Aaron Dembski-Bowden is back!
Continue reading
podcast coming in 2020
What we read, mostly comics and books. Check out Nekoplz for more comics and book blogging.
Aaron Dembski-Bowden is back!
Continue reading0. Looking Back in order to Move Forward One of the more interesting developments in superhero comics has been the growing popularity of comics that take familiar characters and transplant them into unfamiliar historical contexts. …
Continue readingFood is the archetypal First World problem. While some parts of the world starve and other parts are turned inside out by our demand for low-cost and low-fuss supplies of exotic and increasingly refined foodstuffs, …
Continue readingShe’s new, I’m the re-reader. She’s the newbie, I’m the spoilery vet. Together She’s g-mashin’ George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and getting here POV on. Today she moves on to Chapter 19, a …
Continue readingShe’s new, I’m the re-reader. She’s the newbie, I’m the spoilery vet. Together She’s g-mashin’ George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and getting here POV on. Today she moves on to Chapter 18, a …
Continue readingBack in 1987 fans of G.I. Joe got an animated film that has gone on to become a pretty divisive movie during a time which was probably the height of or toward the end of …
Continue readingo, who would you rather have operating just outside the law to protect your city? Batman or Rorschach? Discuss!
Continue readingI have a set of bright memories associated with various of Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels: Sitting, aged 13, grief-stricken and sobbing in a cold bath having finished “The Darkest Road”, the final weft in his …
Continue readingThe question on everyone’s lips, which we humbly seek to answer today, “Which is the better ridiculous mode of transportation, Shai-Hulud from Frank Herbert’s Dune series, or Falkor the Luck Dragon from The Neverending Story?
Continue readingThis week we seek to answer that most pressing of questions: Which is the better sci-fi/fantasy pet? Spot from Star Trek: The Next Generation, or Oy from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series?
Continue readingThere is consolation in conspiracy. Whenever something terrible happens, humans look for answers and they don’t stop looking even when they have found them: It wasn’t Oswald who killed Kennedy, it was the mob or …
Continue readingSome would say that beautiful lives bloom only in the shadow cast by death. But while this may very well be true, how could we ever know for sure? Statements like this one and Plato’s …
Continue readingI’ve long believed Warren Ellis is a crime-fiction writer at heart. The first series of Wolfskin was a clear example of sword-and-sorcery comics, but had that distinct Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars feel, a dyed-in-the-wool crook playing both sides. Comics like Aetheric …
Continue readingI. Introduction II. The Holy Trinity – Chester Himes, Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines III. Gone, Forgotten and Waiting for Discovery – Robert Deane Pharr & Clarence Cooper Jr. IV. The Best of the Rest …
Continue readingComic book nerds are easy targets. Fish in a barrel and on crutches, to boot. Not to put too fine a point on it, but going to down to comics conventions and making fun of …
Continue readingEmpire in Black and Gold is the debut of British author Adrian Tchaikovsky and the first installment in a trilogy titled Shadows of the Apt. In his debut Tchaikovsky gives us a heroic narrative where …
Continue readingBack in the nineties, I had the pleasure of working with Charlie Adlard on Topp’s The X-Files comic. Ages later, the man who draws The Walking Dead was kind enough to spend some time catching …
Continue readingSo you’ve finally met a girl who seems cool. Outlook: positive…except that you can’t figure out how to suss out her level of nerdery without offending her or seeming even geekier than you are by …
Continue readingOne could argue that the enduring popularity of genre motifs is a direct result of the death of God. Prior to the Enlightenment, the people of the ancient and medieval worlds knew their place. They …
Continue reading… ahhh classic VALIANT.
Continue readingI will admit that I’m pretty easy to please but this thing looks better than I could have imagined. I’d consider myself very well entrenched in the world(s) of Terry Brooks, including and perhaps mostly …
Continue readingA lot things happened in last week’s episode that people want to talk about a lot more — and oddly I think that particular one was one of the better shot, edited, and acted scenes in a …
Continue readingBack to Game of Thrones as a lot of people read my Ten Things about Dorne and House Martell and a similar post about House Stark so I thought it might be worthwhile to go …
Continue readingAmerica has always been crazy about serial killers. They’re our homegrown werewolves. They click with the fast-food car culture that roars in the country’s busy, busy heart. They fit neatly with our cult-of-celebrity-style national mythology. …
Continue readingArrow, the WB action television series, starring Stephen Amell’s abs, based on the DC comic book series, Green Arrow, recently debuted and has now been picked up for a full season. Honestly, I haven’t seen …
Continue readingBooze and crime goes hand in hand like booze and being hugely attractive and winning in life. I am drinking while writing this, because something something simpatico and shit. After speaking with my editor about …
Continue readingNear Death is one of the spate of high-quality comic books Image has been cranking out over the past couple of years, and I finally did myself the favor of reading it. Of course, now …
Continue readingEight noir novels to help fill your endless summer with a sense of overwhelming dread and paranoia. Okay, so I’m the professor who wakes up three weeks before the end of the semester and hits …
Continue readingIn part 9 of THE NAIL THAT STICKS OUT, we delve into the case of Lucie Blackman, the gaijin hostess who never left Roppongi alive.
