Now THIS Is How You Do A Title Sequence

Check out the super-charged opening credits for the My Hero Academia spin-off My Hero Academia: Vigilantes.

The show's theme song, Kekka Orai, is performed by Kocchi no Kento.

Below you will find the show's closing theme, Speed, performed by yutori.

Building Up The Old Western Library!

Today saw the arrival - all the way from the Good Ol' U.S. of A - of Deadwood's Al Swearingen: Manifest Evil In The Gem Saloon, penned by historians Jerry L Bryant and Barbara Fifer.

According to the Wild West Extravaganza podcast episode on Swearingen, this book is the closest we'll get to knowing the actual person - rather than the charmingly vile anti-hero version portrayed superbly by Ian McShane in the great Deadwood TV show.

This 140-page tome has immediately jumped to the top of my reading pile, as I just finished my first Louis L'Amour novel yesterday (The Tall Stranger)!

TOP OF THE PILE: Solomon Kane - The Serpent Ring #1

I cannot recommend the first issue of Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring highly enough.

Patrick Zircher has done a phenomenal job as writer, artist and colourist, bringing Robert E Howard's Puritan monster-hunter to life in this breathtakingly-paced cinematic adventure.

While serving as a privateer in the service of Queen Elizabeth, Kane accidentally kills an innocent man, but with the man's dying breath he tasks the Puritan with returning a precious snake-head statuette to a friend in Venice.

However, forces are afoot that seek to thwart Kane in his endeavours. 

Solomon Kane may be the protagonist of The Serpent Ring, but Pat Zircher's story is full of well-developed characters, all with their own motivations, often at odds with each other.

The first issue of Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring is the best comic I've read so far this year, truly feeling like a Robert E Howard tale of pulp adventure complete with a palpable frisson of excitement and a hunger to find out what happens next.

The book left me very excited to see where this continent-spanning story takes us in subsequent issues (as well as finding out how it all ties into the wider Howardverse that Titan Comics is showcasing).

I realise this mini-series is setting up the next big "event" story, Scourge of The Serpent, which is great, but I'd love for Solomon Kane to be an ongoing title... on the proviso that Patrick Zircher is left alone to write and draw this comic for as long as he wants.

It's A Five-Minute Sneak Peek - Not A Trailer!

Superman, DC Studios’ first feature film to hit the big screen, is set to soar into theaters worldwide this summer from Warner Bros. Pictures. In his signature style, James Gunn takes on the original superhero in the newly imagined DC universe with a singular blend of epic action, humour and heart, delivering a Superman who’s driven by compassion and an inherent belief in the goodness of humankind.

BOOK REVIEW: Blue Flame, Tiny Stars

An earnest love letter to the Holmes Edition of Dungeons & Dragons of the late 1970s, Stephen Wendell's self-published 30-page monograph Blue Flame, Tiny Stars details his own introduction to the wonderful world of roleplaying games.

It's a life-changing story, in many ways familiar to a lot of us, about discovering a hobby unlike any other, but told from Stephen's unique perspective as a 13-year-old in 1982.

An author of fact and fiction books, Stephen also runs the Donjon Lands blog, dedicated to old school fantasy adventures and campaigns. 

The story at the heart of Blue Flame, Tiny Stars (the title representing the lasting impact of the David Sutherland's iconic cover) probably echoes those of many of us who consider ourselves "second-generation" gamers.

It delves deeply into the importance of having learned the intricacies and lore of the world of Dungeons & Dragons second-hand, almost by osmosis; how we were taught the game by others inspired to spread the brilliance of this new, imagination-driven hobby.

Although we would pick up the books eventually, we learned first from our chosen mentors. 

Another aspect Stephen addresses in the pages of Blue Flame, Tiny Stars is that once you have embraced the simple genius at the heart of roleplaying, you will never see the world in the same light again. 

