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Generation Gone #1 (Image Comics) So… we’re kinda fucked. Millenials and Xellenials, we’re kinda being destroyed by the people that came before us. Their greed and shortsightedness is basically costing us everything, and making sure there won’t be any generations after us. Boomers accuse us …
Spider-Gwen #21 (Marvel Comics) So, I was riding with a friend the other day and we got to talking about comics. It happens. We’re adults and geeks and it’s a thing we do. “Yeah, they just introduced their Wolverine-analogue in Spider-Gwen,” I said. This took …
Below the homes and below the streets there is a place where vermin dream, where castoffs live and work and breathe – where nothing is what it seems. Here is where the worst go to thrive, where fever dreams are kept alive. The hidden and …
Strong Female Protagonist (Web Comic) What, you thought we only talked traditional comics? Hell no. We’ve talked webcomics before, most notably discussing the evolving themes of Sinfest over the past seventeen years. Go us. Go Sinfest. To close the week we’re going to return to the bread and …
Shirtless Bear Fighter! #1 (Image Comics) We do a lot of deep delving here at Living Myth Magazine. We try to look at the impact and history of characters and story concepts, what they mean in the context of their time and what they add …
Crosswind #1 (Image Comics) It’s a brand new comic that we’re promoting sight unseen for one very important reason: Gail Simone. Gail is fresh off wrapping up Clean Room, a mind-bending exploration of themes that leaked out of Twin Peaks and Lovecraft and was one of the better …
Tomboy #11 (Action Lab Entertainment) Intended for mature audiences. No shit. Let us count the ways. Tomboy is a comic about a magical girl in the real world fighting government and corporate corruption. It’s a bloody mess that happens to be juxtaposed against a cute bright …
So… Wonder Woman. It came out. It hit theaters. People discovered it was there and went to see it and it’s going to dominate the month of June and there’s little chance of anything toppling it. And with good reason. It’s awesome stuff – easily …
So… Wonder Woman happened. The first movie of the Geoff Johns era of DC filmmaking and you can tell, but let’s back up a bit because nothing happens in a vacuum and we need to talk about where this film came from. A little more …
Persephone had long retreated into the underworld, and Everett believed that the place she entered the underworld from was Toronto. Cold and polite, the gray apple, the chill in the air seeping into people’s minds and hearts. It’s why he liked Toronto; the sense of …
Injection #13 (Image Comics) As Warren Ellis settles into the third arc of Injection it becomes increasingly apparent that he’s going somewhere with this. I should have known this, but I had forgotten – Warren doesn’t do ongoing comics that drift off into whimpering messes, he does …
Little Nightmares #1 (Titan Books) I talk a lot about narrative structure here and pretty much everywhere else, too. Narrative and story are my thing, my over-riding passion and obsession, and a good chunk of where I cut my teeth learning about these things was …
Secret Empire #0 (Marvel Comics) I was going to review this, but Captain America is still a Nazi. He betrays everyone and don’t trust symbols and whatever. So. There’s your story. Nick Spencer writes a good yarn that’s based on pissing people off and I’m not …
Night Owl Society #1 (IDW Publishing) IDW Publishing has made a name for themselves by taking older properties and building upon them: Ghostbusters, TMNT, GI Joe,MASK, Transformers, Jem and the Holograms, all their like. The truth is that all of them are good – all of them take every iteration …
Monstress #11 (Image Comics) It amazes me how many people have gotten into comics to read this title. It’s high-concept, story and art wise, the sort of thing that you wouldn’t expect people to go for, but the perfect mingling of every aspect of this …
Forever War #3 (Titan Books) The Forever War is one of those seminal science fiction books that everyone should read and I’m kinda glad it’s being turned into a comic – the more places this story is told, the better. Written back in 1974, the story …
Oh, Marvel. Your comics were doing so well. I mean, sure, you’d accidentally turned Iron Man into a villain with Civil Warand spent the better part of a decade trying to fix the damage you did there only to finally give up and hit the cosmic …
Lazarus #26 (Image Comics) Our world is at a tipping point, where a handful of futures are possible provided we somehow manage to avoid global annihilation to satisfy the greedy death cult that has taken control of world politics. It’s tragic that the most likely …
Our world is an ever-changing complexity. The modern era is seeing a massive shift in paradigm as we gain access to information at a rate never seen before, and this shared information is allowing our species to evolve on a sociological level at a rate …
You remember Amy Jo Johnson, yes? With all the attention being paid to the new Power Rangers movie, we thought it might be interesting to take a look at what one of the originals is doing – and, in short, she is continuing her quest to be …
Oh, boy. There were reports that the WWE has been trying to get in touch with their fanbase, sending out surveys to find out what, if anything, they are doing right. I suppose it’s a smaller list than what they’re doing wrong, but the fact that they …
