BACK IN the forecast this week: Stormy weather, with a new front of hot air. So show the cartoons now on our radar, after Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime special attorney, said it was he who paid out for Stormy, the Vegas-hopping porn star. “In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal […]

THE CHANGE seems to arrive not as coincidence: The past four films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have featured a female lead of color. In the 15 months since “Doctor Strange” faced accusations of “whitewashing” Tilda Swinton’s ancient mystic character in the film, Marvel has embraced its fuller turn toward diversity. This Friday’s “Black Panther” […]

When Ryan Coogler was a kid in Oakland, Calif., an older cousin got him hooked on comic books. X-Men. Spider-Man. He liked all of them, but he was looking for more. “I went to the comic book shop that was by my school and asked if they had any black characters,” Coogler recalled. That was the […]

THE OSCARS’ long history of winners based on Hollywood politics and sketchy horse-trading has left the barn door wide open for sites like Rotten Tomatoes to provide a counter-consensus about just what is “best.” And that is where a burning-bright young director like Ryan Coogler comes in. Despite all the acclaim for Coogler’s first two films, 2013’s […]

“Black Panther” is a stunning visual and cultural achievement that takes superhero cinema where it’s never gone before by not being afraid to embrace its blackness. That may seem like stating the obvious for a movie that features an all-black cast and tells the tale of an African king ruling over a never-conquered nation, but […]

IT’S THE year’s most tweeted-about film on the planet. It’s selling more advance IMAX tickets than any Marvel movie ever. And now, according to tracking estimates, it’s got a real shot at having the biggest February debut ever. Disney/Marvel’s “Black Panther” continues to elevate its box-office expectations when it officially opens Friday, from early predictions […]

“Black Panther” is a stunning visual and cultural achievement that takes superhero cinema where it’s never gone before by not being afraid to embrace its blackness. That may seem like stating the obvious for a movie that features an all-black cast and tells the tale of an African king ruling over a never-conquered nation, but […]

ADRIAN TOMINE’S acclaimed graphic novel “Killing and Dying,” newly released in paperback, often treads along the fault lines that run between family and self, sometimes mesmerizingly showing the shifting ground beneath parent and child. For Tomine, growing into fatherhood provided a crucial portal to rendering these deep and tenuous relationships. He has two daughters, age 8 […]

“WE ARE one year into my presidency, and it’s time to finally admit that I am absolutely crushing it.” So proclaims animated President Trump to open the premiere of “Our Cartoon President,” Showtime’s half-hour comedy, created by Stephen Colbert and his “Late Show” executive producer Chris Licht, that kicks off a 10-episode run Sunday. The […]

The crown for the world’s greatest black superhero has always been worn by the Black Panther. He was also the world’s first. And for more than 50 years, Marvel Comics’ African legend has been hurling a black-gloved fist to the stereotypical notion that superheroes of color only work as side characters. T’Challa, the man under […]

Teaser trailer indeed. Sony and Columbia Pictures just released the first look at “Venom,” starring Tom Hardy in the title role. But the trailer had one moment that stood out over everything else: No Venom. Watch the #Venom teaser trailer now. 10.5.18 pic.twitter.com/D7OFACoetA — Venom Movie (@VenomMovie) February 8, 2018 That’s right. The one thing drawing fanboys […]

JUST HOW good has President Trump been for the magazine business? Well, it’s worth noting that no other president in the past dozen years has twice inspired the best cover of the year, as judged by the American Society of Magazine Editors. That’s right: The commander in chief whose golf clubs are known for hanging fake […]

Ryan Reynolds and Twentieth Century Fox have posted the first full trailer for “Deadpool 2″ online, and one thing is clear: This movie is going to have a lot of Cable. The YouTube video for the trailer is titled “Deadpool, Meet Cable,” and that’s exactly what we get in the opening seconds. The video has a visually […]

EVERY DOZEN parsecs or so, the Star Wars universe seems to expand. Just one day after the world glimpsed “Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke in the first full trailer for this summer’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” Disney announced Tuesday that “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will write and produce a […]

“A LANDMARK adventure.” “A new film classic.” “An answered prayer.” And those hosannas are just from Rolling Stone’s four-star review alone. As the embargo lifted at noon Tuesday for reviews of “Black Panther,” the first wave of criticism brought a torrent of superlatives for Ryan Coogler’s cultural event of a Marvel movie, which opens Feb. […]

Q. DID YOU hear the one about Devin Nunes’s Super Bowl party? A. He promised to serve some political red meat but instead gave everyone a nothingburger. So went the punchline verdict that has populated a wave of columns and cartoons in recent days. This week, the political flame is being turned up on how […]

Q. DID YOU hear the one about Devin Nunes’s Super Bowl party? A. He promised to serve some political red meat but instead gave everyone a nothingburger. So went the punchline verdict that has populated a wave of columns and cartoons in recent days. This week, the political flame is being turned up on how […]

