Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: My wife Anne and I enjoy attending entertainment and comic conventions together, whether in our hometown of Indianapolis or in our neighboring states (and sometimes even farther). We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do. This weekend we once again drove two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend the sixteenth annual Cincinnati Comic Expo, their own version of our usual Midwest cons. After a two-year relocation to the Sharonville Convention Center, this year CCE returned at last to downtown Cincy's newly renovated, erstwhile Duke Energy Convention Center -- now rechristened the First Financial Center.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I enjoy attending entertainment and comic conventions together, whether in our hometown of Indianapolis or in our neighboring states (and sometimes even farther). We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do. This weekend we once again drove two hours southeast of Indianapolis to attend the sixteenth annual Cincinnati Comic Expo, their own version of our usual Midwest cons. After a two-year relocation to the Sharonville Convention Center, this year CCE returned at last to downtown Cincy's newly renovated, erstwhile Duke Energy Convention Center -- now rechristened the First Financial Center.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Horror won big at the Academy Awards! While Sinners and Frankenstein carted off a combined seven categories on behalf of the 2025 field, Zach Cregger's child-abduction plot-twister Weapons darted out of its own dark corner and took home Best Supporting Actress for Amy Madigan -- best known by Gen-X as Field of Dreams' Concerned Wife and Uncle Buck's annoyed girlfriend -- who was completely unrecognizable as the mysterious Aunt Gladys, a fiend who one day might be called "iconic" once enough time has passed that revealing her existence isn't a major spoiler in itself.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read within the past year that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I've read within the past year that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it -- novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Hi, I’m Hungry-Man-Sized Casey Kasem and welcome to another music listicle, but not a Top Ten because I didn't buy that many! As part of my annual series of chronically late year-in-review entries, I remain one of six people nationwide who still prefers compact discs to digital downloads. My hangups about vinyl would require a separate essay unto themselves, though I finally waded into some of that last year. My new-album splurges are rare because: (a) it’s increasingly tougher for new music to catch my ear as I grow older and more finicky; and (b) my favorite yesteryear acts died, stopped recording, or swiveled in directions away from me.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: The period-piece dramedy The Holdovers was one of my favorite films of 2023 for numerous reasons, including but not limited to Dominic Sessa in his charismatic feature-film debut as a cocky boarding-school senior whose family abandons him for Christmas and who learns humility and maybe a few manners as he eventually realizes smart-mouthing everyone around him can only get him so far in life. Ever since, I've been itching to see what else he can do. I wasn't compelled to endure the third Now You See Me…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Nearly three years ago I wrote about the plight of Coyote vs. Acme, the latest Looney Tunes feature film that was in post-production when Warner Brothers announced they'd changed their mind and they'd rather throw the whole thing off a cliff, toss a boulder on it, and declare it a loss on their tax forms. And yet it lives! A groundswell of omnipartisan internet wrath erupted in protest of this craven act of corporate greed and/or executive senselessness and/or misunderstanding by inattentive cartoon watchers who thought Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd were the good guys.

Hats off to writer/director Jane Schoenbrun for contributing to one of the most convoluted entry titles in MCC history! Not that I'm complaining -- tortured syntax is among my numerous writing vices, and I'll take whatever unwitting aiding and abetting I can get in my syntactical torturing. To clarify: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is the full name of Schoenbrun's third film, after We're All Going to the World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. I'm a big fan of creative film-titling and increasingly unimpressed by one-word titles that tell you absolutely nothing distinctive about the work, especially if six other unrelated films had that name first.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... ...and it all comes down to this: all the other pics fit to print. Obviously we had to lead off with the cheese sculpture.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... When I was a kid, the Midway was the only part of the fair that mattered. The food was a nice change of pace, but was more of a necessity than a highlight, at least until I discovered elephant ears.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... One of the fair’s regular features is the antiques competition, chiefly displayed on the second floor of the Indiana Arts Building.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... Anne and I are at that age when we’re more interested in visiting the exhibit halls than in rattling our bones on the Midway rides.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... Lego is a frequent sight at our State Fair. 4-H kids and competitors in other art contests routinely turn in works of Lego as their favorite sculpting medium.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... ...such as cakes! Back in 2019 we discovered for the first time in our entire fair-attending lives that the main 4-H Building wasn't their only exhibit hall.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... ...and one splashy theme recurred throughout the various exhibits of arts, crafts, cookery, and antiquing across all participating buildings: the 250th anniversary of July 4th, 1776, generally considered the date of birth of the United States of America.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context... ...and once again the most interesting exhibit was hosted in the Harvest Pavilion: "Rewind: A VHS Revival". Same as…

