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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...

Some games, they're pretty inoffensive looking. Everybody loves Monopoly when they start out playing board games, but what of those board games that although presented as a fun group activity, just creep you out a little? Maybe not immediately, but when you connect it with stuff you've read in your life about godawful stuff that was real? Or maybe it just presents the dark and disturbing in a way that tries to be funny but in the end you're not sure how black you like your humour or without any sugars. These are the five darkest board games I've...

Although I’m as much of a sucker for vampires and zombies as the next geek, I can’t really call myself much of a horror buff. As a teenager I was pathetically oversensitive to horror film cliches: I can remember lying on a sofa in a friends house as he watched the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly and refusing to turn to face the screen for the entire film. I’ve got rather less wimpy since then, but I guess some of that original distaste has stayed with me. I also have...