SFXの February 2019 の目次

Happy new year! And what better way to kickstart 2019 than the eagerly anticipated return of a show that boldly went where no Star Trek series had gone before? Discovery had me hooked from the start because it took the key building blocks of the saga, but tackled them with the kind of shades-of-grey, serialised storytelling that’s made this the era of binge TV – Discovery may be a warped take on Gene Roddenberry’s vision, but it’s the Trek we needed. So, we sent reviews editor Ian Berriman on an away mission to the show’s Toronto set to find out all the intel he could on season two. He delivered. As well as meeting the returning Discovery crew, he tracked down the new Captain Pike and Mr Spock – and…

When Brian Michael Bendis was offered his own pop-up imprint following his move to DC, he originally planned to concentrate on crime. But after wrapping up runs on Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the Riri Williams-starring Invincible Iron Man, he realised that what DC needed was a home for its younger heroes. “I thought we could do something like the Ultimate line, which would be a very reader-friendly introduction for people of a certain age,” Bendis tells Red Alert. “So I suggested something along those lines, where we focus on that moment where you’re really filled with the wonder of life, and the wonder of all the things that come with discovering what the world is really like and what your place in it is. The end point of that…

TWO IS NEW “It feels like a fresh start at the start of season two. We have new characters, new worlds, new adventures. It’s more dramatic this year. Still funny, but it’s just got real heart.” UNIVERSAL APPEAL “You will see a lot of unusual character pairings, which is rather lovely because you can really push the boat out with sci-fi in terms of interspecies friendships. I think Seth [MacFarlane] is spot on by taking issues of the day and running them through the sci-fi mill and creating thought-provoking storylines.” ISAAC 2.0 “We’ve improved Isaac’s suit this year. I don’t think people are meant to notice it. It’s amazing how quickly it can deteriorate, which is ironic because he’s supposed to be indestructible. It is pretty funny when we’re filming…

After being turned into numerous films and television series and even a popular stage musical, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist has now formed the basis of a dystopian superhero epic. Originally conceiving the premise as a screenplay, Gary Whitta (Rogue One, The Book Of Eli) realised that comics would make a better home for Oliver after teaming up with The Boys artist Darick Robertson. “I’ve always liked the idea of taking a classic and giving it a sci-fi spin,” Whitta tells Red Alert. “Coming up through the English school system, I obviously had to read a lot of Dickens and Shakespeare. So I started looking at both of those canons and ultimately sparked to Oliver Twist as the perfect foundation for the post-apocalyptic story I was already looking to tell.” According…

→ Emma Stone playing Cruella de Vil in Cruella… Sam Raimi producing adaptation of James Herbert’s Shrine, directed by Evan Spiliotopoulos… Robert Schwentke in talks to direct GI Joe spin-off Snake Eyes for Paramount… Guillermo del Toro producing remake of Argentinian horror Terrified… Paddington’s Paul King directing adaptation of Glyn Maxwell’s Time’s Fool… Sony developing an all-female spin-off to Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse as well as a sequel… Avan Jogia starring in Zombieland 2… Fantasy Island arriving 28 February 2020… Tom Hanks in talks to play Geppetto in Disney’s live action Pinocchio… Margot Robbie reveals full title of Birds Of Prey is Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn)… F Scott Frazier writing the Gears Of War movie for Universal… 47 Meters Down director Johannes Roberts…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES → I loved Bumblebee – more emotion and humour than all the Michael Bay Transformers movies put together. → The Good Place getting a fourth season is forkin’ awesome news. RANTS → Why all the secrecy about the Avengers: Endgame title? It’s hardly the biggest spoiler. NICK SETCHFIELD FEATURES EDITOR RAVES → Enjoyed UFO Drawings From The National Archives, a collection of sightings by the public, with sketches and paintings that feel like glorious outsider art. Left me strangely nostalgic for the age of “flying saucers”. → Hugely excited by a Shang-Chi movie. Marvel, get Paul Gulacy in there as art director! IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES → Reading: Giraffes On Horseback Salad (out March), a graphic novel based on a Marx Brothers script written by…

Here is a list: secrets, regrets, genuine history, the supernatural. The basic ingredients of a Tim Powers cocktail. Also, copious amounts of alcohol – in the case of 2001’s DECLARE, it’s arak, weak beer with lemonade and insect repellent. DECLARE swaps Powers’ usual South California setting for England, and alternates between the Second World War and 1963. In 1942, Andrew Hale’s a British spy, sent to infiltrate a Soviet-controlled Resistance network operating in Paris. He learns there’s another, older war going on, and that there are other forces at work in the world. Returning to England, he encounters the man who will haunt him for the rest of his life – ambitious, duplicitous Kim Philby. In 1963 – the year Philby famously defects to the Soviet Union – Hale’s activated…

AS THE GRANDSON OF OSCAR WINNER Gregory Peck, Ethan Peck is used to living in a predecessor’s shadow… but nothing can prepare you for the burden of expectation when you glue on the pointy ears. The 32-year-old says he’s keen to do more than impersonate Leonard Nimoy. “I’ve really tried to internalise his spirit,” Peck tells SFX. “I’ve been spending so much time with Nimoy Spock. I read [1975 autobiography] I Am Not Spock, and I’m reading [1995 autobiography] I Am Spock now. In I Am Not Spock he covers who Spock was to him, and how he’s become a part of him.” Was anything in those books a useful takeaway, in terms of his approach? “He says Spock is birthed in ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’,” Peck recalls. “When this orb…

