Back in the 1990s, the arcades were brought back to life thanks to a game called Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The popularity of the game and its characters told anyone versed in the laws of business that spin-off media was…
There are cases in many stories (usually science-fiction or science-fantasy stories) in which an infinite time loop is used. What is fascinating about this idea is the way a seemingly impossible premise is presented: the fact that certain events in time repeat…
Since the return of Alita, the titular Battle Angel, and her eclectic group of friends, we’ve been treated to a series with a few interesting ideas and a large number of lumbering, slow-moving expanses of non-story overstuffed with oddball characters and fighting…
When people think of Marvel superheroes, usually the first ones that spring to mind are Spider-Man, Wolverine (or any of the high-profile X-Men), Captain America, the Incredible Hulk or the Punisher. Iron Man didn’t get the same kind of high-profile position until…
“What’s wrong with me, Mom?” Superman is an icon of comic books. Superhero comics, and arguably comics in general, are what they are today partly because of him. Had he not come along, comics as we know them would be something altogether…
Ah, the days gone by. I remember first playing Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse (known in its original Japanese as悪魔城伝説, or Devil’s Castle Legend) on my Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990 and marveling at how the series had grown and changed. I’d been…
Like the movie it captured on the printed page, Howard The Duck (ISBN 0-425-09275-5) has been doomed to ridicule. Unlike the movie, however, far fewer people remember it or know that it ever existed in the first place. This is a true…
Cover via Amazon Some time ago, I reviewed a naughty little animated film on Kittysneezes entitled The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, an exercise in excess written and directed by Rob Zombie. While it may seem like this movie was nothing more…
Question: how do you follow up on two action-packed novellas in which clairvoyant women solve strange cases and leave considerable destruction in their wake? If you answered “why, you write a full-length novel for those two women and turn the dial on…
Image via Wikipedia Before he gave the world The Dirty Pair, sci-fi author Haruka Takachiho created a space opera series focusing on a team of galactic mercenaries called Crusher Joe. Crushers, the mercenaries in question, would do anything for a client if…