My Misspent Youth: Giant-Size Avengers #3 by Steve Englehart, Roy Thomas and Dave Cockrum

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. Besides the comics that I selected for myself in my youthful years, I always had access to a few stray issues that came into my possession by mysterious means. Comic books were purchased a little more freely in the nineteen-seventies. They were available practically everywhere and were somewhat likely to be picked up as impulse buys by teenagers and college students just looking for a four-color distraction. I never found a … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Giant-Size Avengers #3 by Steve Englehart, Roy Thomas and Dave Cockrum

Spectrum Check

This week, I finally starting working on the backlog of record reviews I need to work through by offering up an assessment of the new album by the U.K. band Let’s Wrestle. It was one of those tricky instances of having to write about something when my primary reaction to it is “Eh, it’s okay.” What’s actually harder is writing about a film that’s terrific. Invariably, I feel like my words are inadequate. Lu Chuan’s new movie is tough, uncompromising and beautifully made. I am pleased that I wrote the review without ever using the word “epic.” That was intentional. … Continue reading Spectrum Check

One for Friday: Ian McCulloch, “Proud to Fall”

One of the aspects of my personal era of college radio that I found interesting was the pronounced sense that the first wave of great left of the dial artists was coming to an end. By the time I landed there in the fall of 1988, it was already understood that Hüsker Dü and The Smiths were no more, for example. Several other bands that were mainstays of the college charts also seemed on the verge of calling it quits. In some ways, this made it feel like we’d just missed the Golden Age of our preferred music, but there … Continue reading One for Friday: Ian McCulloch, “Proud to Fall”

Spectrum Check

This week I took my first crack at the Revisit feature over on the music side of things, which proved to be far more difficult for me. I initially thought I’d write about R.E.M.’s Out of Time this year stands as the twentieth anniversary of its release and, despite being a major success, it seems to be one of the forgotten albums by the band. I thought it would be interesting to give it a fresh listen, separated from the saturation play it experienced at my college radio station upon release. I may still try writing that piece at some … Continue reading Spectrum Check