COMIC BOOK GUY (SEASON 36)

Welcome to Comic Book Guy! Season 36 gives us Lobo riding a space dolphin into battle, Luke Cage punching his way through a disco-fueled mind-control conspiracy, the Hulk dealing with yet another gamma-powered lunatic, and the Crypt Keeper returning to remind us that terrible people still make excellent horror victims. Between Lobo, Luke Cage: The Purple Man, The Hulk 3 and Tales from the Crypt, subtlety has wisely been left off the schedule entirely.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

At last, the Crypt Keeper returns to theaters with four morality plays, approximately seventeen bad puns and enough awful people receiving gruesome comeuppance to make EC Comics proud. John Kassir slipping back into the role is easily the movie’s biggest win, and individual segments like The Last Supper and Til Death Do Us Part capture the nasty little twist-ending spirit of the series quite well. The problem is the same one that plagues most horror anthologies: just as one story gets interesting, it ends and we start over with an entirely new cast and premise. By the fourth helping of karmic slaughter, the formula begins feeling less like a feature film and more like four television episodes trapped in a trench coat. Fun in pieces, but the Crypt Keeper was probably better off keeping these tales on the small screen.

LUKE CAGE: THE PURPLE MAN

Apparently the best way to defeat the Purple Man is with Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Misty Knight and enough disco lighting to violate several fire codes. Moving the action through Studio 54 gives the sequel a terrific identity, Matthias Schweighöfer makes Killgrave suitably sleazy, and Sabrina Carpenter is inspired casting as Dazzler, whose powers finally justify turning half the movie into a light show. The mind-control material gets appropriately nasty without losing the pulpy fun, while Luke punching his way through psychic manipulation is about as Luke Cage a solution as one could hope for. Throw in Cottonmouth waiting patiently for the next sequel and The Purple Man feels like Marvel street-level storytelling filtered through a particularly sweaty disco ball.

LOBO

If ever there were a comic-book character who demanded a movie built around gratuitous violence, obscene alien nonsense and weaponized space dolphins, it is Lobo. Vin Diesel is well cast as the Main Man, and Doug Liman wisely treats subtlety as something that happened to another franchise. The Bludhound/Gold Star sibling melodrama is ridiculous even by DC cosmic standards, while Rob’s Disease exists largely to provide perhaps the most disgusting death scene of the season. And yes, Lobo riding a dolphin named Lundgren into battle is every bit as stupid as it sounds—which is precisely why it works. Lobo is loud, juvenile and proudly tasteless. In other words, surprisingly faithful.

THE HULK 3

By the third Hulk movie, Bruce Banner has apparently achieved the impossible: emotional stability, a functional marriage and a reasonably civil relationship with Thunderbolt Ross. Naturally, Glenn Talbot responds by becoming a giant gamma-powered nightmare and murdering his way through the supporting cast. Timothy Olyphant makes for a strong Abomination, especially once Talbot’s resentment turns into full-blown monster-fueled revenge, while Mark Duplass continues to sell the quieter Bruce material better than one might expect. She-Hulk joining the final brawl gives the climax some extra muscle, though the movie occasionally feels more interested in setting up Project RED than doing anything especially new with Hulk himself. Still, watching Bruce finally choose to become Hulk rather than fear him gives the trilogy a satisfying bit of closure.