Let's plunge into the catacombs of a story with lots of super creeps, with the writer of The Dig, Mark S. England.  We talk about the recent uncoverings of Egyptian tombs, and see how a cat starts all the trouble. Happy Halloween! Here's some photos from the recent discoveries: Link?

Ever wanted to be an audiobook narrator- you know, get into the characters, really bring it to life? Danielle Procter Piper's living your dream. From her palm tree log cabin outside Tampa Bay, Florida, she tells us how visions have inspired her to create art, which you can find as Taka Gare on Deviant Art. I ask her how she got into reading as a voice talent for audiobooks, and she tells us about her own narrated projects. Hear about her books, and grab some Lebanese cuisine & self-care advice before you go. Find her work on Red Bubble, at Plaid Rat, She's the author of twenty-one books, as well as an accomplished dancer. She's been drafting a novel in the space of a month, so she can create a new one every three months. Wow!!! She's used a few aliases, Sound interesting? Press Play! Happy Halloween! Enjoy! https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-bzinu-ed8626 Or enjoy the embed player below! For more:

Denny O'Neil always said he needed to relate to the heroes he wrote, and Tony Stark was more-or-less antithetical to Denny's values as a social crusading Catholic and veteran of the Bay of Pigs conflict in 1962.   But Stark shared a vulnerablity Denny understood intimately.  So, the mainstream superheroics are given human dramatic stakes by Tony's manipulation by O'Neil creation Obadiah Stane, back into sorrows of the bottle and self-loathing.  Now, Denny had two stories to tell, with down-to-Earth James Rhodes standing in as Iron Man.  Now one of Marvel's best-known heroes- maybe the highest-profile character who could be tried this way- was a Black American, but most of all, a loyal friend, with a different approach and skillset to bring to the twenty year-old character.  Here's my podcast, with limited space remaining, quickly hitting the key insights I uncovered.  It really must've been torture to see Tony, and eventually Rhodey, in their personal d...

Hey, if Mike ever needs a scripter, I was one IDW President away from my professional debut!  But I guess he's got this one figured out.  Check him out?  Vozcomix: MAD MUMMY Gris Gris Girl Pt. 1 : No good deed goes unpunished. This week Adam does a favor for his friend Colon who works in Egyptian antiquities at the museum and he gets m...

Some well-done, street-level adventure comics, here. Blind attorney Matt Murdock's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen in Frank Miller's tone-changing run, an echo of the approach in Denny O'Neil's Batman stories a decade earlier.  That's, of course, a Barry Windsor-Smith cover- the coloring gives it away, right? Ever realize Denny pioneered the 'secret identity slip' that keyed in Miller's Born Again  storyline with Mazzuchelli?   Art: Klaus Janson  First as editor, then as writer, here's some insights about what made Denny's Daredevil, click. And on Apple: Creatng Marvels: Daredevil

So, in his initial series, Spider-Man, Denny has the most ideas, initially, bringing in new characters the first few months.  Calypso, Madame Web, Hyrdo Man recur in later stories- such as Todd McFarlane’s smash-selling vehicle Spider=Man title in 1991, and the Madame and Hydro Man even return in cartoons.  Peter even gets an opponent at the Daily Globe, photographer Lance Bannon- before O’Neil abruptly shifts gears and does away with the Daily Globe newspaper era started by Marv Wolfman in a single issue, #210. However, those characters do not generally add much to any ongoing saga.   In some ways, while the stories in the middle do continue into each other, from 213-218, most O’Neil Spider-Man stories exist in an almost stand-alone fashion.  Hydro Man- who suffers from the most glaring flaw in this era’s villains, his obstinate motivation of revenge, like the Wizard in the next issue- does come back for a sort of humorous rivalry with Sandman ov...

Now it is time we were going, I to die, you to live; But which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God. – Plato, “The Apology of Socrates” That’s a quote from a Daredevil story, written by Denny O’Neil. When Denny offered a perspective through literature, as with his quotes, he gave his work a sense of sharing a humble place alongside its more canonical literary family. He had a smart way of making comics relevant and artistically vibrant, despite their underestimated standing- at least, in the years he wrote Batman, Green Lantern/ Green Arrow, Iron Man, and here, Daredevil. But he also helped bring them out of pile of discarded juvenilia. After all, when he got into the business, barely anyone thought of comic books as more than kid’s stuff, or something to pass the time of bored soldiers. If we came to think of them as legitimate reading material for smart people of any age, I’m confident we can thank Denny for his part. “These be the words you read and re...