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Colin Smith
Colin Smith is currently Q Magazine’s comics columnist and blogs at Too Busy Thinking About My Comics and on Tumbler.
TOP MAGAZINE CONTENT BY COLIN SMITH
Shameless? The Super-Hero Comics of Mark Millar: Part 1, An Introduction
It’s too good a story not to be treated with suspicion. Asked to recall his first comic by Lee Randall of The Scotsman in 2009, Mark Millar declared that he could remember the matter “exactly”.… [more]
On the Profoundly Rational Doctor Stephen Strange
Who’d pitch a character such as Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s Doctor Strange to one of the Big Two today?
The Adventures of Henry Pym (1962 to 1965)
Don’t print the legend. There was no such thing as an archetypal “Marvel superhero” for the first few years following the publication and unexpected success in 1961 of the Fantastic Four. What would in hindsight… [more]
On Hawkworld, by Timothy Truman and Alcatena (1989)
In the shadows of the planet Thanagar’s great High Towers, where the three billion souls of the Empire’s alien underclass are segregated away in the most squalid and soul-butchering of conditions, there’s a statue of… [more]
Dan Dare and the Seductive Myths of Englishness
In the very first Dan Dare adventure, which began to be serialised weekly in the Christian boy’s comic Eagle in 1950, we’re introduced to the ”Inter Planet Space Fleet some years in the future.”
He’s Not a Super-Hero, He’s Not Even a Very Naughty Boy: The Case Against Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s Zenith
He’s a bad one, that Zenith, and we can be sure about that badness because the people who know assure us that it’s true.
The Challenge of the Super-Friends: Why Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch’s The Authority is One of the Sweetest Comics of the Modern Era
For a comic book characterised by its “intense graphic violence” (according to Wikipedia) and designed to be marked by an “attention to nasty little details, its appalling bad attitude, and the utter carnage the cast are capable… [more]
OTHER MAGAZINE CONTENT BY COLIN SMITH (85 TOTAL)
“Now Everyone Hates Yuppies”: Shameless? Part 11
Continued from last week. There’s a sense in which The Saviour helps establish the limits of deconstruction. For Millar stripped away so many of the genre’s traditions that it ceased to be much of a… [more]
A Superhero for the Reader’s Sake: Shameless? Part 10
Continued from last week. But even the most experienced and gifted of writers would struggle to make a success of The Saviour. It was far too ambitious and complex a project. In mixing so many genres,… [more]
The History of the World?: Shameless? Part 9
Continued from last week. But despite its barnstorming high concept, The Saviour was, as Skidmore conceded, “hard to explain” (*1). Some of this was caused by the need to keep key plot-reversals under wraps. But… [more]
On Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2: What Tony Stark Once Suffered to Learn, Tony Stark Soon Forgot
Everyone’s at least something of a villain in Iron Man 2, except for some of our superhero’s friends and those thoroughly unaccountable Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and yet one of the very worst of the bad… [more]
From Shazam to the Devil, from Brother Power the Geek to Jesus?: Shameless? Part 8
Continued from last week. It’s impossible to say how much the young Millar wrote or how often he sent off his work to publishers in the years before he landed the Trident Comics contract. His… [more]
What if Superman was Really the Antichrist!?!: Shameless? Part 7
Continued from last week. The Saviour #1-6 (December 1989 to January 1991) Trident #5 (April 1990) The Saviour TPB Volume 1, Trident, 1990 (reprints all of the above except issue 6, with a Neil Gaiman… [more]
“That Wicked Tongue Will Land You in Trouble Some Day”: Shameless? Part 6
Continued from last week. Shameless? will inevitably reference the way in which Mark Millar has discussed his own work. As such, it’s worth noting that his distinctive public persona turns out not to have been… [more]
The Adolescent High Conceptualist: Shameless? Part 5
Continued from last week. It would take Millar almost a decade to develop a style that was as controlled and effective as his ideas were consistently intriguing. The first substantial evidence of this would appear… [more]
Why are People so Frightened of Change?: Shameless? Part 4
