July 2020

SFX

SFX is Earth’s greatest sci-fi and fantasy magazine

SFX1 min read
Captain’s Log
There’s often talk in the office – when we used to go into offices, that is – of unusually terrifying moments in film history. Not ones that deliberately set out to scare or disgust, but ones that had a far longer-lasting impact than perhaps initiall
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Sfx
Darren Scott (DS) darren.scott@futurenet.com Ian Berriman (IB) ian.berriman@futurenet.com Jonathan Coates jonathan.coates@futurenet.com Ed Ricketts ed.ricketts@futurenet.com Nick Setchfield (NS) Tara Bennett (TB) Kimberley Ballard, Saxon Bullock, Dom
SFX2 min read
First Contact
Gurpreet Bhatia, email With the recent announcement that Zack Snyder’s Justice League will finally get a director’s cut after a fan campaign and be shown on HBO Max in 2021, is now the time for other studios to take note? There’s David Ayer’s Suicide
SFX2 min read
Rants & Raves
A new Star Trek series! Yes, another one! I make that six series currently in some form of production which is, quite frankly, utterly brilliant for me. Please, please can we get new Star Trek in the UK soon? There’s a whole series of Short Treks jus
SFX3 min read
Fowl Deeds
“WHEN YOU CAN WALK PAST A SET AND there’s a big troll catapult outside the front door,” grins Sir Kenneth Branagh, “that never gets old.” This unique sense of job satisfaction is provided by the stage-and-screen knight’s latest directing gig. Based o
SFX3 min read
Viva Las Vistas!
IF YOU WANT AN EXAMPLE OF someone doing a post-apocalyptic life right, you should be watching DreamWorks Animation’s Kipo And The Age Of Wonderbeasts on Netflix. Adapted from Radford Sechrist’s 2015 web comic Kipo, and developed by Bill Wolkoff (Star
SFX3 min read
Mirror Universe
FOR THE ENTIRE SEVEN-YEAR run of The 100, the last remnants of humanity have had their asses kicked… a lot. Post-apocalyptic landscapes will often do that, but watching Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor) try to lead her fellow survivors, and then follower
SFX3 min read
The Long Goodbye
WHEN THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 SHUT down television productions in the middle of their shooting schedules, many shows made the difficult decision to forego filming a season finale. For the demon-bashing Winchester brothers of Supernatural, however, this
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Aerial Assault sci-fi TV Round Up
Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck reuniting for Pike-centric spin-off Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Ruby Rose exits Batwoman after one season. The CW plans to recast the role. Disney+ developing Percy Jackson series. Battlestar’s Katee Sack
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Many Scrotnig Returns
AFTER COMMEMORATING ITS 40th birthday and 2,000th Prog in recent years, the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic reaches another milestone this summer with two decades having passed since 2000 AD was purchased by Rebellion. It’s an auspicious occasion that will b
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Eve Smith
Tell us about your protagonist. What’s her story? Kate works in a hospital where no one ever gets well. Decades of spiralling resistance have unleashed an antibiotic crisis, and the over-seventies aren’t allowed new drugs. As Kate searches for her bi
SFX3 min read
Penny Dreadful SFX’s High Priestess Of Horror
There are some seriously good lockdown horror shorts out there. For starters, check out Dark Mode (bit.ly/shortdark) by Brit filmmaker Jamie Hooper, whose feature debut The Creeping is currently in post. Massively tense, it has a very similar vibe to
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Retro-active
100% FAKE! Character Options has been keeping itself busy in lockdown, with six new Doctor Who figure sets hitting the shelves in B&M stores by the time you read this. UNIT’s The Brigadier, Benton and Mike Yates make up the “Claws Of Axos” collection
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Stars Signs
STARTING WITH CANCER and ending with Gemini, each issue of George Mann’s new limited series from Vault Comics, Engineward, is themed around a specific star sign. Centering upon a far future, frontier-like colony world, “where humans have taken their
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News Warp
Taika Waititi officially signs to direct and cowrite new Star Wars movie. Halle Berry joins Josh Gad in Roland Emmerich’s lunar disaster epic Moonfall. Paramount staking out 24 June 2022 release for next Transformers. Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer in the
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The Umbrella Academy
End of the world? So what’s new… Season two on-set exclusive! Image Comics’ immortal mercenaries brought to life Will Christopher Nolan’s film reopen cinemas? What would have happened in series three? Exclusive behind-the-scenes access SFX 329 ON SAL
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Saviour Of The Universe
PATHETIC EARTHLINGS. Who can save you now? When Ming the Merciless decides to take this obscure body in the SK system as his plaything, unleashing earthquakes, hurricanes and – yes – hot hail in our direction, it’s a question with just one answer. He
SFX1 min read
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SFX2 min read
Keeping Up With The Jones
