This is a follow-up to 2011’s Zita the Spacegirl, but readers new to the series should have no trouble catching on. In this volume (written and illustrated by Ben Hatke), Zita, stranded far from Earth, learns some of the pitfalls of both fame and infamy as she strives to protect her friends, attempts to save an alien race, and ultimately keeps up the quest to find her way home.

As a teenager trapped in a small Florida town, Christopher R. Weingarten fell hard for Beastie Boys’ seminal 1986 album, Licensed To Ill. Blurring the line between a coming-of-age essay (where the fat kid moves to New York and finds redemption as a music critic) and an exploration of Beastie Boys’ influence on moving hip-hop into the public sphere, Every Day I Take a Wee aptly captures the impact of a beloved album on a music lover’s life.

To those of you waiting in vulturous speculation over what might have been Ben (or, for the sake of Former Lives, Benjamin) Gibbard’s post-divorce catharsis record: at ease. Former Lives is, in actuality, something of a scrapbook of the Death Cab for Cutie frontman’s songwriting from the last eight years—hence the collection’s title looking wistfully over its shoulder.

The debut full-length from this glowering <Los Angeles> act is a focused sonic assault that borrows a great deal from Joy Division, early Interpol, and A Place to Bury Strangers to create just under 35 minutes of tastefully restrained post-punk.

The CW continues with its winning supernatural streak. The latest creatures are beasts of some kind-and the story has next to nothing to do with the fairy tale of the same name.

Search any decent record store for any remotely genre-transcending record and it quickly becomes apparent that it’s almost anachronistic that record shops still categorise music so rigidly by genre, a practice that surely should have gone out of the window the moment The Beatles’ Revolver hit the stands.

The promotional posters for the CW’s Green Arrow adaptation show lead actor Stephen Amell all shirtless and beat-up. Female Smallville fans may flock for the eye candy, but this DC Comics TV series is gravely serious; inspirations include Christopher Nolan’s grim Dark Knight trilogy, Mike Grell’s The Longbow Hunters, and Andy Diggle’s Green Arrow: Year One.

All in all, this is a fairly non-essential Batman. The first part of the arc starts promisingly enough—there’s the requisite breaking out of Arkham (which introduces a ‘roided-out Two-Face and a new villain, the “why would anyone wear so few clothes” White Rabbit), an amusing take on a snarky Alfred Pennyworth, and really beautiful art from David Finch.

Nashville hits all the marks: fame, family, politics. The always-luminous Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights, American Horror Story) plays country legend Rayna James. Although looking fantastic, Rayna is not selling either records or shows the way she used to.