🦟 stolen friends and disease

This Week

• 📺: the ghosts of things before
• 💽: a giant elephant in the room
• 🦸: a jam-packed lagoon
• 🎥: up for the challenge

Oh boy... first newsletter on Ghost. Hopefully I didn't break anything. I moved everyone's e-mails and Stripe ID's over so I believe that should all be good (and deleted every record from Buttondown). I also scrubbed unsubscribers so hopefully no one is getting this who doesn't want it... If anything comes through as broken on your end, please let me know.

I'm marking this transition to Ghost as a new era of polish for us. We've had a few different eras in our short tenure, but I'm hoping this helps bring us to a new level.

And we've got a jam-packed issue this week too! TV is okay, but some pretty fun music, tons of killer comics, and some indie movies with high potential. Let's dive in, shall we?

📺 New Shows

🏆 The Big Door Prize S2 (Apple) — 24 April

Honestly, season one was fine... it became our "throw it on in the background" show when there wasn't much else to watch. I don't expect much more from this season either, but we'll still keep it around for those purposes.

👻 Dead Boy Detectives S1 (Netflix) — 25 April

A new show out of Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe. I don't believe he is as involved as he was in Sandman and Good Omens, but it looks interesting. A mix of Wednesday and Dirk Gentley perhaps? Pornsak Pichetshote wrote a more recent comic starring these characters back in 2022 if you are looking for a little primer.

🔍 Velma S2 (HBO) — 25 April

Another one that's hard to really warrant a place in the newsletter. The first season got brutalized in reviews pretty harshly. Some of that bashing came from internet trolls, but the show still wasn't great. The season finale was actually pretty fun and captured the spirit of Scooby Doo so I'm hoping they've found their footing for season two.

👊 Knuckles S1 (Paramount) — 26 April

One more animated show. I haven't seen any of the Sonic movies, but the idea of Idris Elba as Knuckles just fascinates me.

Tuesday

• Shōgun (Hulu) 1:10 [Finale]

Wednesday

• Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney) 3:14
• Palm Royale (Apple) 1:8
• X-Men '97 (Disney) 1:7
• Loot (Apple) 2:5
• The Big Door Prize (Apple) 2:1-2

Thursday

• The Girls on the Bus (HBO) 1:8
• A Gentleman in Moscow (Showtime) 1:5
• Conan O'Brien Must Go (HBO) 1:2
• Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix) S1 [Full season]
• Velma (HBO) S2 [Full season]

Friday

• Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show (HBO) 1:5
• Sugar (Apple) 1:5
• Franklin (Apple) 1:5
• Knuckles (Paramount) S1 [Full season]

Sunday

• Last Week Tonight (HBO) 11:9
• Parish (AMC) 1:5
• The Sympathizer (HBO) 1:3
• The Jinx: Part Two (HBO) 2:2

💽 Release of the Week

🤲 Bless Me by Grocer

Raw, fuzzy, and fast. Just 30 minutes of fun from this trie of indie punk rockers. You can just feel the fun they are having together making delightful sounds deserving of time from your ear holes. With tons of energy, they keep you on your toes, but still allow for some room to breathe so you aren't overwhelmed. Also, pretty cool that all three members sing on the record. I look forward to following what these folks do next. They remind me a bit of a less polished Dehd, which is high, high praise.

🏃 Runner-ups

✍️ The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift

I mean... it's the elephant in the room. I gave it one listen on my flight back from Vegas, but it was at midnight so I fell asleep and haven't had a chance to give it a thorough listen. What I remember was solid—nothing out of the ordinary for her. I really wish she'd stop working with Jack Antonoff though... I also found it weird she released this and "The Anthology" version with twice as many tracks at the same time. Screams cash grab to me.

😎 Keep Your Cool by Riley!

Punk pop with some yelling/singing from the throat that frays the edges to keep you on your toes. A little bit All Time Low meets A Day to Remember (or Danger Is My Middle Name for those familiar...)

📻 It All Comes Down to This by A Certain Radio

If Grocer or Riley! Sound too aggressive for you, these guys bring some easy vocals, clean drums, and funky rhythms and bass lines.

📰 Other Noteworthy Releases

• This Ain't The Way You Go Out by Lucy Rose
• No Shame No Fame by Kindsight
• Name Your Sorrow by Pillow Queens

🦸 No. 1's

🐙 Universal Monsters: Creature From The Black Lagoon Lives! (Skybound) #1

The team of Ram V and Dan Watters is really doing some special stuff. Really cool to see them follow up James Tynion IV's Universal Monsters: Dracula with this one. Skybound/Universal are going all in on killer creative teams for these books with Michael Walsh of The Silver Coin coming next with Frankenstein.

Anyways, V/Watters are joined by Matthew Roberts on art duties, who last worked on Manifest Dynasty, for this four issue mini-series.

🩸 Drawing Blood (Image) #1

TMNT co-creator, Kevin Eastman, is back with a new 12 issue comic series. The tagline sounds pretty interesting too:

When you create a global franchise before you turn twenty... what happens next? Readers will follow the jaw-dropping journey of Shane Bookman—a cartoonist whose real life has become more absurd and action-packed than any comic book story he could dream up!

There are way too many great comic books to go into detail on all of them, so I'll break them up into the Must Reads and Should Reads to avoid repeating myself too much.

But we have two books from James Tynion IV, two from Ram V, one from Pornsak Pichetshote and Jesse Lonergan, Kyle Starks, Jason Aaron, and more! Plus some big two books that are pretty neat too.

🦹 Must Reads

• W0rldtr33 (Image) #9
• Something is Killing the Children (Boom) #36
• Man's Best (Boom) #2
• Rare Flavours (Boom) #5
• Dawnrunner (Dark Horse) #2
• Pine and Merrimac (Boom) #4
• Once Upon a Time at the End of the World (Boom) #14

⭐ Should Reads

• Duke (Skybound) #5
• Monstress (Image) #51
• The Six Fingers (Image) #3
• If You Find This, I'm Already Dead (Dark Horse) #3

🫅 Big Two

• GODS #7
• Ultimate Spider-Man #4
• X-Men: Forever #2
• Rise of the Powers of X #4
• Batman: Dark Age #2
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold #12
• Detective Comics #1084

🎥 New Movies

🎾 Challengers

Don't get me wrong Zendaya has done a lot and made quite the name for herself, but she hasn't actually opened a movie on her own. This is the first real go at it. She's paired up with director Luca Guadagnino, who put her pal Timothée Chalamet on the map with Call Me by Your Name. It'll be interesting to see if this truly catapults her into true stardom.

I believe this was originally supposed to go out during awards season, but was pushed during the strike as they wanted her around for the promotional tour. That could be a great sign or a terrible one...

🥷 Boy Kills World

I feel like we've been getting tons of silent killer type movies and this is another one of those, but I love the fact they have H. Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob's Burgers) doing the voice of his inner monologue. Looks like a lot of cool kung-fu/anime inspiration in this one. Hopefully it delivers with more success than John Woo's Silent Night.

🫦 The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Fair warning, this is not going to be for everyone. Joanna Arnow writes, directs, and stars in this weird sex comedy produced by Sean Baker (Red Rocket, The Florida Project).

Alrighty! First one with Ghost in the books! Hopefully I haven't destroyed everything we've built up until this point.

Stay sane,

—humdrum

foofaraw s3 playlist