Steven Howell Wilson's Blog, page 32

I Just Saw the Best Wonder Woman Movie of 2017 (And It’s Not the One You Think It Is)

So I just got back from seeing Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, written and directed by Angela Robinson. I want to tell you why it’s a better Wonder Woman story than the one which starred Gal Gadot this past Summer, but I think I’ll start by explaining why the Gal Gadot film (actually, the Patty Jenkins film) disappointed me. I wrote this review the day after seeing that Summer blockbuster, but I didn’t publish it. It felt like I was spitting into the wind, because damn near everyone h...

I Just Finished – Jean Grey #7

Jean Grey, founding member of the X-Men way long ago, has been kidnapped out of time as a teenager and brought forward to an era where her adult self is long dead, and remembered primarily for becoming the all-powerful, all-corrupt entity known as the Phoenix. Now the leader of her teenage cohorts, Jean is on a quest to learn how she can avoid following in her older counterpart’s footsteps.

In the latest issues of her solo series, Jean has been meeting up with a different denizen of the Marve...

I Just Finished – Star Trek New Visions Special: The Cage

Back in the days before most of us could afford a video recorder, and before there was such a thing as a DVD, a BluRay, or an MP4 file, there was no easy way to view a favorite TV show or movie between the times it was running on television. A few collectors could afford 16 MM film prints, but that was a very few. Star Trek fans had such a voracious hunger to experience and re-experience their favorite TV show that, in 1977, a company called Mandala Productions decided to cash in. They produc...

I Just Finished – Eternal Empire #4

This series is perhaps less accessible than Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughan’s previous effort, Alex + Ada, but it is intriguing. It billed as an “Epic Fantasy,” which would normally cause me to leave it on the rack. This creative team’s last series was so good, however, that my whole family read it, including my non-comic-reader wife. So I wasn’t going to leave anything they did on the rack. (I hate to hear good comic books shriek in pain.)

So the description is standard fantasy fare: The Ete...

Farewell, Yoji Kondo

Yoji presenting the Heinlein Medal at Balticon 47, with Michael Flynn.

Yoji Kondo, scientist, science fiction author, mentor and friend to me for the past 36 years, has died. Like my father, who died in May, Yoji’s last years were spent amidst diminishing brain function as dementia claimed one of the greatest intellects I’ve ever known.

Yoji introduced me (indirectly) to the works of Robert Heinlein. I say indirectly because, in the beginning, I was just a punk kid who wanted to date his daug...

I Just Finished – Marvel Legacy

“My shrubbery is not to be trifled with, Daniel Rand.”

Funniest line in the book. Unfortunately, it’s about 25 pages in, and not a lot happens before it that grabbed me. Actually, the whole sequence in which that line falls, which has Dr. Strange and Iron Fist visiting Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, after Norman Osborne has just tried to break into it, is funny, and the most entertaining part of the book.

Marvel Legacy has been heralded (by Marvel) as the return of many classic characters and...

24 Years Ago This Evening…

Our first program book cover by Sonia Hillios, an amazing artist who got her start doing our committee’s fanzines.

I was welcoming William Campbell, June Lockhart John DeLancie and about 1100 fans to Marriott’s Hunt Valley Inn for the first ever Farpoint convention. Actually, if memory serves, John arrived the morning of October 9th, and Bill and his lovely wife Tereza had arrived the previous night, and we had driven them to the Inner Harbor for dinner at their favorite local restaurant, The...

I Just Finished – Superman (1939) #150

As was typical of the times (1962), this issue contains three stories. The cover actually references the third and shortest of them, “When the World Forgot Superman.” These were the days when the editor (Mort Weisinger, if memory serves) would have the artist draw a sensational cover, depicting an incident likely to make a reader ask, “How could that ever happen?!” And then the writer would be told to make that happen in a story. In this case, Superman returns from a mission in space to find...

I Just Finished – Uncanny Avengers (2015) #27

A satisfying conclusion to the Graviton story, although the resolution of Rogue’s brief brush with madness at the climax is a little abrupt. The story celebrates teamwork, which is what the Avengers are all about. And the words “Fantastic Four” are actually uttered! Johnny Storm is a welcome member of this team, but it would be nice to have him back where he belongs. The subplot where an attorney is trying to catch up with him, and surprises him at the end of a boxer-clad battle, is appropria...

The House Where I Grew Up…

Is 50 years old today, we’ve decided. That’s based on the day we moved in. We narrowed it down based on my brother’s memory of watching the first game of the 1967 World Series at our temporary home at the Valencia Motel, and subsequent games in our new home. (Amazing what the memory retains!) My sister remembered we moved in on a weekend, and that narrowed it down to Sunday, October 5th, 1967. I was but two, so I had nothing to contribute to the discussion.

Correction: We pulled the wrong day...