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New video is up! With the debut of Thunderbolts* let’s take a look at all the other Ragtag Teams of Dysfunctional Oddballs that came before. Enjoy!

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A Brief History of Superheroes (2700 BC to 2009 AD)

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New video is up! Ever wanted to make sense of the confounding family ties of the X-Men? Well look no further than this video! First up? The Summers Family.

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Ok, the Superman costume looks pretty good, but I gotta say I am infinitely more excited for MR TERRIFIC! My boy, Edi Gathegi is looking goddamn fantastic as Michael Holt. Can’t wait to see him dish out Fair Play on the big screen.

Honestly, it’s about time he got his due. Anyone who wants to see him kicking ass in something contemporary, check out Strange Adventures by Tom King.

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At this point, just hire me to direct Blade. I swear, at this rate the behind the scenes of this flick is gonna be more interesting than the movie itself.

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Happy Pride Month everybody!

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CGI trailer without gameplay aside (which is a time-honoured AC tradition) I am excited for Assassin's Creed Shadows. I'm not ashamed to admit the fact that Ubisoft has got me. They made the perfect storm of concepts that appeal to me and distilled it into pure just-above-mediocre popcorn play. You see, I love me some history, I love me some mythology, and I love me some "secret history of the world" bullshit. And when you mix all that together with a narrative that's never outright terrible, you get the keycode to my brain's dopamine centres. 

Every single time I think I'm done with the franchise they get me. After Revelations, they got me with playing during the American Revolution. After that, they got me with pirates. And even though Unity burned me so much I skipped Syndicate, they got me with the triple combo of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Vikings. And now, there ain't no way I'm passing up a chance to play as goddamn Yasuke in Sengoku Era Japan. 

I'm a sucker for a ‘stranger in a strange land’ type story, and with an additional player character in the same campaign that is native to the ‘strange land’ in question, it's gonna provide a lot of interesting narrative avenues. Also, I unapologetically love the ever-increasing amount of mythological nonsense the AC games have pumped into their stories. Because who doesn’t want to pillage Early Medieval England while dual-wielding Mjolnir and Excalibur? A liar, that’s who. And guess what? When it comes to interesting and expansive mythologies, Japan is up there near the top.

I already have my perfectly polished, amazing-to-control, tightly-written historical samurai game and it’s called Ghost of Tsushima. Now I'm ready for a janky, way-too-open world that still manages to be pleasant to look at and explore while cutting a bloody swathe through it with unbalanced combat while a so-so narrative unfolds, and cool mystical ancient alien bullshit is thrown at me from every angle. 

Oh, and of course, I’m ready to wait about a year for it to be discounted/added to PS Plus.

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I am always saying this during museum visits

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Pockets & Sedition would be a great musical duo name. Anywhoo, here’s a great poem I found myself thinking about while clothes shopping.

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I’ve worked a lot of jobs in my life—many of them customer-facing—but I gotta say I’ve never had more of a blast interacting with the general public than working at a library. You get all sorts coming through and the exchanges are varied. Some are good, some are bad, but they are almost always memorable.

Here is one of my favourites.

By all accounts, it was a pretty average day. Scanning, shelving, reserving—the usual. Then here comes this brick wall of a man. And when I call him a brick wall I am not exaggerating. The thickness of his arms and the width of his shoulders would make a barricade blush. Fella straight up looked like this:

Anyway, he comes up to the desk, puts both hands on it, and leans forward. His face is now inches from mine. He’s breathing exclusively out of his nostrils, the heat of each breath cooking the air. Paired with the vacant look in his eye, he’s like a bull ready to charge. Then he lifts a meaty finger, unfurls his lips, and in a thick Eastern European accent asks:

“Do you have any One Piece?”

It takes a second or two for me to register what he said and a few seconds more to believe I heard it. Then, I try my best to do my job. I’m not 100% sure so I type it into the database. Until the search has loaded, I don’t break eye contact, and when I do, a lump climbs into my throat.

“No. I’m afraid the few copies we have are already borrowed. Do you want me to make a reservation?”

He shakes his head, then says. “What about Na-Ru-To.” He sounds it out just like that. Na Ru To.

I check the database. There are three copies available. “We have volumes 50, 51, and 61 accessible at this library.”

He doesn’t reply. He’s too busy aiming his burly body in the direction of the graphic novels section.

Less than five minutes pass before he comes back, and with him, he brings a veritable bounty of manga. His palms, wider than the shelves themselves, are stacked high with not just Naruto but everything from My Hero Academia to D.Gray Man.

He notices me eyeing his haul and clears his throat. “I like One Piece and Na Ru To,” he says. “They are my favourites. But, I have been told to read more If I am able.”

I ask the man for his library card. He shakes his head and says he will be paying with cash. This is not the first time I’ve served someone who’s assumed the need for money in a public library so I explain to him that he can get a library card and take books out for free. What happens next is one of the reasons I love being a librarian.

His eyes widen and a smile cracks across his face. “This is very good.”

I smile back and tell him that if he likes I can reserve some volumes of One Piece to be transferred to this library for him. A light dances across his gaze and his crack of a smile splits into a chasmic grin.

“You are a very good man!” he declares. “I give you big thank you!”

It takes no time at all to find the volumes he wants and even less to scan his pile. Soon enough, the man has his books, has his reservations, and to my joy, still has his smile.

“I come back for One Piece!” he says gleefully. “I see you soon, yes?”

Then he struts away swinging a canvas bag stuffed with manga like it weighs as much as it did empty.

It didn’t matter what happened during the rest of that day, or even the rest of that week. The genuine smile of that giant manga-loving man carried me through it all.

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Unfortunately, Murph will never live this down

Watch the full episode here

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Holy shit, Ewing. This without a doubt wins page of the week for sending my sides into orbit.

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New video is out and it’s all about comics! Specifically, superhero comics and their never ending battle against the eternal status quo. Enjoy!

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Bendis Speak is just Seinfield dialogue.

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I haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda 4. I don’t know whether it’s good or not. But what I do know is that I am happy that it exists. Because thanks to it, we have been given the phenomenal gift of Tenacious D covering Hit Me Baby One More Time. Enjoy.

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The Immortal Effect of Akira Toriyama

Life is legacy. What you leave behind defines how you’ll be remembered, and Akira Toriyama has left an unerasable mark on not just Manga, not just Anime, but fiction as a whole.

Thank you for everything. Rest in peace.