It’s a common lament (to the point of becoming trite and utterly meaningless) to say that death in comic books means nothing anymore. To be honest, there has never been a time where comics as a whole have treated the subject in a consistent and final manner. In the Golden Age, many heroes had their demise as an origin (See Captain Triumph, Kid Eternity and more), while even in the more “realistic” Bronze Age of comics, Gwen Stacy’s tragic end was followed almost immediately by resurrection fakeouts and the eventual return of her clone. Of course, comics are not alone…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
Last evening, my daughter insisted that we had to watch ‘Despicable Me 2’, regardless of whether or not Daddy had any patience left after double-shifting holidays, flagrantly ignoring the stack of recorded television already on the DVR. Still, when it comes to the Widget, I seldom argue too hard, as her instincts are pretty spot-on about stuff we’ll both like. Still, given the choice, I’d join the legions of whiny know-it-alls who want to know why we don’t have a sequel to ‘The Incredibles’ yet, or perhaps start my own legion of people who think we should revisit Swan and…
Given the post-holiday scheduling (sorry for those outside of the US and/or not celebrating Thanksgivvukah), I am having issues getting back into regular gear. Switching from nights to days has only exacerbated the issue, which left me wide awake at 1 am, knowing I had to work again at 8. Luckily, my old friend Stevie King came through with a couple of short stories to downshift my brain into sleep gear. Ever since I found a copy of ‘Night Shift’ in my grandmother’s library as a child, a little King always helps me decompress, which in turn begs a query……
You know the drill, yadda yadda, holiday in the States, blahbidiblooblah hippity hooplah! (Quoting Eminem is one of my guilty pleasures.) Nearly 20 years ago, I had just met the woman who would become my wife and impulsively went to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner celebration, at which my future-mother-in-law asked each of us to speak about what we were most thankful for. Being a twenty-something ironic goofball (there weren’t hipsters yet, and I wasn’t ever alternative enough to be a grunge guy) I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that question. These days, it’s still a toughie. Seems like…
As a child, I was always puzzled by the Legion of Super-Heroes’ references to future sports like Moopsball, or Commander Riker’s tantalizing references to the gentleman’s sport known as Parrises Squares. The references to strange sports seemed to deepen the world-building, giving us bits and pieces of a greater culture that wouldn’t have been the same had they referenced just plain old football (or worse, “Space-Football.”) Though I’ve never been particularly interested in watching or playing sports myself, the basic rules and scoring strategies have always been fascinating to me, and it’s easy to understand those people who wanted to…
As this week is a Holiday in America (indeed, for some of us, it’s two of ’em), our regularly scheduled podcasts are on a temporary holiday hiatus. Fortunately, I keep my MS-QOTDs numbered, for just such an emergency, which means we’re ready to talk turkey, in the vernacular. The last few weeks, I’ve been focused on television and movies, which makes me feel like I’ve been giving comic books a little bit of a short shrift. That’s kind of a shame, as there are literally thousands of amazing stories out there to enjoy, from Action to Adventure all the way…
There are those who mock me for my love of professional wrestling, but it should be noted that if mockery hurt my feelings, I’d probably never have survived knowing Stephen for the last 25 years or so. Besides, the occasionally masked warriors of the world of wrasslin’ have a lot in common with the superheroes and sci-fi types that Faithful Spoilerites love. Many of our heroes have their own catchphrases, from Han Solo’s “I’ve gotta bad feeling about this” to Spock’s “Fascinating” to Spider-Man’s “I have no idea what happened to my wife”. Heck, The Doctor has six or ten…
*BREEP* I’m sorry, due to the Fiftieth Anniversary Special of Doctor Who airing today, Matthew is unavailable to take your call. If this is a life-threatening emergency, please contact your local emergency services department. For business that can be completed on or after Monday, please leave a message at the tone. For your convenience, the MS-QOTD follows this message. Thank you, and don’t forget that you can’t rewrite history, not one single line of it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t run about with pretty girls for a thousand years of so, and make the most out of it.*BREEP* The…
With my excitement this week about the meeting of the Doctors (only the fifth such televised meeting in as many decades, I might add) I’ve been thinking about the concept of the crossover. These days you can’t twirl a giraffe without bumping into a story that constitutes someone’s dream team-up, from the myriad of agglomerated ‘Dark Fairy Tale’ adaptations, to the continuing tales of the League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen all the way through the upcoming Batman-reboot-disguised-as-Superman-sequel. If two (or even more) characters have any sort of fanbase at all, one can certainly find Tumblrs dedicated to their combined adventures and/or…
As a famous Star Trek cap’n once remarked, the world of the future, while full of Wi-Fi and advanced dentistry, has been mighty stingy about coughin’ up some flying cars. Of course, Stephen and I can collaborate on podcasts from hundreds of miles away, all my favorite music fits on a chip the size of my fingernail that I can move from device to device without adaptors or cable, and my video game system plays all the streaming episodes of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ I care to watch. Hell, the ignition key to my Chrysler has twice the computing…
The buildup to the Golden Anniversary celebration of Doctor Who has been a thrill ride of ups (Night Of The Doctor) and downs (Ninth Doctor portrayer Christopher Eccleston’s seeming disinterest in returning to the role). For my part, my biggest disappointment has been that too few of the previous Doctors are going to be appearing onscreen, a gripe that even I realize makes me sound like Veruca Salt. If the speculation on the special proves anything, it’s that every fan has a theory about and high hopes for the Big Five-Oh, which begs a query… The MS-QOTD (pronounced “gah-lee-fray”) advises…
Even with all the things that the various shades of geek fight over, there seems to be one thing that unites us all: The power of pizza. Cleaning up the comic store over the years, I have probably thrown out 1000 or more greasy folded boxes, each of which has been cleaned of ever scrap of edible substance. Recently, I came across a clip of ‘The Daily Show’ wherein Jon Stewart went on one of his customary tears about the superiority of New York’s pizza over Chicago-style deep dish, likening the Windy City’s version to “casserole.” I’ve bumped into hard-core…
A few years ago, you couldn’t swing at cat without someone telling you about the First Rule of Fight Club, generally with diminishing returns. (As an aside, the best use of such a joke came when a co-worker used the rules as an explanation for why he wouldn’t be telling his significant other of a trip to the nudie bar. “The first rule of strip club,” indeed.) Of course, there are a great many other wonderfully repeatable lines throughout the movie, from “His name is Robert Paulsen” to Marla’s reminiscences about grade school all the way to the perfectly understated…
Seriously, did you see? The… And all the… Plus he came back… and the REFLECTION!!! Holy Shhhhhnikies! I’m so farklempt that I can’t even consider my usual fourth-dimensional QOTD madness. With so much of my processing facilities tied up in excitement about the upcoming anniversary, I’ve decided to fall back on the old chestnut of superhero comics: Could Superman beat up the Hulk? Could The Thing take down Funky Winkerbean? Could Galactus defeat Snoopy as The Red Baron? Whatever the matchup, it’s always fun to wonder what would happen when characters butt heads in the classic “mistaken identity” fighty-fighty that…