The five-disc Collector’s Edition of StudioCanal’s new Flash Gordon release features Life After Flash, a 2017 documentary that set out to tell Sam J Jones’s real-life story – as well as throwing in plenty of Mongo-flavoured nostalgia. “Apart from Ted
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No Flash In The Pan
Pre-dating Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, Flash Gordon made his newspaper strip debut in January 1934. With Buck Rogers already a big hit, King Features owner William Randolph Hearst (the real-life inspiration for Citizen Kane) wanted his own pie
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Lady In The Water
WHAT IMAGE DOES THE phrase “refugee camp” bring to mind? Rows of tents, perhaps, or rudimentary shelters cobbled together from cardboard and scrap wood. Well, the one SFX is exploring right now is rather different. For one thing, it’s utterly deserte
SFX2 min read
Howard’s Way
Talk about the music of Flash Gordon and thoughts naturally turn to Queen, but rock isn’t the only genre blasting out of sound systems on Mongo. The movie also features sections of classical score by Howard Blake, the British composer who would secur
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My Fey Lady
How would you describe Nimue? Nimue is this young Fey woman with a mysterious gift, and because of it she’s treated very much as an outcast. Throughout the course of this series, we see her journey – not just a physical journey, having to deliver thi
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State Of The Art
There have been countless takes on Arthur. What’s this one like? I talked to Tom [Wheeler] early on in the process, and he was saying that with Arthur it’s kind of that moment before he becomes this person, and that we’re constantly, throughout the s
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The Crying Game
So what’s with all the weeping? His reputation is that he looks as if he’s crying, but he actually has birthmarks on his face. The origin of it is complex, but you get to find out why he looks like this. Would you call him an antagonist? I think he’s
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Spides Like Us
POP QUIZ: WHAT ARE YOUR TOP five German SF/fantasy TV series? We’ll give you a minute. Finished your list? Okay, that was a little unfair. Recently there’s been time-hopping Netflix show Dark. Otherwise, scouring our brains, all we can think of are 1
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Coma Chameleon
How did you get the part? Did you have to show you could play twins? I did a self-tape. I didn’t really know anything about the project until I came here. And I didn’t know I was playing two people! That was a big surprise. I didn’t realise until I d
SFX6 min read
Coffee And TV
THIRTY YEARS AGO, TELEVISION was not prepared for how director David Lynch and writer Mark Frost would change it forever. On 8 April 1990, their new ABC network series Twin Peaks debuted in the US, and minds were cumulatively blown. Ostensibly about
SFX7 min read
The Final Frontiers William Shatner
OUR LIVES ARE consumed in mysteries,” says William Shatner, on the line to SFX from his home in California. He has career experience when it comes to the inexplicable. As James T Kirk in Star Trek his entire mission statement was to search out strang
SFX6 min read
Side Ways In Time
THE INNOVATIVE 26-PART science fiction series Timeslip was shown on ITV from September 1970 to March 1971, making a lasting impact on both children and adults, despite being intended for the former. Its four linked, multi-episode storylines included
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Fame By Frame
I ONCE HAD THE LUXURY OF choosing eyeballs,” says Vanessa Harryhausen, daughter of special effects genius Ray Harryhausen. “I know that sounds really ghastly, doesn’t it? But he had this little plastic cabinet, with all these wonderful drawers, full
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Ming-na Wen
BIODATA From Coloane, Macau Greatest Hits Street Fighter, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Mulan, Stargate Universe, The Mandalorian Random Fact Wen took a photo of herself on the set of The Mandalorian against the binary sunsets of Tatooine. She recently sha
SFX4 min read
Paul Tremblay
IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to
SFX7 min read
Dead End
WHO HASN’T experienced that unshakable feeling that forces are somehow conspiring against you? There’s a dark inevitability underpinning human existence that’s hard to ignore. Perhaps that’s what gives good horror films their relatable dread-inducing
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SNOWPIERCER Season One
US TNT, Sundays UK Netflix, streaming now, Mondays Showrunner Graeme Manson Cast Jennifer Connelly, Daveed Diggs, Mickey Sumner, Alison Wright, Iddo Goldberg, Susan Park EPISODES 1.01-1.10 Snowpiercer’s behind-the-scenes saga seems to have entailed a
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Jennifer Connelly
How would you describe Melanie’s arc? I feel like the person that you first meet in episode one is very different from the person you come to know by the end of the first season. It’s a gradual unfolding as you come to understand what she’s been hidi
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Batwoman
US The CW, finished UK E4, finished Showrunner Caroline Dries Cast Ruby Rose, Rachel Skarsten, Meagan Tandy, Nicole Kang EPISODES 1.01-1.20 So, you go onto Rotten Tomatoes and you see the audience score: 13%. “Ah, right,” you think. “Review bombing.”
