Author: Kurt Broz

THE Kurt Broz is not just a personality for Nerdbot, but he's also the editor-in-chief and a real live scientist! Born on the snowy shores of Lake Erie in good ol' Cleveland, Ohio, Kurt Broz has been there and back again, now residing in sunny Southern California. You can find THE Kurt Broz in cosplay, buying comics, hiking, and even writing for Nerdbot and WLFK Productions. He may be a child of the 80's but he is certainly a man of the world.

Batman – Bruce Wayne to the uninitiated – is a stoic, grim guardian of Gotham City and all those in need. Responding as a broken man to the death of his parents by criminals, he becomes a Dark Knight, a hero under the cover of darkness to fight the forces of evil. Even his greatest enemies, he believes, have some good in them. Batman will stand tall and face down gangsters, gangbangers, and super-villains but he will do so knowing that it is not just their fault: society helped to make these monsters in the same way that society made…

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Smoldering rubble. Corpses littering the ground. One lone, handsome survivor. Hollywood loves to watch society collapse. The trope of a failing civilization and how quickly we lose our humanity is a fetishized idea going back to early pirate literature and shipwrecks – before that, religious texts – and becoming a genre unto itself with the advent of modern sci-if. In film and in books, our end comes from aliens, war, oil, and every other fear of a modern world. The problem, though, is history tells us they always get everything dead wrong. 1) DISEASE Zombie apocalypse stories spearhead the…

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Regardless of your political leanings or personal beliefs, you have to accept the fact that it’s a very rough time for the world right now. In the US alone, 8 out of 10 Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and some 18% of US adults suffer from depression. Anyway you slice it, our current world is kind of crappy for a lot of folks. In a time when the rich are getting richer and, even with historic low unemployment and low world poverty rates, wages for most Middle and Lower Class folks are stagnating in the face of rising prices due to…

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The year is 1987. The Nintendo NES is the hottest thing in gaming. With the crash of the the gaming industry that effectively killed Atari and the teenage angst of the Sega Genesis yet to come over the horizon, the NES is king of American game hardware. Things have changed, though, and some 30 plus years after the black box carts hit US shores, the biggest selling game hardware of June 2018 is the PlaySta… Xbo… No! It’s the Nintendo NES! Viva la Nintendo! Technically the NES Classic Edition – aka NES Mini – is the fastest moving console, edging…

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Build A Bear – the world’s most beloved build-your-own stuffed animal retailer – had a wonderful PR stunt idea: Pay Your Age Day! Any and all Build A Bear Bonus Club Members or people who sign up in stores were entitled to pay the price of the age of the child building the bear. So, want the exclusive Jugglypuff and your kid is 7? Pay $7! Want a classic bear with a skirt for your toddler? Pay $3 plus the cost of the skirt! This was a great sale for large families and a fun PR stunt. Unfortunately, TOO MANY…

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Ultraman: the beloved size-changing space cop (merged with a Japanese man) is back and het’s bringing his talents to Netflix in a new original series. Ultraman is probably best known to Westerners through the live action TV shows and toys, but Netflix is planning an original return of the titular hero as a CGI anime. What we do know is that this series will follow a manga featuring Shinjiro Hayata, the son of the beloved original Ultraman us Americans recall fondly, and his taking up the mantel and bonded spirit/DNA of the powerful alien. Of course evil aliens are back so…

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Ant-Man and the Wasp was a highly entertaining but flawed Marvel movie. -Spoiler Free Review- The key term is Marvel movie. It had all the beats you love from Marvel, between serious action, comedy, and introspective moments. Ant-Man and the Wasp also takes on the role of the Ant-Man series as heist films, again returning to the genre. This time it’s the classic “hot potato” heist outline, where various characters have the important MacGuffin before chases and fights ensue. On the back of the affable Paul Rudd (Ant-Man) and the supremely watchable Evangeline Lilly (Wasp) it all works well. But……

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Patrick Stewart played Captain Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV and in film. So beloved was his portrayal of this captain that Stewart – perhaps best known as Professor X to younger fans – might just return to the epic sci-if franchise he helped build. Engage! Alex Kurtzman is the new head show runner for Star Trek: Discovery and will spearhead overall development. Tucked away in this info are rumors for a heavily expanded Star Trek universe, including animation, a Khan mini-series, and Sir Patrick Stewart. Sources around the projects are reporting Stewart might be…

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Solo bombed at the box office. Well, it bombed as far as Star Wars is concerned, being the lowest grossing – adjusted for inflation – Star Wars film ever. Ouch. As a result, Collider is reporting that Disney has put their side story stand alone films on hold. Both Rogue One and Solo started with a lofty goal: stand alone Star Wars films that were the result of strong creative visions. Almost immediately Disney balked at this, with rewrites, reshoots, and even firing a creative team in an effort to play it as safely as possible. Rogue One and Solo…

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Chloe Dyksta, actress and cosplayer, accused an unnamed ex of long-term physical and sexual abuse. Reading her article makes it clear she’s describing the Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick. I don’t know either of these people, but I do know one very important fact in the case: you’re egregiously wrong if you blindly defend him. It’s easy to ignore these things as there are dozens of accusations a day. Sure, certainly some people either lie or misremember incidents. Though I can say from firsthand experience as a white man who went to college that good men and women can do awful things.…

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