Rick Flom

Sean Howe on Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the many other personalities who inspired 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story':

Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story talks about the Golden Age, the cosmic era, the dark days, and the prime movers of comic books.

Bio: Rick Flom is a writer living in Philadelphia.

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Sean Howe on Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the many other personalities who inspired 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story'

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"The Marvel people felt like an extended family to me," Sean Howe said about his new book, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. "They were like the uncles that you never really got to see but you really liked—I just wanted to get more of that story. That was the personal spark that interested me. Honestly, I was really excited about the idea of somebody writing a book about it, but nobody was doing it, so it was a case of writing a book I wanted to read.” More

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By Rick Flom

on October 9th, 2012 12:10pm

 
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The authors of 'Leaping Tall Buildings' imagine comic-book creators as the real superheroes

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“The history all stems out of New York,” Irving told me on the phone. “It’s what Seattle is to coffee or what Hollywood is to movies. But we began to get opportunities to interview people who came in from out of town, people that we couldn’t pass up. And we saw that it was about more than just New York, which is how it wound up becoming Leaping Tall Buildings.” More

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By Rick Flom

on August 15th, 2012 1:07pm

 
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Scott Aukerman on the evolution of 'Comedy Bang Bang'

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Comedy Bang Bang’s latest iteration, the travelling stage show (appearing tomorrow night at the Highline Ballroom), is a culmination of that decade of work and a hybrid of all that came before: the stand-up comedy showcase; the radio show; the wildly popular podcast; and its latest incarnation, the recently-debuted TV program on the IFC network. More

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By Rick Flom

on August 6th, 2012 1:16pm

 
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Neil Young's latest album with Crazy Horse sounds like a bootleg, and maybe should have been

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Young is renowned for having a massive backlog of unreleased material, and the logic behind what he’s found suitable for release has been idiosyncratic at best. There’s little question that this very obstinacy (perceived as eccentricity or rebellion, or both) is a key aspect of his appeal, his myth. So it should come as no surprise that, despite the fanfare surrounding Crazy Horse’s return, this album offers a lackluster display of their powers, or that another intriguing concept album would be so indifferently executed. But it’s become necessary to apply a kind of caveat emptor policy to nearly everything Neil Young releases, particularly as each album seems to act as a negation of the one before. More

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By Rick Flom

on June 5th, 2012 11:25am

 
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Jay Ruttenberg on his comedy zine, 'The Lowbrow Reader,' and its new tenth anniversary collection

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Such pieces help to distinguish The Lowbrow Reader from its online counterparts. The focus falls on the immortal icons of the form, as well as the forgotten, cult-ish corners, rather than ephemeral recaps of sitcoms and stand-up specials. The book is refreshingly free of irony, and Ruttenberg claims a conscious effort was made to “avoid a winking appreciation” of the material discussed. However you may feel about Adam Sandler (who serves as a sort of talisman for the Reader as a whole), Ruttenberg’s “Billy Madison: A Love Letter” convincingly treats him as a profoundly influential benchmark of comedy’s recent past. More

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By Rick Flom

on May 22nd, 2012 4:04pm

 
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Leonard Cohen's latest, 'Old Ideas,' takes the singer back to one good old idea: Melody

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Now we have a new batch of songs on Old Ideas, out this week. Whatever their provenance, mystical or mundane, what constitutes a good song for Leonard Cohen, at age 77, with his history? There's no explicit sense in the songs themselves of why this is a collection of "old ideas" (though the phrase itself is an old idea: it was the working title for the album before it), other than containing "ideas" from someone who is "old." But while very much in line with the Leonard Cohen Sound we've come to expect in the 21st Century, these songs contain some interesting echoes of a far more musical Cohen, one we haven't heard in a while. More

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By Rick Flom

on February 1st, 2012 9:32am