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Magazine
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]
Grant Morrison’s 9/11: New X-Men’s “Ambient Magnetic Fields”
Grant Morrison’s New X-Men debuted in 2001, about five months before 9/11. New X-Men came at an interesting time in American comics history. Marvel was being reinvigorated under Joe Quesada, radically upping its storytelling and… [more]
With Days of Future Past Released, Where Does Fox’s Cinematic Universe Stand?
With the release of Days of Future Past, it’s time to reassess how Fox’s X-Men movie universe is progressing — and what it needs to do, if it’s going to be able to mount a… [more]
X-Men: Days of Future Past is a Lot of Fun
X-Men: Days of Future Past, released today, is one of the funner super-hero movies ever made. Caution: minor spoilers ahead. The movie’s been compared by some to The Avengers. Obviously, the two films are very different:… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Twelve
So here’s my theory: sometime between submitting his final scripts for Scarab #5 and #6, John Smith got word — probably via editor Stuart Moore — that DC wouldn’t be going ahead with his project… [more]
What Should Be Done with the Mutant Menace? Part 5: The Special Case of Professor X
…continued from yesterday. In the previous four parts, we’ve seen how a very particular plot line structures the X-Men comics: the losing and regaining of control over one’s powers (and the comics are based on the… [more]
Review of Arrow Season 2, Episode 23
For a good long while Arrow’s second season finale looked like it was going to be just about perfect. After last week’s installment that both set that pace and upped the stakes for this final… [more]
Is She-Hulk Too Sexy?: Goyer vs. Lee
I can’t be the only person on this planet who finds She-Hulk sexy. That combination of va-va-voom curves, strength and intelligence (the last is important) is a hugely attractive blend. So, the only question is… [more]
Your Homework Before Seeing Days of Future Past: Read All New X-Men and Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men
When comic book movies come out, it’s sometimes hard to tell what storylines they’re pulling from. Based on the trailers, X-Men: Days of Future Past focuses on a future where Sentinels have taken over, no… [more]