Naturalism is not a single thing: every art form has a different kind of naturalism. So if I say that R. Kikuo Johnson’s graphic novel No One Else leans towards a prose fiction kind of naturalism, I don’t mean just that it aims to tell a story about real people in a real world. Comics…
The title is ironic. Or maybe more than ironic: this is not the story of a golden age , but there is a book in this fictional world called “The Golden Age.” So it is, perhaps, a story called “The Golden Age” that centers on another story called “The Golden Age.” The back cover says…
Once upon a time, Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons produced a cheeky series called The Secret Service, which got turned into a fun film called Kingsman. While the comics remain fun reads, the film series has deteriorated when left entirely in Matthew Vaughn’s hands. He’s good filmmaker as witnessed by Kingsman and the underrated Stardust….
Students of history know that 355 was the code name assigned to a woman who spied on behalf of George Washington, during the war for independence. We never learned who she was and the digits have been immortalized in pop culture ever since. Most recently, it was appended to the female empowerment action film The…
I had the wrong idea about this book. I feel like I say that a lot in this blog, but why not say it if it’s true? We all come into new experiences with expectations and ideas, and we’re all wrong a lot of the time. There’s no shame in saying so. I expected Good…
HEAVY METAL SYNOPSISBased on the fantastical illustrated magazine HEAVY METAL, producer Ivan Reitman enlists the help of some of Hollywood’s animation masters to create the otherworldly tale of a glowing green orb from outer space that spreads destruction throughout the galaxy. Only when encountered by its one true enemy , to whom it is inexplicably…
It’s never a good thing to realize, halfway through, that you’ve read a book before. Especially when you’ve just bought a shiny new copy, and the realization includes the fact that another copy – just as shiny, also bought new – is probably on a shelf upstairs in your house. (I haven’t looked yet; maybe…
The memory of a book is not the same as an initial assessment , or a re-read. Looking back, when starting to write about Joshua W. Cotter’s excellent graphic novel Skyscrapers of the Midwest , I see that I read it at almost the same time as Nate Powell’s Swallow Me Whole. At the time,…
This graphic novel is just too damn good to be Will McPhail’s first book-length project. He has to have a drawer-full of stuff, or maybe he’s published short work somewhere. The drawing I completely believe; I’ve seen his cartoons and they’re assured enough that I believe he could easily make the jump from single panels…
I don’t know if all of the Waldo stories are consistent. I don’t know if they can be consistent, or if Deitch would want them to be. I kind of hope they aren’t, actually. Memory is flawed, history is misunderstood, the past is a mystery. And demon-creatures shouldn’t be completely knowable, able to be nailed…
To me, the core Neil Gaiman stories are about young people, encountering things they don’t understand. The Ocean at the End of the Lane. “How to Talk to Girls at Parties.” Violent Cases. Coraline, something of an edge case – since the core set of stories are all about a young person like Gaiman. And,…
Many worthy films for all audiences flew under the pop culture radar in 2021, released with some fanfare but overshadowed by current events. Take the animated Connected, for example. Announced by Sony for 2020, it briefly arrived in theaters in April before hitting Netflix under the name The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Now available in…
