POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Joys of Summer Reading
By Dan Brown The summer of 2026 has officially begun. And I can’t wait for the best part. No, not drinking a frosty beer on a sunny patio. Not driving up to Grand Bend for long weekends. Not even the freedom of wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts. I mean the truly greatest part, better than any of those pleasures. Summer reading. I’m not talking about beach reading, but about the feeling of satisfaction you get from crossing off titles on your summer reading list. If you’ve never heard of such a list before, let me catch you up. I got the idea from my Grade 13 English teacher, Evan Pike, who taught at the old Strathroy District Collegiate Institute. Our paths crossed in the mid-1980s when I was a snotty teen. Pike would often refer to reading lists. He would mention a book in one of our class discussions and ask me (or a classmate) if I had ever read that particular volume. “No,” would come the answer. “Add that to your summer reading list,” he would respond, not in a joking way. For him, I’m guessing, this wasn’t a theoretical thing. My bet is that when he was in school, either as a kid or later in life, my mentor was actually assigned books to read over the warmer months by his teachers. You gotta remember, he was old-school. Pike came of age when they were still teaching Latin in high school. I think the first time I had a summer reading list, maybe in the 1990s, I wasn’t even really aware of it. I just started reading novels by Ernest Hemingway then and by August I had gone through every tattered title I could find in places like City Lights Bookshop or the Coldstream Library. It may have been when the next summer arrived that I said to myself, “Well, what am I going to read now?” I had picked up the idea taking English in my last year of high school and it was growing into a conscious habit. Fast-forward to today, and at this point I’m older than Pike was when he taught us. And each time my favourite season rolls around, I make a scratchy list on a yellow Post-It with a black Sharpie of the titles that will comprise my latest reading project. One summer it was Terry Brooks, the fantasy author. Another it was all the books I’d been read at storytime at Valleyview Elementary School, so Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Charlotte’s Web and Where the Red Fern Grows and so on (and yes, as an adult I cried at the tear-jerker endings that moved me so much when I was a boy). One year it was books by the sci-fi author John Morressy. He’s so obscure, he barely has a Wikipedia page. I may be his only fan. But that didn’t stop me from devouring his written work. And so the summers went. Now it’s become a personal tradition. Pike is long gone, but summer reading still makes sense to me – if you have some extra time, the pressure of work is off, why not use the hiatus to enrich your brain? I don’t even get summers off, like my old teacher did, so I make the time. I like to think he would be pleased that his reading advice to me has outlived him. You may be wondering what I’m reading right now. Even before June 21, I had been going through a number of biographies and memoir. Now it’s time to kick the summer reading into high gear. I’m currently working my way through Lives of the Stoics, a collection of mini-bios of philosophers, and I’ve got a stack of books on the table beside my bed – like a collection of Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his brother, as well as Andre Agassi’s much-praised life story. I finished cartoonist Gabrielle Drolet’s Look Ma, No Hands in the spring to get an early start. So what about you? What will you be reading in the weeks before fall arrives? If you’re new to the concept, take some time to think about the titles you’ve been meaning to catch up on. Perhaps there are important books from your past you want to re-read. It’s all good. When you’re done pondering, draw up a list, then get started. Would love to hear all about what you’re reading in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
Some Light War Reading
GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: Some light war reading By Dan Brown One of the books I’ve been reading during the U.S.-Iran war is Generation Zero, a 1991 out-of-print collaboration between Pepe Moreno and Archie Goodwin. A good chunk of this graphic novel takes place in the same region where U.S. and Iranian forces are vying for strategic advantage after U.S. President Donald Trump chose to attack the longtime thorn in the side of the United States. It’s not clear as of this writing if the war is on or off, but that doesn’t stop the stylish graphic novel from seeming like the right book for the moment. Generation Zero first appeared in serialized form in Epic Illustrated, Marvel’s answer to Heavy Metal, starting in 1983. The monthly featured creator-owned properties aimed at mature readers. In Goodwin’s words, Generation Zero is a “post-doomsday fantasy adventure.” I found it worth my while to track down online. One of the eight chapters, titled Desert Hunt, takes place in roughly the same area as the Red Sea – which, after a limited nuclear war, has become a desert hell in this alternate future. There’s an eye-popping panel that spreads across two pages of a beached oil tanker on its side – it was travelling on the Red Sea’s waters before the apocalypse. And it turns out, even in the decades to come, oil is still crucial for transportation. The book stars a trio of army deserters who venture from a refuge in Iceland in an advanced aircraft searching for a new home for their burgeoning civilization, the ultimate goal being to re-start human life on