ON COMICS CHARACTERS
ON SCI-FI FRANCHISES
ON GRANT MORRISON
ON TV AND MOVIES
OTHER BOOKS
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Magazine Archives for:
2015
Switch to calendar view.
The Surreal Structure of the Shaolin
I watched The 36th Chamber of the Shaolin and had lots of lengthy thoughts about it’s structure in relation to modern action movies [more]
Portraits in Alienated British Youth Circa 1989-90, Part Nine: Out Of His Depth
As part five of Garth Ennis and Warren Pleece’s True Faith opens, we find our young protagonist, Nigel Gibson, well and truly out of his depth as lunatic (by most people’s standards, at any rate)… [more]
A Tribute to James Horner
Probably the reason why many of us know the name James Horner is because he wrote the soundtracks to some of the films of our formative years. The public at large remembers him from Titanic… [more]
Weird Worlds: The Minor Mainstream Works of Steve Gerber, Part 2 – Mister Miracle
Though Jack Kirby’s Mister Miracle ostensibly ran for 6 years (1971-1977), the series produced only 25 issues. Between #18, Kirby’s final issue, and #19, there is a 3 year gap. It is a testament to… [more]
A Brief Appreciation of Comics Lettering
If comics are “Just words and pictures,” then lettering is what allows those two elements to blend into a cohesive whole. Lettering can be artful, it can serve story purpose, it can be decorative, it… [more]
Marvel Studios Selects Ava DuVernay to Direct Black Panther
For those unaware of her work, Ava DuVernay is an award winning and Golden Globe nominated director (Selma 2014) with a pedigree rooted in African-American-themed films. She debuted in 2008 with a documentary about ’90s… [more]
Rasputin Is Back
Rasputin returns for its sixth issue, following one of the most dramatic and unexpected jump-cuts in the history of comics that ended the previous issue. It isn’t as if this issue walks back those surprises… [more]
My Nakama Left Me With a Smile: Hannibal Season Two Episode Three
The murders on this episode of Hannibal revolve around technicalities. The episode opens on a seated Hannibal, discussing Will Graham’s admission of forgiveness. Hannibal seems almost visually shaken as he parses out this newly developing… [more]
A Sandman Miscellany: Sandman Overture #5 Review
One of the difficult aspects of reviewing Neil Gaiman’s bookend of his long developed Sandman conceptual universe is making heads and tails of the myriad pathways that intertwine in the grand narrative. [more]
Invisible Republic #4: Get Another Source
As I’ve mentioned before in our discussions of Invisible Republic, one of the most interesting things about this book is the nature of the dramatic stakes. Nobody is fighting to “save the world” in the… [more]
Michael Keaton to Star in BOOM! Studios Imagine Agents Film
In 1989, one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters was a live action Batman film starring an actor just a year off from giving a killer performance as an insane, manipulative zombie-man named Beetlejuice: Michael Keaton.… [more]
Colloquium #13: Magic Horror Vibe — Ales Kot on Wolf
Markisan interviews writer Ales Kot on Wolf, his upcoming fantasy / horror / crime series for Image Comics. They discuss the influence of Hellblazer, the importance of diversity in comics, the lure of Los Angeles,… [more]
Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events to Hit Netflix: Jim Carrey Still to Be Involved
In late 1999, American novelist Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) took the YA circuit by storm with his new series debut, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginnings. With reviews mostly positive throughout the years,… [more]
Project Greenlight: A Glimpse into a Bygone Era
Even though only fifteen years separates us now from the early 2000s, in terms of the production of film and TV, and the general media landscape, it seems like a lifetime in the past. In… [more]
The Golden Age of American Film Criticism, Part 2
That generation of film critics became my unofficial college professors. If you needed me in those days, you could usually find me in the basement of the university library, sprawled on the dusty concrete floor reading old movie reviews. [more]
An Exploration of the Scientific Accuracy on Orphan Black
Science fiction, even at its most absurdly whimsical and farfetched, is never easy to produce. Some stories contain fictional elements so preposterous that all scientific credulity is lost. Others make the opposite mistake, and fill… [more]
Them Dancing Bones: On Alice
There’s something delightful about a film that manages to create visuals you couldn’t have imagined. In a largely visual medium, one where, especially nowadays, the corner-most vestiges of anyone’s mind can be played across a… [more]
John Byrne Adeptly Extends Star Trek Universe in IDW’s New Visions
Comic books usually begin with stories. Then there are, of course, a wide variety of approaches to the art that illustrates the books. One approach that ran its course in the late 1970s and early… [more]
Jurassic World: A Good Idea Destroyed by the Studio System
I had a more complicated reaction to Jurassic World than I expected to. A lot of people seem to be writing off the film as another run-of-the-mill blockbuster unworthy of strong opinions in either direction.… [more]
“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]