The Onion A.V. Club: Jonny Woodrose And The Broken Hearted Woodpeckers CD Review

Delivering a mix of acoustic-twang-laden blues riffs and husky, raspy vocals, Jonny Woodrose and The Broken Hearted Woodpeckers' debut album, Live From The Garage, channels the spirit of The White Stripes' first effort. Combined with a low muffle production value, the record feels old but sounds fresh, and works much in singer Jonson Kuhn and company’s favor.

Enjoying this? Then check out the rest of my first review with The Onion A.V. Club here:

http://www.avclub.com/denver/articles/jonny-woodrose-and-the-broken-hearted-woodpeckers,35848/

Twice Bitten

Oh, how the world has changed since “Incarnate” #1. “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” has become just “Kate Plus Eight” (refresh your memory with my review of the first issue, and Joel McHale has his own show on network television. But, has “Incarnate,” the vampire comic by Gene Simmons’ son, Nick Simmons, shed some of it’s growing pains from the first issue? Um, not exactly.

I feel kind of, well, crummy about starting this review off with a negative but, as part of Radical Publishing’s “Bigger Book! Bigger Value!” brand, this mammoth 60-page issue doesn’t play into the promise of “more story for less bucks,” as “Incarnate” follows the standard anime tradition of quick-paced pages, causing the 60 pages to leave you with as much story as a 23-page comic. That little nugget of trouble could be alleviated quite easily as we are trained to drop three to four dollars on a regular book every month, so the question is: is the story enough to warrant the five-dollar price tag?h, how the world has changed since “Incarnate” #1. “Jon and Kate Plus Eight” has become just “Kate Plus Eight” (refresh your memory with my review of the first issue, and Joel McHale has his own show on network television. But, has “Incarnate,” the vampire comic by Gene Simmons’ son, Nick Simmons, shed some of it’s growing pains from the first issue? Um, not exactly.

I feel kind of, well, crummy about starting this review off with a negative but, as part of Radical Publishing’s “Bigger Book! Bigger Value!” brand, this mammoth 60-page issue doesn’t play into the promise of “more story for less bucks,” as “Incarnate” follows the standard anime tradition of quick-paced pages, causing the 60 pages to leave you with as much story as a 23-page comic. That little nugget of trouble could be alleviated quite easily as we are trained to drop three to four dollars on a regular book every month, so the question is: is the story enough to warrant the five-dollar price tag?

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my review of Incarnate Issue 2 at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=9565

Avatar Sneak-peak: 15 minutes that changed my life?

 Oh Mr. Cameron, although I still haven’t forgiven you for making Titanic the largest grossing movie of all time and Oscar hog (till Jackson and NZ crew tied you with ROTK), you did make a large portion of the good Sci-Fi movies to come from my childhood (not that I watched them then Mum and Dad, honest). And in the spirit of full disclosure, Titanic was a pretty good yarn, and it stopped Shrek from taking the top spot - so you are forgiven for being one of the only people on this earth to make a movie seemingly everyone likes, you smug git… Sorry, that was uncalled for. And now, here we are ten years on and like little Charlie Bucket standing, coughing and wheezing at the front gates, listening to faint whizzing and whirring coming from within your closed factory, I brimmed with anticipatory salivation at what fantastic morsel you were cooking up next. And to stretch my analogy for all it’s worth, when the chance to snag a golden ticket for “Avatar Day” I got ready to do whatever it would take to get a spot inside your world. Luckily it only consisted of sitting online and furiously pounding the F5 key on my laptop, instead of causing the onset of diabetes from all that chocolate like Wonka caused. I’ll also forgive you, Mr. Cameron for causing the servers to crash probably due to overwhelming demand for these tickets, as I finally, after the deadline closed for tickets, found myself unwrapping the flash intro of your site to find staring back at me two tickets for your 15 minute sneak-peak of Avatar! You’re still not forgiven for putting things into motion that would cause Arnie to become “Governater” of California. No, I can’t grant you penance for that. But on everything else we’re good...

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my review of Avatar: Sneak-Peak, on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=8861

Kiss from a Vampire, Reviewing Radical’s “Incarnate”

Everyone has a guilty pleasure, one that they don’t talk about. They draw the curtains; close the blinds, as dusk falls. They sit in front of the alter of the 21st century and begin this secretive ceremony. Hold up, you thought I was talking about Vampires? No, no, you’ve got it all wrong; I’m talking about reality TV. Now don’t lie, while staring at your feet with guilt. It’s okay; we are a slave to its power. Sure we all watch Lost and pretend that, that’s it, other than Adult Swim, of course. But all of us find ourselves hovering on channels when Bret Michaels searches for another STD, or Dr. Drew tries to counsel ex Babylon 5 alumni with a made case of the rehab blues. For me, it’s a passing glance at John and Kate (can’t help it, I’m mesmerized by the “car-crash’esqueness” of it all) and Gene Simmons Family Jewels. It’s like the non-dysfunctional version of the Osbournes! But anyone whose watched it from the start has probably noticed two things in the last year. One, this show is getting more and more staged to the point that it might take the title away from Brooke Knows Best (which FYI, I don’t watch). That knowledge comes from watching The Soup with Joel McHale. The second thing is that Nick has been walking around with comic books in his hands, left and right. As soon as I saw this, knowing his long-tongued dad has a Kiss comic, I knew we would see something from the young member of the Kiss-clan.


Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my review of Incarnate, on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=8632

Reviewing Caprica

People have always been fascinated with the unknown, in relation to life. We find it such a unique experience, even though all kinds of life and existence surround us from microbe to pet cat. Somehow we feel it unique, alien, and completely un-reproducible. And we are fascinated by the possibility that man can take control of this knowledge and positively terrified by what we would do with such power. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein leapt off the page to confront this, using body parts and electricity. In the day and age where reality becomes increasingly blurred with the ‘virtual’ reality of the internet, Ronald D. Moore asks the same question. Can and should we play God, or perhaps more aptly, gods?

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my review of Caprica, on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=8376

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 1 Review

Okay, let’s get this out of the way straight off the bat. I’m a prequel fan. I love George Lucas’ handling of the Star Wars Saga in its entirety. Sure, I have qualms with bits and pieces, (Boba Fett as a stupid, pouting kid and Han shooting second, come to mind), but as a whole, all six films are, in my view, the best of the best that celluloid has to offer. I’ll even go as far as to say that Episode III is my favorite of the six movies (ESB coming a close second). Now that, that is out in the open I’ll begin… anyone still there?

Lucasfilm has done an admirable job of keeping Star Wars in the mainstream since it reemerged as a dominating entity in 1996. Especially when you take into account the fact that its theatrical incarnation ended in 2005. Of course, I’m not claiming that Star Wars had disappeared before ’96, but it had slumped out of the mainstream’s sweet embrace to a more nuanced status. It appears that Lucas is of the mind now though, that like it or not, Star Wars is here to stay with new content constantly pumping new blood into the franchise...

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my review of Star Wars The Clone Wars Season 1, on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=7865

Scribbles on a Notepad: Starfest ’09 Part II – A date with Starbuck

There I stood, in the neighboring parking lot to the Marriott, where Klingons were reciting Shakespeare and the 501st were posing for pictures that, in a few hours would be posted on a plethora of Facebook profiles. I was only hours away from sitting in a packed auditorium with Katee Sackhoff on the stage giggling through stupid questions and memories of the BSG set while swinging from left to right on the much appreciated (by Sackhoff) rotating, wooden chair. This was not what my attention was focused on at that moment. I was focused on my left foot that had just fallen through a snow pack, straight into the melted snow flooded road below, the ice-cold water racing up my jeans towards my knee.

“Crap!” I exclaimed.

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my adventures at Starfest '09 on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=7702

Scribbles on a Notepad: Starfest ’09 Part I – Falling Snow and Smoking Pirates

Friday: Day One

“The elves are going to get cold,” I said as I stared out at the persistent snowfall that had been falling across Colorado for nearly twenty-four straight hours. The mounting blanket of wet, and I mean wet, snow on the ground made my half-buried Volvo seem increasingly further away. I looked to my side where one of my three cats sat, staring at me with a look that told me he even thought I was crazy for considering to venture out in this, and I’d seen him wrestle with squirrels. I turned from my cat’s accusing gaze and reached for my cell phone. In true Human nature, I would look for companionship on helping me make up my mind.

“Hey Scorpio, it’s coming down pretty hard. Are you still going tonight?”

“I have a table in artist alley, so - I guess so. Are you?” came the reply.

“I guess so, I mean if you are.”

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my adventures at Starfest '09 on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=6759

Movie Review: Star Trek (2009)

Boldly going where no Trekkie has gone before… The mainstream!

Roughly three minutes. That’s all it took for white to become black, in my world. Three minutes filled with glossy shots of close quarters, ship-to-ship battles, freefalling Starfleet thrill-seekers and foaming at the mouth Romulans. You see I’m a Star Wars kinda guy. I like that we don’t have a name; we’re just people who like, sometimes fanatically, the world Georgey Boy created. I was the lesser of the two warring geek factions. The ones with the 501st, not the Klingon translation works of Shakespeare. But in those three minutes J.J. Abrams had released a trailer (the third one I think) that put into question my whole world view. In the immortal words of Dr. Emmett Brown, “Great Scott”, I was in a serious paradoxical dilemma!

But as the opening moments of J.J. Abrams’ “reboot” of this hallow Sci-Fi franchise played across the screen, I forgot all about whether it was right to cheat on my allegiance. I just sat in awe of what Abrams and crew were pulling off.

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of my advance review of the new Star Trek movie on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=6351

Scribbles on a Notepad: I met Superman today… he was taller than I thought.

It’s funny really, in many of my writing assignments I’m asked to make sure my personal opinion doesn’t show up as a character. This isn’t an easy thing for me to do. So when Gary and Richard gave me my own space in the COMICNEWS team to write a column, I was elated! But, as I sat thinking about my first post (translation: watching Futurama with a writing pad in my lap) I realized that the best thing I could do was to lay it all out there. And, for comics fans, that almost always starts with Supes!

“He’s just a big Kansas-born hillbilly!” I stated down the phone through a mouthful of last night’s leftovers. The dull, static tone of my landline accentuated the silence that followed my nonchalant statement and if recovering from the initial shock, artist and friend Scorpio Steele took a deep breath and began. Now, I could relate his next words near verbatim, but instead I’ll dial down the thirty minute rebuttal into a monosyllabic phrase that even Oz from Buffy would be proud of.

“Are you nuts?”

Enjoying this? Then read the rest of it on my monthly column on comicnews.info at the link below:

http://comicnews.info/?p=5956