You can use ideas you've picked up in the real world to give you an advantage in the world of the game, while, simultaneously, the game can teach you about medieval history, ancient arms and armour, outdoor survival etc

Dungeons & Dragons also fostered a great deal of creativity in teenage brains. I mean, after your first session or two of D&D, who didn't go off, grab some graph paper and pens, and sketch out sprawling castles and megadungeons for our friends to explore and ransack?

A well-written booklet, oozing with nostalgia and a sense of fun, many of its short chapters are - essentially - "actual play" accounts of eerily familiar early games.

These would then provide the essential building blocks upon which all of us who have stuck with the hobby have learned to improve and expand our gaming.

Blue Flame, Tiny Stars is an account of finding that tiny acorn from which a mighty passion can grow over the decades.

At that age, we all dip our toes into a whole host of hobbies, but it takes something special for one to endure in the psyche for four decades (and counting).

Stephen has explained what it was about the blue-covered, Eric Holmes-edited, edition of Dungeons & Dragons from 1979 that compelled him to stick with the hobby, and it also reminds us what lit that fire in us as well.

I have to thank Tim Brannon of The Other Side for his comprehensive review of this little tome, which spurred me to pick it up. 

• Blue Flame, Tiny Stars is available from DriveThru in a variety of formats.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: "Don't Tell Him, Pike!"

Graduation Day (left to right): Paul, JJ, Pricey, Me and Rose

Our graduation ceremony took place in November 1998, in the vast arena of Bournemouth International Centre.

After receiving my degree certificate from Formula One commentator Murray Walker, I was milling around in the venue foyer when I was approached by a nice woman who explained that, due to the size of the venue, she and her husband had accidentally taken pictures of me going up on stage before realising I wasn't their son!

She said if the pictures turned out okay did I think my parents would like copies? Naturally, I said yes, although my parents were taking snaps, it never hurt to get extras I reasoned.

The lady and I were chatting while she took note of my parents' address to mail the pictures to (yes, folks, this was still the age of snail mail - especially for sending photographs) and she asked what course I had taken.

When I said Scriptwriting for Film and Television, she replied with words to the effect of: "Oh, my husband's an actor. You may have heard of him. Ian Lavender."

Mind. Blown.

I was talking to the wife of Private Frank Pike!

Naturally my dad, a lifelong Dad's Army fan, was suitably impressed when I told him later.

I remember the pictures turned up at my parents' house and are, no doubt, neatly stored away in the many, many photo albums Rachel and I inherited from them when they died.

A larger selection of the merry reprobates on my Scriptwriting For Film & TV course

BOOK REVIEW: Thunder City by Philip Reeve

I realise I'm a bit late in getting round to Thunder City, Philip Reeve's latest book set in the World of Mortal Engines, but the wait didn't dampen my appreciation of this amazing book.

For me - and I love all the books in this world - this was the best since the 2001 original, Mortal Engines.

Thunder City is a vivid - and surprisingly violent - ensemble action-adventure about a plucky group of rebels trying to retake an usurped traction city in the far-distant future of a reshaped Earth.

A postmodern Victorian scientific romance, peppered with sly jokes (the one about a certain tourist attraction in Paris made me laugh out loud) and cinematic references, as well as the usual rich assembly of engaging and interesting characters, Thunder City was a blast from start to finish.

The ending certainly leaves the door open for more stories about the protagonists and I just hope we don't have to wait quite so long for our next visit to the World of Mortal Engines.

The Substance (2024)

How does writer/director Coralie Fargeat make a half-hour Twilight Zone/Tales of The Unexpected plot last a painful two hours and 20 minutes? By having everything in The Substance unfold at a glacial pace.

Past-her-prime actress Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is given a second shot at celebrity by a mysterious medical procedure - involving The Substance - that births a new, younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley).

The rules are, though, that each versions can only exist for one week at a time.

However, the younger iteration, calling herself Sue, soon starts to abuse the privilege with a predictably gruesome results for all concerned.

What could have been a solid David Cronenberg/William Burroughs/HP Lovecraft sci-fi body horror instead slowly slouches its predictable way towards an unearned Grand Guignol climax that's more a Troma parody than the clever arthouse genre subversion it seems to think it is.

