Brian Bisesi, an Italian-American guitar player from New Jersey who was part of the Muddy Waters Band from 1978 to 1980 in Out of the Blue shares a very vivid and often rough but real portrait of how life was when on tour with this blues master. Bisesi, today still a musician and a music […]
To Boldly Go. Marketing the Myth of Star Trek by Djoymi Baker (2023)
The stories, myths, and colossal spheres and regions (and timelines) the Star Trek franchise has generated so far, to a large extend are based on the show’s clever usage and reinterpretation of ancient Greek myths, epic stories of exploration, warfare, politics, and adventure often already familiar to audiences from (classic) storytelling or archaic tales. It […]
Captain America and the American Journey, 1940-2022 by Richard A. Hall (2024)
When the powerful alliance of superheroes called The Avengers were called by Marvel Comics (or rather, by S.H.I.E.L.D.), each member represented certain traits, powers, mindsets and even ideologies. The “Sentinel of Liberty,” a nickname (turned nom-de-guerre at various occasions on countless missions) for Captain America, unlike other superheroes of the Golden Age not simply existed […]
The Dark Interval. Film Noir, Iconography, and Affect by Padraic Killeen (2023)
Pedric Killeen, a media scholar, arts journalist and lecturer on film and digital cultures from Ireland, brings some fresh ideas to the field of film noir research. His basic idea here is to approach the individual/main protagonist and read him and his actions in terms of a certain paralysis or state of shock he experiences […]
Watching the World Die. Nuclear Threat Films of the 1980s by Mike Bogue (2023)
Already in the 1950s, apart from science-fiction movies following aliens from outer space invasion plots, disaster films or creature horror, another genre was equally prominent in the list of sensational productions: the nuclear threat films. Those were a familiar feature of popular culture, and audiences could watch new movies of the kind until roughly the […]
Asian Monster and Science Fiction Poster Art. Cinema posters … 1956 – 2021 by Detlef Claus (2023)
Monster movies from Asia and the US ever since the 1950s drew audiences to the cinemas. With the dawn of the atomic age and space exploration, also science fiction films quickly established as a genre. To promote such films made in Asia worldwide, and to keep national movie distributors curious, lobby cards and film stills […]
Marvel Comics Library. Spider-Man. Vol. 2. 1965–1966 by Stan Lee and Jonathan Ross (eds.) (2023)
The latest addition to Taschen’s XXL Marvel Comic Library has the focus on the later adventures of Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man, in New York City. And what action awaits there! In the years 1965 and 1966, the extremely successful collaboration of Marvel’s mastermind Stan Lee (script and editor) and legendary Steve Ditko (drawings, […]
The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger by Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith (eds.) (2023)
English director Michael Powell and screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, a Hungarian refugee who came to England in the 1930s, as a team turned out to be visionaries of British film, who created breathtaking cinematic masterpieces. Those often would include elements from fairy-tales, surreal environments, dark and dangerous settings, as well as enchanting Technicolor dreams, sometimes in […]
Secondary Action Heroes of Golden Age Comics by Lou Mougin (2023)
When in the 1930s and early 1940s comic books became very popular and promised good profits for its publishers, the market was soon flooded with various sorts of adventures at the newsstands. The comic book stories would take place on far away planets, on the American frontier of colonial America, in the West, in exotic […]