Magazine Archives for:

June 2015

“Leng. We’re All on Leng”: Alan Moore’s Providence and the Cthulhu Mythos

A while back I discussed just what it was that defines the sense of the Lovecraftian. At that time I spoke of Alan Moore’s The Courtyard and Neonomicon and their contrast to the perhaps less… [more]

Southern Bastards #9: Past, Present and Football

“But the Good Lord always gives us another chance, don’t he?” -Coach Big Here were are again, back in the tangled thicket of history, race, sex, sports, ribs and morality that populate the literate and… [more]

Who Will Save Us Now?: Dirty Realistic Fiction, Grim and Gritty Superhero Comic Books, and the Legacy of 1986—Part 3

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility! In the quarter of a century since these books came out, the American comic book landscape has changed dramatically.  Whereas once upon a time, superhero comic books were made… [more]

Manifest Destiny #15: It Turns Out Bird Is The Word…

Manifest Destiny somehow always seems to keep one toe in historical reality, and one toe in the wildest fantastic metaphors of the all-American mind. But it has generally erred on the side of realism: even… [more]

Who Will Save Us Now?: Dirty Realistic Fiction, Grim and Gritty Superhero Comic Books, and the Legacy of 1986—Part 2

All the reasons which made the initiation of physical force evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative! I read—and loved—The Dark Knight Returns when I was in the 7th grade, about three… [more]

Jurassic Park, Problematic Science and Compromise

Jurassic Park and to a lesser extent, its sequels, has always been a “problem” film for me, mainly due to wasted potential and bad science. As time has gone on, I appreciate the original film… [more]

Who Will Save Us Now?: Dirty Realistic Fiction, Grim and Gritty Superhero Comic Books, and the Legacy of 1986—Part 1

Great Krypton! In the fall of 1987, my father gave me 75 cents to purchase issue 595 of Action Comics, the comic book that started my collection.  I had read comic books before, but hadn’t… [more]

Orange is the New Black Season 3

Like many people this weekend, I marathoned the entire third season of the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. (Many of us are also working on Sense8, which is a much more complex and… [more]

Smorgasbord #20: The Black Cat in the Hat

In the burning month of June one must thankful for the little things… like the lack of any recent controversies in the comics scene. Still, Shawn and Tom find much to talk about with IDW’s… [more]

He Left Us His Broken Heart: Hannibal Season Three Episode Two

The hypocrisy of network TV is immediately obvious in this week’s episode of Hannibal as a subtly censored version of Botticelli’s Primavera fades into a macabre reimagining of the painting. Then later when a mangled… [more]

Roger Ebert and the Golden Age of American Film Criticism, Part 1

Roger Ebert loved his hometown, his college, his newspaper, his friends, his lovers, and his travels. Like most great writers, he doesn’t explain so much as he inspires. [more]

Sequential Offers a Great TCAF Collection For Free This Month

The Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF) was held last month, with its usual great success in bringing together a diverse array of comics creators from all over the world. Sequential, a free digital comics app… [more]

Tsuburaya and Honda’s Last Charge: Destroy All Monsters

There was another big number coming down Toho’s pipe shortly after they’d celebrated their anniversary. Their next kaiju film would be the twentieth they had directed, something worthy of celebration. However the celebration was to… [more]

Watchmen up Close: An Interview with Andrew Hoberek

Andrew Hoberek is the author of Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics (Rutgers University Press), a 2015 Eisner-Award nominee for Best Educational/ Academic Work.  He is also an Associate Professor of English at the University of… [more]

Chrononauts Roars to an End in Issue #4

After four issues, which brings us to the end of the first story arc of Chrononauts, here’s the story in a nutshell: two irresponsible teenaged goofballs steal a hot car and proceed to have a… [more]

An Empire of Crime: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

I’d only ever seen one Fritz Lang movie prior to watching The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and that was the film he directed immediately before The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, M. Other than being a… [more]

Weird Worlds: The Minor Mainstream Works of Steve Gerber, Part 1 – Dr. Fate

When I first started my comics blog in 2008, the first post I made was a brief obituary and tribute to Steve Gerber. I think it serves as a nice introduction to the project upon… [more]

Descender #4: Is Driller a Killer?

The cover of the new issue of Descender is adorned by a character who is rapidly becoming the “Chewbacca” of the series, “Driller”. Driller is exactly what he says he is: a robot that drills… [more]

Ethics Become Aesthetics: Hannibal Season Three Episode One

Hannibal’s season two finale was a catastrophic cliff hanger that saw almost every single protagonist bleeding out on the floor, life fading. The first thing we see in season three is a series of elegantly… [more]

Jurassic Park III: A Retro Review

In summer of 1993, most of the world watched and fell in love with the Jurassic Park movie. But while I’m sure countless folks would have loved to make a dinosaur movie after seeing it,… [more]

Nameless #4: The Logic of a Nightmare

After four issues, I can safely say that I’m still not really sure what’s going on in Nameless. Just as I get, or at least seem to get, a handle on the proceedings, reality shifts… [more]

The Lost World: Jurassic Park: A Retro Review

Believe it or not, I come here not to bury The Lost World, but to praise it. Jurassic Park hit theaters in June of ’93 and the rapturous reception it received at the box office… [more]

Jurassic Park: A Retro Review

When director Steven Spielberg’s dinos-on-the-rampage blockbuster Jurassic Park first hit the screen in summer of 1993, twenty-two years ago now (I’ll let you process that number for a second, and let the reality of how… [more]

The Martian is Revealed in a New Trailer

The trailer for the highly anticipated big-screen adaptation of Andy Weir’s The Martian went live yesterday, and gave us our first in-depth glimpse at Ridley Scott’s latest science fiction vision. The Martian is essentially a… [more]

Eating Brains: Zombies and Dystopianism

In 2013 I was at SDCC meeting Julian Darius for the first time. After a long, harrowing comic-con experience we both went to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund after party. There were famous people… [more]