While a lot of people were upset when The Venture Bros. was cancelled in 2020, there were also a lot of people who asked, “Who the hell are the Venture brothers?”
It is for those people — and Venture Bros. completionists — that we now have The Venture Bros.: The Complete Series DVD, which presents every episode of the TV show…well, sort of.
Canon can sometimes be a tricky thing, especially when it crosses multiple forms of media, numerous decades, and a wide variety of contributors. Unless, of course, you’re an expert like Star Trek author and show consultant David Mack.
In the following email interview about his newest Trek novel, Star Trek: The Original Series: Harm’s Way (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), Mack not only explains what inspired and influenced this story, but also how it does and does not connect to the Vanguard series he co-created in 2005.
While a lot of food in Star Trek comes from the replicators, there’s plenty of fresh food where no one has eaten before. And no, I don’t just mean gagh.
But you don’t have to visit the promenade on Deep Space 9 or the galley on the U.S.S. Voyager to enjoy them; you can make them at home thanks to Chelsea Monroe-Cassel’s new cookbook, The Star Trek Cookbook (hardcover, Kindle), the origin of which she discusses in the following email interview.
For years, some comic book fans regarded Aquaman as a joke. Heck, there was a whole Robot Chicken DC Comics Special about it. But then they cast Game Of Thrones‘ Jason Mamoa to play the man from Atlantis, and now no one is laughing at Aquaman. Well, almost no one. As a companion to Mamoa’s Aquaman, that movie’s director, James Wan, executive produced a three-part animated miniseries for HBO Max called Aquaman: King Of Atlantis that presented a rather silly take on the fish king. But while fans of the sea man will enjoy this animated romp (which has since been reconfigured into a movie) on DVD, they’ll find the disc is rather lacking in the extras department.
Having twice explored the Alien universe, and created one of their own in their Salvagers trilogy, writer Alex White is going where they’ve never gone before with their new Star Trek novel, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Revenant (paperback, Kindle, audiobook).
In the following email interview, White explains how this novel came together, when in the show’s chronology it takes place, and what non-Trek stuff influenced this noir-flavored sci-fi space opera story.
Were Rick and Morty real people, they would both shit on me for wanting to watch a TV show on Blu-ray or DVD, especially one that’s on a streaming service I’m subscribed to. And don’t even get me started on what Summer would say. But I don’t care, because after watching Rick And Morty: Season 5 on Blu-ray, I can suffer their verbal slings and arrows, confident in the knowledge that this is the best way to watch this hilarious sci-fi animated show.
In 1996, when Mike Judge made Beavis And Butt-Head Do America, the idea of turning a TV show into a movie wasn’t new. Mission: Impossible had come out a few months prior, The Fugitive had done it 3 years earlier, and the ’60s Batman show had beaten all of them to the punch by thirty years. But America was the first time a cartoon for adults was making the leap since The Flintstones‘ 1966 film The Man Called Flintstone, and fans (and studio executives) were unsure of what would happen. Turns out, they need not have been concerned. Beavis And Butt-Head Do America was not only a big hit, but it was regarded as one of the best adventures these idiots ever went on (and still is).
Which makes it really odd that Beavis And Butt-Head Do America is only now being released on Blu-ray (though far less so when you realize this year marks the movie’s twenty-fifth anniversary…and that Judge is now making a sequel for Paramount+).
Still, for fans who’ve been enjoying this movie on DVD for the past two dozen years, the question is, should they upgrade?
With Star Trek: Coda, Book III: Oblivion’s Gate (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer David Mack is ending the Coda trilogy that launched in September with Book I: Moments Asunder and continued in October with Book II: The Ashes Of Tomorrow. Except unlike most trilogies, Star Trek and otherwise, David Mack didn’t write all three. Or even come up with the idea for this saga on his own; Moments Asunder and The Ashes Of Tomorrow come courtesy of fellow Trek scribes Dayton Ward and James Swallow, respectfully. Though in the following email interview, it’s Mr. Mack who gets stuck answering my questions about how this all came together, and how this trilogy earned the title of Coda.
While there’s been tons of behind-the-scenes books about Star Wars, writers Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman are trying to do something different with Secrets Of The Force (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook) by not only presenting it as an oral history, but having that oral history be, as the subtitle explains, “Uncensored” and “Unauthorized.” In the following email interview, Altman (who was my boss at Geek Monthly) explains how this book came together, what it does and does not cover, and why they feel oral histories work for these kinds of making-of books.