Search Results for: book club

Fantasia 2020, Part XXVII: Kriya

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Religion’s a recurring subject for horror, and for a lot of reasons; there’s a lot in there to be scared about. More, from at least the 18th century onward writers have followed Edmund Burke and Ann Radcliffe in linking horror with the sublime. When horror fiction in the West has grappled with religion, naturally enough it’s tended to use Christian symbols, ideas, and sometimes even theology — whether in something as simple as the crucifix turning away a vampire, or…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 20: Iron Fist, Blame Canada, and Some Strike-Outs

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This Quixotic blog series of my reread of the Uncanny X-Men has gotten to twenty posts! When I started in December, I wasn’t sure how long I could do this, but it’s been a lot of fun! In this post, I’m going to go over two gems from 1977: the Canadian Invasion in Uncanny X-Men #109 and the dinner party gone bad in Iron Fist #15. Then I’m going to take a bit of a higher level look at a few swing-and-a-miss guest appearances and another issue…

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Fantasia 2020, Part XVII: Feels Good Man

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I try to keep an eye on comics, but like many people my first exposure to Pepe the Frog was as a poorly-drawn meme spouting racism. I remember reading about Pepe’s comics origin, but the name of Matt Furie, the cartoonist who created him, remained a piece of trivia. As did his comic Boy’s Club, where the frog first appeared. Now there’s a documentary telling the whole story of Furie, Pepe, and Boy’s Club — a tale of politics, appropriation,…

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Blogging Marvel’s Master of Kung Fu Part Twelve

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Master of Kung Fu in 1978 was in the process of finding its footing again. Paul Gulacy’s departure from the title left an enormous hole for the series’ two new alternating artists, Jim Craig and Mike Zeck to come up to speed and offer readers a comparable level of accomplishment. Just a few years earlier, martial arts mania had swept much of the Western world on the strength and charisma of Bruce Lee. Marvel had quickly responded with the creation…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Disney’s Early Swashbucklers

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After the box-office success of RKO’s The Spanish Main (1945) and Sinbad the Sailor (1947), in 1948 Warner Bros. re-released The Adventures of Robin Hood to theaters, where it did almost as well as its first time ‘round in 1938. The rest of Hollywood took notice, and soon every studio had two or three historical adventures in the development pipeline. The postwar swashbuckler boom was on! Walt Disney wasn’t about to be left behind. With a pile of money parked in…

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: C.M. Kornbluth’s Pulp

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Steven H Silver and I shared office space in the dungeon…cellar…basement….journalist’s suite (yeah, that’s it) at the Black Gate World Headquarters. Then, Steven published his cool new novel, After Hastings, and got moved above ground level. He tapped out a message to me on the pipes and said that it has taken a while for his eyes to get used to all that natural light. But before he moved on up, we worked on the joint post you are now…

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The Dark Corners of Cyberpunk 2020‘s Night City

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Cyberpunk as a term covers a broad vision, from Philip K. Dick, to Blade Runner, to The Matrix, to Snow Crash, to Transmetropolitan and many beyond. Cyberpunk is recognizable while being open to many artistic points of view. The audience’s understanding and vision of cyberpunk is also theirs. That’s part of what keeps cyberpunk alive, this ability to share some basic concepts but in many guises. Like much else with genres, each person has touchstones of their encounters with the…

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Dick Powell as ‘Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar’

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) Dick Powell was Johnny Dollar? Well, no, not exactly. Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, was a very successful radio show, which ran for over 800 episodes, covering thirteen years. It easily outlasted many competing programs, such…

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: All Through the Night (Bogart)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) Today it’s a look at All Through the Night – one of my five favorite Bogie films, but not one that makes too many Top 10 lists. In 1940, Bogart’s career really started its climb,…

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19 Movies Visits the Land of the Rising Sun

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Daimajin: Daiei Film This time around we’re taking a look at Japanese films from a number of different genres.  I’m not going to mention any of the Japanese movies I’ve discussed in previous columns. There’s plenty of great films to cover, more than enough to revisit this topic again in the future. 19. Daimajin (1966: 8) The first, and best, of the Daimajin Trilogy released by Daiei Films, which are historical fantasies concerning a giant statue that comes to life…

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