noir

| Witches Tales #25 (Harvey, 1954) is a classic among two different groups of people for two different reasons that involve the same story.  Pre-Code Horror collectors love that classic terrifying yet fascinating cover by Warren Kremer, which purports to represent the interior feature named "What's Happening at… 8:30 PM," while there's been a lot of historical interest around the interior story of that name by artist Howard Nostrand and scripter Nat Barnett.  But fascinatingly, Kremer seems to be telling a very different…

Image: Soho PressIt’s hard to resist a sci-fi noir, especially when the main character is a reluctant gumshoe—and even more when the setting is as unpredictable as a crime-riddled city that happens to be underwater. Chris McKinney follows up 2021's acclaimed Midnight, Water City with Eventide, Water City next year, and io9 is thrilled to have a first look at the second entry in his Water City Trilogy.Here’s a bit of context to catch you up on the sequel’s stakes:Year 2150: Eight years after the murder of Akira Kimura,…

THIS WEEK: You’ve heard of Batman: Year One, but what about an origin for the city where he lives? Tom King and Phil Hester have you covered with the first issue of Gotham City: Year One.  Note: the reviews below contain spoilers. If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdict. Gotham City: Year One #1 Writer: Tom KingPenciller: Phil HesterInker: Eric GapsturColorist: Jordie BellaireLetterer: Clayton CowlesCover Artists:…

Image via Quiver Distribution There is something undeniably romantic about film noir that that makes Neil Labute’s Out Of The Blue one of his most alluring cinematic concoctions to date. Fatally flawed anti-heroes, lascivious femme fatales, and a grotesque gallery of villainous hoods await those willing to embrace this genre. The film has plenty in the way of sexually charged encounters, forbidden affairs, and more adulterous shenanigans than audiences can handle. Those are the ground rules, those are the…

Writing a crime novel now appears to be a well-established rung on the career ladder of white male television entertainers, achieved with varying degrees of success and skill, so it’s a relief to find that Frankie Boyle’s first work of fiction is an enjoyably dark and entertaining tranche of Glasgow noir. It contains all the deft wordplay you’d expect of him, and a few well-aimed, drive-by satirical shots at political targets along the way.Set in the aftermath of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Meantime is…

Image: Prime VideoAmazon’s The Boys wrapped its third season a few days ago, and now the raunchy superhero satire is taking a break until season four hits sometime presumably next year. A lot happened throughout the eight-episode season, and the show is shaping up to have a sharply different future from the source material by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. And now that things have come to their conclusion, showrunner Eric Kripke has opened up about what’s next for the heroes and dickheads of the beloved series. In a…

Tom Cruise and Samantha Morton in Minority Report.Image: DreamWorksThe best movie rewatches happen when you revisit a film you know you liked, but don’t really remember. That happened to me last week with Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report. I saw it in theaters when it was released 20 years ago this week but have probably only seen it once since then. So I was honestly very excited to sit down and dive back into a Steven Spielberg movie I had little to no memory of... outside of memes of Tom Cruise moving…

Are you a fan of hard case crime on the streets? Then get ready for hard case crime in the ring! In the upcoming Aftershock “One Shock,” Hell is a Squared Circle by writer Chris Condon, artist Francesco Biagini, colorist Mark Englert, letterer Dave Sharpe, and with a main cover by Jacob Phillips and an incentive cover by Francesco Francavilla, Ted “The Irish Mooska” Walsh is a wrestling heel who is trying to escape his past… but with blood on his boxing gloves, can he really hope to escape his previous mistakes? Hell is…

A fog of menace descends on this hauntingly photographed, oppressive and driftingly directionless movie from Lucile Hadzihalilovic. It has the intensively curated atmosphere of body-horror noir – if not the conventional plot structure – and some way into the running time you might find yourself awakened from its reverie of formless anxiety by a sudden, horrifying stab of violence. It’s a flourish of brutality whose meaning and motivation are never entirely revealed (there is no question of calling the cops in this…

Korean director Park Chan-wook was once the master of gonzo revenge violence but with the adaptation of the Sarah Waters novel The Handmaiden in 2016 he pivoted with flair to the elegantly designed suspense thriller. And it is in this spirit that he’s back in Cannes with this sensational black-widow noir romance, featuring a glorious leading turn from the Chinese star Tang Wei, who has bettered her iconic performance in Ang Lee’s 2007 spy drama Lust, Caution. She is effortlessly charismatic and (that overworked word)…