseries, Event Horizon: Dark Descent, revealing the horrors that unfolded in the lead-up to the start of the movie.

The comic is written by Batman: City of Madness's Christian Ward with Alien: Defiance's Tristan Jones on art duties.

According to IDW:

Embracing the hard-R rating of the shocking movie, Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1 (of 5 issues) will lightspeed jump into comic shops this August.

Taking place before the events of the film and completely accessible to new readers, this is the unbelievable story of the final fate of the original Event Horizon crew.

What really happened to Captain Kilpack and the first crew as their ship journeyed across a nightmarish realm of torments beyond imagining?

Abandon all hope as demonic forces - led by Paimon, the eyeless King of Hell - unleash agony and pure evil upon the crew in a gripping story.

I'm low-key obsessed with Event Horizon, so much so that several years ago - when contemplating an ALIEN RPG campaign - I wove it into my headcanon for the near-future Alien Universe.

Once again, it's also one of those Lovecraft-inspired horrors that isn't based upon any particular part of his mythos but feels like it is.

Christian Ward's variant cover artwork for issue one

Who's A Very Good Boy? Krypto The Superdog!

Due to land in stores on June 18, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton is a reimagining of the origin story of Superman's beloved canine companion by the Fantastic Four's Ryan North with art by the wonderful Mike Norton of Battlepug fame.

DC’s Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton comic book series begins Krypto’s journey on the planet Krypton.

Jor-El and Lara are working on a ship capable of keeping someone alive in interstellar space, but when their first test - with Krypto inside - goes catastrophically wrong, the dog is thought lost.

Unbeknownst to them, Krypto and his spacecraft merely entered an unexpected space-time gateway, and days later from his point of view - even though it’s been decades in real time- Krypto lands on Earth.

Through the five issues of Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton, Krypto explores Earth in search of his family.

Finding himself lost and alone on our alien world - and with strange new superpowers quickly coming in - Krypto begins traveling the strange planet he finds himself in the middle of, always on the trail of his lost friend: Kal-El, a being now better known as Superman.

DC has released a short tease of the first issue, which you can see below:

IT'S OUR EIGHTEENTH WEDDING ANNIVERSAY!!!

The ritual exchange of gifts and cards

Eighteen years ago today Rachel and I got married.

Yesterday, we marked the occasion with a lovely meal at The North Pole in Waterinbury, with Rachel's parents (who very kindly paid) and later presented us with a magnificent array of lights for our garden.

Lunch at The North Pole

This morning Rachel and I exchanged our own gifts (none - thankfully - matching the official "porcelain" theme of an 18th wedding anniversary, it must be noted): I got her a dinosaur dress and another cheery book about the horrors of Auschwitz, while she gave me a box set of Stephen King's Dark Tower saga and a large bar of chocolate.

The plan had been to visit Raystede animal sanctuary later, but we both fell asleep and when we woke there wasn't enough time to get to the rescue centre.

Instead, we opted to take Alice on a walk around our nearby lake, where we met a lot of other dog walkers, so that was lovely.

Haysden Country Park

There's always time for ice cream on a healthy country walk

Of course, not only is May 25 our wedding anniversary, but also (the original) Star Wars Day Towel Day (in recognition of Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy).

Rachel and I were married in a Star Wars-themed wedding... on the anniversary of the day the original film made its debut in 1977.

The hubbub around May The 4th as Star Wars Day grows every year, especially since the arrival of Disney+, and I'm not adverse to any excuse to celebrate all things Star Wars, but, ultimately, I'm an old school, orthodox, Jedi who will always mark May 25 as his Star Wars Day.

Rachel and I tied the knot at Salomons in Southborough (between Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge),where I made sure all the guests' tables were named after planets from the Star Wars Universe.

Rachel's arrival music was the Imperial March (still her personalised ringtone on my phone... which always makes me giggle when she calls), and Darth Vader was our ring-bearer.

It was such an amazing day.

And the adventure continues... thanks to the love of my incredibly tolerant and understanding wife.

The Force is strong in Rachel, she supports most of my geeky whims and copes incredibly with the dramatic swings of my unpredictably variable physical and mental health.

One of our great wedding pictures: The only sensible way to settle domestic discussions

Ten Westerns Based On True Events

Studios twisted history into legend, then buried the stories that told the truth. A Confederate deserter who fought against the South. An Indigenous man hunted for loving the wrong woman. A real outlaw who wore a dress and armour. These aren't Hollywood myths — they actually happened. This is the list they wish you'd ignore: 10 Westerns based on true stories they tried to silence.

A really interesting selection of movies, highlighted by the Old School Cinema YouTube channel, that has helped add a few new titles to my ever-expanding wish list of Westerns I need to see.

Another Fantastic Four Relaunch? In The Middle of An Already Popular Run? I Guess Marvel Knows What It's Doing

Scattered through time by Doctor Doom, Marvel's First Family have one chance to reunite in new Fantastic Four #1 comic

It's no secret that I love the Fantastic Four - it's one of the two books (the other being the Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans) - that made me a comic book collector for life.

However, I'm increasingly frustrated by Marvel's current trend for frequent relaunches of their titles... usually just to mark a change of creative team.

In July (just ahead of the the eagerly-awaited Fantastic Four: First Steps movie), the current run of Ryan North-penned Fantastic Four is getting a new number one... seemingly just because the book is changing artist (to Humberto Ramos).

Why, oh why, must they keep doing this?

For one thing, it makes it increasingly difficult to track down back issues when a title has half-a-dozen (or more) issue ones, issue twos, issue threes etc

I know the old argument is that "first issues sell really well", but isn't this just a slippery slope to the apocalyptic scenario where comics no longer have issue numbers or, perversely, are all "first issues"?