TOTAL SCORE 97% Jessica Jones, the second of the original series being produced by Marvel and Netflix, has been out for a little more than two weeks. We’re about to dig deep and talk about the guts of the thing, why it works and what makes …
TOTAL SCORE 83% We needed to wash the bad taste of Hemlock Grove out of our mouths, so we went back to an old favorite. We powered through the first season and loved that about as much as we ever did, then watched the Christmas Special, and started up …
![Hemlock Grove – Season 3 [Review]](http://www.aarongolden.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Hemlock-Grove-s3-banner-600x400-600x400.jpg)
TOTAL SCORE 21% We liked Hemlock Grove. We really did. The first season was a meandering hot mess of a story, this weird and protracted journey. It was about nihilism and loneliness, alienation and supernatural realism, and we loved it. The story sprawled out like an uncomfortable …
Well, it happened again. Ho-hum. Just another day in the United States of America. We expect this now. It’s common place, to the point where many people see this and think ‘what did the girl do to deserve that?‘ or, worse still, ‘given that cops are …
The title was what drew me in. Loki – Agent of Asgard. There was something appealing about that, the idea that every other power in the Marvel universe has entire agencies set up to spy on everyone else, to feed the, misinformation and carry out …
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT. Turtles that are mutants, teenagers, and ninjas. Or heroes, if you live in the United Kingdom. Do they have something against ninja there? Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Whatever. We know who the Turtles are. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo. There’s …
Red Sonja is a weird character. That’s not to say that the character itself is weird. It’s simple enough – she’s the distaff version of Conan the Barbarian, and even shares a world with him (and Cthulhu, because Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft were …
An interesting thing that happens when we remember the stories that influenced us as we figure ourselves out: we tend to remember the style of them instead of the substance. Style is simpler – it’s the razzle-dazzle, the special effects, the stuff that sticks with …
We started this column off with a Valiant Comic. It seemed like a good idea – yes, we talk about a lot of comics and other forms of media, and we try and break down the why that makes a story work or not. All …
Every now and again, we’ll publish an article on politics. We try to keep our thoughts north of the border unless it’s something that’s going to effect the world stage, and even then it’s only a once in a while thing. We talk comics and …
“We all live in the shadow of Nextwave.” I didn’t say that. Kieron Gillen said that. The guy that wrote Phonogram, the Wicked and the Divine, Young Avengers, Journey into Mystery, Angela – Asgard’s Assassin, that guy. Look at that list of comics. It’s insane. Those are some of the best …
There’s something about fairy tales. We grow up with them, internalize them. They’re the first stories that many of us experience, whether it be through the auspices of Grimm or Disney. There’s something about them that resonates in the programming of our souls, that helps …
Wolfenstein #1 (Titan Books) Feels like we were just talking about writer Dan Watters last week. What was he working on? Little Nightmares? Assassin’s Creed? No, no, it was the Shadow. I want you to take a look at that list, though. Those three comics and what the …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:09 – Iataad taohif aamgae. None may escape. Those were the words her House had been built upon. The very first Vanir to bear their name had looked up at the stars and pointed, …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:08 – Figo Jera had always seen the world for its light. In his eyes, everything was beautiful. Everything had meaning. There were darker shades but they were perversions, not true things in and …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:07 – The woman was an idiot. That was the only explanation. Veskur and Thea had been in constant communication for decades, the letters they shared so much shorter than they once had been …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:06 – A month passed and Veskur had not yet replied to any of the messages that Endrall had sent her. Sotaas not responding to him he could kind of understand; the man was …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:05 – Veskur Wyrd wore the very power of creation itself on her hand. The gaurn she had crafted made the world around her a loom, each thread something that she could pull at, weave, color, …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:04 – There were moments, so many small moments, where Endrall missed Veskur. He didn’t understand why the woman just couldn’t keep her mouth shut and accept whatever treatment he chose to give her. …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:03 – Sotaas watched as it all unfolded. There was nothing that could be hidden from him, not a moment that passed that he was unaware of. Oh, the warlords of the Coeecians thought …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:02 – “Are you doing okay?” Risue asked, looking at the ragged woman that stood beside him. “I’m fine,” Veskur whispered. “Fine.” Risue was polite enough