Geeknit alert: Constantine in the comics did use a normal gun one time. He shot a non-supernatural serial killer with it, and then he freaked the fuck out about that.

Pants = undies. http://www.worldwidewords.o…

I liked the movie OK, especially whenever my celestial girlfriend Tilda Swinton is on screen. As for whether it captures the spirit of the comic in any way… I guess it depends on which of the dozen or so writers and zillion storylines of the comic you prefer. The parts of the comic that involved literal deals with the…

Moore pretty much said (in his stupendously detailed footnotes) that the Stephen Knight book he got this theory from was probably a lot of hooey. But it manages to tie together all sorts of interesting people and bits of Victorian history in a way that works really well for the story.

But The Fountainhead has a story of sorts, and characters, and it doesn't attempt to contort everything in the whole world to fit the message.

Yeah, I agree that the miners were looking to hurt her, not to find the most efficient way to turn her into a ghost. Except for the bartender, I don't think the miners understand their situation at all - they're just really tired and bitter and confused, like the guy in the Tarot reading who wanted to know when he…

@avclub-7e9d7bf9fca0d81a31df4f127d2e945d:disqus - "Even the Village Voice"? I'm pretty sure the main Voice critic, J. Hoberman, hates the Coens. I still remember him using the phrase "an acrid blast of tailwind" to describe Fargo.

It gives it a certain extra something if you know that the author/artist, Raymond Briggs, based the couple on his parents. His autobiographical comic Ethel & Ernest is about them, and it's almost as much of a heartbreaker - no nuclear war but they still die.

"I've always wondered why there isn't much analysis (or heck, much innovation) of all the interesting things you can do with comic lettering"

The ghost of Pamuk could plausibly tell every living woman in the village that they can safely do anything they want with him.

You have no idea why she isn't, because she is! She's been Dame Maggie Smith for 20 years. http://www.hellomagazine.co…

I don't get that at all. Seriously, I have really tried to understand when people make that argument, but…

Actually, there are lots of reasons people may like books you don't like. But if you're just trying to start a fight here, carry on.

I'm not going anywhere near Flashback, and I really liked The Terror, but I'm not really surprised to hear about the direction Simmons has been going. Hyperion contained a pretty gratuitous rah-rah military bit in which you can solve political problems by just assassinating all the Muslim clerics with satellite…

I liked Pastwatch a lot too. It's not really well written or anything, but it's an interesting story with a surprisingly nuanced view of history. Based on Card's politics, I expected it to soft-pedal Columbus's atrocities and lean heavily on the idea that the Aztecs were even bigger assholes than the Europeans, but he…

Did he actually say he'd be *writing* for the paper? I thought it was more likely that he got some low-level job and that the "journalism career" part was just an excess of self-confidence.

Yeah, I can imagine it would… but, what I meant was that even by the time of the first hour, or even last week's episode, the flu would have already been killing millions of people all over the world for *months*. Especially soldiers on the front— with all those wounded men coming to Downton, odds are that some of…

Genji, you make your point well and I respect you for trying, but man… you just can't argue people into finding something convincing when they don't. If 9 out of 10 people are saying things like "I loved the first season of Downton, but now it's overdoing the cheesy soapy stuff", you should at least consider that…

Although there was plenty of dumb to go around in that scene, as Mary and Edith didn't think to bring up "by the way, you STOLE ONE OF OUR CARS" until Branson mentioned "oh uh I'll drive it back soon" at the last minute.

Yeah, read it. I think the show is a pretty good adaptation but there was inevitably some interesting stuff that had to be left out, and if you like Martin's writing then you will like that stuff— and if it turns out you don't like Martin's writing, then you might as well find that out in the first book.