Vampire stories aren’t really my thing, but as far as vampire stories go, this is a good one! 90s New York is an interesting setting, I like the cultural shake-up, and the art is a lot of fun.

I’m glad I watched this, but I was surprised to not enjoy it as much as expected. Part of it is the usual caveat of watching on my phone while doing chores, and part of it is age (in that its innovation has become mainstream and in that John Cleese has really taken a scary turn). Yet, I’m glad I watched it, and I’m ready to watch some other Python stuff.

Hellboy reminds me a lot of Atomic Robo. I love the idea, I like the art, it’s pulpy in a fun way, but after a while, I just get bored of it.

Horror is not at all my jam, but I’ve recently discovered analog horror, which works better for me. I didn’t like the gorier aspects of this movie, but I did find that it captures what I like about Parsons’s original short—and the genre of analog horror in general.

Also, if it wasn’t intended to be a commentary on generative AI, it sure stumbled right into that. A “poorly remembered” reality that produces extra fingers and may be dangerous to humans but whose creators think is the most important thing for us to understand today? C’mon.

Okay, so I didn’t actually read the final TPB. I cobbled together individual issues from hoopla (boooo, hoopla) but couldn’t be bothered to review them individually.

That’s probably good, because I didn’t like the first issue at all—I had trouble remembering what had happened in the previous TPB and struggled to get back into the plot. I still think the plot is kind of dumb, but reading the remaining issues reminds me that I like Guillory’s characters, art, and clear personal investment in this story. I’m being generous with my rating, but I think he’s earned it. (Chew is still too weird for me to try, though).

There’s so much about this series that shouldn’t work. The protagonist is clearly meant to be feminist but borders on angry manhater and is clad in typical comic book superheroine attire. Would it surprise you to know the creative team is all male?

Yet, for all of its very clear faults, there’s something about it that works? Or at least that I found to be an engaging read. Maybe there’s something here under the problems, or maybe I’m just part of the problem. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I chuckled at the Ben Reilly scenes in the second Spider-Verse movie because I know the jokes about 90s superhero comics, but I hadn’t actually experienced 90s superhero comics.

While, now I have, and I get the jokes even more. This was hard to convince myself to finish: It felt like a trying-too-hard attempt to build an interesting comics universe, but it just wound up being dumb and sometimes poorly illustrated.

Incredibly helpful collection of source documents (especially for a non-historian like me) but would not recommend to anyone that doesn’t have a specific research question. Not exactly a page turner!

Earlier today, I wrote a review of the second season of Severance where I mentioned how hard it is to follow up on a stellar first take on an idea. I was really nervous about this sequel in the same way, but it really works!

Kiddo somewhat begrudgingly admitted she liked the first movie enough for us to watch this one over the long weekend. It was great! I have been giggling about Ben Reilly jokes for the past 24 hours. I also love how Reilly looks like he’s from a 90s comic book, and the whole movie does a good job of following up with the creative blend of animation styles (the LEGO joke was fine, but the Da Vinci Vulture was fun, as was the “-Ed.” joke, which I’m surprised they didn’t use in the first one.

It’s hard for a tv show to follow up on an amazing season 1 premise with a solid season 2. This definitely has some creaky spots in it at the beginning, but it works up to something that won my trust back. What a deliberately, excellently weird show this is.

I understand why this movie is well-regarded, and if I were watching it from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time in 1991 (which I couldn’t have, because I was 3 and from a no-R-rated-movies Mormon family), I might have different thoughts.

Instead, though, I noticed all the obvious ADR, I learned the context for all the lines I already know from playground conversations and pop culture osmosis, I shrugged at the over-the-top action, and I thought about how much more banal the threats of AI are these days than Skynet and a T-1000. It was a real meh for me.

Look, to enjoy this film, I had to set aside a lot of concerns about the glorification of war and violence, uncritical U.S. patriotism, and more besides. I did set those (mostly) aside, though, and it’s a fun, well-done movie. I wish there were more Stellan Skarsgård (the actor) in it, but I really enjoyed Jerry Westerby (the character from another franchise) popping up as the Soviet ambassador.

I own a physical copy of this book but sold out to hoopla to listen to it over the weekend so I could say I’d finally read it. I appreciate just how practical this book is: outlining steps one can take rather than simply appealing to an abstract anarchist ideal.

I also felt a real tension while reading this. The ideals it sets out really speak to me, but the amount of work and commitment that it would take to actually follow these principles feels intimidating to me.

On one hand, this is the first manga I’ve read where I saw why the art form is as revered as it is. Good art, interesting premise (somewhat silly, but no more than XIII, which I love more than I should), and not too gratuitous (but still some).

On the other, I felt that it didn’t catch my attention for the whole volume, and I’m torn on whether I’d enjoy reading the next four.

Top Gun is probably the better movie, but if I had to watch one US Navy aviation recruitment video dressed up as a blockbuster film, I think I’d pick this one. It wrestles with more interesting ideas, and more of it happens on a carrier, which is fun.

And yet, I am annoyed by two things that I recognize stand in tension with each other: 1) the jingoistic “look how cool our war toys are” vibes and 2) the shaggy dog nature of the story that ultimately rules out showing off those war toys and doesn’t do anything with the time travel premise that a short story couldn’t do better.

A lot of what I was looking for in this book is already available in other sources, and while I appreciated the normalizing of Latter-day Saint temples for a lay audience, it would also smack of apologetics if Stapley weren’t also so unflinching in addressing controversy and taboo. It’s a wonderful resource, and it’s accounting for important events of the last decade made it an invaluable read.

This movie is a pure delight, and I’m glad I talked kiddo into watching it with me. Maybe it’s time to finally watch the sequel after three years of meaning to but never getting around to it.

I struggled with how to rate this one. I’m going to settle for this: Just because a series that knows it’s being dumb and fanservicey does not automatically elevate it above being dumb and fanservicey.

I have been meaning to read this book for years and finally got to it. On one hand, it’s excellent, and I’m kicking myself for not having read it before. On the other, it’s so well-suited to a current project that I’m not sure I would have appreciated it earlier.

Not life-changing, but a pretty good comic. I didn’t know about this apparently legendary story, but it was fun to learn about.

Like the last volume, I’m less convinced by the plot as it continues, but there’s still so much about this that’s good. I appreciate the portrayal of faith without being preachy, I like the art, and there is still plenty of humor.

This is the last PDF I own, and I didn’t realize there was a fifth TPB that rounds out the story. I’ll have to track it down somehow…

Horror is not my genre, but this was funny and interesting enough in other ways that I (mostly) enjoyed the series anyway.

J’aime bien un petit drame politique, et voici la première fois que j’ai eue la chance de rencontrer un tel drame à la française. J’avoue que je ne suis pas arrivé à tout suivre, mais j’ai été content d’avoir reconnu plusieurs détails qui auraient échapper à la plupart des Américains. J’aime le cynicisme des personnages, même si certaines parties de la série deviennent fantabuleuses.

I’n pickier about this volume because it’s harder to follow up on a good premise than to set it up, but it hasn’t entirely jumped the shark, and I’m still enjoying it.

This volume has some more obvious furniture moving so that important things can happen later, but it’s still great so far.