to say nothing. He knew all about Veskur …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:03:01 – Thea had yelled and yelled at her, calling her a coward, a hypocrite, a liar. He had belittled everything she was while telling her again and again that they were meant to …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:09 – Endrall tended to the wounded. It was what he did out on the front lines, far from where his father’s long shadow would drape over him. He worked under an assumed name …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:08 – Veskur was tired, isolated, alone. She had never minded being alone before Figo had come into her life, had handled being alone quite well, but now that she was used to basking …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:07 – It was a strangeness, to be sure. Sotaas was uncertain how he felt about it, especially at first. There was a closeness between Veskur and Endrall that he didn’t want to get …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:06 – Every time he said Sotaas’ name, Endrall shone. Veskur watched this with amusement at first, catching Endrall in his darkest moments and mentioning the wandering Ygg noble’s name, smiling herself when the …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:05 – Where was he? Where was his darling child, his perfect son, the weapon that he had raised so perfectly? Lately he’d been acting like a dryw and Sahr sometimes wondered whether the child was …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:04 – Risue Nihm of House Elhaz was one of the best politicians in his family. He could talk and negotiate, carried himself with an air of confidence that often rolled right over lesser …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:03 – The Vanir held a beauty that Veskur never would have guessed at. She had found wonder in mathematics, in ritual and form, in her countless theories and the frozen world that surrounded …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:02 – There was so very much to learn. Sotaas Ygg was one of the greatest minds of his House, a friendly quiet sort who got on well with everyone. His House had given …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:02:01 – Life was a whirlwind of passion, sensation, joy. This was a truth that Endrall Sahr had long believed and now that he was beginning to venture out from underneath his father’s shadow …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:09 – Thea’s plan was perfect. It was going perfectly. He had spoken about it with River many times over. He would come up and live with the Lady Wyrd and she would recognize …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:08 – “She is insane, you know,” Farrell said, lazy and smiling. “She cannot be trusted.” Farrell had returned to House Suwilo following his incarceration at the hands of the Coeecians, the same period …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:07 – There were many warm mornings for Figo in the northern climes. He’d wake up and find Veskur nestling beside him, the madness that drove her in waking banished when fatigue finally overtook …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:06 – Veskur Wyrd sometimes looked at other couples in love and saw that they often lived together. Her mother and father, for instance, had lived with one another for all of Veskur’s life. …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:05 – River eased out of the carriage, straightened his jacket and slung his bow over his shoulder. The weapon was a trophy from when he had raided the Coeecians hordes as a boy. …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:04 – Deeam Wsael, the Apparent of House Wynn, studied the ballroom around him with his usual aloof demeanor. He had made a study of contented stoicism, achieving in that air a perfection that all …
*** Read the First Chapter Read the Previous Entry *** – 03:00:01:03 – Figo Jera vomited into the basin that Jesam had left in his chamber. The Coeecian warlord had claimed the keep that Figo had been put in charge of when he had claimed Figo, …
Click here to read previous entry. – 03:00:01:02 – They called her the Golden Champion. Hekro Gherlid of House Gebo had lost count of the soldiers that had come to her and told her that they believed they would survive this war only because …
– 03:00:01:01 – A storm was coming, the kiss of it cresting the horizon. Lady Veskur Wyrd watched the gathering clouds for a time, trying to remember if the storm was something she had called. She did not remember and could not think of a …
Alright. Velvet. Where do we begin? Velvet is the story of a secretary by the name of Velvet Templeton. She works for one of the largest espionage agencies in the United Kingdom, and directly for the head of that agency. This means she has access to pretty much …
We’ve talked about how derisive people can be when talking about genre books before. There’s a dismissive attitude when it comes to science fiction or fantasy, which has more to do with the simplicity of the critique than the simplicity of the narrative. Sort of like what …
Hacktivism. A new and, for some people, weird concept. At it’s base, the idea is that if enough people are paying attention to a thing and are spreading enough real information about a thing, then that thing will be dealt with. People will get angrier …
