Who doesn’t love ‘Mars Attacks’? OK, a lot of people, actually. The film barely rates above 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the people who hate it seem to hate it with a passion even stronger than the people who liked it. Something about the film doesn’t just distance people from it, it outright infuriates them. […]

Continue reading...

There’s always something fun about the quirky, organic partnerships that grow up between two characters in comics. Sometimes they’re done for mercenary reasons, like the need to combine two low-selling books into one moderate-selling title (like, say, slapping together a martial artist from the lost realm of K’un L’un and a street-smart super-strong hero for […]

Continue reading...

One of the things I lament most about the slow transformation of ‘Star Wars’ from a great movie into a multi-billion dollar industry is the way that George Lucas has mythologized the process of creating the films. I’m not upset about it; I understand that most people don’t really want to hear about the slow, messy, […]

Continue reading...

As I noted about a month ago, it’s genuinely unfair for me to tell you about things I dislike without letting you have an idea of the things I like as well. After all, when Roger Ebert writes a movie review, he’s not handing down the Truth From On High; he’s just telling you what […]

Continue reading...

So last week, I made a post about women in fandom and the ways that they interact with canon. Many things were said in the comments, but one of them stuck in my mind particularly: Klytus, one of the commenters, said, “what makes me sad is that these girls could be reading the comics instead […]

Continue reading...

Recently…well, probably not recently because it’s a very old debate but here’s another recent iteration of it…the discussion once again came up regarding slash fiction. In this particular case, for those of you not clicking the link, it’s a woman stating that she has just as much of a right to remix canon as anyone […]

Continue reading...

The first thought: It’s tricky. Obviously, Marvel has provided a blueprint on how to create a blockbuster film that acts both as a standalone film and as a sequel to numerous other standalone films featuring the origins of the cast of your current movie (so that you don’t have to spend the first ten hours […]

Continue reading...

It has been pointed out to me, on occasion, that I spend many of my blog posts (here and elsewhere) complaining about things that frustrate me and irritate me about comics. This is, to some extent, a fair criticism; I do spend more time talking about the things that I want to stop than the […]

Continue reading...

Free Comics Day has changed a lot for me since my daughter came into my life. It used to be something I almost casually ignored; after all, I was already shopping at my local comics store. I didn’t need a neat holiday to get me through the doors, and whenever the folks at Mind’s Eye […]

Continue reading...

…is this. Not the article. The pictures. It really does seem, based on not just this but all the publicity pictures I’ve seen, that everyone in the Nu52 has only one expression, and it’s “perpetual grimace”. Seriously, you could make an animated gif of nothing but DC characters making inadvertently hilarious facial expression, and it […]

Continue reading...

Of course, realistically speaking, this post should really be titled, “Empirical Reasons Why The Silver Age Was More To My Personal Taste”, or perhaps if I wanted to come on strong, “Empirical Reasons Why The Silver Age Catered Better To A Mass Audience”. But this is the Internet, and we have proud traditions here. Stating […]

Continue reading...

Back in 2005 or so, when I actually cared enough about DC to pay attention to them, it occurred to me that there was an interesting vacancy created by the departure of Wally West as the Flash and the arrival of Bart Allen. Specifically, it meant that the identity of Impulse was just floating around […]

Continue reading...

It’s become an overused and empty catchphrase with almost depressing speed; faced with sexist caricature after sexist caricature, feminist comics fans said that they wanted strong female characters as an alternative to women who serve no purpose other than to be the eye/arm-candy for male protagonists. And seemingly within days, every character was being described […]

Continue reading...

Every time I hear about Geraldo Rivera’s comments on the Trayvon Martin shootings, I always picture him talking to the victim’s family. I picture him sitting there, an expression of Sincere Concern on his face (the one he’s practiced over years of TV “journalism”), perhaps putting a hand on one family member’s knee in a […]

Continue reading...

The other day, I was reading a book called “A Galaxy Not So Far Away”, a book of essays about ‘Star Wars’. The essays varied wildly in quality from “kind of mediocre” to “crimes against the English language”, but one of the things that stuck out about them was the way that they all talked […]

Continue reading...