I’ve recently seen a few people upset by or about Your Webcomic Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad, and the usual comments about that site have emerged, and as usual they are all wrong. No, the writer is not uncreative or lazy (writing a funny rant – and they are funny rants – is […]

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Originally written March 21st, 2006. Recently, around the internets, in reading people’s opinions on V For Vendetta, a commonly mentioned argument (in both positive and negative reviews of V) is that Alan Moore has a right to be gun-shy about Hollywood because League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was, quote, “the worst comic-book film ever.” From now […]

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This week: Barney Bentall and his Legendary Hearts with “Do Ya.” If ever there was a more unlikely rock star than Barney Bentall, I could not name them.

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Happy New Year to all those Jewish folks out there reading this little corner of the interwebs, and I’d like to thank you guys, not only for the four-day weekend I’m enjoying because York University made all Jewish holidays universal for students and staff, but also because our law professors took the opportunity of a […]

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MOVIE: Shoot ‘Em Up PLOT SUMMARY Wait, you want a plot? OH COME ON NOW Fine: Clive Owen is the good guy protecting a baby from the approximately seven million gunmen who want to shoot the baby MOVIE EQUALS The Transporter minus Cars plus Three Men And A Baby DIRECTED BY Michael Davis WHO LAST […]

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Ever have a moment where you’re driving, and suddenly another car cuts in front of you and you have to brake desperately to avoid a major collision? Now imagine that, except instead of driving you’re on a bus, and instead of another car it’s the largest type of delivery truck there is short of a […]

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Wikipedia’s entry for Rip Taylor describes him as “openly gay.” Now, I’m not disputing Rip Taylor’s gayness, because, come on – it’s Rip Taylor. But so far as I’ve always known, Rip Taylor is one of the last true “silent queens,” in the tradition of Liberace or (probably) Richard Simmons: flamboyant, oft-effiminate manner of performance, […]

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So, yesterday I put up my rendition of a comic book hero’s version of the Gettysburg Address, and offered people to get the chance to guess at it. Here it is again: Ninety-odd years ago, our mothers and fathers made a new country out of nothing, where we were all free and we were all […]

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Another week, another edition of my weekly TV column at Torontoist. If you like TV, then give it a go, why doncha.

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I recently got some email from somebody enthused over my comics parodies (it happens), and they asked a question I started to answer in email but then, after realizing how much I was writing to them, that I might as well turn it into an article for the site. The question was “how do you […]

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Originally written September 10th, 2005. There is this website called ConservativeMatch. The idea behind this website is fairly obvious: it is a dating site where conservatives can find other conservatives, spawned probably by the same company that made ActForLove for liberals, and at least the right-wing site has a less pretentious name, so let’s give […]

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So, Jim Shooter has been announced as the new writer on Legion of Super-Heroes, and the comicblogotubes have mostly gone berserk with joy. My reaction is twofold: 1.) Shooter’s most recent track record – discounting Defiant Comics, which he was producing at a time when he was simultaneously fighting a number of vicious legal battles […]

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Dave Campbell recently featured a post about non-compelling comics covers, and in the ensuing discussion, a lot of people were particularly confused by this cover. Because nobody knows who the Cosmic Avengers are. This is entirely fair, because the Cosmic Avengers never actually had their own comic book per se. I thought I would explain […]

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This week, something a little more recent, but still Cancon: Broken Social Scene with “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl.”

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I’m living for the month in a one-bedroom apartment that the landlord is trying to rent as a two-bedroom by converting the living room into another bedroom and the oversized kitchen into a kitchen/dinette/living room combination. It’s not really a feasible proposition, but as a one-bedroom this apartment would be fabulous for a couple; it’s […]

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