The Punisher is a strange character. On paper, it looks simple enough – a war veteran named Frank Castle witnesses his family get killed as collateral damage in a shout out between rival gangs and swears revenge. Some depth was added to the character during …
Hawkeye is one of the strangest comics to ever come out of the Big Two. This isn’t a knock on its quality – we’re doing a full-on God of Comics on this title, and we’re doing it because this comic is amazing – but that …
WE ARE LIVING MYTH MAGAZINE, AND WE ARE HERE TO READ COMIC BOOKS! EVERY WEEK, WE GO AND FEED OUR ADDICTION (SINGLE ISSUES MOSTLY ONLINE, TRADES MOSTLY FROM CONVENTIONS OR BIG PETE’S). THEN EVERY WEDNESDAY WE RESPECT WODEN, THE GOD OF COMICS, AND WE SPEAK OF …
WE ARE LIVING MYTH MAGAZINE, AND WE ARE HERE TO READ COMIC BOOKS! EVERY WEEK, WE GO AND FEED OUR ADDICTION (SINGLE ISSUES MOSTLY ONLINE, TRADES MOSTLY FROM CONVENTIONS OR BIG PETE’S). THEN EVERY WEDNESDAY WE RESPECT WODEN, THE GOD OF COMICS, AND WE SPEAK OF …
TOTAL SCORE 53% I was very excited for this movie. The Soskas had gone on record as saying that they wanted to do a Punisher movie and that this was their proof of concept. On that front it works – we now know that the Soska …
So, every week we do a review of that week’s comics called God of Comics. It’s worked out really well for us, and there’s apparently some people that really enjoy it. Thing of it is, there’s a whole host of comics that don’t have major …
So, every week we do a review of that week’s comics called God of Comics. It’s worked out really well for us, and there’s apparently some people that really enjoy it. Thing of it is, there’s a whole host of comics that don’t have major …
A while back, we were lucky enough to come across the first season of Carmilla. We were enchanted by it and decided to spread the word. We’re good like that. We got in about halfway through the first season and we became addicted, loving every frame …
“Yeah, most of my comics money goes to Image, Boom, or Valiant these days,” the Hero of Time told me. We were walking around Big Pete’s Comics on Free Comic Book Day, looking for new titles to read. He was steering clear of everything Marvel …
TOTAL SCORE93% One day you will die. There’s a saying that runs that only two things are unavoidable – death and taxes. Taxes are something that we’ve made up as a society, and they’ll fade with us. Death, on the other hand? Wherever there’s life, …
TOTAL SCORE 91% There’s a guy I know that gets very upset when he looks at the modern world. It’s hard to blame him. There’s people that think that Gamergate is seriously about ethics, as opposed to being about some jilted idiot getting revenge on a …
TOTAL SCORE 78% Dead Hooker in a Trunk. That’s a hell of an evocative title, especially considering the actual state of the hooker in question, but the events that whirl up around her make this trip worth it. Let us be straight, right from the start: …
Interview with Peter S. Beagle Date: April 21, 2014 (Back in April of 2014, Aaron Golden and Gregory Milne were lucky enough to get a chance to sit down with legendary writer, Peter S. Beagle, and his agent, Conner Cochran. They sat down and talked for …
Whenever some marketed narrative based media – video games, movies, comics, novels, et al – is successful there come a bevy of imitators that strive to duplicate that same success, but make a mistake when considering style vs. substance. Mostly, they focus on re-active marketing – …
TOTAL SCORE93% Drawing upon history to create entertainment is nothing new. Shakespeare himself was fond of crafting historical fan-fiction with works like MacBeth or Julius Caesar, and every writer before and since has added to the stock pile. Most of the time, these works are …
Fifty Shades of Grey is a textbook for abuse. It terrifies me that people are going to read this book or see this movie and think that this is an okay way to act, that any of the things that Christian Grey does are even the slightest shade …
There’s something to be said for James Spader. He’s an incredible actor who brings both a sense of joy and a sense of menace to his work. It’s always there, from Stargate to Boston Legal, this sense that he knows more than he’s letting on. …
This is why we talk a lot about comics. Stories are important, and comics do as much to inform our culture as anything else – maybe more, given how much pop culture draws from comics these days. Certain characters are important, and we keep saying …
TOTAL SCORE 89% Last week, we talked about how Justice League – Throne of Atlantis was a very pretty but ultimately forgettable movie. The animation, character designs, and voice acting were all about perfect, but the story made little to no sense and the character arcs were largely …
There used to be this thing, back in the dark days of the eighties, where people would complain about mindless trashy television. Programming like Married with Children and Rosanne used to be accused of it – programming without character, arc, or merit. The idea was that these shows were …
Elementary is one of those shows that polarizes people. It had the unfortunate timing to come out after BBC’s Sherlock, which got this whole Benedict Cumberbatch thing started by being, well, incredible. Sherlock translated Sherlock Holmes into the modern world in a believable way, with interesting characters and cases, …
“Hey, wanna watch Constantine?” I asked my friend. “The movie with Keanu Reeves?” He scratched the back of his neck, looking mystified. “No, no, there’s a TV series.” “Is it based on the Keanu Reeves movie?” “No, it’s based on Hellblazer, the comics that the …
