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… the pocked-sized bare bones backpack version before the the gloss and glitz of bad boy Wizard.
Wizard Magazine is a publication that is now often talked about in a negative context by most of the same people who didn’t like the half decade or so that Wizard reflected and even influenced the comic book medium and culture, not to mention people who never read the magazine in its prime who echo anything negative because internet
Continue reading Wizard Before Wizard Magazine – Prototype Before the Magic
my first world problems solved by Wonder Woman
For some time now I’ve been planning a theater room addition to one of my homes. I think often when such endeavors are planned we often start thinking about the least significant details first. After all, I won’t be the one doing the electrical work or heavy lifting, nor will I be laying down any foundation or building frames for walls. Much like when I was a kid, I would just be sitting around thinking about shit.
Continue reading Wonder Woman: From DC Trinity to House Pantheon
I revisit the summer of ’92 and perhaps the most successful single issue of any american indie comic ever.
1992 was an odd year for me.
It was when the comic book fan who wouldn’t even read the established and iconic competition DC Comics and couldn’t give the least of cares about underground or independent comics took some of his money that was always and exclusively allocated for MARVEL comics, and without a second thought, added IMAGE comics to his weekly pull list. STRONG.
Continue reading Revisiting McFarlane’s Spawn #1 with Zero Love Loss
The New Mutants had an incredibly diverse group of artists in its 100 issue run. But who had the best cover? Comic pro Riley Rossmo tells us.
When asked what the best comic covers are, I think most people try to choose something by one of the classic artists: Neal Adams, Jack Kirby, John Buscema, etc. But for me there is only one choice: Bill Sienkiewicz. I first noticed his art on the Moon Knight comics I was buying from quarter bins when I was eight years old. He was the first comic book creator whose name I knew.
Continue reading Cover-Op – Riley Rossmo on the New Mutants of Sienkiewicz
I pick up Night of Knives again to relive a Shadow Moon is Malaz City again. Friends ruled the night.
Huge fan of the everything Malazan. I am of the opinion that Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen is the single finest fantasy series this or any other world has ever seen, surpassing my past and still very much loved favorites by George R. R. Martin, Roger Zelazny, Tolkien, and Patricia McKillip (because her Riddle of the Stars mesmerized me as a child.)
Continue reading Night of Knives review – Picking up the Ian Cameron Esslemont debut again
Star Wars Bloodline and Claudia Gray reminds us that the Vader has two badass kids.
Up until recently only two new canon STAR WARS novels were books that I thought both captured what this thing of ours is and just added something potentially valuable to the mythos or how we understood it. Also, and this is important, were cool. The rest, of which I have read all off (excluding those aimed specifically at kids), were in various degrees problematic.
They were also both surprises.
Continue reading Star Wars Boodline Review – No SW Sophomore Slump for Claudia Gray
To pick a favorite comic book cover isn’t easy– we’re bombarded with tons of new great images every week on the fronts of our favorite comic books. Even after I write this, I’ll go into my comic shop in a day and find just incredible artwork and new artists to look into on this weeks’ comics. So I’ll be biased this time, and pick a cover from one of my favorite artists, James Jean. To pick a favorite James Jean cover is a crime in itself, but his run on Umbrella Academy really stands together wonderfully as a set and beautiful individually. The covers were so narrative, and the characters had such personality, the world was so Mignola-esque. I loved the stylization and musical influence, you can tell Jean was having great fun working on these, and it showed through in the work.
Continue reading Cover Op – Chrissie Zullo rocks Jean & Umbrella
I’ve crossed Gregory Frost’s Shadowbridge, and I have a story to tell.
The vision of a bridge probably invokes the feeling of simplicity, a means to go from A to B or vice versa, at time ornate, but more likely, sensible, serviceable, and functional, but bridges in fiction have led us to many memorable moments. Whether the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, Goats Gruff, Jon Orr, or perhaps most memorable to me, a standoff between brothers, Benedict and Brand, fans of speculative fiction have tread many bridges and with Shadow Bridge, Gregory Frost brings to us a world made of bridges, bringing a literal walkways to the figurative that exists all around us.
Three years have passed. Not in The Sandman, but here between these meditations. Within only a few installments of finishing the central series, I couldn’t go on. I read chapter two of The Wake and could think of nothing to say. Characters from all the books were coming back, congregating, ready to pay respects. I wasn’t ready.
What has changed? Everything. Nothing. Years have passed. Can I think of something to say now? Perhaps. Is it worth saying? I don’t know. (But then, I never know.)
