Free Republic

A Hollywood film yet again finds itself responding to a social-media outcry over the casting of a white actor in a role that was originally Asian-American. British actor Ed Skrein earlier this week joined the cast of the “Hellboy” reboot “Rise of the Blood Queen,” which is to be the third film in the comic adaptation franchise previously helmed by Guillermo del Toro. The character, Ben Daimio, is Japanese-American in Mike Mignola’s “Hellboy” comics and his heritage is central to his backstory. Daimio’s grandmother was a Japanese Imperial assassin in World War II. Many objected to the role not going...

Holy cartoon cash, Batman! The Charleston County Sheriff's Office is auctioning off more than 400 comic books seized in a drug investigation. "It’s entirely possible there may be some treasures in there, and the hunt could be fun," said Mike Campbell, owner of Captain's Comics & Toys in West Ashley. The online auction, on govdeals.com, runs until Tuesday morning and already has attracted nearly two dozen bids. Campbell is not among the bidders. He said it sounds like most of the titles are from the 1990s and "most likely, fun books worth $1 to $5." He said the 1990s were...

Note: For simplicity’s sake, whenever the term “reshoots” is used, unless otherwise stated, assume that it’s a catchall term that includes pick-ups, additional photography, and the standard reshooting of scenes.In weeks past, there have been some rumors regarding the state of the DC Extended Universe — namely, the status of their upcoming team-up film, Justice League. Extensive reshoots and additionally photography have, perhaps wrongly, been correlated with bad movies, and while reshoots have been a standard practice for films in the past decade or so, it still seems to give audiences some concern. Now, a report from Batman-On-Film seems to...

If you've watched many of the approximately 8.6 million movies in Marvel Comics' Avengers franchise, you may recall Hydra, a Nazi-linked terrorist organization often battled by Captain America. Hydra is named after a mythological, multi-headed snake monster that grows more heads every time you cut one off, and members of the villainous group identify each other by whispering, "Hail Hydra!" But if you visit hail-hydra.com, perhaps hoping to read up on some Marvel lore before the next 4 million movies premiere, you will instead be redirected to the WhiteHouse.gov page for President Donald J. Trump. Really — try it. It isn't clear who set up the...

For a lot of comics fans, Marvel just isn't what it used to be. While the comic line that gave us Thor, Captain America, The Hulk, and the X-Men has often been tinged with a bit of politics -- for example, discrimination against mutants is common in the Marvel universe -- recent comics from the company have been overwhelmingly political, and always politically left. Many fans have been less than appreciative. Luckily, it now seems those days are over:

After a spell of big-budget disasters last year from Jupiter Ascending to Pan, cash is finally raining on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, CA as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is set to post the biggest pre-summer opening day ($82M, beating Furious 7‘s $67.4M) and weekend ($170M, outstripping The Hunger Games’ $152.5M). Heck, BvS is poised to be Warner Bros. best opening of all-time, beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($169.2M), and even The Dark Knight Rises ($160.9M) and The Dark Knight ($158.4M). In 4,242 theaters, BvS is the widest pre-May release and new record-holder...

I'd like to know how fast could a physical being luke Flash really run before running through the air before the air resistance becomes something like running through neck deep water or even impossible because the air resistance is like running through solid concrete? At that point, safe to say that Flash becomes more like energy to avoid that problem, but when does that likely occur?

Sen. Ted Cruz kicked off the new year by gushing about the new Star Wars movie and his favorite super-hero comic books. "Ever since I was a little kid, I would read comic books and grew up on sci-fi," Cruz said an interview set to air Saturday with "Geek Tank Radio," a show broadcast on a local Memphis radio station. The hosts of the show promised not to ask him any questions about politics, pledging instead to stick to "geek topics." "I'm very much an original Star Trek guy rather than a Next Generation guy," Cruz said, later admitting his...

The latest issue of Action Comics finds Superman battling a foe on the streets of Metropolis, but this time he isn’t taking on his rival Lex Luther. Instead, he’s battling the police, which has some people outraged. “There’s some fans that are alienated, a portion of the older fans," said Dimitrios Fragiskatos, the manager of Midtown Comics in New York City. "[But] younger fans seem to be embracing it.” The new issue comes from the minds of Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder, who have imagined a much darker story for arguably the world's most iconic superhero. The comic has been...

One of the biggest changes to come out DC Entertainment's big comics revamp this summer turned Superman's world upside-down: Lois Lane revealed his identity to the world, and then he lost almost all of his powers ... Now that he's been outed, Superman's relationship with everyone around him has completely changed. Some are supportive, and grateful, surprised to learn that he's been living among them all along. Others, however, have a chip on their shoulder, resenting all the supervillains that he has attracted. Unfortunately for him, most of the angriest folks are cops. This quickly escalates into open conflict by...

