Original Geek

Connect with us! The d20 calls Detective Sam Porter a cliché, and the author agrees. J.D. Barker joins Steve and Jeff for a dice-driven review of The Fourth Monkey . He explains how he loaded Porter with every cop cliché on purpose to use the reader’s comfort against them. He also explains why the killer’s early diary entries read like Leave It to Beaver , and which real Chicago places made it int...

Connect with us! Thriller author J.D. Barker spent a year interviewing murderers in Florida prisons before he wrote The Fourth Monkey . He tells us what he learned and why he wanted readers to empathize with the killer. JD joins Steve and Jeff to talk about The First Scarlet Door , his new prequel that tells Anson Bishop’s origin story. He walks through two decades of ghostwriting bestsellers unde...

Connect with us! Artist Alley is where you meet the creators behind the work, from the legends to the people you’ll be glad you stopped for. At Granite State Comic Con, we stopped for Mike Spring, writer and publisher at Outtatime Comics. His table was all 80s art, and his sign made us laugh before he said a word. Mike talks about I Want My Two Dollars , his book on 20 cult-favorite 80s movies. He...

Connect with us! The rules of Random Review are simple: we set the topic, and the d20 sets the direction. This time we got some help. At Granite State Comic Con, Felicia Day, actor, producer, and outspoken Dungeon Crawler Carl fan, agreed to roll the first die for us and give her take on the spot. She lands a 17 and talks about Carl’s new Agent Provocateur subclass, and why she’d never play a bomb...

Connect with us! This episode covers a full day at the Granite State Comicon in Manchester, New Hampshire. Steve and Jeff recap the con they’re calling the Goldilocks of comic cons. They interview writer Mike Spring in Artist Alley about I Want My Two Dollars , his book on 20 beloved 80s movies that flopped at the box office. Then Felicia Day joins the Random Review for Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 5...

Connect with us! Warner Bros. finished Coyote vs. Acme , then shelved it for a tax write-off. Ketchup Entertainment rescued it, and it's been filling theaters since August. We saw it ten days in to a mostly full house and came out with a theory, a grudge, and a whole lot of Looney Tunes history. The dice send us into Will Forte's chemistry with a coyote who was never in the room, and int...

Connect with us! We set the topic. The dice set the direction. This week: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods — the bubble floor, four castles, and one very large puppy. The first roll sent Steve and Jeff into the Gate itself, and into an argument with the question: did Vadim's death really unleash Emberus? They pull the whole chain apart on the fly — the flooded sub, the...

Connect with us! We set the topic. The dice set the direction. This week it's Lanterns , episode one — and both of us walked in already sold. The first roll landed on Tom King's fingerprints, which stung a little, since we were standing in the same building as him at Boston Fan Expo and never made it to his panel. What we got instead is a Hal Jordan who is nothing like the Silver Age ver...

Connect with us! We set the topic. The dice set the direction. This week the d20 pointed us at Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist Cookbook — and Steve and Jeff had no idea which two questions they'd be answering until the dice landed. Roll one sent them into the Iron Tangle, which surfaced a real split between the hosts: Jeff took Matt Dinniman at his word — don't worry a...

Connect with us! Two Marvel guys walk into the Green Lantern Corps. Steve and Jeff review episode 1 of HBO's Lanterns , then dig into James Gunn's whole DCU reboot — Super Friends to Snyderverse to now. Tom King's fingerprints on Hal Jordan. Kyle Chandler being a jerk with a power ring. The d20 hands Steve a question the AI made up. Plus: was recasting Henry Cavill the biggest unfor...

Connect with us!  Steve and Jeff spent a day at Fan Expo Boston and brought back the whole thing: Chris Evans, the Hobbits, The Boys, and the moment they told Colby Minifie they'd fan-cast her as Cascadia in Dungeon Crawler Carl. Plus what a con actually costs, why six and a half hours isn't enough, and the trinket trade that turned 30 homemade 3D prints into a floor full of new friends....

Connect with us! Some of the monsters know they're monsters. And they can't leave. Book two of Dungeon Crawler Carl drops Carl and Princess Donut onto the third floor — and starts quietly asking a question the games we grew up on never did: what if the NPCs are aware? Jeff and Steve roll the d20 and let the dice decide how they review Carl's Doomsday Scenario — no plan, no idea what...

Connect with us! Only one Spider-Man is allowed a 10 on Steve's scale. Jeff disagrees. Loudly. The dice decide how we review Spider-Man: Brand New Day — we set the topic, the d20 sets the direction, and we don't know what we're saying until we're already saying it. This roll landed on the two best arguments in the movie: whether the Department of Damage Control is the darkest t...

