Typebar Magazine (Issue 8 Out Now!)

I'm really really excited for this one. Debuts on Monday!!

"Who Wants to Be a Superhero? The Last Window Into a Pre-MCU World" by Joshua Pantalleresco. The image is the cast of who wants to be a superhero? on the left and the right image is the cast of The Avengers.

A forgotten reality show is the last snapshot we have of how the world viewed superheroes before they became a foundational pillar of American popular culture.

PUBLISHING MONDAY: Who Wants to Be a Superhero? The Last Window Into a Pre-MCU World by Joshua Pantalleresco

Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman, and the Horror of False Freedom The real tragedy is believing yourself free when freedom is impossible.

The true terror in Shirley Jackson's Hangsaman is the illusion of freedom

www.typebarmagazine.com/shirley-jack...

niche intersectional content alert 🚨

Dungeons, Dragons, and Game Design: Why 4E Rules the D&D Roost I doubt Dungeons and Dragons will ever be so honest again.

#SorryNotSorry: 4E is the Best D&D Ruleset

www.typebarmagazine.com/dungeons-dra...

Professional Wrestling, a Multi-Era Musical Analysis A musical tour through wrestling history.

What were the best professional wrestling music songs of each era?

www.typebarmagazine.com/professional...

Pumping Gold: How a Decade of Bodybuilding and Terrorism Started a Wave of Cheap Fantasy Movies Politics, pulp fiction, and pumping iron.

Contemporary fantasy owes a great debt to bodybuilding

www.typebarmagazine.com/pumping-gold...

Weirding the Periphery: How Imperialism Infiltrated Our Imagination Through Fantasy So much of foundational fantasy is about the (often imperial) core versus outside territories.

Were the very premises of traditional fantasy narratives priming our brains to accept imperialism this whole time?

www.typebarmagazine.com/weirding-the...

Love & Pop: The Evangelion Creator’s Live-Action Time Capsule Masterpiece That’s Even More Relevant Today There are no shortcuts to developing real human connections.

Hideaki Anno's Love & Pop is a masterpiece prescient in its analysis of loneliness and the decaying social structures that create it en masse

www.typebarmagazine.com/love-and-pop/

Between the Lions, "Elsagate," and the Fall of Quality Children's Programming Young imaginations should be expanded, not exploited.

Children's programming, overrun with highly questionable YouTube #content, has fallen from its peak--the PBS Kids show Between the Lions which aired from 2000-2010.

www.typebarmagazine.com/between-the-...

Git Gud? More Like Get Literate: Dread Delusion and the Art of Gameplay-as-Story This game is about choice, belief, and the weight of being a person.

Dread Delusion is a masterwork of blending core game design with narratives

www.typebarmagazine.com/git-gud-more...

Cyberpunk 2077 and the Anesthesia of #Dissent There are few easy answers to the questions the cyberpunk genre asks.

The best cyberpunk fiction draws from the exploration of human life, not from paltryy political metaphors

www.typebarmagazine.com/cyberpunk-20...

Homer's Odyssey: The First Literary Thriller Literary thrillers are about the journey, not the destination.

Why Homer's Odyssey is the first-ever literary thriller

www.typebarmagazine.com/homers-odyss...

Like the author here I once went in search of the "original" Robin Hood (and later King Arthur) when aged about 12. I wanted to know story the later myths were built on. I had this notion that there were "original" versions of the Greek myths somewhat like Homer's Illiad and Odyssey.....

The Weakness of the Flesh and the Horror of Losing It In cyberpunk, what does it mean to have a body?

On cyberpunk and the science of cognition

www.typebarmagazine.com/the-weakness...

What Happened to the Game that I Love? Basketball After the Vibe Shift “Nothing happened, you just never loved basketball.”

"Only in fragmentary moments in our culture does America happen like it’s supposed to. Basketball just makes it happen in 24 seconds, until the shot clock rings."

www.typebarmagazine.com/what-happene...

Science Fiction is Dying. Long Live Post Sci-Fi? The old mode of science fiction is disappearing. What's replacing it?

The old mode of science fiction is vanishing. What is being published in its place?

www.typebarmagazine.com/science-fict...

Anime Abridged Series on YouTube: A Retrospective and Love Letter The rise and fall of one of YouTube's most iconic genres

Whatever happened to "anime abridged" series on YouTube?

www.typebarmagazine.com/anime-abridg...

Ultimatum: A Journey Into an America-Fearing Canadian Mind A book from 53 years ago posited a now too-relevant question: what if the US went rogue?

"Richard Rohmer’s Ultimatum – the story of the United States invading Canada for its energy – seemed ludicrously implausible not even five years ago."

www.typebarmagazine.com/ultimatum-a-...

Not So Classic: How Super Mario 64 Changed the Mario Franchise for the Worse Super Mario Bros. lost something when it gained a dimension.

Super Mario 64 forever changed what it meant to be a Mario game...for the worse

www.typebarmagazine.com/not-so-class...

*to ugh

I really adored this book and @simonm223.bsky.social’s analysis of it. The vibes of climate fiction should be rancid because the problem is the product of overwhelming greed, entrenched power, and the eerily gleeful willingness to do anything to anyone ti maintain that power.

Awesome read

Technology, Power, and Violence: How the Tangled Lands Tackles Climate Fiction Saving the world is more complex than solar panels and good vibes.

The Tangled Lands is among the most thoughtful climate fiction in that it acknowledges the terrifying truth of solving the climate crisis: power must necessarily be confronted and they will not give up without enacting terrible violence on the world

www.typebarmagazine.com/technology-p...

Pulse, Demonlover, and Meanings of the Internet Two films clairvoyant in their skepticism of the internet.

Pulse, Demonlover, and human passivity in response to the internet's claiming of our psyches and souls

www.typebarmagazine.com/pulse-demonl...

Secretary and the Erotic Nature of the Typewriter "Two lonely people  have come together through a love and desire that’s unique thanks, in part, to the typewriter."

Analog eroticism? The symbolism and tactile pleasures of the typewriter

www.typebarmagazine.com/secretary-an...

I Have the Key to All of This By Tiernan Blanchard

FICTION: I Have the Key to All of This by Tiernan Blanchard

www.typebarmagazine.com/fiction-i-ha...

Game Pass in 1994: The Too-Soon Brilliance of the Sega Channel A brief history of digital games distribution, and why Sega's revolutionary attempt caused no revolution

Sega Channel and the early history of digitally downloading games

www.typebarmagazine.com/game-pass-in...

Jackass and the Tragedy of Cinema's Slop Era A franchise that died and rotted into merchandise of itself.

The Jackass films and what cinema lost as it submitted to #content

www.typebarmagazine.com/jackass-and-...

Seann is one of our writers and needs help.