Andy Ihnatko's golden rule about photographing cosplayers: You must never do anything that makes the cosplayer wish you hadn't taken that photo.

Last month I asked my friends to write about books they loved (you can read all the essays here). This month, I invited them to write about their favorite graphic novels, and they selected some excellent titles. I hope you enjoy them! (Read all the Great Graphic Novel essays here.) -- Mark

West Coast Avengers, by Steve Englehart and Al Milgrom

TIME magazine chose to put the money quote from Richard Schickel's review of Raiders Of The Lost Ark right on the cover:

"A MOVIE MOVIE!"

Was there any need to say more? It's a perfect review, in three simple words. "Raiders" broke absolutely no new ground whatsoever. It was old-fashioned at its core. But it was engineered to hit every button that gives us pleasure as moviegoers. Here is a movie that reminds us of why we love movies.

West Coast Avengers -- the original 1984 four-issue limited series and the first 42 or so issues of the monthly that followed -- was "A COMIC BOOK COMIC BOOK!" And that's why it's one of my favorite series ever. It anticipated Marvel's current vogue for spinning off a popular logo into multiple franchises. The Whackos were formed when the New York team's leader decided to create a Los Angeles-based team, designated to handle "all threats west of the Mississippi."

It turned out that Earth and the Universe were both located somewhere of Indianapolis. It seemed as though every threat that affected the whole planet and every battle that involved warring alien factions was handled by the original East Coast team in their own book. Read the rest

Last week, Boing Boing presented a series of essays about movies that have had a profound effect on our invited essayists. We are extending the series for several additional days. See all the essays in the Mind Blowing Movies series. -- Mark

[Video Link]To date, the most mind-blowing film I've ever seen was 1980's The Stunt Man, directed by Richard Rush. This movie truly had exactly that sort of effect on me, through scene after scene, until the very end.

And by "the very end" I don't mean "the end of the movie." I mean "the very end of the VHS cassette I first saw it on." I sat there in my chair, staring blankly at the screen with this fixed, open-mouth grin on my face after the credits rolled and the screen went to black. There was some blinking. No drooling as far as I can recall, but otherwise, I spent those several minutes staring at a black screen and trying to process what I'd just seen. What blew my mind wasn't the story itself so much as how it'd been told. As I reviewed the experience, I started to appreciate that The Stunt Man is possibly the finest magic trick I'd ever seen. The trick is over, it gratefully releases its grip on your sense of free will and independent observation, and you start to appreciate just how skilled the magician was.

This happy mental state was only broken by the THUNK of the tape stopping at the end of the leader and then auto-rewinding in the VHS deck. Read the rest