Back Issue Alphabet: H is for H.A.R.D. Corps #14 (1993)

Back Issue Alphabet: H is for H.A.R.D. Corps #15 (1993) (David Micheline, Yvel Guichet)

Oh my gosh. This is exactly the kind of mess I was looking forward to reviewing when I started the Back Issue Alphabet. I legitimately love this cover. Some guy with a mullet, one glove, and a thriller jacket is trying to melt the helmet off of a guy in tech-armour, who is choking him. It’s a neat use of perspective.

Movie Review: True Grit

Oscar nominations are in, and you may find yourself wanting to chat around the water cooler about some of the niminees.You already know what I thought of The King’s Speech and The Social Network, but I only got around to seeing True Grit yesterday. If you’re in Edmonton, like I am, you need to fight -25 degree weather and third-world quality roads to get to a movie theatre. That’s a major hassle.

If you don’t want make the harrowing journey to a theatre, but still enjoy film conversation, here’s how to talk about True Grit and its Oscar nominations to your friends at the office without actually watching it:

NBC's "The Cape" - Second Impressions

Episode 3 “Kosmo” starts out with an unidentified man making a spectacular escape from a Russian prison using a lock pick made from one of his teeth and contorting through a sewer drain. Roll credits! Meanwhile, Trip is having rouble fitting into his new school because some mean kids put a bunch of chess pieces in his desk. 

Back Issue Alphabet: G is for Groo the Wanderer #47 (1989)

Groo the Wanderer #47 (Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai, Tom Luth, Mark Evanier)

Spider Man and the Mystery of the Museum Snakes!

Most comic book enthusiasts know about the Hostess snack advertisements that ran in the 70s. They typically featured Marvel and DC heroes battling criminals, giant frogs, and occasionally anorexia using various Hostess products.

Well, until I read Fantastic Four #251, I didn’t realize this sort of advertising was used for other products as well.

Movie Review: The Green Hornet

Directed by Michel Gondry, (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) The Green Hornet is an adaptation of the 1930s radio drama of the same name (it wasn’t a comic book for another decade). Pampered rich boy Britt Reid (Seth Rogan) is a slacker with serious daddy issues enjoying a balanced life of slacking and partying until his father’s death leaves him charge of the family newspaper: The Daily Sentinel. Distraught, he forms a bond with his father’s former mechanic Kato (Jay Chou). During a booze-inspired late-night desecration of his father’s grave (remember, daddy issues) Britt and Kato thwart a mugging, which inspires Britt to start a crime fighting duo. Britt calls himself “The Green Hornet” and poses as an upstart criminal attempting to muscle in on crime lord Chudnofsky’s (Christopher Waltz) territory.

Back-Issue Alphabet: F is for Fantastic Four #251

Fantastic Four #251 (1983) John Byrne, Jim Novak, Glynis Wein

Tired of me featuring DC comics? You’re in luck! This week we’re looking at John Byrne’s Fantastic Four #251. Not only is it the first “Back Issue Alphabet” book that’s older than I am, it’s a great microcosm of what the Fantastic Four are all about. 

Movie Review: The King's Speech

Nothing is easier to hate than wealthy, powerful people. They live lives of opulence and fancy, have off shore tax shelters, and never take public transportation. So how do you make a compelling story about a pampered rich man that rules over ¼ of the world’s population? You make him as real and sympathetic as Colin Firth makes The Duke of York, Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George (“Bertie,” to his family and for the sake of expediency) in Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech.

The year is 1925. After a disastrous speech at the British Empire Exhibition, Bertie (Colin Firth) reluctantly takes speech therapy sessions from the unorthodox Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Frustrated by his own insecurity and Logue’s methods, Bertie resigns to live life in the shadow of his charismatic brother Prince Edward, first in line to the throne. However, his brother abdicates within a year of assuming the crown, and Bertie is made King George VI. With a second Great War looming on the horizon, the Empire needs a king that can inspire confidence at home and abroad.

NBC's "The Cape" - First Impressions

I believe that NBC was intentionally distributing absolutely terrible and misleading promotional material for The Cape, promoting it as a gritty and dark superhero drama. I’m happy to say that despite having a cape, using a cape as a weapon, and being named “The Cape,” The Cape has a lot more in common with campy pulp action heroes than the cape wearing “fights and tights” comic book super-heroes, and that’s a good thing.

Back Issue Alphabet: E is for Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 (1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 (Kieth Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Bart Sears)

If the cover scan looks a little bit askew, that’s because the diamond that Eclipso is holding over his eye is actually a little plastic thingy that’s attached to the comic book. It’s like one of those treasure troll tummy gems, and despite my initial optimism, it doesn’t actually grant wishes.