SHIELD wasn’t a secret, just some of their operations were. Like most government intelligence agencies. The first time Coulson shows up in Iron Man, he’s broadcasting his employer’s name every where.

We know Rorschach is Moore’s send-up of Objectivism, because he was explicitly parodying Steve Ditko’s Objectivist heroes Mr. A and The Question. (Rorschach would have actually been The Question, if Moore and Gibbons had been allowed to use the Charlton Comics characters as originally intended.) Other interpretations…

The movie was never going to live up to the book. And I’m not saying that as a “book is always better” person (the book isn’t always better). But Watchmen the comic was a seismic shock to its medium, its industry, and its genre. We live in a world that Watchmen helped create. There was no way a three-decades-later…

Tanya Huff is writing a new Confederation series? EEEEEEEE!!!

Right, this is pretty Silver Age. But there was also Reference Man’s grim and gritty 90s antihero reboot.

So when Bobbi first shows up in the lab coat, I was thrown for a second, and then was okay with it, because I thought she was putting on an act. She’s a deep cover agent (she hid inside HYDRA for months) and is good at setting people at ease. So put a labcoat on her, because to the average layperson that means…

Guy still has an amazing eye. Since he’s working from a Goddard script and not a Lindelof one, I’m a lot more hopeful this time.

It’s one of those things that tries really hard to get everything right, and gets about 80-90% of it right, which makes that small part that isn’t stand out all the more. Whereas something that didn’t even care about getting the details rights wouldn’t be held to the same expectations.

I buy his explanation. He was trying to sell this movie to a bunch of people who have no idea how awe-inspiring and wondrous science can be—ironic when some of them belong to a weirdo cult that has “science” and “-ology” in its name—and he’s not the first to take this approach. Wasn’t this basically Carl Sagan’s…

Well, it’s like the way they used to play “Bad to the Bone” for 80s-esque action heroes. Completely overused, but is there another song that so perfectly encapsulates the sentiment?

It’s been suggested that it might not even be Krysten Ritter in these promos, though I’m not sure I buy that. But it’s a good way to show her desire for anonymity (or at least solitude) clashing with her old life.

You watch enough 90s direct-to-video action/martial arts films, you realize the bullies and bikers will always pick on the ex-Navy SEAL, or the guy with three 10th-degree black belts, or the vampire. Sometimes they just need to be reminded which movie they’re in:

College essays beware! Together, Reference Man and Reference Woman will combat ignorance and library resource confusion!

Can they recreate the bath house scene from Red Heat with Clark and Bruce?

YOU GOT THAT YOU PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS!?

Bad news: Genndy Tartakovsky says he will not return to direct [Hotel Transylvania 3].

The first time I saw Fellowship in the theatre, when they’re walking through the absolutely massive Mines of Moria, I almost wept. Nothing in all my years of reading fantasy or playing D&D prepared me for that scale. It’s probably the last time I was really bowled over by a film spectacle.

I’m hoping for Ice-T. His take on “Comrades at Odds” was dope.

Even better, TSR’s own flavour of Choose Your Own Adventure: Endless Quest!

Jo Walton explores that scenario in her “Small Change” alternate-history trilogy. The US stays out of the war, doesn’t support Britain, and elects Charles Lindbergh president (similar to another alt-history take, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America). After Dunkirk, the British sue for peace with Germany and a…