Ray's X-Blog

By coincidence the two movies I watched the other evening each featured the title character trapped in ice. The Thing From Another World (1951.) A remote arctic research station detects the crash of an unusual object. Upon investigation they discover an alien being encased in ice. Somehow the men are able to carve out a coffin-sized ice block to bring the creature back to their base. Uh-oh. Quibble time. How did they dig underneath the alien Popsicle to create the block, especially with a bad storm on the way limiting their time? How did they raise the block to fly it back home? Did someone crawl under, carving away without the ice falling and crushing him? At the base the frozen ET is stored in a cold room. OK, the monster has to get free or watching an ice-encased alien just sitting there gets boring really quick. How a delayed reaction by a damaged heating device on the alien, melting him free? No, they have to use the "I didn't know th

Archetypal Clickbait Comic Cover No, Superman didn't die unlike the more recent event. By the time I read this comic in the 1960s I was getting tired of Kal-El. He was too powerful.  For example he's on a date with Lois Lane one night and the moon starts falling towards the earth. So Superman just flies up and fixes the problem. Even as Superboy Kal-El was one step below God. Challenged to perform impossible tasks Superboy stands on his head. People say, "So what?" He tells them to check with the local observatory. Astronomers are shocked that the earth has moved out of its orbit. With his impossible task completed Superboy just puts the world back into proper orbit. Of course with the moon's gravitational pull still in effect one would think his moving trick wouldn't be that easy. No earthquakes or tidal waves. It got the the point that I wished Superman would die. That's why I started reading Spider-Man. He didn