Columns

Teenage Wasteland: Please, No More Teenage Superheroes

August 25th, 2016

Look at this. The image above these words is the cover to Ms. Marvel #007. Selfies with Wolverine. Ridiculous. I'm old. I don't want to see teens anywhere, but there are two places I ESPECIALLY don't want to see them: on my lawn and in my comics. They're screwing up both. And it seems like there are so many teen heroes now. Kamala Khan, new Ms. Marvel, is in high school. Miles Morales, new Ultimate Spider-Man, was 13 when he started showing up in comics. Riri Williams, the new Iron Man, is 15.

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What Works & What Doesn't: 'Forrest Gump'

August 24th, 2016

Welcome back to What Works & What Doesn't, where we deconstruct the screenplays of famous films and determine just what the title suggests—what works, and what doesn't work. 

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ADA and the Modern Writer

August 24th, 2016

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is legislation that was passed in 1990 that, for the first time in American history, prohibited discrimination against individuals with disabilities and sought to provide equal opportunities for those individuals. Signed in 1990 and amended and expanded in 2008, it is as remarkable a piece of legislation as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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The Use of Derogatory Language in Period Pieces

August 23rd, 2016

Language is always evolving, and that’s never more evident than with the written word. Dialogue that was once tolerable, if not risqué, does not fly today, hence the repeated controversies over the likes of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the classroom. But when stories written today are period pieces, should a writer portray the language of the time with 100% authenticity in terms of hate speech?

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9 Literary Treats Made Into Musicals

August 22nd, 2016

You can make practically anything into a musical, though that doesn't mean you should. Having a degree in literature along with a background in musical theater, I've become intimately familiar with several musicals that were books first. So I am not only a book nerd—I am the book nerd who takes books to her community theater rehearsals, reading and writing during downtime.

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Ashes To Ashes: 6 Books About Funerals

August 22nd, 2016

Funerals are some of the most important events in life, even if they center around death. They're intriguing in the sense that the person of honor is present and yet not; a corpse is human, but also an inanimate object. These authors don't just address the difficult and often taboo subject of human mortality, they also play with it, using wit and skill to shine a light on the dark moments at the end of a life.

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8 of the Worst (and Best) Book-to-Film Adaptations

August 19th, 2016

I remember visiting the movie theatre as a child. It was a riveting experience full of wonder and joy. What new story will I see brought to life next? Will I be scared or forced to hold my belly from laughter? And, most importantly, will the employee behind the counter actually remember to put extra butter on my popcorn?

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What's the Big Deal about 'Ben-Hur'?

August 19th, 2016

Lewis Wallace’s novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ was published in 1880 and has been adapted for the stage, silver screen, and television a total of seven times: a Broadway play in 1899; a one-reel silent film in 1907; another silent film, this one feature length, in 1925 starring the great romantic lead Ramón Novarro; MGM’s spectacular 1959 Biblical action-adventure extravaganza directed by William Wyler, with Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd as his best-friend-turned-mortal-enemy, Messala; an animated feature voiced by Charlton Heston (and other

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The Rabid Puppies of Pelennor Fields

August 18th, 2016

The Hugo Awards are among speculative fiction’s highest honors, and the winners, announced annually at Worldcon, receive their trophies amid black-tie pageantry and applause from the likes of George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, and John Scalzi. In other words, the Hugo Awards ceremony is prom night for science fiction writers—and this year it’s going to be a bloodbath. Because behind all the smiles and the fanfare, the 2016 Hugo Awards ceremony is the Battle of Pelennor Fields, and believe me, my precious, the trolls are massing at the gate. Again.

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7 Things That Are Ruining Amateur Book Reviews

August 18th, 2016

Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThing. I was excited when these outlets for amateur book reviews showed up. Finally, I could tell these snooty book reviewers, these Kakutanis, to take their five-dollar words and...ingurgitate them wholly. But that excitement came and went a long time ago. It was a different time. I was young. Excited about the future. I hadn’t yet seen the horrors to come. My mistake was thinking, for a brief moment, that something could be turned over to the crowd, and that the crowd would handle this new power well.

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