Glenn Walker is a writer who knows pop culture. He loves, hates, and lives pop culture. He knows too freaking much about pop culture, and here's where he talks about it all: movies, music, comics, television, and the rest... Welcome to Hell.
The All Things Fun! New Comics Vidcast is shot live in a real comics and gaming store in West Berlin, NJ - All Things Fun! - co-hosts Ed (Bronze Age) Evans, Allison (Post-Crisis) Eckel and Glenn (Silver Age) Walker discuss the new comics out this week in two fun video segments, now in high definition, and also available on YouTube. See it here!
The first segment includes discussion of the following topics: Tiny Titans #46 and the identity of the New DC 52 Mystery Girl, Green Lantern the Animated Series #0 - both by Art Baltazar and Franco, Archie Meets KISS!, Archie Babies, Ed's Marvels including Thunderbolts, Ghost Rider and the X-Men titles, and Glenn's Marvels including Red Skull, Mark Waid's Daredevil, the FF and the whole Marvel Universe B through C.
The discussion continues in segment two including: Paul Levitz' Legion: Secret Origin #2, THUNDER Agents new and old by Nick Spencer, Fables and its television counterparts, Ed's indies including Star Wars from Dark Horse, Buffy Season 9, TMNT, and Avengelyne by Mark Poulton, Allison's kids comics, Star Trek #3, Green Lantern action figures trades and winter Angry Birds.
Rob Kelly is a guy who understands passion, and the concept of the phrase "labor of love." Not only is he the man behind The Aquaman Shrine, he is also the writer of the smashing new webcomic Ace Kilroy, along with artist Dan O'Connor. This is his newest labor of love, and with just a few clicks of the mouse, you can help make this adventure last a good long time. It's worth it!
Ace Kilroy is a loving tribute to the high adventure comic strips of yesteryear. My first glance at the work, which started on Halloween this year, conjured memories of Steve Canyon, and sure enough, that's one of the strip's inspirations. I have fond memories of the newspaper strips as a kid, reading their adventures in the black and white dailies and then in full color on Sunday - and this is the method of webcomic Ace Kilroy.
The man, Ace Kilroy, is the spitting image of Clark Gable, and a classic soldier of fortune in the late 1930s. Summoned by President Roosevelt to combat the monsters of our childhood like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man, who might now be working with Hitler's sinister Third Reich. It's clean cut but gritty action with a square-jawed hero facing off against the solid evils of monsters and Nazis. Really, Ace Kilroy is everything you want in an old-fashioned (and that's a good thing) adventure comic. It's good versus evil, where the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black. You know who to root for and you know who to boo and hiss. Like I said, it's a good thing.
Rob Kelly has an extensive background studying both comics and film, giving his sequential storytelling flow and cinematic flair. Dan O'Connor has an artistic style that perfectly matches the era and feeling needed for the strip. Together, they make the noir adventure breathe and jump off the page. Their Ace Kilroy really is a 1940s adventure movie and/or comic (take your pick, it's both) come to life. Less than two weeks in, I am hooked.
And Rob and Dan are doing this great old-fashioned comic strip with a twist of contemporary internet promotion, and also using Kickstarter to fund it. So if you dig Ace Kilroy, become a backer! Find Ace Kilroy at the following links:
The All Things Fun! New Comics Vidcast is shot live in a real comics and gaming store in West Berlin, NJ - All Things Fun! - co-hosts Ed (The Bowler) Evans, Allison (Batgirl) Eckel and Glenn (Red Lantern) Walker discuss the new comics out this week in two fun video segments, now in high definition, and also available on YouTube. See it here!
The first segment includes discussion of the following topics: Uncanny X-Force #17, the rest of the X-Men titles, Nightcrawler returns in Fear Itself #7.8 maybe, the female Ghost Rider, Avengers Origins The Vision #1, Paul Cornell's Demon Knights #3, Gail Simone's Batgirl #3, the 'real' Superboy, father of the year Batman, Green Lantern #3, and the rest of the DC 52 titles of the week.
The discussion continues in segment two including: Ed reviews some DC titles, Resurrection Man #3, father of the year runner up Deathstroke, the return of Wildstorm, Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #2, Ed's indies, House of Night #1, Zenescopes of the week, 'some' of the Robins, new website, new t-shirts, Ed's trades and manga, and the Food Machine Charity Event.
If you love playing WarMachine, or you just want to help folks in need this holiday season, you should bring your canned goods down to All Things Fun! this week through the big day on November 13th. That the date of this year's FoodMachine Charity Event.
