Search Results for: Derek Künsken

Uncanny X-Men, Part 27: Act II of the Dark Phoenix Saga

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1979’s Uncanny X-Men #129-131 began the legendary Dark Phoenix Saga, which runs to issue #137. In those first three issues, we saw far more clearly the hooks that Jason Wyngarde got into Jean Grey, the Phoenix, and we saw more dramatically how Phoenix had been changing. She’d become more violent, sensual, tempted by emotions and desires she’d suppressed all her life. In the fictitious dream world that Wyngarde had been constructing in Jean’s mind, as a means to control her…

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American Gods on the Small Screen

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Like most of you, I read and enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, so I was happy to see it get the premium specialty TV treatment, although I didn’t have the time or the right subscriptions to watch it until this year. I just binged all three seasons, and it’s a gem. It has a few flaws, the most major being its pacing, which might be why Starz dropped it after season three, but even these three seasons are a work…

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Marvel TV’s Buddy-Cop Entry: Falcon and the Winter Soldier

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My son is *super* excited about the MCU’s latest TV venture, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I thought Marvel did spectacular work with WandaVision (see my reviews here and here) which was a real stylistic and tonal departure from the movies. I came to Falcon and the Winter Soldier with less excitement in part because sometimes I feel just saturated with cape and cowl stories. Luckily, the first two episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier delivered in a…

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L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #4: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

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I’ve continued reading the Oz series by videoconferencing with my niece a few times a week. We’re having a lot of fun. Not long ago, we finished L. Frank Baum’s fourth entry in the series he really didn’t want to write, but as they say…. “if you back up a dump truck full of money…” Dorothy is going to rejoin her Uncle Henry in California where he’s visiting his brother. She’s picked up at the train by Jeb and his…

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Lovecraftian Horror, Robot Musicians, and Alien Monsters: March/April 2021 Print SF Magazines

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Covers by NASA, Maurizio Manzieri, and Warwick Fraser-Coombe My regular trips to Barnes & Noble to pick up the latest print magazines are usually a fun affair. But it was bittersweet last month as, due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding Interzone (and the planned retirement of its editor, Andy Cox), I assumed the Nov-Dec 2020 edition currently on the stands would be the final print issue of Interzone. Fortunately the magazine appears to be continuing, as least for the short…

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Absolutely Remarkable TV: Wandavision, Episodes 3-8

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When the two first episodes of Marvel TV’s new WandaVision dropped six weeks ago, I blogged about my reaction to something that was at tonal right angles to everything else I’d seen from the MCU. I just finished watching the penultimate episode and now I think that the show is actually not even in the same ballpark as anything else produced by Kevin Feige. It feels like the MCU and Vertigo Comics snuck off to have a weird love child….

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L. Frank Baum’s Oz Series #3: Ozma of Oz

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I’ve been doing more reading with my 10-year old niece and book 3 of L. Frank Baum’s Oz series was a real treat. While I’d seen the Wizard of Oz of course, Ozma of Oz was the first book I’d read and luckily it can be read entirely fine with nothing more than the 1939 movie as an introduction. This book was also my introduction to the otherworldly art of John R. Neill. Ozma of Oz was published in 1907,…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 26: Introducing Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost and Launching the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1979!

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Well, if you’ve been waiting for my epic reread of the Uncanny X-Men to reach one of the most consequential and memorable stories in comic history, your waiting has paid off. It only took 26 blog posts, but we’ve arrived at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga. This arc of the Dark Phoenix Saga, from issue #129 to #131 does some major things. First, it introduces a mutant who will over the course of the coming decades become a…

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