Geek Stuff

Now I’m on Youtube. What have I gotten myself into?

April 6, 2016 12 Comments

I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. When my buddy Tig Carson asked me to do a nerdy video series with him, the idea excited me because doing nerdy stuff with friends is always a good time. Tig is the curator of Nerd Out With Me (follow them on Facebook here, and Twitter and all that jazz), and the author of A Space Story, a Hitchhiker’s Guide-esque science fiction adventure. I have fun talking about geek stuff with him. The idea of a video series sounded like fun, too. We’d talk about old toys and cartoons from our youth and whatever. It would be a good way to spend an afternoon. Then we set up a spot and filmed some material as a…
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Geek Stuff, Videos, Works by Eric

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Meet Robert Kirkman, the Man Behind The Walking Dead

February 24, 2016 0 Comments

The following is an excerpt from Dissecting The Walking Dead: Slicing Into The Guts of Television’s Hottest Show, available in paperback and for Kindle. Dig it: Robert Kirkman is a Kentucky boy. There is no mistaking him for anything but. He is one of TV’s hottest properties of the moment, yes, and for the last decade he has also been the dominant force in creator-owned comic books, but talk to him and he’s still the same quiet, considered dude he’s always been. Thick beard, plain T-shirt, eyes that make you believe he’d rather be anywhere but in the spotlight – his appearance hasn’t changed much over the years, even if his bank account has. Oh, he’ll sport a decent sports jacket now instead of a…
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Comics & Graphic Novels, Geek Stuff, Television

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Why without George Romero, there is no The Walking Dead

December 7, 2015 4 Comments

The following is an excerpt from Dissecting The Walking Dead: Slicing Into The Guts of Television’s Hottest Show, available in paperback and for Kindle. Without George Romero, there is no The Walking Dead. His 1968 film, Night of the Living Dead, invented the modern zombie genre. Robert Kirkman himself has said on many occasions that his comic series and television show is essentially an extended take on Romero’s legendary film, borrowing all its core elements and reimagining them as an ongoing story rather than a single night of terror. In other words, if you want to understand where The Walking Dead comes from, you must understand Night of the Living Dead and the Romero mythos. As I examined in a previous post, Romero didn’t create the…
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Films, Geek Stuff, Television, Works by Eric

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Zombies, Mythology, and the Origins of the Zombie Genre

November 29, 2015 4 Comments

The following is an excerpt from Dissecting The Walking Dead: Slicing Into The Guts of Television’s Hottest Show, available in paperback and for Kindle. Shambling corpses with ragged clothing still clinging to their grey, rotting bodies. An unsteady, drunken walk. Long, pitiful moans and an aching hunger for human flesh. The image is by now so familiar even people with no interest in the genre know it inside and out. These are zombies. But zombies weren’t always depicted this way. Once upon a time, the zombie was something much different, a creature linked with black magic and Voodoo and having nothing to do with eating flesh. It seems as if they’ve been around forever, but our modern view of zombies is actually a relatively new creation. The first recorded use of the term “zombie”…
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Geek Stuff, Television

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Watchmen and The Lord of the Rings Are Strikingly Similar Landmarks

October 13, 2015 6 Comments

Watching The Rings Moore’s Watchmen and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings Are Strikingly Similar Landmarks   When one talks of vital contributions to the art of comics, one cannot ignore Alan Moore. With a body of work as consistently terrific as his – he has more certifiable classics under his belt than any comic writer of the last 30 years – targeting any given tale as his “best” is an impossible task. But of Alan Moore’s contributions to comicdom, one truly stands as not just an undeniable landmark, but the undeniable landmark, putting its stamp on comic history forever: Watchmen, the powerful 12-issue collaboration with Dave Gibbons circa the Reagan-era 1980s. Just how big a landmark is this now classic tale? Alan Moore’s Watchmen is to modern comics what J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord…
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Books & Authors, Comics & Graphic Novels, Geek Stuff

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