Browsing: Question Of The Day

Back in the 1990s, Marvel Comics debuted ‘Sleepwalker,’ the superheroic adventures of a strange creature from a sleep-dimension (I think that’s in the mall, where they sell the beds with the numbers) who fought crime in the mainstream Marvel U.  Though the book was much maligned, partly due to Marvel editorial declared that it was ‘Sandman done right!’, even though there’s nothing wrong with Neil Gaiman’s magnum opus, Sleepwalker still has fans, including Robert Kirkman, who used Sleepy as a primary character in Marvel Team-Up a few years ago.  ‘Walker’s status as 1990s refugee actually reminds me of the rather…

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Neal Adams return to the X-Men was in many way surprising to me, and got me thinking about great returns in pop-culture terms.  Though I’m still impressed by Steve Gerber’s posthumous return to writing Man-Thing, the crown prince is multiple-time WWE Champion Chris Jericho, whose various returns to action  over the last decade-and-a-half (mostly from his second gig as a rock star) never fail to impress, and can still give me goosebumps even now. The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) got stopped and dropped by the Walls of Jericho, asking:  What pop-culture “return” (by character, author or actor) stands as…

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With the first #12 in comic shops, we approach the end of one year of the New 52, probably the biggest gamble any comic company has taken since 1987, the year that the Crisis reset everything.  Some fans are still angry, but I still hear each week that the relaunch brought lapsed readers back into the comic shops, and I am seeing a meaningful influx of real NEW readers for the first time in over a decade.  Whether you like it or not, the New DCU is here to stay (until the next universal shakeup), leading me to question whether everyone…

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Some days, it’s not even worth the price of admission to wake up.  Phil Connors discovered the power of turning a bad day inside out, but he had the advantage of nigh-immortality to help push him along that path. Having managed to pour a glass of water into my laptop moments before the recording of our latest Major Spoilers Podcast, I have been ruminating about the nature of the do-over in pop culture, and wondering if the chance to be a better Bill Murray and winning Andie MacDowell is worth the possibility of becoming Ashton Kutcher without any hands.  Or,…

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This week’s Hero History was somewhat slower going than previous ones, in part due to the sheer brilliance of the art in DC’s original Captain Action series from the late 1960’s.  I kept getting swept up in the art (originally done by Wally Wood, then by Gil Kane with Wood inks) and sidetracked from the task of chronicling his exploits.  It reminded me of a discussion I used to have with like-minded nerds in college, wherein we opined on which favorite artist we would rather have creating our world, given the choice.  For a long time, I wanted to live…

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The “Marvel NOW!” initiative promises to reconfigure the Marvel Universe, taking off from the as-yet-unpublished end of AvX into a whole new world where the Hulk wears armor and everyone complains about Cap’s new uniform.  Though I have my own ideas about Marvel continuity, I was taken by Brian Bendis joking that his favorite character in his upcoming X-Men stories is Luke Cage.  (At least, I think  it was a joke.)  Then again, writers often have a pet character that they take with them from series to series: Chris Claremont has Storm, for many years Steve Englehart had the Beast,…

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Recently, there have been reports of die-hard fans of a certain vampire-love-story property (rhymes with “Fry-Might”) being upset that the lead actress cheated in her real-life relationship with the lead actor.  While I don’t necessarily sympathize with someone who starts an affair out of boredom, I am a bit bemused to see fans reacting as if her character had betrayed his, or that because they played a perfect couple in the movies that they must be a perfect couple in real-life.  I’m reminded somewhat of my own love/hate relationship with the works of Dave Sim, a fascinating writer whose opinions…

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I am not, by nature, a particularly squeamish human being.  Growing up with a nurse for a mother and a tendency towards curiosity, I learned quickly that things considered gross or horrifying can also be fascinating, and clearly recall a time back in the 70’s when she had to dissect a deceased animal, a process partly done in our dining room.  So when I watched a recent rerun of Family Guy (the hurricane episode, wherein Brian takes psychedelic mushrooms and trips badly) I didn’t expect to be overcome with base revulsion and a literal case of the chills.  This is…

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With the recent release of Marvel Comics’ new Captain Marvel title and the announcement that the original Cap will be going by Shazam, I’ve been thinking about superhero naming conventions.  In recent years, Marvel has been notorious for having multiple versions of the same character name floating around (right now, there’s a non-Peter-Parker version of Spider-Man in the Dark Avengers, there’s Miles Morales over in the Ultimate universe, and half a dozen alternate universal versions, such as 1601 Peter Parquagh), while DC’s multiple realities made discussions of WHICH Green Lantern had come out as gay akin to an Abbot &…

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The latest issue of Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation² featured the iconic be-scarfed Fourth Doctor working alongside the crew of the original series Enterprise to save a remote outpost from the menace of the Cybermen.  Knowing that there are literally decades of history to play with, nearly a dozen Doctors and half a dozen notable Captains in the Stark Trek  franchise, my brain started wondering what ELSE might have happened in this new shared continuity that we don’t yet know about.  Could Khan’s knowledge of eugenics come from The Master?  Could Adric and Wesley have nerded out together…

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Among the news from out of SDCC was the announcement of a ‘Wonderland’ television series based on Zenescope’s re-imagining of the works of Lewis Carroll.  Having recently done a little bit of reading and research on the subject (we got a HUGE lot of Zenescope comics in, and I wanted an idea of what precisely I am selling), I’ve found that the title contains a lot more violence, sexuality and adult themes than I have seen on regular broadcast network television.  Certainly cable channels have more leeway with TV-MA shows (‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Archer’ come to mind) but that…

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Everyone has been looking forward to the end of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, so much so that reviewers who dared to not like the movie have been met with death threats, and Rotten Tomatoes actually turned off comments on their website due to the dull roar of hatred over a movie that the vast majority of the world hadn’t even seen yet.  Though I’m sad to see the end of the latest Batman series, it’s mostly because I know that they’ll probably reboot with a new origin movie before the end of 2015, and I think Kim Kardashian’s brother…

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The first reports are in, and Walking Dead #100 is being touted as the best selling comic since the speculator bubble burst back in the 90’s.  Major Spoilers’ own Stephen has been saying damn near forever that the industry needs to diversify it’s output away from Spider-Man and the JLA (but probably not Batman, ’cause that guy is awesome) and the super-hero tributaries, and the success of this book seems to bear him out.  For my part, I can’t help but look at the book’s dozen variant covers and remember the sales gimmicks of the 1990s as well as the…

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For some reason, today I awoke to the sound of Cory Haim running away from a werewolf on a motorized wheelchair, thanks to a Stephen King film festival on one of the strange cable movie channels that I inexplicably pay for.  It got me thinking about my love of King’s short stories, and my general disdain for the movies they make out of them.  King has a tendency to end his books on an ominous and unresolved note (recall that only Wil Wheaton’s character actually survived in the book of “Stand By Me,” aka ‘The Body’), which leads helpful producers…

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