I'm a writer/editor who's been at the site since 2015. I cover politics, weird history, video games and... well, anything really. Keep it breezy, keep it light, keep it straightforward.
Lucasfilm has high hopes for The High Republic. Their new Star Wars line, set 200 years before The Phantom Menace, gives their creative teams a blank slate to work with. We'll get our first full look when the inaugural novel, Charles Soule's Light of the Jedi hits shelves on August 25th, but right now we have a pretty good idea what to expect.
Against all the odds, Sonic the Hedgehog turned out to be pretty good. It's not a masterpiece by any means, but it's worlds away from the disaster that seemed inevitable after that first trailer and its dreadful Sonic design. It's gone on to respectable reviews, made a bunch of money and probably inspired a new generation of young fans who will one day grow up to produce nightmarish pornographic fan-fiction of their own.
Tony Stark has had all manner of crazy adventures over his time in the 616 Marvel Comics Universe, but now the company has decided they're taking him in the strangest direction yet. This week Avengers #31 revealed the bombshell that Tony Stark's father was not Howard Stark after all. No, Tony Stark's father is actually... the devil! And, even worse, Tony Stark himself is... the Antichrist!
Despite the many Star Wars comics, novels, games, TV shows and movies there still remain some mysteries in a galaxy far, far away. Was Anakin Skywalker really conceived by the Force? How did the First Order gain so much so quickly? How did Anakin's blue lightsaber end up in Maz Kanata's bar? Now a new Marvel comic, Star Wars #3 sets out to clear up one of them - albeit not one that fans have spent much time pondering over. How did Leia know how to defrost Han when she rescued him from his carbonite prison in Return of the Jedi?
Say what you will about the tenets of Thanos' plan to wipe out half of all life in the universe, but the guy thought things through. His plan to secure all six Infinity Stones took him most of the first ten years of the MCU's existence, true, but he executed it the first moment he was able to, did exactly what he promised and proceeded to retire to obscurity rather than rule over the galaxy as some kind of galactic conqueror after Avengers: Infinity War. Leaving aside the whole 'killing half of all life in the universe' thing, you've got to hand it to the guy, for his perseverance.
The death of Tony Stark at the end of Avengers: Endgame decisively brought down the curtain on the first decade of the MCU. Robert Downey Jr.'s performance kickstarted the whole affair, and if Iron Man hadn't been a critical darling and box office smash, the whole project might never have gotten off the ground. But, after ten years of storytelling, Stark's tale came to an end with him heroically sacrificing himself to defeat Thanos' army and save the universe. Not bad considering he started out in 2008 as a self-centred scumbag, eh?
Lucasfilm's next big Star Wars project, The High Republic will begin with a series of books and comics. The first title, Charles Soule's novel Light of the Jedi, hits shelves on August 25th and is expected to establish the setting and core conflict between the Jedi and the "space Vikings" known as the Nihil. But The High Republic won't remain exclusive to print for long, as we've already heard rumors of video games, TV shows and full-fledged movies in various states of development.
Is the Coronavirus the first wave of a biological extraterrestrial invasion of Earth - a real-life The Andromeda Strain? It sounds pretty damn unlikely to me, but then again, I'm not Cambridge PhD mathematician, astronomer and astrobiologist Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe. He's claiming the COVID-19 virus, which is currently on the tipping point of becoming a global pandemic, may have been caused by a meteorite hitting China back in October.