July - 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters, #213: Worf

Joe Pace

Jul 31, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters, #213: Worf

I've mentioned before that it took Star Trek: The Next Generation a while to find its stride, and nowhere is that more evident than in the character of Lt. Worf. I thought the inclusion of a Klingon bridge officer was one of the more daring and creative efforts by the creators, who were otherwise plotting a fairly middle-of-the-fairway course with the new series. Data was a rejiggered Spock, for instance, while Riker gave us Kirk's swagger, and Dr. Crusher reprised McCoy's on

Favorite Fictional Characters, #212: Lucky Eddie

Joe Pace

Jul 30, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #212: Lucky Eddie

Hagar the Horrible was a beloved comic strip in my family while I was growing up. Hagar's Gleason-esque Viking warrior and his sitcom family were always good for a laugh, and Hagar himself was a decent proxy for our own father - rough and tough and tender underneath once you got past the bluster. His overbearing Wagnerian wife Helga, sexy/vapid daughter Honi, and precociously intellectual son Hamlet have him no end of trouble, but the funniest parts of the strip often came fr

Favorite Fictional Characters, #211: Minerva McGonagall

Joe Pace

Jul 29, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #211: Minerva McGonagall

I love my wizards. Gandalf, Merlin, Dumbledore. I love the gravitas, the familiarity, the tradition. But sometimes you need a witch. And not just any witch, but the most powerful, rugged old broad of a witch you can find, with the scars from the battles she's fought, a scowl that scares schoolchildren, and the depth of ability to go toe-to-toe with the Voldemorts of the world. Minerva McGonagall was an ill-tempered crone, consumed with a fierce desire to do right, an obsessiv

Favorite Fictional Characters, #210: Derek Zoolander

Joe Pace

Jul 28, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #210: Derek Zoolander

I don't care if Blue Steel, El Tigre, and Magnum are all the same look. All I know is that Zoolander is so hot right now. Just really, really, ridiculously good looking. Ben Stiller's goofy farce about a male fashion model caught up in silly international intrigue is stupid fun. Owen Wilson's Hansel brings just the right touch of added lunacy, while Will Ferrell is perfect as Mugatu, taking his crazy pills to keep up with the weirdness, but Stiller strikes just the right tone

Favorite Fictional Characters, #209: Lightspeed

Joe Pace

Jul 27, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #209: Lightspeed

Power Pack debuted in 1984. I was nine, and so I was certainly the target audience for a comic book about a group of elementary school aged children with super powers. The four Power siblings - Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie - saved a dying alien fleeing his enemies, and in return he granted them a variety of abilities that would help them protect their family and the world from the impending menace of the rapacious Snarks. It wasn't complicated or particularly heady stuff. but

Favorite Fictional Characters, #208: Stuart McKenzie

Joe Pace

Jul 26, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #208: Stuart McKenzie

So I Married an Axe Murderer is a hidden gem, one of those early-90s vheicles for a Saturday Night Live alum that actually worked. Coming off his Wayne's World success, Mike Myers played it straight for one of the few times in his career. Not a crazy caricature, his Charlie MacKenzie is a regular guy, a very funny but essentially normal San Francisco beat poet who winds up in an amusing little romance with a woman with a checkered past. All of her previous husbands have died,

Favorite Fictional Characters, #207: The Regent

Joe Pace

Jul 25, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #207: The Regent

With Omega Reign, Bill Coffin explores the superhero trope as only a true believer can, in a brisk and wonderful read that pays equal homage to the Marvel classic Secret Wars and Stephen King's The Stand. His not-quite-Earth is populated with an imaginative (and brilliantly-named) menagerie of super-folk, both "capes" (good guys) and masks (bad guys) locked in the constant and eternal tug of war that will be familiar to comic readers and moviegoers alike. Coffin takes advanta

Favorite Fictional Characters, #206: Reginald "Red" Forman

Joe Pace

Jul 24, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #206: Reginald "Red" Forman

Ah, Red. Perhaps the most realistic father figure ever depicted on television. Less henpecked and overtly vulgar than Al Bundy, less neutered and neutral than Cliff Huxtable, the patriarch of That 70's Show was emblematic of the oft-befuddled, oft-irate dad of that era, confronted even in remote Milwaukee with a youth counterculture utterly alien to him. The feeble work ethic, casual drug use, and lack of fear and awe of parental authority made no sense to this blue-collar ve

Favorite Fictional Characters, #205: Lemuel Gulliver

Joe Pace

Jul 23, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #205: Lemuel Gulliver

Swift's masterwork is a classic satire, full of social, political, and philosophical commentary both overt and subtle. Most readers are familiar with Gulliver's first two travels, as a giant among the tiny Lilliputians and a living doll among the titanic Brobdingnagians (so familiar, in fact, that both races have been immortalized as adjectives describing their relative sizes). These two adventures are visually vivid, their contrasts simple to grasp. Gulliver is at his younge

Favorite Fictional Characters, #204: Michelle Flaherty

Joe Pace

Jul 22, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #204: Michelle Flaherty

For cheesy teensploitation sex romps, you could do worse than 1999's American Pie and its increasingly threadbare sequels. It's a pretty conventional narrative, high school boys groping for how to get girls in bed and those same girls doing some groping of their own. It's consistently lowbrow and slapstick, leveraging moments of discomfort and awkwardness for laughs and some dart throws at heartwarming. Most of the characters do what they're supposed to do and don't grow much

Favorite Fictional Characters, #203: Henry Pym

Joe Pace

Jul 21, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #203: Henry Pym

If the early Avengers were the Beatles, then Henry Pym was Ringo. You had Thor, Iron Man, and the Hulk, all big strong bruisers who would become iconic characters in their own right. Even the Wasp, with powers Pym had given his then-girlfriend Janet Van Dyne, became a more prominent character. Pym, then in his Ant-Man identity (before Giant-Man, or Goliath, or Yellowjacket, or even his non-costumed "Dr. Pym" days with the West Coast Avengers), was a founding member of those A

Favorite Fictional Characters, #202: Dr. Doug Ross

Joe Pace

Jul 20, 2016

Favorite Fictional Characters

Favorite Fictional Characters, #202: Dr. Doug Ross

ER was an ensemble show, full of wonderful characters given life by talented actors and mostly great writing, especially during the early seasons of the show's run. Greene, Carter, Benton, Lewis - these were textured individuals, laboring to be healers despite their own myriad hurts and wants. Most flawed and heroic of all was Dr. Doug Ross, the party-boy pediatrician with the white knight syndrome and the dreamy mid-1990s five o'clock shadow. I'll confess here that I'm a Clo

1

2 3

Categories

Archive