The Darkseid War, continued in this September’s Justice League #44, is a beautiful contradiction. On the one hand, it is a seamless continuation of the series to date. Helmed by auteur Geoff Johns in collaboration with some of the industry’s top artistic talent, it has proven to be one of the most consistent series with regards…
There is an ongoing debate in games criticism regarding whether games should continue to become more cinematic (that is to say, to emulate the conventions of film in presenting their narratives, such as through cut-scenes and story-structure) or more ludic (focusing on the elements unique to the games medium, such as environmental storytelling and strong…
Best known for his portrait of Marylin Monroe and canvases of Campbell soup cans, Andy Warhol was one of the pioneers to infuse commercial art into high, appropriating it from popular culture and preserving a place for such in the marble mausoleums of fine art galleries. Perhaps it is only appropriate, then, that Warhol should…
The final issue of Alan Moore’s run on Miracleman begins with a page long wall of text, narration from the mind of Miracleman without accompanying illustration. What would normally prove a poor use of the visual medium becomes through Moore’s skillful prose one of the most exciting pages in the series. He writes: “I dream…
I recall much ado being made in early 2012 regarding the impending release of Before Watchman, which would for the first time see other writers pen tales in the same universe and continuity as Alan Moore’s opus magnum. One wonders if similar sentiments, albeit without decades of nostalgia and the internet echo chamber to magnify…
Much adulation has been heaped upon Destiny since the debut of the 2.0 patch and the release of the Taken King expansion. The changes both bring to the game as it existed in its first year are universally agreed upon as positive. However, the extent to which such improvements mend the broken state of the…
Apart from Star Wars and Indiana Jones, my favorite Harrison Ford movie is probably Air Force One, wherein the President of the United States single-handedly defeats a cell of Russian terrorists who had taken the plane hostage. In my favorite scene of the criminally underrated White House Down (which asks the age old question: what…
Superman: Lois and Clark #1 is a strange patchwork of references and homages to prior Superman series. This in itself is not problematic; in an overly reductionist way, even Morrison’s All-Star Superman could be described as vignettes heavily inspired by Silver-Age stories and his own previous work on the character. With regards to Lois and…
Often acclaimed as the Citizen Kane of games, the first nascent step in legitimizing the medium as art, the original Bioshock constructed a compelling critique of Randian Objectivism. The sequel, however, wisely avoided repeating the message of its predecessor, instead deconstructing the polar opposite philosophical system, Collectivism. The two games taken together then were thematically…
Beyond any skill as a director, perhaps George Lucas’ greatest contribution to universe he created in Star Wars was as a translator, his particular modus operandi being to take pre-existing elements and adopt them into the genre of space opera. The whole of A New Hope may be seen as Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress… in…
The Hub City Review 