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From the award-winning author that brought you Destroyer and the rising star artist from Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Boom! Studios has announced today a brand new five-issue original series: EVE coming out May 2021.

“When the ice caps melted, most of humanity was lost to the hidden disease that was released.

Now, a mysterious girl named Eve has awoken in secret and must deal with a world that’s nothing like the virtual reality she was raised in. In order to save her father, Eve must embark on a deadly quest across the country, but she has no idea of the threats that await her – or the price she will pay to restore life to a dying planet…”

Victor LaValle is the author of seven works of fiction including The Ballad of Black Tom, which was a finalist for a Nebula Award, a Hugo Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the writer of the acclaimed comic book series Victor LaValle’s Destroyer with BOOM! Studios. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City with his wife and kids.

“What kind of planet are we leaving to our kids? This is the question that spawned my comic book. It’s an old one, of course. Many generations have wrestled with it, but the question has never been as immediate” said LaValle. “But I didn’t want to write some grim story about how this joint went to hell. Instead, I wanted to write a story about how we let the planet fall apart and left it to the younger generations to fix it. So this a story, inspired by young folks like Mari Copeny, Elsa Mengistu, Greta Thunberg and so many more, of how an eleven-year-old girl, EVE, and her android teddy bear try to do the seemingly impossible: save the planet, save us.”

Jo Mi-Gyeong is a comic artist and illustrator based out of Seoul, Korea, best known for her work on Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance for BOOM! Studios and the original comic book series Beastlands.

“A new kind of apocalyptic landscape awaits our hero EVE and her strange teddy bear in this brand new world full of the weird and the unthinkable,” said Mi-Gyeong. “I had a lot of fun illustrating this fascinating world that Victor built, and I can’t wait to show you all a future beyond your wildest imagination!”

EVE #1 features main cover art by artist Ario Anindito (Star Wars: The High Republic) and variant covers by famed illustrator Yuko Shimizu (Dracula, Motherfxxker), and acclaimed artist InHyuk Lee (Magic, Mighty Morphin).

“Victor is a visionary writer who brings a sense of realism and heart to the sci-fi and horror stories he crafts,” said Eric Harburn, Senior Editor, BOOM! Studios. “He and Jo have created a beautiful, haunting world for EVE that is no less prophetic for being fictional, in a series that addresses one of the most pressing concerns of humanity today.”

EVE is the newest release from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to critically acclaimed original series, including BRZRKR by Keanu Reeves, Matt Kindt, and Ron Garney; We Only Find Them When They’re Dead by Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo; Seven Secrets by Tom Taylor and Daniele Di Nicuolo; Something is Killing the Children by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera; Once & Future by Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora; Faithless by Brian Azzarello and Maria Llovet; and Abbott by Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä. The imprint also publishes popular licensed properties, including Dune: House Atreides from Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, and Dev Pramanik; Buffy the Vampire Slayer from Jordie Bellaire and David López; Firefly from Greg Pak, Lalit Kumar Sharma & Daniel Bayliss; and Mighty Morphin and Power Rangers from Ryan Parrott, Marco Renna, and Francesco Mortarino.

Print copies of EVE #1 will be available for sale in May 2021 exclusively at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one) or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and Madefire.

For continuing news on EVE and more from BOOM!, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

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The post EXCLUSIVE: Boom! Studios Announces “EVE” From Victor LaValle and Jo Mi-Gyeong appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.

Source: Jim Dyson / Getty

Late last year, singer and entertainer Tahliah “FKA Twigs” Barnett made some damning accusations against her ex-boyfriend, actor Shia LaBeouf. In an interview The New York Times, she detailed not only the emotional, physical and sexual abuse, she announced that she was suing him and plans to donate a significant portion of the funds to organizations that raise awareness about domestic violence.

When the claims were initially brought to the public, LaBeouf denied that all of them were true but did take responsibility for some of his actions saying, “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say.”

Later, LaBeouf’s team came out and denied all of Barnett’s allegations, even claiming that he only attacked her as a form of self-defense .

