My friends often roll their eyes when I hesitate to embrace anything that’s popular. It’s true that I’m wary of popular things. It’s not because I’m a hipster (I’m not – I live in the suburbs and I like Bud Light and Taco Bell). I think the reason I balk at popular things is because I’m afraid of getting swept up in something that I’ll later regret. It’s better to test things on their own merit than to sign my name to something that sours. […]
More Human Than Human
I’ve been on a late oughts X-Force kick, lately. That run has been my comic book introduction to X-23, aka Laura. (If you’ve seen the movie Logan, Laura is the lil’ Wolverine. That was my first encounter with the character.) The Laura character is terrifying and hilarious in X-Force. She’s so efficiently brutal that you always wonder whether she’s a judgment call away from hacking into pieces a character you like. Kind of weird vibe for a teammate. She’s funny in the way Guardians of […]
A Starting Point for Christian Mysticism
Earlier this year I wrote a review of Yumi Sakugawa’s Your Illustrated Guide To Becoming One With The Universe, which is a charming and profound comic that helps the reader meditate on and contemplate life. I also reviewed Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land and compared that book to The Matrix for thoughtful Christians. Keeping in the same neighborhood of meditative searchers, I’m reviewing The Way of the Mystics. I picked this one up at Half-Price Books a decade ago, but it never felt like the right time to […]
A Nice, Relaxing Lakehouse Getaway…Just Kidding!
The Lady in the Lake, Chandler’s fourth Philip Marlowe novel, gets the private eye out of 1940s Los Angeles and into the California countryside. You would think the hard-boiled detective is just looking for a little TLC after all the murders and blackjacks to the skull, but that’s not his style. Just look at the title! Trouble seems to follow Marlowe like a hangover fart. This is a different kind of Marlowe novel, in my opinion. The previous books featured a more sardonic, cosmopolitan, up-for-anything […]