Are We On the Verge of an Age of Authenticity?
By Dan Brown Back in the day, young people wanted to usher in the age of Aquarius. Today, young people are ushering in an age of authenticity. And there’s actually a connection between the two, which I’ll get to in a moment. But how do I know that authenticity matters a lot to twentysomethings? Because I teach and mentor university students in both my day jobs. It’s a word they use ALL the time. In their texts, authenticity is rendered as “auth.” There’s also “gen” for genuine and “real” and “legit.” Whatever word they use, it stands for the same concept: These students are turned off by fakery and pretension, and want to get beyond surface appearances because they prize the truth. The funny part is, today’s university students actually have a lot in common with the hippies of yesteryear, who rejected the square establishment in favour of a lifestyle that allowed them to live in a more grounded way. It’s true kids in 2026 are different in important ways from the long-hair crowd of the 1960s. For example, some critics say Generation Z was raised by their cellphones. What I do know for sure is they are tired of people trying to deceive them. In fact, it might stem from being on their phones a lot, using things like dating apps – which include photos of potential partners that have been touched up via digital trickery to give the impression of perfection. They’re sick of being catfished. They are also tired of being lied to by governments, corporations, influencers and celebrities. They were raised in a world of jargon-packed press releases that obscure, rather than communicate, vital information. They don’t want to be told there is “collateral damage” in the U.S. war on Iran when what that term really means is innocent schoolchildren are being killed. They abhor the artificial, the synthetic, the counterfeit. The manufactured. The – to borrow another popular word – performative. “People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake,” DC Comics head Jim Lee said in a speech last year committing the company to never use AI-generated art or writing in its products You can see it everywhere. For instance, since so many young adults value quality over quantity, they shop at thrift stores instead of buying so-called “fast fashion” that damages the environment. They would rather have honest, old-fashioned clothing instead of items that look great but can only be worn once or twice before disintegrating. The surface image isn’t enough for them anymore. And sure, there are exceptions to what I’m telling you, Gen Zers who don’t embody the qualities I’ve listed here. No question. There always are. But what’s so interesting to me is how the hippies are actually role models for Zoomers in a lot of ways. Their reaction against the mainstream in the 1960s set the stage for Gen Z now. That reaction led to young Boomers leaving cities for rural communes. It led to Coke adopting the slogan, “It’s the real thing.” It led to Sly and the Family Stone singing, “Don’t let the plastic bring you down.” And it eventually sparked the rise of a value system that sees things that are artificial as treacherous, and views leaders who are pretending to be something they’re not as unworthy of trust. Authenticity is the ultimate asset and competitive advantage in 2026. And twentysomethings are craving it, maybe even more than their Baby Boomer predecessors once yearned for a sincere, simple way to live. 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.
One World Under Doom is Latest Marvel Event
By Dan Brown Spoiler warning: This review contains plot points involving Marvel characters, so if you value surprise stop reading now. If you’re a fan of big Marvel events – the company-wide crossovers that depict all of Marvel’s heroes uniting against a common foe – then you’ll love the collected One World Under Doom. It contains all nine issues from the main One World Under Doom title, which unspooled from February to November last year. The premise: Latverian dictator Doctor Doom takes over the planet, making the entire globe his domain. The unexpected reaction: Some people welcome the apparent Utopia Doom is offering. So not only do superheroes like the Thing, Captain America and Thor have to battle the armoured villain, but they also find themselves waging a public-relations war. “He’s given the world peace, health care, education, food security,” Squirrel Girl, a minor Avenger, laments at one point. Written by Ryan North with pencils by R.B. Silva, the series followed on the heels of another crossover, Blood Hunt. The anthology has a cover that’s a riff on a cover from 1977, the one for Super-Villain Team-Up No. 14. It shows the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Spider-Man and the X-Men kneeling before their nemesis, who is not only a scientific genius, but was also the Sorcerer Supreme in the Marvel continuity of last year. In the early chapters, the good guys come across as complacent. Taking an invisible jet liner to Eastern Europe, they find it impossible to breach the magic bubble protecting Doom’s castle. What seemed like just another Doom ploy soon leaves the heroes without a good answer. As they continue to battle Doom’s allies, like his army of Doombots and assorted Hydra flunkies, his political support across nations grows. “We just need to make him look weak and silly and angry,” Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) reasons. Turns out doing so is easier said than done. Even such champions of justice as Thor, who is himself the monarch of Asgard, begin to question whether Doom being emperor is such a rotten development. Some of the chapters are told from Doom’s point of view, and one even contains a Jack Kirbyesque collage. Doom’s tangle with Dormammu is the artistic highlight of the book. Of course, not everything is as it seems. When the protagonists do finally find a way to get inside the castle, they find a massive complex beneath it where Doom has imprisoned the population of Latveria and is draining the life force from each resident, shortening their lives while boosting his powers. Valeria Richards, the daughter of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, plays a big role in the story. If you have been reading Marvel in recent years, you will know she is Doom’s goddaughter, and possibly the only other human being he cares about. She tries to talk him out of his plan, becoming collateral damage in the final battle scene. Big crossovers are now a staple of comic companies like Marvel and DC, and have been since the 1980s. If you’re hungry for some superhero action that may also provoke thought about current politics, check out One World Under Doom. 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.
