Blog Archives

Popular Culture (Contemplations the Tree of Woe): Moreover, the change in our social mores is unpredictable in its pace and direction. Could Woodrow Wilson have predicted that his views would one day cause progressives to remove his mention from the school named for him? No, in his day he was the exemplar of progressivism. Could […]

T.V. (IGN): Aware of what Sapochnik was accomplishing on Game of Thrones, Condal asked if he would want to develop a Conan series with him and immediately agreed. “He was then off making Thrones for a year,” he explains. “I was writing scripts and sending them to him and he was sending me feedback.We wrote […]

Cinema (Looper): Let’s not mince words … “John Carter” was an okay movie. Released in 2012 by Disney and based on a series of books written by Edward Rice Burroughs — yes, the same author whose work led to Disney’s “Tarzan” — almost exactly a century prior, the science fiction blockbuster film was intended to […]

Gaming (Bounding Into Comics): In their latest effort to try and rehabilitate their public image, Blizzard Entertainment has introduced a new anti-harassment “Social Contract” which World of Warcraft players must agree to before logging into the game. As reported by 80Lv, players are presented with the agreement upon their first log-in to the game following […]

T.V. (Arkhaven Comics): The growth of Disney Plus is tortoise-like and it’s all in the wrong markets. Disney Plus needs to get subs in the West where they can charge decent prices that will actually turn the company a profit. Instead, the only place anyone is signing up is in India, where the business model […]

Gaming (Wert Zone): Sony have confirmed that one of their signature PlayStation franchises, God of War, is making the jump to the PC format, with the latest game in the series hitting PC as soon as January. The God of War franchise began in 2005 with the eponymous debut game on PlayStation 2. It was followed […]

Games (Pulp Rev): The video game is the defining entertainment medium of the times. Combining high-impact visuals, immersive sound and deep player engagement, all within the comfort of the player’s home, the video game is the epitome of technological leisure. Its influence bleeds out into other media. In writing, we see this in the immensely […]

Comic Books (Looper): It’s not really hyperbole to say that Roy Thomas is a living legend. A comics fan since childhood, the former teacher was hired in 1965 by DC Comics’ then-editor Mort Weisinger to become an assistant editor at DC on a trial basis. But Thomas soon found Weisinger too difficult to work for, and […]

Weapons & Science Fiction (Dirk Bruere): We have all seen it — soldiers in the scifi future carrying their phasers, lasers, disruptors, blasters and so on, yet failing to hit their targets as the hero does cartwheels and back-flips to dodge the fire. The stormtroopers in Star Wars are notoriously bad shots, for example. In […]

Fiction (Classic Horror): For centuries Ireland has fostered a culture swarming in mystery, magic, and the macabre: it gave us Samhain and jack-o-lanterns, Dracula and Carmilla, headless horsemen and banshees, and a rambling host of masterful literary minds whose supernatural fiction is still celebrated for being wildly imaginative and unsettling. Ireland has arguably contributed more […]

Fiction (Rough Edges): Years ago, I read several novels in the long-running BattleTech science fiction series, tales about a galaxy-spanning conflict between rival clans, fought mostly by giant robots piloted by humans who controlled them from a cockpit within the robot’s body. Kind of like giant tanks that could run around and punch each other […]

Fiction (Ken Lizzi): I think a brief reminder is all that is needed here: Lin Carter was a gifted and prolific editor. One of the volumes he put together for The Adult Fantasy series was a book titled Golden Cities, Far. The introduction is one of his better efforts, and seems to have been exhaustively […]