Every once in a while, I get all jaded and grown-up about the glorious and bizarre world in which we live, thinking that I’ve got everything figured out and that nothing can really scare me other than taxes and the big & tall store running out of khakis. Luckily, any time that happens, I can bust out my copy of ‘Heavy Metal’ and watch ‘B-52’ alone or turn off all the lights and scream along with Katie as her jackass of a boyfriend torments the thing that lives in the attic throughout ‘Paranormal Activity.’ The Halloween season is the perfect…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
When it comes to fiction, I prefer that my characters have flaws and weaknesses, even the proverbial “feet of clay”, if only to avoid the dull late-90s infallible one-step-ahead Batman characterization. Even though I like the fact that Chuck Taine became Bouncing Boy because of a completely avoidable bone-headed blunder, I prefer that the CREATORS have their $#!+ together, avoiding moments like Stan Lee’s embarrassing Super-Man error or the fact that Donna Troy owes her existence to one of DC’s writers not realizing that the Wonder Girl character was just a time-displaced Wonder Woman! Still, as Gerald Ford was known…
There are those who rail against the existence of Kryptonite, claiming that it’s a cop-out to have Superman be vulnerable to the radiation of his long-lost home planet, but when it comes to superheroic weaknesses, the Man Of Steel’s is practically poetic. If you compare the Golden Age Green Lantern (can destroy a city with his thoughts, but powerless against a kid with a Louisville Slugger) or the madness that is Wonder Woman’s Golden Age limitation (rendered powerless whenever tied up by a man), it’s easy to see that Supes has it easy, which does beg a rather interesting query……
Recent news about the return of Miracleman (perhaps finally completing the legendary lost tale by Gaiman and Buckingham) have me super-excited about the future of comics, but Micky Moran’s azure alter ego isn’t the only big return extant. Fans of Angela were psyched to see her return in the pages of Marvel Comics, while the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents have relaunched at IDW, along with Cartoon Network mainstays The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack (the subject of this week’s Dueling Review!) Truly, we live in interesting times to be a comic book fan, but even with as many licensed, revamped and reworked…
With more and more material from next Spring’s remade/reworked Robocop film escaping into the wild, fans around the world are coming to the conclusion that those in charge of the remake didn’t necessarily get what was best about the original movie and, to a lesser degree, the sequel. (Although, now that I think of it, the same could be said about Robocop 3.) Officer Murphy’s journey from cop and father to implement of destruction back to a semblance of humanity was a disturbing tale, filled with violence, mutilation and entirely human monsters, and the tank-like armored form that Peter Weller…
There are a lot of comic books out there in the world, and only so many hours in the day, even when your memory is like mine, so when it comes to our Retro Reviews, (Major Spoilers exclusive, accept no substitutes!) I am sometimes limited to the things that have stuck in my mind. That’s where you, the Faithful Spoilerites, come in! As my review pile is growing short, I’d like to know what bits and pieces of comic-book ephemera I may have forgotten or misplaced (bearing in mind, of course, that some books are harder to track down than…
Last evening, I enjoyed the company of some old friends, a bonfire and an array of traditional campfire foods. After enjoying some lovely hot dogs of unknown provenance (when it comes to the tubular meats, I find it less disconcerting if I don’t examine them too closely, to be honest), we also melted chocolate and roasted marshmallows over the fire to create the traditional dessert known as S’mores, one of the few food items in the world to be named worse than ‘kumquats.’ One of my friends, an even bigger lover of puns and wordplay than I am, began sharing…
As a wise man once said, “Lots of planets have a north!” That’s not really apropos of anything, particularly, just good perspective on the universe, though it does touch on one of the great questions of fiction (specifically, why do so many aliens look human and speak English?) Another endlessly debated question of fiction regards the speed-rankings of the Man Of Steel and the Vizier Of Velocity, a battle which DC Comics has seen fit to revisit half a dozen times over the years. Mark Waid’s specialist rule (“Flash is faster than Superman because Superman has other abilities”) generally applies…
Modern comic-book storytelling has been leaning pretty hard on the classic villains, making it necessary for each hero to have one Greatest Villain Of Them All. Daredevil with Bullseye, The Fantastic Four with Doctor Doom, Iron Man with Jack Daniels… All of these are somewhat obvious, but it can be more difficult with some characters. It’s easy to say that Batman’s perfect foe is the Joker, but who would it be for Spider-Man? His dark mirror, Venom? The murderer of his first love, The Green Goblin? The guys who wrote the Clone Saga? Because of the multi-faceted nature of the…
If you follow the Major Spoilers crew on Twitter, (And, really, why wouldn’t you? We’re kind of delightful, especially Rodrigo) then you’re probably already aware of my appreciation of the beauty of a certain actress. I’d apologize for my minor obsession, but I make no excuses for pointing out that someone is utterly adorable, especially given that I still remember how awesome it was to be the object of someone’s similar attentions some years ago. (I was married, and he wasn’t my type, but that didn’t make it any less flattering…) The Tumblrs and Photobucket’s of the intarwebz are full…
The mythology of “cool” is a strange and nebulous beastie. From my perspective, as a child of the 70s, I immediately think of Henry Winkler’s Fonz as the epitome of self-confident actualization, but my elders could easily make arguments for the likes of James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, or even the legendary Achilles. Whomever or whatever you deem to be the perfect indicator of self-possession, we can all agree: We know it when we see it. Exposure in my tween years to the exploits of daredevil biker and erstwhile cowboy Johnny Blaze (aka the original motorcyclin’ Ghost Rider) has cemented him…
I’ve often said that having a brain that works the way mine does, trapping pop culture detritus like a hair clog in your shower, is a mixed blessing. Case in point, for the last week or so, off and on, I’ve found myself half-remembering a few bits from the musical ‘Chicago’, but since I don’t recall the actual lyrics, Roxie Hart is for some reason singing about Terence and Philip from ‘South Park.’ While not as insidious as the one awful year-and-a-half where a certain musical’s reprise was stuck in my head, (and, no, I won’t tell you which one)…
This weekend has been an interesting one for me, having spent most of it lying on my couch in various states of semi-consciousness getting over a fever. At one point, I was flipping back and forth between channels, watching the climactic sequences of ‘Titanic’, ‘8 Mile’, and ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ at the same time (a surreal experience that I highly recommend), and half-watched the second Harry Potter movie for about ten minutes before my daughter informed me they weren’t speaking English. The wonder that is Spanish-language cable networks aside, I also dreamt that I was in the Robocop cartoon and that…
— Due to illness, today’s MS-QOTD (you know how it’s pronounced) re-presents a Classic query from the distant summer of 2012. It’s cool, though, ’cause no one responded the first time. Next up: my review of the new issue of ‘The Adventures Of Jerry Lewis.’ — The (no-longer-so-very) recent return of Metalocalypse has re-instilled my great admiration for Charles Foster Ofdensen, manager of the world’s most successful band, Dethklok. Possessed of clarity of wit, iron-clad sense of purpose and excessive levels of badass (One word: “Renovationklok.” And, yes, I am aware that’s not an actual word.) Ofdensen remains unflappable,…