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context. Most years, we’re all about the food. Each time our favorite part is the “Taste of the Fair” competition, in which vendors showcase ostensibly new dishes in hopes of enticing foodies and/or impressing attendees who seek more to fair-life than eating the same tenderloin again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike... ...and it all comes down to this: one last photo gallery touring what else we saw beyond the cosplay, besides the celebs, past Artists Alley, and even outside the convention center's walls.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike... ...and for this longtime comics collector, that means keeping an eye out for favorite creators and/or new reading material.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike... …and for us it meant another round of photo ops with actors from movies and TV shows we’ve enjoyed.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike. As is the MCC procedure, let’s start with mandatory cosplay photos! The humble duo here at MCC enjoys the panoply of costumes, and appreciates the makers and wearers who enliven every comic-con with their talents and their exaltation of various fandoms.

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike. As is the MCC procedure, let’s start with mandatory cosplay photos! The humble duo here at MCC enjoys the panoply of costumes, and appreciates the makers and wearers who enliven every comic-con with their talents and their exaltation of various fandoms.

When I was a kid, gas fill-ups were just another ordinary errand, like buying groceries or refilling your parents' prescription or suffering at the dentist: they had to be done, but nobody ever giggled with anticipation or clapped their hands at the sight of those establishments. Sure, groceries got less tedious after WWII when the FDA legalized flavor, but nobody rational ever thought gas stations were fun...least of all during the 1970s energy crisis, when America's last hundred gallons had to be split 100 million ways. Getting gas was expensive and dispiriting and, worst of all, it was really boring.

Previously on Spider-Man: Five years ago as the pandemic trended downward -- been a while! -- No Way Home capped off Tom Holland's first trilogy by ruining Peter Parker's life even more depressingly than usual. The This Is Your Life fan-service parade of Spideys and Spider-villains from Spider-cinema past were a delight despite the Major Character Death casting a pall, though The Battle of the Spider-Stars fizzled out in its showdown letdown, a blurry mishmash of scaffolds and weightless automata typifying the rushed VFX of many a post-Endgame…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Help us celebrate The Guild's upcoming 20th anniversary by making the most epic renfaire movie of all time!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oppenheimer afforded Academy Award Winner Sir Christopher Nolan a "king of the world" moment that his hardcore fans had been anticipating for years. Few other directors, if any, could've reaped a nine-digit box office take and filled a movie-trophy case with a big-budget historical saga about a haunted man who's hailed as a hero by his peers for having a singular idea that took a team to execute and ended a lengthy war at the cost of countless innocent lives in the process, only to end the film with a monologue about his hubris, sins, and regrets, all as an admonishment to a humankind too quick to celebrate his body count and one day repeat his mistakes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

Previously on the all-new DC Universe: With last year's Superman, James Gunn admirably rebooted Warner Bros' big-screen superhero canon that kept putting the "League" in "beleaguered" with every new misfire. Rather than fully suppress the bad-boy edginess of his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy -- which worked for that particular motley crew, don't get me wrong -- Gunn shrewdly tapped humankind's self-inflicted age of cynicism as a chief antagonist to the Big Blue Boy Scout's superpowered optimism. He wasn't necessarily renouncing "attitude" as a marketing mood, so much as he was conceding there…

