I’m Fine with a Spinal Tap Sequel
By Dan Brown Much to my surprise, I find myself not dreading the Spinal Tap sequel. Set to land in theatres September 12, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues once again features Rob Reiner as filmmaker Marty Di Bergi chronicling the career of the band that made songs like Stonehenge, Big Bottom and Sex Farm somewhat famous. I’m surprised at my own reaction because, well, most sequels suck. And I have a high opinion of the 1984 original. If you’re a fan of the movie, as I am, you have no doubt spent many hours repeating lines like “These go to 11,” “He died in a bizarre gardening accident” and “What’s wrong with being sexy?” with your friends. People have had decades of repeated viewings to build up This is Spinal Tap in their minds, so why try to compete with that legacy? As a group, sequels, remakes, and reboots have an underwhelming reputation – when they don’t suck canal water outright. Movie fans hate them by reflex after being force-fed a diet of retreads they never asked for. Only the odd one, like Top Gun: Maverick, taps into the magic of the original, becoming a box-office success in the process. Most of them are . . . meh. Yet I’m hopeful. There are several reasons for this optimism. For starters, the premise for the new film is a promising one. This is Spinal Tap became a legendary motion picture for one reason: It contained every joke about rock and roll that could be made on the big screen. Band members constantly dying, musicians who can’t find their way to the stage, a manager whose favourite tool for settling disputes is a cricket bat, elaborate set pieces malfunctioning during concerts, it even had a Yoko Ono figure. The End Continues will succeed if it contains every joke about aging rockers. This is the creative team’s comedic window of opportunity. It’s a rich vein to mine. One of the locations for filming Spinal Tap II was in Florida, so with any luck there’s a spoof on how foreign rockers like AC/DC’s Brian Johnson flee to the Sunshine State once they’ve made their fortune. Another possible source of laughs could be Tap being consistently judged not worthy of induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Is there any idea less rock and roll than that of a museum devoted to rock music and rock musicians? This July will see the members of Black Sabbath reunite for a farewell concert in Birmingham. Surely the notion of aging rockers getting the band back together for one more big show is an opportune one for jokes? I also have faith in the group of comedians who made Spinal Tap II. Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer – this is a formidable team. They’ve had decades to come up with jokes about their characters, plus their improv powers have only grown greater in the interim. Collaborating on other mockumentaries, such as Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, gives these players even more range to work with. And let’s face it, this will likely be the last Spinal Tap flick, so that may give Reiner and company the courage to go all out and not hold back. I can see a funeral for one of the band’s members being another setting for huge laughs. I can even picture a real-life scenario in my mind in which the sequel generates Oscar nominations. I know the Academy is prejudiced against comedies, but wouldn’t you love to see the members of Spinal Tap give their acceptance speech in character? Are you looking forward to the Spinal Tap sequel? Are you a fan of the original? Let me know in the comment box below! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Comic Writers Are the New Auteurs
By Dan Brown My brother Mike is four years older than me, but as kids we were both fans of Marvel Comics. One time, it might have been while I was reading an issue of Fantastic Four and he was perusing the latest Marvel Team-Up, he asked me a question. “Do you think the writer of a comic or the artist is more important?” For me, the answer was obvious: The person who draws the pictures. Not surprisingly, Mike disagreed, arguing the guy responsible for the words has primacy. That exchange has stuck with me to this day. Perhaps I was so adamant as a young boy because I had done more drawing than writing. My perception was that artists got no respect then, and I still believe that today. This is just a long-winded way of saying, in the modern comic industry, writers are the new auteurs. Illustrators, meanwhile, aren’t appreciated for everything they bring to the table. “Auteur” is a term borrowed from French New Wave cinema. I believe it originated in the French film magazine Cahiers du cinema in the 1950s Basically, auteur theory – as it applies to film – dictates that the director of the film is the one who supplies the overall vision. He or she is the “author” of the movie and the other folks involved – producers, screenplay writers, performers – are there to carry out his or her goals. It was a revolutionary idea decades ago. Today’s auteurs would include the likes of Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorcese, and James Cameron. They’re the ones who move the art forward. Somewhere along the line over the last five decades, writers have emerged as the equivalent figure in the comics industry. When I was reading Fantastic Four in the 1970s, I don’t remember comic fans talking a lot about the styles of different writers, but I do recall many debates about the best illustrators. In 2025, however, the conventional wisdom is that the writer is the one whose ideas and input count the most. On the cover of a typical