Connect with us! The first edition of the OG Call Sheet is here — the segment where we cast our favorite stories the way they were meant to be.  With a Dungeon Crawler Carl adaptation reportedly in the works at Seth MacFarlane's Fuzzy Door, Steve and Jeff go one-by-one through 13 characters and lock in their dream cast — from Carl and Princess Donut to Mordecai, Odette, and Elle. Expect a cou...

Connect with us! A guy in his boxers. Crocs. A talking cat. Try recommending that to a normal person — they'll look at you like you've lost your mind. Then they read one page of Princess Donut, and they're in the cult too. Steve and Jeff roll the D20 and let the dice pick the angle on Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 1 by Matt Dinniman. Top-three characters, the odd-couple buddy-cop dynam...

Connect with us! Dungeon Crawler Carl book 1 review — Steve and Jeff break down Matt Dinniman's LitRPG phenomenon, Princess Donut, and who should play Carl in Seth McFarlane's Peacock series. The apocalypse will be televised. A guy in boxers, Crocs, and a leather jacket chases a cat into the street at 2:30 a.m. — and the world ends. That's page one, and somehow it only gets more unh...

Connect with us! The rules of Random Review are simple: we set the topic, and the d20 sets the direction. We know what we're reviewing — we just don't know how. This time we handed the dice a post-apocalyptic novel and sat the author down to defend it in real time. Steve and Jeff are joined by indie author Alex Grass for a review of Drek , his surreal, funny, end-of-the-world novel where...

Connect with us! Author Alex Grass joins us in the basement for the debut of Artists Alley — and he brought the whole shelf with him: Black River Lantern , Influencer , Drek , A Boy's Hammer , and the brand-new short story collection Infernal Tramps (out July 15). We start by trying to define paranormal horror and immediately discover the category might swallow the whole genre. Alex traces ho...

Connect with us! We rolled the d20 on Disclosure Day, Spielberg's new alien movie, and the dice picked our fights for us. Roll one: the cold open that skips the close encounter entirely and throws you into Act 2 mid-chase, with Daniel already running and zero exposition to catch you up. Roll two: the train car climax — a practical-stunt escape sequence with a full John Williams score behind i...

Connect with us! How many alien movies has Steven Spielberg actually made? Ask three geeks, get three answers — and that's exactly the fight we pick this week. With Disclosure Day finally in theaters, we put Spielberg's entire alien run under the microscope: Close Encounters, E.T., the new one, and the two movies nobody can agree on (looking at you, War of the Worlds and that Indiana Jon...

Connect with us! This week on Original Geek Random Review, Steve Scarfo and Jeff Shaw roll the dice and land in the smoky, shadowy world of Spider-Noir. Nicolas Cage stars as Ben Reilly, a broken-down private investigator with a past life as The Spider, and somehow the whole thing works exactly because it lets Cage be Cage. We dig into the noir style, the Spider-Man twist, Janet as the show’s secr...

Connect with us! Is The Mandalorian & Grogu a true Star Wars movie event… or does it feel more like a Disney+ episode with an IMAX upgrade? On this Original Geek Random Review , Steve Scarfo and Jeff Shaw roll the dice and review The Mandalorian & Grogu , breaking down the theatrical experience, the Disney+ problem, Grogu’s big Force payoff, the Hutt storyline, the pacing, and whether this...

Connect with us! ⚠️ FULL SPOILERS for the series finale. Watch the episode first, then come back. Episode 8, "Blood and Bone," had the hardest job on TV: end Butcher, Hughie, Starlight, and Homelander without short-changing five seasons of buildup. Did it stick the landing? We Roll the D20 — it's a spoiler-heavy Random Review of THE BOYS series finale. Steve and Jeff break down the...

Connect with us!  The boys are putting Gen V on trial. Jeff prosecutes the spin-off for the ultimate irony — a show that satirizes corporate franchise expansion… by expanding into a franchise. Steve defends it as legitimate universe-building that explores what Vaught does to young, hopeful lives. They agree on one thing: they wasted Marie Moreau. Guilty or not guilty? You decide.  🎙️ Original Geek...

Connect with us! The Boys is over. We watched the series finale the day it dropped — and now we're Deconstructing the Cape. Steve and Jeff dig into five seasons of Compound V and corruption, then break down the finale: the Deep's karmic end, Huey's "it just hurts to be human," Homelander's collapse, and whether the show stuck the landing or pulled a Lost. We put Gen V...