Our Gods Wore Spandex: Last Supper for Superheroes

Our Gods Wear Spandex hit the shelves fifteen years ago this month and prophesied the coming rise of the superheroes, back before the Spandex Age of Cinema took off with the releases of Iron Man and Dark Knight. The age which is now most definitely drawing to a close.

Memeday Monday: Can't Trust that Day

If only, Homer. If only.

Kevin Must Be Missing an Angel

Wow, Kevin Spacey just races from triumph to triumph, doesn't he? Man, what I'd give to have a peek at that man's blackmail file. He probably had to buy himself an old missile silo just to store it all.

If this keeps up, I can see him becoming a studio head before the New Year is out. Real-life Lex Luthor, indeed.

From Ecto-Genesis to Transgenic Revelation

Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space

For over 50 years, researchers have been screaming into the wind that a massive conditioning program has been underway in order to acclimate people to UFOs, aliens, exoplanets and the rest of it. 

According to this line of thinking, this is precisely why we've been carpet-bombed with movies, books, comics, toys and TV shows beating the alien/UFO/AAT drum.

Legion and the Trauma of Metaphysics

It's just about ten years ago that I finished my manuscript for Our Gods Wear Spandex and the perspective that I spelled out in it has become, if not the dominant pop cultural paradigm, then certainly a predominant current within it. 

Go Back to Hell, Lucifer. You're Embarrassing Yourself.

What a shitshow

I just read that Fox has renewed its "adaption" of the Vertigo/DC comics series Lucifer for a second season. I use 'adaption' in the loosest possible sense, in that rough contours of the long-running comic series can be gleaned from time to time in the TV series, but they're buried underneath an almost unimaginably-inappropriate (and gag-inducing) police procedural.

"Bad Things Happen When the Birds Gather"

I began writing Our Gods Wear Spandex on September 11, 2001. For some reason I can only ascribe to my Holy Guardian Angel, I wasn't in the WTC PATH station around 9 AM that morning. I actually had been for most of the summer, working in-house for a production studio on Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan, doing storyboard work.

Generation X: History's Latchkey Kids

So, a developing theme out there in the culture is this "Baby Boomers vs. Millennials" war. You've probably seen it floating around. 

The Present ≠ The Future

You may have seen this story recently:

Barnes & Noble Inc. BKS, +0.22%   announced Wednesday that it is doubling the size of its sections for graphic novels and manga (Japanese comics) in all its U.S. stores. 

The move reflects customer demand for the genres and illustrates the company’s push toward bringing more customers into stores, rather than buying online from its own site and rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +2.10% 

Jack Parsons, Jack Kirby & the Babalon Working, All in Color for a Dime

There's been little news on the project as of late but last year we heard that Ridley Scott was developing a miniseries based on the life of Jack Parsons, the co-founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories and inventor of solid rocket fuel.

Comics Are Magick: Intruders in the Skies

As you get older, it's all too easy to get lost in routine, to anesthetize yourself with ritual and television. It's why creative work is so often the province of the young. 

It's also why David Lynch is such a firebrand for Transcendental Meditation; he knows how easy it is to lose that spark and how hard you have to work to keep hold of it.

Graphic Depictions

Ever since I started this blog, I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life doing someone else's laundry. I came into this having published a couple comics series (unfortunately during the bleakest years of the downturn) and having serious interest in a couple screenplays I worked on (one of which was apparently of very serious interest to certain parties, as longtime readers will remember).

Telling Tales Out of School: Hiding in the Light

One of the more fascinating figures of the collision of 20th Century pop culture and future-science is Otto Binder. 

The prolific writer was not only one of the most influential writers in the history of the comics medium he was also a forward thinker on the topic of rocketry and space, creating one of the first- if not the first- magazines dedicated to the space program, Space World. 

The 2013 Ausurs®: Better Late than Never

Back in 2007 I started blogging about Jack Kirby in the context of synchro/datamysticism, and looking at the almost-unfathomable numinous power his work contained. 

The first series I did here looked at his 1983 miniseries Silver Star and its obvious influence on the then-popular/now-forgotten TV show Heroes.

Doctors, Doorways and Dimensions, Part One

One of the main tenets of my research is that our most resonant pop culture is a kind of lucid dreaming, in which the creator acts as a guide for a shared visionary experience with the audience. 99.9% of the crap out there is immune to this process and is produced for reasons that are entirely mundane or cynical. 

But the stuff that resonates does so because it captures something elusive, something that changes the course of cultures and societies.

Jack Kirby, Mindbomb: Break on Through to the Inner Side

 From 2001: A Space Odyssey #2

 I realized I left this series hanging and didn't adequately wrap it all up. 

Seeing as how Synchronicity insisted I do so- in its own inimitable way- here's the coup de grace for what was an unexpectedly popular breakthrough series.

Comics are Magick: "Horoscope Phenomenon"

I mentioned my first encounter with Jack Kirby via a DC house ad for The New Gods and The Forever People in The Witching Hour #12. Contrary to current misconception, no one really referred to those books as the "Fourth World" until much, much later, and the term itself - most likely actually coined by DC editorial and adopted by Kirby after the fact - didn't show up until several issues into the project's run. 

Comics are Magick: Runestone Cowboy

Strangely enough, this installment is kind of a sequel to "Daddy and the Pie," only it was published 5 years before by a different company (in The Witching Hour #12) and was written by a different writer. It was illustrated by Alex Toth though, and concerned the fate of a young man who once had an all-powerful magical talisman when he was a boy.

Comics are Magick: Daddy and the Pie

While I try to smack some sense into my life I thought it would be a good time to return to The Source, the initiation place of my younger days. Over the years I've written about the late, lamented Valles' News and the great Mysteries of the paranormal that I encountered there, but I realized that I haven't shared those Mysteries with you as much. 

 

Everything In Its Right Place

I'm of the opinion that genuine weirdness is usually an intimate affair. 

And as much as the capital 'S' Skeptics-- many of whom are in fact neurologically wired with various perceptive challenges-- yell and scream and rend their clothing,