Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II 5: Discussion

by Taylor Anderson and Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Taylor: Sticking the landing is the hardest part of any endeavor. It doesn’t matter if it’s landing a plane, finishing a gymnastics routine, or writing the end to a story: it’s just plain difficult. In all of these examples, sticking the landing is hard because they require one final flourish of skill before the tension in the situation is resolved once and for all. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters II has to stick its landing in this, the final fifth issue. It does so successfully but in a way that is overshadowed by the brilliance that came before it. Continue reading

Shutter 2

shutter 2Today, Patrick and Greg are discussing Shutter 2, originally released May 14th, 2014

Patrick: Do you remember the first time you realized your childhood experience wasn’t the same as everyone else’s? My Grandparents lived in Florida over the winter, and my mother made it a priority to spend at least a week with them every year. That meant that she pulled us out of school in Wisconsin for two weeks every year (incidentally, it means we also spent a weekend at Disney every year before finishing the drive down to Anne and Elmer’s place). I had grown up assuming that everyone’s mother gathered two weeks worth of homework for their children before forcing a vacation at the least opportune time for everyone. This was a normal occurrence for the Ehlers family, and while it’s a simple and trivial example, it demonstrates how no one thinks their childhood is strange — or even unusual — until they grow up. Still, I think there’s part of me deep down that still feels like I should be able to take two weeks off to go to Disney apropo of nothing every winter. Katie’s childhood is undoubtedly stranger than mine, but she too has that creeping inkling of assumed normalcy. Only, y’know, it involves cat-gangsters, ghost ninjas and flying saucers. Continue reading