The Surreal Within the Everyday: Jim Woodring’s ‘Frank’

Set in a world called “the Unifactor,” Jim Woodring’s wordless Frank recounts the adventures of the title character—a gormless-looking, anthropomorphic, rabbit-like creature with a nature by turns passive and perverse—and his interactions with the Unifactor’s other inhabitants and the world’s beautiful and frightening flora and fauna, given to unpredictable reactions and behaviors…

“I Was Alive and I Waited for This”: Coming of Age at the End of History

By Michael Grasso

I was born in 1975, at the demographic nadir of the 1970s birth trough in America and before the mini Baby Boom of the early ’80s. My birth cohort is small; my grade school classes were the smallest they’d be for the next 30-some odd years. So, as a late Gen-Xer, my oldest pop culture memories are of the late 1970s. I was a kid in the 1980s. But I came of age at the end of history…

Ready Player None: Toppling the Diseased Colossus of Geek Culture

I honestly hadn’t thought about Ready Player One until the movie was announced. Even then, I tried to avoid it. But I finally saw the trailer, against my will, and dear God, what a hideous mess. But hey, I wasn’t going to see it, because I lost my virginity and I’m married to a good-looking man and can watch grown-up films because I’m a Big Girl. Then I read his poetry. And since then, I’ve been training, Linda-Hamilton-in-T2 style, to take this motherfucker down…