THE ANNIE Awards, the industry honor bestowed by peers in animation, can serve up some intriguing tea leaves before the Academy Awards — partly because the Annie voters are not so steeped in a recent tradition of handing Disney almost all the hardware. Four times within the past decade, in fact, the Annies have diverged from the […]

CONCERNS BEGAN to spin like a maneuvering Millennium Falcon last summer when the directors of the Han Solo spinoff film (“Lego Movie” masterminds Phil Lord and Chris Miller) were unceremoniously dumped well into shooting, and old pro Ron Howard was brought aboard to close those “creative differences” with Lucasfilm. Was the “Solo” anthology film, which lands May […]

AFTER WEEKS of big-game speculation, buildup and angling for advantage between two fierce sides, the February kickoff has finally arrived. And by that, we of course mean the anticipated release of “the Nunes memo.” [What is the memo?] On Friday, as The Washington Post reports, President Trump is expected to give a big thumbs-up to […]

WILL THIS month’s “Black Panther” play out on such sites as Rotten Tomatoes and Facebook like a repeat of another Disney franchise film, “The Last Jedi”? Because in recent days, it’s beginning to smell like deja vu all over again. This week has already brought the rise of an encore social media campaign by the Facebook group […]

Shadow of the Colossus Developed by: Bluepoint Games and JAPAN Studio Published by: Sony Interactive Entertainment Available on: PlayStation 4 A decade or so ago when the “Can video games be art?” debate was in full flare, no other popular game seemed to be cited as often as “Shadow of the Colossus” as an example […]

MORT WALKER was one of those people whose eyes smiled every bit as brightly as their mouth. And so, when I sat next to the tuxedoed cartoonist at a 2010 Jersey City dinner and asked him whether he ever had trouble coming up with ideas, he got a playful glint in his eye before he […]

AFTER SEVEN steady decades at the drafting board, Jules Feiffer believes he’s doing some of his best work these days. And still, as he turns 89 today, what he sometimes renders most intensely is judgment toward his earlier, wobblier artistic self, back when he was trying to figure everything out. Perhaps that blunt self-criticism is just the […]

Finding Paradise Developed by: Freebird Games Published by: Freebird Games Available on: PC, Mac For much of their history video games have inspired conversations about emotions such as loneliness, regret, or the nagging sense of time wasted. (This is not a judgment against games, simply an observation — who hasn’t heard a story about a […]

EVEN ON the road, during an 18-hour car trip through the South and well away from the Washington office, Ann Telnaes couldn’t get President Trump out of her head. It was one month before the inauguration, and the editorial artist had been thinking of doing a book of Trump cartoons, yet a friend’s suggestion kept […]

AS THE Trump administration hurtles into its second year, the time is prime to look beyond our would-be border walls and see how other nations are seeing us. Why do we need an outsider’s viewpoint anyway, you might ask. Well, as such cartoonists as Tom Janssen of the Netherlands illustrate: Without a little awareness, our […]

FROM THE footlights of Los Angeles, legendary veterans in two fields joined forces to achieve an Academy Award milestone. Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers great, is the first former NBA player to receive an Oscar nomination, which he got for producing “Dear Basketball,” recognized in the animated short category. Bryant teamed with director and supervising […]

ONE OF the more essential obligations of a hall of fame is to illuminate anew the world-class talents that generations may have forgotten. This week, the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame fulfilled that function brilliantly. That’s because too few fans of American pop culture recognize the name Jackie Ormes. Born more than a century […]

When actress Candice Patton was cast as Iris West on the CW series “The Flash” back in 2014, she was not sure what she was jumping into. She knew the basics: Iris West was a classic DC Comics character (debuting in Showcase No. 4 back in 1956). She’s one of the most important women in […]

  THE LEAD White House doctor, Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, has spoken, and the physician who performed the ultimate “president’s fitness challenge” declared Trump as fit as a fiddle, at least for a Stradivarius his age. Yes, the doc said Tuesday, the president’s “overall health is excellent.” Plus, he scored “exceedingly well” on a cognitive […]

Cress Williams began to see his acting career taking off in the early 1990s, when Hollywood wasn’t taking superhero comic books nearly as seriously as it does today. When that attitude started changing at the turn of the century, and heroes on the big screen and eventually on TV became big business, the 47-year-old always […]

The following article contains major spoilers for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” as well as the plot (such as it is) of the anti-feminist fan remake.  “Star Wars: The Last Jedi: De-Feminized Fanedit” is a divisive film, even within the community of men’s rights activists for whom it was made. Some appreciated the recut, which pares the run time of […]

For those looking for a black superhero to crash the network television party, there was always only one hope: Black Lightning. There exists a small Mount Rushmore of black comic book superheroes to begin with, and most have already begun their path in the world of entertainment. There’s Marvel’s Black Panther, who will make his cinematic debut (with Chadwick […]

THROUGHOUT “MARCH,” Rep. John Lewis’s memoir of the civil rights movement, hovers the presence of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It is King who first reached out to the then-teenage Lewis in the 1950s, and King who spoke on the same dais as Lewis in 1963 Washington, and King who went to Selma to […]