Wither Star Wars?
By Dan Brown As you may have heard, Star Wars is at a crossroads. Lucasfilm, the company that produces the venerable franchise, recently got a new boss. Or rather bosses. Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down as president of the Disney subsidiary, and a two-headed monster is taking her place. Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan, two old hands at Lucasfilm, were announced last month as the venture’s new co-presidents – which sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. More on that in a moment. Depending on which social-media posts you read, Kennedy was either the very best or very worst thing that ever happened to the space-fantasy franchise. She was promoted to president in 2012, when Disney bought Lucasfilm and all its properties from namesake founder George Lucas. Since then, her record as leader has been . . . mixed at best. There have been high points, like the two seasons of Tony Gilroy’s Andor streaming series, as well as low points, like 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, a movie even diehard fans admit is a chaotic mess. How bad is the sequel trilogy-concluding film? One line from Rise of Skywalker – “Somehow, Palpatine returned” – has since become shorthand for lazy moviemaking. Meanwhile, Andor has been lauded as a prescient fictional roadmap to the current political situation in the U.S. Kennedy wisely decided to let Gilroy have free reign to bring his vision to the small screen. She has greenlit other projects, including Rogue One, The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Solo: A Star Wars Story (which I will defend to the death!). She has been blamed, unfairly in my eyes, for every misstep Lucasfilm has made along the way, and rarely gets any credit for keeping Star Wars alive in the public imagination. But I think we can all agree we’re happy she tried. Let’s face it, Star Wars has never been more ubiquitous. Lucas himself was not exactly a prolific filmmaker, seeming hesitant to exploit the storytelling possibilities of the universe he invented. In the seven years between 2005’s Revenge of the Sith and the Disney purchase, Lucas focused on the Clone Wars and didn’t put out enough other Star Wars product to satisfy fans. He had run out of gas. Now, about the management structure that’s taking Kennedy’s place. I don’t see how it can work. My firm belief is that committees can’t provide vision or leadership. And at this uncertain moment Lucasfilm needs more of both. Having two presidents, even if one is responsible for creative decisions and the other is in charge of operations, can lead only to heartache. My prediction is that, within a few short years, one of them will be forced out. It’s just not a sustainable model that can lead to success over a long period. I think what corporate history teaches us is that executives have an innate desire to build and protect their own empires. But at least it will give the fanboys something to complain about online! 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.
My Favourite Superhero is a Self-loather
By Dan Brown It’s a question every self-respecting geek must grapple with: Who’s your favourite superhero? Mine is the Thing, from the Fantastic Four. I’ve been a fan of many comic characters in my 57 years, but he is the one who remains closest to my heart after all this time. If you’re not a regular reader of Marvel Comics, the Thing is the one who looks like an anthropomorphic pile of orange rocks. Maybe you saw him in last summer’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. His defining trait is that he doesn’t want to be a superhero and has many times tried to get changed back to just normal Ben Grimm. Unlike, say, DC’s Superman, the Thing hates being super-powered, and considers his condition a curse. He is, put simply, a self-loather. The first time I met the Thing was in the summer of 1977 when I picked up Fantastic Four No. 183. I got it at a variety store just down the road from Orr Lake, where I went with my parents and brother for our annual cottage visit with my mother’s side of the family. The furious action, the lively colours, the compelling dialogue . . . it captured me. I was later delighted to discover the Thing had his own title, Marvel Two-in-One, in which he would team up with other Marvel characters for side adventures. Fantastic Four always had a sci-fi feel. The leader of the group is Reed Richards, who was Grimm’s college roommate. Grimm piloted the spaceship that flew through a shower of cosmic rays, transforming each of the FF into their superpowered self. I grew to love Grimm because he was imperfect. For whatever reason or non-reason, the fact he was rough around the edges drew me to him. He didn’t speak in lofty superhero phrases, in fact he had a New York accent. I loved that he smoked cigars. I loved that he was the one who always started a poker game when other heroes came to visit the Baxter Building, the FF’s headquarters. When the team was battling villains like the shape-shifting skrulls, or Annihilus from the Negative Zone or Doctor Doom, there would inevitably come a moment when the Thing would really let loose with his stony fists. His war cry in those moments was “It’s clobberin’ time!” He also had other stock lines, including one – apparently inspired by radio comedies of yore – that he uttered darkly when a situation turned for the worse or became perplexing: “What a revoltin’ development!” In my young mind, it stuck. Of course, for Grimm the most revolting development of all was how he had been turned into a monster by his best friend, who insisted on breaching Earth’s atmosphere without proper shielding. Not to mention Grimm suspected Alicia Masters, his girlfriend, only loved him because, being blind, she couldn’t see his rocky visage. He may have been able to land a haymaker punch, but in life it was the Thing who got knocked down. Yet he always got back up. He did his stoic best. Eventually, he learned to make a kind of peace with the bum hand he had been dealt. What a role model! That’s me. Now let’s do you – who is your favourite superhero? Why that particular character? Let me know in the comments! 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.