Previously on Toy Story: After Toy Story 3 proved the perfect finale for Pixar's flagship series, the formerly impeccable animation studio held the IP upside-down and shook really hard to see if any more coins might fall out of Hamm's back-hole. I later summed up the fourth one... The series was OVER. The trilogy was COMPLETE. The finale with Bonnie was PERFECT. But no, Pixar had to yank out the stitches on that beautiful closure and march Bonnie’s toys through the motions of yet another toys-on-the-run escapade that benches half its all-stars, loses track of its own rules, manufactures one needless chase too many, and drops one of its decent, nonwhite human characters into a disturbingly harrowing police encounter — blithely pretending such a scene evokes absolutely no alarming real-world relevance — all so Sheriff Woody can ride off into the sunset AGAIN, but this time literally instead of metaphorically.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Once every decade some indie studio will scrounge up enough money to afford a brief wide release for a brutal foreign-language martial-arts flick to remind Americans the John Wick series isn't the be-all-end-all of the genre. The last one I saw on the big screen was 2014's The Raid 2, so I'm pretending to be an authority here. Such works rarely hit the big screen near us, or if they do, nobody tells me. Not that I watch a lot of them anyway, but at last, another one has broken through that isn't a…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I visit entertainment conventions together! As a married couple 21 years and counting, and best friends for years before that, we've attended everything from cozy local gatherings to small-town festivals to large-scale comic-cons in some of America's largest convention centers -- three Star Wars Celebrations, four Dragon Cons, four Superman Celebrations, a couple dozen Chicago events, and several other Midwest shows easily reachable from our Indianapolis hometown. We're the Goldens. It's who we are and what we do. Our most recent show was last weekend's…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Longtime MCC readers may recall I'm not of Generation YouTube and don't really keep tabs on any of their channels or series except Screen Junkies' "Honest Trailers". Bonus points go to creator/director Kane Parsons for grabbing my attention with his feature-film debut Backrooms, which builds on his YouTube horror series of the same name that I'd never heard of until I saw the trailer and may have held my breath for a moment as I thought to myself, I've had dreams exactly like this.

AHOY Comics presents their first ever Kickstarter — for a graphic novel by an Eisner-award winning writer and the artist of THE BOYS!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis -- a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI “art”, and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad. Rather than dump all our pics into a single omnibus entry, we’re mercifully splitting them into a trilogy of galleries...

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in downtown Indianapolis -- a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI “art”, and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad. Rather than dump all our pics into a single omnibus entry, we’re mercifully splitting them into a trilogy of galleries...

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the twelfth edition of the Indiana Comic Convention at the Indiana Convention Center in scenic downtown Indianapolis, and by "scenic" I mean "overcrowded with more construction equipment than a Tonka Truck factory". ICC 2026 was a fun opportunity for fans to look at walls covered with old comics, build lightsabers, buy 3D-printed knickknacks, overstock on Funko Pops, respect the anime fandom whose population dwarfs us older generations, avoid AI "art", and scratch their heads at the inexplicable comeback of the 19th-century rubber-duck fad.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: We watch Star Wars movies and shows! My wife Anne and I have kept up with most of the Disney+ series, for better or worse. We aren't unconditional superfans preaching, "If it says Star Wars on it, it's A+++!" in a glassy-eyed haze, nor do we hate-watch it and share high-strung "cave-geek shakes impotent angry fist at toy line" harangues for hollow YouTube bucks while our souls decompose into gnarled, oily nubs. The far-faraway galaxy is large; it contains multitudes. Granted, that's more of a four-quadrant marketing design than a magnanimous diversity credo.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home…

Previously on Mortal Kombat: I'm not a deeply invested fan -- even "fan" might be an overstatement -- but I've dabbled in the franchise. Back in my fast-food management days, after closing time a friend and I would hang out at a local 24-hour grocery that had a Mortal Kombat II cabinet by the front doors. Their overnight crew ignored us while we virtually whaled on each other for a while. I learned the moves for Liu Kang and Jax, just barely enough to get by, but I was never a serious threat.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we have annual traditions ’round these parts! Two such occasions fall three weeks apart each year, often but not always receiving separate entries of incredulous self-congratulation. In this attention-deficit we once again offer two for the bandwidth of one, a pretty sweet deal in any economy, not just this one. I launched this wee blog on April 28, 2012, three weeks before my 40th birthday as a means of charting the effects of the aging process on my opinions of, enthusiasm for, offense at, and/or detailed nitpicking of various works of art, expression, humanity, inhumanity, glory, love, idolatry, inspiration, hollowness, geek lifestyles, food, and Deep Thoughts.

Dateline: Friday, May 15, 2026 -- Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I do stuff for each other's birthdays! Usually it's a road trip somewhere outside our hometown of Indianapolis. This year for my birthday, we attended something completely different: the very same weekend, Indy would be the first stop on a repertory roadshow tour for Airplane!, that 1980 parody classic from the young directing team of Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams. I trust it needs no introduction regarding the incessant goofiness and wall-to-wall gags that cemented its legacy as a critical comedic ancestor to…