Dr. Geek: The Fractured Nature of Fandoms

Here we are in the United States of America, having just gotten past yet another July 4th holiday weekend, where you are required to show your official fandom as being an American patriot through draping yourself and your belongings with the flag, eating and drinking as much as you can with the people you love, and crowing over the explosions […]

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Dr. Geek: What the Hell Was Going On In Old Comics?

I didn’t start reading superhero comics until the 1990s.  In fact, I didn’t get interested in superheroes at all until after the animated series for The X-Men and Batman.  I vaguely recall the Superfriends cartoon (and notice that I make a difference in calling it a cartoon), but if you remember it or have ever seen it, then you’ll probably […]

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Dr. Geek: Batfans, Putting the Fanatic Back in Fan

The theory goes that the term “fan” originated as a shortened form of fanatic.  Fanatic comes from long, long ago, when the only fanatics were of the religious type, as a way to describe such people with excessive zeal, enthusiasm and passion, as if driven mad and consumed by the madness.  Due to its etymological origin, the term fan, when […]

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Dr. Geek: Jesus Christ, Superhero?

With C2E2 almost set to launch from the McCormick Place in downtown Chicago, I wrap up my three part series on superheroes with this entry, in which I attempt to answer this question: do religious figures and the heroes of legend fall under the definition of “superheroes,” as outlined in part I? First, let’s look at the heroes of legend […]

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Dr. Geek: Superheroes Spanning the Globe

As a lead up to the Chicago pop culture extravaganza that is C2E2 (where I will be officially stalking John Barrowman, Val Kilmer, and John Cusack), I started a series in my last article that focuses on one of the current driving forces in American pop culture: superheroes.  In the previous article, I focused on working out just what exactly […]

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