a large scale. Along the way, they encounter mutated giant snakes, topless belly dancers, ancient ruins, redheads, and an evil army with war supplies to spare. All of it is drawn (and coloured) gorgeously by the Spaniard Moreno. His art reminds me of a combination of France’s Moebius and Italy’s Franco Francavilla. It’s that strong. The action sequences pop off the page. Although it’s a post-nuclear war story, I think Moreno had another fantasy series on his mind when he created Generation Zero. The concluding chapter relates a battle on a catwalk above a barely-suppressed volcano in which it turns out – in a stunning surprise revelation – the two combatants are members of the same family. Sounds like Star Wars to me. If you’re wondering what Goodwin did, the Marvel stalwart supplied the dialogue and captions. It’s an intoxicating, pulpy mix that I liked when I read it for the first time in Epic in the 1980s, and I love as an adult in standalone form. The difference between Generation Zero and other post-nuclear comics, like Threads from Raymond Briggs, is that it depicts the aftermath of a limited nuclear conflict. The far-fetched notion that the superpowers wouldn’t try to completely annihilate each other was a novel one in the Cold War, as now. Even given that faint glimmer of hope, this graphic novel remains a nightmare vision of a possible tomorrow for humankind that isn’t entirely off the table. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: Give Doctor Who A Rest
By Dan Brown I haven’t watched Doctor Who on the regular in a long time. And I don’t believe there should be any new episodes of the venerable BBC series for a long time, either. That’s to help guarantee the viability of the program far into the future. Why am I saying this? You may have heard Doctor Who is at a crossroads. Showrunner Russell T. Davies has exited the series, and the rights to produce the show have been put out to tender. My feeling is, for the Doctor to survive, the character needs to go away for several years. Maybe even decades. It last aired on Disney+ in May, 2025. Although it was a staple of my childhood pop-culture diet, I haven’t been a regular viewer for ages. I think the BBC needs to send a message to fans: You’ve been taking the long-running show and its title character for granted. In a world with seemingly unlimited sci-fi content, Doctor Who has been getting, with its built-in generational audience, the short end of the proverbial stick. It needs to go fallow. Doctor Who aired for the first time in 1963, and made a generation of British children jump behind their living-room couches with its weird mix of rubber monsters, cliffhanger endings, and bargain-basement special effects. It eventually came to North America, where kids like me – watching on public broadcaster TVOntario – were enchanted, many of us becoming fans for decades. And yes, it has gone on hiatus before – notably from 1989 to 2005. Then it got a new lease on life with Davies at the helm. But lately, it feels more like background noise than compelling appointment viewing, whatever that might mean in the age of streaming services. I admit, I’m one of those boring, middle-age fogies whose first Doctor was played by Tom Baker. And in my view, he’s never been surpassed. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you who the last couple Doctors were, and I’m a Disney+ subscriber! (That’s the conceit of the show, that the Doctor regenerates every so often into a new body.) So let’s put it on the shelf for, say, a decade, and give fans a chance to miss the ever-quipping Time Lord. The character has stood the test of time before, I’m not worried Doctor Who will be forgotten. Besides, in our streaming reality, many programs take years between seasons to come back into our living rooms anyway. As smarter people than me -- like science-fiction writer Mark Shainblum -- have pointed out, the premise of the show is “inherently self-refreshing,” meaning each new actor who takes on the role represents an opportunity for the production team to set off in a new direction anywhere in this or any other universe. I think this was true in the show’s early days, but the Doctor isn’t in an environment anymore where his competition is other network productions. Now his competition is TikTok and YouTube. Besides, there are plenty of precedents for franchises that went on hiatus (imposed or voluntary) and came back stronger, built for the long run: Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica. Even Marvel Studios is producing fewer superhero movies and shows now. Speaking of Marvel, the worst thing the BBC could do is go on making Doctor Who content just for the sake of making Doctor Who content. I am open to one slight variation on the hiatus though: I hear an animated Doctor Who series may be in the works. If true, I could get behind that – so long as Tom Baker returns as the voice of the character! He’s still kickin, so The Fourth Doctor: The Animated Series sounds good to me! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: GNG does a twofer
