“IT’S…” …Major Spoilers Flying Query! *fanfare* With the latest episode of Critical Hit still haunting our collective consciousness, I thought I might try and turn our thoughts to a more pleasant bit of gaming minutiae. Throughout the many years that I’ve been roleplaying, throughout many different games and gaming systems, there have been a few utterly unbreakable rules: * Don’t call the game-master a “scuzzbag.” * Don’t attack your party (unless you’re sure you’ll win.) * Never give Tiltowait the money. * Most important of all, never EVER reference Monty Python unless you’re ready for the entire game to devolve…
Author: Matthew Peterson
Matthew Peterson
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.
During the dark days of the 1980s, there was no shortage of tights-wearin’, hair-teasin’, tongue-wagglin’ lunatics with names like Ratt, Quiet Riot and Snakes ‘N Barrels, all entreating us to feel, work for and/or get various noises, weekends, rocks and video vamps. Music being music, those legendary bands are now only heard on oldies stations (or in Otter Disaster’s Subaru) but I still find myself missing the lost epoch of the Queensrÿches and White Rangers Night Rangers of the world… The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) wants a piece of your heart, but just doesn’t have time to start from…
My recent review of The Walking Dead comic started a chain of thought in my head about current events in the television version of Rick Grimes and company’s story. To wit, I’m finding it most interesting to examine the comic book’s characterization of Negan, and how he occupies a similar narrative role to the TV version of The Governor (a sinister counterpart to Rick, with similar goals regarding the safety of his people, though not sharing Rick’s moral stance). Though there is some variance in how the tale is being told, the paranoid part of my brain wonders if there…
Or – “It Takes A Real Man To Be A Superhero AND Host The Daily Show!” In a way, it’s kind of astonishing that in an industry that started in the mid-1930s, there were virtually no superheroes of color until the 1970s. Though today’s Hero History entrant wasn’t the first black superhero (that place is held by The Black Panther, circa 1966) nor the first African-American character to headline his own book (that honor goes to Dell Comics’ Lobo, a cowboy type who will probably make for a fine Retro Review soon enough), but John Stewart predates either Luke Cage…
The recent announcement of Geoff Johns leaving the Green Lantern title sparked two lines of thought in my head: First, while fans will miss his work, the new-and-different take that he brought to the tales of Hal Jordan and his alien blue masters now comprises nearly a decade of stories, and successfully brought the character of Green Lantern back to prominence. (Heck, he even managed to amicably settle the Hal/Kyle fan wars by making EACH of them the most important Green Lantern, albeit for different timeframes.) The second thing that occurred to me was, I admit, steeped in cynicism and…
Or – “A Walking Dead Double-Feature!” What has Negan done with Carl Grimes?
Or – “I Wish “All The Good Names Really Are Taken” Wasn’t Such A Cliché.” The best thing about comics in the New 52/Marvel NOW! era is that many of the oldest properties in the comics world are getting new takes, and new fans. The worst part is that no one in their right mind can be following ALL the new books at once. Because of that paradigm, I haven’t read Suicide Squad in… Um… At least a year, I think. Have the adventures of Harley Quinn and her amazing friends held up? Your Major Spoilers review awaits!
The formulation of the MS-QOTD is an arcane process, shrouded in mystery and potato chip crumbs, but a large part of the work is in the choice of the correct image. (I was going to say “appropriate,” but… perhaps not so much.) I pride myself on not using my browser’s SafeSearch function, but I have the dual advantage of an unshared laptop and a high threshold for the bizarre. In many ways, the things I see on the internet are a testament to mainstream culture embracing the icons of our nerdery, something that can only be good for the various…
Or – “The New Bendis Era Begins!” When Brian Bendis took the reins of the Avengers in two-thousand-whatever, he immediately got things off the ground with a bang, blowing up Avengers Mansion, killing off fan-favorites, and immediately shaking up the status quo by adding new characters to the Avengers mix. It was a thunderbolt from the blue for an admittedly shaky franchise, and brought the Avengers back into the public consciousness for the new century. Now, BMB is ram-rodding a new age for the X-Men franchise, including a new role for the original X-leader, Cyclops. Will they bring ol’ One-Eye…
Couples in fiction (ESPECIALLY in heroic or super-heroic fiction) are a troublesome plot point. There is an old adage that says happy couples are dramatically inert, which makes them occasionally seem boring to read/write about. There are literally infinite ways around this problem, but even back in the Golden Age, writers have bent over backwards to create drama around comic book pairings. Still, in honor of St. Valentine’s Day (which, I think, is designed to either make you feel like an inferior partner and/or remind you of gangsters gettin’ shot down) I have been considering the various permutations of pop-culture…
My most recent Retro Review started me thinking about the nature of the “kid sidekick” as a superhero trope. From the debut of Robin back in the Golden Age, people LOVED the concept, leading other companies to try to duplicate the Boy Wonder’s success with the likes of Bucky, Dusty, Tim and the other Tim. (Both Captain Wonder and The Black Terror had sidekicks by that super-heroic sobriquet.) In these postmodern days, it’s become a cliché to mock the very IDEA of a child fighting crime, but that sort of cynical Negative Nancy nabob nattering doesn’t fly in MS-QOTD land. Besides, if…
This weekend’s shift at the comic store (Gatekeeper Hobbies, Huntoon & Gage, Topeka! Ask me about the first appearance of Bizarro!) included an extended conversation with a young woman about 18 years old who was just killing time while her laundry finished drying across the street. Although initially uncertain about the whole “comic book store” experience, she had an understanding of RPGs, liked the Walking Dead television show and was kind of fascinated by the D&D game going on in the back game room. Our discussion ranged from the simple (“How do you know what order to put the books…
Fawcett Comics had a number of super-hero first-stringers who weren’t Captain Marvel, but none had the star power of the Big Red Cheese, to the point where the creators clearly wondered if it was possible to once again catch lightning in a bottle. This time, however, the bottle was blue… Your Major Spoilers (retro) review awaits!
When Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was on the air, they made much hay out of the imported/adapted films of Sandy Frank, to the point where he was tabbed as “the source of all [their] pain.” I always found hilarity, not just in Joel’s dancing, but in the fact that, when I was a lad, Sandy Frank meant liquid awesome in the form of BATTLE! OF! THE PLANETS! planetsplanetplanets Of course, things were different in the 1970s, and perhaps there wasn’t as much quality competition for my proverbial dollar, but BoTP is one of the entertainments of my childhood that totally…