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Partnering with Toyota, ESSENCE transformed The Villan event space in Brooklyn, NY into a visually stimulating, interactive playground carefully curated to activate the senses felt when jumping behind the wheel of the new 2018 Toyota Camry. Check out the video above to see what you missed as attendees navigated their way through the ultimate Afrofuturistic experience known as the Essence x Toyota #SensoryWonderland.

Writer:Sean Mackiewicz / Artist: Niko Walter / Image Comics

Gasolina #5 pulls out all the stops and goes as full-throttle as it can. Veracruz is literally on fire in this one. Yet, it somehow it misses the mark on what is clearly the end of its first arc. Gasolina #5 neatly ties off the loose ends but without that definitive ‘umph’. It happens a little too neat, and with none of the gravity of the situation built up in the last four issues. If there was going to be a legit payoff – it should’ve shown up here. Spoiler: it only halfway happens.

The La Querida gang shows its final form and tips its hand. Amalia catches a couple more bodies all commando-like. A certain unheard from young person eats the face off of someone with their chest monster. The women of Veracruz (and some of the men) return to town. Literally, every loose end is tied up. It leaves an evidence-shaped absence that demands more be done to satisfy the story. It does the most trying that it can though. It really tries to get somewhere in measuring its balance of genre.

Gasolina #5 falls on its own sword in looking way too clean in putting the pieces of the puzzle together. The issue leads nowhere unexpected. There is so much cultural richness to the geographic location and its people. So much to be explored in Amalia and Randy’s ‘mixed race’ relationship. Plenty of gender issues to engage in. There’s so much missing from the characters and the environment that it begs one to wonder if writer Sean Mackiewicz has done the appropriate cultural research to better flesh this world (and its inhabitants) out.

Crossing horror, crime, local and international politics with action elements has given Gasolina as a whole something to work with that set it apart from most titles. On that same token, the muddled development of all that left a sour taste in my mind. God bless the letters page, where we learn that there is a cultural gap at play and get to see the narrative work in process happen in response to the letters from readers.

5 snakes down the throat out of 10.

Reading Gasolina? Find BNP’s other reviews of the series here.

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The post Gasolina #5 Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

The Internet is probably the most important technological development of our time. Which might be why people tend to waste nearly a whole day per week online. According to the 2017 Digital Future […]

The post Study Says: We Spend Too Much Time Online appeared first on Geek.com.

**One more NSFW warning, including animated nudity you can never unsee.**

Years ago, in the simpler time of 2003, a weird video took the internet by storm: “End of Ze World.” Living alongside the likes of Homestar Runner, All Your Base Are Belong to Us, Foamy the Squirrel, and other vintage internet phenomena, it was still a commentary on the state of the world, but it was less concerned with that than with its own silly sense of humor, and was noticeably different in tone from the sequel that debuted over the weekend.

The world, and the internet, has changed a lot in the 15 years since, and like many of the revivals of nostalgic properties that we’ve seen lately, the sequel gives the feeling that we can’t go home again. That’s a given, and one that presents two choices: try to recapture the magic of the original while ignoring how times have changed, or adjust to your new surroundings. Jason Windsor, the creator of the original in this case, went for the latter, and the result is a more explicit level of political and social commentary, and more focused barbs than random jokes.

(Here’s the original, in case you need a refresher.)

For some in the YouTube comments, that’s off-putting, since it seems the original was subtle enough (something I never imagined myself saying about that video, but here we are) that those viewers didn’t realize that their politics were at odds with those of the thing they were laughing at, or those of its creator. Maybe if we’d all been a bit more confrontational and overt in the first place, we wouldn’t have wound up in the situation we’re in now.

(featured image: Jason Windsor)

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