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I was quoted in a brief article on Forbes.com about the superhero movie renaissance.

It’s been a while since I’ve flexed my online comics journalism muscles, but I’m back at it again on a limited basis for some good friends over at iF Magazine. Starting this week, I’ll be contributing some features under the “Listmania” heading, and we kick off with a look at possible future characters and storylines for a third Hellboy feature film. More to come, including a look at what may lie ahead in the Batman film franchise!

Over the next few weeks, Simon Guerrier, editor of the upcoming Doctor Who short story anthology from Big Finish, Short Trips - How The Doctor Changed My Life, will be posting on to the Big Finish Facebook group the first paragraphs of each of the 25 stories in the collection together with biographies of the authors. And one of them is me! More from Simon:

“The book, published in September, is the result of our competition last year to find exciting new writing talent. At the time we commissioned them, none of these authors had previously written a professionally produced work of fiction. (Many of them have been commissioned for other things since!)

Feel free to comment or ask questions, and please buy the book. Go on, I’ll be your Facebook friend.”

I’ll post an update when they get around to the preview of my story. And that Facebook friend offer is open from me too.

Last month I told you that I’d started writing a column for a magazine called America in World War II for their department, “The Funnies.” Each installment focuses on a particular pop culture or comic character icon through the lens of the WWII era. The current issue (August 2008 cover date) features my second installment on Joe Palooka.

On July 4, our thoughts naturally turn to the history of our country, and here at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum it’s the perfect place to see Independence Day through a different lens.

For one thing, right at the start of our tour you come face to face with the work of one of America’s great statesmen and thinkers, Benjamin Franklin. His famous “Join or Die” snake cartoon from 1754 (recently featured prominently in the opening sequence of HBO’s John Adams series), while not related to the War of American Independence (it’s actually related to the French and Indian War) is not only considered one of the first political cartoons, but it’s a superb example of a scientist and philosopher turning to the art of cartooning to make a socio-political point. Let’s put it this way; it’s not exactly The Far Side.

If there’s one thing you learn here at GEM, it’s how important the World War II era was and still is to the shaping of our nation’s cultural identity, and it was just as transformative – probably more so – to the literary art form of comics themselves (still considered one of the two unique American art forms along with jazz music). During WWII, the comic book industry became the juggernaut that defined itself for decades to come and established so many of the characters that are still with us today, from Superman and Batman to Captain America and the Human Torch.

Ah, Captain America. Skinny Steve Rogers submits himself for a top secret government experiment to create a “Super Soldier” and instead becomes the Sentinel of Liberty and the embodiment of our nation’s greatest hopes and ideals. This is the ultimate American fairy tale, and ever since Cap was introduced in 1941 by co-creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby he’s been at the forefront of the Marvel Universe – its moral center and its American conscience.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the character is that Captain America has always striven to represent our aspirations as a nation regardless of other factors; when the law or the current administration have clashed with what he believed our country should be, Cap has often defied his government, shed his mantle or gone underground. In every case, Cap has invariably been right.

The character recently died in a controversial story, but rest assured Ol’ Wing-Head will surely return. What’s important is that on a day like today, we take a page from Cap’s book and think about the history of our country, celebrating the heroes both real and fictional that helped to shape us. Happy Fourth of July!