Recently, Barnett spoke to CBS This Morning’s Gayle King to not only detail the abuse but also raise awareness about the cycle of domestic violence. During the course of their interview, she also shared a teachable moment with King and anyone else who has ever thought to ask domestic violence survivors why they didn’t leave.

See what she had to say below.

Early warning signs

In the beginning, he would jump over the fence where I was staying and leave flowers outside my door, poems and books. I thought it was very romantic but that quickly changed. I understand now, that’s testing your boundaries. Instead of thinking that’s nice to have flowers outside your door, now I think that’s inappropriate to jump over the fence of where I’m living. That’s breaking a boundary.

It’s very subtle. It’s a real gradual, step by step process where people lose themselves so much that they feel like they deserve to be treated in that way. It’s not one thing.  It’s loads of tiny little things that get sewn together into a nightmare.

What is Love bombing?

Putting me on a pedestal, telling me that I’m amazing, over the top displays of affection just to knock me off the pedestal to tell me that I was worthless, to criticize me to berate me, pick me apart. Some of the worst times I experienced in that relationship was when he felt like he was losing control of me and like I was trying to get out.

Gaslighting

Abusers use gaslighting which is where somebody minimizes your experience, altering your narrative, not listening to you and denying your experience. And eventually it did become physical. There were certain instances where he would push me and say, ‘You fell.’ I would get really confused and think maybe I did…

Sexual abuse

Then he’d only want me to sleep naked because he said if I didn’t, I was keeping myself from him. It’s a tactic a lot of abusers use, this constant availability and everything centered around them. That’s why I wanted to come out and talk about this because the signs really are there from the beginning.

Filing the lawsuit

I didn’t want to originally. I wanted to ensure that he got help privately so that he wouldn’t hurt anyone else the way he hurt me. I wanted him to donate money to charity. Because when I called the helpline, it was a moment of changing for me.

Gayle: If he had done the things that you had asked, you would not be filing the lawsuit?

FKA Twigs: No.

Why didn’t she leave

Gayle: Nobody who’s been in this position likes this question and I often wonder, is it even an appropriate question to ask. And you know the question is, ‘Why didn’t you leave?’

FKA Twigs: I think we just have to stop asking that question. I know that you’re asking it out of love. But I’m just going to make a stance and say I’m not going to answer it anymore because the question should really be to the abuser, ‘Why are you holding someone hostage with abuse?’

And people often say, ‘Well, it couldn’t have been that bad or else she would have left.’ And it’s like no, because it was that bad, I couldn’t leave.

What she makes of LaBeouf’s statement

It reminds of some of the gaslighting that I experienced when I was with him, the sort of taking some of the blame but not all of it and then denying it.

What she hopes will come out of speaking out

The result for me Is already happening. I just couldn’t carry it anymore. I felt like I was cracking. Whereas now I feel like I’ve handed his dysfunction back to him and it’s his…I’m feeling brave.

You can watch the full interview in the video below.

Lowell High school is a public magnet school located in San Francisco Unified and is the subject of Debbie Lum’s documentary, Try Harder! The oldest public high school west of the Mississippi, Lowell consistently ranks #1 in the western region, while being recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School on multiple occasions. While Lowell High school is a public high school it is a magnet school that allows the school to have selective admission.

These selective admissions allow Lowell to have a base of high-performing students who make up its student population. To the average person, this might seem wonderful but as Debbie Lum explores in this documentary there are pains and heartache that come with being a top 1% er.

Early on you see that these aren’t your typical students. One student claimed fairly early in the film “ You get used to feeling mediocre” in a school full of high-performing individuals. To these children getting into a top university is a must or you are an automatic failure. One student claimed, “You see a lot of freshmen wearing Stanford jerseys, by the time they are juniors you don’t see those anymore”.

