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Reviews
Orange is the New Black Season 4: Non-Spoiler Review
Orange is the New Black was always an interesting, innovative show, both in its subject matter and even its mode of distribution (Netflix). But last season, the narrative became unfocused, the hole at the centre… [more]
Manifest Destiny #20: Big Feet and Bigger Eyes
“Captain Clark killed a curious animal… [one] never yet known in the United States.” That’s a quote from a member of the actual Corps of Discovery, and in that case it was the antelope, which… [more]
Descender #12: Brothers
One of Descender’s strongest themes has always been the notion of robots having souls — sometimes souls more pure and more sensitive than the flesh and blood humans that surround them. Our central robot character,… [more]
Invisible Republic #10: New Wrinkles
Invisible Republic is only just now in its tenth issue, but it feels as if there have been many more than that. The complexity of the world, and the subtlety with which Gabriel Hardman and… [more]
Paper Girls #6: The Horror of Adulting
Warning: If you haven’t read the first five issues of Paper Girls, this discussion will spoil a few things. On the other hand, if you have read those issues but not the latest, don’t worry.… [more]
The Goddamned #4: You Don’t Mess With Noah
The Goddamned is one of two major comics that have recently offered us a reimagined version of the Biblical character Noah. The other book — Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, which was also made into a big… [more]
Equals Film Review
Science-fiction movies have long had a history of flirting with the concept of a “utopia.” However, the recurring problem of any utopia is that they are often always a “dystopia” in disguise. Is life truly… [more]
Manifest Destiny #19: Teamwork
When undertaking a task as dangerous as the exploration of unknown lands, teamwork is an absolute necessity. Other writers (such as Stephen Ambrose) have noted that it was this capacity for group unity, strong leadership… [more]
Black Road #2: A Little Kindness
It should come as no surprise that Black Road has the narrative structure of the “journey”. (The word “road” is right there in the title, after all.) While we were introduced to the characters and… [more]
Southern Bastards #14: “Homecoming” Ends
As we reach the end of the “Homecoming” story arc in Southern Bastards, it becomes fairly clear what this particular storyline has always been about. Not football, or even race, necessarily, but the rather the… [more]
Batman V Superman and the Lack of Emotion
SPOILERS AHEAD… I wasn’t moved. There I was, watching my three all-time favorite superheroes together on the big screen for the first time and I wasn’t moved. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were there, in… [more]
Ken Burns’ Jackie Robinson: A Timely and Snappy Portrait of a Legendary Life
Longtime fans of Ken Burns know that the legendary documentary filmmaker can produce works of great beauty and power, but sometimes falls prey to sentimentality and repetitive, unsubtle narratives. Luckily, his new film Jackie Robinson… [more]
Black Road #1: The Viking Comic You’ve Been Waiting For
Vikings have a special place in the European imagination, to put it mildly. A crazy blend of the wild west with the notion of the Fantasy Hero archetype set to a Heavy Metal soundtrack, the… [more]
The Fix Is Wonderful, Outrageous Fun
When I was in Grade 12, our laid back physics and astronomy teacher once asked our class, “What do you want to do when you leave here?” One bravely honest soul replied, “I don’t want… [more]
The Goddamned #3: The Mark of Cain
Jason Aaron’s The Goddamned is best described as a cross between the Bible and Mad Max, with all the brutality and wit that implies. But somehow it goes so far into the depths of inhumanity… [more]
Fat Man on Batman Live in Detroit
We live in a day and age where the media we enjoy is constantly being translated from one medium to the next. While some may lament that this is done merely to increase exposure to… [more]
A Look at Daredevil, Season Two
SPOILERS AHEAD! With memories of Ben Affleck’s run as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen nearly forgotten, season 2 of Netflix’s Daredevil quietly snuck in a week before the chaos that is Batman Versus Superman: Dawn… [more]
Negative Space #4: The Power of Depression
Negative Space, by Ryan K. Lindsay, with artwork by Owen Gieni, started out with a suicide attempt. It then followed our hero, Guy, through some therapy, some revelations about the nature of the world, and… [more]
The Trailer Park Boys Return for Season 10
Trailer Park Boys has turned itself into a cottage industry. Growing organically (pardon the pun) from a short film by Nova Scotia filmmaker Mike Clattenburg, the Boys had their own Showcase TV series from 2000-2007,… [more]
Descender #11: Stuck in the Middle
The moral sides are rather sharply drawn now in issue #11 of Descender. We’ve met humanoid fanatics, bent on the destruction of all robotic life (The Scrappers of Gnish) and now we’ve met the other… [more]
Plutona #4: The Power of Imagination
One of the many things Plutona gets right about children is how seriously they take their imaginations. It isn’t as if they don’t know the difference between what’s “real” and what’s not — they just… [more]
The Boys are Back in Town: Power Man and Iron Fist #1
Nostalgia played a big role in why I picked up the first issue of Marvel’s new Power Man and Iron Fist series. From the pre-release buzz, it appeared that writer David F. Walker, artist Sanford Greene,… [more]
Invisible Republic #9: A New Perspective
The latest issue of Invisible Republic begins with a welcome look into Maia’s past. The little incident in the fish farm that’s depicted reinforces two main character points: that Maia is a lot stronger than… [more]
Celebrating the X-Files Self-Aware Sense of Humour
There’s been some predictable criticism of the latest episode of the new X-Files, “Babylon”, the fifth in a short run of six, since it deals with the issue of Muslim extremists and terrorism. We should… [more]
Descender #10: Picking a Side
We’ve spent so much time getting to know the characters and their personal challenges over the past 10 issues of Descender that it’s good to be reminded in the new issue that the freaking galaxy… [more]