Welcome to the Age of the Spiritual Sequel
Welcome to the age of the spiritual sequel By Dan Brown There’s been much discussion in recent days about the trailer for the new Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day. Spielberg is being cagey about the new film’s relationship to his 1977 UFO classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Is Disclosure Day a sequel to Close Encounters? Is it a standalone film? The online debate rages on. Of course, there is one other possibility: It could be set in the same world, but not directly follow the events of Close Encounters. In other words, it could be a spiritual sequel. Which wouldn’t be surprising, since this is the age of the spiritual sequel. There appear to be more and more of them all the time. When the mockumentary series The Paper debuted last year, many reviewers pointed out how it was set in the same world as The Office. It even shared at least one character with its predecessor series. The Creed trilogy follows the six Rocky movies, but the central character is not Balboa himself, but the son of his frenemy Apollo Creed. The Texas college comedy Everybody Wants Some takes place in 1980, four years after Dazed and Confused, which is set in 1976 on the last day of high school. But EWS focuses on a different set of students; you don’t need to have seen the original to understand it. And the Exorcist, which stars Scarlett Johannson, is set for release a year from this March and is not a remake of or direct sequel to the 1973 horror classic, although it is set in the same imaginative universe. Spiritual sequels – which in television were always called spinoffs – make a lot of sense. Pretty much every sequel you can think of has already been made, so billing a movie as a spiritual successor gives studio marketing departments a way to promote a motion picture while also giving directors and producers creative room to manoeuvre. Are they better than direct sequels or prequels? There may be too little information at this point to make a definitive conclusion on that question. It’s probably much harder for filmmakers to capture the “flavour” of a popular motion picture while also creating a story that can stand on its own for those viewers who have no knowledge or memory of the first one. One suspects we are going to see even more of them – look at the Star Wars movies and shows all set in the same galaxy. Having a consistent milieu makes it easier for storytellers to find a launching point they can exploit, a logical entry point into a setting that already feels familiar to fans. Me, I have reason to believe Disclosure Day may be more of a direct sequel to Close Encounters than we’ve been led to believe. When a new trailer dropped during the Super Bowl, there were at least two images that look mighty familiar to me, including a spaceship shrouded in clouds and an isolated white house situated perfectly for an alien abduction. We’ll all find out for sure on June 12, when Spielberg's latest lands in theatres. 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.
GNG Tackles Gun Street Girl
By Dan Brown SPOILER WARNING: This column contains plot details, so if you value surprise, stop reading here! The L.A. Mood Graphic-Novel Group met Saturday, February 14 and this is what happened in our hour-long meeting. The book: Gun Street Girl, written by Barb Lien-Cooper, and illustrated by Ryan Howe. Published by London’s Lucha Comics. The discussion: In our lightning round – every group member gets two minutes to give their overall impressions of the book at the start of each session – it was clear most of us enjoyed Gun Street Girl and found something to appreciate about it. The central characters are Liz, a bodyguard, her boss, Eddie Caution, a paranormal investigator, and Prana, who is Liz’s girlfriend. Eddie hires Liz to be his muscle on paranormal adventures. The action takes place in England, specifically London, so will please Anglophiles (there are several scenes in a pub), and follows the pair as they encounter such monsters as demons, trolls and a baby griffin – so if you’re versed in Dungeons & Dragons or Harry Potter lore, you’ll already have the basic vocabulary down. I guess Gun Street Girl would fall into the urban fantasy genre. What I found fascinating is that despite the title, which is taken from a Tom Waits song, the reader hardly ever sees Liz at work. Her fights mostly take place offstage. In fact, if my memory serves, there’s maybe one panel in the whole collection showing Liz firing her gun. What this means is, the focus is not on violence or gore. I think the heart of the book is the back-and-forth between Liz and Eddie, who is Liz’s guide to the supernatural. It felt to me like a really good workplace sitcom. The very first chapter, for instance, starts in medias res – Liz and Eddie have been captured by a wizard and must figure a way to avoid impending doom. Other stories in Gun Street Girl aren’t about jump scares, but a slow burn of suspense. There’s also a great sense of humour pervading the whole book, which helped me as a reader to accept the premise. It’s a way for the creative team to wink at the audience, allowing readers to suspend their disbelief. So even though the cover (which evokes Alan Davis for me), depicts Liz blasting her way out of a door with tentacles slithering out of it, the thrust of this collection is the relationship between the two leads. What could a lesbian monster assassin and a crusty, over-the-hill mage possibly have in common? One of our other points of discussion was how the dialogue gets better the deeper you get into the book. I figure any creative team takes some time to establish the characters in any given story. I would readily recommend Gun Street Girl. You’ll find it in L.A. Mood on the rack reserved for books and comics with a local connection. A second volume looks to be coming this year, which I can’t wait for. L.A. Mood’s Graphic-Novel Group meets the second Saturday of every month. Next month’s selection is The Goon: Bunch of Old Crap by Eric Powell. I know little about the Goon, so I’m looking forward to learning more about this long-lived Dark Horse Comics title, which goes all the way back to the 1990s. We’re set to meet March 14 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 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
