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Magazine Archives for:
2015
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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]
Star Trek III and PTSD
“The Enterprise feels like a house with all the children gone,” Admiral James T. Kirk intones in his first scene in Star Trek III, the darkest and in some ways most heartfelt of all the… [more]
Will Brooker on My So-Called Secret Identity Volume 2
With My So-Called Secret Identity Volume 2 now on Kickstarter, I thought it was time to talk to Dr. Will Brooker again about the series, including its innovative new Kickstarter campaign. DARIUS: My So-Called Secret… [more]
“If it Ain’t Broke …”: Revisionist Missteps in Batman: Earth One
Three weeks ago, while discussing the Superman: Earth One series of graphic novels, I mentioned in passing that I “didn’t care” for the Earth One Batman series. Now as far as Internet critiques go, saying… [more]
Love and Mercy: The Powerful Story of Brian Wilson
There are many scenes in Bill Pohland’s new film Love and Mercy of Brian Wilson simply listening. That wouldn’t be an especially unusual choice for a film about a great composer, but the twist here… [more]
Metal Monsters: Tsuburaya Returns to Kong
1967 was a big year for Toho. Not because of the introduction of Godzilla’s son, but because it was their thirty-fifth anniversary. Eiji Tsuburaya and Ishir? Honda reunited to work on their penultimate collaboration for… [more]
Portraits in Alienated British Youth Circa 1989-90, Part Eight: Flushed Down The Toilet
There’s a question I just know you’re dying to ask right now—“dude, if you’re talking about True Faith, why do you have a cover scan of Preacher #1 at the top of your article?” It’s… [more]