The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has infused modern life with an air of uncertainty. And on Behind The Bastards, Robert Evans and guest Jamie Loftus (My Year In Mensa, Robot Chicken) remind us that whenever there’s chaos, grifters will always try to profit. In this timely episode, Evans outlines some “remedies” that…

It begins with the most tired of clichés: the body of a dead woman. Five children make the discovery near a river one hot afternoon, smelling the corpse before they see its “dark mask seething under a myriad of black snakes.” But the associations the trope stirs up—a serial killer on the loose, an obsessive detective…

Like every corner of the entertainment industry, comic books have taken a devastating hit from the COVID-19 pandemic. Comic shops around the world have had to close their doors as cities, states, and countries go into lockdown, and the United States’ primary comics distributor, Diamond, has suspended shipping of any…

In many ways, Kairos is an excellent fairy tale comic. The book opens with Nills and Annaelle arriving at a remote cabin, ready for a vacation in a flower-drenched fields and lush forests. Things quickly take a turn when they are attacked and Annaelle disappears into what looks like a different dimension, leaving…

It’s either the best time in the world to launch an app, or almost the worst, but Reggie Watts has to be hoping it’s the former. The comedian, musician, and co-host of The Late Late Show With James Corden has just launched WattsApp, a techno-savvy look into his life, work, and techno junk drawer.

My question is on managing “gray area” intimacies during the pandemic. I have a lover/friend that I’ve been hanging out with—fucking, drinking tea, going on hikes, eating ice cream, watching movies, and other activities—for about nine months. He’s 36 and was married for 10 years and due to that experience he’s been a…

It’s kind of hard to watch, read, or really dive into anything too serious right now. The world’s serious enough already. Maybe that’s why everyone’s playing Animal Crossing and letting themselves be swept away by the majestic glory of Joe Exotic’s tight, tight jeans.

Sitting in the back of an ambulance rushing his ailing mother to a hospital, cartoonist Madang remembers the happier times from his childhood—specifically the memories of his mother’s irresistible cooking. Young Madang and his little brother float through the air on the wave of smells, and cheerfully sing as they…

If you don’t know Isa Mazzei’s name yet, you will soon. She broke into the film scene in 2018 with Cam, which The A.V. Club described as a “brilliantly inverted techno-thriller” about Alice (Madeline Brewer), a.k.a. Lola_Lola, a cam girl who is thrown into the ultimate digital-age nightmare when an inhuman entity…

When YouTubers and podcasters encounter strange pop culture artifacts, the response is often mockery. Tony Thaxton, however, is not interested in lampooning the misfits of media, celebrating them instead. In each episode of Bizarre Albums, Thaxton—a drummer for Motion City Soundtrack—recounts the history of a…

The modern alternative music scene began, most appropriately, at a house party on Valentine’s Day, 1977. The performance was simultaneously an embrace and a kiss-off of just about everything new, old, and in between that contemporary pop music had to offer: punk, new wave, disco, dance, surf, and funk. In their…

With mutants relocating to the island nation of Krakoa, the X-mansion in Westchester, New York, has been abandoned. But there’s something strange going on in the empty Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, and a team of mutants investigates in next week’s Giant Size X-Men: Nightcrawler, spotlighting the fuzzy elf as he…

When word emerged that Greg Daniels and NBC would be attempting an American reboot of the hit British comedy The Office, it was met with a singularly reigning sentiment: “It’ll never work.” The track record for that kind of faithful retelling hadn’t exactly been great. In fact, the network was already dealing with the…

The true John Constantine disappeared for a while as a superhero-friendly version of the character entered the main DC Universe. While that iteration still exists in books like Justice League Dark, the original Constantine has returned in all his messy glory in the new John Constantine: Hellblazer series. Written by Th…

DEAR READERS: I live in Seattle, the U.S. epicenter of the novel coronavirus epidemic, with my family. A lot of my readers wrote this week to wish us well. We are fine—scared, but fine—washing our hands compulsively and staying close to home. I’m going to keep churning out the column and recording my podcast, while…

It has been almost exactly fifty years since the catastrophic explosion aboard Apollo 13’s service module that nearly cost three astronauts their lives. The events leading up to this accident and the ensuing tale of survival are the subject of the latest season of the BBC’s 13 Minutes To The Moon. Host Kevin Fong…

In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?

“People can’t live without wonder and stories. They give up. It’s happening out there right now. They drain of feeling. They drain of life!”

How far would you go to achieve greatness? This question takes a young jazz musician on a horrific journey in the upcoming Image Comics graphic novel, Blue In Green, from writer Ram V, artist Anand RK, and letterer Aditya Bidikar. This creative team previously collaborated on the urban teen drama Grafity’s Wall, which…

Riverdale’s modus operandi seems to be, “when one mystery closes, another mystery opens,” so it’s all-together shocking—and wholly satisfying—that its latest episode finally put a bow on the season-long mystery of Jughead’s fake death. “The Locked Room” not only tells us the great lengths Betty and company went to…