Continued from last week. “Why are they so obsessed with continuity? A story is a story – nothing more, and yet people want to know which Earth Watchmen takes place on.” (*1) The adolescent Millar… [more]
On My So-Called Secret Identity
My So-Called Secret Identity: not just principled, smart and promising, but repeatedly downright enjoyable. Every story contains any number of manifestos. The less a comic’s creators focus on a precise expression of their own beliefs,… [more]
Mark Millar, Deconstructionist, Man and Boy: Shameless? Part 3
Continued from last week. From the middle of the Eighties to the decade’s end, the teenage Millar’s preference appears to have been for the breed of super-hero comics associated with the label of deconstruction. The… [more]
On the Professional Pre-History of Mark Millar: Shameless? Part 2
Continued from last week. Only Mark Millar knows which twelve months of his life would most deserve the title of Annus horribilis. But from what he’s said in the press, the years of the late… [more]
The Renaissance Man, The Master Of The World?: One Last Look at the Ditko / Lee Doctor Strange (Part 12)
One recurrent criticism of Doctor Strange as a character is that he’s simply too powerful. A great many writers and fans alike have contended that comic book magic provides him with the tension-destroying ability to… [more]
That Cowardly and Superstitious Batman, That Heartlessly Persecuted Joker: On Batman #17
Well, why doesn’t the Batman simply kill the Joker? You’d think the answer would be obvious. Yet fans the blogosphere over appear quite flummoxed, if not dangerously apoplectic, about the matter. The Joker can’t be… [more]
You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby: On What Made Doctor Strange Unique (The Penultimate Part)
Why would the Ancient One wait until after Strange had confronted Dormammu before rewarding his triumphant student with “new powers”? Perhaps the physical and magical enfeeblement caused by the Dreaded One’s spell had left the… [more]
Father, Son; Mentor, Student; Friends: On Doctor Strange & the Ancient One (Part 10)
It was the unprecedented degree of conflict, of course, which marked out the earliest Marvel superhero comics from their characteristically more polite, repressed competitors. No-one had ever produced the likes of Fantastic Four #1 before,… [more]
Who’s the Superhero, Who’s the Supporting Player? On Doctor Strange & the Ancient One (Part 9)
In the years since Ditko and Lee stepped away from writing Doctor Strange, the Ancient One tended to be characterized in terms of, at best, his moral authority and, at worst, his physical decrepitude. Yet… [more]
On the Ancient One, Earth’s Greatest Super-Hero (Part 8)
Steve Ditko was often displeased with Stan Lee’s interpretation of his plots during the last few years in particular of their collaboration. Sadly, there seems to be no way of telling how the artist felt… [more]
On the Coyly Affectionate Doctor Strange (Part 7)
It took almost two years of monthly adventures before Strange finally realized how tremendously fond he was of Clea. As if the relief of finally rescuing her from Dormammu’s banishment had cut through the magician’s… [more]
On the Romantically Disengaged Doctor Strange (Part 6)
As with friendship, so with romance. Love, or at least lovelornness, tended to ground Marvel’s superheroes in a version of mundane reality that reflected the world-view of young boys just learning to recognise both longing… [more]
On the Entirely Uncomplaining, Yet Distinctly Overworked Doctor Strange (Part 5)
It seems hard not to believe that Strange was deliberately making himself and his mission known to the world in a somewhat indirect and yet undeniably insistent way.
On the Profoundly Rational Doctor Stephen Strange (Part 4)
Even smiling at the literal-mindedness of the West was no little matter in the Marvel books of the period.
On the Profoundly Rational Doctor Stephen Strange (Part 3)
The Sorcerer’s Code committed Strange to the defense of the Earth, and it obliged him to place the welfare of humanity above that of any alien race.
2000AD, a British Institution: An Interview with Writer Al Ewing and Henry Flint
2000AD artist Henry Flint still recalls the excitement of encountering the first issue of the weekly SF-adventure comic. It was, he says, “nasty, brutal. Parents hated it. The morality of the heroes was questionable. After… [more]
On the Profoundly Rational Doctor Stephen Strange (Part 2)
Having found his way to “India, land of mystic entanglement” in the hope of having the “Ancient One” heal his hands, the still entirely cynical Strange discovered that magic really did exist.
