RSS feed for Matthew Kirshenblatt
@mkirshenblatt
on Google+
ON COMICS CHARACTERS
ON SCI-FI FRANCHISES
ON GRANT MORRISON
ON TV AND MOVIES
OTHER BOOKS
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Matthew Kirshenblatt
Matthew Kirshenblatt is a graduate from York University, Toronto, Ontario, and is a writer and blogger living in the city of Thornhill. He is a comics and mythology fanatic; having written his Master's thesis, "The Spirit of Herodotus in Gaiman and Moore: Narrative Spaces and their Relationships in Mythic World-Building," he also contributes science-fiction, horror, and revisionist short stories to Gil Williamson's online Mythaxis Magazine. Nowadays, he can be found writing for G33kPr0n, and creating and maintaining his Mythic Bios: a Writer's Blog, in which he describes his creative process and makes weird stories, strange articles, reviews, overall geek opinion pieces and other writing experiments.
MAGAZINE CONTENT BY MATTHEW KIRSHENBLATT (69 TOTAL)
Wonder Woman 1984 Review
SPOILER WARNING: Please don’t read this until you’ve seen the film! I never wrote anything on Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Well, that isn’t entirely true, as I’d admit if Diana of Themyscira’s Lasso is called… [more]
An Introduction’s Inevitable Conclusion: Art Spiegelman: Golden Age Superheroes were Shaped by the Rise of Fascism
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year since the Folio Society published Marvel: The Golden Age 1939–1949 as compiled and edited by Roy Thomas. I saw it as a sponsored Facebook advertisement… [more]
Different Men of Tomorrow: Superman and Providence
Stop me if you’ve heard this story. A mild-mannered bespectacled journalist works at an American newspaper attempting to find a story, having to deal with a senior editor, a wise-cracking coworker, and a troublesome, opinionated… [more]
Send in the Clowns: Todd Phillips’s Joker
Coulrophobia. A fear of clowns. It’s kind of an ironic fear when you consider the idea that clowns are humanity’s way of making fun of its own mortality. For the longest time, I actually thought… [more]
Jordan Peele’s Us: Untethered
“There we are – demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow… [more]
The Invisible Art that Makes The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Works & Worlds of Herbert Crowley
Recently, I read an article by Noah Charney about Davie Bowie and William Boyd’s connection to an obscure American abstract expressionist artist Nat Tate, operating in the mid-twentieth century, who destroyed most of his paintings,… [more]
This Next Experiment and the Values of Fun: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part III
In our second article, I wrote about Undertale, the presence of W.D. Gaster in the game and its code, the collaborative dynamic between Toby Fox and his audience as well as the implications it had… [more]
Preliminaries in Undertale: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part II
Where we last left off, I wrote a general outline of how Toby Fox’s work in game hacking, music creation, and his participation in and moderation of EarthBound forums helped influence his development of Undertale,… [more]
EarthBound Dress Rehearsals and The Beginnings of Interaction: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part I
It feels like everyone, and their mother too, has already been talking about the first chapter of Toby Fox’s new video game Deltarune, the spiritual sequel to the popular 2015 independent game Undertale. So many… [more]
There is Punk and Heart in How To Talk To Girls At Parties
I’d read Neil Gaiman’s short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” a long time ago now, back in 2006 when it had been published in Fragile Things. It’s hard for me to remember… [more]
An Interview in Patrick Meaney’s House of Demons
Patrick Meaney, producer of She Makes Comics, and the director of Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously, Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods as well as many other documentaries has recently released his first-ever horror film House of… [more]
When I Found “The Heart’s Way” In the World of Two Moons
Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest is a comics series that has been around for forty years. Soon, this ongoing story about the World of Two Moons and its denizens will be coming to an end… [more]
A Trip Through Old Wounds: Patrick Meaney’s House of Demons
It is fairly clear, to my mind, that when most people live long enough, they have moments that they wish they could change. It can be something that they did, or something that they did… [more]
That Grey Place: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.” “So what does that make us?” “Absolutely nothing….” – Dark Helmet and Lone Starr, Space Balls As of this writing, everyone and their Force immaculate parent… [more]
Do You Want to Know My Secret Identity: Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
I haven’t had the opportunity to see any advanced screenings of Professor Marston & the Wonder Women yet and, as such, I only have the majority of positive advance reviews to go on. Nevertheless, the… [more]
Back to the Past with Samurai Jack, Part 2
In Part I of “Back to the Past: Samurai Jack,” I began to look at Genndy Tartakovsky’s final season of his series in terms of its strengths and weaknesses with regards to its overall physical… [more]
Back to the Past: Samurai Jack
So, this past while I’ve been ruminating over Samurai Jack. Originally, I focused on Aku and how ridiculous he is as a villain. However, like I said in my first article on the subject Aku… [more]
Whatever Happened to the Legends of Tomorrow?
