Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
I’ve got a newly-revised comic guide for you – The Definitive Bobbi Morse AKA Mockingbird Collecting Guide and Reading Order!
Not in the mood to browse through an in-depth guide? Keep reading to learn a little more about Mockingbird, including where to start, what’s new, where she’s been in 2017, and what percent of her comics have been collected.
[Read more…] about Updated: The Definitive Guide to Mockingbird, Bobbi Morse
I’ve got a freshly updated comic guide for you – The Definitive Hawkeye Collecting Guide and Reading Order!
Don’t want to browse through the entire guide at the moment? Keep reading for little hits on where to start, what’s new, where the Hawkeyes have been in 2017, and what percent of Hawkeye’s comics have been collected.
[Read more…] about Updated: The Definitive Guide to Hawkeye Comic Books
It’s time… time for more fabulous drag queens!
That’s right, last night RuPaul took the to the airwaves to announce an all-new cast of nine queens for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 3, which is set to debut in January.
While the past two seasons of All Stars heavily featured queens that reached the finals, this cast doesn’t have a single Final Three competitor in its rank.
If these aren’t the most glittering of all-time drag stars, then what is the unifying theme of this season of All Stars? It could be “Ru-Grets.” In the case of over half of these queens, RuPaul could credibly claim that she has since had second thoughts about the “Sashay Away” that lead these queens to make their exits the first (or, in two cases, second) time around.
How well will these return queens fare in glamorous combat based on what we’ve seen of them in past seasons and in their brand new video packages? Keep reading for as I rank the house down to assess the chances of each of these queens to strut into the Hall of Fame alongside Chad Michaels and Alaska Thunderfuck 5000.
[Read more…] about RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, Season 3 Pre-Season RuVeal!
Despite being on my 26th consecutive nomadic day, things have settled back into some semblance of a routine here in our temporary Kiwi homestead, which meant I actually had time today to update comic book guides!
I started with a complete refresh of my guide to the current Rebirth era of DC Comics!
It has been over a year after the debut of this era and fan interest just keeps getting bigger in every single comics circle I run in. That’s for good reason: as all of the main, double-shipping titles of this relaunch press on into their 30th issues, pretty much all of the series that started out great have stayed great. You couldn’t say that for New 52, and Marvel Now barely let anything other than Avengers, Guardians, and X-Men run past issue #25.
Plus, there’s a palpable sense of anticipation for what’s to come as DC releases the King/Gerads blockbuster Mister Miracle and hits their first line-wide event of the Rebirth era with Dark Nights … and, of course, fresh off of that they’ll launch the hotly-anticipated DC/Watchmen mashup throwdown Doomsday Clock.
Whether you’ve been keeping up for the past 16 months or this is all new to you, check out the Rebirth guide to find every series and where it’s collected!
I am always fascinated when a teenage musician – not just a singer or player, but a songwriter – becomes a global star.
It’s a selfish fascination. I remember being that age and being full to the brim with inspiration. I recall feeling like songs were bursting out of my brain every single day, sometimes faster than I could write them down. I would naively follow all of my melodic impulses, no matter how transgressive, and for as many awful choices I see in hindsight there are the occasional flashes of brilliance.
I can never decide whether it is good or bad that YouTube didn’t exist at the time. I love that the teenaged songwriter version of me is a Schrödinger’s cat of internet fame; we’ll never know if he would be beloved or ridiculed.
For those selfish reasons, I have been more fascinated but the journey of the precociously talented Lorde than I was with the slick Justin Bieber or the initially folksy Taylor Swift.
All three are mega-talented songwriters, but they both express that in different ways. Bieber’s expression was about the casual, effortless coolness of being in the in-club. Taylor Swift was about transformation – from country kid who sang about being an underdog to pop bombshell sweeping up Grammys.
Lorde’s expression has been the utter opposite of them both. She’s almost too full of effort compared to Bieber, and as self-conscious as Swift but more wild and free than she has ever allowed herself to be.
Lorde’s songs are brimming with that wildness, starting with “Royals” – a song so basic yet so vividly evocative. Each feels like an aperture into her wildly buzzing creative mind, controlling the flow, letting just enough of her interior world through that we can make sense of it.
Despite the electricity of her songs, Lorde’s Pure Heroine wasn’t the world-altering smash of, say, Alanis’s Jagged Little Pill. It’s not a singular, unassailable achievement. She could and would be able to follow it up, and just has with her sophomore effort, Melodrama.
There are a lot of interesting, mature moments on Melodrama, but none so arresting as the bare piano balled “Liability.” Maybe that’s because Lorde is an obvious mastermind, controlling every little flutter and breath noise across her discography, but “Liability” is her sparest song. It’s a bare piano ballad – just keys and her voice.