The Cultural Gutter

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"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

The Good Outnumber You: A Look at Heroism in Storytelling

powerman and iron fist picture

When I was a mere lad, I picked up a battered newsstand copy of Power Man and Iron Fist. I had grown up with superheroes in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Incredible Hulk, and The Herculoids on the television, but my comics reading prior to that issue of Power Man and Iron Fist was [...]

Disassembled!

Junaid Chundrigar made a charming and funny series of shorts about Marvel heroes. (Thanks, Mark!)

Avengers ’78

Avengers ’78 is the finest Marvel movie that Marvel never made!

The Avengers and Philosophy

The first chapter from the book, The Avengers and Philosophy, is available online–for free!

End of the Year at Too Busy Thinking About My Comics

Colin Smith exhaustively examines the best and worst in comics in 2011 including thoughts on comics such as, Thor: Mighty Avenger, Journey Into Mystery, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1969, as well as pondering “The Death of Narrative Comics” and the DC reboot. A deeply thoughtful read.

6000 Words on Summer Comic Book Movies

Over at The Hathor Legacy, we find out Why Captain America is Better than X-Men: First Class and Thor: “Captain America is very much a movie about the choices people make, and trying to be a good person, which is pretty rare in mainstream cinema.”

Summer Fun Time Reading ’11

It’s summer time and instead of beer bottles exploding out of coolers in a shower of refreshing ice, bikini-clad hotties and fireworks as we know it should be, everything is wilting and perhaps even melting. As far as I can tell there are only two possible explanations—Hot Lava Monsters have readjusted the earth’s thermostat to [...]

Racist Freak Outs!

ZOMG, French Muslim Batman!  ZOMG, Idris Elba is a Norse God! (Incidentally, Idris Elba could play every role in most movies and we’d be fine).

Avengers Assemble!

Earth’s mightiest heroes in their own webseries–holding meetings!

Coming Home In The Dark Ages

sven deer 80.jpg

A soldier returns home to tend to affairs after the death of his father. Sound familiar? It did to me, too, but in Northlanders: Sven the Returned it’s a good thing.

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  • Of Note Elsewhere

    A novelist takes revenge on writers he doesn’t like via wikipedia. Slate has the story. “Qworty’s edits undermine our trust in this great project. Qworty’s edits prove that Wikipedia’s content can be shaped by people settling grudges and acting out of spite and envy. Qworty alone, by his own account, has made 13,000 edits to Wikipedia. And Qworty, as the record will show, is not to be trusted.”

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    Diane Dooley writes about Mars’ need for women and ways to subvert it.

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    “[T]he mainstreaming of Jane Eyre as a vanilla romance, or even as an exploration of a woman’s pure, uncompromising, and uncomplicated (and religious! and feminist!) integrity, says all kinds of things about our inability to speak honestly about violence and sex.” More on Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, consent, sex and submission, here. (via K.A. Laity)

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    Comic Book Attic talks about comics about comics, with plenty of pages from Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s The Newsboy Legion for your enjoyment.

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    At Babbler Dabbler, Briana discusses female cyborgs in Ghost In The Shell and in Alien: Resurrection.

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    Commander Chris Hadfield performs David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in space.

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