The Comic Critic Reviews Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, and the Tacoma Zombpocalpse

One summer my cousins went to Disneyland. I remember them telling my siblings and me about all the rides. I got very excited that there was a ride called “Pirates of the Caribbean.” My father was a huge Errol Flynn fan, and he introduced me to pirate movies via “Captain Blood.” Together, we spent countless hours watching sea battles and peg-legged pirates swinging cutlasses. So when Deborah, Diane, Dina, and Denise described this ride with animatronic (freakin’ robots) pirates, my overactive mind feasted on the imagery for months. In fact, I can’t remember any other details of their trip. I think their parents were there—maybe. Anyway, when I heard that Disney had turned the ride into a movie, that little part of my brain that got ridiculously hyper as a kid got all charged up again. I was one of the first to get a ticket to that ride, erm, movie, and I loved every minute of it.

And I know several of you are wondering how I did at the Tacoma Zombpocalypse. The answer: Fantastic. Not only was this great one day show, but it was their first show, and it has topped my sales for a one day show this year. Here is a link to a group page on flickr so you can see all the fun. Kudos to my friend, Joe Manfredini, for helping me out at my table.

The Comic Critic Reviews Metropolis

Part of me wishes I could have been there for Metropolis’s debut. It was a time of explosive imagination. It was at the very start of film. No rules had been set to govern it; no preconceptions were available to hamper it, even the definitions of new words to describe it were in flux. And into this brand new media came this extravagant science fiction drama, filled with cultural, philosophical, ideological, and artistic references, some old and others just entering public discussion. It’s no wonder that nearly all of its imagery has become iconic. Yet, because Metropolis’s influence on the science fiction genre was so enormous, part of me is grateful that I wasn’t there in 1927. If I were, I couldn’t help but compare everything that came afterward to that first awe-inspiring viewing experience.

A little personal note here. I have a tremendous love for movies. But if I collected a DVD of every movie I enjoyed, there wouldn’t be any room in my house for furniture. So, it was a strictly survivalist decision to limit it, using personal nostalgia as my guiding factor. After a lot of thought, I realized two qualifiers that would allow a movie to enter my collection:

1. Any pirate movie.
2. Movies in which robots are the primary focus or are heavily featured.

You might think that the first thing I did was pick up a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean, but you’d be wrong. I established my video collection rules two years before Pirates of the Caribbean was released. No, the very first was Metropolis.