On The Phoenix: The Weekly Story Comic
The Phoenix is so purposefully targeted at such a specific audience that it can be hard for the rest of us to remember that it exists.
On Harker: The Book of Solomon, with an Interview with Writer Roger Gibson
The most radical propositions don’t always arrive with their trousers around their ankles, flashing their behind to the bourgeoisie while thrilling culture’s gatekeepers with headline-generating, career-making manifestos.
On Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, by Sean Howe
Sean Howe begins his history of Marvel Comics in 1961 with publisher Martin Goodman ordering Stan Lee to produce a knock-off of rival DC’s new and successful Justice League of America.
On The James Bond Omnibus Volume 004, by Jim Lawrence and Yaroslav Horak
Did we really used to take this pretty much for granted? In what was considered a respectable, family newspaper? It seems absurd now.
On Goliath by Tom Gauld
We all know how the story ends, of course, and as soon as Tom Gauld introduces us to his own take on the Philistine giant, we can guess much of what the route to his… [more]
On Best of Enemies by Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B.
There are all too few moments when it’s as easy to adore Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B’s Best Of Enemies as it is to admire it.
An Interview with Rob Williams, on 2000AD‘s Ichabod Azrael and Comics Storytelling in General (Part 2)
Continued from last week. COLIN SMITH: I may well be very wrong here, but it seems from the outside as if you’re determined not just to tell a good story, but to push your own boundaries… [more]
An Interview with Rob Williams, on 2000AD‘s Ichabod Azrael and Comics Storytelling in General
I gave up on 2000AD in the early 1990s. Not only did it seem to have lost much of its sharpness and satirical edge, but it often appeared complacent, sloppy and even, on occasion, smug… [more]
An Interview with 2000AD‘s Al Ewing, Part 2
In which the interview with Al Ewing — begun last week — is concluded. COLIN SMITH: To what degree does the writer of fantastical fiction have a political responsibility, and who’s that responsibility to? To… [more]
An Interview with 2000AD‘s Al Ewing
I’d struggle to overstate how much I enjoy and admire Al Ewing’s work.
On the Ethics of How and Why Hank Pym Created a Wasp (Part 2)
By design and chance, Tales to Astonish #44 had presented a fledgling romance between Pym and Van Dyne which had the potential to constantly and plausibly generate both conflict and reconciliation over and over again.… [more]
On Stan Lee and H.E. Huntley’s the Wasp and Ant-Man (1963 to 1966)
Suddenly, Ant-Man’s wife was dead.
X-Men #1-19 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al (1963-66), Part 2
In the wake of their first public appearance, the X-Men appear to have been briefly embraced by the American people. Having defeated Magneto’s attempt to seize the U.S. military base of “Cape Citadel”, Cyclops and… [more]
X-Men #1-19 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, et al (1963-66), Part 1
In a profoundly reactionary society, even a gentle and sincere challenge to the status quo can be read as a significant marker of dissent.
On Iron Man in 1963, by Stan Lee, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby
Why should we care about Tony Stark? More importantly, why should we pity him?
On the Batman of Three Worlds, by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff (1963)
It’s not so long ago that the very idea would have sounded thoroughly absurd. Yet, the Batman tales of the late ’50s and early ’60s by editor Jack Schiff, writer Bill Finger, and penciler Sheldon… [more]
On Paul Chadwick’s Concrete: Complete Short Stories 1986-1989
Becoming a monster’s not all bad, or so Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko assured us.
On Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon History of the Universe (1978)
Human beings don’t arrive on the planet Earth until its opening chapter is very nearly over. Yet every single panel of the first book of Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon History of the Universe contains something… [more]
On DC Comics Presents #50, by Mishkin, Cohn, Swan, and Shaffenberger (1982)
Nothing ever ages worse than a typical product of the moment just before a paradigm shift.