mainstream comic, it’s the writer’s name that gets top billing. Often it’s just his or her last name – that’s how much recognition they get, how well-known they are. When comic publishers promote a new series, it’s frequently marketed to the public on the strength of the writer’s reputation and ability. I don’t know the exact moment when writers ascended to the level of being auteurs. I’m guessing it had a lot to do with three comics that came out in the 1980s: Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Many fans, as well as industry insiders, view that period as a renaissance when new life was breathed into the form. The guys involved became giants. (If you want to laugh at a savage satire of Moore in particular, check out Chip Zdarsky’s Public Domain series, which has a British comics writer character named Carter Dusk, who hangs a garden hose in front of the window in his study so he can brood as it’s raining all day long. In his own pretentious words, Dusk is a “dabbler in wordplay and mass-printed magic.”) You might think the passing of the years has softened my stance. Not so. I still think artists don’t get the props they deserve. I don’t know about your buying habits, but I usually pick up a comic or graphic novel based on who did the art. Since I first began to appreciate sequential storytelling, the art in the average comic book has gotten so much better. Yet I don’t see anyone arguing in 2025 that the same has happened to the writing. Or consider this: There are many artists who have branched out into writing, sometime Canadian John Byrne being one example. Artists like Byrne have been able to learn to do plotting, dialogue, pacing, and everything else writers have traditionally done. But can you think of a single instance of a writer learning how to draw? It just doesn’t happen. I would love to read your answer to the question my brother posed all those years ago. Feel free to drop it in the comment box below! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Dan Brown’s Pop-culture Column feat. Dan Brown
It’s a four-letter f-word that you see a lot. No, I’m not referring to the naughty f-word. I’m talking about a term you see in many a song title these days. It’s “feat.” and it’s short for “featuring.” As in song titles like “Low by Flo Rida feat. T-Pain” and “Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton.” Used in the name of a song like those two examples, it indicates that a guest artist rapped or sang a verse or even shorter snippet, like providing backing vocals, on that particular single or album track. It’s a way for an artist to tip their hat to someone who helped them realize their musical vision. And it’s freaking everywhere. If you don’t believe me, just look at the streaming charts. Right now, the No. 5 song according to Billboard is TV Off, a Kendrick Lamar song featuring Lefty Gunplay. All told, there are currently four collaborations (or “collabs,” as they are now known) in the Top 10. So what’s the problem? Stick around for a moment and I’ll tell you. First, my credentials as a music fan: I’ve been listening to music for my entire life, 56 years now. I am a daily consumer of music on my three Alexas at home and the satellite radio in my pickup. My work week is spent in the company of university students, who are all in their peak years as music enthusiasts – they often bring songs I don’t know about to my attention. If it’s on their radar, it will make its way onto mine. It’s in my nature to listen to a wide variety of musicians, from Willie Nelson to Billy Joel to the Red Clay Strays to Murray Head. And with summer coming up I plan to see a few live shows, like Daniel Lanois’ two-night stand at the Aeolian Hall in August. I have covered music as a journalist for more than three decades, interviewing the likes of Don Henley, Gordon Lightfoot, and Howard Jones. I also met Lou Reed once. Anyhoo . . . I don’t know when “feat.” (or sometimes “ft.” or “with”) first appeared, but it has proliferated to the point where it’s self-defeating. If every song has a guest performer, then that’s just the way music is made in 2025 and the designation isn’t necessary. Maybe it was a prestigious thing in the beginning. It doesn’t set a song apart anymore. I know the music biz is a tough one, but the practice has exploded to the point where listeners can just assume the “feat.” part on any given song. Now, I don’t want to say everything was better when I was younger, but in this case it might be true. For example, when Neil Young recorded Harvest in the 1970s he didn’t feel the need to let his audience know Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor sang backup vocals on that album. If I have my music lore correct, they were working in the same studio at the time and they popped in to give the Canadian rocker a hand. He thanked them, and that was all the credit needed. No one insisted on getting a “feat.” credit in those days. And as a listener, you figured out whose voices were on a song with repeated listens. It was a fun way to grow your music knowledge. Back then, it was more a team approach to music than any one individual needing to feel special – which matters because now the name of every song is a platform for marketing and self-promotion.. The counter-argument, I suppose, would be that it’s better for everyone to get their due in a public way and it’s a question of equity. If that’s the case, then song titles are literally the only part of the music world that’s equitable. Sometimes I get to thinking I must be a strange music lover because the tunes I listen to generally don’t have a featured artist on them. If “feat.” had been a thing back in the day, then we would have had to get used to song titles like Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones feat. Merry Clayton. That’s a mouthful. So go ahead – call me a purist. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
