Defaced Comic

Comics Defaced

Man of the Atom returns with part 2 in his series on the history of American comic books. This time, he examines comic book distribution, among many other topics. Return rate was the fraction of the total print run that was returned to the distributor by the retailers. Newsstand distribution…
November 30, 202111 Comments
Shatner Deep Fried Turkey

Spitting in the Face of Science

Happy Thanksgiving to all my cherished readers. Out of my deep and abiding interest in your wellbeing, here is a cautionary message from Mr. William Shatner: Macross meets Warhammer 40K Read now for 99 cents!
November 25, 20213 Comments
Nebuchadnezzar Ages

The Ages of Comics

Friend of the blog Man of the Atom pens a learned essay on the origins and ages of American comic books: What about the stories? Where did they originate? Like any good writers, the comic authors typically went to the literature of the times as well as the recent past…
November 22, 20214 Comments
Astroworld satanic

Stanning for Satanism?

A quote often attributed to Chesterton notes that when something draws equally vehement attacks from opposite sides of the same issue, it's a good bet that what the partisans are attacking is true. In other words, heresies tend to come in diametrically opposed but equally erroneous twos. The resurgence of…
November 19, 202119 Comments
Shooting Up

Shooting Up

A striking phenomenon increasingly on display as the generation raised by Nickelodeon turns 40 is the redirection of man's natural religious impulse to pop culture artifacts. A while back, I termed those who make idols of action figures, comics, and video games the Pop Cult. The reason Generation Y is…
October 29, 202124 Comments
World of Darkness

World of Darkness

Those who've followed my writings for a while know I'm an avid tabletop gamer. I even made my own role-playing system for Combat Frame XSeed. Unlike many in the #PulpRev and adjacent literary movements, I didn't cut my teeth on old-school D&D. My induction into the hobby came in high…
October 28, 20217 Comments
LinksAwakening

Link’s Awakening

My last full game review dropped over a month ago, and it's high time for another. The game in question probably isn't a surprise, since I've been telegraphing it for a while now. I've just finished my decades-delayed first playthrough, so this post will be written while the experience is…
October 26, 202130 Comments
Falling Down

Falling Down

I don't like to use the word "God" because it' overused in the United States ... it's been politicized and has become an attack--like if you don't believe in Jesus, you're not one of us! -Falling Down director Joel Schumacher Bar none, the movie that readers ask me to review…
October 18, 202121 Comments
Pop Culture Time Slippage

Pop Culture Time Slippage

About fifteen years ago I started noticing a curious phenomenon--a sort of jump-cutting in time. The effect wasn't internally consistent, like when I sit down to write at 7 PM, get into a groove, and suddenly it's midnight. The temporal anomaly I'm referring to is oddly selective. What happens is…
October 12, 202116 Comments
Typewriter Monkey

A Million Digital Monkeys

Hollywood gets short shrift around here, and it's easy to see why when they not only insist on accelerating ever farther out of touch, but reveling in it. Actress Geena Davis's latest role is getting artificial intelligence bots to monitor movie scripts to make sure Hollywood remains politically correct. The…
October 11, 202125 Comments