Certain sections of comics fandom spent the days following Stan Lee’s death sucking in breath every time another glowing tribute referred to him as the “creator” of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, et al. Not just because they believe, at best, he should be referred to as “co-creator”. Some go further. They argue that Lee’s greatest creative talent was self-promotion, and the real credit should go solely to artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The detractors have a strong case. Lee himself was always upfront about the extent of his actual writing input. Under the so-called “Marvel method”, which put the onus of plotting onto the artists, his main job was filling in the word balloons. They also point out that artists like Ditko and, especially, Kirby had…

“TURN YOUR BACK AROUND AND IN GOES THE KNIFE” From the pilot episode of Gotham, it was clear one of the shining lights of the city’s underbelly would be Oswald Cobblepot, AKA the Penguin-to-be. Brought to life by actor Robin Lord Taylor, Cobblepot popped off the screen as an oily opportunist trying to climb the mobster pecking order. Thankfully, Lord Taylor is nothing like his character – the complete opposite in fact – as he’s proven time and time again when talking to SFX about playing Cobblepot. Still grateful for the chance to add his imprint to the pantheon of Batman’s enemies, the actor gets genuinely emotional talking about bringing his reign of terror to a close. How does it feel as you approach the end of Gotham? It’s Batman’s…

A POPULAR BBC FANTASY SERIES, THE LEADING MAN replaced by a younger woman, airing to a mixed reaction from fans and some lukewarm reviews… SFX isn’t in 2019 discussing Doctor Who, but back in 2008, when Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah’s Inspector Sam Tyler (John Simm), a 21st century cop trapped in the 1970s in Life On Mars (2006-07), was replaced by Inspector Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) in the sequel, Ashes To Ashes (2008-10). What made the relaunch possible was the popularity of Tyler’s boss, the defiantly un-PC Chief Inspector Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), who’d bullied, insulted and thumped his way into viewers’ affections over two series. With the action relocated from Manchester in 1973 to London in 1981, Hunt returned with his sergeants Ray Carling (Dean Andrews) and Chris…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! PG | 117 minutes ▶ Directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman ▶ Cast Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Nicolas Cage Six movies. Two reboots. Three Peter Parkers. Enough webbing to cocoon the Chrysler Building. At this point you’d be excused serious origin-fatigue at the prospect of another big-screen Spider-Man. And it’s animated? Some second-tier side-project, surely, escaping its true destiny as a straight-to-DVD footnote in the wall-crawler’s movie canon? Hold on to your web-shooters. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse isn’t just a stunningly fresh take on the Marvel icon – it’s the best Spider-Man movie of all, a relentlessly clever, remorselessly playful entertainment intoxicated with the possibilities of comic books and animation and smashing both those mediums together to create something absolutely dazzling. “Alright, let’s…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! U | 130 minutes ▶ Director Rob Marshall ▶ Cast Emily Blunt, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Lin-Manuel Miranda Author PL Travers famously hated Walt Disney’s plan to turn her Mary Poppins stories into a film, and you can only imagine how she’d react to the company he founded going back to the brightly coloured well more than 50 years later. But while she might not be happy, those looking for something channelling the feelgood nostalgia of the original movie will doubtless be pleased. Emily Blunt touches down as the new Mary with ease, bringing all the haughty attitude blended with twinkly charm you might want. Returning two decades later to help Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane Banks (Emily Mortimer) in a time of crisis, she’s got plenty…

▶ RELEASED 28 JANUARY 2018 | 15 | DVD/download Two gangsters, aided by a female medium, revive the spirit of the man they murdered in this micro-budgeted horror-comedy, shot across Bradford. With lines like, “Ere, Frank, what’s it like ’avin’ tits?” the pinnacle of its witticisms, it’s best not to expect too much laugh-wise. Sadly, despite some adequate gore effects, it also stumbles as a horror, saddled as it is with some garishly lit cinematography that robs it of any sense of atmosphere. + Extras Writer and director commentary.…

▶ RELEASED 21 JANUARY 2018 | 15 | DVD/VOD Either one of the worst films ever made or an audacious attempt to represent ADHD through the medium of wire-fu. It’s the sequel to Iceman, a 2014 martial arts/time travel film that flopped spectacularly. This was shot at the same time, but radically recut and rewritten after the failure of the first film – and it looks it. Incoherent, vacantly acted, hamfistedly edited and utterly ludicrous, it’s also let down by terribly choreographed action. + Extras Trailer…

Four more films by the King of the Gimmicks have been remastered for Indicator’s latest box set, WILLIAM CASTLE AT COLU MBIA VOLUME TWO (out now, Blu-ray). Only one is, strictly speaking, our bag: Zotz!, a fantasy-comedy about a professor given magical powers by an amulet. Also included: 13 Frightened Girls, a spy flick about a 16-year-old girl; horror remake The Old Dark House; and Strait-Jacket, an axe-murder shocker. Sadly, review discs weren’t supplied in time for our deadline. The third follow-up to 2008’s Death Race, DEAT H RACE: BEYOND ANARCHY (out now, DVD), has little connection to the previous two, beyond a Danny Trejo supporting character. Set once again in enclosed wasteland/prison The Sprawl, it sees the Warden sending in a man to challenge the masked Frankenstein. It’s grindhouse…