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details from two graphic novels. If you value surprise, stop reading now! You’ve been warned. The L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group met Saturday, June13. Because our May meeting had been cancelled, we covered the assigned books for both May and June in our most recent sitting. The books: Mouse Guard: Dawn of the Black Axe, plus the graphic-novel adaptation of The Iliad. Dawn of the Black Axe Here’s the headline: All five members of GNG who were present gave this book a thumbs up. We loved it. Carol Vandenberg, L.A. Mood’s co-owner, has always been enchanted by the world-building David Petersen does on his Mouse Guard books. Petersen has created in his imagination an entire culture of medieval mice who live in a far-flung setting, which requires the Guard – whose members are forest rangers – to keep routes between the different communities open. Petersen’s mouse world has the same level of detail as Seth’s mythical city of Dominion. The Black Axe is kind of like Batman, operating outside the rules governing how Guard members behave. And yes, he carries a honking big black axe. His quest: To rid mousekind of the giant snakes that plague them. The new thing in Dawn of the Black Axe is how Petersen, who usually illustrates each book, recruited Gabriel Rodriguez to handle art duties. I thought the story might suffer with Petersen focusing on writing alone, but the group really appreciated what Rodriquez brings to table. Part of the discussion also centred on the Black Axe’s spirit guide. Is the ethereal elk real, is he a ghost, is he a projection from the axe bearer’s mind? I like how Rodriquez sometimes draws the elk as solid, but in other panels he appears to be from another plane of existence. GNG member Amanda pointed out there’s not a lot of joy in the book, no respite from the gloom. But that’s not what interests Petersen. This is a book about the cost of doing your duty and the sacrifices and compromises that follow. The Iliad We weren’t so effusive with our praise for this Gareth Hinds book. We read his comic version of this epic tale in part because its sequel, The Odyssey, is coming to the big screen this summer in a Christopher Nolan adaptation. Overall, we gave The Iliad not a thumb up or down, but a thumb sideways. It's fine. Carol thought it didn’t work on its own, but would make a good adjunct to studying the written version of the epic work. GNG member Matt noted how making it into a comic required Hinds to disrupt the rhyming of the original. I found it to be Biblical in the sense there are many, many lists of the participants in the battle to overthrow Troy, which came across to me as similar to the long verses in the Bible indicating who begat whom. They go on and on. I also stumbled because the names listed in The Iliad aren’t familiar to me. I have a hard time dealing with the notion of gods and mortals who share many of the same feelings and motivations. In The Iliad, gods have children with mortals, they feel human emotions, they change their minds – it’s a mix that makes me uneasy as a reader as I’m not used to thinking of immortals with Earthly traits. Looming in the background of our discussion was a larger question: How can an artist adapt an ancient work of art so that it still speaks to readers in 2026? If you make too many changes, it may be more relatable, yet you’ll anger the purists. The bottom line: This Iliad would be a fine textbook or companion piece to the original. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of every month. Next month’s selection is Jeff Lemire’s autobiography, 10,000 Ink Stains. Lemire hails from Southwestern Ontario and if you’ve ever wanted to get a glimpse into his artistic process, check this one out! We’re set to meet July 11 at the gaming tables in the store at 11 a.m. All are welcome to join the discussion! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
A Littlest Hobo Reboot if Necessary, but Not Necessarily a Littlest Hobo Reboot
POP-CULTURE COLUMN: By Dan Brown Seth Rogen is rebooting The Littlest Hobo. That may sound like a headline from The Beaverton, but apparently it’s true. If you’re Generation X like me, you’ll remember the CTV series from your own childhood. It featured a drifter German Shepherd who would roam from place to place across the Ontario countryside, helping the good-hearted and foiling the plans of bad guys along the way. Airing from 1979 to 1985, it was like other CanCon productions of the day: So earnest, when you watched an episode your teeth would hurt. I’m all for a new version, but I do have some notes for Rogen and his producing partner, Evan Goldberg. The pair have my blessing, so long as they adhere to the following conditions, First, the dog MUST be real. The original Hobo was played by London, as the opening credits indicated. The opening credits lied, of course. London was actually a team of Shepherds who rotated through the role, depending on the shooting needs on any particular production day (if you want to speak with someone who met these doggles back in the day, just ask L.A. Mood co-owner Carol Vandenberg.) Despite all the technical advances since then, the new Hobo absolutely has to be an actual dog, not a CGI or otherwise-animated creation. In the press release announcing the update, the yet-to-be-filmed series is called “a live-action drama,” so that’s a promising sign. No puppets, no prosthetics, the lead character simply has to be a flesh-and-blood dog to maintain the spirit of the original series (note I’m not saying it has to be a purebred Shepherd). Second, individual episodes MUST be played straight. Rogen made a name for himself prompting laughs in such stoner comedies as Pineapple Express, This Is The End, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. However, for a reboot of The Littlest Hobo to succeed it must be just as wholesome, whatever that means in 2026, as the show that spawned it. So no in-jokes. No code words in the script as cues for the audience playing drinking games at home. No meta references. No self-referential comedy at all. So no irony along the lines of having a character say, “Have you noticed how misfortune seems to follow this stray canine wherever he ends up?” All those jokes have been made by former viewers since the 1980s, they would be