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Alex Rider
US/UK Amazon Prime, streaming now Showrunner Guy Burt Cast Otto Farrant, Vicky McClure, Ronke Adekoluejo, Brenock O’Connor EPISODES 1.01-1.04 While this isn’t the first screen adaptation of Anthony Horowitz’s popular teen-spy saga – remember 2006’s S
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Birds Of Prey
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director Cathy Yan Cast Margot Robbie, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell Hollywood, actors had an uneasy relationship with comic book characters. Too o
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Bloodshot
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director David SF Wilson Cast Vin Diesel, Eiza González, Sam Heughan, Guy Pearce Despite his impeccable action-hero credentials, having Vin Diesel headline your movie is no guara
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Onward
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | PG | Blu-ray (3D, standard)/DVD/download Director Dan Scanlon Cast Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer Pixar’s idea of epic fantasy is different to everyone else’s. Magic, a smorgasbord of my
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A Word After A Word After A Word Is Power
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | PG | DVD Directors Nancy Lang, Peter Raymont Governor General’s Award in her mid-20s, Margaret Atwood has been a writer to watch. But it’s the TV series of The Handmaid’s Tale that, arguably, really propelled her to st
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The Vast Of Night
RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 12 | VOD Director Andrew Patterson Cast Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Bruce Davis, Gail Cronauer AMAZON PRIME If the sole measure of a film’s success were its ability to immerse an audience in its world, this atmospheric i
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Brahms: The Boy II
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download “Can’t wait to have this guy in the house,” mutters frustrated dad Sean, as his traumatised son insists on keeping the titular doll. It’s the only nod to the inanity of this unlooked-for seque
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Darlin’
EXTRAS RELEASED 22 JUNE 2019 | 15 | DVD/download Pollyanna McIntosh makes her feature-directing debut with this uneven but compelling sequel to 2011’s The Woman, which sees the now feral youngest daughter of the Cleek family, Darlin’, led back into c
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Dolittle
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | PG | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Despite the star wattage of Robert Downey Jr, Emma Thompson and Antonio Banderas, this film is staggeringly bad. For a story that’s supposed to make you love animals, there are j
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Luz
RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Download/VOD This enigmatic German horror is slight (the credits roll at 65 minutes), but remarkable given its film-school project origins. As a young woman acts out recent events under hypnosis in a police station (a cl
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After Midnight
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | Blu-ray Directors Jeremy Gardner, Christian Stella Cast Jeremy Gardner, Brea Grant, Justin Benson, Henry Zebrowski Break-ups can make you crazy, especially if one party suddenly ups and vanishes. Hank (Jeremy Gard
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PENNYWORTH Season One
EXTRAS RELEASED 22 JUNE 2020 | 18 | Blu-ray/DVD Showrunners Danny Cannon, Bruno Heller Cast Jack Bannon, Emma Paetz, Ben Aldridge, Jason Flemyng Who’d have guessed that giving Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth, a show of his own would result in
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The Mad Fox
EXTRAS RELEASED 22 JUNE 1962 | PG | Blu-ray Director Tomu Uchida Cast Michiko Saga, Hashizô Ôkawa, Ryûnosuke Tsukigata, Kensaku Hara BLU-RAY DEBUT “Diverse” doesn’t quite cover the work of Japanese filmmaker Tomu Uchida, who in the course of a near 5
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Dream Demon
EXTRAS RELEASED 22 JUNE 1988 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Harley Cokeliss Cast Jemma Redgrave, Kathleen Wilhoite, Timothy Spall, Jimmy Nail BLU-RAY DEBUT Judging by the title, you’d think this long-lost ’80s horror was a straight Nightmare On Elm Street r
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The Lighthouse
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director Robert Eggers Cast Willem Defoe, Robert Pattinson All credit to Robert Eggers. It takes some doing to make a more uncompromising art horror than his first feature The Witch, but that’
