How many supernatural love stories can there be out in the YA world? Boy meets girl, girl meets vampire, boy meets witch who can control the weather, girl must choose between Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot? Okay, so I made that last one up. But the field of young adult fiction has been combining all kinds of supernatural and human mash-ups in an attempt to find the ultimate in teen heart-string pullers. Very few, however, bring young love to an audience with such quirky humor and believability as The Art of Wishing, a love story between a girl and her genie. 

[A review of The Art of Wishing by Lindsay Ribar]

It’s that time again, Revolutionaries! Welcome back to our weekly recap of NBC’s Revolution where we’ve spent most of the season trying to figure out just what turned out the lights. Well wait no longer, blackout fans! The secret is out about what caused electricity to disappear, and it’s probably not what you think. This week’s episode is all about secrets revealed, confrontations about loyalty and a kiss heard round the world in “The Song Remains the Same.”

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Welcome back, Revolutionaries! We’re deep into the second part of season one this week with episode 12, “Ghosts”—and though the ratings may be slipping, the episodes continue to impress. This week Our Heroes venture into the heart of the rebellion to deal with their losses and find new purpose. There is mother-daughter bonding, new and scary allies, and some damn good sword-fighting. So let’s just jump right into this week’s recap as we ask ourselves: how many people can Miles Matheson kill in one episode?

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Recently I was lucky enough to attend PAX East, one of the largest gaming conventions on the east coast. Hosted in Boston, PAX East draws tens of thousands of attendees and showcases the best that the video game and tabletop world has to offer for the upcoming year. While plenty of folks go to see what the big AAA studios are going to offer us for the new year, I instead found my way to the Indie Games section of the expo floor. Here, smaller studios were showcasing their projects for gaming fans to demo to attract new players and spread the word about upcoming releases. However among all the games offered, two stood out as powerful examples of indie games you’ll want to check out in the coming year: Contrast by Compulsion Games and Outlast from Red Barrel.

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Women in Refrigerators. You might have heard the term. It refers to the death of a female character in comics that was done just to provide plot movement for or offer emotional “depth” to a male protagonist. This trope was coined after Green Lantern Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend was murdered, hacked up into little bits and shoved into his refrigerator for him to find. It was hailed as one of the most gratuitous murders of all time and sparked a controversy that created this now well-known call out. It is typical to hear a storyline called out for “fridging” a woman.

[Warning: Further spoilers below for Injustice comics!]

The day Revolution fans (can we just start referring to ourselves as “Revolutionaries”?) have waited for has arrived! NBC’s post-civilization action adventure is back with episode eleven and this time, the show is pulling out all the stops. Gone are the lackadaisical days of the first half of the season—this episode, entitled “The Stand,” lands with a bang. And when I say “bang,” I mean explosions. Lots of explosions. Helicopters full of explosions.

Want to know more? Let’s recap last night’s episode and welcome back Our Heroes on their journey to find out why the lights went out.

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The future of X-Men is in its women, ladies and gentlemen—and the future is now. In a surprising move, Marvel Comics announced recently that they will relaunch X-Men as a comic title headlined by all X-Women! This new book starting in April will be headlined by Brian Wood (writer of comics like DMZ, Mara, and The Massive) with art by Olivier Coipel (Thor) and will focus on such long-time favorite characters as Storm, Rogue, Shadowcat, Psylocke, Rachel Grey and Jubilee.

Why is this so exciting?

At a time when so many are standing up to speak about a lack of well-developed female lead characters in various geekdoms, Marvel has been actively addressing that absence with some amazing titles. Let’s take a look at what we can expect from the upcoming X-Men book and some of the other great books featuring Marvel’s mightiest women.

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At the height of the Hunger Games craze, I talked about some other YA fiction out there to fill your post-apocalyptic or dystopian cravings, but few are as complicated and interesting as Ally Condie’s Matched trilogy, the story of a repressed, contained world containing the Society. The Matched trilogy has all the expected tropes of young adult dystopia—a sweet, willful girl named Cassia, a love triangle that defies the conventions of everything the Society will allow, and a mysterious revolution that gives hope to all those oppressed. Throughout the story, Cassia depends on the inner world of her own artistic expression to guide her as her life is completely thrown out of control and she’s asked to figure out what she really believes in—what she’s been told or what she feels.

In the recently released finale to the trilogy, Reached, Cassia and her two potential love interests Ky and Xander must face down the struggle for the heart of their civilization. It’s the Society versus the enigmatic Rising in a bid to control their world—except what they unleash in the fight might wipe away everything that Cassia holds dear.

Let’s take a closer look at Reached and review the Matched trilogy leading up to the series finale.

[Warning: Spoilers follow for the Matched trilogy!]

There have been a lot of shake-ups lately in the world of comics. In the DC universe, the Joker is running amok once again trying to kill everyone in the Batman family. Vertigo is ending their long-running Hellblazer series. Dark Horse is sending Hellboy to Hell. Meanwhile, over at Marvel, the after-effects of the Avengers versus X-Men story arc have altered the flow of the X-Men world forever. The staging ground for Marvel’s newest event is called Marvel Now, and it’s giving fans some new books and new creative teams to be excited about. Among them is a brand new series called All New X-Men.

“But wait,” you might say. "What is so exciting about a new New X-Men comic? What could they possibly do that they haven’t done before?’

Well...can you say time-traveling original X-Men? Read on for five good reasons why you should absolutely check out the newest X-offering from Brian Michael Bendis.

