Tag: comic
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Dante Deluxe
Funnily enough it was Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle who turned me on to Dante. Their decidedly odd libertarian take on the original, Inferno, came out in 1976 and had the Science Fiction author Allen Carpentier dying after falling out of window (Asimov’s fault) and being led through Dante’s hell by Benito Mussolini. I started […]
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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and Logicomix
Comics again, this time with a couple of wonderful graphic novels that tackle similar mathematical themes but in very different ways. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou focuses on Bertrand Russell’s attempt to create a mathematical foundation for logical truth, while Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace […]
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Lovecraft by I. N. J. Culbard
A while back I wrote about the H. P Lovecraft Historical Society’s film of The Whisperer in Darkness. It’s a great movie and by and large it does a good job of rendering a classic Lovecraft tale in the style of ‘40s film noir. Yet at the same time it highlights a lot of the […]
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Classrooms of the Future
I work in education, advising ministries throughout the world on how to best use technology in the classroom. For most the process is one of constant catch up. Technology changes on a monthly basis, while education systems tend to work on yearly budget cycles. Furthermore if you tinker with something you usually don’t see the […]
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You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack – Tom Gauld
A while back I posted one of Tom Gauld’s cartoons on this blog and wrote a brief piece for my newsletter. His work is so clever, and pushes so many of the right buttons for an Eng-Lit professor turned science fiction writer that I couldn’t help but share some more of his work, taken from […]
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Corporate Samurai
I downloaded The Wolverine from iTunes a couple of weeks ago. All good fun, even if it did go through the motions a bit, and Hugh Jackman is always watchable in the title role. It was set in Japan, at least the kind of Japan that only exists in Hollywood execs’ heads, and as such […]
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Phoenix (Hi no Tori) – Osamu Tezuka
Following on from Jim Barker’s post about the need to take comics seriously I thought I’d write about an artist who is recognised as one of the greatest comic book writers of all time, Osamu Tezuka and his finest creation, the twelve volume Phoenix series (Hi no Tori), first published in Japan between 1967 and […]
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Frank Frazetta
I’m still waiting for Conan. The first Arnold Schwarzenegger film was kind of OK, and had one or two impressive moments. The second was dire and I still can’t bring myself to watch the remake with Jason Momoa (despite the fact that his Khal Drogo is as close to Conan as anyone – though Rory […]
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Cartoonophobia by Jim Barker
I wanted to give this blog post over to a friend of mine who is a brilliant independent cartoonist; Jim Barker of Jim Barker Cartoons and Graphics. Having lived in Japan for ten years, I can entirely sympathise with this. For the Japanese, manga are a narrative art form to be taken as seriously as […]
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Nemesis the Warlock – Shriekback
In the mid 1980s England was ruled by a right wing conservative government under Margaret Thatcher. Like Cameron’s Tories and New Labour under Blair they espoused the values of liberty and justice while simultaneously suppressing free speech and clamping down on Trade Union rights and minorities. It was the first time in the 20th century […]
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Eagle Book of Spacecraft Models
By the time I was old enough to read the famous British comic Eagle it had folded, so I missed Dan Dare, Police Constable 49 and the inner workings of various planes, trains and automobiles. Eagle was founded in 1950 by a vicar who wanted to get the morals of Anglican muscular Christianity over to […]