Author: Kurt Broz

When you think of trees, flowers, and ferns, you probably think of green… maybe a salad… even a beautiful flower. But wait! Plants live weird, sexy, and exciting lives! Lives worthy of big budget blockbusters. How can a simple, boring plant deserve an exciting, interconnected universe worthy of Marvel?! Well… STRANGLER FIG Mmm… delicious fig Newtons. Mmmm… delicious fig… murder? Many of the figs (Ficus spp.) have edible fruit, are planted in gardens, or used as houseplants. A few tropical species are a little more… active in their agency in life. Instead of being a seed, falling to the ground,…

In 1940, C.C. Beck and Bill Parker created one of the most iconic heroes of all time for publisher Fawcett Comics: Captain Marvel! Captain Marvel was young boy Billy Batson, imbued with the amazing powers of the wizard Shazam. He was joined by Captain Marvel, Jr., Mary Marvel, and a crazy cast of heroes and villains including one of the first “evil twins” in modern literature (Black Adam) and one of the first giant robots (Mr. Atom). Then Captain Marvel became so popular, DC -the publishers of Superman and Batman – sued the hell out of them because they claimed…

The style guide – basically an art guide for drawing a character in various poses with colors, views, etc. – was leaked for the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie. The images first showed up here, so are probably valid: Hamagami / Carroll, Inc. Sega’s mascot has evolved a lot since 1991, but now he’s in the flesh… uh, CGI for the first time on the big screen. The alleged style guide leaks don’t show much of a surprise, but they do allude to one issue everyone who loves Sonic was complaining about: His eyes. It looks like they went for…

The Seventh Annual San Diego Comic Fest, the friendly comic book convention with a casual atmosphere and an intimate scale will be March 7-10, 2019 at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel on Aero Drive. San Diego ​Comic Fest has sometimes been called “Comic-Con Unplugged.” It offers all the things that make comic book conventions special, with an emphasis on comics, science fiction, movies animation, and artwork, but without lines or crowding. Tickets are available in advance online and at the door during event registration hours. Guest of Honor, Sergio Aragonés (“El Maestro”) has been called the World’s Greatest…

One of the most important tests in intelligence and self-awareness is the Mirror Test. Simply put, a mark – a sticker, a pen mark – is put on an animal and they they are shown a mirror. If the animal realizes the mirror is it’s own reflection by using it to find the mark, that’s high marks for self-awareness. People can do it. Many primates, birds, pigs, and cetaceans can use mirrors. And now… fish are showing they’re just as smart and connected to the universe as we are. According to researchers at the Max Planck Institute and Osaka City…

What if you could charge your phone wirelessly… just by being on Wi-Fi AND without a battery? Researchers at MIT – with other scientists – have made a next gen jump by creating a flexible antenna that can charge a mobile device by converting wi-fi energy to electricity. A newly designed rectenna uses Wi-Fi to create an AC current. This is another huge jump towards battery free, continually charged electronics. It isn’t truly free energy, but it’s the closest we’ve gotten. Other exciting possibilities according to Zhang and others include powering devices for medical reasons. These kinds of devices may…

The greatest character in the history of Star Wars is back for the live-aciton The Mandalorian series. No, not Han Solo or Luke Skywalker or Boba Fett. Not even Salacious B. Crumb. No, witness the return of the most important droid in the history of droid-ness… R5-D4! John Favreau posted a beautiful, glorious image of R5-D4 to his IG feed today. Now it could be another, similar droid of the same model but it certainly has the same colors and basic design, so I assume it’ll immediately break. Will he have a bad motivator? Is The Mandalorian secretly the origin…

RIP Universal’s Dark Universe nonsense. The last 3 films based on the classic Universal horror characters have… not been good. The Wolfman, Dracula Untold, and The Mummy have gotten progressively worse according to critics and most fans. Those last 2 were the harbingers of a “Dark Universe” of horror classics. Universe has essentially announced the death of that idea with the announcement for a new The Invisible Man film. Leigh Whannell is set to direct and write, with the new Invisible Man story being produced through Blumhouse. Whannell directed Upgrade (2018) and was involved in writing Saw, Dead Silence, and…

Starship Troopers might be getting a TV series featuring some of the original cast! Well, another TV series. According to screenwriter Ed Neumeier, a reboot of the franchise featuring at least some of the original cast is being looked at as a big budget TV series. Neumeier was a screenwriter for the 3 original movies and an animated feature based on the novel by well-respected sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein. The first and most well-known film was directed by Paul Verhoeven of Robocop and Basic Instinct fame. Though Verheoven also directed Showgirls… No word yet on network or streaming interest…

A mysterious object has entered our solar system from parts unknown. It’s a large, weirdly shaped object. It is sending us signals. It wants to talk to our whales! Wait, no. That’s the plot of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. What has really happened, though, might be just as interesting. Oumaumau – Hawaiian for first scout – is a really weird object. It’s not very big but there’s a good chance it’s the first object we’ve recorded from outside our solar system. It’s an asteroid – really a large space rock or clump of rocks – likely ejected from…