▶ RELEASED 10 JANUARY 514 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Eyal Kless ▶ Publisher HarperVoyager Post-apocalyptic fiction remains one of publishing’s most popular subgenres, but this latest example skews in a pulpier direction by pushing the action into the distant future. The Last Puzzler also throws several other genres into the mix, combining aspects of pulp adventure, punky sci-fi and epic fantasy into a flawed but still entertaining brew. Set after the fall of a mysterious future civilisation, this first volume of the Tarakan Chronicles tells the story of Rafik, a young boy with a mysterious inherited ability to solve puzzles. This makes him valuable as a “Puzzler” to those aiming to unlock the buried and heavily-guarded secrets of the past – but it also sets him on a path…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 255 pages | Hardback ▶ Author Monica Valentinelli ▶ Publisher Titan Books • Yet another book about Joss Whedon’s short-lived space Western. We make it at least the eighth by Titan! • A large-format volume, it’s in four sections. The first covers the storylines (including the movie’s). • The second provides biographies of the characters and actors. • The third focuses on the wider universe: the systems, weapons and ships, a guide to the Mandarin spoken in the show, and so on. • The final section presents short script excerpts, with analysis. • If you already have a shelf full of Firefly books, it’s questionable whether you need this one. It’s heavy on synopsis early on, and much of the imagery is familiar. • The occasional…

▶ RELEASED 10 JANUARY 246 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Rachel Burge ▶ Publisher Hot Key Books Entwining fantasy with mythology is an old trope, here given some new life in a YA novel that binds up the life of disfigured teen Martha Hopkins with Norse legend. After an accident that leaves her blind in one eye (no points for spotting that mythic reference), Martha returns to her grandmother’s home in Norway in search of reassurance – and answers about her new ability to read people’s emotions by touching their clothing. But her grandmother is dead, and staying in her cottage is runaway Stig, who has family issues of his own. Neighbours warn of danger – oh, and there’s a mysterious and very old tree in the garden that’s looking…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 384 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author DJ Daniels ▶ Publisher Abaddon Books DJ Daniels’ second novel explores a future where humanity is not the only option… Green Jay is a double – a living copy designed to live briefly, then die. Instead, she has carried on living in hiding with a pair of robots, the Chemical Conjurors. If she wants to survive for much longer, however, then she’s going to need the contents of a very special box. The only problem is, it’s fallen into the hands of Kern Bromley, an unwilling employee of the local mob boss. Brom has problems of his own – most notably that he keeps slipping into alternate realities… Alongside the human and humant (plant/human hybrid) characters are the “Tenties” –…

As ever, there were loads more books that we couldn’t fit in. The latest Star Trek: Discovery novel, Una McCormack’s THE WAY TO THE STARS (10 January, Pocket Books), sees the 16-year-old Tilly “embarking upon the adventure of a lifetime” – and no doubt swearing like a trooper. Fans of Christopher Paolini’s dragon-bonded Eragon Shadeslayer will be pleased to hear there’s a new collection set in the world of the Inheritance Cycle. THE FORK, THE WITCH AND THE STORM (out now, Penguin) features three original stories set in Alagaësia. Hang on, isn’t that a cream you rub on a rash? Terry Goodkind’s The Nicci Chronicles also continues; third book SIEGE OF STONE (out now, Head Of Zeus) sees sorceress Nicci and her chums besieged after half a million warriors are…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Dark Horse Comics ▶ Writer Jody Houser ▶ Artists Stefano Martino, Keith Champagne ISSUES 1-3 Given that Eleven feels like an X-Men homage, and its references to Uncanny X-Men #134, you’d have thought Stranger Things would have been ripe for a spin-off comic. Neatly utilising outmoded devices like thought balloons, there’s a wistful, vintage feel to Jody Houser’s script, which understandably dials down the Merry Mutants references but adds plenty of evocative nods to Tolkien. Harking back to the first season, it charts Will Byers’s initial experiences after finding himself lost in the Upside Down. It’s essentially a solo outing for Will, with Mike, Dustin and Lucas restricted to flashbacks. Other characters are only mentioned in passing or, in Joyce’s case, reduced to an…

▶ RELEASED 10 January ▶ Publisher Rebellion ▶ Writer Barrie Tomlinson ▶ Artists Ian Kennedy, Vanyo, Keith Page COLLECTION Wildcat arrived at the tail-end of the UK SF comics boom in 1989 and only lasted 12 issues, but it had a great conceit: an anthology comic whose four strips – Turbo Jones, Joe Alien, Kitten Magee and Loner – were different strands of the same story, about a group of colonists escaping the destruction of Earth. Each strip followed one of the senior officers as they explored a continent on their potential new planet. Sadly this collection doesn’t give you a full flavour of the concept, as its brief is to collect just the Turbo Jones strips. It’s pretty gung-ho space adventure fare, as Jones (who says “My friends call…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 74 minutes | CD/download (vinyl to follow) ▶ Label Silva Screen SOUNDTRACK For many of a certain age, rewatching the BBC’s 1984 take on John Masefield’s book about a boy entrusted with a magical box has become a Christmas tradition, thanks to its seasonal setting and then cutting-edge blend of video effects and animation. Though Roger Limb, of the Beeb’s Radiophonic Workshop, was responsible for the incidental music, the main theme was actually decades old, its eerie riff on “The First Noel” extracted from a ’60s recording of Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony (1927). You’d be forgiven for not having realised that, considering how Limb weaves references to Hely-Hutchinson’s piece throughout. Given the story’s themes (a battle between old magic and new), the way his work mixes…

