warning: contains comics So, unsurprisingly, Fantastic Four (2015) tanked this weekend. I’m not surprised, really; it sounds like it simply didn’t get the characters or the concept, plus, there’s the whole talk of the studio losing confidence in the director and doing reshoots which led to a film described as having no second act and […]

Twas a somewhat busy weekend, though it was the kind of busy that helped me temporarily put aside some weekday stressors for at least a little while. Hopefully I’ll be able to kick them forward at least a couple of steps (if not resolve them) in the next couple of days, to make room for […]

Yes, there’s some new footage here, but it’s really the Japanese announcer and the occasional kanji titles that really make this Japanese Ant-Man trailer really pop.

Andy Weir’s The Martian was one of the best books I read last year. If you haven’t read it yet, go do so, immediately. Trust me. In broad terms, it’s the story of an astronaut who gets stranded alone on Mars during a near-future NASA mission, and all the stuff he has to do to […]

Yes, it’s been almost a month since I posted anything. I’ve been busy. And overwhelmed. And stressed. And engaging in copious business travel involving the wearing of suits on the subway when it’s 90 degrees outside. Not cool. Life’s getting in the way. Pffft. I totally missed my traditional First of May and Star Wars […]

Yes, I know it’s fake (we all got it straight from Joss’s mouth). I’m almost sad about this, because this forty seconds or so gets Spider-Man right in a way that five films and two different Spider-Men didn’t. We can only hope that when Marvel films finally does introduce Spider-Man, it’s at least this good:

Like a lot of latchkey Gen-Xers in the 80s, I spent a lot of time with the TV babysitter. The early 80s was also the advent of cable TV, complete with the old style plastic woodgrain channel-changey boxes and all that. In what must have been ’83 or ’84, we had HBO for a while. […]

There’s a long tradition of the “big two” comic companies taking friendly swipes at each other; Marvel gently mocking the “Distinguished Competition” in it’s letters pages and “Bullpen Bulletins”, and DC pulling some similar stunts in their own, slightly more serious way officially (but being just as jocular unofficially). In the print world, it’s always […]

So, things are maybe getting back to normal after the 5 inches of snow shut down most of Virginia for a week. The kids were off of school for five unplanned days, my office was closed one day (though I still ended up working – yay telework…not), all kinds of activities were cancelled for everyone, […]

Spider-Man writer Dan Slott recently did an interview about the Marvel Cinematic Univers, specifically commenting on the recent news about Spider-Man, the character he’s been shepherding since 2008 (and before, if you count the excellent Spider-Man/Human Torch: I’m With Stupid limited series back in ’05). As usual, the guy’s right on about about a lot […]