Comic Book Lucky Dip - Fantastic 4 Life Story #1

We’ve got another lucky dip and oh look, it’s the Fantastic 4 Life Story #1. The Spider-man Life story mini-series was fantastic and brought me round on Chip Zdarsky after being less than impressed with his Jughead run. But this story isn’t by Chip Zdarsky, not is it a spider-man run, instead this story is written by Mark Russel, responsible for the 1970s reboot of DC’s Prez, and the Wonder Twins series as part of Brian Michael Bendis’ short-lived Wonder Comics imprint. The art is by Sean Izaakse with Nolan Woodard on colours. But enough preamble (going into the details of the aims of the Life Story series would be counterproductive to the nature of this format), let’s take a look at this.

Disney+ Retrospective - Love, Victor Season 2 Episodes 4-6

We’re back and for another round for Love Victor, and in our next exciting episode:

• Victor and Benji get cockblocked at the coffee house
• Victor and Benji get cockblocked at Benji’s house
• And Victor and Benji get cockblocked in the Janitor’s closet

Ratchetrospective: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

It’s been a while since the last of the Ratchetrospective reviews, but then it’s been a while since the last Ratchet and Clank game too, The movie tie-in game came out in 2016 and this game in 2021, a full 5 years and a full console generation later. It’s not as if Insomniac Games was idle during that period, in 2018 they released fantastic Spider-man game: Marvel’s Spider-man, and in 2020, as the PS5 launched they launched a Spider-man Spinoff title featuring Miles Morales as the titular character. But the PS5 and its solid-state drive and the some of the features of its new controller opened opportunities for Ratchet and Clank to shine. Also, they set the seeds the multiverse years before Spider-man made it cool, This is Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.

Disney+ Retrospective - Love, Victor Season 2 Episodes 1-3

The second season of Love, Victor was released not long after the first in the UK, it had been about a year in the US. The cliff-hanger of season 1 is about to be resolved, so in the series’ first exciting episode

• Isabel and Adrian play monopoly;
• Mia opens a box;
• And Armando buys a Turtle

Black Widow

Well, Endgame came and went, we got a Spider-man sequel and then COVID happened and everything got pushed back, Black Widow did eventually come out but about a year after it was intended to, its release continually delayed thanks to movie theatres being shuttered over the pandemic. Even then, the release was a partial release as a premium film on Disney+, which Scarlett Johansen, whose contract gave her a portion of box office receipts, was not happy about.

But that’s a matter for a different discussion. Black Widow is the first true film in the phase 4 slate, made up of both films and TV shows in the Disney+ Sphere. The timing though is a bit weird; Black Widow had died following Endgame and she’s been a presence in the Marvel-sphere since Iron Man 2, she was long overdue a headline role, but now it couldn’t be in a movie taking place in the present.

It's hard to attribute exactly the amount of money Black Widow made following its release, it made just shy of $400m in theatres, and $66m in its opening weekend on Disney+, though how that translates into revenue I’m not sure. But let's take a look at it and see if it holds up.