The documentary follows several students Alvin, Ian, Shea, Sophia, and Rachel as they try to navigate the college admission process. Alvin is full of personality, which is probably why he is the focal point of this film. While his goofiness and charm remind you he is a teenager, the crushing pressure he is under by his “Tiger Mom” and the overwhelmingly high standards he puts on himself remind you he is much more than that. Ian’s mother takes the opposite approach and wants him to focus less on grades and more on understanding himself. While Ian is still a high performer the difference in his psyche is extremely noticeable. While he also worries about college, he doesn’t seem nearly as stressed out as the other individuals. Shea is a junior and isn’t involved as much in the college process in the beginning but he is different in that he has an unstable home life where he has to take care of himself the majority of the time. Shea is driven and he goes back and forth on whether or not going to a top 20 school is essential to success. Sophia is cool calm and collective. She has confidence in herself and her abilities, she even mentions that she doesn’t find the curriculum at Lowell too difficult. She has several extra-curricular activities as well and a part-time job. Rachel is a biracial student who alludes to certain racism in the school. At one point she mentions that a student told her that they didn’t realize black people cared about grades. She has a hard time defining herself as either black or white. Knowing that being African American in the college admission process will benefit her steers her decision. All of these students approach the pressures of “succeeding” differently, which makes for an interesting look into their psyche.

There are several things that I believe Debbie Lum wanted to address in this documentary. Early on it is made clear that most of the population of Lowell is Asian, and it is hinted that being Asian comes at a disadvantage during college admissions. At one point we were told that a Stanford representative that visits the school made a comment alluding to limiting the number of Asian students they allow in for diversity. With a lot of the student body of Lowell applying to Ivy Leagues, Stanford, and the UC system, acceptance to these is growing harder to come by for this reason. The students are also referred to as robots, unfeeling machines that only concentrate on grades. This might be the truly heartbreaking part of the documentary as these are children after all. The documentary displays the vast personalities of its subjects and they are anything but robots.

Lum does a good job showcasing the pressure that these students have to handle daily, and you can’t help but cheer for every single one of them. Definitely add Try Harder! to your watch list.

The post Try Harder! A Wonderful Documentary about the Evergrowing Pressure of College Admissions appeared first on The Nerd Element.

Twitter/Melody Cooper (@melodyMcooper) By Ashlee Banks ·February 17, 2021February 17, 2021

Amy Cooper—the 41-year-old white woman who infamously called the cops on a Black man who was peacefully birdwatching in New York City’s Central Park—is off the hook now that her criminal case has been thrown out. 

Christan Cooper was enjoying his hobby on May 25, 2020 when he saw Amy and asked her to leash her dog, which is the law in Central Park. Amy wasn’t too pleased with a Black man asking her to be a law-abiding citizen, so she decided to use her privilege against him in retaliation. She called the cops and lied to them. She said she was being threatened by “an African American man.” Amy wanted Christian to be punished for simply asking her to comply with the law and to be a responsible dog owner. Violent, deadly encounters between police and Black people have been more public in recent years, which means Amy knew what she was doing. Christian could’ve easily been a trending hashtag in 2020, alongside George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

Due to backlash, Amy was fired from her job as a portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton, an investment firm in California. She was also arrested and charged with one count of filing a false report against Christian. Many of us thought Amy was going to face serious consequences for putting Christian’s life in danger. That hope dissipated when it was announced on Tuesday, February 16 that the charge against Amy had been dropped. Why? Well, it’s because she completed a diversionary counseling program. Prosecutors said this program served the purpose of educating her on her actions, as if Amy was a 4-year-old girl who was ignorant about what she was doing. 

Amy knew exactly what she was doing, which is why a few weeks of counseling isn’t enough. Counseling won’t remove Amy’s racist ideologies. It isn’t going to stop Amy from calling the cops the next time a Black man or woman calls her out for being a law breaker. Thanks to her Whiteness, she knows the law is on her side. Even worse, she is the clearly the type of person who has no problem abusing her privilege. Once again, the justice system has failed the victim.

Officials had the power to sentence Amy and make her serve as an example to all the “Karens” who constantly put the lives of Black and Brown people in danger. She is no different than the White women who scream rape when they’re caught with Black men they secretly desire. She’s no different from Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who lied on Emmett Till. 

Amy Cooper threatened a man’s life that day in May. Some would say calling the cops to make a false claim of violence against a Black person amounts to attempted murder. She deserves a punishment that fits her crime. 

The post Amy Cooper Proves Once Again That White Privilege Prevails appeared first on Essence.