I used to think it silly how wild people went over peaches or ramps or morels—any highly seasonal crop that has a short window of availability. Something about the fervor rang false. Are they really that good? Any better than any other summer produce? It was all just a little too too. But now I think I get it. It’s…
I am a 24-year-old straight guy who recently broke up with my girlfriend of more than four years. One of the reasons we broke up was a general lack of sexually compatibility. She had a particular aversion to oral sex—both giving and receiving. I didn’t get a blowjob the whole time we were together. Which brings me to…
With the successful relaunch and expansion of the Archie universe, it’s no surprise that publishers continue to revisit other aging classics. They have name recognition across multiple demographics, and many of them are overdue for a revamp. Nancy Drew #1 (Dynamite) is the perfect example of how to initiate a…
Mark Millar is a major force in Hollywood, making bank on film adaptations of his creator-owned comics Wanted, Kick-Ass, and The Secret Service (which became Kingsman on screen) and playing a significant role in superhero movies by writing the comic-book source material that inspired Marvel’s Avengers franchise and…
In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
Bubble, the first scripted comedy series from Maximum Fun, begins as a cutting and comic look at millennial misadventures. Set in Fairhaven—“a literal bubble of corporate utopia”—the opening scene depicts a bunch of young people as they all “brunch and vape and watch shelter dogs and have too-loud conversations” about…
Every two weeks, Big Issues focuses on a newly released comic book of significance. This week, it is Exiles #4. Written by Saladin Ahmed (Black Bolt, Abbott) with art by Javier Rodriguez (Royals, Doctor Strange And The Sorcerers Supreme), inker Álvaro López (Royals, Doctor Strange And The Sorcerers Supreme) and…
Without snooping, I came across texts between my wife, “Mary,” and a guy “Jeremy” of a very sexual nature. While I would be okay if she were doing this and I knew about it, this has been going on since before we met. (We’ve been together 10 years.) She says she has never met him in person (despite communicating with…
“It’s impossible to really tell the story of somebody’s life, and the most we can hope to convey here is a very abstract ‘Rosebud,’” David Lynch writes near the very end of Room To Dream, marveling at the failure of the preceding 500 pages to truly capture him. This is the inevitable upshot of all biographies, of…
Last month saw the start of Love + Radio’s seventh season. Nick van der Kolk’s podcast is known for its in-depth and expertly produced interviews that cover “an eclectic range of subjects, from the seedy to the sublime.” Even before it found a permanent home at Radiotopia in 2014, Love + Radio was an award-winning…
For his first novel, President Bill Clinton, along with fiction factory James Patterson, has written a trashy, trashy-fun airport potboiler. It is called The President Is Missing, and it is about an eyebrow-raisingly noble hero president who sneaks out of the White House in order to foil a threatened cyber attack of…
As much as the introduction of DVD commentaries promised revelations inside the creative process, plenty of times they offered more insight into the banter of the people involved, as seemingly important scenes sail by unexplained. Longtime Simpsons producer-writer Mike Reiss, a frequent presence on the hours and hours…
Comic books from the 1960s and ’70s, even the good ones, often ask contemporary readers to bring to them some degree of moral relativism, and Baron Yoshimoto’s The Troublemakers (Retrofit/Big Planet) is no different. Collecting a number of short stories that the author produced in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the…
Simon Spurrier is not the kind of comics creator who shies away from ambitious ideas. The recently wrapped Angelic sported pastel flying monkeys in an apocalyptic post-humans world, and Cry Havoc mixed monsters and myths informed by modern technology placed over the backdrop of Western colonialist warfare. So it’s…
I’ve been married to my husband for two years. Five months into our relationship (before we got married), he confessed that he was an adult baby. I was so grossed out, I was literally ill. (Why would this great guy want to be like this?) I told him he would have to choose: diapers or me. He chose me. I believed him…
Anyone who has been on a comic convention floor in the past 20 years knows there are a lot of superhero fans who wish they could be Deadpool. Marvel gives them the opportunity to step into Wade Wilson’s shoes in You Are Deadpool, an interactive weekly miniseries that combines a choose-your-own-adventure story with a…
Porochista Khakpour has been sick her entire life, tormented by pain, mental and physical. She suffered from tremors, depression, and fainting spells as a kid. Panic attacks and insomnia in her 20s. Joint pain and muscle aches, chronic lethargy and serious anxiety in her 30s. The obstinate feeling that her body is not…
ESPN’s 30 For 30, the documentary hub known for producing stories “too dramatic not to be real,” just delivered a one-two punch to the world of podcasting. First, a quick jab with “Bikram,” its first serialized season in its three-season run, and second (and most importantly), a power punch in the form of Julia Lowrie…
Lauren Groff opens her latest short story collection with a woman walking through her North Florida neighborhood, looking through her neighbors’ windows, getting brief glimpses of their lives. “Ghosts And Empties” is less a story and more an explanation of Groff’s methodology. While her first collection, Delicate…
Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.