The WarMachine Gaming Tournament begins at noon on November 13th, with an entry fee of 15 cans of food for charity. Prizes have been donated by local businesses including Tunes, Vision Center II, Bottino’s Shop-Rite, AKA Recording, Screen Gems, and All Things Fun!
So come on out and help your neighbors this holiday season by bringing down some canned foods for ATF!'s 2011 Foodmachine Charity Tournament & Food Drive on Sunday, November 13th. The doors open at 10 AM, and the game begins at Noon. More details can be found at the fabulous new All Things Fun! website here.
This is notoriously the New Wave song from Alice Cooper, trashed at the time as cashing in and selling out to popular music, the album "Flush the Fashion" is now considered something of a lost treasure. It was one of my faves of the time even though it disappeared quickly. I remember it being in the nightly 'top five at ten' on WPST for a week or so.
Selling out or not, the tune is vintage Alice, and fits it perfectly with his repertoire. Alice was the monster guy when I was in elementary school, and was now the scifi guy with this comeback while I was in junior high. Do you hear the Gary Numan "Cars" vibe in there? I like it.
Some folks are their work. I can't help but think about that today as I write about the passing of journalist and writer Andy Rooney. He passed away Friday night from major complications of an undisclosed surgery, just weeks after signing off for the last time on his regular closing slot on the long running "60 Minutes." Even in his final piece, an interview for the program, he said he wouldn't stop writing - he couldn't stop writing.
Rooney was a journalist since the Second World War and had closed the CBS new program with his commentaries for over forty years. He was the curmudgeon's curmudgeon, always questioning the most mundane and puzzling of the day's mysteries. His voice was grating and his attitude confrontational and often sarcastic, but he was always entertaining, and if you weren't careful, informative.
Andy Rooney wrote for television and news for decades, He won four Emmys while on "60 Minutes," and many other broadcasting and journalism awards during his long career. We have lost a true legend and an epic voice in our times. He will be missed.
Battle Los Angeles ~ This wannabe summer blockbuster took a new spin on the old alien invasion story by telling much of it through modern day news coverage and also through the eyes of one group of young Marines as they hold the line in Los Angeles against nearly indestructible extraterrestrial assault.
Tower Heist ~ This movie was really quite a pleasant surprise. I am always tentative when I go to see a movie with either Eddie Murphy or Ben Stiller, because basically, I never know what I'm going to get. These two, in my book, are always hit or miss.
Director Brett Ratner's Tower Heist is exactly what it what it sounds like, a heist movie, and it's done in the spirit of the old 1960s and 1970s heist films, only with both a comedic and a contemporary spin. And it is funny. Stiller is not over the top, and Murphy is actually back in is old form. Very refreshing. An all star ensemble cast, including Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, Tea Leoni, Judd Hirsch, Gabourey Sidibe, and Casey Affleck, highlights this fun romp.
Now that's not to say this is perfect, it's not. It does fall apart in places where a more appropriate heist movie would have been tighter, but it usually does so for the benefit of laughs. All in all, a homage to the genre and a nice change of pace regarding Murphy and Stiller. Worth seeing.
When it comes to the New Wave, Duran Duran is one of the major names that comes up. Pretty Boy Five were superstars in the early 1980s, and "Rio" is debatably one of their greatest albums. For many of us in that time and place, "Save a Prayer," officially the third single from that LP, could be considered our "Stairway to Heaven."
Like many songs from UK acts in those days, the US didn't get stuff until much later. By the time "Save a Prayer" was released here, we'd all heard it a million times on college radio. It didn't matter, we still loved it, and amazingly the tune holds up wonderfully today. The video was beautifully shot by film director Russell Mulcahy in Sri Lanka.
The All Things Fun! New Comics Vidcast is shot live in a real comics and gaming store in West Berlin, NJ - All Things Fun! - co-hosts Ed (Duke Nukem) Evans, Allison (Strawberry Shortcake) Eckel and Glenn (Stilt-Man) Walker discuss the new comics out this week in two fun video segments, now in high definition, and also available on YouTube. See it here!
The first segment includes discussion of the following topics: Action Comics #3, Flashdance from Hell, Hawk and Dove #3, new DC horror comics, X-Men Regenesis, Avengers Origins Ant-Man and the Wasp #1, and everything you wanted to know about the Stilt-Man, and more.
The discussion continues in segment two including: Halloween fairy tales, Little Mermaid not for kids or biologists, Invincible #84, Duke Nukem vs. Hitler, indies including more fun with Hitler, Steve Niles' Wulf vs. Ironjaw, Allison's kids comics, and Ed's trades including Batman: Noel.
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