Alex Zalben
@azalben.bsky.social
9.6K followers 560 following 9.9K posts
Host/Producer: http://comicbookclublive.com | Buy my books: http://amzn.to/3t0NB2t | TCA member | Sure, I’ll be on your podcast | He/Him | http://linktr.ee/azalben
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azalben.bsky.social
Only took 45 years for me to realize Jack also has the shining in The Shining.
Reposted by Alex Zalben
ashleylynch.bsky.social
This is why the costumes are honestly brilliant. Ngo, who has never said a truthful thing in his entire life (remember the concrete milkshake?) now has to convince people inflatable Sesame Street and animal costumes are violent terrorists.

Sometimes you just need an image too silly to demonize.
michaelehayden.bsky.social
“They are highly organized … [they] have purchased their own animal costumes”
Andy ngo mad about muppets again — this time in Chicago
azalben.bsky.social
And not that I love this, but if it's about saving money and time I guarantee there are AT LEAST 100 different artists out there who will make you absolutely great period replicas you could exploit for chump change. At least then you’re paying a human, and getting the aesthetic you’re aiming for.
azalben.bsky.social
It's the same problem as the AI graphics in Late Night With the Devil, which are jarringly and obviously not of the time period. It takes you straight out of what you’re watching, when it should ideally immerse you in a world instead.
azalben.bsky.social
What really bothers me in using AI to "smooth over" an artist's work, even beyond the AI of it all, is it makes it look LESS like the thing they're trying to ape, aka old movie posters, which means it's less successful at conveying the thing they're ostensibly trying to do.
azalben.bsky.social
Er, I think I forgot to embed the actual podcast in this post. But it's there now!
azalben.bsky.social
Just in case someone skips/tunes out from the opening of a show/movie/book/etc, the bad guy should also shout "this is bad, don't do this, I'm the bad guy" whenever they're doing bad stuff.
azalben.bsky.social
Since folks keep missing the pointof these things, we need to institute a rule in fiction that the first few minutes of a movie or TV show, or first few pages of a comic or book, begin with the characters looking at the camera/reader and saying "hello, I am the bad guy, do not identify with me"
samthielman.com
It’s very funny to see him say this about Ozymandias, maybe the only character in Watchmen who can’t be correctly described as an antihero
sharonk.bsky.social
thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about
Reposted by Alex Zalben
samthielman.com
It’s very funny to see him say this about Ozymandias, maybe the only character in Watchmen who can’t be correctly described as an antihero
sharonk.bsky.social
thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.
azalben.bsky.social
Caught up with @al-ewing.bsky.social at NYCC to talk about Absolute Evil, Absolute Green Lantern, Venom, and why Paul might be good, actually.
comicbookclub.bsky.social
Al Ewing joins the podcast from Artist Alley at New York Comic Con to talk Absolute Evil, Absolute Green Lantern, and Venom. Plus: lots of talk about Paul.
Comic Book Club @ NYCC 2025: Al Ewing
Al Ewing joins the podcast from Artist Alley at New York Comic Con to talk Absolute Evil, Absolute Green Lantern, and Venom.
comicbookclublive.com
azalben.bsky.social
Getting a lot of questions about the new game show I’m pitching titled “Hey, Remember That?” To answer one big one: you don’t need to offer up any details or answer further questions. They show you a picture of something, and if you remember it, you win a prize.
azalben.bsky.social
There should be a game show called “Hey, Remember That?” where they show you pictures of things, and if you remember them you win prizes.
Reposted by Alex Zalben
mleelunsford.com
I've made this scale to help people out during this holiday season
a scale of Dracula to Not Dracula going from right to left: Dracula (Dracula), Count Orlok (Legally Distinct Dracula), Drake from Blade Trinity (Might Be Dracula), Vlad the Poker (Probably Not Dracula, and Morbius (Not Dracula)
azalben.bsky.social
The Beauty will be released in the third week of January.
azalben.bsky.social
They're going to show us a Christopher Cross musical number, with Ramos singing along to "Sailing"
azalben.bsky.social
Kutcher and Murphy are discussing how the stigma against elective cosmetic procedures is disappearing by the day, and wonder why you can get braces but not your face improved.

...okay
azalben.bsky.social
When you take The Beauty, you don't know when it's going to hit, but then you collapse into a pile of goo.

"We called it the flesh sacks," said Murphy, adding this is followed by a "rebirth."
azalben.bsky.social
Murphy: "When I talk about this show I feel like Stefon from Saturday Night Live because this... show... has.. it... all."