Lately, I’ve become enamored of a late-night cartoon called ‘Archer,’ the adventures of a snarky, lazy, hedonistic (but ultimately eerily capable) super-spy, whose interactions with his ex-girlfriend, his emotionally abusive mother-who-is-also-his-boss and a bevy of loony tunes are utterly hilarious. What’s most fascinating, though, is the world they live in, where technology seems modern, vehicle designs are stuck in the 80s, and global politics are squarely in an era best described as ‘James Bond O’Clock.’ Soviet Russia is still a force, the KGB is still a threat, and not once have they broken the spell of the story being told…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
After a year or so of MS-QOTDs, I thought surely I had hit today’s query before, as it is one of the most revealing and repeated questions of our age, dating back to time immemorial (but only truly crystallizing in 1964.) The age-old battle for the hearts and minds of the world, between movie star and farmer’s daughter, a battle waged every weekday after school when I was but a young lad. Though I’m firmly a Maryann man myself (I also favor Betty Cooper, even though she’s more than a little bit nuts), it’s easy to see the appeal of…
Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve done something befo– Naah, skip it. Nevermind, bygones. In any case, the worlds of pop culture are chock-full of characters who are fun to read about, and fun to imagine romantic entanglements, but what about a good old-fashioned Saturday night good time? Who would be the most fun on a pub crawl? Would Tyrion Lannister be a drag at the movies? Sure, Tony Stark would probably pay for everything, but would he stagger and slobber all over your date? Is the thought of hanging out with Superman enough to offset the chance…
Not that long ago, this very MS-QOTD inquired as to whether or not Faithful Spoilerites would be disappointed if the upcoming Doctor Who 50th Anniversary special featured only the two announced Doctors, rather than all 11 or even just the surviving 8 Sons of Gallifrey. The more I think about it, the more I know that there would be no way to balance nearly a DOZEN protagonists and still have the special work as a narrative, but there is still a part of me that is emotionally and nebulously upset about the situation. Historically, the multi-doctor tale has always been…
It always makes me a little sad that the Fantastic Four, the heart and foundation of the Marvel Universe, has been painted into such a corner in terms of story and motivations. The strengths that make them unique (the family aspect, their “four elements” temperaments, and the general angsty monsteryness of Ben Grimm) have often become the team’s most debilitating limitation for storytelling. How many times has Reed been stuck in the “Absent-minded Professor Dad” role rather than being a kick-ass superhero? How many times has Johnny Storm, one of the most experienced heroes in the entire Marvel Universe, been…
We all have our favorite pets shows and books that we read. Until recently, I had been reading ‘Hellblazer’ monthly since the titles inception back in 1988, while I have friends in nerdery who claim to have watched every episode of Doctor Who since 1963. With the 75th anniversary of Superman approaching, as well as the 50th for Doctor Who, and Deadpool’s big Two-Oh, there’s a lot of celebrating going on, but I can’t help but remember the hundreds and hundreds of comics from 1938 that didn’t make their Diamond Jubilee, and a tiny part of me is a little…
When the news broke this weekend that Matt Smith would be leaving Doctor Who, I immediately heard howls of despair from friends in fandom. For my part, after the fifth time or so, the trauma of a new Doctor inspires less fear and uncertainty than it does speculation about who should take the role next. Rupert Grint? Patterson Joseph? Ryota Ozawa? How about Helen Mirren as our first female Doctor? It’s a nerd wonderland, a beautiful time when we can all pretend we know best, and recast the role of our favorite imaginary friend with the face of a beloved…
From the earliest days of Major Spoilers, I have tried to instill in others a greater appreciation for the forsaken characters, titles and forgotten moments of comic-book history, many of which have never gotten much positive attention. Cheerleading for the likes of Matter-Eater Lad, Herbie The Fat Fury and the writing of Bill Mantlo can be depressing, though, even for someone like myself, and occasionally it’s fun to play ‘What If?.’ What if, instead of ‘New Teen Titans’ becoming popular, Black Lightning had been the book to save DC from utter doom? What if, instead of Rob Liefeld, John Byrne…
Recent events in the universe have conspired to once again remind me that, in many cases, the things that are the most strange are also the most fun to figure out. Every wedding, I try to figure out why in the world anyone would ever want to do The Chicken Dance, but grown adults with no trace of whimsy will still crowd onto the dance floor to play that particular reindeer game. When it comes to TV, many of my friends are crazy for ‘Adventure Time,’ which seems to be all the possible bits and tropes of all possible adventure…
In college, one of the running gags that Otter Disaster and I would engage in was the conceit that he was drawn by Steve Ditko and that I was drawn by Jack Kirby. (To this day, the tips of my fingers are squares.) While this usually made for little more than idle chatter, the occasions have popped up in the ensuing 20 years wherein I’ve met people who look like they were drawn by particular artists. One of my co-workers at the comic store looks like a Gilbert Shelton character, a former boss looks like John Byrne’s rendition of Captain…
When I first encountered the Venture Brothers, I found myself annoyed by the show’s status as a shameless ersatz version of Johnny Quest. For quite some time, I had no interest in the series (mostly because of the depiction of the death of Race Bannon in one of their episodes) but once I gave it a chance, I quickly disappeared down the show’s rabbit hole of recursive humor, ruminations on failure, and unconventional (but vivid and unique) world-building. As such, I’m more than a little bit psyched for the upcoming Season Five, and wondering what madness awaits us after the…
The joyful and long-overdue news that Zenith, Grant Morrison’s seminal 80s superhero strip, might FINALLY get reprinted garnered a huge whoop of joy from me today, but when I tried to explain my excitement, nobody knew what I was talking about. Sure, this sort of thing happens to comic nerds the world over every day, Faithful Spoilerites, but in this case, I was IN A COMIC STORE when the discussion was being had, and while people knew Morrison, they seemed surprised that he did anything before the 1990s JLA. Sadly, Zenith falls into a strange lacuna of comics history, residing…
Recently, my daughter and I have been discussing the Teen Titans, with whom she has become familiar from the ‘Teen Titans Go!’ shorts. She recognized Cyborg, but couldn’t figure out why he didn’t look like he was supposed to from my Justice League comics, a confusion that didn’t get any clearer when I showed her the original George Perez Cyborg from the 1980s. (She did love his hair, though.) While I’ve never sat through an entire TTG short, I did enjoy the old Teen Titans cartoon series, even though it made a lot of changes that forced me to categorize…
Sometimes, in the course of post-modern comics events, you will see the use of a familiar pose or image from days past, either to evoke memories of the original or to memorialize a favorite artist or team. The iconic “dead hero cradled in crying heroes” arms cover has made many appearances, as has the “X-Men coming at Magneto’s evil force bubble with Cyclops going all pew-pew-pew out his face”, although the latter has expanded to four and five-page gatefolds due to the sheer number of mutants extant in the Marvel Universe. When it comes to the homage, comic books have…