Celebrating the Unpopular Arts
 

National Geographic’s ‘Genius’

A couple of weeks ago I spent a Monday evening at the world premiere screening of the National Geographic Channel’s first scripted series, Genius, followed by a pretty elaborate cocktail party at which I almost met Ron Howard, Geoffrey Rush and Vincent Kartheiser. But we’ll get to that.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Eye Candy and Daddy Issues

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may be the most eagerly-awaited sequel outside the Star Wars brand, and James Gunn has delivered a winner. Some online critics feel that it doesn’t live up to the first, but I believe they are confused by the fact that the first one was an unexpected surprise they didn’t know they wanted, and this one is an eagerly anticipated treat that they are pumping up high expectations for. Since that joy of discovery is replaced by expectation, which can’t really compare, they are feeling a self-inflicted disappointment that is unwarranted. I loved it. Gunn still has some tricks up his sleeve.

Webcomics From My Friends

Aside from being the lovable fraud behind the curtain here at AJS, I’m also a cartoonist; I even belong to a professional cartoonists’ group based in beautiful downtown Burbank, the Comic Art Professional Society, colloquially known as CAPS. I thought I’d take a page here and offer up shameless plugs for some of my fellow members who have webcomics available for your amusement.

The ‘Iron Fist’ Argument

Since everybody’s arguing about Iron Fist, it only makes sense that we here at Atomic Junk Shop should jump into the fray. I thought maybe the best thing to do would be to not get all whitesplainy, so instead of sounding off about my opinion of all this, I thought I’d do something sensible. So I looked through my Facebook list for friends who are geeks of Asian descent; we fired up a group chat and started talking.

Meet Artemis: Madison McLaughlin

I got a chance to interview Arrow’s Madison McLaughlin over at GeekDad. And here’s the story behind the story. For the last 15 years or so, I’ve been teaching archery at the world’s oldest field archery range; a few years back, a family showed up; parents and four girls, two of whom were in wheelchairs. The oldest daughter was about 17.

Still the Geekiest Thing Ever!

This is quite possibly the geekiest thing anyone has ever seen, and I get to be the one to share it with you. As I’ve mentioned a time or two before, I’m a big fat geek of the worst kind. One of my longtime favorites is “Legion of Super-Heroes,” a rather oddball series dating back some 50 years or so. The whole thing is basically a science-fiction super-hero soap opera, with the various characters going through personal and interpersonal crises and drama as they go about saving the world a thousand years from now. Another really geeky thing that I like is the Simpsons. One thing these two series have in common is a huge extended cast of characters. It seems that one guy noticed that there are some similarities between the casts, and took it upon himself to do something about it…