Books

  • I tried to find a song or video the summed up the tone of Jacob Mendelsohn’s book without the religious assumptions but Godspell’s “Day by Day” captures the daily conflicts of his characters most perfectly. I spent my summer getting to know Wilson Vincent (who was once accused of a terrible crime), Laurie (who used…

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  • Thanks to PBS, every English school boy I read in the first person sounds like Gian Sammarco’s Adrain Mole, the title character from the ITV series based on Sue Townsend’s book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole. The protagonist from Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End of the Lane is no exception. He may…

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  • Page of Ultron

    In “The Next Avengers” Ultron has taken over the world and it is up to the children of the original Avengers to stop him. Several Goodreads critics gave Marvel Avenger’s Age of Ultron just one or two stars, but like a few other critics, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Among the…

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  • TV ad using the Panasonic Orbitel TV set. In her depiction of the robots, Fiona Staples gives us a sort of disturbing sideshow representation of an alien race that is grotesque in a very good way. The race of robots in Saga have human bodies and old 1960s-style 12 inch televisions for heads (complete with…

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  • From The Flash Volume 2 Rogues Revolution: A gorilla priest explains how the Flash will save Gorilla City from ruination. In my review of the first New 52 Flash book I called the Flash the anti-Batman because despite losing his mother in a similar manner to Bruce Wayne’s, Barry Allen retains his optimism and faith…

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  • The Spider-Man Noir cutscenes from Shattered Dimensions have a Sin City feel that makes it noir. I call it the “Batmanification” of Spider-Man, the darkening of a usually wise-cracking, trickster spirit into something severe and brooding. My first introduction to Spider-Man Noir was the video game, Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions. It shares the same setting and…

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  • Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1: Cosmic Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis I borrowed Guardians from my local library because of the movie due out next month. I also like Brian Michael Bendis’ writing. I am a fan of his Ultimate Spider-Man comics. Guardians of the Galaxy starts out with a familiar Bendis style drama.…

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  • Batman: Battle for the Cowl by Tony S. Daniel My rating: 3 of 5 stars In Batman: Battle for the Cowl Batman is dead and Gotham knows it. A team of superheroes: Robins (past and present), the Bat Family, Huntress, Black Canary, and a host of others who I don’t recognize are called in to…

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