Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 146 is brought to you by The Comic Book Syndicate (who we erroneously referred to as ‘The Comics Syndicate’ during our live broadcast–many apologies!!), whose interview with award-winning comic book writer and artist Darwyn Cooke at Toronto Fan Expo a few weeks back garnered quite a bit of attention from comic book fans due to Cooke’s comments regarding the current state of the superhero comics genre and why he wants no part of it. We devote quite a bit of this hour to putting in our own two cents regarding Cooke’s observations, which we, for the most part agree with, save one notable exception. If you want to see the video and hear the words from Cooke himself, check out the clip below, and check out the Syndicate’s website, ’cause they deserve some love after scoring a gem of an interview like this!

In addition to our own response to Cooke’s observations, we put in our two cents about Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth entry in the Resident Evil film franchise. This is the second film in the series to be written AND directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (he served as writer and producer only on Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction), who we vehemently defend as a capable, if not all that innovative, filmmaker who does NOT, under any circumstances whatsoever, deserve to be compared to the director whose very name inspires either snickers or shudders from movie fans who might hear it, German film director Uwe Boll. This chapter in the story of Alice and her fellow survivors of the Umbrella Corporation’s zombie apocalypse had the biggest box office opening of any film in the series ($26.7 million), probably due in part to its being shot in 3D, and as a Resident Evil movie and a video game adaptation is fairly entertaining. Plot holes the size of battleships? Sure. Not a whole lot of acting? Of course not. But do we seriously go to these movies for solid plotting and thoughtful characterization? HELL no. More on that in the podcast …

We wrap up this episode with reviews of two new releases from DC Comics last week: Green Lantern #57 (Johns, Mahnke) and Batman and Robin #14 (Morrison, Irving). Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 125 is brought to you once again by Florida Supercon. We’re just days away from the beginning of the fun down at the Doubletree Miami Mart, Airport Hotel and Exhibition Center. As we announced during the last hour, hotel rooms for the event are sold out for Friday and Saturday night, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting down there and enjoying as much of the convention as possible. If you’re there on Saturday or Sunday, make a point to head over the main stage and check out Revenge of the Nerd Comics, featuring our friend Lisa Corrao along with a host of other comedians speaking geek as only they can. We have a great chat with Lisa to start off this hour, talking about Revenge of the Nerd Comics, along with Star Wars geekdom, going to conventions, and the perils of handmade Halloween costumes at early ages. We thank Lisa once again for taking time between her performances at Bonkerz Comedy Club in Daytona Beach to chat with us for a bit–it was a lot of fun and hopefully we can have her back on the show again soon!

Also in this hour, we present our first reviews of Burn Notice on USA and Merlin on SyFy. Both shows have a lot going for them, including clever writing and great character actors having fun with great material. We’re going to keep on reviewing Burn Notice and Merlin, but what other shows we cover is still in your hands. There’s ONE more day to vote in our Summer Shows Poll over on our Message Board at SomaCow.net/forum. We need more votes to break ties between shows, so sign up for a FREE profile there and cast your vote before tomorrow. Make your voice heard!

We wrap up the hour by spotlighting two comic releases from last week: Batman #700 (Morrison, Daniel, Quitely, Kubert, Finch) from DC Comics, and Captain America #606 (Brubaker, Guice) from Marvel. Enjoy!

Originally posted at PrimeTimeGeek.com.

PTG Episode 77 is brought to you by the wonderful world of audio editing. Yes, through the miracle that is Adobe Audition 3, we here at PTG can bring to you 1) a version of Episode 77 that is not only 7 minutes shorter than the original broadcast version (much closer to the 1 hour that we should be clocking in at every week); 2) an episode highlighted by music from guitar god Joe Satriani, specifically selections from his 2nd and 3rd studio albums, Surfing with the Alien (1987) and Flying in a Blue Dream (1989), respectively; and 3) an episode free of the host’s breaking of the fourth wall and actually stopping the show and getting up from the host’s chair to see what could possibly have agitated the dogs at the SomaCow compound (one dog in particular whose name starts with a ‘C’) to such an extent that she sounded hoarse from barking. If you listen closely to this podcast, you can probably still hear the barking during the first ten minutes of the show during moments while I’m talking, however–the software is good, but it’s not THAT good. Ah, well.

So in this episode we talk about some of the major announcements that came out of DC Entertainment last week. As promised, here are links to the announcements themselves at DC Universe: The Source:

• DCU in 2010: “The Return of Bruce Wayne” hits in April
• DCU in 2010: Welcome to Earth-One
• DCU in 2010: The “War of the Supermen” Begins

There were quite a few more stories posted that week in The Source that we didn’t cover in the broadcast that you might want to check out, including the announcement of noted TV writer Marc Guggenheim, most recently of FlashForward, taking over as the full-time writer of Action Comics, and Wonder Woman renumbering to celebrate her 600th issue. The cover to what will be Wonder Woman #600, provided by none other than George Perez, is the definition of “classic”-head over to the story and check it out!

