Blog Archives

C2E2 2016 Recap

Another year has gone by and once again I was able to check out one of the comic book conventions that took place quite near me. This year’s C2E2 felt very similar in a lot of ways to last year, but my experience was quite a bit different for more than one reason. This year I saw fewer panels, but actually talked to a couple celebrities. I also managed to bring my nine year old daughter along for Sunday which was also kid’s day. It did feel a little bit smaller than last year, but at the same time it also felt busier.
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Defining Superhero Movies pt. 1: Time Period

Something that I haven’t done on this site in a long while is to break down some element of superhero movies in general. And I think it’s time that I revisit what I consider to be my guidelines for what it means to be a superhero movie. As you may or may not know, I don’t consider superhero movies to be a genre itself. Instead, I think of it more as a category of movies. There are a handful of elements that need to be present in some form for me to consider a movie a “superhero movie”. Not all of them need to be there, and it is a very rough set of guidelines, so there will be many movies that fall right on the line of what may or may not be a superhero movie. And for those movies, I might fall on one side of the line while different people might fall on the other side of the line. But for now, I’ll be taking on these elements one at a time starting with the time period.
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Not Everything with a Tenuous Link to Superheroes is a Superhero Movie

AKA The Adventures of Food Boy is Not a Superhero Movie

It’s been a long while since I’ve written one of these blog posts looking at what does or doesn’t make a superhero movie as a whole. I usually err on the side of acceptance, including movies like the Spongebob Movie that only has the characters turn into superheroes for the last fifteen to twenty minutes at the end, or Birdman where the main character is an actor who used to play a superhero and is having hallucinations of that same hero, or even Electric Man where it’s mainly about comic books and one of the characters merely cosplays as the fictional comic book hero. But I finally found a movie that made me draw the line even though the poster for the film has the titular Food Boy opening his shirt in a clear homage to Superman and one of the alternate titles of the film isĀ High School Super Hero.

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It’s October, and that means Graphic Horror

It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to watch a full movie that I intended to review for this site here so I wanted to spend a quick moment to give an update to you on what I’ve been doing lately and what I hope to be doing here in this coming month where nearly everyone starts bringing out the horror movies from now until Halloween, and I’m no different. I’m not quite sure how many movies I’ll be able to get in this month, but I plan on adding at least four films to my graphic horror tag for films based on horror comics, plus the usual two episodes of Filmwhys that aren’t specifically horror related, the next of which has already been recorded and will be posted on Monday as usual. I also have had the chance to appear on a couple podcasts in the past few weeks so I thought I’d share those here as well.
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Thursday Movie Picks: Train Scenes

There’s been a couple times in the past where I joined in this weekly discussion topic started by Wandering Through the Shelves where there’s a new topic for each participating site to choose three movies and the occasional honorable mentions that fit within the theme of the week. This week’s theme is Train Movies, but as I can only think of a single train movie that fits in this site’s focus, I decided to narrow it just a bit and go for train scenes. It seems like every other superhero has at least one moment where they need to stop a train for one reason or another, but here’s my top three, unranked.
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C2E2 photo gallery

C2E2 Days 2 & 3

C2E2 is already over and it’s been a long weekend. I’m going to be combining my details of days 2 & 3 into a single post for a couple reasons, first is that I did not get home from day 2 until rather late at night and I basically went straight to sleep, and second is that I did not spend very much time on day 3 so there’s not too much to report there. Overall, it was a lot of fun. I’ve got tons of pictures which will show up as their own post tomorrow and I’ve got a little video project that I’m working on and hope to finish within the next few days so I’m excited about that. Enough chat, let’s get onto the show!
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The Glaring Reality of Women Superhero Movies

While I was beginning to write my latest review for a superhero movie I watched that was recently released on home video, it made me think about Women-led superhero movies and how it’s been so long since anyone has dared to make one, either on home video or in theaters. That movie happens to be the first movie that has been released in the US that’s led by a female superhero since 2009’s DC Animated Wonder Woman. If you’re curious, the movie is Barbie in Princess Power. Yes, it took a Barbie movie to break this streak. By my count there have been 80 superhero movies released in the US between 2010 and April 2015. This is the only one led by a female superhero. If I expand my search just a little, there is at least one other that I am aware of from a couple years ago in Japan called Nuigulumar Z but that’s it. When you look at theatrical features the prospects are even more grim considering the last female-led superhero movie was all the way back in 2005 with Elektra and the next one isn’t due until 2017 with Wonder Woman, that’s twelve years. Think about this: if a girl was born in 1999, she would not have been able to see a superhero movie led by a woman in the theaters until her 18th birthday.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights is going to C2E2!

Greetings all! I’m happy to announce that I will be attending this year’s C2E2 here in Chicago next weekend! I will be there as much as possible all three days and will be doing coverage here throughout that weekend and hopefully through the following week. It’s one of Chicago’s premier comic and entertainment conventions and I am absolutely thrilled that I get the chance to go as a member of the press. Not only will this be the first comic book convention that I will be attending as a member of the press, but it will also be the first comic con that I will be attending period.
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Graphic Horror Blogathon March 2015

It’s that time of year once again. I started this last year and I plan on continuing it again this year. Most bloggers take the month of October as the time to focus on horror movies since it’s near Halloween, but I thought that March is a good month to take a look at horror movies as well, to help spread the love of horror outside of the fall months. And besides, March is still the early part of the year which is generally the cinematic dumping grounds with a lot of poor movies in theaters. I’d love to make this a big event, and this year I’m keeping things a bit more simple so I’d love it if you would join me!
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