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Blood Tide
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 1982 | 15 | Blu-ray Director Richard Jefferies Cast James Earl Jones, Deborah Shelton, Martin Kove, José Ferrer BLU-RAY DEBUT If a honeymoon sets the tone for a marriage, newlyweds Neil (Martin Kove) and Sherry (Mary Louise W
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Vivarium
EXTRAS RELEASED OUT NOW! 2020 | 15 | DVD Director Lorcan Finnegan Cast Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Jonathan Aris With its themes of entrapment and soul-crushing repetition, Vivarium has got a hell of a lot closer to home since it was scripted and
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The Invisible Man
EXTRAS RELEASED 29 June (Download 19 June) 2020 | 18 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/DVD/download Director Leigh Whannell Cast Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid You’ve only got to look at other revivals of figures used in classic
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Round Up
Line Of Duty meets Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) in CODE 404 Season One (DVD, 6 July). Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays star in this Sky One sci-fi comedy about a Special Investigations Unit copper who, after being shot dead, reappears a year later havi
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The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again
RELEASED 25 JUNE 272 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author M John Harrison Publisher Gollancz There are lives that play out in the margins of other people’s lives. These are dangling lives where things are left uncompleted, lives that pass largely
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Wonderscape
RELEASED OUT NOW! 304 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Jennifer Bell Publisher Walker Books A group of kids are sucked into a fantasy gaming world, an accident that will have fatal results for them if they don’t play along with the game. So far, so Jum
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Devolution
RELEASED OUT NOW! 282 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook Author Max Brooks Publisher Century A community isolated through natural disaster is faced with a lack of resources, technological shutdown and a very serious threat to their lives in Max Brooks’
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A Cosmology Of Monsters
RELEASED 30 JUNE 448 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Shaun Hamill Publisher Titan Books Shaun Hamill’s debut arrives with a fierce buzz and a glowing Stephen King cover quote. That feels apt. A Cosmology Of Monsters may riff heavily on HP Lovecraft’s
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Mexican Gothic
RELEASED 30 JUNE 299 pages | Hardback/ebook Author Silvia Moreno-Garcia Publisher Del Rey There are shades of Daphne du Maurier in this twisty little gothic novel, which pits a young woman against the horrors of a crumbling ancestral home. Our heroin
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Harrow Lake
RELEASED 9 JULY 320 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook Author Kat Ellis Publisher Penguin Books Author Kat Ellis Publisher Penguin Books Harrow Lake taps neatly into nostalgic hooks, and one of its key strengths is in creating a very believable histo
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Love Bites
RELEASED 9 JULY 384 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Ry Herman Publisher Jo Fletcher Books Author Ry Herman Publisher Jo Fletcher Books Angela’s dead. Once a fairly normal astronomy student, she was accidentally-on-purpose killed by her girlfriend – an
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Reissues
If you haven’t had enough of reading about deadly outbreaks, you’re in luck with this month’s paperbacks. COLD STORAGE (out now, HQ) is the novelwriting debut of Jurassic Park and Spider-Man screenwriter David Koepp. It centres on a Pentagon bioterro
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Red Noise
RELEASED 14 JULY (ebook out now) 426 pages | Paperback/ebook Author John P Murphy Publisher Angry Robot Sci-fi that’s actually just a Western with spaceships and lasers is nothing new, and Red Noise enthusiastically embraces this mongrel genre. It’s
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Midnight’s Twins
RELEASED OUT NOW! 432 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Holly Race Publisher Hot Key Books At times this debut novel bursts with creativity: fitting, as much of it takes place in a world built from the imaginations of people who are asleep and dreaming.