Also in this episode we continue our 3-part “Best of 2009″ series with what were, in our somewhat-less-than-humble-opinions, the Top 5 New Comic Series of 2009. Now once again, we limited our consideration to titles we reviewed during our broadcasts and to titles that specifically started in 2009, whether they were limited series or ongoing series. All five of our choices are pictured in the image below:

Agree? Disagree? Know a title that would have made our list had we actually read it? Leave your comments and your feedback in comments, please–look forward to reading them!

Prime Time Geek Episode 29 is brought to you by the (still) most addicting CCG out there, Magic: the Gathering. It doesn’t matter one bit if you’ve been out of the game for months or years; it’s still just as fun, just as engrossing, just as addicting in terms of wanting to keep playing and get more cards to improve your decks to be ready for the next battle. The new Alara Reborn expansion is every bit as fun as the folks over at Cool Stuff Games told us it would be, but there’s something even more exciting coming next month.

M10, the latest core set and rules revision for MTG, is coming to stores the weekend of July 18th, with pre-release events going on all over the country the weekend prior. Keep checking back with Prime Time Geek over the coming weeks as we gear up to cover the pre-release event going on at Cool Stuff Games over in Winter Park, Florida. There’s even a chance we’ll be doing a special live broadcast of PTG from Cool Stuff Games, so we’ll keep you posted on that. Stop by their store, or if you don’t live in the Orlando/Winter Park area, check out their online store at www.coolstuffinc.com!

And yeah, in case anyone is wondering from the title of this episode, I’m a Queen fan and a Highlander fan, so I’ve had those songs in my head all day. “So here we are … we’re the princes of the universe …”

Prime Time Geek Episode 26 is brought to you by Tate’s Comics in Lauderhill, Florida. Well, not exactly brought to you by Tate’s, since they’re not a sponsor, but they are REALLY cool. We here at PTG wholeheartedly recommend you check out their website, and if you’re in South Florida and love comics, toys, anime, gaming, or just about anything pop-culture related and you haven’t been up to Tate’s, shame on you. Get in your car, Google the directions, and go. Right now. Put the podcast on your iPod and take us with you, ’cause we’d love a return trip over there.

[NOTE: The correct address of Tate's Comics is 4566 N. University Dr. Lauderhill, FL 33351--during the podcast I erroneously located the store at 4555 N. University. I apologize for any confusion.]

Now, if you live in and around where Tate’s is located down there in the Lauderhill/Sunrise/Plantation area of Broward County, Florida, the name “Past, Present, and Future” might also be familiar to you, and might seem a strange choice of title for an episode of PTG during which much time is spent going ga-ga over Tate’s. But aside from being a store name held at one time by a store quite close to Tate’s, Crossroad Comics and Games, “past, present, and future” is very much a theme running throughout this entire hour of PTG. In the literal sense, it relates to both of the comics we spotlight in this episode: Batman #687, which ushers in a new era for the Caped Crusader as Dick Grayson takes on the mantle of the Bat; and Buck Rogers #1, which shows the beginning of an exciting new envisioning of one of sci-fi’s most venerable time-traveling heroes. In their own ways, Batman and Buck Rogers are characters whose appeal defies the passage of time, and no consideration of their new adventures can escape some form of comparison or contemplation of what has come before.

But Episode 26 is also very much about memories and change. After all, a trip to South Florida for me is a trip down “Memory Lane”, an opportunity to drive along the streets that my friends and I back in the day cruised upon as we quested for gaming books, for new anime, for Battletech miniatures, for rare toys, and just about anything else that we might have fixed our sights on back in the day. Trips into that area require that I reconcile those memories of past experiences with present circumstances, such as the fact that the store my friends and I referred to as “The Shrine” (the aforementioned Crossroad Comics) due to its sheer size and its vast selection of geekly distractions has since changed ownership twice and is now most certainly the second option for geek shopping in the area. “Going home” means recalling the past, reconciling it with changes in the present, and contemplating the future–it’s simply unavoidable, especially if you have someone with you who is seeing it all with fresh eyes. More often than not, those places that are so special in our memories as childhood haunts and playgrounds lose some of their lustre once they are stripped of the veil of nostalgia and seen under the present’s harsher light. Time is often unkind … often but not always.

Yes, the store in North Miami Beach where I bought my comics all through high school, the store I knew as “Super Heroes Unlimited,” is now known as “Villains” and is a fundamentally different store than it was 20 years ago, before the advent of Collectible Card Games. And yes, “The Shrine” may have been eclipsed in greatness by the awesomeness that is Tate’s Comics. But the very landscape of Geekdom in South Florida is changed beyond belief, simply because it is visible and vibrant, whereas in my day one could argue it was non-existent. This is very good thing in my mind, and though I might look back fondly on the way things were when I was younger, I certainly can’t argue that its a very good time to be a geek in South Florida, and I can’t imagine it changing for anything but the better in the future.

Amazing how things change.

Prime Time Geek Episode 25 is brought to you by Bad Apple Comics. Vote for Bad Apple Comics as “Best Comic Store” in this year’s Orlando Weekly “Best Of Orlando 2009″ poll by clicking HERE. They’ll be your best friend, and so will PTG. (Okay, so maybe not your BEST friend, but we’ll both like you a whole lot.)

