Author Archives: Neil McAllister

What went wrong with Attack on Titan?

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Attack on Titan Vol. 1 Cover[Spoiler Alert – it’s pretty much everything.]

After 12 years of serialized manga, Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan is done. It didn’t take long for the online critics to start dissecting the controversial conclusion: Is it unsatisfying? Is it maybe a little cringeworthy?

I’d argue it’s both. But more than that, now that we can analyze the work as a whole, I’d say Attack on Titan was probably never very good to begin with. The signs were there almost from the very beginning.

It’s hard to overstate how massive a phenomenon Attack on Titan was in its early years. In Tokyo, you could hardly buy snacks at a convenience store without seeing the image of the Colossus Titan peering over Wall Maria. In hindsight, though, maybe a few such iconic images were all the manga really had going for it. » More... » →

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I was a teenage computer virus author

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Source code iconNOTE: A version of this essay originally appeared at The Register in 2015.

I was 17 years old, I had nothing to do, and I wanted to teach myself PC programming. So I decided to write a computer virus.

Don’t worry. The two viruses that I ended up writing – Leprosy and Leprosy-B – were designed to infect MS-DOS computers. They knew nothing about the internet, Windows, stealing people’s data, or anything remotely sophisticated, because neither did I at the time. And today, both viruses are as dead as smallpox.

My reasons for wanting to write software that trashed other people’s PCs weren’t that complex. For starters, as I said, I was 17. Petty vandalism kind of comes with the territory. Maybe sticking to computers was a better idea.

I was already a bit of a hacker, having taught myself Basic, Pascal, assembly language, and Forth on an Apple ][ years earlier. But the PC worked differently, and I wanted to figure it out.

Perhaps the main reason, though, was that I was a bit full of myself and I wanted to do something about the arrogance that I felt existed in the underground computer scene at the time. I just wanted to prove to the scenesters that even an idiot who didn’t really know how to program could write a virus. » More... » →

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That time I watched every single episode of the Twilight Zone, back to back

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One year I downloaded every single episode of the original, 1959 Rod Serling version of The Twilight Zone and I made a “box set” of DVDs of it for my sister. It kinda coincidentally happened to be the 50th anniversary of the show itself.

While I was at it, I watched every single episode and I logged them. You see, having watched a number of Halloween Twilight Zone marathons on KOFY Channel 20 in the Bay Area — and by “watched,” I mean forgone sleep — my sister and I had long harbored the opinion that you could break them down into various themes.

So I came up with some icons and I made a key. You can download that PDF at the link below.

Twilight Zone DVD Booklet

Sorry that it’s not easy to read sequentially. Its source is a Microsoft Publisher file and it’s designed to be printed out on double-sided paper and made into a CD/DVD booklet. But it’s been a bunch of years now and I still think it’s pretty amusing.

Horror from the East: The H.P. Lovecraft manga of Gou Tanabe

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H.P. Lovecraft manga of Gou TanabeHorror author H.P. Lovecraft never wrote with an Asian audience in mind. He identified as an Easterner, having spent most of his life in New England, but of the Far East he knew nothing. He never traveled abroad. In fact, the farthest he ever ventured from his beloved Providence was to New York, an experience that later led him to describe Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood as “a maze of hybrid squalor.”

About that word, “hybrid.” Lovecraft wasn’t one for mixing with foreigners. While the degree to which he was an overt racist is sometimes overstated, his xenophobia and his mistrust of unfamiliar cultures were real. In fact, they underlie many of his most memorable stories.

Given all of this, it may be surprising to learn that, in my opinion, some of the best recent comics adaptations of Lovecraft’s weird fiction have come from the pen of Japanese manga artist Gou Tanabe. » More... » →

The only time I was ever published in The Industry Standard

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The Industry Standard cover, March 6, 2000If you weren’t around 20 years ago to experience the original dot-com boom, you probably don’t remember a print magazine called The Industry Standard. To understand the full, bizarre history of this awful rag will require someone with more inside knowledge than myself to explain. Believe it or not, though, it was considered “the paper of record” for the Silicon Valley tech industry, back in the days when people weren’t laughed out of conference rooms for having the job title “Webmaster” listed on their business cards.

I was strongly encouraged to write for this magazine several times while it was still around. It and its counterpart, the equally odious Red Herring, were covering the investment angle of the industry, which meant there was certainly more than enough money to throw around. And yet I never bit, with but one exception — coincidentally, exactly 20 years ago this year. » More... » →

It ain’t easy being a successful manga creator

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I was fascinated by the sections of Frederik L. Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics describing the breakneck, seemingly even harrowing nature of the Japanese manga business, and I wanted to learn more. I found what I was looking for in another book: Manga in Theory and Practice, by Hirohiko Araki.

This slim volume from Shonen Jump was first published in English by Viz Media in 2017 – meaning some 20 years had passed since the revised edition of Schodt’s book. Still, not much seems to have changed in terms of how manga are produced. » More... » →

Frederik L. Schodt wants to introduce you to manga

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I almost didn’t read Frederik L. Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately, so a history of the subject sounded appealing. Had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic, however, it might have been a near miss.

You see, I’d checked the book out of the public library, but the dense text and its textbook-like format, with its multiple sidebars and explanatory notes, put me off. As its due date approached, I still hadn’t read more than a few pages and I was about to return it. That’s when San Francisco issued its “stay at home” order for the pandemic and the entire library system shut down, book deposit boxes and all. As a result, Schodt’s book was mine for the duration, so I decided to put on my thinking cap and give it a whirl.

I’m glad I did. Manga! Manga! has maintained its reputation as the definitive English-language work on the subject, and despite being somewhat dated – it was the first such work ever written – it deserves its accolades. » More... » →

Frank Miller, you’re no Will Eisner (and other thoughts on the comics biz)

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I’ve had a little-worn copy of Eisner/Miller on my shelf for years. Published in 2005 by Dark Horse Comics, and to my knowledge never reprinted, it offers a dialogue between two respected cartoonists in the mold of François Truffaut’s celebrated conversations with Alfred Hitchcock. In this case, the pairing is of Will Eisner (best known for The Spirit) and Frank Miller (of Dark Knight Returns and Sin City fame).

I’d only read the book once since I bought it, 15 years ago. Considering later developments in both men’s lives, and in the American comic book business in general, I thought it deserved a second look. » More... » →

Edward Snowden talks state secrets in a book that’s short on surprises

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Edward SnowdenI don’t read a lot of memoirs. None, really. I can get behind a good biography, and maybe even an autobiography, sometimes. But the idea of slogging through a few hundred pages of the self-important reminisces of someone gazing through the lens of their own nostalgia appeals to me about as much as being FedExed the plates from whatever they ate for dinner last night. But when I heard famous NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden had published such a book, my curiosity got the better of me and I picked up a copy. For the most part, it was worth it. » More... » →

Is Rambo getting to old for this, or is it just the movies that are getting old?

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What an odd bird is Rambo: Last Blood. I had to watch it—I’m an American male of a certain age, and I grew up with the Rambo character. But what this movie was, I’m not quite sure. (Also, I was one of three people in the theater, on opening Friday night at 7pm.)

In a film by Balboa Productions, Sylvester Stallone returns to his other signature role as John Rambo. Even more so than the last outing, he lumbers into this fifth film in the series, looking chiseled but stiff at the ripe old age of 72 (at the time of filming). Yvette Monreal plays a damsel in distress who must eventually be avenged. Paz Vega plays a character who is unimportant. And the rest of the cast are basically indistinguishable, cardboard demon-men who must be shot, stabbed, dismembered, tortured, or blown up. » More... » →