MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON Maggie’s World 087: A Robot Century When the play R.U.R. by Karl Čapek had its premiere on January 25, 1921, Rossum’s Universal Robots introduced the word “robot” to the world. Čapek later credited his brother Josef with creation of the word: the Czech word “robota” meaning serfs’ forced labor, was based on […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON Maggie’s World 086: Maggie Anecdotage Now and then, I’ve been known to launch into a “that reminds me” anecdote—and people have occasionally responded with a “you should write that down.” Now and then, I check a variety of dictionaries for spellings and definitions, and I recently looked up “dotage” in […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON Maggie’s World 085: Vacuous Villainy The 37th Maggie’s World focused on evildoers and their motivations and challenges. The motivations were summarized as: Hunger. Control. Insanity. Vengeance. Occupation. Plot Necessity. But, even while the funny-animal villain Big Bad Wolf was mentioned, most of the ones discussed in 2016 were memorably menacing. Recently, though, I […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON Maggie’s World 083: The Depression Comics Challenge Someone online recently noted that, when Pogo creator Walt Kelly graduated in 1930, he left high school just as the realities of the Great Depression were taking hold. Creative kids his age had seen the fun and pop culture entertainments of the “Roaring ’20s” turn […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON Maggie’s World 082: Who Was That Masked Man? Mask and Cape: That was the title of a fanzine founded by Margaret Gemignani in the early 1960s—and the combo of mask and cape for costumed characters was often a focus in those early days of comics fandom. Comics historian pioneer Jerry […]

MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON Maggie’s World 079: Beginnings In a 2015 Heritage auction, I bought an Anglican prayer book for $56. The description was that it had “modern leather binding” and “all edges gilt.” I haven’t been able to learn much about it beyond that. The title page: The Book of Common Prayer and Administration […]