Top Hat Sasquatch

I’ve been looking forward to The LEGO Movie ever since it was announced, but I wasn’t prepared for how awesome this trailer was going to be. Chris Pratt was perfect casting as the everyman LEGO guy Emmet, who gets mistaken for a Master Builder when a threat looms over the LEGO Universe.

Morgan Freeman’s character looks great, and that role call scene is hilarious. I love seeing Superman, Wonder Woman, a Ninja Turtle, and the 2002 NBA All-Star team all in one room. It definitely has me looking forward to all the LEGO in-jokes that are sure to be in this movie. And 1980-something Spaceguy? Brilliant.
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I enjoy Kickstarter. I take pride in helping subsidize others’ creative goals. It’s even more satisfying when the project closely aligns with my interests and I get a little something in return for my contribution. I’m not rich, mind you—far from it. We’re talking less than $75 with an average of around $10 per project.

I joined the crowd-sourcing website back in early 2010. The first project I backed was Dear Mr. Watterson, a promised “cinematic exploration of Calvin & Hobbes.” I’ve been a huge fan of Bill Watterson’s comic, and newspaper comics in general, for as long as I can remember. The film seemed a worthy first choice to support.

Kickstarter was relatively new when I joined so I didn’t know the negatives inherent to the site. When I contributed to Dear Mr. Watterson, I had no idea I would have to wait nearly three and a half years to see the end product. I pledged my money on Jan. 11, 2010 and finally received a Blu-ray copy of the film in the mail on June 15, 2013. Kickstarter certainly isn’t for people expecting instant gratification.
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I loved Man of Steel.

Know what I love more though? The fact that it’s inspiring debate among geeks. I get the issues that people have with this movie, and I’m just glad that we have a Superman movie that has enough going on to actually get people talking. My hope is that the issues people are having with it won’t be issues when the inevitable sequel gets here, and that Man of Steel can serve as a springboard for a robust Superman (and DC Comics) Cinematic Universe.

If you haven’t seen Man of Steel yet, don’t read this. I don’t think I can talk about the movie without giving anything away.

The Movie

I’m a huge Superman fan. In fact, Man of Steel made me remember just how big of a Superman fan I’ve been my whole life. I was pretty much obsessed with the Big Blue Boy Scout up until I was about fifteen years old. Then I got busy and paid less attention to DC superheros (Spider-Man and X-Men were just hitting the theaters) and it wasn’t until Superman Returns that I started thinking about the character more again. I liked that movie, but just as a nostalgic homage to the classic movies, and I totally understood everyone’s complaints about it. It was not an action-packed Superman film.

Fast forward a few years and the world is superhero movie crazy. We’ve had a great Batman movie trilogy and we’ve seen Marvel craft an incredible interconnected Marvel Universe on screen. It’s time to bring Superman back. When I heard Christopher Nolan was going to be involved I was excited, but then I was less excited when Zack Snyder was announced as the director. I wasn’t a fan, but I am now.

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Although the comic strip Flash Gordon might not have invented the space opera genre, it certainly helped define it.  And for nearly a decade, the creator and visual maestro behind Flash, Alex Raymond, drew a weekly strip that continues to inspire young artists today.  Since 2012, Titan Books has been issuing reprints of these classic comic strips as part of The Complete Flash Gordon Library.  Their latest offering, Volume 3: The Fall of Ming, covers the years 1941 – 1944, a time of great transition for not only the world, but also Raymond and his beloved creation.

It might surprise you to hear that it’s not absolutely necessary you read the previous installments of Flash Gordon in order to jump into the weekly comic strip.  While there are occasional references to earlier characters and events, for the most part the plot is simple enough to understand even without a complete backstory.  So chances are you’ll be caught up and know everything you need to know within a couple of strips.  However, I have read some of the early adventures of Flash, and knowing how the strip started back in 1937, helped put a better context on what it had become by the beginning of this volume in 1941.

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I was digging through stuff at my Grandpa’s house last weekend to see if there was anything I found sentimental and wanted to keep (he didn’t die, he’s just moving to a retirement home), and among the old photos, fishing paraphernalia, and random mothball-scented things, I found a 1993 Sears Catalog. I spotted it from a mile away and almost knocked my sister over who was looking through our Grandmother’s Christmas decorations trying to get to it.

Unfortunately it wasn’t a Christmas catalog. If it was, I would have snatched the whole thing and spent hours (days?) scanning the entire toy section. Alas, this was just a regular-type catalog which meant no toys. However, I remembered that even these boring catalogs still usually had video game sections and I quickly flipped past the pages of clothes, exercise equipment, and antique-looking computers to find them. I wasn’t disappointed.
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