Yesterday’s review of the new FF #1 (featuring the always-wonderful art of Mike Allred) got me to thinking about the concept of varying mileage, especially as regards artists and their creative endeavors. When I was young, I recall turning up my teenaged nose at the work of Gil Kane, and not understanding why anyone would want to look at Gene Colan’s artwork. In the years since, I’ve embraced the true awesomeness of those two artists and dozens more that I used to not care for, from Don Heck to Joe Staton to Jack Kirby himself, to the point where I…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
This week’s third Major Spoilers Podcast features a discussion of the works of JJ Abrams (look for it this Friday!) which led to me ruminating a bit about his 2009 continuation of the Star Trek series. (My friend Dusty, the biggest Trek aficionado I know, will not allow me to refer to it as a reboot.) In that film, I was really impressed by the work of Karl Urban and Zachary Quinto, both of whom created their own takes on the iconic roles of Leonard McCoy and Mr. Spock. However, the kid they have playing Kirk never quite nails enough…
Unless you’re in a coma, you’re probably familiar with Superman, the last son of Krypton, the man of tomorrow, the non-bird, non-plane thing up in the sky. And, as you’re probably aware, Superman has had an astounding array of superpowers over the years, from super-breath to super-hypnosis and even (for a short while in the 1940s) the ability to manipulate the muscles in his face to perfectly duplicate another person’s features. Given that massive back catalogue of powers, many people like to grouse that Superman will never be interesting because the creators can just yank new powers out of thin…
One of my favorite time-killing websites has as it’s unofficial slogan “[Website Name] will ruin your life.” This has proven to have more than a grain of truth in it for me, as after hearing someone referring to the anniversary of the death of Eric Carr, second drummer for KISS, I found myself thinking how he had seemingly avoided the curse of the ‘Replacement Scrappy.’ Replacement members are par for the course in the music industry, but it seems that other facets of pop culture are a bit less tolerant of the new kid. Ask a ‘Deep Space Nine’ stalwart…
As a child, I was often kept out of the adults’ hair by being distracted with a steady stream of cartoons, including the adventures of the Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Dangermouse. (Jem was an occasional guilty pleasure, due to my crush on hottie keyboard player Kimber, but I never admitted to watching that show.) After the moderate success of the Transformers animated movie, the creators of the cartoon bumped their continuity forward in time to match the series future setting, the far-flung year of 2005! Unfortunately, they also chose to undo the movie’s most dramatic moment, bringing Optimus Prime back…
There are two holidays that really get to me. The first is Halloween, because we can dress up without fear of community lash back, the seasons change and the environment explodes in a deluge of colors, and we get to scare the crap out of one another for a good laugh. The other is Thanksgiving (bet you didn’t see that one coming). This is a time that we get to give thanks for what we have, what we can look forward to in the coming months, and years, and a chance to eat more food in a single sitting than…
A recent Saturday Night Live, hosted by Jeremy Renner, featured a (not-particularly-funny) sketch about the Avengers movie, primarily about the uselessness of Hawkeye and the sexiness of the leather-clad Black Widow. When you look at the grand scheme of things, though, “archery” isn’t a bad super-power, and it’s depiction in the hands of Green Arrow and Hawkeye is really no less realistic than the physics-defying portrayal of Batman or Captain America’s martial arts prowess. As much as I mock the Ultimate Universe, they really did it right by giving Ultimate Hawkeye additional genetic alterations (enhanced vision and arm-strength) that make…
When I was younger, there was something called Wizard Magazine, where comics fans gathered to learn new fart jokes and over-estimate the value of their comic book collections, and said magazine had a monthly feature wherein they would speculate who should play whom in movie adaptations of our favorite superhero books. All that I really remember about it was the repeated assertion that Dolph Lundgren was the only man to play Colossus, though he himself was Swedish and nearly 20 years too old to play the character. Of course, on the other side of the casting couch, we have the…
One of the greatest parts of the internet is finding words to describe things that I’ve never been able to clearly articulate before, like the fact that, as a child, I found the yearly airing of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ to be an utterly (but enjoyably) frightening experience. As I’ve aged, I’ve found myself quietly enjoying a proper helping of horror in my comics (witness the death of alternate-Magneto in the first issue of the original ‘Marvel Zombies miniseries) and have developed an occasional practice of watching horror films alone in the dark in the dead of night to…
Last night, while killing time on the internet and chatting with Adriana (who is hilarious by the way), I accidentally let my remote control stop on The Hub, a channel which is partially owned by Hasbro and seems to be used primarily to sell my childhood memories back to me a half-hour at a time. I mistakenly started watching the proffered Transformers episode and was dismayed to find half a dozen things in the first few seconds that bothered me about it. Bumblebee’s scale was inconsistent, going from 12 feet to 6 feet and anywhere in-between, while Optimus Prime went…
Recent announcements have indicated that the proposed ‘Star Wars Episode VII: Luke Needs A Sky Walker’ (alternate title: ‘The Empire Makes Han Throw Out His Back’) already has a writer attached to it, making it clear that the third trilogy is more than just a pipe-dream. Rumors abound about the film (Darth Vader resurrected! Harrison Ford seemingly onboard! Zack Snyder, Guillermo Del Toro and JJ Abrams to be fused into one cyborg body to become the ultimate director!) but I think most of us have one real question: Will our favorite characters be in the movie? It seems that Mark…
It’s Monday, which is always a dicey proposition, and a Holiday Monday (Observed) to boot. While we’re remembering those who served in the real world, it’s interesting to consider those who have served in fictional realities as well. In my youth, it was considered de rigueur for a true tough-guy character to have served in Vietnam, a concept that lasted well into the 1990s, until the time-frame became untenable, as septuagenarian badasses can sometimes be hard to write. As emblemized by the legendary A-Team, though, the REAL hard-cases were always former “Green Berets.” (Though the general public loved this term,…
Recently, I had the mixed fortune to witness a fascinating ritual, albeit in less-than-pleasing circumstances, reminding me of the existence of Secret Societies, even in the futuristic world of 2012. Sure, I used to drive past the Eagles lodge on my way to work, but it had literally never occurred to me that these things still existed. My own favorite take on the dark, shadowy organization manipulating from the shadows is still in Steve Englehart’s legendary run on Captain America in the early 1970s, leading to a tense confrontation between Steve Rogers and a “high-ranking government official” within the oval…
There are times when I feel like a bad comic book fan. (Mostly, these have to do with conversations about Wolverine’s status as comic-book poster boy or the wonderfulness that is Batman.) The most recent discussion that left me feeling like a bad fanboy addressed the subject of what real-life personages would make for good superheroes, with name-checks for Bradley Cooper, Christian Bale and Jillian “I’m Mean Because Fat People Deserve It” Michaels. The entire time, I was thinking how those pretty boys (and girl) would totally wilt under the pressure of AIM, Hydra or Cobra, and probably soil themselves…