It had been advertised for a little while before. The teaser commercial and trailer were fascinating. The Flash had reached another critical story arc mass and Arrow was continuing on. Moreover, in the wake of… [more]
An Age of Resistance: Legends, Myths, and Shadows
It was a surprise. The Jim Henson Company had been seeking to revisit the world of Thra for quite some time. There were, of course, developments. TokyoPop’s Legends of The Dark Crystal and The Dark… [more]
Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth and Child of Love
By the time this article is seen, Wonder Woman will return to Patriarch’s World on the big screen thanks to DC Comics, Warner Brothers, Patty Jenkins, and Gal Gadot. As such, I really wanted to… [more]
Fairy Stories for a Wizarding World: J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard
A little while ago, I got into a rant about Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume Three: Century, or more specifically its final chapter beat “2009.” I understand the creative… [more]
Mythic World Rewriting: Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence
“All countries and all cultures, in the first few centuries that follow their inception, seem to naturally produce their individual supernatural mythologies and webs of folkloric belief. This much we can deduce by looking at… [more]
Samurai Jack: Can He Go Back?
It’s always a challenge writing about a series in progress, especially when you know that by the time your article comes out, it may already be a fairly moot point or some development occurs that… [more]
The Framework in Agents of HYDRA
Where do we even begin? This is yet another article that I hadn’t been planning. Well, I’m sorry: that is just an alternative fact. You see, I had been thinking of writing about this arc… [more]
Where’s Our Moon Over Soho in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Part 2
In Part I of “Where’s Our Moon Over Soho in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” I talked about The League and three major characters in its story line and some… [more]
Where’s Our Moon Over Soho in Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Part 1
I’m not really sure how to start this one. I feel like I might be writing about this subject a few years too late, but it’s taken just as long to get to the point… [more]
I’m Afraid I Must Apologize: The Matrix Rebooted
There has been talk about a reboot of The Matrix. In 1999, I didn’t really know what that was. The Matrix was created by the Wachowski sisters that took me a while to see. All… [more]
Star Wars Legacy: Young Jedi Knights When The Force Awakens
I remember watching Star Wars for the first time. My parents rented them from the now defunct-Hollywood Movies video store before we got our own VHS collection set. We got one movie a week and… [more]
Samurai Jack: Aku’s Folly
I knew about Samurai Jack for a long time, but I never really got into it. It was just another cartoon that my brother and some friends were into that I just, at the time,… [more]
On the Origin of the Sexes War: Jamie Delano and John Higgins’ World Without End
I found World Without End almost completely by accident, or rather, in a chain of events that led to a name and a title. It began when I finally read AARGH! for the first time.… [more]
When Shadow Returns: Neil Gaiman’s American Gods
For a while, I thought I had a horrible feeling why Shadow left America. If you don’t want any spoilers for either the book or the upcoming television series, please read no further. If not,… [more]
XX: Women in Horror, Horror in the Family
I will admit, I’ve been waiting for this film. Until fairly recently, I used to write for another online magazine that, in its last incarnation, was called GeekPr0n. I spent some years covering various comics,… [more]
What is The Power of The Dark Crystal?
Back in 2013, it was my intention to participate in what was called the Gelfing Gathering Author Quest: a contest in which the Jim Henson Company along with Grosset & Dunlap would chose a writer… [more]
Wrestling With the Cycle: Not All Men and “He” in Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s ODY-C
In Part I of this article, “Not All-Men: On the Subject of “He” in Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s ODY-C,” we looked at the presence and purpose of men and male characters in an almost… [more]
Not All-Men: On the Subject of “He” in Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s ODY-C
When I last wrote on Matt Fraction and Christian Ward’s ODY-C in my article She Made Them in Their Image, I was attempting to focus on the Sebex – the third sex created in a… [more]
Traversing the Plateau of Leng: To Read is to Be Read in Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence
“So much of this is made of books, this Commonplace book….” – Robert Black, Commonplace Book, June 5th, 1919, Providence #1, p. 32 This article is strange for a few reasons. First off, it’s about… [more]
Steven Universe: What is The Answer?
