IMMORTAL HULK #8: Victory in his cold, dissected hands! The Hulk's survival crosses a line that dissolves any feel-good simplicity of the gamma giant-as-superhero. I recommend you see for yourself how his vengeance comes together, just as his predicament- one I never saw before, for any character!-verges on becoming insurmountable. For this Hulk and his dizzying powers, what seems like ultimate defeat, physically, just plays into his cold, dissected hands! I don’t keep up with every very good comic series or individual work in the genre. The day I bought my wonderful What If? Comic, I also realized the sun was setting on our local store- What If? Comics and Collectibles. Here I am, reliable vehicle secured, savings, best job yet and freelance articles- I’m ready to get some comics! Are you ready to get some comics, too? Well, when the sun goes down, if you want at least one monthly comic that touches upon rich Marvel history, superhero suspense in a horror-fix atmosphe...

Flash Fiction: What IF? Flash Thompson Became Spider-Man One-Shot The opening narration’s the first feint. Longtime-fans familiar with military vet Flash Thompson will think they’re reading captions describing how his time in the service taught him the difference between heroes and “a thug with a gun.” But the chaos unleashed towards our perspective by Diego Olortegui’s art stems from ‘the good guy.’ For this is not the mature Flash cultivated by this very writer on his original groundbreaking Spider-Man run. This is no friend of Peter Parker, who walks up to our intrepid shutterbug spitting menace. The narrator? Our new version of Colonel Nick Fury, standing in for The Watcher after the events of Secret Sins as The Unseen, with a very different formula for seeing Infinity. His words are the weigh station to a parallel Earth, and the times have picked up in the heart of Spidey’s roots, where our writer discovered Spider-Man, himself. It’s Midtown High’s football hero, with...

We save the movies for our favorite larger-than-life heroes- that's Freddie Mercury! Rockin' time, sweet date. The story of Bohemian Rhapsody from Fox jibes closely with biographical Queen lore. Freddie was a sweet guy, prone to life in huge, dramatic, colorful strokes, and it's fair to say, this was because he wrestled with the tedium and unrest of life off stage. I've long thought the adoration and adrenaline and bombast of a fist-pumping live show is surely such an addiction, it's really little wonder those who attain its heights find life away from the spotlight nearly unbearable. The gifts wrapped up in the making of a song are an internalized transporting feeling that rivals, and for some, surpasses the stage. But for rock's super-talented full-blast front man, the stage was also a place where he could be loved, seemingly unconditionally, and his shared creative prowess with Queen, known and loved. But there are things about a person that are terri...