The main thesis of this book will be of interest to both philosophers and comic book fans, as strange as it may sound at first. In an unusual effort, thought experiments done by philosophers (ancient and recent), and the stories behind many superhero comics are evaluated, and their many similarities revealed, as both groups play […]
Robots That Kill: Deadly Machines and Their Precursors in Myth, Folklore, Literature… by Judith A. M
In three parts, Judith Markowitz deals with the phenomenon of evil or rather, human-killing robots (and their creators) in the book at hand. In part 1, greed, revenge and furor are taken into consideration in cases why humans had to die by “the hands” of a robot, that was more or less only used as […]
Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934): When Sin Ruled the Movies by Mark A. Vieira (2019...
Film studies introduced countless movie fans to genres and varieties of films that were once praised just by small groups of fans. It was usually decades after the initial film releases, that, for example, the fascination with film noir, certain types of the westerns, or screwball comedy went beyond the tiny groups of connoisseurs and […]
Disney’s Star Wars: Forces of Production, Promotion, and Reception by W. Proctor and R. McCulloch (e
The movie Star Wars (1977) and the evolving Star Wars universe never were just films or simple family entertainment. To many fans, seemingly it became a surrogate religion or a way of life. The merchandise, action figurines, literature or cartoon adaptations and spin-offs earned George Lucas and Lucasfilm fortune after fortune (he directed and produced […]
Winsor McCay. The Complete Little Nemo 1910–1927 by Alexander Braun (ed.) (2019)
If there ever was something close to psychedelic art, or representations and imaginations of a surreal and subconscious reality before the drug-induced states that became popular in art and fiction of the 1960s, then comic artist, cartoon producer and visual pioneer Winsor McCay (1869–1934) was the one who provided it, starting in 1905. He was […]
The Great Monster Magazines. A Critical Study of the Black and White Publications … by Robert Cotter
“Monster and horror movies and stories of all types …. once were hard to come by. For a time, vampires and werewolves were taboo in comic books.” Author Robert Cotter here explains the long journey of the monster magazine and the story of its fandom over the decades in this noteworthy book. While the so […]
MOEBIUS Exhibition and Catalog – Max Ernst Museum Brühl, Germany (2019)
French comic book artist extraordinaire Jean Giraud, better known as MOEBIUS, (1938 – 2012) is the topic of a huge exhibition currently at the Max Ernst Museum Brühl, Germany. The show is stocked with roughly 450 works. It covers more or less everything from his notebooks (“carnets”), to comics, “sketched drawings, abstract paintings, up to […]
Movies, Songs, and Electric Sound: Transatlantic Trends by Charles O’Brien (2019)
Sound film changed many ideas and experiences of watching motion pictures; certain aspects that concern the use of songs, musical story lines and content of films from 1930 onward are evaluated here. Author O’Brian selected a corpus of roughly 500 feature films (including musical films) from France, the US, England and Hollywood’s greatest rival at […]
Musik im klassischen Film noir by Janina Müller (German) (2019)
Janina Müller’s study (“Music in classic film noir”) takes a close look at the scores of mostly the popular films noir and a few rather unknown ones. Here it means studying, juxtaposing and evaluating the scores of several films, while their uniqueness in comparison with standard Hollywood movies is questioned. As there is hardly one […]