It’s funny how something called “The Answer” are two artistic and emotional pathways that ultimately lead to the same place. Then again, perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is quite fitting. In… [more]
Mad Love Meet Love is Love
A little while ago, I had the excuse to revisit the 1988 comics anthology AARGH! Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia in light of more recent political events. In my article AARGH! RESIST! A Retrospective and… [more]
Down A Dark Path of Bibliomancy – The Necronomicon in Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence, Part 2
In Part I of “Down A Dark Path of Bibliomancy: The Necronomicon in Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence” we looked at how Alan Moore incorporated and reinterpreted H.P. Lovecraft’s “History of the Necronomicon” and… [more]
Down A Dark Path of Bibliomancy: The Necronomicon in Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence, Part 1
“My own rule is that no weird story can truly produce terror unless it is devised with all the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax.” – H.P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith (17 October… [more]
Watching a Serial of Strange Aeons: Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence
A lot of people, and I do mean a lot of people, are writing about Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence and have been for quite some time. You can look at Joe Linton, Robert… [more]
A Myth of Love and Metals: Gem Fusion in Rebecca Sugar’s Steven Universe
“So we thought, why don’t we all marry each other?” “Ta-da!” “And if that’s not human enough for you, we throw in a little being born and some dying …” “We’re very sorry for your… [more]
The Demon With a Thousand Names and One in Toby Fox’s Undertale, Part 2
In Part I of The Demon With a Thousand Names and One in Toby Fox’s Undertale, we focused on some of the game’s background, its medium and genre tropes, and began the process of illustrating… [more]
A Journey Through Alan Moore’s Jerusalem: Modern Times
In “Modern Times” we don’t get any answers to the previous chapter, or even new questions about the things that we already know. One hazard in writing these “reader impressions” of mine for each chapter… [more]
A Journey Through Alan Moore’s Jerusalem: X Marks the Spot
A lot of events occurred in Jerusalem’s “Rough Sleepers” chapter. Moore’s nature of time, at least with regards to Northampton and the Burroughs had been revealed as eternalism: as space and time existing simultaneously in… [more]
A Journey Through Alan Moore’s Jerusalem: Rough Sleepers
I didn’t know what to make of this chapter at first. To be honest, it’d been a while since I’d read Jerusalem after taking time to undertake some other projects. Certainly the preceding chapter “ASBOs… [more]
A Journey Through Alan Moore’s Jerusalem: “ASBOs of Desire”
There are a few things worth noting before I go on here. I might have mentioned this earlier, through my impressions of the previous chapter but unlike Alan Moore’s previous novel Voice of the Fire,… [more]
The Demon With a Thousand Names and One in Toby Fox’s Undertale, Part 1
Sequart has “sequential art” as the general focus of both its articles and its studies. Sequential art, a term that was coined by Will Eisner and expanded on by other comics creators and theorists such… [more]
She Made Them in Their Image: Sebex in the Universe of ODY-C
For the longest time, ever since high school, I have been reading Homer’s Odyssey. This is something that has followed me from Undergrad all the way into my Graduate studies. But not too long ago… [more]
AARGH! RESIST! A Retrospective and a Prelude
In my four-part article Not By Something As Accidental as Blood: Bash Back, my research into Lawrence Gullo, Fyodor Pavlov, and Kelsey Hercs’ work took me to places I hadn’t gone before while, in other… [more]
The Narrative Power of Violence and Self-Determination in Bash Back
In Part III of this article, we looked at how Bash Back‘s narrative and The Family utilize and represent violence as a form of self-defense. In Part IV of “Not By Something as Accidental as… [more]
LGBTQ Fantasies of Violence in Bash Back
In Part II of this article, we looked at some of the characters and how they might represent The Family in Issue #0 of Lawrence Gullo, Fyodor Pavlov, and Kelsey Hercs’ Bash Back: A Story… [more]
A Journey Through Alan Moore’s Jerusalem: A Host of Angles
You know there’s going to be a story when you’re told, flat out, that the protagonist is going to go insane. I feel like for every detail I catch in my reading of Jerusalem, there… [more]