Secretary of State John Kerry boasted that “we have the capacity to knock out ISIL, but we’re not going to do it. Eliminating these murderous thugs is not part of the President’s vision for the transformation of America.” By way of explanation, Kerry pointed out that “in the movies, Lex Luthor is a vile criminal, yet Superman never kills him. Why? It’s because there needs to be a balance between good and evil. The same thing can be said for how we respond to ISIL. Wiping them out risks upsetting the balance between good and evil. We need them as...

<p>New York City’s subways had five days of record ridership last month, and those in charge of the public transportation system have seized on the increased usage to push their multi-billion dollar capital plan.</p> <p>The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Wednesday that the subway system broke its single-day ridership record on five days last month.</p>

Splattergate II: Green Graphic Novel Celebrates Eco-Terrorism Shopping Mall Killing Spree  When is it acceptable for a terrorist to go berserk in a shopping mall and machine gun innocent victims to death? When it's all being done for the noble cause of environmentalism, of course! Such is the take-home message of an award-winning graphic novel which has been praised by a top scientist at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as "a marvellous way to convey the knowledge accumulated by our scientific community." It has also been recommended by a curriculum developer at the US National Council of Teachers...

Al Feldstein, who took over a fledgling humor magazine called Mad in 1956 and made it a popular, profitable and enduring wellspring of American satire, died on Tuesday at his ranch in Paradise Valley, Mont. He was 88. His wife, the former Michelle Key, confirmed the death. In recent years, he was a wildlife and landscape painter in Montana, outside Livingston. Mr. Feldstein had been a writer and illustrator of comic books when he became editor of Mad four years into its life and just a year after it had graduated from comic-book form to a full-fledged magazine.

Gavia Baker-Whitelaw lamented how the movie depictions of Spider-Man and other superheroes are all "straight, white men" in a Tuesday item on Salon.com titled "America deserves better superheroes: Why a straight, white Spider-Man is no longer a real underdog." Baker-Whitelaw, a "fandom and Internet culture" reporter for the website The Daily Dot, zeroed in on the supposed "ramifications of having eternal underdog Peter Parker remain a straight, white man." The writer also complimented Andrew Garfield, the actor who plays the title character in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, for wondering why the superhero "can't...be into boys," and contended that Sony, the...

It’s been almost 40 years since Wolverine’s first appearance on the very last page of The Incredible Hulk #180. In comic book time, of course, Wolverine is much older: Over a hundred years old, a century-plus lifespan that has seen the man called Logan become a soldier, a samurai, a superhero, an X-Man, an Avenger, the amnesiac victim of horrific scientific experiments, a renegade, a teacher. This September, that’s going to end.

Archie fans might want to brace themselves: The beloved character will die this July. Archie Comics announced Tuesday that the lovable redhead Archie Andrews will bite the proverbial dust, to cap the recent “Life With Archie” series. “We’ve been building up to this moment since we launched ‘Life With Archie’ five years ago, and knew that any book that was telling the story of Archie’s life as an adult had to also show his final moment,” said Archie Comics Publisher/Co-CEO Jon Goldwater in a statement. While details of the character’s impending death are scant, it has been revealed that Archie...

<p>As for Mara's ethnicity? She's not Native American. Folks are passing around an online petition that asks Warner Bros. to "stop casting white actors to play people of color."</p> <p>2. If you're particularly ticked off when a white character is played by a person of color, then you're probably not pleased that Michael B. Jordan (Friday Night Lights, The Wire, Fruitvale Station), who is black, was cast as the Human Torch in Fantastic Four. Human Torch is a superhero who, as his name hints, can engulf his body in flames, control nearby fires and fly. When he's not on fire (though he usually is), the comics show that he's a blonde, white guy named Johnny Storm. (There was an android Human Torch once. To the extent that androids have ethnic identities, the android's was probably Anglo-Saxon.) If casting a black actor to play a white superhero irks you, this probably will, too.</p>

Some of America’s greatest superheroes came of age in the gritty days of the Depression and World War II. But how different would things be if Superman and Batman been millennials? Just imagine: •The Bat-signal would regularly go undetected by its intended recipient, lost within a flood of social media streams. •Superman would avoid the DTR (define-the-relationship) talk with Wonder Woman, flee to grad school to wait out the soft economy and ponder his true purpose, and rack up serious student debt. •The embattled mayor of Gotham would feel torn between his productivity goals and his heroes’ demands for foosball...

Kamala Khan isn’t your average New Jersey teenager battling a cultural identity crisis. She has superpowers. And she’s here to smash the stereotype of young Muslim-American women.Marvel has a comic book superhero named Kamala Khan, a Muslim teen from New Jersey. This idea is refreshing. It’s important. It reminds me of the late ‘60s film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. That was a revolutionary story about interracial marriage in America at a time when it was taboo. Like that film, Kamala will shatter taboos, too. Ms. Marvel (Kamala’s alter ego) will open the eyes of a new generation of comic...