I Recommend the Movie Version of Paying For It
By Dan Brown The movie version of Chester Brown’s Paying For It is a well-crafted, warm, funny film. If you’re a fan of Canadian graphic novels, as I am, you should see it. The best part is Ottawa-born actor Dan Beirne’s portrayal of Chester, the cartoonist who seeks out sex workers after he gets dumped by his girlfriend. In real life, the dumper was one-time MuchMusic VJ Sook Yin-Lee, who directed the adaptation. Where the book focuses on Chester, the movie gives equal airtime to Lee’s side of the story, although on the big screen her character’s name is Sonny. You may know Brown as one-third of the Toronto cartoonist troika that also included Seth and the late Joe Matt. Brown is widely known for his graphic-novel history of Louis Riel. Paying For It (the graphic novel) came out in 2011 and relates his search for sex without any strings attached, which he finds with the city’s prostitutes. It’s one of those personal stories that typify the autobiographical Canadian graphic novel school of cartooning. I think it’s fair to say Brown wrote Paying For It to demystify sex work and johns. The book’s happy ending occurs when Brown finds one particular sex worker to patronize exclusively, eventually working out an arrangement in which he is her only customer. So yeah, it’s not the same old love story. “Romantic love is bullshit, and I’m not wasting any more time chasing it,” Beirne-as-Brown tells his friends. I saw Paying For It when it played in London for less than a week earlier this year. The good news is you don’t need to rush to a theatre because there’s no real reason to see it on the big screen. Seek it out when it comes to TV or streaming. Granted, Lee has some amazing compositions – the opening shot of Beirne at the drawing table is patterned after a 1668 Johannes Vermeer oil painting – but otherwise it’s not an overtly cinematic piece. Its strength lies elsewhere. I would never have picked Beirne to play Chester Brown. Clearly, Lee understood he could nail the shy comic creator, holding the whole movie together with his nebbish charm. He goes through his many encounters with sex workers with a kind of refreshing earnestness, an eager naif who wants to decode the mysteries of how to be a paying client, His circle of friends includes three other Toronto cartoonists who meet regularly to chat. There’s a lot of humour that comes from Brown’s attempts to explain his prostitution journey to his pals. The movie also does a really good job of evoking 1990s Toronto. Lee filmed scenes in the same apartment where she and Chester lived together, so you can’t get more authentic than that. Sonny, her stand-in, works for MaxMusic, which is run by an annoying/inspiring entrepreneur who is a lot like Moses Znaimer. The only element that seems missing is, although there is one scene of the aftermath of police violence on a sex worker’s apartment, we don’t see much of them outside Chester’s visits. As a viewer, I wanted to know more about their lives when they’re off the clock. I won’t spoil the ending too much, but a sad event momentarily reunites Chester and Sonny, bringing them full-circle – they are no longer the people they were at the start of the film, even if they still care for each other.. If Canadian graphic novels are your thing, you should check it out. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Robert Pattinson Versus Himself
NOTE: Dan Brown’s column will now be appearing twice a week on the website of L.A. Mood Comics & Games; on Tuesdays, he’ll write about graphic novels, and on Thursdays he will cover other pop-culture topics. By Dan Brown You know a movie star has made it when he faces off against . . . himself. The latest example is Robert Pattinson who – through the plot device of cloning – is his own worst nightmare in the movie Mickey 17, which landed in theatres March 7. But not just any actor can do battle with his own mirror image. A Hollywood star has to earn the right to trade blows with a doppelganger by achieving a certain stature first. He has to overcome every other possible enemy – gangsters, terrorists, Nazis, aliens – over a number of earlier movies for this career avenue to open up. The earliest example I can recall of the trend is when the character played by Jean-Claude Van Damme in 1991’s Double Impact pounded on his twin brother. Arnold Schwarzenegger fought his clone nine years later in The Sixth Day. Then Tom Cruise got in on the act in 2013 in the film Oblivion. Gemini Man in 2019 featured Will Smith hunting . . . Will Smith. Strangely, veteran tough guy Sylvester Stallone has never gone up against himself on the big screen. But I have to believe that at some point during the 1980s Stallone contemplated doing a project involving Rocky Balboa trying to punch John Rambo’s lights out. At that time, it would have been easy to get it greenlit. Even relatively young stars are going this route. Next month will see the release of Sinners, the Southern gothic vampire flick in which the ascendant Michael B. Jordan plays identical siblings. The smart money says it will include at least one scene of a scrap between them. You may also be aware Robert De Niro is currently playing two roles in Alto Knights, released last week; the