A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 76

Green Lantern: First Flight (a review)

 FIRST, THE COMIC BOOK RANT.  YOU CAN SKIP TO THE REVIEW A FEW PARAGRAPHS DOWN.

I don't know if my regular readers have noticed this or not, but I tend to spend an unusual amount of time bemoaning the quality of modern comic books.  A big part of this, I'll admit, is simply coming from a different era.  Everybody tends to like things they grew up with more than is reasonable.  But it's also because comics are kind of lame now.

Let's be fair though.  When I complain about modern comics, I'm...

Weird, but Inspirational

Tonight, a visitor to the DFWWW said she'd found my blog about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs inspirational.  And can I just say how cool that is?  It's great that something that inspired me lead me to write something that inspired someone else.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I still can't get over the position I find myself in.  People care what I have to say.  My thoughts and opinions, for better or worse, can have an effect on others.  I've been quoted, gang.  In a modern age...

Scribblenauts (a review)

Every once in a while a game comes along that challenges everything that game before it.  Simply put:  Scribblenauts is one of those games.  So original, so unusual, so never-done-before that even if it was lousy, it'd still deserve a permanent place in video game history.  But Scribblenauts does not suck.  In fact, it's a damn fine game.

Scribblenauts is for Nintendo DS, and it shows that once again, the most innovative gaming system on the market isn't found in your living room, but in your ...

Cloudy with a Chance of Kung Fu Monsters

Saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs today.  Damn good movie.  Really.  Fun.  Exciting.  Funny as heck, with multilayered writing and a terrific energy.  I really, really enjoyed it.  I think Cloudy just might be my favorite disaster movie.

Every time an animated movie like this comes out, I reflect on my own goals as a writer.  Because, when you get right down to it, this is the stuff that I love.  This is the stuff that I aspire to write.  I've admitted it before (and I'm sure I'll admit...

Ad Astra (a game review)

I like games.  It should be readily apparent to everyone who knows me.  And I figure that one of the best ways to distinguish this blog from most every other novel writer's blog is to exploit that.  And if I should happen to enlighten the general public on this terrifically underrated and oft misunderstood hobby, so much the better.

So today, I'm going to review Ad Astra ("To the Stars" in Latin) from Fantasy Flight Games.  ( a

My Run-In with Paul Cornell (Apologies Included)

Hey, hey, everybody.  So Fencon has come and gone, and it was a fantastic time.  If you live in the D/FW area and are a science fiction / fantasy fan and aren't checking out Fencon when it rolls around you're missing out.  That's all I'm saying.

There was a lot of great stuff at Fencon this year, and I'll get to it in some later entry.  Right now, I'm pretty damn tired, and I'm about to keel over.  But there was something at the very end that I thought is worth talking about.

The last panel of ...

Bloom-chicka-bloom

Life begins at 30.

It did for me anyway, and part of me hates saying that because I feel like one of the problems we tend to make in American culture is waiting too late to start our lives, treating grown people like children, and generally acting as if we have all the time in the world.

But, for me at least, I have to say that if you were to judge my life by the first 30 years, you'd see a guy who wasn't going anywhere with no prospects of going anywhere.  I wasn't a loser.  I was just a guy w...