→ Jodie Whittaker will return in Doctor Who – though the Beeb’s confirmed we’ll have to wait until 2020 to see her. Showrunner Chris Chibnall will also be back for the next series. → New Star Trek Picard spin-off series to premiere in late 2019. → Stranger Things 3 episode titles will be “Suzie, Do You Copy?”, “The Mall Rats”, “The Case Of The Missing Lifeguard”, “The Sauna Test”, “The Source”, “The Birthday”, “The Bite” and “The Battle Of Starcourt”. → Nick Nolte joins Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian in an as-yet unconfirmed role. → Daredevil becomes the Man Without A TV Show, as Netflix wields the axe. With Iron Fist and Luke Cage also cancelled, maybe Jessica Jones and The Punisher should be worried… → The Good Place…

Betrayal, magic and the fate of an empire are at the heart of The Girl King – the debut fantasy novel by Mimi Yu. The book follows Lu and Min, two sisters with very different approaches to life, who are forced to take desperate measures when Lu is passed over for the throne… “The kernel of the book came to me as a teenager, daydreaming in class,” says Yu. “Two enemies, a girl and a boy, meet in a forest and emerge as allies. I knew I wanted to build a world that could help expand the milieu of the overall SFF imagination – for diasporic Asian readers, for readers of colour, for the reader I’d been as a child, devouring books containing elves and shape-shifters, but rarely featuring a…

Tell us a little about your protagonists. What’s their story? → The ’60s, small town USA. Young couple Molly and Gene are devastated by personal tragedy. Then a disaster strikes, and Molly, a nurse, must care for Cory, a dying orphan from the stars. It’s their fierce love for their innocent, unforgettable son versus everyone who would exploit him. Did anything particular spark the idea? → I read a couple of Ray Bradbury novels and thought I’d write a Halloween short story. Molly and Cory arrived fully formed. Everything else flowed in: the music; the issues; my mother’s friends; some SF/F I loved, and some I wanted to subvert. Did your experience in communications for Great Ormond Street feed into it? → Yes, quite a bit is set in a…

Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s going back to school. Just as the new TV show will feature a teenage slayer, the new series from Boom! Studios (taking over the licence from Dark Horse) will go back to the Chosen One’s formative days at Sunnydale High. With Joss Whedon acting as story consultant, and Jordie Bellaire and Dan Mora handling scripting and art duties respectively, the monthly book is designed for both new and seasoned fans. “This will absolutely be new-reader friendly, as we’re telling the story from the beginning, learning about Buffy’s world along with her,” says editor Jeanine Schaefer. “But for people who loved the original show, there’s so much that we’re going to be revisiting and putting a new spin on: ‘Do all the same people survive or die?…

→ Tjas Debeljak, email I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed The Crimes Of Grindelwald. It could get a bit confusing at times, as they were introducing new characters left and right, but they were by and large great. Jude Law as Dumbledore was a brilliant piece of casting, and he captures the twinkle in his eye from the get go. Yusuf’s story was a bit rushed, but captivating, and Leta was a definite standout, as a complicated character who has a history with Newt that’s largely left unexplored. I hope we get at least a few tidbits about their past relationship as the series continues. The only new character that felt a bit wasted was Nagini, whose main purpose seemed to be to look sad, so I hope her story will…

“IF YOU COOL US TOO MUCH, OUR PROTEINS STOP BEING FLEXIBLE” Science fiction talks about terraforming as the sort of basic assumption for humanity to leave the Earth. Sure, we’ll live in habitats for a while, but eventually places like Mars and possibly Venus will be terraformed, while Mercury and moons of the gas giants will have enclosed habitats with Earth-like conditions. We’ll make the places we go look like the place we came from. I think our optimism is getting away from us, though. Even if we could import a lot of water to it, Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field as strong as the Earth’s, so radiation will always be a problem; radiation that will strip away hydrogen (and therefore water) constantly. Venus has the same problem and…

SHERLOCK HOLMES “To me, the life-and-death situations and the danger was the least of it. What I enjoyed was how Holmes would know what a man was doing 10 hours ago by what was underneath his fingernails! I loved the deductive reasoning that Arthur Conan Doyle would put in. It was here that I learned that a character didn’t have to be an action hero to be a hero – he could be a brainy guy, and be every bit as compelling. Later on, some of my favourite characters to write were the brainy ones. Reed Richards, I’m looking at you!” KING KONG “The idea of this giant ape who loved this girl so much and was just trying to protect her really warms the heart. And he was ultimately…

▶ What can you say about Alita’s journey? Alita comes from a place where she’s a weapon, she’s a war machine. She was trained – you don’t have feelings, you don’t have family, you don’t even have a material body anymore. But then she meets Christoph’s character; to be able to have that relationship with someone, to be able to have a father, is something completely new to her. It’s really beautiful. ▶ What training did you do? I trained for five months with a man named Keith Hirabayashi who actually plays Sub Zero in Mortal Kombat. He is an amazing person, an amazing sensei. He trained Zoe Saldana for Avatar. He is brilliant; and what we did was some Muay Thai, some kickboxing, some Eagle Claw, which is Kung…

What’s the most compelling aspect of this series for you? All of our plotlines are based on actual reports. It’s a very interesting angle to be coming from, in what’s seen as a popular entertainment sci-fi genre, to be saying “This stuff happened.” Or, at least these people very convincingly told us what happened to them. What’s the most interesting thing that’s come out of diving back into these cases? What’s really interesting to an audience, and to Hynek and to me, is if Betty and Barney Hill say they were abducted by aliens and they’re sticking to the story for years, if it didn’t happen, why are they doing this? What’s behind it? There are questions that go beyond just sci-fi, or beyond this plot. What makes people make…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 128 minutes ▶ Director Christian Rivers ▶ Cast Robert Sheehan, Hera Hilmar, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang Mortal Engines’ problems are as massive as its vision (based on Philip Reeve’s YA book) of motorised towns and cities steamrolling their way over a far-future Earth. Tom (Robert Sheehan) is a citizen of a monstrous London, now a rumbling, tree-crushing juggernaut. He stops the assassination of esteemed visionary Valentine (Hugo Weaving) by scarred avenger, Hester (Hera Hilmar), but he overhears something he shouldn’t and Valentine kicks him off London. Joining with Hester, poor Tom is flung into breathless adventures, with much running, jumping and flying. What he lacks is humour, charm or characterisation. There are moments of flair and gusto in the action and camerawork, but the…

