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2001′s Planet of the Apes Remake is the Worst of the Franchise
Awkwardly sexualized apes, bad writing, clumsy thematics, and Mark Wahlberg set this film apart from the rest of the franchise. Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of the classic SF franchise starter may not be good, but it is interestingly bad. More bad than interesting though… [more]
An Open Reply to Fantasy Author Patrick Rothfuss
Patrick, In your most recent blog post, you replied to an article that I wrote for Sequart, “Six Reasons Why the Kingkiller Chronicle is the Next Game of Thrones.” You wrote: “Over the years, I’ve been… [more]
Alan Turing in Context, Part 2
Since my last writing, Tor has finished posting the graphic novel of Alan Turing’s life, The Imitation Game, by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis. You can find my comments on the first part here. What… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Inferno Part 1
The first major crossover of my time as devotee of the Uncanny X-Men, Inferno marked the culmination of year’s worth of story, a vast majority of which I was unfamiliar with at the time, and… [more]
Asterix the Gaul, Captain America, and Steroids
What if Tyrion Lannister had Popeye’s super powers? What if Thor had the appetite and I.Q. of Cookie Monster? What if the Spartacus universe was cross-pollinated with the Smurfs? Well, then you’d get Asterix, Obelix,… [more]
Why Aren’t Horror Comics Scary?
Six months out from its announcement at 2014’s Image Expo, we’re still waiting for a solicitation on Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s “The Nameless,” a book that I can guarantee you, based on those two… [more]
An Apology to Pam Noles
Early this year, I wrote an analysis of an interview Alan Moore did with Pádraig Ó Méalóid. One day after it went live, I learned that the “Batman scholar” referenced in the interview (whom I’d… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1 #67
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]
Stunt Writing Yields a Brilliant Novel: Dave Eggers’s Newest
Imagine you’re a novelist who gambles. You lose a big bet, and the buddy you lost to decides to make your writing life incredibly difficult. He sets these restrictions for your next novel, and as… [more]
Cosplay and Color: Skin Tone and Character Portrayals
Among my other duties for A-Kon is administering the social media pages, the Facebook group in particular. Recently there was an interesting debate on the use of cosmetics and other techniques to alter one’s skin… [more]
The Room
The Room is clearly establishing itself as the current cult classic in the vein of Plan 9 From Outer Space. I first watched it with two friends during a day when we were deliberately seeking… [more]
Why Ravi Thornton’s Graphic Memoir is an Early Candidate for the Year’s Best
At a recent conference I attended for English educators, a panel of writers was discussing the phenomenon of the memoir, and debating what the popularity of the form has to say about today’s readership. The… [more]
Sturm und Drang: Germanic Influence on Shingeki no Kyojin
Seid ihr das Essen? Nein wir sind die Jäger Spoilers to follow: The bestselling manga Shingeki no Kyojin by Hajime Isayama has been adapted to television, inspired several video games, and a commercially successful English… [more]
Bugged Out! Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Fifteen
All good things, as they say, must come to an end. As must all bad things, and all mediocre things… and all truncated, confused, ambitious, intriguing, but ultimately, hopeless things. And so it was that… [more]
Indian Culture in Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji)
I will warn you now: this article has spoilers. What I have in mind would be impossible without them. So, that said, allons-y! In the anime series Black Butler, episodes 13 – 15 introduce us… [more]
“The War Between the Super-Freemasons”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 25
Continued from last week. Millar’s command of his craft wouldn’t significantly improve over the remainder of his time on Swamp Thing, though progress would undeniably occur. He’d dial back on the degree of redundant dialogue… [more]
Hanging Ten: A Review of Silver Surfer #3
Of all of Marvel’s cadre of cosmic characters, none are more misunderstood or have as rich a history as the Silver Surfer. Introduced in 1966 in the pages of Fantastic Four #48 by Stan Lee… [more]
Zenescope’s Joe Brusha and the Problem with Provocative Covers
Founded in 2005 by Joe Brusha and Ralph Tedesco, Zenescope’s notorious covers have been a topic of intense conversation within the comic community for the entirety of the company’s history. From souped-up, sexy Dorothy and… [more]
Larry Gonick, Thomas Jefferson, and the Fourth of July
The first time I proposed teaching a comics class, someone asked me what I wanted to call it. “Um … Comics? Comic Books? Something like that,” I said, thinking it should’ve been pretty obvious. The… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Prelude to Inferno
Genosha was now in the rearview mirror but for the last several issues, ever since her dream sequence with S’ym, something had been building with Madelyne Pryor. The demon “stabbed” her in the heart with… [more]
Review of Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert
In her award-winning novel, Mostert blends alchemy, the art of memory, high magic, and murder to create a highly original psychological thriller. Gabriel Blackstone is a cool, hip, thoroughly twenty-first century Londoner with an unusual… [more]
Alan Turing in Context
If you are reading this on a computer, and you almost certainly are, you owe a small debt to Alan Turing. He was the genius code breaker in WWII who theorized and created the first… [more]
Transformers: Age of Extinction Review
The fourth Transformers movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction, is pretty terrible. It’s not really going to have its critical defenders, so piling on the bandwagon and expressing my many problems with the film doesn’t seem… [more]
Optimus Prime Died So The Transformers Could Live
In 1986, Optimus Prime died. And I cried. Not big, wracking sobs or anything, mind you. But it’s entirely possible a single tear rolled down my cheek. I feel comfortable admitting that in a public… [more]
Roll Out! A Review of Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #30
Since the beginning, the Transformers have had a long and distinguished history in comics that have included stories that have been both revered and fondly remembered over the years. From the concept’s earliest days at… [more]