There’s no question that Peanuts makes Christmas special. Spending time with Snoopy, Charlie Brown. Lucy, Sally and the rest of the thoughtfully lovable cast of characters brings not only a richness to proceedings since these are kids who really think things through, but a quirky delightfulness as they pose the Continue Reading
Comics
Woof! Asterix’s Dogmatix gets his own book!
One of the great delights of the Astérix comics (and they are multitudinous), which began in 1959 under the stewardship of writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo – these duties are now handled by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad respectively – is a very small, feisty and mischievously lovable Continue Reading
Pop culture festiveness! The 5 ornaments I hung on my #ChristmasInJuly tree
I have put up a Christmas in July tree! Those who know me well will not be surprised by this at all, since I love Christmas with the same fervour and passion that I reserve for caramel cheesecake and releases of new books by my favourite authors. But in previous Continue Reading
Comics review: Beyonders (Volume 1) by Paul Jenkins and Wesley St. Claire
We are, for the most part, a very curious people. Not everyone grant you, but enough of us dare to ask the big questions and push the boundaries of what is known and what’s possible that humanity has been able to push forward, ever forward to some very cool and Continue Reading
Comics review: The Thrilling Adventure Hour – Martian Manhunt
Fighting battles of any kind on Mars would be, you would have to think given its otherworldliness and hostility to life, be a fairly big deal. After all, it’s not like you’re duking it out on the green, green grass of home. But in The Thrilling Adventure Hour: Martian Manhunt, Continue Reading
Comics review: Bloom by Kevin Panetta and Savanna Ganucheau
The ill-defined but promising period between the late teenage years and nascent adulthood comes with both a heady hope for the fulfillment of long-held dreams but also a terror that they might never be expressed at all. In most cases, optimistic expectation wins out, a crash-or-crash-through positivity that sees many Continue Reading
What makes Chewbacca tick? Looper entertainingly explores his backstory this Star Wars Day #Maythe4thBeWithYou
SNAPSHOTWhy is his weapon so different from almost everyone else’s? Why does he talk like that when he clearly understands different languages? Is Chewbacca his actual given name? We took a deep dive into Star Wars lore to find what makes this Wookiee tick. (synopsis via Laughing Squid) Poor Chewie. Continue Reading
Comics review: Mutts – Hot Dogs, Hot Cats by Patrick McDonnell
Reading MUTTS, by cartoonist, playwright and author Patrick McDonnell, is never not a joy. To co-opt a phrase popularised by Snoopy from Peanuts by the legendary Charles M. Schulz – this is okay you would surmise since Schulz called Mutts “one of the best comic strips of all time” – Continue Reading
Comics review: Vagrant Queen by Visaggio Smith and Saxon Saam
Sassy, capable and world-weary protagonists are somewhat of a dime-a-dozen in modern, self-aware sci-fi which takes great delight, with common with a great many other genres in our hyper postmodern world, in subverting, dismantling and remaking traditional ideas of heroes and anti-heroes and the very idea of adventuring for a Continue Reading
Comics review: Star Trek: Picard—Countdown
It is a strategy of which, I’m sure, even the legendary Picard himself would approve. A man who happily mixed calculated insight and intuition, compassion and tenacity, whit and whimsy and steely-eyed resolved, Picard, as played by Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation, subsequent movies and recently to Continue Reading