The way I remember it, sometime during the summer of 1975 I picked up a copy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not comics for 25-cents from the local pharmacy. The cover depicted the ghostly apparitions of a coonskin-cap-wearing frontiersman and an Indian with a mohawk clenched in mortal combat… Read full post »

Pyramid Magazine has published a brief article I wrote on the femme fatale archetype, which is found most commonly in film noir and hardboiled crime fiction. The article also considers attributes and other elements of the femme fatale character that are applicable to role-playing games. While… Read full post »

Paul Simon wrote “A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission)” during a period of time when he was frequently traveling between the US and the UK. The lyrics are a parody or homage to the style of folk song then exemplified and popularized by Bob Dy… Read full post »

Football season is over. No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old… Read full post »

You don’t have to be a genius to recognize that in the United States politics works along a binary axis of “left” or “liberal” ideologies pitted in a tense contrast with “right” or “conservative” ideologies. You don’t have to have eidetic me… Read full post »

The Magician King by Lev Grossman is the sequel to The Magicians, his 2009 novel about a young man and his magical education at Brakebills College, a secret magical academy located somewhere in the wilds of upstate New York. (My review of the The Magicians can be found here.) The… Read full post »

A girlfriend gave me my first copy of Watchmen. I had never heard of it and she declared that if I loved comics I must, must, must read it. Milady took her slipcased hardcover first edition down from the shelf and tossed it onto my lap. “Heavy comic book,” I… Read full post »

Stephen King’s latest novel is not a horror novel. It is not another entry in the dark fantasy of Roland and the Tower. It is not another Bachman book, although it is with that sub-genre of King’s ouevre 11/22/63 most closely belongs. With its first person narration, its scenes of… Read full post »