It's not insane, and other comments have had the same idea. But the question is how we define "major." I mean, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are in a class more or less by themselves, so far as DC goes — and if "major" only means that level, we can all keep dreaming.

Yup. Robinson is a writer, and one of my favorites. Rethinking the Golden Agers is one of the things he does best. (Remember "Silver Age"? "Starman"?) But DC, like anybody else trying to sell anything, needs a publicity hook, and "Alan Scott is gay" will get them more headlines and blog comments than "Jay Garrick…

Fine, sure, whatever. But the guy's still a dick, and I can prove it.

In Transylvania, there are some huge salt mines, some of them excavated continuously since the Middle Ages and before. A couple have opened up as subterranean parks, in once case complete with a boating grotto and a Ferris wheel. If you're ever there, it's worth the trip.

Heck, I'm still bitter that NBC canceled "Journeyman." (Of course, I'm also bitter that they canceled "Rockford" and "Police Woman," so maybe it's just me.)

Yes, please. Please.

I have to give my elementary school teachers credit here. Almost 40 years ago, in our mediocre rural school, when they spent their obligatory five minutes on Gutenberg and his Bible, they absolutely did preface it with "China first." They didn't say any more than that, and I doubt they knew much more; but then, they…

Outstanding. Best news I've had in a while.

I read "Venom" when it came out, and enjoyed it immensely. This article does a good job of explaining why.

As I recall, Dr. Sivana traveled to Atlantis looking for some neutrium. As I recall, Junior got the protium and Georgia got the electrium, and the upshot was that the Marvel Family were hunted like foxes.

Wasn't there a mock travel poster in the 60s, with the slogan "Come to Barsoom"? I vaguely remember reading about it once, but I've never been able to confirm it (or see one).

Yes, that's right: hu-MONS. Because, for reasons you and I will never understand, the only one the vampires trust to tell their story is ... a Ferengi.

Here I figured Wally Wood's Iron Maiden, from THUNDER Agents, was the female Doom. Based on absoutely nothing but the cape-and-gray-armor combo.

You think that's rough? You should have heard what H. Rider Haggard said about Walter Besant and Marie Corelli. (Not to mention his disdain for Phileas Fogg cosplay).

#9 includes an ad for a story that is legendary in our home. My 5-year-old is obsessed with "The Fattest Girl in Metropolis." He's made me read it to him a hundred times, and then branch off into stories about most of the DC universe turning inexplicably obese. (That's right: Dr. Fate, Sugar and Spike. Everybody…

I live in Transylvania. The real one. In fact, when people come to town and ask where to stay, I recommend a place called the Hotel Transylvania, which is right by where I work. Nice little hotel, recently renovated, nothing fancy. But you know what? I walk past it about 50 times each week, and on at lest ten of…

I read a novel a few years back, the name and author of which I have forgotten, about American electoral politics in a future where America is a cultural and economic backwater. The backstory is that one day China decided to ignore every intellectual-property treaty it had ever signed, and the next day America's…

Hey scientists: don't feel so bad about yourselves! I read poorly-written articles in the humanities all the time. Good ideas are often buried under bad prose, and the absence of ideas is often disguised by it.

It's the plume sent up when "John Carter" crashed and burned.

Over the last few years, I've been more and more put off by the generic spandex costumes on superheroes, whether male or female. Once it dawned on me that no actual spandex exists which can reveal the minute striations of, say, a pectoral muscle that we have grown to expect from the likes of Jim Lee (and a thousand…