Continue reading The Wake: Chapter Two | Sandman Meditations
Sometimes, the English language plays along. A god-like king of dreams has died, and so there is a wake. Dreams, in the literal sense at least, die upon the dreamer’s waking, and so, too, in The Sandman when Morpheus is no more: the dreamers wake.
There is a sense of quiet throughout this chapter, a quietude. And more so: gravity. Not for lack of words; there are plenty of words throughout these pages. Instead, the quiet, grave, pensive sorrow filling each panel seeps from the pencil lines and muted hues, the scored shadows along most of the edges, and all the downcast eyes. Though the chapter is not rich with plot, it gives an inescapable sense of motion, an undercurrent — the characters are all drawn toward the last page, the last panel. It’s the greatest, grandest view of the Endless we’ve yet seen, but also in many ways the coldest, for they look like stone monuments against a slate sky. “They are the family,” a character says.
Continue reading The Wake: Part 1 by Neil Gaiman | Sandman Meditations
I’m writing this article with a terrifying sense of self-awareness, yet I will proceed with courage and hope for the best. Outlander, as I’ve born witness to, is an extremely popular book series from authoress Diana Gabaldon and is being adapted into a Starz drama series. As with any adaptation, the built-in fans have their attentions rapt as they wait to see just how their beloved series will be handled as it makes the transition from page to screen. Today we have the first look at Scottish actor Sam Heughan in character as Jamie Fraser (double-checked). So how does he look?
Continue reading Outlander’s First Look At Sam Heughan As Grim Looking Jamie Fraser
The cast of Starz’s Outlander has grown by two and has done so quite splendidly by getting a hold of two of the most lovely and talented actresses around. Northern Ireland’s Laura Donnelly (Merlin) and Netherlands’ Lotte Verbeek (The Borgias) may not be American, but they sure as hell know how to act and have been tearing it up in the few shows that have managed to make to this side of the world. They’ll be welcome additions to the already splendidly made cast of Outlander, from Ron Moore and based on Diana Gabaldon’s best-selling books. The better the cast gets, the more I look forward to watching this show.
Continue reading Starz Grabs Laura Donnelly and Lotte Verbeek For Outlander
Imagine Borges and Dali hanging out at Pee Wee Herman’s playhouse, and you have a brief inkling of what Rosenbaum’s fiction is like. The Ant King and Other Stories is Rosenbaum’s debut collection of short fiction, which features pieces have been that have nominated for genre awards, and have appeared in a slew of venues, from Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and McSweeney’s. The content ranges from postmodern fables, flash fiction, pulp fiction, all told in precise and distinctive, if not exactly poetic, prose. The imagery—which is what propels the stories as much as plot—is always startling and surrealistic. Rosenbaum mixes literary forms and narrative styles like a DJ.
The Ant King. A California Fairytale. An absurdist piece about a dot com company owner in modern Silicon Valley searching for his girlfriend, who ahs been abducted by a hacker/being called The Ant King. As interesting as the plot machinations are (straight out of the Orpheus myth), the humorous Simpsons-like details are what make it a pleasure to read. Especially the character called Corpse.
Continue reading The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum | Review
A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Jessica Bendinger, screen writer, director, and now author. Her best-known work, at least in my age demographic, is writing Bring It On. Jessica also wrote and directed Stick It, with Missy Peregrim and Jeff Bridges, and last December she published her first novel with Simon & Schuster, titled The Seven Rays. It’s a young adult caper into karma and destiny and love and teenage hilarity, and I got the scoop on her inspirations, intentions, and more in our conversation…which you can read below!
Continue reading Bringing it On | a Jessica Bendinger Interview
Did Mervyn Peake go mad writing Titus Alone, or does Titus Alone merely predict his madness? Is it a work of dystopian science fiction, or a work of psychological symbolism? Is the book a terse masterpiece, or is it just the half-formed ravings of a crumbling mind?
What the heck is this book you’re holding?
Continue reading David Louis Edelman – Introduction to Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone
Ah, the Cold War. Growing up as I did in the Eighties, there was no greater Bad Guy in film or print as evil or subversive or insidious as the Russians. They were the eternal enemy, lurking across the ocean at the business end of a fleet of ICBMs. It was a time of uncertainty, of mistrust, of a vague feeling that global nuclear catastrophe could happen at any time. Not just that you might die, or your brother in the service might die, but that everyone might die. That the culmination of human endeavors to this point might just end after the hasty push of a big red button.
Continue reading From Russia With Love | The James Bond Zapiska
America 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.
These beasts that seem like men, mowing through victims like McDonald’s cheeseburgers, speeding for the televised takedown by John Q. Law – how can the USA not be wild for them?
