About

SciFiPulse has been bringing you all the latest in genre TV and Movie news since May 2001.

The website’s mission is to be a place that fans of Science Fiction and Fantasy can enjoy and read all the latest news, interviews and reviews.

Feedback is welcomed, so please feel free to post you comments under each article.

I hope you enjoy the new look and choose to make it one of your many homes on the internet.

All the best

Ian M. Cullen

Webmaster and News Editor

About The Team

Ian M. Cullen – Founder and Lead Writer

I’m not especially good at writing about myself – but here goes. My journey into writing was a pretty unusual one. I was by no means a born writer – if anything quite the opposite.

As a kid I would draw a lot – I was pretty good at copying things such as cartoon character like Popeye and such – but I was never of the standard to do comics.

I was always involved in something creative though – and one of the first stories I wrote was at junior school where I wrote a few short stories – nothing spectacular though – it took a long while for my confidence to grow as a writer.

In the late 1980s and early 90s I got involved with Theatre. My first experiences of which were with a disabled theatre company which was attached to Beaumont College in Lancaster. Over the course of a year the group of which I was a part of devised a play which we took on tour and in 1990 it was filmed as part of Granada Televisions ‘Celebration Show’ which was a celebration of the arts within the North West of England.

In around 1992/93 I did the BTEC First Diploma in Theatre Arts where as part of their theatre company at Abram Moss College in North Manchester I helped devise a play based on the German Folk tale about the Pied Piper Oh Hamlin, which was called ‘Rats’. I helped out with some of the writing of this and also played the villainous King Rat – it was my first lead role and I was terrified.

In my first year on the BTEC National Theatre Arts course I wrote a play called ‘Johnny’s Amazing Silicone Chip Adventure’ which was written for the ‘Theatre In Education’ part of the course. Apparently the play worked out so well that a few years after I had left my tutor pulled the play out of mothballs as an example to the new class of what can be done. They used and adapted it for their own performance.

Throughout the mid 1990′s I did a few courses but by and large drifted from project to project – trying to find a niche for myself. I’d kind of got most of the theatre stuff out of my system – but needed a new creative project.

It wasn’t until 2001 that I finally decided to form scifipulse.net, which to start with was initially called CyFy Pulse and was originally hosted on Geocities.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years – and now my adult life. I’d always been a fan of video games, science fiction television and fantasy. I’d always been a big fan of the summer movie season as well.

So, armed with very little knowledge and a little passion I proceeded to design a very basic looking site called CyFy Pulse that eventually evolved into scifipulse.net

This site has been really good to me over the last few years – and has been through a few rough times with me as well. It has also been a learning experience for me – and went some way to helping me get my first professional work published in 2006 for Star Trek Magazine, when I started I never really had any aspirations to get published. If you’d told me back in the 1990s that I’d be interviewing the likes of Richard Hatch, Nichelle Nichols and a few of the other people I have interviewed for this site. I’d have probably laughed it off.

Anyway that’s just a little about myself.

John Freeman – Writer

I’ve worked in comics and magazine publishing in the UK for over 20 years. My past work includes being editor of Doctor Who Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, Star Wars Magazine, the UK Simpsons Comics, and various comics titles for Marvel UK under the tutelage of Paul Neary (including, Death’s Head II, Warheads, Overkill and others).

I’ve also written comic strips for various companies such as Marvel, Fleetway, Lucky Bag and commercial companies seeking to use comics as a promotional device.

These days, my day job is Managing Editor of ROK Comics, which enables comics creators to create or adapt their strips for mobile phones, which can be delivered worldwide through WAP subscription and single downloads — potentially reaching a much bigger audience than that for web-based comics. In addition to comics delivered via the main ROK Comics web site and WAP service, we have partner services in China (where some strips are being translated into Chinese), Pakistan and South Africa, with more in the pipeline.

My British comics news and features web site, downthetubes.net, web site features news about British comics and a comics writing guide. I also writer for Star Trek Magazine and Comics International.

• The SciFi Pulse logo is based on design work for the Ex Astris comic and was designed by Mike Nicoll and the design elements are © Mike Nicoll and John Freeman. More information at www.exastris.co.uk

Nicholas Yanes – Comic Book Reviewer

If you’re reading this, you either really like my blog or you’re planning to stalk me – I’m okay with both.

I received my undergraduate degree from the Wilkes Honors College in Jupiter, FL where I also wrote an honors thesis titled, “X-Men as a Reflection of Civil Rights in America.”  I received my Masters from Florida State University’s American & Florida Studies Program.  As a graduate student I was fortunate enough to teach a junior level college course called “American Comic Book History” for two years.  My Masters’ thesis is “Graphic Imagery – Jewish American Comic Book Creators’ Depictions of Class, Race, and Patriotism”; a portion of which appears in Captain America and the Struggle of the Superhero: Critical Essays under the title, “The Super Patriot: World War II Warriors and the Birth of Captain America.”  In addition to pursuing a PhD at the University of Iowa’s American Studies Department, I am putting together a collection of essays looking at Obama in popular culture which is to be published by McFarland Press.

Outside of contemporary popular culture I enjoy studying U.S. Environmental History, American Religion and Colonial United States – Puritans are far cooler than people realize.

My goals include gaining superpowers, getting paid to express my opinions, and meeting Stan Lee.  I enjoy watching Lost & Heroes, and I morn the loss of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Stargate: Atlantis, but I am deeply looking forward to Stargate: Universe; and if I was a character on Scrubs, I’d be Dr. Cox.

Finally, if you want to learn about me professionally, feel free to look at my linkedin.com profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nicholas-yanes/a/84a/518

Wayne Hall – Writer and Comics Reviewer

Believe it or not, there was a period of time when I actually didn’t read comics. It lasted for about ten years. I don’t think I missed much because that was the era of the Super-Mobile, the Spider-Mobile and Doc Ock wanting to marry Aunt May.

Prior to that, I learned to read from comics. Don’t laugh—it gave me the ability to read at a high school level before I’d entered second grade.

So, what brought me back to the books, as I like to call them? The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. I began to read them, and before I knew it, I was back into the weekly run to the local comics shop. Now I’m involved in the constant search for quality reading.

Currently, I work for the Washington Post as a Desktop Publisher in Washington, DC. I live in the Maryland suburbs just outside of the District.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Web, blogging and podcasting—at least, ever since they were invented by Al Gore.

I write news stories at least three days a week for the site, and also create three columns—Tubular Television (about the previous week in TV), Comix Portal (a general comics column that appears usually on Tuesday) and DC Comics And Beyond (where I review recent releases). Recently, I also began to write a weekly column on comics called A Comics Odyssey, which highlights recent developments in the industry, brief reviews and maybe an opinion or two. That last column appears on monstersandcritics.com!

I do have a blog you can read. Just go to Wayne’s Worlds. (What else could it be called, after all?)

Feel free to send me any comments at waynehall@scifipulse.net or waynescomics@gmail.com.