Len Wein! His contributions to comics are too vast to fully comprehend. Wein played a disproportionately huge role in pivoting comics into the modern era. There’s definitely an argument to be made for Giant Size X-Men #1 being the most important comic book of all time. It certainly marked the beginning of my emotional investment…
Author: Erik Radvon
Installing Doom
As a nerdy reclusive teenager from Massachusetts I made for a strange transplant to the wilds of Central Florida. Where I ended up on the outskirts of Orlando in the early ‘90s was more Dixie than Disney, and a level of raw violence permeated the humid air. The kids in my neighborhood were a curious…
Plastic City Comic Con 2017 Recap
This past weekend I attended the second Plastic City Comic Con. This year the show made the jump from a small VFW hall in Leominster to the mighty Wallace Civic Center in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. I saw my first concert at the Civic Center, and for decades the venue used to sub as the “Boston” leg…
Attack of the Localize Mother 3 Sign Clones!
Oh my. What have I done. Genie is out of the bottle, kids. The Localize Mother 3 mindgerm has been released and is infecting the population at pandemic levels. Now something akin to a full-scale psyops campaign is underway. Since unleashing the neon pink scourge upon the world last April at a taping of WWE…
“Independent punk rock master of darkness”
The good folks at Monkeys Fighting Robots were kind enough to do a Creator Spotlight write-up on me and highlight my recent comics Voodoo Bird and Crypt Zero. Writer Brandon Griffin described me as an “independent punk rock master of darkness”, which, y’know, I’ll take. Check out the feature here: http://www.monkeysfightingrobots.com/creator-spotlight-eric-radvon/
The Last Jedi, and a new hope for weird Star Wars
The Force Awakens isn’t a bad movie. It does what it sets out to do. The issue I had with it is it didn’t seem to aspire to do very much. It played it so safe, over-pivoted so hard from the unrestrained zaniness of the Lucas prequels that, while a fun ride, it left me…
Logan: Here comes tomorrow
I still remember my first introduction to the X-Men. It was a Super Bowl sometime in the mid 80s, one of the Montana years. I was dragged along in tow with my family to a neighbor’s party. They had a son, older than me, and we were paired off as the adults engaged in their…
Colonial Comics: New England 1750 – 1775
Colonial Comics New England: 1750-1775 is here, and it is a great looking book. I’m humbled to be in the company of so many talented comic creators. The variety of styles, voices, and stories assembled by Jason Rodriguez and his team really makes this a unique and special collection. My contribution is titled “The Call…
Running on Empty in Winter 2017
Hello from the depths of winter 2017. My mental, physical, and spiritual reserves are at their natural nadir. The days are rusty gears grinding away- not much goes easy, but the job is getting done nonetheless. It was 65 degrees yesterday, in February, and the warm wind was exhilarating in its apocalyptic wrongness. I’ve moved,…
Cheap Thrills of a Cheap Age
So you kick out 3 million. Does the factory reopen? Do the shops come back to the decimated main street you walked as a kid? Do the Cadillacs roll by blasting something by Brenda Lee? Is everyone smiling and happy? Are things the way they ought to be? Maybe you hear less Spanish at the…
Crypt Zero – Postmortem ramblings about making an indie comic
This is the afterword for Crypt Zero, produced by the writer version of Erik Radvon, and axed from publication by the budget-minded publisher version of Erik Radvon. It is presented here as a companion piece to the comic book. Welcome to the Land of the Living, Crypt Zero All living things share the same plodding…
All Good Things…
It was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek this past week. I didn’t have much time to revisit it, but all the headlines struck me as I went about my busy adult-life tasks. Star Trek is a live wire topic. Dropping the name alone is like lighting a bonfire, signaling to all that there is…
The Next Great Retrogaming Machine: Sony’s PlayStation 3
The retrogaming market has grown remarkably in the last decade or so, evolving from a ragtag hobby of sorts among yard sale and flea market scavengers to something approaching mainstream. Retail giant GameStop added “retro classics” to its online offerings last year, and smaller independent shops have also increased their stock of old video games….
21st Century Sound and Fury – Kanye West’s Saint Pablo Tour in Boston
Alternate Title: Reflections from an old dude at Saint Pablo’s Kanye came to Boston last night. It was the most 21st century thing I’ve ever seen. The TD Garden was bursting at the seams with humanity, it’s old 20th century confines ill-equipped for this new century’s offerings- its throngs of people, their passion, their unyielding…
No Man’s Sky – A Grand Failure
No Man’s Sky always sounded like something of a dream. Hop in a spaceship, explore a real-fake universe, traverse the stars using the next-gen power of Sony’s PlayStation 4. Like most dreams it only partially made its way into this reality, arriving like a faint echo. Instead of ushering in a new era of video…