I know it's supposed to be a parable about the inability to fight fate, but that doesn't excuse the multiple plot holes and inconsistencies in the story.

A pretentious horror flick for people who don't watch horror films, The Substance is one of the worst movies I've seen in recent years, pretty much on a par with that other example of Emperor's New Clothes that was the hugely overrated and oversold Poor Things.

Both of these movies seem to think the best way to subvert the male gaze is to give it exactly what it wants and have its lead actresses parade around in the nude for lengthy periods of time.

Really socking it to The Man!

PULP PICTURE OF THE MONTH: Tarzan Triumphs (1943)

The Second World War has come to Tarzan's Africa... and he wants nothing to do with it.

Ever the isolationist, Tarzan just wants to keep Boy safe (Jane is 'away in England' - a plot device to cover Maureen O'Sullivan's absence from the film), even when a detachment of Nazi paratroopers take over the isolated, hidden and resource-rich city-state of Palandrya.

Having advance knowledge of the city's location, the Nazi's parachute in, with the idea of enslaving the locals to make a runway so they can bring aircraft in and use the city as a base for their conquest of Sub Saharan Africa.

Their plan goes slightly awry when their radio operator, Lt. Reinhardt Schmidt (Rex Williams), is separated from the main party, injured and rescued by Tarzan. The Nazi's plane turns to try and rescue him, but is brought down by an unfortunate flamingo-birdstrike!

Schmidt is, of course, totally duplicitous and ends up getting his just desserts, leaving the German's radio at Tarzan's camp.

The gorgeous Zandra (Frances Gifford, from the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jungle Girl, the Republic serial), a friend of Boy and Tarzan's, escapes from Palandrya to enlist the Jungle Man in her bid to reclaim her city from the Nazi invaders, but - despite her feminine wiles -Tarzan doesn't want anything to do with such foolishness.

Without their radio, the Nazis are trapped in the jungle, so they goose-step over to Tarzan's camp to reclaim it (however, sneaky Cheeta the chimp has swiped an important coil, so it doesn't work anyway) and kidnap Boy instead.

This is the final straw for the Ape Man, who declares: "Now Tarzan make war!"

Tarzan heads off to Palandrya, gets captured - along with Zandra - and has to be rescued (as usual) by Cheeta, before he can lead the repressed natives in a violent uprising to usurp the Nazis.

In a scene presaging Planet Of The Apes, bizarrely Cheeta gets in on the Nazi killing when he grabs a machine gun and mows down the captain.

Possibly the most violent of the old Tarzan films, Tarzan Triumphs even has Boy shooting a Nazi... all in a good cause, of course!

The film wraps up with a scene that makes no sense whatsoever: the radio finally connects to Nazi HQ, but instead of the expedition's leader, Col. Von Reichart (Stanley Ridges), the soldiers in Berlin hear Cheeta chattering away... and believe it is a message from Adolf Hitler!

Totally potty, but no doubt it got a great roar of approval from wartime audiences.

There is no moral ambiguity about Tarzan Triumphs. As explained on Wikipedia this was propaganda, pure and simple:

The U.S. State Department informed Sol Lesser [the producer] that a Tarzan film would be an ideal way to spread the message of democracy's battle against Fascism to the American public. Lesser's first RKO Tarzan film had made the Ape Man a symbol of American isolationism.

The majority of the Nazi forces are out-of-shape and I can't help but wonder if this was a deliberate propaganda jibe as well, or simply a reflection of the availability of extras at this time.

I've also read that by this stage Maureen O'Sullivan had grown tired of playing Jane, but probably the most accurate explanation for her absence was the swift of the Tarzan franchise from MGM to RKO - O'Sullivan was an MGM contract player.

Maybe the lovely Frances Gifford's Zandra was being eyed up as a replacement for Jane, if O'Sullivan wasn't interested, or able, to return to the franchise.

Me Tarzan, Who Jane?