Categories
Blather Comics Science Fiction and Fantasy

Fanboy Hell

Sigh. So on Tuesday I passed on a link to an article I found here. Now, I hadn’t read through the whole article, or the other articles linked to in the original post, or the comments posted on it, the first of which is genuinely disturbed by the very mention of this writer.
So I followed another link, and saw Doc Nebula’s rant about Kurt Busiek, which the aforementioned commentator described when he wrote: You have to understand, _his side_ of his ‘grudge’ with Busiek makes him look unbalanced. . Elsewhere, someone called it truly fascinating in its awfulness.
Damn. It’s sad. That’s probably the most depressing web page I’ve read in a very long time.
And when I went back and finished reading the article on Superhero sexuality I linked to earlier, and saw how, as Doc Nebula himself noted in his conclusion, it has transformed over its considerable length from a witty and cheerful romp into a peeved and sullen rant about his least favorite bits of superhero comic tawdriness, and how he brings up something as obscure as The Liberty Project, dwelling on it just long enough to strongly reinforce the impression that he’s got “issues” about the writer (Busiek) and his wife.
So it becomes very clear that this guy I linked to, this erudite and well-read fan, is, well, a Dark One.
But then, reading Sheldon Teitelbaum’s account of Harlan Ellison’s “feud” with him over here (For 15 years, perhaps longer, the ”shrying” Svengali of Sherman Oaks swings headless chickens about his pointed head while cursing my name in French fanzines and in prologues to failed screenplays.), I guess the lure of the Dark Side is ever-present in the geek lifestyle.

Categories
Science Fiction and Fantasy

Superstrong Mutant Baby

AP AP: Mutation Found in ‘Muscle Man’ Toddler:
Muscle Tot

Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat. DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.

According to the original article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the mutation is in a gene called Myostatin, which halts muscle growth.

Via Didi, Warren Ellis and Ezrael.

Categories
Comics

Androids vs. Boom-Boom Girls

Four color carnality: A Study of Superhuman Sensuality by “John Jones, Manhunter from Marathon, IL” surveys the state of romatic superhero literature throughout the ages:

To sum up the 70s, then… At DC, it was still, for the vast most part, business as usual, meaning, all their characters might as well have been genderless androids. At Marvel, on the other hand, gorgeous women were screwing waterfowl, Vietnamese boom-boom girls were joining the Avengers, female vampires were starring in their own horror series and using sex appeal to lure hapless male victims to the slaughter, and cheesy warlords from alternate futures were showing up with raging woodies for captive super-heroines. Everybody, even the morose, petulant Peter Parker, was getting laid.

Found via John Jakala’s Grotesque Anatomy.

Categories
Oddities

Tolkien’s hobbit hill up for sale

Telegraph : Tolkien’s hobbit hill up for sale at £500,000

It dominates views of the surrounding countryside and is credited as the inspiration for Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and now the Wrekin, a 1,300ft hill, is up for sale.
It is deemed one of the most important of mid-Shropshire’s heritage sites.

The Wrekin, which overlooks Telford, is so well known locally that it has entered the language of the Midlands people.
The expression “All round the Wrekin” means “going the long way” or “not explaining something clearly and directly”.

Compare:

The Werkin
Escape from Mirkwood

Categories
Oddities

Now the drugs don’t work

Nature – Virus robs addicts of their high: Transgenic carrier inactivates cocaine in rat brains.

The treatment was developed by Kim Janda, a chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and her colleagues. They gave eight rats nasal injections of the virus twice a day for three days and compared them to eight rats that did not receive the treatment. On the fourth day, they gave both groups a dose of cocaine.

The untreated rats behaved in a characteristic way after receiving the drug: sniffing, standing up on their hind legs and rocking backwards and forwards. But the rats that received the virus showed much less severe behaviour.

“If they are not demonstrating this activity, they are probably not feeling the high,” says Janda.