UK BBC Four, aired; streaming on iPlayer US TBC ▶ Showrunner Mark Gatiss ▶ Cast Simon Callow, Anjli Mohindra, Susan Penhaligon, Joshua Oakes-Rogers Welcome back, A Ghost Story For Christmas! The BBC’s strand of festive chillers originally ran from 1971 to 1978. The League Of Gentlemen are huge fans, so it made perfect sense to place this return in the capable hands of Mark Gatiss. A tight, economical piece (necessarily, on a BBC Four budget…), The Dead Room sees a veteran actor (Simon Callow) recording a spooky story in the Beeb’s Maida Vale Studios. Aubrey Judd has a guilty secret connected to the place, one which bubbles to the surface as he hears echoes from the past… Callow is superb, modulating smoothly from prickly pomposity, as he lectures his young producer…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | 15 | DVD/download ▶ Director Brian Henson ▶ Cast Melissa McCarthy, Elizabeth Banks, Maya Rudolph, Bill Barretta There’s precisely one gag in this film, repeated over and over: the puppets swear. Given that it was developed by the Jim Henson Puppet Company, you’d have hoped for something bolder. Puppet PI Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta) is forced to reteam with his human ex-partner from the LAPD, detective Connie Edwards (Melissa McCarthy). Their relationship was left in tatters. Now they must work together to solve a spate of murders. Who Framed Roger Rabbit found mileage in humans and cartoons coexisting, while Team America: World Police did the sweary, shagging puppet thing far better 14 years ago. But The Happytime Murders is just dull characters and a…

▶ RELEASED 21 JANUARY 2018 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD Intended as the start of a new franchise, with a second film already in production, Occupation is a slick but generic sci-fi shoot-’em-up. Fresh out of prison, Peter Bartlett (Temuera Morrison) and his family are taking a holiday when aliens land and start blowing things up; the survivors head into the woods and quickly form an immediately competent armed resistance. It’s adequate but utterly disposable action fare, and the baddies are basically hench Greys in Power Ranger suits. + Extras None.…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 1988 | 15 | Blu-ray ▶ Director James Signorelli ▶ Cast Cassandra Peterson, W Morgan Sheppard, Jeff Conaway, Susan Kellermann BLU-RAY DEBUT Finding fame as the B movie-skewering host of a weekly horror show, Cassandra Peterson’s turn as Elvira graduated to the big screen in this broad comedy chiller, part Carry On, part Scooby-Doo. Driven by doubles entendres – “Just grab a tool and start banging!” – the thinnest of plots sees the mistress of the dark heading to a small Massachusetts town for the reading of her great aunt’s will. Inheriting a recipe book with surprisingly sorcerous properties, she’s branded a “one woman Sodom and Gomorrah” by the uptight townsfolk and tangles with a local warlock, played with ghoulish relish by William Morgan Sheppard. Peterson…

▶ RELEASED 24 JANUARY 404 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Peter Higgins ▶ Publisher Gollancz It’s the end of the world in Peter Higgins’s Dragon Heart, the story of a desperate attempt to outrun Armageddon. His protagonists are Castrel, a hedge-witch and healer, and her husband Shay, a former shipbuilder. Their quiet rural idyll is rudely disrupted by a tide of chaos sweeping slowly but inexorably from the north, heralded by the appearance of inhuman riders who leave slaughter in their wake. So the couple flees south, encumbered first by Castrel’s pregnancy and then by their new-born child. Higgins’ prose tends towards the florid, and he paints vivid pictures in the tumble of words. It’s an interesting conceit to build a story around protagonists who have little understanding of the…

▶ RELEASED 10 JANUARY 304 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author David Owen ▶ Publisher Atom We tend to think that progress is inevitable – it’s easy to look at improvements in the world and assume things will always get better; for women, for minorities, for gay people. But with change often comes a backlash, and that’s also apparent today, with the rise of the alt right, of incels, of hatred and blame. This is the world of Kat Waldgrave, hiding in her room and only able to be herself online, and Wesley Graham, desperate to prove himself to his new friends by helping bring down the feminists who criticise their favourite YouTubers. But when they destroy Kat’s online life, her physical body also begins to disappear… From online geek culture…

▶ RELEASED 24 January 208 pages | Hardback/ebook ▶ Author Iain Reid ▶ Publisher Simon & Schuster Nobody likes an uninvited guest, especially after dark. Junior and Hen live a quiet existence on a remote farm, surrounded by vast fields of genetically modified canola. Then, one evening, a man named Terrence arrives with unexpected news… Junior has been selected to be part of The Installation, a project in deep space that will take him away from home, and from Hen, for a long time – and he has no choice in the matter. What’s more, Terrence’s employers are sending something to look after Hen while Junior’s away… This is, to some degree, a technological twist on the home invasion thriller, with the book rarely venturing outside of Junior and Hen’s…

