WHAT IF Shakespeare in Love happened to the Marvel Age of Comics as Martin de Goodman and his nephew Stanislaus Lieber need to come up with money — fast! One has an idle printing press and the other no end of ideas. Whatever will they do? ANNOUNCING THE WORLD PREMIERE OF A ONE-ACT (30 MINUTE) PLAY MODOK/MACBETH written by ZYG FURMANIUK and directed by SIMON […]
Warhol / Wayne / West
You know Warhol did a Batman film in 1964? Issue 109 of 34th Parallel https://www.34thparallel.net/ has my “nerd noir” story about the origins of 1960s Batmania: “Warhol / Wayne / West.”
Marvel 1602 : The Future Physics of Alternate History Past
The Big Bang Theory – one of the few mainstream television shows with plots involving hard science and a recurring setting in a comic book store– has a notable episode: The Comet Polarization Season 11, Episode 21 – first aired April 19, 2018. Neil Gaiman, unrecognized by the characters, responds to a recommendation to Sheldon […]
STEM in Silver Age at HeroesCon
Talk went well! Thank you to all who came!
Green Lantern and Crystal Meth
In Green Lantern Season Two #10 (Feb 2021) Hal Jordan drops the formula C10H15N and immediately identifies it as crystal meth. There are numerous structures of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen that fit that formula, only one of them being methamphetamine.
Search for Earliest Chemical Formula in Comic Books
I will forever laud Metamorpho simply for the inclusion of the actual formula HNO3 in Metamorpho #3 (Nov Dec 1965). This is the earliest actual chemical formula that I’ve been able to identify in comics If anyone has an earlier example please let me know!
HeroesCon Charlotte
Giving a panel at Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC, June 25, 2022. STEM in Silver Age Comics: They Blinded Me with Science! STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) in the Silver Age wasn’t just lab accidents and adamantium – sometimes it was an actual gravitational free fall problem or a sulphur-selenium exchange reaction. Whether the science […]
The Hulk in Free Fall
In contrast to Simon Stagg counting up to the well-known and often published escape velocity, here we have a genuine motion situation that would be familiar to any beginning student. One slight issue: the answer is wrong (both from the math as solved and from the reality of the situation we’re facing). That does not […]
Can Hoover Dam Flood Las Vegas?
In Godzilla #9 (Apr 1978) Doug Moench wrote a plot where Hoover Dam threatened to break, flooding Las Vegas. Radioactive breath kaiju rampaging through Nevada? Sure! Who cannot get behind that? Hoover Dam flooding Las Vegas? Nope – no way. First off, Las Vegas is not downstream of Hoover Dam. Second, Las Vegas is about […]
Where from here?
Gentle readers, The Lemony Snicket Allusions you’ve all been reading are still here — but I’m now working on a project on STEM in Silver Age comic books and…. having a site already… feel this is a good place to publish some of my work in progress and get feedback. For more of a sense […]