Platypus of Truth

Ad Hominem Lives.  I speak to those who know.  To those who don't: my mind's a blank -I'll never say a word.  Mike Mignola gets to all the good ideas first....  Meh. ;-)

And like to coins, some true, some light, but every one of you stamped with the image of the King. -Tennyson, The Holy Grail There are experiences that "stamp" a person for life.  Whatever they may be, these events are so life-altering that they set those who experience them apart from the rest of humanity.  No matter what your character, appearance, or circumstances are, something about you is different from those who haven't been "stamped."  Conversely, no matter how unalike you may be, you have a bond with anyone who has had experienced the same.  They know. They've been there.  They "get it." Discussing Tennyson's Idylls of the King with my students has led me to coin a new term: "Round Table experience."  These are periods of profound communal interaction that dramatically shape our character for good or ill.  It's those moments when you feel part of something bigger than yourself; when you enter into fellowship at ...

Too Christian to be Pagan and too Atheist to be Christian. That's about the best way I've found to describe the 2010 remake of the 1982 adventure classic "Clash of the Titans."  Emerson assures us that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."  Whether that's true or not, any kind of consistency, even a foolish one, is necessary for art.  Now "Clash of the Titans" doesn't bother to posture itself as high art; it's just plain pulp.  However, even a thinly invented world created purely for the sake of entertainment needs some unifying "truth" to so that the audience can suspend disbelief.  The lack of a unifying "truth" to the film is the one great weakness of this remake.  "Clash of the Titans" can't decide what kind of world it's trying to immerse us in.  Are the gods really damnable?  Well we only meet two of them.  Hades is definitely damnable, but Zeus comes off as more conflic...

In a series like "Hellboy," volume 9 just has to be significant.  In this case, Mike Mignola doesn't disappoint.  "The Wild Hunt" has to be the strongest in the series to date, uping even the soulful "Strange Places" and eerie "Darkness Calls."  After holding off for over a decade, Mignola finally taps into one of the richest wells in world folklore: the Arthurian Legends.  In case you haven't read it yet, I'll spare you any further details.  All I can say is "dude, it's like my brain barfed into a comic book!"