In the late ’60s and early ’70s, in a musical sweet spot somewhere between the compositional ambition and bombastic excess of progressive rock, the experimental weirdness of early jazz fusion, and the liquid light-fueled freak-outs of psychedelia, there existed a unique group of bands centered around the cathedral town of Canterbury in southeastern England. United […]
Author Archive
Pilgrimage to Canterbury, Part 1: Caravan – “The Funk’s Tale”
Posted: 18th January 2013 by Brian in Music, Notes & ChordsTags: Canterbury, Caravan, Dave Sinclair, Geoffrey Richardson, Pye Hastings, Richard Coughlin, Richard Sinclair, Steve Miller
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Readers in Paradise: The Wonderful Terry Moore
Posted: 20th November 2012 by Brian in Comic Books, The Comic SpinnerTags: Echo, Rachel Rising, Strangers in Paradise, Terry Moore
Terry Moore deserves some kind of award. No, not the kind you win for making amazing comic books. He’s already won a couple of those. No, I mean he needs an award named after him, an award for skillfully telling addictively entertaining stories in serialized graphic form, stories featuring beautiful, empowered women, stories entirely outside […]
The Rigante: Like History, Only Better!
Posted: 13th September 2012 by Brian in Books, Escape VelocityTags: Connavar, Crypto-historical, David Gemmell, Keltoi, Midnight Falcon, Morrigu, Ravenheart, Rigante, Seidh, Stormrider, Sword in the Storm, Varlish
Every other Thursday, Brian goes out of this world, waxing recommendatious on great reading that will transport you to fantastic, far-away worlds and times. Looking to escape? Escape Velocity is your bi-weekly ticket! Within the world of science fiction and fantasy, possibly my favorite little sub-sub-genre is one I recently decided to call the crypto-historical. Most usually […]
“Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” – The Romp That Refreshes
Posted: 10th September 2012 by Brian in Doctor Who, Recap, TelevisionOne of the often-cited strengths of Doctor Who as a series is the flexibility of its concept—when your one permanent concept is an alien do-gooder with a time-and-space machine shaped like a police box, well, there’s not a whole lot you can’t do with that. Mostly, people refer to this wide-open imaginative potential when the show […]
Two Sought Adventure: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Posted: 9th August 2012 by Brian in Books, Escape VelocityTags: Conan, Fafhrd, Fantasy, Fritz Leiber, Gray Mouser, Sword and Sorcery
Every other Thursday, Brian goes out of this world, waxing recommendatious on great reading that will transport you to fantastic, far-away worlds and times. Looking to escape? Escape Velocity is your bi-weekly ticket! Fantasy doesn’t have to be epic to be great reading. Today’s case in point: Fritz Leiber’s long-running series of stories about Fafhrd and […]
The Wonderfully Mad World of Captain Britain, Part 1
Posted: 31st July 2012 by Brian in Comic Books, The Comic SpinnerTags: Alan Davis, Alan Moore, Captain Britain, Chris Claremont, Dave Thorpe, Jamie Delano, Marvel UK, Meggan, Opal Luna Saturnyne
Join Brian every other Tuesday as he talks comic books from a reader’s perspective, both his new experiences with the medium and reflections on over thirty years of enjoying the finest in sequential art. In 1989, when I was at the height of my teenaged X-Men fandom, I discovered a slightly different flavor of X-book. […]
The Desert of Souls : Adventure in the 1,001 Nights Tradition!
Posted: 26th July 2012 by Brian in Books, Escape VelocityTags: Desert of Souls, Harold Lamb, Harun al-Rashid, Howard Andrew Jones, Pulp Adventure
Welcome to the debut of this new bi-weekly column, in which I get to wax recommendatious about great escapist literature every other Thursday. Because y’know, sometimes you don’t need a searing indictment of gender relations in a war-torn third-world country. Sometimes you just want to let an author take you somewhere neat in your mind, […]
When Comic Books Saved Science Fiction
Posted: 17th July 2012 by Brian in Comic Books, Science Fiction, The Comic SpinnerTags: Avengers, Eternals, Fantastic Four, Fourth World, Jack Kirby, New Wave SF, Roy Thomas, Thor
Join Brian every other Tuesday as he talks comic books from a reader’s perspective, both his new experiences with the medium and reflections on over thirty years of enjoying the finest in sequential art. I’ve made no secret of the fact I’m not a fan of “New Wave” science fiction. Don’t get me wrong, the […]
The Amazing Spider-Man : The “Ultimate” Spider-Man Film
Posted: 5th July 2012 by Brian in Comic Books, Film ReviewTags: Andrew Garfield, Brian Michael Bendis, Emma Stone, Kirsten Dunst, Marc Webb, Mark Bagley, Sam Raimi, The Amazing Spider-Man, Tobey Maguire, Ultimate Spider-Man
As The Amazing Spider-Man grew closer to its debut, the question just got louder and louder: With three madly successful Spider-Man films being released in just the last ten years, was it neccessary, or wise, to reboot the franchise and inflict a whole new Spider-Man on a public that was probably all Spider-Manned out? Did anyone […]