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Make room for Mota, the man from Mars! Mota enlists a scientist and two thugs to lay the groundwork for a full-scale invasion from space. Only the heroes of Fowler Aerial Patrol can save us! Republic's serial adventure ought to carry an "80% Recycled" label -- even the flying disc craft is second-hand, bearing a Japanese Rising Sun flag from a previous wartime serial. Flying Disc Man from Mars Blu-ray Olive Films 1950 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 169 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring Walter Reed, Lois Collier, Gregory Gaye (or Gay), James Craven, Harry Lauter, Richard Irving, Sandy Sanders, Michael Carr. Cinematography Walter Strenge Film Editors Cliff Bell, Sam Starr Original Music Stanley Wilson Special Effects Howard and Theodore Lydecker Written by Ronald Davidson Produced by Franklin Adreon Directed by Fred C. Brannon

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Looking at the gloriously redundant Flying Disc Man from Mars,...

The 1980s were an important period for comics as they transitioned from the Bronze Age to the Modern or Dark Age of Comics with books like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. It was also an incredibly creative time for Marvel Comics with Chris Claremont and John Byrne beginning the decade with their “Dark Phoenix Saga” epic in Uncanny X-Men, Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil as well as the first event crossover Secret Wars and ending with the rise of artists, like Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee, who would later found Image Comics.

At East Coast Comicon, comics historian and researcher of the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe Peter Sanderson, former Uncanny X-Men editor and Daredevil writer Ann Nocenti, and former Amazing Spider-Man editor Jim Salicrup chatted and swapped stories about what Marvel was really like in the 1980s.

After saying comics were his drug of choice then, Jim Salicrup...

Marvel's Daredevil TV show heads to Netflix in April. And as the trailer demonstrates, it contains welcome defenestration...

This article contains potential spoilers for Marvel's Daredevil Netflix series.

Marvel finally let fans have a look at the Daredevil series coming to Netflix, with the release of the first trailer. It's safe to say...this looks nothing at all like anything we've seen from Marvel Studios so far. Despite the fact that Daredevil is a TV production, it looks far more cinematic than Agents Of Shield or even Agent Carter which, even on their best days, still look like ABC TV shows.

Daredevil, on the other hand, looks like it has a little more in the tank than Marvel's other TV efforts. So, aside from the numerous nods to the character's Marvel Comics history, we took a look to see what else sets Daredevil apart from the rest of its Marvel Studios brothers and sisters.

[May contain slight spoilers]

Towards the end of Gangster Squad, there’s a moment where Josh Brolin’s iron-jawed, principled cop Jon O’Mara and Sean Penn’s rubber-faced mob kingpin Mickey Cohen trade punches. As Ruben Fleischer’s camera yet again spins into slow motion, the fighters are drenched by the flumes of a recently-smashed fountain. The overbearing sentiment to this scene isn’t one of absorption or tension – it’s an acknowledgement that the sequence is incredibly similar to Simon Pegg’s model village fight with Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz. Fleischer’s film has already borrowed liberally from Martin Scorsese, Alan Parker and Raymond Chandler at this point, so a little more mimicry isn’t too severe an offence.

Yet the Hot Fuzz comparison is an especially unfavourable one for Gangster Squad. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg lampooned the most high-octane entries in the buddy cop canon, yet their tongue-in-cheek take...

Directed by: Michael Gallagher

Written by: Michael Gallagher, Glasgow Phillips

Cast: Caitlin Gerard, Melanie Papalia, Shane Dawson, Andrew James Allen, Liza Weil, Roger Bart, Keith David

There are plenty of great horror movie slashers that you know by name: Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Victor Crowley, Cropsey, Leslie Vernon. While certainly all different in appearance, they share two key commonalities: a) they all kill teenagers, and, more importantly, b) they each have a backstory. Some are chilling, some are tragic, but each of those killers has a distinct and compelling reason for doing what they do.

This is where Smiley falls short.

Sort of like a Candyman for the cyber generation, Smiley is the story of Ashley (Caitlin Gerard), a sweet, naïve girl who heads off to college after the untimely death of her mother. She moves into a house with slutty party gal Proxy (Melanie Papalia), who of...

Facsimile of Edgar Allan Poe's original manuscript for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", from the Susan Jaffe Tane collection, Cornell University. Image via Wikipedia.

On this day in 1841 in Philadelphia, Pa, Edgar Allen Poe’s first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was published in Graham’s Magazine.

It has been called the first detective story ever, with C. Auguste Dupin as the first true detective in fiction, the precursor of everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Scooby Doo, from Veronica Mars to Angel Investigations, from Castle to Psych. The Dupin character established many literary devices which authors have used ever since: the brilliant detective, his friend who serves as narrator, and the last revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it.

And of course, without detective stories, we don’t have Detective Comics… which means we don’t have either DC or Batman.

Science fiction writers of every generation had their own visions of the future, but what if their predictions became a reality? Rob dons his silver suit and delves into the archives to find out...

To me, living in 2010 seems like the future (well a bit anyway), and some of the things people dreamt of in years gone by have indeed come to pass. We have iPods which contain all our music, videos and data like the PADDs in Star Trek, have unlocked parts of the human genome, cloned livestock and created primitive artificial life. And while we don't have jet-packs, teleporters or the ability to travel to Mars, current technology hasn't don't too badly on the whole.

We love our technology, all sleek, thin and mobile, full of wafer-thin elements that can pass data at massive rates, wrapped up in shiny and lovingly-designed bits of kit. The ‘aesthetic of the...

Cowboy film pin-up Virginia Carroll has died at the age of 95.

The model-turned-actress passed away of natural causes last week (23Ju09).

Carroll made her film debut in 1935's Roberta and she went on to appear alongside cowboy stars including Roy Rogers and Gene Autry in movies such as The Masked Rider and Overland Trail. She was also a regular on The Roy Rogers Show.

Her first husband was actor Ralph Byrd, who played Dick Tracy on the big and small screen.