Arrow Season 2 Episode 3 (TV Show Review)

Once you have established yourself as a fan favourite and have proven your worth, so to speak, the only way to go is up, unless you massively screw it all up. Its happened to several shows over the years. The big crucible point for a TV show these days is to bring in a high number of viewers every week, to maintain that interest on a high level. Too many shows these days get cut in the early stages of their very first season because the executives don’t have much faith in the property beyond the dollar point. Thankfully, that’s not something that CW’s Arrow is going to be doing any time soon.

The first season was received with great acclaim, despite some fair criticisms from various places and the second season has been doing things bigger and better right from the start and we are only two episodes in. Or we were, until this Wednesday, when the third episode of the season was aired, proving that in Green Arrow & Co. CW has a really hit franchise on its hands and that the people working behind the show are people who know what they are doing and what they want to do. Because damn, Broken Dolls was the best episode of the entire show, to date.

Conan and the People of the Black Circle #1 by Fred Van Lente (Comics Review)

I’ve been on a sort of Conan kick recently, thanks to Brian Wood’s excellent relaunch of Conan the Barbarian from Dark Horse Comics, of which I’ve read only the first volume so far and have the second waiting to be read. As a fan of the character and the setting he is a part of, the comics have been quite enjoyable and with Wood’s run coming to a close quite soon, Dark Horse has brought in Fred Van Lente to carry on next year with #26, and in the meantime, Van Lente is penning a mini-series featuring the world’s most famous sword-and-sorcery hero.

From what I’ve seen generally, as well as with an ongoing title, Conan thrives in the mini-series section, and several have been written and illustrated over the years. Van Lente’s Conan and the People of the Black Circle is just another in the line-up and where my previous experience with such has been mixed, this new one is giving me a lot of reasons to stick around and carry on with things.