Not only does this "relaunch" come in the middle - after issue 33 - of Ryan North's popular run on this book, but also in the middle of the universe-wide One World Under Doom "event" storyline.

Isn't the point of a "new number one" meant to be it's a good jumping on point for those new to the adventures of the book's protagonists? Yet this issue drops any new readers it attracts right in the middle of North's ongoing story as well as the supplementary shenanigans of Doctor Doom in his own event.

Surely it would have been easier just to continue as it was?

The plot of initial story arc in the "new" Fantastic Four is a time travel tale involving Doctor Doom, dinosaurs, and a quest for something called The Forever Stone.

Why this couldn't have been issue 34 instead, god only knows. To be honest, I'd love to see all Marvel's long-running, prestige titles simply reverting to their "legacy numbering" (as DC has done with its premier Batman and Superman books).

THROWBACK THURSDAY: First Published

Although I had had some fiction and club write-ups published in school magazines (at both my prep and grammar schools), the informative paragraph above was my first piece of "serious journalism" to see the light of day in the Kent & Sussex Courier.

Sadly, I didn't make a note of the publication date, or even the year, but it would have been 1984 or 1985, I guess.

In the sixth form at Skinners' we were encouraged to find a "work experience" placement in a local firm.

I knew then that I wanted to be a journalist and so badgered our local paper, the Kent & Sussex Courier, for a week of work experience.

Once there, at the Tunbridge Wells office, I was tasked with shadowing a wonderful, experienced, reporter called Sheila Gow, and while I wrote a number of dummy stories - to learn style etc - I was only allowed to write this one NIB ("news in brief") piece that would be published.

I was so proud when it made the paper that Friday - my mother was even prouder, of course - and so I cut it out and pinned it to my noticeboard (hence the hole in the top of the article!) where it sat, becoming increasingly buried under other scraps of paper, notes, and photographs.

It's not the most riveting of news stories - but it was mine!

This was the first, real, concrete step on the path to where I am today...

Django & Django (2021)

Django & Django is an 80-minute documentary looking at the history of Italian/Spaghetti Westerns and their influence on Quentin Tarantino's 2012 Django Unchained (available in the UK on Sky Documentaries as well as being a bonus feature on the recent blu-ray release of Django).

The primary focus of the piece, presented largely as a casual conversation with Quentin Tarantino (occasionally intercut with a few other talking heads), is his admiration for the work of the late Sergio Corbucci (aka The Other Sergio or The Second Best Spaghetti Western Director).

Tarantino is seemingly given free rein to enthuse over a genre he clearly loves in his trademark style of blending his encyclopaedic film knowledge with limitless child-like enthusiasm:

"Of all the great Western directors, Corbucci created the most pitiless West that there was. The most pitiless, the most pessimistic, the most surrealistically grotesque, the most violent."

While Tarantino does detail how Corbucci's body of work helped shape Django Unchained, he graciously devotes the main thrust of the presentation to discussing Corbucci's ultra-violent Western oeuvre of the 1960s and early '70s: Django, The Great Silence, The Specialists, Navajo Joe, The Mercenary, Sonny and Jed etc

Although Corbucci only (obviously) appears in archival footage, this Italian production manages to interview the charismatic Franco Nero (who played Django in the original 1966 movie) and, a year before he died, Ruggero Deodato, who was assistant director on Django before helming the infamous Cannibal Holocaust in 1980.

A fascinating watch for fans of the genre, 80-minutes feels too short a time to listen to Tarantino and dissect the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Corbucci... and yet some of the documentary seems a bit self-indulgent.

There's a couple of overly long 'behind-the-scenes' sequences without dialogue and commentary, which are superficially interesting but lack real context and meaning.

However, for me, the worst offence was the documentary's "prologue" (the film is broken up into chapters, naturally), which is a make-believe "deleted scene" from Tarantino's Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood that hijacks and reimagines a real story about a young Burt Reynolds interacting with Corbucci, but attributes it to Tarantino's character, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Maybe it's because I'm no fan of Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood  (for me it's Tarantino's weakest movie, but what do I know?), but this felt like an unnecessary introduction to the subject of the documentary.

Conversely, the film wraps up with a wonderful experiment in the creation of headcanon as Tarantino kicks around an idea for who Django (a Northern soldier in the Civil War) had come South to find, and ultimately seek brutal revenge on behalf of.

As far as I am concerned, Tarantino's headcanon is now my headcanon for Django's backstory.

The Town With No Name Welcomes The Saloon With No Name

The first complete building for my Dead Man's Hand game (the marquee venture of PROJECT 60) now sits in pride of place in my rather crowded games room.

However, I didn't build the "multi-part, two-storey building" from Great Escape Games (purveyors of all things Dead Man's Hand and much more), instead I came across an already built kit on eBay for the same price as the kit.

All it needs now is a lick of paint. 

Of course, I have the other buildings - still unassembled - that I've acquired in recent months, but I reckon this saloon will be a great icebreaker.

Come to think of it, I haven't even conjured up a name for my nascent Frontier town, let alone considered what the saloon will be called. The Gem (as in Deadwood) is too obvious, so I'll have to give the old noggin a good shake and see what comes out.

In the meantime, the two-story building is sitting on my gaming table in the games room, surrounded by clutter that I'm sure I tidied up a few weeks ago, and a family of Border Reivers that I've been too slow about packing up (as my first wave of cowboy figures are off being professionally painted)!

The saloon was incredibly well-packaged by trader The Last Nazgul

The detail and features on this kit are amazing

Can't help but love that the all the levels are detachable, so figures can move in and out

Current visitors to the saloon appear to be Border Reivers!