cringe today. Besides, Brent Butt made the best Littlest Hobo joke in an episode of Corner Gas when a pup who looked like the Hobo turned up in Dog River, and his true nature was revealed: It turns out the Hobo is a scold, as well as a steak thief. If Rogen and his team are looking for a model to follow, there are worse ones than the modern version of the Degrassi series. Third, there must be big-name guest stars. Watching reruns is fun just for spotting celebrities – Leslie Neilsen, Al Waxman, Saul Rubinek, and others earned an honest paycheck on the show, and future marquee performers like Mike Myers cut their teeth alongside “London.” The time is now for Rogen to call in favours. I bet Myers could be convinced to make a cameo at least, and such collaborators as Michael Cera, Paul Rudd, and Elizabeth Banks, could be drafted for one-episode guest shots. For some reason, I picture Jay Baruchel in a recurring role as a Humane Society inspector who follows the dog from incident to incident, not out of evil intent but genuine concern for his welfare. Oh, also, the theme song can’t be an update with a dramatically different musical flavour, but should be a cover version that captures the same melancholy-yet-hopeful vibe from the first time around. There’s no point redoing The Littlest Hobo if you’re going to betray the gentle flavour it originally brought to the small screen. The advantage Rogen has is he’s making the show for Crave to air in Canada, so he doesn’t need to appeal to a broad demographic as a network series of old. Rogen has proven he can be a mover and shaker in Hollywood with his series The Studio winning 13 Emmy Awards last year. This is not the time for serious tinkering with the Littlest Hobo formula. There are reasons it’s still on the air today. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
One Actor, Two Superheroes
By Dan Brown They’ve made a ton of superhero movies. How many, exactly? Here's one measure: There are now multiple actors who have played at least two different comic-book characters in their careers. When Supergirl debuts in theatres on June 26, the list will grow even longer because it features Jason Momoa in a supporting role. You might be thinking, I see, Supergirl will be teaming up with Aquaman – the underseas hero who Momoa has played in movies like Justice League and the Lost Kingdom. Nope. Momoa now stars as Lobo, the interstellar mercenary, not the dude who can command whales to do his bidding. The DC movie universe rebooted with last summer’s Superman, so Momoa has in front of him a new acting challenge, if that’s the right word. Nor is he the only one. Perhaps the most famous example is Ben Affleck. In 2003, he appeared as brooding Marvel crime-fighter Daredevil. Thirteen years later, he donned the cape and cowl belonging to brooding DC crime-fighter Batman. In acting, they call that range. Ryan Reynolds has technically appeared as three different comic characters: Green Lantern, an early version of Deadpool (in X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and the actual Deadpool we all recognize now. In fact, in the latest Deadpool movie, there’s even a joke about the trend of performers appearing as more than one hero when the merc with a mouth mistakes the Human Torch for Captain America, who were both brought to life by Chris Evans. Other examples of the trend are Karl Urban and Elliot Page. If you include both heroes and supervillains, you can also add Michael B. Jordan and Michael Keaton. If you’re asking yourself, “So what?” there is a relevant point to be made here. What the growing list shows is fickle movie audiences are more than willing to give an actor a second chance. They don’t hold a stinky performance against them. Fans of superhero flicks are more than willing to embrace a performer who takes on a new persona. Green Lantern was a notorious bomb in 2011. Reynolds appearing in that role was clearly a career miscue, yet to this day theatregoers are more than happy to buy tickets to see him as Deadpool. Same with Affleck – although the Daredevil motion picture was aggressively mediocre, that failure didn’t stop fans from supporting him as the Dark Knight in multiple adventures. Heck, how many superhero/actor portmanteau nicknames are there? I’m talking about “Batfleck.” No one should be surprised how some actors are making a living by playing “the superhero type.” Exactly how many cowboy roles does Clint Eastwood have on his filmography? Along the same lines, Robert De Niro is the eternal gangster and Noah Wyle has played two different Emergency Room doctors, and has plenty of time left in his career for more. But perhaps the riskiest comic-book recasting is to come at the end of this year when Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theatres on December 18. You likely know by now that Robert Downey Jr. – formerly Iron Man — will appear as the titular bad guy, Victor Von Doom. However, no one knows how the creative team making the movie is going to handle his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe after Tony Stark's death. Is this Doom a Stark variant from another reality? Will they even acknowledge that Doom has the same face as Stark? Will the other Avengers recognize him? Presumably he’s going to take his mask off at some point in the upcoming film, so stay tuned to see how Marvel diehards react to whatever plot device the filmmakers decide to use. As for the inverse of this trend – the Hollywood tradition of superheroes who have been played by more than one thespian – there’s not enough space here to name all of them. Superman alone has been played by, like, a kazillion different guys! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
