This is why I have such a hard time reading hard sci-fi:

Those kinds of things need to be set up beforehand, yes. But not the way, say, David Weber does it.

Wheel of Time slam outta nowhere!

A mass driver mounted on the moon has basically the ultimate kill-shot.

I have a hard limit of 3 made up words on the backcover blurb. More than that, and I'm not touching your book with a ten foot pole.

I read the Cobra parody before I saw the movie.

"The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam" requires a level of cultural awareness far and above anything that Family Guy offers or would ever attempt.

AD reminded me a lot of British comedy shows like Blackadder and the Young Ones and Bottom, where the main characters are all horrible people and you're not supposed to like any of them.

Rearrange the letters in Kwisatz Haderach and it spells "grow a penis."

We just talked right past one another, didn't we?

The Morrison-Moore thing makes no one look good. Morrison sounds defensive, Moore sounds like an asshole, and the whole thing is just sad on the face of it. Two of the greatest writers in comics who hate one another's guts for such petty, pathetic reasons.

This is… kinda… fucking crazy, isn't it?

A wizard did it.

I used to love the Savage Dragon letter col, because Larsen wrote every answer, and he could be entertaining and cranky in equal measure.

Someone who learned the comics business at the knee of Mort Weisinger is always going to have a bad reputation amongst the creative types. But I dig Jim Shooter. He made good comics himself, and he kept the Marvel Universe in pretty spectacular shape during his years as e-i-c. Walt Simonson's Thor, Claremont & Byrne's…

Eh, people were talking about Warren Ellis and Alan Moore. And they still do. The Authority and Planetary and ABC books are in the rearview mirror, and people's affection for them and interest in them has nothing whatsoever to do with the Wildstorm Universe.

Yes, that's Moore's argument. And one he has to make; I'm sure he doesn't want to see Rowling's lawyers or the Ian Fleming Estate knocking on his door with C&D letters.

That as soon as Robinson left, the book that killed off Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in its first issue became a book about (Old) Batman, (Black) Superman, and (Evil) Wonder Woman really killed my interest in the title.

DC has tried periodically to bring them back. They never last. Marvel appears to have them, though. It's still the kind of echo chamber it always was, though. Just endless rah-rah-rahs for the current storyline, no one pointing out flaws or asking pointed questions.

There is an Asian equivalent Superman! And a bald Superman, and a woman Superman, and a classic Superman! We just need a cyborg, robot, and an in-your-face kid to complete the set.