two gangster characters are childhood friends, not twins, and critics have slammed the picture for being confusing for that reason. That’s how accustomed audiences have grown to this convention. The closest Bruce Willis ever got was when he played an older and younger version of the same bounty hunter in 2012’s Looper, so I don’t count that one, even if the two versions of the character were enemies.Nor do I include the 1988 Jeremy Irons movie Dead Ringers, since it was a thriller, not an action film. Also out is Mark Hamill’s brief encounter with his own dark side in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back – that case was a single scene, not the entire premise. As I mentioned above, not every actor has the necessary drawing power to play on a double bill with themselves. In Hollywood, you have to earn the right to be your own opponent by building up your filmography over a number of years and motion pictures. For that reason, starring opposite himself would make no sense for an actor in his debut film – he wouldn’t be that well-known. That’s why you have to work your way to the top, fighting other types of bad guys, before you can trade blows with your twin or clone. At a certain level of fame, a star is the only one audiences will buy with the necessary strength to go toe-to-toe with himself. By process of elimination in all his previous movies, he becomes the next logical adversary. I leave it up to you to decide if Pattinson fits that bill. I tend to give him a break since he has followed an unusual career trajectory, alternating smaller projects with blockbusters.You will notice I have used the male pronoun throughout this column, a choice I made from not being able to come up with any examples of women action stars being part of this trend. I would argue Linda Hamilton long ago had enough action cred to fight herself, perhaps in the form of a Terminator version of Sarah Connor. I would pay to see that.And we know from previous instalments that androids and cloning are part of the Alien universe. Who doesn’t want to see Sigourney Weaver star in Alien: Ripley vs. Ripley? Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
Read Local, Shop Local, Attend Local Cons
By Dan Brown I’ll be honest with you: I don’t know how the Trump tariffs are going to affect the price of comics, if at all. But if you’re looking for ways to put your comic-book dollars back into the local economy, be it Southwestern Ontario or Canada, here are a few ideas for how to do so. For starters, you can patronize local comics stores like L.A. Mood, which employs Londoners and supports the local pop-culture ecosystem by hosting events like Godzilla Day. The Forest City has always been blessed with more than its share of places where you can pick up your favourite comic titles, and the same goes for all of Southwestern Ontario. Here’s a fun road trip idea for when the warm weather arrives: Make it your goal to visit all the comic stores in this corner of Canada, which will mean travelling to such communities as Sarnia, Windsor, Chatham, Kitchener, and Guelph. I did so a few summers back and it was a blast! Along the same lines, when convention season starts back up, you don’t need to go all the way to San Diego (or even Toronto) to hang out with other comic enthusiasts.London has cons aplenty, including Forest City Comicon – which this year moves to a new date (November 2) and venue (the Lamplighter Inn). Other shows to keep in mind include the Chatham Kent Expo, which happens April 26 and 27. I realize bigger cons get bigger names. That doesn’t necessarily make for a better experience, though. For example, almost every DC or Marvel panel I’ve attended at Fan Expo in previous years can be summed up in one sentence: “Our company has such cool stories coming out soon, but if we told you the details it would spoil them.” The difference at a smaller event is the friendlier vibe, which is much warmer. There is no substitute for meeting comic fans or cosplayers in your own backyard! And what’s that, you say you also want to read local at this moment in our country’s history? It’s easy to make that happen by throwing your support behind specific creators and publishers. There are guys like Byron’s Derek Laufman, the graphic novelist responsible for Bot 9, RuinWorld, and Crimson Fall. Fans can buy his books and art directly from his website. Laufman also has a Patreon page, which offers exclusive first looks at the projects he is working on. Other Forest City creators to check out include Diana Tamblyn, A Jaye and Alison Williams, Scott MacDougall and D.S. Barrick (who publish under the banner of River Donkey Adventures), Sam Maggs, and don’t forget Bryan Lee O’Malley. Among the cartoonists with connections to the wider Southwestern Ontario scene are Jeff Lemire, Seth, Scott Chantler, and Joe Ollmann. Or perhaps you want to support Canadian publishing houses. Done. There’s always Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal, the East Coast’s Conundrum Press, and Chapterhouse Comics (the publisher of Captain Canuck). They all do compelling work. If you don’t like my ideas and you need more suggestions, just consult with the staff at your comic-store or the nearest librarian. When it comes to comics, and pop culture in general, our dominion punches way above its weight. So if you have any other suggestions of other creators to support, or different ways to keep your pop-culture dollars circulating close to home, I would love to hear all about them in the comment box below! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