Our pick of the paperbacks this month: Kate Mayfield’s THE PARENTATIONS ( 3 January, Point Blank). Stretching from Iceland in 1783 to present-day London, it centres on Elisabet and her family, rendered immortal after drinking from a mysterious pool. This brings them to the attention of a mysterious enemy… We said: “Evokes both the splendour and squalor of London. The prose is occasionally rather florid, but this is a terrific debut from an exciting new talent.” Tessa Gratton’s THE QUEENS OF INNIS LEAR (24 January) is basically a fantasy riff on King Lear, looking at the women around Lear, his wife and his daughters, and how his tragedy is also theirs. We said: “Gratton looks beyond the characters and creates a beautiful world, one where there’s magic in the trees and…

ROSWELL THAT ENDS WELL “My older sister and I watched [the original show]. [After my casting], I went back and watched it and read some of the book series. I’m a big fangirl at heart. I love anything where I’m going to be a part of people’s excitement in watching.” A WOMAN OF HER TIMES “She’s Mexican-American, as she was in the book series. She’s an activist and a scientist, and a woman ignited, as I like to say. She’s been away from Roswell for 10 years and has come back to take care of her dad and really just pass through. But she runs into Max Evans and finds out that he is alien and her whole world is turned upside down. It’s fun to have a character who…

As Kat – the lead character in David Owen’s new novel All The Lonely People – discovers, the internet can completely encapsulate someone’s identity. Hounded off social media by a trolling campaign, her physical body inexplicably disappears along with her virtual presence. “It’s about the perception of the importance of her online self to who Kat really is,” Owen tells Red Alert. “The internet provides her with various spaces where she feels safe to be herself. So when that online self is wiped away, she feels like there is nothing left of her at all, or certainly nothing worthwhile, and that induces the fade.” Ironically when Kat begins to vanish, it is her nemesis Wesley who tries to bring her back. “I definitely wanted Wesley to be far more than…

After spending much of her previous run in space, Carol Danvers is returning to New York in her new monthly series. But according to writer Kelly Thompson, you can’t keep Captain Marvel away from the stars forever. “It’s completely core to who she is,” says Thompson, who is paired with artist Carmen Carnero on the series. “But she has been away from Earth for a long time and after the reconnecting and soul searching she did with her family recently, she still finds herself needing to examine what all of that means for her, and where she fits into the world.” Thompson will also be dealing with the revelations about Carol’s past that came to light in the recent Life Of Captain Marvel miniseries. “We will definitely be building on…

Amy Jo Johnson may have left her Mighty Morphin Power Rangers character behind years ago to become a filmmaker and musician – not to mention acting on shows like Felicity and Flashpoint – but fans have not forgotten her stint as the Pink Ranger, AKA Kimberly Hart, who she played in three seasons and two feature films. “People like to give me their toys!” she tells Red Alert. “I have so many little Pink Rangers all over my house my daughter said to me, ‘Mom if someone broke in here they would think we were big Power Rangers fans.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah they would!’” Would you like to play the role again? → No, I think it’s nice that it’s been passed down to somebody else. Naomi Scott was amazing…

Everything got a little bit crazy at the end of The Magicians’ third season. Magic was returned to the world, only to be quickly siphoned over to the Library, as it became the entity controlling it all. In order to help contain it, our Brakebills University heroes have their memories wiped by the uni’s boss Dean Fogg (Rick Worthy) and the Order of the Library of the Neitherlands. Only the extremely powerful Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) knows the truth, but she’s imprisoned, and Eliot (Hale Appleman) is revealed to be possessed by the monster. We really meant it when we said it all went crazy. Executive producer and co-showrunner Sera Gamble tells Red Alert that, when season four begins, “Pretty much all of our cast now play characters who have…

→ Nicolas Roeg, acclaimed director of Don’t Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth and The Witches, has died aged 90. → Avengers 4 has a title and it’s… Endgame. → Margaret Atwood is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. The Testaments is due in September. → Black Lotus, a new 13-part Blade Runner anime spin-off, is coming to Crunchyroll. It’s set in 2032, and will feature some familiar characters. → Welcome to the Roald Dahl-verse! Netflix announces animated series inspired by the likes of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG and The Twits. → Judge Dredd publisher Rebellion announces launch of its own TV and movie studio in Oxfordshire. → Danish star Claes Bang to play Dracula in Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s BBC take…

YOU ONLY STAR TWICE! BOND 25 SPECTRE’s Léa Seydoux looks set to be the first Bond girl to encore in the superspy franchise since Eunice Gayson’s turn as Sylvia Trench in Dr No and From Russia With Love. The Daily Mail’s Baz Bamigboye claims director Cary Fukunaga himself says Seydoux will return as Madeleine Swann in the next adventure – alongside MI6 regulars Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Naomie Harris. Fukunaga tells Inquirer.net that Bond 25 will continue to mine 007’s damaged psyche: “In his first Bond movie, Casino Royale, [Daniel Craig] brought an incredible amount of vulnerability and humanity to the character, which was a big shift from Pierce Brosnan’s run. Bond is on a character arc that started with Casino Royale, and I will be carrying that on……

While we didn’t receive any mail by owl this month (must be because of Christmas), you did have plenty to say about the latest instalment in the Fantastic Beasts saga – shame nobody can agree on whether it’s any good or not. You’re also still rather vocal about the end of Jodie Whittaker’s first run in the TARDIS and remembering the legend that was Stan Lee. As ever, one lucky correspondent receives a book as reward for their missive – this month, Bob Pierce has bagged himself Warhammer short story collection Inferno! Volume 2.…

