Top 10 geek culture highlights of 2011
Hello, 2012! May you not suck as much as 2011 did! To be fair, 2011 did have many good moments, especially when it came to my writing. As a longtime D&D player, I was thrilled to be published in the official magazines, Dragon (as mentioned here, here, and here) and, just recently, Dungeon (here, about which I’ll post shortly). New friendships were made, which -- to quote Rupert Giles -- is almost unheard of for a man my age, and my family remains an unending source of delight.
One great thing about 2012 right off the bat? The first week of January means that it’s time for the third annual Geek Culture Highlights of the Year, celebrating some of 2011's coolest or most significant events in the realms of film, TV, comics, tech, and other things geek. (Feel free to check out the 2009 and 2010 lists.)
10. NBC’s The Event implodes. A truly magnificent opening episode soon gave way to running-in-place mush, featuring dumb - I mean REALLY dumb - characters. NBC, which had aggressively promoted the ambitious, expensive series as the flagship of its fall 2010 schedule, pulled the plug last spring. The cancellation of The Event, if considered separately, would not merit a spot on the list. However, its demise is significant in that it essentially marked the end of the major networks' attempts to replicate the success of Lost. (R.I.P. Daybreak, Flash-Forward, Heroes, etc.) You may have noticed that many of the new genre shows either use tried-and-true episodic tales (Grimm) or have story arcs that are more limited in scope (An American Horror Story).
9. Angry Birds. The addictive “exploding birds vs. taunting pigs” game is everywhere now. There’s even spin-off merchandise. And yes, it’s fun -- and it has introduced non-gamers to the joys of gaming. Bonus Thought to Assuage Any Guilt About Playing Angry Birds: It teaches kids physics!
8. Smallville concludes. Can you believe that this series actually completed 10 freakin’ seasons? It even survived its parent network, the WB. While my attention to it waxed and waned over the years, the tales of young Clark Kent certainly got a huge boost from the creative input of DC’s Geoff Johns, who cleverly brought in many comics icons in the series’ final years, including the Justice Society and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Although the last episode may have suffered from high expectations and a visual cop-out on Darkseid, the series deserves high praise for succeeding in its ambitious goals (unlike, say, The Event).
7. IBM’s Watson defeats two humans in Jeopardy. I, for one, welcome our new Skynet overlords.
6. Superhero Summer at the movies. Thor. X-Men: First Class. Green Lantern. Captain America. The film that was most highly promoted was the biggest bust (Green Lantern), while the film that had been trashed on Internet forums months before its release was arguably the best of the bunch (X-Men: First Class). Go figure. Bonus for Captain America: the post-credits teaser for May 2012’s The Avengers. Sweet! So sweet, in fact, that I’ll save for another day the topic of whether the studios’ reliance on summertime superhero films is a really bad sign for Hollywood.
5. Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman style. His episode, “The Doctor’s Wife,” is classic Gaiman, closely looking at something that you’ve long taken for granted and turning those conceptions inside out. The Doctor, marooned in a pocket universe, has a true hearts-to-heart encounter with the “soul” of the TARDIS, now trapped in the body of a dying woman. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory endure horrible torments at the hands of the sadistic, murderous intellect that now inhabits the TARDIS. Gaiman (a longtime Who fan) also uses his tale to pay homage to the series’ history. The best single episode of Doctor Who since the relaunch, and possibly one of the best stories in the series’ nearly fifty years.
4. DC’s “New 52.” A few years have gone by since DC’s Infinite Crisis, which reset DC’s superhero continuity for, oh, the third time in 20 years. You know what that means, right? Time to do it again! DC boldly released 52 new Number 1 issues in September and October, and the initial sales have made it seem worthwhile - for now. Creatively, does the reboot measure up? Read opinions here and here. The Best of the New 52 (based on my VERY limited exposure): Animal Man, Demon Knights, and the intriguing, horror-slanted take on Wonder Woman. The Worst of the New 52: DC loses its mind (and some readers) by presenting the double whammy of mindless sex zombie Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws and the gratuitous, anatomy-defying, Bat-nipple-tickling rooftop sex between Batman and Catwoman in Catwoman #1. WTF, DC? The portrayals raised a ruckus online (see here, here, and especially here). I wouldn’t make a big deal out of this, except that some of DC’s creators flaunted their misogyny with one jerking hand while fatuously proclaiming their desire to attract new readers (including women) with the other.
3. The triumphant end of the Harry Potter films. I’ve mentioned series with ambitious goals above, but c’mon! The Harry Potter films take the cake! What are the odds that a film series that began in 2001 would reach its conclusion after eight movies and ten years -- and still have the core cast members and actually manage to sustain if not improve quality over that span? Fifty points for Gryffindor. (A sign of J.K. Rowling’s great success: While writing this post, I learned that Microsoft Word has “Gryffindor” in its dictionary. Bravo.)
2. HBO’s A Game of Thrones. Years after the Lord of the Rings movies proved that heroic fantasy COULD be financially and critically successful, HBO launched its adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” series to great acclaim. Viewers also soon learned that, just as in the books, no character is safe.
1. The death of Apple’s Steve Jobs. He helped shape our modern culture, for better or worse. Technophiles continue to debate whether Jobs’ products made us value slicker design over better functionality. In any event, it’s practically impossible to go through the day and NOT encounter something that was born of Jobs’ brilliance. His death by cancer was a huge loss.
