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Magazine Archives for:
May 2014
Game of Thrones and True Blood: I Read the Audiobooks!
Eric Northman describes Oklahoma as empty, economically exploitable territory containing nothing but oilrigs and Indian casinos in Charlaine Harris’s final Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Ever After. While not all of Oklahoma matches this description, the… [more]
Why Worldbuilding Matters
A staple in genre fiction is the act of worldbuilding; when a creator crafts a mythology of certain fantastic elements and illustrates how they interact within the setting of the story. It is not just… [more]
What is Electricomics? Right Now, It’s an Illustration of Comics “Journalism”
Over the previous few days, virtually every comics site has covered the announcement that Alan Moore’s creating a new app which will somehow revolutionize digital comics. It’s called “Electricomics,” and it’s been reported as both… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 7
Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Rick Leonardi Inker: P. Craig Russell Colorist: Glynis Oliver Letter: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Bob Harras When we left our mutants last, the team had returned to their Outback home following a… [more]
“I Spent Time with Coulson. He’s a Good Man.”
I trusted Phil Coulson from the first moment he appeared onscreen, because he reminded me of someone I knew, a good man, who had a good heart. He was self-effacing and simple, with a sharp,… [more]
Game Changer: A Review of Invincible #111
For months now, Robert Kirkman had been warning fans that issue #111 of his long-running creator owned title Invincible would usher in a new, darker direction for the book. He has said that Mark Grayson… [more]
Tales of the Hidden World: A Book Review
In this wide-ranging collection, the New York Times-bestselling urban fantasist opens doors into hidden places: strange realms bordering our own mundane existence and prowled by creatures of fancy and nightmare. Here are the strange, frequently… [more]
Life Behind the Visor: Tracking Cyclops through the X-Men Films
What happened to Cyclops? It’s a question that’s been burning inside me since the ludicrously terrible “X-Men: The Last Stand.” Finally, “Days of Future Past” provides some answers. [more]
The Fifth Beatle: The Untold Story of Brian Epstein
The Fifth Beatle is a monumental comic that combines bold styles, uses every comics storytelling trick in the proverbial book and a fast-paced style to recount ten years of history, from about 1957-1967. Those were… [more]
Andrew Dominik’s Filmography Part One: Chopper
I start my journey through the filmography of Andrew Dominik with the intense and fascinating Chopper. [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Superboy Volume 4 #35
Last Christmas my brother gave me a booster pack of random, non-sequential issues from a variety of popular comic book titles that syndicated in the late eighties to mid nineties. The nineties was a time… [more]
Charlie Cox is Daredevil
Marvel has confirmed the rumors that Charlie Cox has been cast as Daredevil in the upcoming Netflix series, scheduled to run 13 episodes in 2015. Cox is best known for playing Tristan Thorne in the… [more]
Why Edgar Wright Leaving Ant-Man is a Big Deal
On Friday, news broke that Edgar Wright was leaving as director of Marvel’s Ant-Man film, which he’d long helmed and represented to the public. Wright is probably best known for 2004′s Shawn of the Dead. That… [more]
Escape from the Planet of the Apes: Good Despite the Odds?
The third Planet of the Apes movie goes from funny talking apes to baby-murder in an insanely short period of time. So if that’s your thing this movie has that… [more]
What X-Men: Days of Future Past’s Opening Weekend Means
X-Men: Days of Future Past scored an estimated $91.4 million domestically over the three-day weekend, or an estimated $111 million including Monday, the Memorial Day holiday. In the X-Men movie franchise, only X-Men: The Last… [more]
Zombie Tramp: Exactly What it Sounds Like
One of my favorite features of comics is that, unlike prose fiction, you can judge a visual book by its cover. Covers can mislead you by juxtaposing compelling external art with mediocre artistic guts (shout-out… [more]
Comics Finding Success with Kickstarter
In the economic climate of today’s comics industry, where distribution is often the only thing a creator requires a big company to do, the actual production and creative costs of comics is increasingly funded by… [more]
If a Bell Chimes at Midnight, Does it Make a Sound?: Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight
It’s my favorite picture. If I wanted to get into Heaven on the basis of one movie, that’s the one I would offer up. [1] –Orson Welles This week Marvel releases the first collected volume… [more]
Gareth Edwards’s Other Giant Monster Movie
A year ago I took a gamble with the cable in my hotel room after a long day of travel and tuned in to what I discovered to be Gareth Edwards’s 2010 film Monsters, and… [more]
An Almost Unnoticed Side-Effect: Thoughts on the Janelle Asselin / Teen Titans Cover Controversy
Heard about the recent Teen Titans controversy? For any mainstream comics fans living under a rock the last several weeks, the latest development in the recent series of social justice related uproars in the comics… [more]
Buffy: Retreat
After six issues that were essentially standalone stories, some of which were very experimental one-off character or thematic explorations, Jane Espenson’s five-part “Retreat” arc is a vital turning point in Buffy Season 8. In fact,… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 6
Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Marc Silvestri Inker: Josef Rubinstein Colorist: Glynis Oliver Letter: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Bob Harras That is without a doubt one of my favorite X-Men covers of not just this portion of… [more]
Edward Snowden Gets His Own Comic Book
Edward Snowden will join JFK, Pope John Paul II, Lee Harvey Oswald, Nelson Mandela, Brian Epstein, and Pierre Trudeau in the ranks of real-life figures who have had their stories told in the medium of… [more]
Saturday Morning Rewind: A Review of Amazing X-Men #7
If you are like me and are of a certain age, then you have very fond memories of the Saturday morning cartoon Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Running from 1981 to 1983, it featured Spider-Man… [more]