SFX’s high priestess of horror MIND MATTERS Last year talk turned to “elevated horror” once again – basically a cheeky way for people who think they don’t like horror to admit to liking genre movies. It’s not new, but one of the big focuses of 2018 horror was movies with mental health issues at the heart. Grief stricken family trauma flick Hereditary was at the forefront with Toni Collette’s performance as a mother dealing with the worst kind of inheritance holding it all together. Meanwhile Matt Holness’s Possum was a weird, creepy tale of past horror manifesting via a hideous puppet. Unsane looked more literally at a woman who was previously stalked questioning her sanity, while even the remake of Halloween had a thread about PTSD. The horror may come…

ANSON MOUNT SEEMS A LITTLE subdued, initially. It’s the morning after New York Comic Con’s Discovery panel, so it’d be understandable if he relaxed last night by sinking a couple of Saurian brandies. Maybe it’s just having to speak to journalists on a Sunday morning, before the caffeine’s kicked in. But Discovery’s newest cast member – looking every inch the silver fox in a cool leather jacket – perks up quickly enough when asked about his relationship with Star Trek, as winning the part of Christopher Pike (Kirk’s predecessor as Enterprise captain) is clearly something of a dream come true. “The original series went into syndication in my area of Tennessee around the age of eight,” Mount tells SFX. “Sunday night, six o’clock. I’ve been a fan since then, and…

IT’S THE MOMENT THAT IGNITES A UNIVERSE, sparks a modern mythology. A flare gun fires above a city “with the sudden fury of a thunderbolt”. Three words claim the sky – “three awesome words”, a caption assures us, though we already know this from the way the crowd points and gasps, frozen on the page in ink and astonishment. Bright red letters tremble in the smoke, taking form “as if by magic”. THE FANTASTIC FOUR! Yes, this inscrutable piece of sky-writing packs its own exclamation mark, because this is a universe where words are thrown like punches, propelled by the might of their own, self-created legend. “What in blazes does it MEAN?” asks a cop, unaware he’s on the opening page of a comic book that will one day sell…

Marvel UK would never have existed without Stan Lee. Considering himself “the world’s greatest Anglophile” – his wife came from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and their daughter JC later relocated to London – he became unhappy with how patchy the US imports were, and the manner in which homegrown titles Pow! and TV21 re-edited Marvel’s stories for a British readership. Creating a UK comic developed into a new ambition. After becoming Marvel’s publisher in 1972, Stan rescued their investment in an unreleased UK comic, set to contain a mixture of US reprints and new UK strips. Now featuring only American material, it was refashioned as The Mighty World Of Marvel, with a successful, profitable range of weekly (and later monthly) comics soon following. Now a regular visitor, Lee enjoyed increasingly packed press schedules…

From the start your character, Amy, and Detective Wolgast (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) spend a lot of screen time together on the road. Yes, we had to bond, and plus, I had to connect to Amy. So, when I connected to Amy, I connected to Wolgast, and then I connected to Mark-Paul. So, whenever we were on camera, or off camera, it was always something special. What’s your friendship like? It was loud. It was jokes. It was sometimes serious, crying, or I just needed someone to hold. Amy’s situation is pretty dire. Are you able to shake that heaviness off? Whenever I go to work, I always want to have fun. You don’t always want to go, “Ugh. I’m on set. I’m going to be focused. Just leave me alone. I’m…

▶ What was more exciting – working on a James Cameron script or being directed by Robert Rodriguez? Well, I tend to concentrate on the task at hand. That is a different perspective. I loved the job. I really liked working with these people, apart from the fact I admire them for their immense competence and know-how and all of that. But I still have to do it properly and invest my energies in what they hired me for. They didn’t hire me for my enthusiasm for them! ▶ Had you met Robert before? You have a strong relationship with Quentin Tarantino, who is good friends with Robert… Yes, but I’m sure he has a strong relationship with other people I’ve never heard of! I also – it might come…

When did you first find out that Split was a sequel to Unbreakable, and when did you know that Night had a part for you in Glass? It was the same night. We had just gone to do a test screening, and Night just sort of let me in on it. And I just had the same reaction that everyone else did in the movie, which is that I screamed and jumped around. I said, “No way! That’s mad!” I just got so excited and completely geeked out, and then just said, “Oh, you have to let me come to set. You have to let me see this!” He was super-cool, and said, “What makes you think you’re not coming along for the ride?” When did you first see Unbreakable?…

“YOU NEED BOOKS THAT MORE THAN EVER ASK THESE BIG QUESTIONS ABOUT SOCIETY” For those of us who sometimes daydream of living on other planets, it’s easy to let the sheer excitement obscure the potential difficulties. As Charlie Jane Anders succinctly puts it as we discuss the idea of humanity being best evolved to live on Earth: “Any other planet is going to be a fixer-upper at best.” It’s a subject that’s at the centre of Anders’ new novel, The City In The Middle Of The Night, which takes place on a tidally locked planet where one side is constantly in darkness and the other in light. Humanity lives in two cities, each located on a narrow strip of twilight where the temperature is neither too high nor too low.…