Continue readingDirector Oliver Stone is bringing Don Winslow’s SAVAGES to the big screen. But will it be any good? “Bet.” Don Winslow’s 2010 novel Savages is one of those books you chide yourself for not reading …
Continue readingA few months back, I ploughed through Jungle Street by Don Elliott. Elliott (the pseudonym of SF master Robert Silverberg) wrote numerous smutty novels (such as Escape To Sindom, Sex Gang and Party Girl), the kind which once flooded the market …
Continue readingIt all depends on how you choose to view it: Fatale is a crime comic. It features square-jawed tough guys making goo-goo eyes at beautiful dames with curling, jet-black tresses and fine suits and shotguns and …
Continue readingI think that I found my voice—or at least my confidence—when I was a graduate screenwriting student at UCLA. Although I had been writing for a number of years, it was at UCLA that I …
Continue readingIf you wander around a second hand book shop and start leafing through old history textbooks you will rapidly notice that history used to be nothing but stories about men with beards and top hats. …
Continue readingI walked away from watching The Rum Diary with feelings as dichotomous as the two halves of the film. The first half is what the film appears to be in the trailers, while the second is …
Continue readingSpeaking simply in terms of narrative possibility, Batman is the writer’s best friend. A skillful wordsmith armed with this brooding pulp titan could spin an infinite number of genre-spliced yarns and never would the plot-well …
Continue readingIn a story entitled “The Human Chair,” an anonymous, physically repulsive furniture maker builds a large, beautiful chair that he can climb in and out of to enjoy the sensuous delights of having woman of …
Continue reading0. The Challenge of Escapism Like Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), we live our lives obsessed by thoughts of escape. Escape from our jobs, escape from our relationships, escape from our friends and …
Continue readingOkay, so here’s the thing… I started in on the sixth volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers without bothering to re-read either the previous volumes in the series or my thoughts on those five books. …
Continue readingThough not billed as such, this book is the last part of an unofficial trilogy. Battle of the Fang effectively bridges the story begun in McNeill’s A Thousand Sons and Abnett’s Prospero Burns to the …
Continue readingThe extremely talented author James Rollin is with me today to talk about his latest Sigma Force novel, the 7th in the series, The Devil Colony. Was America originally supposed to have 14 instead of …
Continue readingAfter what seemed two clunky beginning issues, Cerebus hit its early stride with the introduction of Red Sophia, and it built from there. Over the course of the next ten issues, Sim’s ability to see …
Continue readingI’ve occasionally suggested to those who know me best, and subsequently to those who know me to be a terrible human being with few redeeming factors past my ability to imitate Hugo Weaving, that the only …
Continue readingSucker Punch is possibly the most spectacular failure I’ve seen in a while. It’s certainly ambitious, it’s got lots to praise, but there are far too many efforts falling flat or possibly offending for it …
Continue readingComics are all about beautiful people. Find me a leading character who isn’t physically desirable and I’ll find you a comic I either don’t know or it isn’t selling. This is an aesthetic medium and …
Continue readingMarvel Studios have had a lot of success at the box office lately, especially with the Iron Man movies, and they obviously plan to have a lot more success in the coming years with a …
Continue readingAaron Dembski-Bowden bringing his cannons to canon. Also his warhammer.
Continue readingThe Christian conception of redemption is an oddly commercial one. Grounded in Old Testament talk of ransoming the slaves, redemption is presented as a transaction through which Christians pay off their debt to God and …
Continue readingPart the First Dave Sim is not dead.
Continue readingEmbedded is Abnett’s second independent novel for Angry Robot Books and one of the most original and compelling SF stories I’ve read in quite some time. In fact, I’m drawn to a grossly overused cliché to describe …
Continue readingGeorge R. R. Martin has us in Bran dreams in our reread this week and we are talking the heart of winter and other things We know nothing about.
Continue readingI’ve been meaning to review this little beauty for a while, so, straight to business. Iron Company was Chris Wraight’s first Black Library novel and yet somehow managed to tick almost all the boxes for …
Continue readingAt the end of volume one of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers, the Shogun Yoshimune asks an elderly monk to explain to her “the logic of the present custom” of using male honorifics and …
Continue readingWith the opening volumes of Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Fumi Yoshinaga attempts to answer the question of why it is that a culture’s values do not automatically keep step with its demographics. For example, why …
Continue readingMy burgeoning affiliation with the All New! All Different! Boomtron, with its Ooku reviews and its Sandman Meditations and its other various lovingly crafted commentaries, comes with the knowledge that I am lacking in … well, knowledge. …
Continue readingEven in a fantasy world we join forces in our Game of Thrones reread to hate anyone who kills our puppies.
