Trailer Park: The DC TV Puppetry Jamboree

After breaking one of my unspoken personal rules for The Trailer Park last week (no offensive content), I've gone and broken another one today. I had planned to restrict myself to only one TV trailer per week, and even then only if there weren't enough films. But there were so many good TV promos last week, and so few decent film ones, that I've gone back on that rule too.

Despite this, it's actually a really strong week overall. All five trailers are pretty great, and I absolutely love more than half of them. This feature may have morphed slightly away from how I originally envisiged it, but maybe that's a good thing! You can decide for yourself by hitting the link below.

Hex Picks: Comic Villains

It's the final week of our month of villain picks, and that means it's comics time! I've really been looking forward to this one, since comics are such fertile ground for cool costumed villains. And yet, somehow, we ended up with quite a short list with only one supervillain on it. Disappointing, perhaps, but in fairness it was the greatest comicbook villain of them all - when this guy's on the list, there's basically no need to continue listing!

But then, I would say that, since that's the one I wrote. Which supervillain was it that rose above all others to appear on our coveted list? Click below to find out.

Hex Dimension: Is Marvel teaming up with a Sony a wise move?

This week, a miracle happened. Marvel Studios finally struck a deal with Sony Pictures, allowing Spider-Man to at last appear onscreen with Marvel's other characters. But, perhaps more importantly, that deal establishes that this will be a new version of the character rather than the current puffy-haired, promise-breaking iteration. And, more important still, Marvel will be the ones with creative control, rather than the aimless executives at Sony. This is great news.

Following our reaction piece regarding the Star Wars trailer, Hex Dimension have written a similar piece about this Spidey news. Rather than just squee about how great the news is (like I did above), I tried to find a more interesting angle to look at this from. I think I found one - and you can find it too by following the link below.

Hex Picks: Comics we want for Christmas

So here we are at the end of 2014, with our final set of recommendations for the year. As with the rest of December, the theme is stuff we'd like to get for Christmas and, as with the rest of December, I've picked something I haven't actually read or seen yet. I've been looking forward to this one for a while, because I really really want to read this comic, and it's always fun to tell people about how weird it sounds. For instance, I never expected to use the words "gay porn" in one of these reviews, but there it is!

So, to find out what comics the Hex crew are hoping to find in their stockings this week, for the last time this year, click the image below. Happy Christmas!

Hex Picks: Most Recent Comic

I started writing this blog for a couple of reasons. The main thing is a general love of films, of course, but perhaps even more important is the fact that I really needed to blurt out my thoughts about Prometheus.

That need has never really gone away, so when the chance came up to write some more about it for Hex Dimension, I jumped all over it. The only problem is that I was supposed to be writing about comics. This week's recommendations are the most interesting and most numerous in a while - so to take a look (and to find out just how badly I went off-topic) click the link below.

Hex Dimension: DC v Marvel: Dawn of Universes

You've probably noticed how psychadelic the blog's been looking recently. Well, now it's getting worse. This is the debut of my new Opinion Green theme, to sit alongside Recommendation Red and TARDIS Blue as ways to distinguish my nonsense. Hopefully all these colours are brightening the place up and not just hurting everyone's eyes! Anyway, to business...

With Doctor Who and The Companion Piece both winding down for the year, I finally have more time on my hands to write actual articles and opinion pieces and maybe even reviews! The first, which I hope will be one of several over the next few weeks, is a sceptical look at last month's press-releases from Marvel and DC, which announced their future movies.

I fall down pretty heavily on one side of the equation, and it's probably quite predictable which one - but I feel like my reasons are valid and the points are worth reiterating. Click the link below to take a look!

Hex Picks: Horror Comics

I almost skipped this one - comics is the medium I have the least experience with and the one I always have most trouble recommending - but then, one day before the deadline, I realised there was a choice so head-smackingly obvious that I couldn't believe no-one else had already picked it.

But, while my choice is obvious, there's a couple in here that definitely aren't. There's one in particular that I've never heard of, but which sounds really creepy and awesome - I can't wait to get hold of a copy!

Click the link below to check that out, along with the rest of our scary comic picks, and don't forget, you only have a few days left to enter Hex's big Hallowe'en givaway!

Hex Picks: Romantic Comics

Romance month is over! Nope, no more hugs. We're done.

Our final recommendation, as always, was comics. And, being the discerning connoisseur I am, I chose that rarest and most unique of genres: superhero comics. Joking aside, it's a superhero comic that I enjoyed mostly for its romantic angle, and that is fairly unusual.

There's a couple of other unusual choices in there too - one postmodern meta-comic, a D&D stickman comic and, weirdest of all, Chobits. So it's worth having a look, just to see what strange and unhealthy ideas about romance we all have...

Hex Picks: Sci-Fi Month

It's recommendation time again! This month, Hex Dimension tried something new and had a constant theme running through all our picks. The theme for July was science-fiction (we are a geek website, after all) and it resulted in a bunch of great suggestions, ranging from hardcore cyberpunk to whacky space-fantasy.

As always, we started with books, moved on to films, then games, and wrapped up this week with comics. Hopefully you'll check them all out and discover some hidden sci-fi gems! Unfortunately, I missed the deadline for that final post (by a mere half-hour, I swear) and my recommended comic didn't make the cut. I do still want to share it with you, though, so I've decided to post it here on NerdTech instead:


Girl Genius - Phil and Kaja Foglio

All this month, for our sci-fi recommendations, I've been trying to pick examples of real, hard sci-fi rather than that namby-pamby soft stuff. But I've been racking my brains for a similarly hardcore comic and, shamefully, I don't think I've read any! So today I'm going completely the other way.

Kaja and Phil Foglio's ongoing webcomic Girl Genius is about as soft and unrealistic as it's possible for sci-fi to be. Because this is not a comic about science; it's a comic about MAD science. Girl Genius takes the age-old idea of the mad scientist and spins it in a unique direction: what if all scientists were mad? What if the use and understanding of science required (and also caused) a certain level of insanity? What would that world be like?

The answer, of course, is "very very silly". This is a world of giant clockwork men, steampunk spider-tanks, airship cities, unstable time-machines, frankinsteinian abominations, and an alarming number of death-rays. But that's all just texture - this sci-fi nonsense is fun, but the substance lies in some great characters and relationships, and there's some pretty complex political intrigue too.

The art can be a little messy and confusing at times, and the story often throws things rapidly and haphazardly together, possibly just to see what works - but the chaos actually suits Girl Genius perfectly. It's a mad experiment performed by crazy people, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But hey, that's SCIENCE!

Hex Picks: Favourite X-Men and Supernatural Novels

Another quick update to plug the two latest weekly recommendations at Hex Dimension.

Up first is a look at our favourite X-Men, to celebrate the release of the new film (which I'm finally seeing tonight). Contains spoilers for the comics, but not the film.

Up second - and freshly posted today - we took a look at supernatural fiction. It's not a topic I thought I'd have anything to say about, but it turns out I did. And, in true supernatural fashion, I spookily wrote almost the exact same thing as my brother...

That's it for now but, following Friday's finale, my long-gestating piece on Agents of SHIELD is finally done. It's due to hit the website on Thursday, so I'll see you then!