Actually, Jack Kirby the writer is kinda hard to defend on that score!  But plenty of people consider Kirby's 1971 debut at DC to mark the endpoint of the Silver Age, so I'm not sure how relevant your observation is to the well-documented DC Silver Age fetish of creators like Johns, DiDio, etc.

I agree, actually.  And I've got no love for the whole adolescent rape/murder/pillage aesthetic—but DC could have either pushed beyond that stage into something more humane & mature, or regressed to a storytelling level that was less violent but equally naive.  So often, they've chosen the latter.

Screw the Silver Age, and triple-screw the miserable hacks that keep dragging titles back into its artistically, intellectually, and emotionally retarded orbit.  I'm no fan of the "grim & gritty" '90s stuff, but it seemed like an awkward adolescent phase that might, if allowed to go forward, lead to something…

In his day, Robert Browning was considered one of the most pretentious poets who ever existed.  But a closer look at his life shows that he wasn't throwing up a smokescreen, and wasn't out to impress anybody—the way he wrote really mirrored the way he thought, and the inner voice in which he "spoke" to himself.  Sure,…

"Renihilation"?  Shouldn't it be "abnihilation"?

Sure … long as you grant that people whom it does affect emotionally might be onto something.  For example: I don't enjoy bebop jazz—it leaves me utterly cold, it seems to be "trying too hard" in the same way that prog strikes others as doing, and listening to it is often actively annoying to me.  But many people…

Cersei turns out to be a mother-in-law from hell, and this puzzles you?

I'm not at all sure she's in over her head.  Margery seemed shocked, but not necessarily intimidated.  From here, it looked as if she was more surprised at Cersei's needless showing of her hand—an unforced error. To further mix the metaphors, Cersei is unhappy and rattled enough that she's taken to leading with her…

I dunno … for people who haven't any use for such a vision (i.e., non-sperglords), Abrams's take on the franchise is relatively compelling.

In my fondest dreams, future President John Bolton would one day deliver Gary's stirring final speech to the U.N.—verbatim.  Oh, Dear Leader … why couldn't you have held on for a little while?

I'm a Republican, and adore Zooey Deschanel helplessly and unironically.  If my calculations are correct, this puts me behind nearly every 8-ball the AVC has to offer.

Are you kidding?  The one movie of its day that PREDICTED the advent of shallow, low-flow, overly engineered toilets?

If I were your father, I'd be weirdly, unaccountably proud.

I'd forgotten about Pete & the au pair, and that's indeed another, lower level.  However, I maintain that in his day, Roger too might've taken advantage of the girl … though in a much smoother manner, one that didn't seem overtly rapey.  Which brings me back to my original point.

As the former owner of a '68 Rally Sport, I simply choose to believe it's Camaro.

Conversely, Pete's really no worse a man than Roger or Don … though that's not raising the bar very high.  But the latter have style and the former doesn't: on that one, unspeakably shallow criterion are based our differing perceptions of the men.  The show's got our number.

News flash, Marie: the word "idiote" is perfectly recognizable to an English-speaker.

No.  Chipper, jaunty oboe always sounds so greasy and perverse.

I think that the remainder of this season will be spent showing us that it WAS, in fact, too easy by half.  At this point, I still trust the show to eventually show the real financial, logistic, and human costs of what, to Don at least, seems like a magical application of fairy dust.

Sean Tillmann's internal monologue … every waking moment on infinite loop, disturbingly enough.