What’s your working relationship with James Wan like? → I always liked to annoy him! It’s funny to get under his skin a little bit, and make him shake his head. Then I know when to back off. He definitely can push me to my limits, and get great things out of me. We had this one great take, where I’m trying not to cry; my voice is cracking up. He got me to this spot. We talked about it, then he left me alone. I was like, “Alright, I’m just going to keep doing it, keep doing it,” and he used it. He set the playing field, then when those beautiful moments happen, he honours it, and lets the movie take its shape. At this stage, how comfortable are…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 86 minutes ▶ Director Diederik Van Rooijen ▶ Cast Shay Mitchell, Kirby Johnson, Stana Katic, Grey Damon This horror potboiler has a decent set-up. A former cop (Shay Mitchell) with emotional issues – but who doesn’t have the slightest belief in ghosts – starts a night-shift job in a Boston hospital morgue. After a mutilated female cadaver is delivered, weird things start happening, from mechanical glitches to freaky shadows on video camera footage. The film might have worked as either an old-school, hard-gore nasty, or as a slow-burn mood piece (like the Paul Whitehouse segment in the recent Ghost Stories). There are suggestions of the latter approach in the film’s first half, which is amusingly fun in a generic way, with Mitchell mostly roaming…

BEST MOMENT → When the Doctor packs in a sentient universe disguised as a talking frog in “It Takes You Away” – a sequence whose sublime madness sums up the limitless possibilities of Doctor Who. NITPICKS → When the Doctor and co are menaced by Robertson’s goons in “Arachnids In The UK”, why doesn’t Yaz mention that they’re pointing their guns at a police officer? DID YOU KNOW? → An eyeless, snouted, horribly clawed monster played by 7’ 8” basketball player Paul Sturgess was completely cut out of “It Takes You Away”. STAR TURN → The award for best guest star has to go to Alan Cumming. His performance as James I in “The Witchfinders” is more arch than anything seen since Graham Crowden’s infamous scenery-chewing as Soldeed in “The…

UK TBC US NBC, returns 7 January ▶ Showrunner Jeff Rake ▶ Cast Melissa Roxburgh, Josh Dallas, Jack Messina, Athena Karkanis EPISODES 1.01-1.09 What would you do if you were on a flight that seemingly zapped out of existence, only to reappear more than five years later? That’s the central conceit driving Manifest, the latest show with more than a whiff of Lost about it. Flight 828 to New York vanishes off the radar, seemingly gone for good, for half a decade. The passengers, meanwhile, only experience a brief moment of stormy weather, a few unexplained light flashes and then a confused welcome – and no little suspicion – from everyone else once they’re back on the ground. “The main characters simply aren’t engaging enough” It might seem a little unfair…

RELEASED 14 JANUARY 2018 | 15 | DVD Sleep paralysis is a ripe area for a horror film to explore, but Mara is only a partial success. A troubled psychologist (Olga Kurylenko) investigates an apparent murder, only to find herself targeted by a demon that kills people in their sleep. It’s creatively shot and Kurylenko stands out in a generally good cast, but the scares are extremely rote and prone to cliché (spooky CCTV footage lost its bite a long time ago…). This isn’t a bad film, but as a horror, it’s more than a little bland. + Extras None.…

▶ RELEASED 17 JANUARY 544 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Gareth Hanrahan ▶ Publisher Orbit There’s a genuine streak of strangeness running through this first book of new series The Black Iron Legacy, a grotesque weirdness reminiscent of novels like China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. The story, concerning factions in a neutral city-state fighting to control (or destroy) the power of the old gods, and the group of misfits who get caught up in the conflict, is one that could easily have been rendered mundane if constructed from more familiar character types, placed in a more familiar setting. However, debut author Gareth Hanrahan’s created a world where alchemy makes monsters and ghouls live beneath the surface of the city. It’s a disturbing world, and because of that you pay more…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 416 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Amanda Bouchet ▶ Publisher Piatkus When you’re writing a science fiction story about a team of misfits on a spaceship rebelling against a fascist galactic regime and your lead character is named Quintessa Novalight, it’s probably fair to say that you’re not really going for “subtle”. Indeed, Nightchaser is about as subtle as George Lucas doing some retroactive CGI tinkering. That’s not to say it’s unlikeable, however. While its premise may be a melange of Firefly, Dark Matter, Star Wars and a million other space operas, Nightchaser does have an interesting crew, a diverting love affair at its heart (featuring a guy named Shade who, funnily enough, is made up of shades of both Han Solo and Mal Reynolds) and…

▶ RELEASED 10 January 496 pages | Paperback/ebook ▶ Author Mimi Yu ▶ Publisher Gollancz In almost every way, this is your standard genre fantasy: youthful lead characters, a contested throne, subjugated kingdoms, people with supernatural abilities. There’s the usual tentative romance and political shufflings, an untrustworthy religious type and, of course, a prophecy. What sets The Girl King apart from its kin is its Asian-inspired setting. Most genre fantasy draws on a European idiom, with non-European influences used for nations and people away from the main action. Here, Asian (Chinese, specifically) culture and history is a central inspiration, filtering through in everything from royal dress and court customs to the structure of society. That said, this is not a Chinese fantasy in the wuxia mould; there’s far less elaborately…

▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! ▶ Publisher Image Comics ▶ Writer Chelsea Cain ▶ Artists Kate Niemczyk ISSUES 1-3 Mockingbird’s Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk reunite for a sparky sci-fi satire that takes a swing at institutional misogyny via a feminist subversion of the werewolf myth. In the near future, a mutated version of toxoplasmosis has caused a percentage of women to transform into big cats when they menstruate. The government has reacted by implementing a fiercely repressive scheme to keep women in check via the chemical suppression of oestrogen. It doesn’t work on everybody, however, including young Maude, who begins to reject the drugs. Meanwhile, her cop parents investigate the latest spate of cat attacks… Cain’s scripting is sharp, smart and frequently very funny. Niemczyk is a good fit for…