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Magazine Archives for:
2014
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The Grand Budapest Hotel after Two Viewings
“You can tell they had a low budget; all the backgrounds were painted.” That quote comes courtesy of one of the shining beacons of taste I went with to see The Grand Budapest Hotel. It… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Eleven
Like you, I’m not quite sure what Glenn Fabry and Tony Luke’s cover for Scarab #5 is exactly supposed to be depicting other than some weird electricity coming out of our protagonist’s head, but it… [more]
Rat Queens #6: Hangovers and Dark Magic
We last left the Rat Queens at a wild party, having defeated an evil army, brought one of their members back from the brink of death and they celebrated appropriately. (Or, as we soon find… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Tangent Comics: Nightwing Volume 1 #1
This 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]
Why You Should Watch Justified
Justified should be a way more popular show. It’s not that it’s unpopular, in fact it’s heading into its sixth season, it’s that it should be resonating more clearly with viewers. It is the kind… [more]
Grant Morrison: The Zoids Years
Grant Morrison is well known for looking at the banality of life and giving things a unique cosmic twist. To live in his world of a magic-fuelled, comic rock-star means working in a world of… [more]
Orson Welles’ Mr. Arkadin
In honour of what would have been Orson Welles’ 99th birthday today, I’d like to offer some insight on one of his lesser-known and seldom-seen films, 1955’s Mr. Arkadin. It’s impossible to meaningfully discuss Orson… [more]
Starting Out Again at the Top: Swamp Thing (1994 to 1996) — The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 17
Continued from last week. It’s no overstatement to say that Mark Millar’s first major breakthrough at DC Comics owed everything to Grant Morrison. Offered the chance in 1993 to write Swamp Thing, Morrison assumed the… [more]
Delightfully Dirty: A Review of Filth
“Same rules apply.” James McAvoy gets to say this a few times as Bruce Robertson in the movie Filth. The adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s book of the same name is directed by the relatively unknown… [more]
Absolute Editions, 3D Movies, and the Silent War on Democratic Art
Last summer I decided to re-read the entirety of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Even though I’m a big fan, it had been years since I sat down and systematically went through the whole ten-volume series, so… [more]
Review of Arrow Season 2, Episode 21
“City of Blood” has a mostly unenviable task, effectively setting the stage for the finale of a twenty-three episode season of television. It’s mostly devoid of action, and generally a talky episode of Arrow, which… [more]
With Ronin on the Way from SyFy, Can We at Least Discuss Frank Miller?
With SyFy having announced that work has begun on a Ronin mini-series, can we at least discuss Frank Miller’s views? Miller’s Holy Terror was deeply Islamophobic. He plead ignorance of not only the history of Islamophobia… [more]
Buffy: Harmonic Divergence
The next five issues of Buffy Season 8 (#20-25), seem to represent a determined and conscientious effort on the part of the Whedon crew to experiment. They revisit some old ideas, and old characters, and… [more]
Spider-Man Shrugged: The Lack of Randian Heroes in The Amazing Spider-Man
A cursory exploration of “The Amazing Spider-Man” #1-#38 and its tangible threads to Steve Ditko’s known ardent Objectivism, a philosophy of self-interest developed by Ayn Rand. [more]
Examining the World of Night of the Hunter
“Lord save little children…They endure and they abide.” These words are spoken directly to the camera at the end of Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton’s directorial debut. This ending reminds me of another classic… [more]
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol #20, A Companion Reader
This essay series will devote time and attention to intertextual themes in the first four issues of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol (#19 to #22). [more]
Spider-Man Was Never Just the “Loveable Loser”
“Yes siree, things are sure looking up for my favorite couple of guys–namely, me!”—ASM #12 Quick: what’s Spider-Man really all about, in one sentence? With most major superheroes, someone might have to pause a second… [more]
Serenity: Leaves on the Wind #4: Where River Gets Scared
The return of The Operative in the previous issue of Serenity: Leaves on the Wind excited fans all over the world, but it sure didn’t excite the Serenity crew. Though we all love Chiwetel Ejofor’s… [more]
“The Final Chapter!”: Peter Parker, Steve Ditko, and the Greatest Spider-Man Story Ever Told
It was clear from his first appearance in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15 that Spider-Man was a very different character than any of the other super-heroes battling for justice on the newsstands at the time. Unlike… [more]
Peter Jackson, We Need to Talk About The Hobbit
Dear Mr. Peter Jackson, It’s time for an intervention. I wasn’t going to write about the Desolation of Smaug, I really wasn’t. Everything I felt about that film had been succinctly expressed elsewhere. Then you… [more]
The New Star Wars Cast: Lucky VII?
This photo is destined to become one of the most famous, or one of the most notorious, in popular culture. The image of the first assembly of the Star Wars Episode VII cast is right… [more]
The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Defending the Reboot
Wasn’t it strange that the prospect of a sequel to the hit franchise reboot of Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man was not greeted with the excitement of, say, Bryan Singer’s new X-Men chapter? How about the rampant… [more]
(Almost) the World’s Finest Team: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 16
Continued from last week. Millar was hardly the first comics scripter to bridle at the constraints of continuity. But few can equal his predilection for heedlessly flouting the more obvious aspects of a property’s backstory. The… [more]
Spider-Man and Science: Exactly Who is Responsible Enough for Great Power?
Spider-Man is kind of unique amongst superheroes in his relationship with science. No, not the science of how he actually swings on those webs without dislocating his shoulders or ripping his arms out of their… [more]
Review of Arrow Season 2, Episode 20
For a good portion of “Seeing Red” I was convinced that the variety and complexities of this season’s plotlines might have finally gotten the better of the writers. Roy’s trail of carnage simply wasn’t illuminating… [more]