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A Declaration Of The Rights Of Magicians
RELEASED 25 JUNE 560 pages | Paperback/ebook Author HG Parry Publisher Orbit Author HG Parry Publisher Orbit Pitt The Younger, magicuser. Thinking Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? No, this is no pulpy thrill-ride. It tells of the experiences of a han
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We Ride The Storm
RELEASED 25 JUNE 512 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Devin Madson Publisher Orbit Books Devin Madson returns to the world of her self-published Vengeance Trilogy for an epic fantasy tetralogy dealing with clashing empires and royal power str
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Also Out
As ever, there are lots more books we couldn’t fit in! Joan He’s Chineseinspired YA fantasy THE DESCENDANT OF THE CRANE (out now, Titan) follows a princess thrust into power after her father is murdered, who enlists the aid of a soothsayer and an inv
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Joker/harley: Criminal Sanity
RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics/Black Label Writer Kami Garcia Artists Mico Suayan, Mike Mayhew, Jason Badower ISSUES 1-4 Once again testing the theory that there’s no such thing as too many Joker comics, DC is following up its recent Black Lab
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STRONTIUM DOG: SEARCH & DESTROY
RELEASED (Digital/limited edition hardback; paperback 12 November) Publisher Rebellion Writer John Wagner Artists Carlos Ezquerra, Brendan McCarthy, Ian Gibson COLLECTION One of 2000 AD’s most popular characters, Johnny Alpha actually originated not
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Plunge
RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics/Hill House Writer Joe Hill Artist Stuart Immonen ISSUES 1-3 The latest release from DC’s new Hill House imprint sees founder Joe Hill back in writing mode for a six-issue miniseries of maritime mysteries, strange
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Snowpiercer
RELEASED OUT NOW!/30 June/21 July Publisher Titan Comics Writers Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, Olivier Bocquet Artist Jean-Marc Rochette GRAPHIC NOVELS If watching the Netflix series prompts you to dive into these reissues of the French graphic nove
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Adventureman
RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics Writer Matt Fraction Artists Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson ISSUE ONE Having made his return to superhero comics last year at DC, acclaimed writer Matt Fraction continues his mainstream comeback with this brightl
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The Elder Scrolls Online: Greymoor
RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PC Also on PlayStation 4, Xbox Publisher Bethesda Softworks RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PC Also on PlayStation 4, Xbox Publisher Bethesda Softworks But this is Skyrim at its lowest, grimmest point. Greymoor ushers in t
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DOCTOR WHO: STRANDED Volume One
RELEASED OUT NOW! 291 minutes | CD/download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA Doctor Who stories that maroon the Doctor on Earth aren’t exactly a new thing – the UNIT years and “The Lodger” have already mined the idea for all it’s worth. But after the
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Return To Oz
Mention the cult live-action Disney movie Return To Oz and people will inevitably tell you how it terrified them as a child – sometimes also as an adult. Not me; I was absolutely captivated by it, an early indication that I would turn to the dark sid
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The Human Frontier
RELEASED OUT NOW! 238 minutes | Download Publisher Big Finish AUDIO DRAMA This ambitious Big Finish Original is so overflowing with cool sci-fi ideas that you’d require a small fortune to put everything on screen. Unfortunately, what with alien monst
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Those Who Remain
RELEASED OUT NOW! Reviewed on PlayStation Also on PC, Mac, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch Publisher Wired Productions VIDEOGAME For budding filmmakers, no-budget horror is the go-to format for using limited resources creatively. Indie game developers have
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Arthurian Legend
Who is generally believed to have been the author of 15th century text Le Morte d’Arthur? Name the 1963 Disney film which centres on a 12-year-old Arthur. What name is shared by the Federation starships with the registry numbers NCC-1664 and NCC-2651
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Podcast Roundup
KNEEL BEFORE POD THIS MONTH’S TOP PICK missionlogpodcast.com Knowledgeable hosts John Champion and Ken Ray are covering every individual episode (including The Animated Series) and film of all the Star Trek series in chronological broadcast order. Th

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