Feminism. It’s somehow become a dirty word. People shy away from the sound of the word, from the label, treating the term like an invective or an insult. Feminism. To be labeled a feminist is be called a man-hater, to say that men’s struggles count as nothing. All …
“Hey, man, have you seen Banshee?” a friend of mine asked me. “No, never heard of it,” I answered, but I already knew I was going to. He had that look in his eye, that one that only shines when he’s found something unspeakably cool. …
Fourteen years ago, three kids living in the wilds of North Vancouver came together and changed the world. One of their number, Brooke Burgess, had a vision that he called Broken Saints, and with the help of the other two he fashioned one of the first …
Daylight Savings Time. What a terrible and outdated concept, or so I’m told – being an insomniac means I’m often a little behind on keeping track of our bi-annual time jump, though the differences between my cell phone and microwave are happy to remind me …
![Hemlock Grove [Book Review]](http://www.aarongolden.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/hemlock-grove-book-600x400-600x400.jpg)
Hemlock Grove, by Brian McGreevy, 318 pages. TOTAL SCORE 73% I know exactly how I feel about this book. It’s been pretty well established that we were seduced by the Netflix Original Series. The first season had some problems with movement and momentum, but was strangely hypnotic …
![Hemlock Grove – Season 1 & 2 [Review]](http://www.aarongolden.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Hemlock-Grove-Season-2-Desktop-Wallpaper-600x400-600x400.jpg)
I don’t know how to feel about this show. A year ago, a friend of mine recommended it to me. “It’s a Netflix original,” said he. “It’s got a rich pseudo-vampire and a Gypsy werewolf, and together they’re trying to solve murders that the werewolf …
Some people harp on me for reading comics. There’s this idea that comics are somehow a lesser art form, something meant for children. Some writers in the medium even believe that, letting that sense of disdain fill their works and turn them into petty indulgences …
So, while writing the God of Comics twitter feed this week and the following Afterthought, I got to thinking. It was not a terribly good thought, but it was one that made a lot of sense. Time Warner’s favorite source of creative properties, DC Comics, has been having some …
There’s this idea that giving something a rating because it contains nudity, foul language, sexual innuendo, drug use, actual sex, or ultra violence somehow makes it more mature than something that does not. This is something that needs to stop. None of those things are, …
Several months ago, on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire. He killed twenty children and six teachers before killing himself, an atrocity that made him famous post-mortem and was one of the most violent and despicable acts …
This is not a post about history, which I love. It is not a post about things being established, which I also love. It’s not even about the idea of re-telling a story, or going back to a previous point in a story to flesh …
After a year’s time you’d think the pain of betrayal would fade. You would be wrong. More than a year after the fact and it still stings, the ache of what could have been as much a slap in the face now as it was …
Our passions and differences go a long way towards defining who we are and what we’re capable of – they are they very foundation of personal strength, and that is something that we need to remind one another of. This is why I’m sick of …
I’m gonna piss some people off. That’s fine. It’s alright to be mad – religions have become one of the things we define ourselves by and use to explain the world around us. We believe, we have Faith, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s …
It’s been noted that physical laws tend to carry over from one scale to the next: the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. Ideas, information, and systems are all the same thing. Even we, as people, are made up of different kinds of information, be that information …
Vampires have sort of taken a hit in the modern world. We’ve got the sparkly kind, and the southern kind, and occasionally the European kind, but we know all about them and they’re not terribly frightening anymore. Same goes for werewolves. Golems. Mummies. Ghosts sometimes …
Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) This man is the inspiration for this column. Everyone to be honored under this title is being done so in his name, and that needs to be said. Our sincere condolences to his family, first and foremost, for his loss. And our condolences …
I’m a Canadian. Living Myth Media, Inc, is based in Canada. That doesn’t mean so much anymore. Once upon a time, we divided ourselves primarily by where we were born and the culture we grew up in. The French were French, the Germans were German, …
Revenge. That’s kind of a loaded word. Revenge. But it fits. Last week, we talked about why and how integrity was replaced with bullshit journalism. It was a fun little piece that I’m sure upset quite a few people. So, now, let’s talk about what happens when …
You might not know this, but at one point news was supposed to be objective. Well, as objective as possible – true objectivity is impossible, as we’re all the sum of our perspectives and experiences. The news has always been slanted for or towards its …