"Come With Me If You Want To Laugh"

Variant cover art by Bill Galvan

He's faced The Punisher, The Predator, the Evil Dead's Army of Darkness, even a Sharknado, and now unstoppable Archie Andrews runs afoul of The Terminator... when the futuristic, killer cyborg ends up in Riverdale.

Launching in October, the five-issue miniseries, Archie vs. The Terminator, sees the trouble begin with John Connor enrolling at Riverdale High.

Tracked by the Terminator, John can rely on his mother, Sarah Connor, for assistance, but who is going to protect Betty, Veronica, Jughead, and the other residents of the Riverdale?

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the new series is written by The Terminator: Metal's Rory McConville, with interior art by the father and daughter team-up of Steven and Lily Butler.

Published by Dynamite, in collaboration with StudioCanal and Archie Comics, the first issue comes with a variety of covers on offer, which you can see here along with character designs for the Connors and their cyborg foe.

Main cover art by Francesco Francavilla

Variant cover by Björn Barends

Variant cover by Robert Hack

Bloodrayne (2005)

After I was pleasantly surprised by the general enjoyability of In The Name Of The King - A Dungeon Siege Tale, I thought I'd brave another of Uwe Boll's infamous video game adaptations to see if I could scrape up some more morsels for recycling into Dungeons & Dragons inspiration.

I went for BloodRayne as it featured vampires, swords and the mega-hotness of Kristanna 'Terminator 3' Loken in the lead role.

Some films are renowned for being 'so bad' they are 'good' - BloodRayne isn't one of them.

Loken is Rayne, a half-human/half-vampire sired by Ben Kingsley's Kagan, lord of all vampires.

Escaping from the circus that was somehow holding her as a performing freak, she is tracked down by a band of vampire hunters - Vladimir (Michael Madsen), Sebastian (Matt Davis) and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez).

Despite being members of a vampire hunting order called The Brimstone Society (in fact Vlaidmir might be the leader, it's never really made clear), they team up with Rayne and go looking for some payback against Kagan.

There are some powerful vampire relics thrown in as a scavenger hunt (although why the humans holding them didn't just destroy them is, again, never explained) and a slightly-confusing sub-plot with rebellious vampire Billy Zane, who also happens to be Katarin's father (I think).

Zane only appears in two scenes, but they are certainly the funniest - and not just because of the awful wig he is wearing.

Meanwhile Rayne is training with the Brimstone Society in their top secret island lair and has a random sex moment with Sebastian - who seems as shocked as the audience, as none of us had seen that coming.

All this nonsense is supposedly taking place in 18th Century Romania, but it could be Greyhawk, Ravenloft or countless other pseudo-medieval Dungeons & Dragons realms for all the verisimilitude or attention to detail.

The plot stumbles towards a final confrontation between father and daughter, in which we quickly realise that a lot of the brouhaha around the relics was just a red herring and finally Loken shows us some half-decent fight moves (having looked rather uncomfortable up until this point).

Lifeless fight sequences, uninspired performances and a confusing - possibly incomplete - storyline, can be blamed on the director.

However, Mr Boll can't be blamed for everything: Guinevere Turner's script has more info dumps of exposition than actual dialogue, for instance. When actual dialogue is allowed to sneak in - barring Billy Zane's couple of deadpan comedy zingers - it is of the lowest calibre, not helped by the top-flight stars delivering their lines in varying degrees of mumbling or monotone.

The only role-playing game moment that is possibly salvageable from all this is the near-Total Party Kill the script delivers quite spectacularly at its climax. 

However, BloodRayne doesn't so much end as just run out of script with a blank-faced Loken slumping down into her father's throne and staring forlornly into the camera.

The Sword of Xanten (2004)

Part Dungeons and Dragons romp, part Xena: Warrior Princess and a smidge of Lord of The Rings, Sword of Xanten is based on the Germanic myth Das Nibelungenlied and the Nordic Volsunga Saga, which also inspired the four-opera cycle by Richard Wagner and Tolkien's world famous ring-centric work.

The film is a loose retelling of the legend of Siegfried and Brunhild as swords-and-sorcery viewed through a soap lens.

Weaving a complicated plot, with inevitable unhappy ending, it's easy to see why Wagner would want to adapt this story.

The acting is fine for what it is and you can't help but be distracted by the gorgeous Kristanna Loken (T-X from Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines), perfectly cast as Icelandic warrior-queen Brunhild and the lovely Alica Witt as naïve Kriemhild.

Great scenery, slow-motion bundles (it's a bit of an exaggeration to call most of them 'fights'), arch acting and above-average CGI make for a great little pot boiler.

It's quite long (around three hours) but The Sword of Xanten (aka Ring of the Nibelungs) is non-stop fun and frolics all the way - with a bit of sauciness and a bit of blood - that can hold the attention of a willing viewer.

M3GAN (2022)

After the tragic death of her parents in a road traffic accident, eight-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw), goes to live with her workaholic aunt, Gemma (Allison Williams), a robotics engineer at a leading toy company.

Gemma is not at all prepared to suddenly become a 'substitute mother', but quickly realises that a pet project of hers might be the solution: a cutting edge, AI-controlled 'companion doll' called the Model 3 Generation Android or M3GAN (played impressively by Amie Donald, and voiced by Jenna Davis).

M3GAN has been designed to bond to a child and learn from its environment.

While Cady's tragic backstory brings out M3GAN's protective side, this soon escalates into "over-protective" and she starts making sure that anyone that seems to threaten Cady won't do so for much longer.

All this is happening against a backdrop of the toy company racing to unveil the M3GAN before any of its competitors get wind of the doll's capabilities (while exploiting Cady's tragedy in its marketing to demonstrate the utility of their android in such difficult situations).

Picture Chucky from the 2019 iteration of Child's Play getting a Terminator-scale upgrade, assisted by a dash of Tony Stark's inventiveness.

Although it starts slowly, M3GAN soon ramps up the action and tension, tempering it with some laugh out loud moments of dark humour.

Perhaps not enough is made of the 'uncanny valley' factor of M3GAN's near-human appearance, but when it is addressed it leads to some very funny - and believable - reactions (such as the scene where the school teacher mistakes the android for a new pupil).

While the technology employed both on-screen - and behind the camera - to bring M3GAN to life is ultra-modern, there's a definite 1980s tang to the plot.

For instance, the ending seems rather abrupt and doesn't explore the consequences of M3GAN's actions, but still manages to slide in a sly nod towards a sequel (M3GAN 2.0 has already been greenlit for a 2025 release).

Sidestepping the potential for a finale involving mass slaughter and carnage, writer Akela Cooper and director Gerard Johnstone instead choose to make the climactic showdown more personal, with a satisfying resolution that was foreshadowed earlier in the 102-minute movie.

The film certainly has something to say on the possible dangers of an overreliance on technology in our lives, especially in the field of parenting, but it largely skates over this as an excuse for more "killer robot" action.

And I was there for the wonderful "killer robot" action.

Although it doesn't bring anything particularly new to the party, M3GAN is a fun, thrilling, and entertaining serving of sci-fi/horror that hits all the right slasher beats in a classic "cuckoo in the nest" scenario. 

The film's memorable and iconic lead certainly has the potential to spawn a fantastic franchise and I await with interest the many variations of a theme that will be entertaining us in the future (at least until the fiction of androids in everyone's home becomes a reality).