Strange Sightings: Stuff all over the USA and Canada (and a bit of Thailand)

For the first few months of this year we were hoofing around in the United States—far from my usual haunts in Australia, but all around my old stomping grounds in New York and wherever we could catch up with other old friends and see some exciting sights.

A more touristy overview of the trip will soon grace this blog, but I wanted to note where our travels also brought us into contact with interesting examples of pop-culture, especially when it had to do with superheroes or science fiction.  Of  course I bought some comics and went to a convention, but I’ve already written about those things, some more than once.  I’m talking more about just stuff I bumped into, usually fairly randomly, in my daily travels.

Comic-Con Comic Countdown

So while hanging out in New York over the last little while, my two younger daughters and I got down to Big Apple Con, which was a lot of fun. I wrote about it here.

As is usual for an event like this, I bought a bunch of comics which I have since spent time reading. Here is some commentary on all of it, presented as a countdown. From least to most, how much have I enjoyed everything that I read?

Fictional Characters Who Came Face to Face with their Double [Random Pop Culture Top…something] – Part One

A little while ago I wrote about Fictional Twins (see here) and that got me thinking about all those other instances that were kind of like twins, but not really. And that’s led to this post, which is about all the different reasons that I can think of that characters in fiction run into apparent duplicates of themselves, and some of my favorite examples of each!

So the list here isn’t a countdown exactly–it’s in more of an intuitive order than a “worst to best” order. Each entry on the list is a reason why characters have exact doubles out there for them to run into (and there are a lot of reasons, it turns out), accompanied by one of my favorite examples for that reason.

And to be clear, we’re not just talking about stories where doubles of characters exist, but specifically where characters comes face to face with (it would seem)…themselves.

Top 60 Favorite Fictional A.I.’s – Part Four [24-13]

Continuing here our rundown of my 60 Favorite Fictional Artificial Intelligences.

You can have a look here for Part One, which includes some of the rationale for this list, as well as some of the explanations and qualifications, and here for Part Two and here for Part Three.

Colorado: the American comic book & cool stuff haul

I didn’t go to America recently to buy comic books.  I went to gather with my family and do another layer of saying goodbye to my father.

But…even though it was not my purpose, I did in fact buy some comic books while I was there, because generally in America it’s easier to get such things a bit more cheaply than in Australia, where I normally live.

The Daily Spoon #21 – #MonthoftheSpoon

In celebration of the Spoons of our life–ubiquitous but often unrecognized–Blue Towel Productions is proud to present the Daily Spoon, which we were are celebrating this September, the Month of the Spoon. #MonthoftheSpoon

100 Years, 100 Creators – Part 6

Over a few posts, I’m choosing different creators or creative teams–novelist, composer, scriptwriter, comic book artist, etc–who have influenced or inspired me, and in most cases brought me a lot of enjoyment.

For each year from 1919-2018, I’ll pick someone who produced something significant or recognizable from that year–based on what year it was published or released (with comic books being considered to have been released on the cover date, although I know that’s not usually true). And of course, lifetime accomplishments beyond that year will play a big role in who is chosen and who is not. Because certain years were tricky, I’ve also allowed myself to pick people who were born or even died in certain years.

Read More:  1969 – 1981 • 1994 – 2006

100 Years, 100 Creators – Part 3

Over a few posts, I’m choosing different creators or creative teams–novelist, composer, scriptwriter, comic book artist, etc–who have influenced or inspired me, and in most cases brought me a lot of enjoyment.

100 Years, 100 Creators – Part 2

Over a few posts, I’m choosing different creators or creative teams–novelist, composer, scriptwriter, comic book artist, etc–who have influenced or inspired me, and in most cases brought me a lot of enjoyment.

100 Years, 100 Creators – Part 1

Over a few posts, I’m going to choose a different creator or creative team–novelist, composer, scriptwriter, comic book artist, etc–who has influenced or inspired me, and in most cases brought me a lot of enjoyment.

This idea came to when when I saw a similar list recently, on another blog, identifying 25 creators who had inspired or influenced the writer.  It made me think about who would be on my list.  But I felt like I had more than 25 that I wanted to talk about, and so I came upon this idea.