Honorable mention: Although it didn’t get the attention of, say, DC’s reboot, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites is the best comic/graphic novel of the year. It’s a chilling and occasionally heart-shredding horror tale that might come across as a Tom Sawyer/Scooby Doo mashup written by Joe R. Lansdale. Read it.
Anything you want to add?
One great thing about 2012 right off the bat? The first week of January means that it’s time for the third annual Geek Culture Highlights of the Year, celebrating some of 2011's coolest or most significant events in the realms of film, TV, comics, tech, and other things geek. (Feel free to check out the 2009 and 2010 lists.)
10. NBC’s The Event implodes. A truly magnificent opening episode soon gave way to running-in-place mush, featuring dumb - I mean REALLY dumb - characters. NBC, which had aggressively promoted the ambitious, expensive series as the flagship of its fall 2010 schedule, pulled the plug last spring. The cancellation of The Event, if considered separately, would not merit a spot on the list. However, its demise is significant in that it essentially marked the end of the major networks' attempts to replicate the success of Lost. (R.I.P. Daybreak, Flash-Forward, Heroes, etc.) You may have noticed that many of the new genre shows either use tried-and-true episodic tales (Grimm) or have story arcs that are more limited in scope (An American Horror Story).
9. Angry Birds. The addictive “exploding birds vs. taunting pigs” game is everywhere now. There’s even spin-off merchandise. And yes, it’s fun -- and it has introduced non-gamers to the joys of gaming. Bonus Thought to Assuage Any Guilt About Playing Angry Birds: It teaches kids physics!
8. Smallville concludes. Can you believe that this series actually completed 10 freakin’ seasons? It even survived its parent network, the WB. While my attention to it waxed and waned over the years, the tales of young Clark Kent certainly got a huge boost from the creative input of DC’s Geoff Johns, who cleverly brought in many comics icons in the series’ final years, including the Justice Society and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Although the last episode may have suffered from high expectations and a visual cop-out on Darkseid, the series deserves high praise for succeeding in its ambitious goals (unlike, say, The Event).
7. IBM’s Watson defeats two humans in Jeopardy. I, for one, welcome our new Skynet overlords.
6. Superhero Summer at the movies. Thor. X-Men: First Class. Green Lantern. Captain America. The film that was most highly promoted was the biggest bust (Green Lantern), while the film that had been trashed on Internet forums months before its release was arguably the best of the bunch (X-Men: First Class). Go figure. Bonus for Captain America: the post-credits teaser for May 2012’s The Avengers. Sweet! So sweet, in fact, that I’ll save for another day the topic of whether the studios’ reliance on summertime superhero films is a really bad sign for Hollywood.
5. Doctor Who, Neil Gaiman style. His episode, “The Doctor’s Wife,” is classic Gaiman, closely looking at something that you’ve long taken for granted and turning those conceptions inside out. The Doctor, marooned in a pocket universe, has a true hearts-to-heart encounter with the “soul” of the TARDIS, now trapped in the body of a dying woman. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory endure horrible torments at the hands of the sadistic, murderous intellect that now inhabits the TARDIS. Gaiman (a longtime Who fan) also uses his tale to pay homage to the series’ history. The best single episode of Doctor Who since the relaunch, and possibly one of the best stories in the series’ nearly fifty years.
4. DC’s “New 52.” A few years have gone by since DC’s Infinite Crisis, which reset DC’s superhero continuity for, oh, the third time in 20 years. You know what that means, right? Time to do it again! DC boldly released 52 new Number 1 issues in September and October, and the initial sales have made it seem worthwhile - for now. Creatively, does the reboot measure up? Read opinions here and here. The Best of the New 52 (based on my VERY limited exposure): Animal Man, Demon Knights, and the intriguing, horror-slanted take on Wonder Woman. The Worst of the New 52: DC loses its mind (and some readers) by presenting the double whammy of mindless sex zombie Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws and the gratuitous, anatomy-defying, Bat-nipple-tickling rooftop sex between Batman and Catwoman in Catwoman #1. WTF, DC? The portrayals raised a ruckus online (see here, here, and especially here). I wouldn’t make a big deal out of this, except that some of DC’s creators flaunted their misogyny with one jerking hand while fatuously proclaiming their desire to attract new readers (including women) with the other.
3. The triumphant end of the Harry Potter films. I’ve mentioned series with ambitious goals above, but c’mon! The Harry Potter films take the cake! What are the odds that a film series that began in 2001 would reach its conclusion after eight movies and ten years -- and still have the core cast members and actually manage to sustain if not improve quality over that span? Fifty points for Gryffindor. (A sign of J.K. Rowling’s great success: While writing this post, I learned that Microsoft Word has “Gryffindor” in its dictionary. Bravo.)
2. HBO’s A Game of Thrones. Years after the Lord of the Rings movies proved that heroic fantasy COULD be financially and critically successful, HBO launched its adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Fire and Ice” series to great acclaim. Viewers also soon learned that, just as in the books, no character is safe.
1. The death of Apple’s Steve Jobs. He helped shape our modern culture, for better or worse. Technophiles continue to debate whether Jobs’ products made us value slicker design over better functionality. In any event, it’s practically impossible to go through the day and NOT encounter something that was born of Jobs’ brilliance. His death by cancer was a huge loss.
Honorable mention: Although it didn’t get the attention of, say, DC’s reboot, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson’s Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites is the best comic/graphic novel of the year. It’s a chilling and occasionally heart-shredding horror tale that might come across as a Tom Sawyer/Scooby Doo mashup written by Joe R. Lansdale. Read it.
Anything you want to add?