Lots of time in this episode is spent talking comics – special guest co-host Matthew Ruele spent some time before (and during) the show getting caught up on Marvel’s meltdown of the Ultimates universe, Ultimatum, which could carry the alternate title of “So You Think That’s a Gruesome Death?” Later in the episode, Bad Apple Comics General Manager Shawn Schinault calls in to talk further about Ultimatum, as well as the amazingly well done Old Man Logan story in Wolverine, the aftermath of Batman: Battle for the Cowl, and the new Batman and Robin #1. Shawn gives some interesting insights on the reasoning behind Ultimatum’s brutality, Old Man Logan’s brilliance, Batman: BFTC’s blunders, and Batman and Robin’s bright future. If you’re over at the Bad Apple store on OBT and you need a recommendation on something great to read, you could a lot worse than to ask Shawn to recommend something for you. The man simply KNOWS what’s good in a comic book.

Truthfully, as Matthew pointed out, it is quite sad that so many of Marvel’s heroes in this world have fallen, if for no other reason that these often-brilliant new takes on classic characters were once celebrated as much-needed revitalizing energy for a company that needed a shot in the arm. As Ultimatum rumbles to its final, body-count raising conclusion next month, I can’t escape the growing perception that writer Jeph Loeb’s blood-soaked opus is growing into an exercise in seediness, something akin to Hostel-like torture porn, where we as readers get to see characters we’ve come to care about sacrificed on the altar of crossover-event sensationalism. It’s simply not possible for issue #5 to not kill half the remaining cast, because to do anything less would be a letdown in comparison to what’s come before. We’ve come this far, Jeph–why not simply blow up the entire Ultimates Earth and be done with it?

In Hour 1 of PTG Episode 6 our special guest, Ryan Bonifant from The Sports Buzz calls in to about his “New XBox Experience”, as he is now a XBox owner after years as a Playstation man, and to talk a little about Fables 2 and Ninja Gaiden. Also in this hour, the DC Comics Spotlight falls on the incomprehensible mess that was Final Crisis #7, how the whole series holds up when read in a single sitting, and its relative success as an event comic in relation to its predecessor, 2005’s Infinite Crisis. I wrap up the hour by taking a long moment to say goodbye to the video format that marked the beginning of me calling myself a “videophile”, the predecessor of DVD, the LaserDisc player, by talking about some of the titles I still own in the format, including the classic 80s anime Bubblegum Crisis. All this and more in Hour 1 of PTG Episode 6 – listen to it now right here at primetimegeek.com!

Earlier this month, Pioneer Electronics quietly announced that they were halting production on the last models of LaserDisc players they had still been producing up until this point. LaserDisc has a special place in my heart, and so in this week’s PTG we’ll have a proper requiem for the now-ALL-dead format (up until now, because machines were still being made and a handful of laserdiscs were being produced and sold each year in Japan, it was safe to call the format “mostly dead”). That, plus a visit from Sports Buzz Ryan, a talk with JC Martinez about his latest Podgnosticast blog, and all the usual comic book rambling, including a healthy alleluia that “Final Crisis” is FINALLY over and more fawning over the work of Ed Brubaker, this time on “Daredevil”. Prime Time Geek Episode 6, live tomorrow night on ustream.tv – don’t miss it!

In Hour 1 of PTG Episode 5, we hit on the WORST spoiler EVER (or at least the worst in my recent memory) for an upcoming DC Comics storyline, Grant Morrison’s “Superman Beyond” and how it helped me come to the realization that I am, in fact, incredibly stupid, and filmmaker and comics writer Terry Cronin of Students of the Unusual and the Mega-Con Indie Film Expo stops by to talk about how the Film Expo has grown in its five years as a part of Mega-Con and what attendees can expect at this year’s Expo (hint: Zombie Confederate Massacre!).

Oh, and during the broadcast, once he heard that the Red Lanterns currently appearing in Green Lantern comics do not use their rings to attack their enemies, but instead spew rage in the form of corrosive red energy from their mouths, Geoff of SomaCow suggested that his good friend and co-host Mickey might be a fine recruit for the Red Lantern Corps. Let the record show that I disagreed–I need to stay on Mickey’s good side or this site won’t work. Find all this and more here in this week’s Prime Time Geek!

In Hour 1 of this week’s Prime Time Geek, the DC Spotlight falls on Final Crisis #7 and the “death” of Batman (no, REALLY this time!), we say a fond farewell to Ricardo Montalban, who was beloved by most for his role as “Mr. Roarke” on Fantasy Island, but was revered by Star Trek fans for his depiction of Khan Noonian Singh in the Original Series and in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and we cover Watchmen, Iron Man 2 and (oddly enough) live-action Cowboy Bebop casting news. Also, Michael Poley of the sketch comedy group Night of the Night Wolf calls into the show to talk about his group, their videos and live performances, and their particular brand of comedy. Check it out, and check back at midweek for Hour 2 …