Continue readingVolume One of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers posed a question of both its world and ours. That question was why there is such a thing as gender inequality when gender inequality is so …
Continue readingThe notion of the sidekick has been a popular one in story-telling since time out of mind, yet it has most likely been brought to its highest prominence in superhero comics. The majority of these …
Continue readingSansa Stark sees the world of Westeros in a much different way as her siblings and we dive into her first POV of this reread of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Continue readingThe First Volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers ends with the newly installed Shogun asking a question of an elderly monk. This question, though apparently simple, cuts straight to the heart of her kingdom, her …
Continue readingThe first Phonogram mini landed and people weren’t sure what to believe. Here was a comic about music that talked about lyrics and music instead of writing and art. It didn’t feature a cape in …
Continue reading0. A Statement of Subject and Method Fumi Yoshinaga’s Eisner Award-nominated and James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning series Ooku: The Inner Chambers is a multi-volume manga series set in an alternative version of Medieval Edo Period …
Continue readingCatelyn Stark does Catelyn Stark things and me and Elena just can’t in this chapter of our Game of Thrones reread.
Continue readingMore Tyrion as we go up North to see the Wall and realize Tyrion is a fan of fantasy in this chapter of our Game of Thrones reread.
Continue readingRobert Baratheon and Ned Stark won a kingdom together. Which of them will out dumb the other to lose it all amidst all the Lannisters?
Continue readingWe are invited to a wedding by George R. R. Martin and Drogo and Daenerys are the lucky young couple. Emilia and Momoa. Goddamn fine people.
Continue readingOur Game of Thrones Reread has brought us to a crossroads, where Stark farewells occur, as we travel north and south, to the wall, and to court.
Continue readingTyrion Lannister enters the Game of Thrones reread, thus beinning the epic journey of a dwarfs who casts a giant kingly shadow.
Continue readingThings are going down as in this Bran chapter we get our first GRRM cliffhanger in Game of Thrones – and we all fall down.
Continue readingSince I missed the in-production teaser when it aired during the Countdown to True Blood on Sunday, I had to watch it on HBO’s website. Which meant that I also read the introduction by the …
Continue readingWe get our first Arya Stark POV chapter and get great Stark family interaction with her and Jon and her and Sansa in this edition of our Game of Thrones reread
Continue readingWe disect and discuss the husband wifey relationship between Ned and Catelyn Stark, opportunity, and parenting in Game of Thrones.
Continue readingOur first POV Jon Snow chapter offers us the classic first meeting of Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister in our Game of Thrones combo reread. Of Bastards and Dwarfs!
Continue readingTwo brothers from another mother reunite in the first Ned Stark chapter of our aSoIaF reread. And Jay loves Bobby Baratheon?
Continue readingWe get introduced to Daenerys Targaryen in Chapter 3 of our Game of Thrones reread. She has 99 problems and her brother is #1.
Continue readingInfo dumps! We meet the king through Catelyn Stark’s eyes and see a reunion between two old friends in Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon.
Continue readingPuppies! The Starks get direwolves and miss ominous symbolism of wolf and stag in the Bran Stark Chapter 1 reread of A Game of Thrones.
Continue readingWaymar Royce stylish in his winter gear! Kicking of the two person combo reread of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones of with the prologue.
Continue readingI thought Eclipse was the best of the three movies so far, though not by as large a margin over New Moon as New Moon was over Twilight. New director David Slade retained the same look …
Continue readingJodelle Ferland is the young actress playing Bree Tanner in Twilight: Eclipse. She’s got a resume a mile long already, even though she’s not even sixteen, and it includes working with heavyweights like Terry Gilliam …
Continue readingKick-Ass lives up to its name. Best movie I’ve seen at the theater in months. I had pretty high hopes going in–all the bad reviews I saw were focused on how violent it was, which just …
Continue readingMedora was kind enough to point me in the direction of this news item and it was a tough call between BSCkids and this site, but in the end I felt it belonged here. Disney …
Continue readingX-Men Origins: Wolverine is an epic catastrophe on every level, a confluence of poor ideas, poorer execution, and blinding stupidity. When faced with a celluloid abomination of this magnitude, a person must look back in …
Continue readingWhile often times I think fans of comics and thus their creators are a bit too preoccupied with the same ailment that some Fantasy and Science Fiction writers and tend to trade the walking stick …
Continue reading