Arrow, 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 the show yet, and had little intention to do so after what I felt looked like a lacklustre trailer. However, it seems the show has become somewhat of a hit, and is getting pretty good buzz in the dark corners of the internet, which is no small feat, considering it’s based on a comic book, and seems vaguely embarrassed of that fact (case in point: it won’t call itself “Green Arrow,” as that is somehow more ridiculous), and comic book readers are not known for taking changes lying down, instead preferring an elaborate outraged-sitting position akin to extreme-yoga.
Continue reading Real = Angst – The Grim ‘N’ Gritty Trend Of The Non-Powered Superhero
It’s hard to know how close a friend Brian Keith Jones was to Nelly last week. Or if he was a friend at all. What it is possible to glean from reports however, is that he’s a damn good friend now. And that he knows how to party. After Nelly’s tour bus was boarded at Sierra Blanca, Jones took responsibility for ten pounds of weed, a handgun, and a little over a half ounce of horse that was broken up into easily distributable (and indictable) packets. Nelly was detained, questioned, and subsequently released while Jones was booked on a likely harrowing list of charges.
Welcome to Sierra Blanca, Texas. Population: Your ass.
Continue reading Down And Out In West Texas – The Terror Of Sierra Blanca Checkpoint
Somewhere on the fringe of mainstream film, there’s a frenzied community of artists who illustrate an elemental aspect of crime. They don’t bother with the ticky-tack trivia of the procedural. They don’t focus on the grand fables of revenge and wrongs righted.
They have one obsession that strikes closer to the heart of what crime is than those other, petty examples: They show that crime is weird.
Among this outlying cadre, Rob Zombie is a dark prince. If a director like David Lynch is the philosopher king of this set, Zombie is its Dracula – an isolated loon on a bloody frontier, composing a grand guignol from his subject.
He taps into the surrealistic nature of his subject and smears it all over the walls in technicolor. His most recent offering, The Lords of Salem, dedicates itself entirely to this spectacular effort.
Continue reading Cult Film Cult Crimes – Rob Zombie and THE LORDS OF SALEM
British singer Adele has yet again proven herself to be a family friendly version of Amy Winehouse by recording a theme to a James Bond film, by (unlike the late Ms. Winehouse) actually getting the song recorded. And yeah, the song Skyfall (from the new James Bond film, the name of which I’m drawing a blank on…) sounds like the same kind of bland crap that normally gets made for these films. Just when I thought they’d maybe turned a corner with the Jack White-performed theme song from Quantum of Solace (perhaps the theme songs are inversely correlated with the quality of the films), which was so catchy that I could actually slap the meat curtains to it, as the common phrase goes.
My friend’s dad took us to see Willow one sunny summer’s day in 1988. It was a good movie and all, but honestly I was extremely distracted throughout the whole thing. All I could think about was one of the coming attractions I’d seen for a film called Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I’d seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks and other fare where cartoons were mixed with live action. But this flick looked much different—it had sex and violence and swear words. Mix those with cartoons, and it was everything my almost adolescent heart could desire.
Thing was I was gonna have to wait until the next summer. Sharp-eyed kid that I was, though, I’d seen in the trailer credits that the flick was based on a book called Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by a guy name of Gary K. Wolf. The next weekend, I rode my bike down to the local library and checked it out. The futsy librarian seemed a bit weirded out that a little kid like me wanted to read something that looked if not a little unsavory, then at the very least over my head.
Continue reading Forget It, Eddie, It’s Toontown – The Crime Fiction Roots Of Roger Rabbit
On the occasion of the Emmys’ passing, let’s take a step outside the spotlight. I want to lead you to the fringes for a moment.
You need to meet an artist who has yet to hold a gold statue aloft on a high-profile red carpet, but who is brilliant enough to be seen in the shadows all the same.
You need to meet Mae Catt.
Continue reading Mae Catt – She Likes To Watch Monsters And Men
Booze 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 the topic of this week’s column, I was told “Liam, you’re a pathetic drunk, either clean up your act, or write about it!”
And here we are.
Continue reading Boozed Up And Beaten Down: Noir, Realism, And Alcohol
The thing one must always keep in mind with industry awards is, aside from a marketing perspective, they mean exactly nothing. Less than that, even. If a show I particularly enjoy can move a few more DVD sets on the after-market by slapping an “Emmy winner!” sticker on it, or if that little gold statuette helps convince the suits upstairs that said show should be renewed for another few seasons, then that’s just hunky-dory. But if the Academy of Television Arts(?) and Sciences(!) doesn’t see fit to acknowledge certain shows or actors for their fine work, that certainly should be no skin off anyone’s nose. The Emmys are like whipped cream: Great as a nice topping, but if you eat them right out of the can, you’re likely to get a stomach ache.