Steven Howell Wilson's Blog, page 34

I Just Finished – Uncanny Avengers (2015) #26

I was pleasantly surprised by this issue. I haven’t been following the series since its first couple of issues. I have no patience with the “The Scarlet Witch is so sorry for her crimes” storyline that just goes on and on. The early issues just seemed to be an extension of that, played out with Rogue as the voice of all the younger fanboys and fangirls who don’t understand that Wanda Maximoff was once a really good character, and that her downfall, like Jean Grey’s, had a lot more to do with...

I Just Finished – Superman (2016) #27

Two months ago, in honor of July 4th, Peter J. Tomasi, one of my favorite comics writers, together with Patrick Gleason, offered up a two-part Superman story called “Declaration.” Lois, Clark and their son, Jon, take a tour of the United States to visit historic sites. On this trip, they meet the Dowd family, who, for 154 years, have celebrated the birthday of Thomas Dowd, their ancestor, at Gettysburg. Thomas died in a military hospital and his body was never recovered. The story brought tea...

I Just Finished – Dark Shadows: Bloodlust

I’m late getting to this audio drama from Big Finish. I hadn’t realized it had been released. Big Finish has released over 50 hours of new Dark Shadows audio adventures, but their full cast dramas are the best. This is the third collection of episodes structured like the old TV episodes were, in 30-minute segments, although these adventures are more compressed, since we don’t get 240 new episodes a year, indeed, it’s taken more like ten years to release three sets of 12-13 episodes a piece.

T...

I Just Finished – Secret Empire #10

This was a terrible let-down. The series was mildly interesting, but, ultimately, the problem with the Hydra Cap story is not that it made Cap a fascist, it’s that it was the setup for a thinly veiled anti-Trump rant. A poor successor to the real Secret Empire story, and a cheap excuse for Big Damn Deaths of the Year. It’s odd, because I understand Nick Spencer is not particularly leftist, but the “stand and fight fascism” mantra that permeates the final battle, laced with all the talk about...

I Just Finished – Champions (2016) #12

I promised to share what I’ve been reading, watching and listening to. Here’s the first entry. Going for daily. Will post them under “I Just Finished…” Please jump in with your thoughts. 

Cyclops loses it! Well, he doesn’t lose that. 

Champions has strayed occasionally into the preachy, just a little. When the story opened with the team getting a call to handle a riot in Denver, I cringed a bit. Fortunately, the riot was not caused by the orange rays emanating from the President, but by a cla...

I’ve been off in my corner

The boys are in my corner, at any rate.

Really. I’ve been hiding in a corner for all of 2017. You’ve barely heard from me at all, unless we had specific business to transact, or a family event to attend together.

Well, I’m coming out of my corner. Some. A little ways, maybe.

I want to tell you why I’ve been in hiding, but I don’t want to say too much.

I don’t really consider this vague-booking. Vague-booking is making a statement on Facebook (or, I guess, other social media) that grabs people...

In Honor of Father’s Day

My Dad isn’t here to spend Father’s Day with me. He died on May 6th, at the age of 94. This past Tuesday, we buried him in his native North Carolina mountains, after a funeral at which I delivered the eulogy. So, in honor of Father’s Day, here’s what I decided to tell people about my Dad:

That’s me on the blanket. My father is the one who’s obviously old enough to be my father.

The topic of today’s lecture is Snell’s Law. Snell’s Law describes the relationship between the angle of incidence o...

On the Occasion of my Mother’s 90th Birthday

My mother, my sister Susan and me (the one in the highchair), discussing Proust’s influence on literature, circa 1966.

Yesterday was my mother’s 90th birthday. I had intended to dust off a biography I’d written of her about eight years ago, and share parts of that. It was written for our local newspaper in Yancey County, NC, and it celebrated the 20th Anniversary of a scholarship she and my father had established. That scholarship encouraged County high school graduates to study what we now c...

Icky Things We Don’t Talk About But Should – Pelvic Pain Therapy

I wrote this article on pelvic pain a while back, and was waiting for the right time to share. Since I missed International Men’s Day this past Saturday, now seemed like the time.

Because I’m tired of seeing a walnut here.

Prudery and Squeamishness are two things I don’t have much patience with.

Okay, I’m squeamish about having things touch my eyes, and snakes still make my skin tingle. I don’t care to look at open, oozing wounds or dismembered bodies. Or most of the photos on Internet ads ca...

A Different Kind of “Bully!” – Hillary, Teddy and the Quest for Leadership

So the story goes like this:

Donald Trump is the Anti-Christ. If he is elected, America is over. Hillary Clinton is the only other option. If you do not vote for Hillary, America is over.

I do not agree with either of these points, but, for a few hundred words, let’s live in a world where they are gospel truth, divinely revealed, handed down from the mount, and, of course, thoroughly fact-checked and proved bullshit-free.

While it astounds me that American citizens would complacently accep...