Tag Archives: art

Ms. Marvel, #19: A Comic Book Review

msmarvel19“Qiyamat ka din to nahin hain.” It’s not like it’s the end of the world, Mr. Khan muses aloud to his family in Urdu. But it is, at least until next month when the first issue of Ms. Marvel Volume 4 hits stands everywhere. This issue effectively marks the destruction of the universe for these characters, but it’s everything the finale could be and more.

It’s now that I’m forced to eat some of the words I published in my last review, those concerning the “meandering plot as it slowly reaches the end”. Yes, Issue #18 ended with the reveal that Kamala’s mother knew about her vigilantism, but there are so many other relationships that are fleshed out and given the closure they need as this chapter closes [in preparation for the next one beginning].

The first involves, as mentioned, our heroine and her parents of course. Kamala opts not to tell them about the impending apocalypse and simply enjoy their company. Following up with that are two female friends, one of which felt like a blindside but not in a bad way. We’ve seen so little of Nakia since Issue #1 that it’s easy to forget that she’s one of Kamala’s closest friends, and she voices her concerns that they might be drifting apart. It feels real because, as anyone in any kind of relationship can attest to, it can and has and will happen to all of us. And since we’re coming full circle back to the first issue we have Zoe-

zoepology Continue reading

Why Horror Movies Are Good For You

That’s right, boys and ghouls-

Good for you.

That’s not something you’d expect someone to say about the genre, is it?

Sure, you might hear about horror “classics”. There are plenty of fans out there who’ll talk about their personal favorites. You might even hear critics fondly contemplate how certain horror flicks were telling of their times. But morally edifying?

Well that’s the argument I’m going to be presenting to you today.

Be warned- spoilers may follow.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to champion the macabre. I don’t expect it to be the last either- not considering the reaction folks give me when I say I enjoy the stuff.

And before we really dig in here- let me get the obvious out of the way.

Yes, a lot of horror movies are garbage. The slasher/”teen-scream” subgenres use cheap gore and excessive nudity as a crutch for plot. More serious attempts still rely on the same cliches that have been around for decades. Plenty are poorly acted and have production values that could be outstripped by a middle school enactment of Romeo & Juliet.

But that’s hardly unique to horror. Continue reading

We Need More Women in STEM, But I’m Not One Of Them

Hello everyone, my name is Emily and I am bad at math. Sometimes this makes me feel like a failure as a feminist.

See, I’m a nerd at heart (surprise!), and a lot of my favourite websites and blogs accrete STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) news alongside covert footage of the new Millenium Falcon. I certainly don’t mind after all, I follow NASA on Facebook. I really am truly interested in most of the science news that comes across my dash, but it’s like being a child with a crush on one of her parent’s friends: I think it’s so incredibly cool and it thinks I’m kind of silly. Left-brainers range from befuddled to downright arrogant when dealing with us right-brainers.  

At any rate I see a lot of news about how important it is to get more girls into STEM fields, and it leaves me feeling a little guilty.  I would consider myself both a nerd and a feminist, and yet my brain seems to be built like a sieve with number-shaped holes.  Seriously, when my husband was doing his engineering degree he would sometimes vent about the concepts he was learning and even when I was trying very hard to focus and follow what he was saying, my brain would go fuzzy and I’d entirely lose track of his words.  Numbers just make my brain congeal a little.

This, but with math.

I’m not exaggerating.  I can do the same problem four times and get four different answers.  The numbers swim and change places, and working through problems feels like pushing something heavy through something thick, only to find out you were moving the wrong heavy object once the job is done.  STEM types laud math for being so reliable and utterly logical, but it’s always felt rather arcane to me. Continue reading

On The Image Problem of Christ

Back when this blog started up, Evan and I had a discussion about a lecture given by Socialist novelist China Miéville. During that lecture, Miéville commented that “if one person hears what you’re saying and does something horrible, the issue’s probably with them. If hundreds of people consistently start doing horrible things, it’s probably time to re-examine your message.”

Those words returned to me a few months ago as I watched Family Guy’s “The 2000-Year-Old Virgin”, which depicted Jesus as a cowardly shyster, lying about being a virgin in order to bed Lois Griffin (and more than a few other women).

Family Guy: Season 13, Episode 6

Grotesque? Repulsive? Offensive beyond all description?

For me, it wasn’t.

It was certainly far from being funny, but readers, yours truly simply was not offended.

As sacrilegious and bitingly edgy as I’m sure the writers thought the story was going to be, I was merely disappointed by it. While I’m not going to excuse the laziness or insensitivity of Seth MacFarlane or any of Family Guy’s writer’s, I actually don’t think the majority of blame should be placed on them.

I think it should be placed on Christians.

Continue reading

Ms. Marvel, #18: A Comic Book Review

msmarvel18So the world is still ending. While the final incursion was revealed back in Issue #16 New Jersey, and consequently the rest of the Marvel universe, continues to exist. That’s not to say that Ms. Marvel is alone in dragging its feet towards the apocalypse given that Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier and All-New Hawkeye are just two other titles that haven’t yet wrapped things up. No, my observation has more to do with it appears to be one to two days stretched out over the course of four issues [with next month’s #19 being the last before the book’s new #1].

Turn with me, if you will, all the way back to the second issue of Ms. Marvel that I ever reviewed. One thing that I pointed out was how G. Willow Wilson’s storytelling was “decidedly decompressed“, or focusing heavily on characterization in a way that often results in stories being stretched out longer than they might usually. While I believe it worked at the book’s inception, with many readers being brand new to comics and needing to be eased in, it feels overdone here in the final issues. Continue reading

Palmyra

Today’s post was supposed to be about Millennials and marriage, but seeing as how the only married writer on this blog will be covering that very subject on Wednesday, it didn’t seem quite right that I comment on it.

And that post I had intended to write was going to be a lead-in to the myth of overpopulation and the so-called “voluntary extinction” movement. And I do intend to cover that-

Just not today.

And so the only thing that’s left to write about is the thing I just can hardly stomach to think about:

The destruction of Palmyra.

Palmyra, for those of you who have never had- and now never will- the privilege of visiting, was the ruins of a magnificent and ancient Syrian city. Pristinely preserved, the Roman colonnades, the Persian temples, the Arab fortification all served to transform the city into a dazzling monument to human history.

And, when in May of this year, a division of IS scum invaded the neighboring village of Tadmur. In spite of their repellent murder of some 20 locals, I could find no news about what the fate of the ruins was. Some part of me hoped against hope that the thugs (“militants” is far too generous a term) would leave it all be. That there was some flicker of pride in the magnificent heritage of the old place. That even they might still be human enough to appreciate the grandeur of the silent, sun-washed statues and archways.

But in the past 48 hours there has come confirmation that demolition has begun.

And there are no words. Continue reading