Once again, DC Comics is venturing into alternate universes with multiple titles. Imagine a reality created by Darkseid, one that sprang from his death, infused with his essence, through which he might revive himself. This isn’t Earth 3, the home of the outrightly villainous Crime Syndicate, nor is it the world of Justice League: Gods […]
It’s been a minute since I last entered Disneyland. My first visit happened in 1965, when my mother was seven months pregnant with me. My second was around 1973 or 1974. The third was when Jimmy Carter was president, and Star Wars, now Star Wars: A New Hope, had dropped a month and a half […]
I’ve told this introductory story before, and I’m retelling it now in a different context. You can see the original here. A seminal memory from my time in Ukraine involves a working vacation during my first summer there. Friends from my city, Ternopil, owned an enormous cabin outside Yaremche, a major skiing center in the […]
Brenda Knight, author of “Memory Babes: Joyce Johnson and Beat Memoir,” describes Herbert Huncke (rhymes with “junky”) as “the most Beat of the entire group,” that group including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, Gregory Corso, and all those dubbed the Beat Generation. Why distinguish Huncke this way? Perhaps this stems from Kerouac’s admiration […]
In an article entitled “The Beats and Visual Culture,” David Sterrit groups Beat-related films into three categories: mass-audience movies and television shows, experimental works, and nonfiction works. The Beat Generation (1959) falls into the first category, including films that “explore Beat interests or represent Beat personalities,” but “show little understanding of Beat ideas, sympathy for […]
Soap Opera Twin Peaks is a murder mystery and a soap opera. Lynch and his creative partner Mark Frost intend no soap-opera parody here, as some have hypothesized. No, he’s giving us a soap opera wrapped around a murder mystery. During the summer of 1980, Americans wondered who shot J.R. Ewing, the villainous Texas oilman […]
The Beginning I spent over a year deciding how best to approach Mark Antonucci’s death. When I met him, Mark was the clinical director of Suicide and Crisis Services (SACS), now the Crisis and Suicide Prevention Lifeline-988 (CSPL-988). More than anyone else, Mark was responsible for how I approach what remains my vocation nearly 37 […]
The mid-2000s rank high among the toughest years of my life, beginning with 2004. My mother suddenly became ill and died from congestive heart failure. Three months later, doctors diagnosed me with acute myelogenous leukemia. I survived without needing bone marrow transplants, but I’m permanently off organ and blood donor lists thanks to multiple chemotherapy […]
The DC Universe has undergone reboots, been reimagined, and survived reality-changing crises. Certain aspects remain constant, although narrations vary. A hallmark among these is the friendship between Superman and Batman, together the World’s Finest. During the Golden Age, the two first appeared together in All Star Comics #7, “$1,000,000 for War Orphans,” but it wasn’t […]
Motel Hell (1980) Roger Ebert once dubbed Motel Hell “a welcome change of pace; it’s to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as Airplane! is to Airport.” Ebert even admires certain scenes, including a chainsaw duel and the final confession from the dying Farmer Vincent, the proprietor of Motel Hello (the “o” on the sign has burnt […]
I WILL FIND THE RIGHT WORDS 