[Warning: Spoilers included for the All-New X-Men #1]

All right, fellow Revolutionaries—it’s all been leading up to this! Our heroes started this season on NBC heading through a post-apocalyptic America to rescue a boy kidnapped by a brutal dictator. There have been explosions, sword fights, betrayals, creepy dogs, murder, and hallucinations along the way. We’ve gotten hints as to why and how the lights have gone out. In the season finale, everything comes to a head as Miles, Aaron, Nora and Charlie venture into Philadelphia to rescue Danny. It’s family reunions all over the place in the mid-season finale, “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” What have we learned? Let’s take a look at the recap!

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It started out with one question. Luke Crane, creator of such tabletop RPGs as Mouse Guard and The Burning Wheel, asked his Twitter audience: 

“Why are there so few lady game creators?”

What followed was an explosion of responses in the gamer community that sent Twitter buzzing and caught the eye of media outlets across the internet. Spurred by the seemingly straightforward question, women game designers began sharing stories about their personal struggles in the gaming industry. Under the hashtag #1reasonwhy, women from AAA video game companies to tabletop RPGs and LARPs came together to share the number one reasons they don’t want (or feel they aren’t able) to pursue game design as a career. The stories themselves are heartbreaking and speak for themselves.

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What do you get when you cross hallucinations, underground urban exploration and some trippy Led Zeppelin? No, it’s not someone’s bad college vacation memories—it’s this week’s episode of our favorite post-apoc drama, Revolution! The team behind got a boost from the rock legends (as you may have guessed from the title), featuring Zeppelin’s music in the ninth episode of the season, in which we discover that Nora hates alligators, all badass teen girls must shoot arrows in the post-apocalypse times, and oxygen deprivation makes you act like you’re on a serious drug trip. Let’s take a look at this week’s adventure, “Kashmir”!

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Welcome back to the quest for light, Revolution fans. We’re back with episode eight of the first season, just in time for our crew to have to solve one of the most difficult problems of the post-apocalypse: how do you cross a river when the writers just don’t want it to happen? This week’s episode is all about fording one body of water, how four adults can’t hold on to one piece of jewelry, and the massive problems that family can bring you in “Ties That Bind.” 

[Will they ever get across that damn river?]

It’s another week of lights out in our blackout speculative drama Revolution and this week the show pulled out every single stop. There’s revelation after revelation as the show’s creators dropped tons of long-awaited answers on loyal fans. Plus, they managed to do it while including a plot with adorable children, to boot! This week we’re taking a look at episode seven, “The Children’s Crusade” as we learn just who Randall is, how much Rachel Matheson really knew, and just how far a mother is willing to go to protect her children.

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Hey there, Revolution fans! So a funny thing happened on the way to covering episode six of our friendly neighborhood post-apoc blackout series: I got trapped in the middle of a real blackout! A hurricane named Sandy hit the East Coast and I suddenly found myself without power. I will say that it certainly put the whole future without electricity situation in perspective, and by day five I was wishing for one of those Blackout Necklaces to give me a little juice for my iPhone, just like Maggie. Thankfully the power came back and now I’m caught up in time to give you a double-header of episode six and the latest, episode seven.

So first, we’ll take a look at episode six, “Sex and Drugs,” in which we discover that Charlie looks good in a dress, unstable drug dealers are a problem in any time and place, and that OMG Aaron is a badass! Without further delay, let’s go to the replay!

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Every year, horror fans are treated to a smattering of books and films that attempt to innovate the genre. Maybe they find a new way to repackage slasher films, like Joss Whedon did in Cabin in the Woods, or they find a new way to present their story, like the “found footage” format of Paranormal Activity. One way to spice up tried and true tropes is to draw on different source material to craft your story. 

The western horror tradition draws on a shared body of common folklore standardized by western society and pop culture to create its tales of suspense and terror. But, if you want a rich body of folklore chock-full of the strange and supernatural that isn’t as familiar or well understood, you only have to look towards Jewish mythology for new ways of exploring the supernatural. Creative forces in Hollywood have discovered the power of Jewish folklore, as is evident from big budget movies like the recent The Possession and 2009’s The Unborn. But do they get their stories straight? For example, what is a dybbuk and can it really live in a box? And what about a golem? Let’s take a look at some of the denizens of the darkest parts of Jewish tradition to see what goes bump in the night.

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It’s not often you get to sit down in a room with three of the biggest names in the comic book industry and hear them talk about how to write. At New York Comic Con earlier this month, a giant room full of aspiring writers and fans crowded together to get advice and tips from three industry giants whose writing has inspired and intrigued for years: Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman, The Invisibles, Batman, New X-Men), Jonathan Hickman (Fantastic Four, Manhattan Project), and Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Saga). Throughout the hour, they dished on the creative process, their inspiration, and answered questions from the audience. 

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It’s been five weeks since NBC introduced  us to the post-apoc blackout drama Revolution and – dare I say it? Has the show finally hit its stride? This week our storylines collide, as our intrepid heroes finally catch up to Captain Neville and the Wandering Plotline, figure out that he’s seven kinds of crazy, and finally solve the mystery of No Name Nate! It’s train whistles, explosions and flashbacks in this week’s episode, “Soul Train.”

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If you’re a Marvel-head like me, you’ve been keeping an eye on the changes going on with Marvel’s NOW initiative. Suddenly, mutants are Avengers, Storm’s getting a mohawk and...Deadpool is punching ex-presidents in the face? What’s going on here? New York Comic Con gave Marvel a chance to showcase the best and brightest coming out of their new restructure. 

For a full breakdown on the NOW initiative you can check out this Reader’s Guide, but here’s a look straight out of NYCC at some of the best Marvel has to come. We’re going to focus here on two major branches of the Marvel U: the X-Men and Avengers titles. 

[Spoilers for AvX and hints about upcoming events and plotlines]