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This may come as a shock to all of the parents who read "Parenting” magazines and think that little Johnny and Sue need to be protected from monsters and scary things...but – and this is the truth now – kids love monsters and scary things. Monsters and dark deeds are the foundation of almost all myths and legends, and kids love them. In this sanitised, health and safety loving, wholesome and hearty world (which has, let’s not forget, given us the ASBO generation) there is one Saturday Morning Cartoon that would never have stood a snowball’s chance in hell...

Well it’s been a while since I did one of these, but I noticed that they have an understandable habit of generating recommendations for me to check out. After all, if I’m going to paste my taste up on a public billboard somewhere it’s inevitable that people who agree with me will urge me to take a look at other films or books that they’ve enjoyed, and that those who disagree with me will urge me to perhaps have another look at something else by a favoured author or director they love and I don’t in order to help...

To the best that my memory serves me, The Death of Superman was the first big comic book event that I saw since I started reading comics. Before it even happened, everyone knew that Supes would die at the hands of an enemy called Doomsday, knew that it would be followed up with a company-spanning event called "Funeral for a Friend," and I'm pretty sure everyone knew that Superman would eventually come back. And what sort of impact did it have on Superman as a character? Well, for one thing, he returned sporting a mullet. ...

My kids are teenagers. For those of you not familiar with this malady, one of the main side effects of being a teenager is a secure knowledge that your parents are idiots. So are most adults, with the exception of A) extremely popular musicians, B) any extraordinarily attractive member of the opposite sex (as long as they don't know your parents), and C) the homeless guy who tells stories about Vietnam and carries a knife he made out of a discarded hubcap. This condition leads to a series of unpleasant symptoms, including unpleasant sneers, casual disrespect, and treating your...

My history with Conan the Barbarian is a bit of a personal one. In addition to instilling morals, saying, "Please," and "Thank you," and all the other values a parent tries to teach their children, another important lesson that my father taught me was what is and isn't the way Conan the Barbarian should be. Back when I was a youngin', there was a cartoon on called "Conan the Adventurer", not to be confused with the live-action show of the same name. One Sunday morning while my father was flipping through channels, we came upon the...