In the many years since the superhero first showed up (and remember, prototypical guys like Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Mandrake predate the Man Of Steel, some by several decades), there have been literally thousands of guys fighting for truth, justice and the almighty buck. Naturally, there has been some overlap of abilities, costumes and names in the intervening century, which has occasionally led to some tap-dancing around intellectual property. Marvel Comics Kree Captain Marvel has often been known by an obnoxious portmanteau of his real name, Captain Mar-Vell, while Fawcett/DC’s big red cheese has recently had his name changed…
Browsing: Major Spoilers
My daughter’s latest obsession is an educational show called “Crashbox”, designed to teach reading and math comprehension to school-age kids. The child was absolutely aghast when I informed her that, once we have seen all fifty-odd episodes, that there weren’t any more to be had. Worse still was the news that there wasn’t even the chance that they might make more, as the show had been cancelled several years before she even been BORN. Her dismayed response led me to recall a similar personal disappointment, the experience of finding seven issues of the original Secret Six comic years ago, and…
If you are living in the United States of America, Happy Fourth of July! For the rest of you who aren’t celebrating, here’s a picture of a kid in a goofy hat.
Today in the United States, it’s Independence Day, which generally means no postal service, small exposions everywhere, and random patriotic fervor throughout the day. Living as I do on the outskirts of a largish (for Kansas, anyway) city, I find that fervor revealing itself in the form of gunfire, shouting, that one Lee Greenwood song and the wearing of the red, white and blue. The only place one finds more stars-and-stripes attire than early July in the heartland (he said, transitioning effortlessly), is in the comic books where the example of The Shield (the first patriotic superhero) and his longer-lasting…
IT’S NEW COMIC BOOK DAY! With the myriad of titles being released each week, we know it can be difficult to narrow down your list of books to pick up. That’s why the Major Spoilers Staff came up with their list of books they are looking forward to this week.
This week on the Major Spoilers Podcast:Seven years is a long time, but somehow we’ve made it this far. We answer your questions, and talk comics, too. [podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/majorspoilers/msp527.mp3[/podcast] Direct Download Subscribe via iTunes RSS Feed Subscribe to the Major Spoilers Podcast Network Master Feed! Major Spoilers Podcast Network Master Feed RSS Feed Show your thanks to Major Spoilers for this episode by making a $5.00 per month recurring donation. It will help ensure Major Spoilers continues far into the future! Show Notes after the Jump!
One of our Twitter followers asked the other day if there was ever an artist change that caused us to drop a title. Then the very next day, Rob Leifeld started tweeting about dropping books because he didn’t like the artist change. Then I got an email asking the exact same thing. The universe seems to be conspiring to force this week’s Major Spoilers Poll of the Week upon all of us. [poll id=”291″]
Munchkin is a dedicated deck card game by Steve Jackson Games, written by Steve Jackson and illustrated by John Kovalic, that has a humorous take on role-playing games. This week on Munchkin Land we dive into the dark twisted dungeon cards of Munchkin Cthulhu.
One of the unspoken rules of pop culture is that, as something popular ages, more and more contrarians appear out of the woodwork to tell you how it actually wasn’t as good as the general public thought. While I’m sometimes part of those discussions (especially as regards Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and the dystopian antics of ‘Kingdom Come’) I find some amusement in recurring themes. The latest argument I’ve encountered is that the Avengers movie suffered most because of the presence of the “unrealistic” character of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Barton, aka Hawkeye. In a world of giants and monsters,…
Though I’m not one of the guys who idealizes the days of childhood, I nonetheless have some fond memories of lying about reading comics (or, later, some heavy-duty science fiction novels stolen from my stepbrother’s bookshelves) to while away the occasional weekend afternoon. I clearly remember a fall day when I sat down to read Fleischer and Aparo’s ‘Wrath Of The Spectre’ for the first time (totally blown away, I might add), as well as an afternoon spent sitting, for some reason, in freezing temperatures inside my unheated truck enjoying Stephen King’s ‘The Bachman Books.’ Why I was sitting in…
If you listen to our various podcasts, (and if you don’t, WHY NOT?) you probably know that I have issues with movie/cartoon adaptations of characters that I love from the comics. Not only do many producers and filmmakers have a questionable idea about the reality of comic book stories, there’s little understanding of the fact that there is actually a spectrum of story-telling tropes and genres at play in comic fiction. Film tends to turn every hero into either a variation on Batman (dark angsty avenger) or 40s Captain Marvel (a comedy figure played for laughs, often a bumbler.) As…
In this episode of Critical Hit, A Major Spoilers Dungeons and Dragons Podcast: A familiar face returns, and it’s time for some fighty-fighty! Images for this episode, after the jump!
The concept of “crossover” is a very strange and relatively modern one. I imagine that, in ye olde dayes of yore, a storyteller who wanted to have Heracles meet Gilgamesh didn’t have to create a time-vortex omniversal space/time breach to do so (or in the case of Angela’s recent Marvel Universe debut, a ten-issue plotless boondoggle) she probably just said “Okay, this one time? Two guys totes met, y’all…” Audiences and storytelling tropes have gotten more sophisticated over the centuries (for better and for worse) and as a result, today’s readers want explanations to rationalize why Spider-Man wouldn’t participate…
This week, Zach is going to need a bigger boat, as we talk Jaws and the summer blockbuster.