Posts

Showing posts with the label biography

Lucas Blogs About Mengele

Image
I took the dust jacket off while reading this one in the break room at work. What in the world possessed me to read a book about Josef Mengele, the Nazi scientist known as "the Angel of Death" for his horrific experiments on children at Auschwitz? Well, I was initially drawn to it because the author, David G. Marwell, is a historian who worked with the Justice Department to help track down Mengele (or rather, his remains) in the 1980s, and I felt a morbid curiosity about how exactly Mengele managed to evade capture for nearly forty-four years. Also, I remember I was annoyed with the role he played in Amazon's The Man in the High Castle adaptation, where he's depicted as one of the scientists testing out a machine to travel between worlds. I mean, seriously, Mengele had doctorates in medicine and anthropology. He didn't have the background in theoretical physics that would be necessary to build a portal. That said, he definitely would be interested in performing ex...

Lucas Blogs About Jack Kirby

Image
True story, the Krackle effect actually emanated from Jack Kirby's person during moments of inspiration. Also, any statement immediately following or preceding the phrase "true story" is a lie. So, what's this book's deal? Well, as you might guess from the title: Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics is a comic book biography of Jack Kirby (né Jacob Kurtzberg) one of the most influential comic book artists of the Twentieth (or any other) Century. It's written and drawn by Tom Scioli. You may recall that in the past I have expressed enthusiasm for comic books based on characters created by or evoking the style of Jack Kirby. You may have mentioned him a few times, yes. Heck yes, I have! Even before I knew who he was I was a fan of his creations. I loved the X-Men, Iron Man, and Fantastic 4 cartoons in the 90s. I'll give you the X-Men but the Iron Man and FF cartoons in the 90s sucked. I don't deny that, but I loved them. I especially lo...