The Family and Identity in Bash Back
In Part I of this article, we examined some of the possible origins, influences, resonances and echoes behind Issue #0 of Lawrence Gullo, Fyodor Pavlov, and Kelsey Hercs’ Bash Back: A Story of the Queer… [more]
Not By Something as Accidental as Blood – Bash Back
It’s funny what you can find hidden right in plain sight. Sometimes you know it’s there, but you just don’t know where to look. Perhaps you’ve seen it in other forms, in various other permutations.… [more]
A Journey Through Alan Moore’s Jerusalem: Work in Progress
This is an experiment, you understand. I haven’t written for Sequart in quite some time and in addition to other articles I want to write, I’ve decided I wanted to try something I haven’t really… [more]
On the Art and Cycle of Proper Suffering: The Artist-Figure in Phoenix: Karma Part 3
In the second part of this article, we looked at the challenges that faced each artist-figure in Phoenix: Karma. Now, in the final part of this article, we will look at how they come to… [more]
On the Art and Cycle of Proper Suffering: The Artist-Figure in Phoenix: Karma Part 2
In the first part of this article, we looked at the beginnings of the artist-figure Tezuka Osamu, the cultural time period that informed his work, the era he chose to create Phoenix: Karma in and… [more]
On the Art and Cycle of Proper Suffering: The Artist-Figure in Phoenix: Karma
It is neither a new nor a culturally specific idea that art is created through suffering: that the figure of the artist is an individual who must experience great ordeals in order to accomplish his… [more]
Flowers, Fire, and Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture #1, Part 3
The next segment of The Sandman Overture Issue #1 doesn’t have a very auspicious beginning. Pages twenty-five and twenty-six open up into a spread with Morpheus flying towards his Castle and his Dreaming kingdom: now… [more]
Flowers, Fire, and Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture #1, Part 2
In the next part of The Sandman Overture Issue #1, we now get to focus on Morpheus’ tools in trade: dreams. After transitioning to page fourteen, what we have waiting for us is something that… [more]
Flowers, Fire, and Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture #1
An overture is traditionally the opening or introduction to an opera. Yet if anything in the past twenty-five or so years of the comics medium can be compared to an opera–as a masterpiece made up… [more]
Sharing the Love From Ground Zero: Spread by Justin Jordan and Kyle Strahm
In the comics medium, a spread is usually an image that takes up two or more pages in both volume and sheer scope. That is what most fans and comics scholars would first think when… [more]
Revisionism Comes to a Silver Age: Or Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?
Julian Darius, in a response to a comment of mine in his article “On Underworld Unleashed, Precursor to Kingdom Come” explains that Reconstructionism with regards to the superhero comics genre is a term coined by… [more]
The Stitching Together of a Mythos: Kris Straub’s Broodhollow Part 3
In Parts I and II, we looked at the influences and aesthetics of Kris Straub’s Broodhollow as well as the stories that led to its creation respectively. But now, we move away from considerations of… [more]
The Stitching Together of a Mythos: Kris Straub’s Broodhollow Part 2
When we last left off in Part I, we were looking at the beginnings of Broodhollow: at its possible horror and comic influences and how its aesthetics is centred around the exploration and fear of… [more]
The Stitching Together of a Mythos: Kris Straub’s Broodhollow
It’s a rare thing to watch a reality in the process of its own formation. It’s like observing a building being created row by row: block by block. But in this case it’s more like… [more]
Yet Those Hands Will Never Hold Anything: Emiya Shirou as the Interactive Superhero of Fate/Stay Night (Part 2)
Continued from part one. At some point in the superhero trope, the hero has to start building on the foundation of their training and perfecting their powers. For Shirou, this results in the mangling of… [more]
Yet Those Hands Will Never Hold Anything: Emiya Shirou as the Interactive Superhero of Fate/Stay Night (Part 1)
The super-hero genre is something that has not only cross-pollinated into different media, but has–in itself–been subject to a considerable amount of scrutiny. Superheroes have been changed into gritty, horrifyingly realistic beings by the Revisionism… [more]