Regular Critical Hit listeners will note that I am the token “old guy” of the group, even moreso than in some of our other programming, as my fellow forty-something, Stephen, didn’t partake of role-playing nerdery in his youth. Of all the changes from the AD&D of my youth to today’s shiny 4th Edition, the scrapping of the traditional nine-point alignment for the streamlined five-point spectrum is the one that is the hardest to get used to. (Granted, many times, alignments ended up being just a one-note performance piece wherein the allegedly “chaotic” character would spout some nonsense or do something…
Browsing: Question Of The Day
A long time ago, when I lived with Otter Disaster, he informed me that my crush on Sundra Peale was all well and good, but that the woman in question was “just $^@#ing lines on paper, man!” It’s advice that has served me well in my travels through the worlds of comics, especially when there’s Steve Rude or Amanda Connor art involved. Stephen has been known to swear by the beauty of an Adam Hughes pinup, and if you follow Rodrigo’s Tumblr, you know of his love of things artistical. While I might vaguely resemble John Goodman right before he…
A few years ago, I chanced to go to lunch with a colleague at the local Chinese buffet, only to find that the place had installed a Tekken machine. She, being much younger, thought to school me in the ways of the fighty-fighty, only to discover my skills with Christie Monteiro to be up to her angry jaguar-headed something-or-other attacks. Sadly, she eventually overpowered me, making me wish that I had the reach of SoulCaliber’s Seung Mina, or perhaps Raiden’s human cannonball attack. Indeed, much of the time when I play video games, I find myself wishing I had accessories…
Recent discussions on the Top Five podcast have, for some reason, touched on the subject of the awful 2008 film version of Will Eisner’s seminal comic strip, “The Spirit.” Not only was the film itself technically flawed, not only did it come off as a retread of Miller’s humorless ‘Sin City’ flick, but it was creatively the polar opposite of the classic Spirit tales from which it allegedly spun. I recall thinking that this production would be troubled when Miller known for his angular art, deadly serious characters and dark themes of sex and death, was being billed as the…
This week has been an interesting one for me on Twitter, as (after multiple recommendations from creators and fans alike) I finally followed legendary creator and comics historian Jim Steranko (@iamsteranko). A man known for the rarity of his work as well as it’s exquisite quality, Steranko is also a fascinating real-life character (his career as an escape artist was said to have inspired none other than Jack Kirby to create a character based partly on him: Mister Miracle) and has used the 140 character limit in creative ways, telling long-form anecdotes from his storied career and being damn entertaining…
Discussion during last night’s recording session led me to think for the first time in a while about early episodes of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, and the fact that Earth’s last, best hope came from 10th grade study hall. Zordon’s insistence on high-school-age soldiers is given a brief explanation in the pilot, but most kid/teen superheroes don’t even get so much as a hand wave. Bruce Wayne’s shortened timeline on the New 52 bring this into sharp focus, as he is clearly choosing to recruit Robins in their teen years. Interestingly, though he is a repeat offender on the child soldier…
This weekend’s opening for ‘The Lone Ranger’ seems to have been a shaky one, with those who gawp about Hollywood stuff in shock that the movie did even worse financially than ‘John Carter’, which has become shorthand for “failure.” Still, the weaknesses that reviewers of the film keep harping on (too long, too wacky, failing to take the characters and their premise seriously) remind me of the reviews of 2011’s ‘The Green Hornet’, a movie that likewise underperformed at the box office. Having seen Seth Rogen’s take on the Hornet (who is, in canon, the Lone Ranger’s descendant), the film’s…
During her summer vacation, my brilliant child has taught herself to ride a bicycle, adopted the use of the word “hypothesis,” and created her own super-hero team “The Super-Weirdos,” as well as their nemeses, “The Super-Lame-Os”, led by the terrifying Evil Doctor Cat-Head-In-A-Jar. Their continuity is already several stories deep, and features the most wonderful character of all, a buck-toothed monosyllabic and amorphous creature known only as ‘Boing.’ It’s wonderful to see her absorbing not only my love of super-dupers, but an appreciation of the absurd, and her art skills have pretty much outstripped my own already. I’m glad to…
In the many years since the superhero first showed up (and remember, prototypical guys like Zorro, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Mandrake predate the Man Of Steel, some by several decades), there have been literally thousands of guys fighting for truth, justice and the almighty buck. Naturally, there has been some overlap of abilities, costumes and names in the intervening century, which has occasionally led to some tap-dancing around intellectual property. Marvel Comics Kree Captain Marvel has often been known by an obnoxious portmanteau of his real name, Captain Mar-Vell, while Fawcett/DC’s big red cheese has recently had his name changed…
My daughter’s latest obsession is an educational show called “Crashbox”, designed to teach reading and math comprehension to school-age kids. The child was absolutely aghast when I informed her that, once we have seen all fifty-odd episodes, that there weren’t any more to be had. Worse still was the news that there wasn’t even the chance that they might make more, as the show had been cancelled several years before she even been BORN. Her dismayed response led me to recall a similar personal disappointment, the experience of finding seven issues of the original Secret Six comic years ago, and…
Today in the United States, it’s Independence Day, which generally means no postal service, small exposions everywhere, and random patriotic fervor throughout the day. Living as I do on the outskirts of a largish (for Kansas, anyway) city, I find that fervor revealing itself in the form of gunfire, shouting, that one Lee Greenwood song and the wearing of the red, white and blue. The only place one finds more stars-and-stripes attire than early July in the heartland (he said, transitioning effortlessly), is in the comic books where the example of The Shield (the first patriotic superhero) and his longer-lasting…
One of the unspoken rules of pop culture is that, as something popular ages, more and more contrarians appear out of the woodwork to tell you how it actually wasn’t as good as the general public thought. While I’m sometimes part of those discussions (especially as regards Frank Miller’s ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ and the dystopian antics of ‘Kingdom Come’) I find some amusement in recurring themes. The latest argument I’ve encountered is that the Avengers movie suffered most because of the presence of the “unrealistic” character of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Barton, aka Hawkeye. In a world of giants and monsters,…
Though I’m not one of the guys who idealizes the days of childhood, I nonetheless have some fond memories of lying about reading comics (or, later, some heavy-duty science fiction novels stolen from my stepbrother’s bookshelves) to while away the occasional weekend afternoon. I clearly remember a fall day when I sat down to read Fleischer and Aparo’s ‘Wrath Of The Spectre’ for the first time (totally blown away, I might add), as well as an afternoon spent sitting, for some reason, in freezing temperatures inside my unheated truck enjoying Stephen King’s ‘The Bachman Books.’ Why I was sitting in…
If you listen to our various podcasts, (and if you don’t, WHY NOT?) you probably know that I have issues with movie/cartoon adaptations of characters that I love from the comics. Not only do many producers and filmmakers have a questionable idea about the reality of comic book stories, there’s little understanding of the fact that there is actually a spectrum of story-telling tropes and genres at play in comic fiction. Film tends to turn every hero into either a variation on Batman (dark angsty avenger) or 40s Captain Marvel (a comedy figure played for laughs, often a bumbler.) As…