While watching ‘Blue Harvest’ (The Family Guy ‘Star Wars’ parody episode), I was impressed with how much The Widget caught in terms of the references to the original film. (She also laughed out loud at Doctor Who and Asteroids jokes, but that’s clearly my influence showing through.) Afterwards, we talked about how Vader is Luke’s father, and how Ben Kenobi stole him away as a baby to keep him safe from his father. The child then asked me a question that didn’t occur to ME until 1989 or so: “How come Darth Vader didn’t just come get him? Isn’t Tatooine…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
We’ve talked before about the “earworm,” a song or snippet thereof that gets stuck in your head, repeating and repeating, chiming endlessly through your poor skull until you want to run your head over with a clockwork train like Gomez Addams. This afternoon, it happened to the Widget in the car, forcing me to play OTHER songs at top volume to keep her from humming three seconds of a song that she didn’t know the end of, thereby making it impossible for her to end the process by singing the song all the way through. I once knew a woman…
This week I was shocked to find that the endless promos heralding the return of ‘The Arsenio Hall Show’ weren’t just some elaborate joke on the viewers (insert remark about how the show itself is the joke blah blah blah fishcakes.) For my part, if they were gonna reanimate the pop-culture corpses of the Clinton Administration, I’d have preferred that they bring back Mystery Science Theatre 3000, or perhaps throw Jim Carrey’s floundering career a bone with a retake on ‘In Living Color.’ Even though, when it comes to talk shows, I’m not particularly interested in watching even when I…
As a young lad on the plains of Kansas, I enjoyed the arena-rock stylings of Styx, Journey and especially Boston. One of Boston’s most impressive songs, ‘Rock & Roll Band,’ is a classically embossed tale of their rise to prominence, the kind of self-aggrandizing madness that I find myself having to admire. Later, I encountered the works of Tenacious D (the greatest rock duo in the history of the universe), a band that actually has several different songs explaining their history and/or cosmic origins. Maybe it’s because of my love of professional wrestling and the traditional badass entrance theme (I’m…
Recently, Grant Morrison made some waves with his interpretation of the last scene of the 1988 Alan Moore/Brian Bolland graphic novel opus, ‘The Killing Joke,’ (which also triggered our discussion of that rather imposing tome in the latest Major Spoilers Podcast.) Morrison opined that “no one gets the end” of the book, explaining that (in his analysis) the final sequence depicts Batman finally crossing the line and snapping his old enemy’s neck just off-panel, finally giving their decades-old rivalry an ending. The roots of the idea do touch something which admittedly is an appealing concept for comics, providing the story…
When it comes to the definition of a pop-culture badass, it’s often in the eye of the beholder, and while you’ll hear a lot of talk about Batman, Wolverine and Jean Valjean, you don’t often hear people discussing Eddie Izzard or Prickle the clay dragon. Spending time as I do on the internet, I find many people enthusing about the wonderful Mal Reynolds, or that guy Walter Breakingbad from that show whose name I can’t remember, but it’s also wonderful when there’s one guy who has an entire site devoted to the most epic moments of awesome by the likes…
There are those who tell me that Daniel Craig’s James Bond is the best James Bond because he eschews the gadgetry and goofy humor of the old movies in favor of a more “realistic” and brutal approach to spycraft. Sure, there’s something to be said for a more realistic Bond, but part of the charm of the Bond films was the sometimes-clever, sometimes-ridiculous laser-guided electro-gizmos (as well as the snappy post-murder one-liners, but that’s another question.) After a long car trip today, I found myself wishing that I had the submarine/Lotus Esprit from “The Spy Who Loved Me”, the better…
Rodrigo, co-host of the Major Spoilers Podcast (and dance machine to all the ladies) is a pretty perceptive feller, and something he said the other day and/or a couple of years ago has stuck with me throughout the last years of comics: Superheroes don’t fight villains anymore as much as they fight one another. Sometimes they shake things up, like in ‘Siege,’ where the other superheroes were actually villains in disguise, but the heroes of the Four Justice Avengers Of The Galaxy Legion often end up in conflict with themselves as much as with any ne’er-do-wells or nefarious nudniks. The…
Amazo: Android menace created by Professor Ivo to defeat the Justice League by using their own powers against them. The Super Adaptoid: Android menace created by the scientists of A.I.M. to defeat Captain America, using the powers of the Avengers against him. The combined powers of the Justice League of America on the one hand, the combined powers of the Mighty Avengers on the other. What to do, what to choose? The MS-QOTD (pronounced “Sie-burr-net-ick-oh”) thought about tossing the Mimic and the Super-Skrull in there, but figured that’d make things weird, asking: Which super-robot would you rather have as your…
The circles in which I turn tend to expose me to many ongoing arguments of a nerdy nature, but one that keeps recurring in recent weeks has been the question of what character is Marvel’s equivalent to Wonder Woman. Many candidates have been floated, from Aurora to Zaran’s daughter, with a lot of people hanging around Carol Danvers for some reason, but it seems that few actually ask what “Marvel’s Wonder Woman” means. In terms of character role, Diana’s position in the DC universe is split over several characters (Invisible Woman shares her “first notable female hero in the world”…
With all the talk about Ben Affleck’s casting as Batman (I’d link to some of the discussion, but I’m afraid to break the internet), one question has mostly remained unanswered: Is he handsome enough to pull off the Bruce Wayne portion of the role? Val Kilmer made for a fine-lookin’ Wayne, as did Clooney (even though his movie was least successful as a movie), and even Michael Keaton cleaned up nicely in a tux. Indeed, the first part of my wife’s appreciation for the Marvel movie-verse came in the casting of her old crush Robert Downey, Junior as Iron Man,…
For decades, comic racks were filled with the adventures of funny-animal/cartoon characters, from Atom Ant to… something that starts with Z? In any case, these characters often lived regular lives, with jobs, cars and even vaults full of gold, all the while getting to enjoy the benefits of their anthropomorphic animal status. The dogs had enhanced canine senses, the bunnies could tunnel through the earth as a method of transportation, the ducks could fly, and roughly 40% of characters were allowed to wander about without pants on, truly a better world. I think that, given my choice, I’d probably want…
Driving home from work last night, I found myself singing (read: screaming my not-inconsiderable guts out) to Journey’s 1983 power ballad, ‘Faithfully.’ It’s a song I came to late, seein’ as how I didn’t get the album til ’87, and one that I associate with my last high school girlfriend and long drives in the awesome Grand Prix that I refused to tell anyone I borrowed from my mom. When it comes to flashback-city, though, the only thing that causes quicker reversion to my teenage self is side two of the Monkees ‘Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd’ album (although…
Recently, my niece who is watching all the Star Trek series in order informed me that she thinks I am like Garak due to my ability to answer a question without ever answering the question, as well as the elegent leather spoon built into my face. I’m oddly fine with that, as Garak is one of the more fascinating characters in Deep Space 9, and ranks in my Top 5 favorites in all of Trek mythos. That said, though, my number one fave-rave would always be Scotty, who managed to survive all three seasons of the show while wearing a…