In 2016, Justice League Action premiered on Cartoon Network. Each episode featured two fifteen-minute segments during which members of the Justice League faced off against any number of villains. The series lasted for one season and although the format was geared toward younger viewers, references to Silver Age heroes and concepts kept older fans interested […]
If you ever go back into Wooley Swamp, son, you better not go at night!There’s things out there in the middle of them woodsThat’d make a strong man die from fright!There’s things that crawl, and things that fly,And things that creep around on the ground!And they say the ghost of Lucias Clay gets up and […]
Two films bear the title The Tower of London, both offering interpretations of events surrounding Richard III that exploit elements of horror. I saw the first forty years ago, and when Chris Garcia proposed an issue of The Drink Tank focusing on all aspects of the Tower of London itself, I decided to not only […]
My excellent friend the Hugo-Award winning Maurine Starkey reconnected me with a significant artifact from my childhood, Jim Steranko’s two-volume History of Comics. My first copies disappeared from my father’s storage warehouse during the 1980s, along with a large portion of my library. Online agencies – eBay, for example — have helped many to acquire […]
I freely admit that much about the Matrix series confuses me, so while I’ve seen the films I haven’t become so much a fan as an interested observer. Nonetheless, as with literature like Finnegans Wake or Ezra Pound’s Cantos, I find elements that compel me to try harder, to strive toward answering the question, “What […]
Every Saturday at 6 PM, WTBU 89.3 Boston, the “Beat of Boston University,” airs Your Auntie Grizelda with DJ Amber playing a selection of music from the 1950s to the 1980s. Most student listeners might require an explanation about the show’s title to help them understand its significance. More than a few older faculty members, […]
Between 1996 and 2006, mockumentaries, films spoofing the documentary form, enjoyed their heyday thanks in large part to the creative team behind This Is Spinal Tap (1984) who then moved on years later to produce The Return of Spinal Tap (1994), Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For […]
Verle (Father) Chuck (Son) CHUCK: You first came to came to California in 1954? VERLE: 1954, yeah. CHUCK: And you just had Tom at that point? VERLE: Yeah, well, actually it was 1955 when we came. Because Tom was born in 1954 in September and we came down to California in June of 1955. CHUCK: […]
Novelist Grady Hendrix, most noted for Horrorstör and My Best Friend’s Exorcism, casts a nostalgic eye on his forebearers with Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction. This was the generation that spawned Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, and Clive Barker. Hendrix doesn’t spend much energy on those gentlemen, […]
Over the past two years, my comic-reading habits have shifted to titles featuring female leads. I can’t get enough of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Velvet, Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s Lazarus, James Robinson and various artists’ Scarlet Witch, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk’s Mockingbird, and my favorite female superhero of all time, the Black […]
