TEACHER: Good morning, class! CLASS: Good morning, teacher! TEACHER: And how is everyone today? CLASS: We’re “super,” teacher. TEACHER: Very good. Yes, Hal, you have a question already? HAL JORDAN: Yeah, Teach, I feel really stupid having to say we’re “super” every day. TEACHER: Well, Hal you are, after all, the superhero movie class of [...]

Over the weekend I was walking with some friends on the Upper West Side here in New York, when we spied an imposing statue, from the back, that seemed to be wearing a cape. Not a marble one, but an actual, flowing bit of black fabric that undulated in the wind. We wondered who the [...]

What better way to start a new year than with a fresh evaluation of what it means to be a geek and/or nerd? Comedian, actor, and writer Patton Oswalt recently penned a piece for Wired magazine essentially claiming that the ease of accessibility the internet has afforded to geeky interests has allowed pop culture to [...]

Hey, Jon Favreau! You just directed two Iron Man movies and are putting the finishing touches on the epic mash-up, Cowboys & Aliens! What are you gonna do now? That’s right, he’s going to Disney World. In a somewhat shocking move, Favreau confirmed this week that he would not be returning to direct Iron Man [...]

10. The Dead Walk At this point I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time writing about this show than its own staff. Yadda yadda Eisner-winning comic yadda yadda Robert Kirkman, blah blah Frank Darabont AMC blah blah, ratings smash, and so on. But TWD truly is a pop culture phenomenon, also having just earned a [...]

Dear Mr. Darabont, Congratulations! Looking back at the first season of The Walking Dead, I’d say you’ve done AMC, Robert Kirkman, and comic fans everywhere proud. Normally I might take offense with the creative choice to slangily refer to the zombies as “geeks,” but seeing as the first season finale received the highest ratings in [...]

If Star Wars: A New Hope gave the world its first glimpse of the creative potential of a blockbuster sci-fi movie franchise, The Empire Strikes Back was that potential realized. As the best entry of a trilogy that was the inspiration for a cultural movement, it is possibly both the greatest and most important geek film of all time.

The first rumblings of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot came about a year ago, when the director of the original movie from 1992, Fran Rubel Kuzui, announced she was interested in bringing back the franchise. Nothing came of it until the recent announcement that Warner Brothers optioned the rights from Kuzui, Sandy Gallin, and [...]

As someone who is a large fan of genre film and TV, and especially as someone who writes about them, I feel like somewhat of an ambassador to the rest of the world who only dabble in these things when the word of mouth is good enough. I feel protective about my adopted niche corner [...]

What exactly does Marvel have against Mary Jane Watson? It’s bad enough that Editor in Chief Joe Quesada mandated that poor Peter Parker end his marriage to the crimson-haired supermodel even if he had to go to the devil himself to do it (which, by the way, is kinda what he did). It’s bad enough [...]

I’m going to make a bold claim and say that 5.3 million people read my column. Or at least visit 30Ninjas for their daily dose of action. How else to explain that on Halloween night, after all the time we’ve been touting this show left and right, that just as many people tuned in to [...]

Happy Cosplay Christmas, everyone! Yes, it’s that time of year when everyone else seems to catch on to what we already know: Dressing up in costumes is fun! When else outside of a comic con can you walk down the street as Boba Fett, Cloud Strife, or even Snooki (aaaaah!) and no one looks at [...]

Geek comic icon Patton Oswalt has a somewhat famous track off his Werewolves and Lollipops album that perfectly sums up my issue with prequels. In it, he describes what it would have been like to go back in time to the mid nineties and run into George Lucas on the street. He’d most likely accost [...]

Now that my Comic Con hangover has let up, I can’t help but feel like New York didn’t get its due as the big entertainment center that it truly is. As awesome as it always is to mingle with fellow fans and see all the cool geek stuff I can’t afford, this year in particular [...]

Mark the day, my fellow ninjas! The word is official, coming straight from the mouth of one of the most prolific geek producers in Hollywood: “Zombies are better than vampires.” Hordes of NYCC attendees (I guess you could call them “un-undead”?) had to be specially herded into a vast, empty industrial room adjoining the IGN [...]