On Jeff Hawke: Overlord, by Sydney Jordan and Willie Patterson (1960)
“Adult” all too often has a different meaning now. But in the very best sense of the term, Jordan and Patterson’s Jeff Hawke was a newspaper science-fiction comic strip for adults.
On Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America (1941)
1-2-3-4! Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s “The Case of the Hollow Men” is punk super-heroics.
On Green Arrow, by Mike W. Barr and Trevor Von Eeden (1983)
Any amount of risible super-pirate Cap’n Lash is far, far too much, and there are five pages and more of the wretched character in writer Mike W. Barr and artist Trevor Von Eeden’s 1983 mini-series… [more]
On Charley’s War, by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun (1979-80)
You have to be careful what chapter of Charley’s War you pick to introduce yourself to the strip. It’s all too easy to stumble upon a three- or four-page episode that, at first, seems to… [more]
On Planetary #3, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday
“After this, there’s nothing,” explains the ghost of the murdered Hong Kong cop. There is, he assures Planetary’s “mystery archaeologists,” no afterlife awaiting them, or indeed anyone else, when death arrives. Something has brought the… [more]
On Spandex: Fast and Hard by Martin Eden
If 2012′s sales figures are to be trusted, today’s hardcore super-hero fans are predominantly reactionary creatures.
On Adventure Comics #332, by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte (1965)
The received wisdom has it that the future world of the Legion Of Super-Heroes was originally an inspiringly optimistic, comfortingly cosy, super-scientific utopia.
On Boys’ Ranch #1-3, by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (1950)
In his Art of the Comic Book, R. C. Harvey offers Boys’ Ranch as an example of Jack Kirby having elevated comics into an “art form.”
On The Zaucer of Zilk, by Al Ewing and Brendan McCarthy
NB: The Zaucer of Zilk is currently being serialised in 2000AD, so please be aware of oncoming spoilers as well as the likelihood that most if not all of my presumptions are entirely misplaced.
Not the Way We Play the Game
I’ve never once criticised the work of another blogger in public, so why start now? Yes, Gene Phillips’s Making a Dirty Breast of the Matter (parts 1 and 2) are appallingly written pieces which express… [more]
Dan Dare, by Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine (2008)
Dan Dare is ancient comics history now.
On The Evolutionary War (Marvel Comics, 1988)
Those who choose to see the superhero comic’s decline as a relatively recent occurrence may prefer to keep their preconceptions away from The Evolutionary War, a sequence of often-awkwardly linked stories which were originally strung… [more]
On The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln, by Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud’s The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln reads as if it had been pieced together by a team of expert comic-book historians from a great mass of often incomplete and even contradictory notes, sketches,… [more]
On Michael Fleisher and Russ Heath’s Jonah Hex Story, “The Last Bounty Hunter”
It’s not just great artists who steal.
On Wally Wood and Stan Lee’s Daredevil #7
The years steam past, the comics pile up, and the canon for any single moment of time soon collapses to a ridiculously over-simplified, back-of-a-Trivial-Pursuit-card answer.
On Alan Moore’s WildC.A.T.s
Alan Moore doesn’t even slum it like the rest of us do.
On the Sgt. Rock Story “Head Count,” by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert
Camus defined a rebel as a man who says no, and that’s exactly what Warrant Sergeant Hugh Thompson was on Saturday, 16 March 1968, when his helicopter flew over the Vietnamese village of My Lai.
On Eloise de Montgri, by Hermann
Please do be aware: spoilers.
On Seth’s It’s a Good Life, if You Don’t Weaken
Please be warned: spoilers ahoy!
On Steve Gerber and Gene Colan’s Howard the Duck Story, “The Night After You Save the Universe?”
Violence is generally presented as a solution to problems in comics, because, being the illustrated form they are, they tend to over-simply, reduce everything to its most basic.
On Mister Wonderful, by Daniel Clowes
Please be warned; this second Valentine’s Day piece contains very significant spoilers!
On Bill Finger and Wayne Boring’s “The Girl in Superman’s Past”
It’s hard to tell at first from looking that the Clark Kent of 1959’s “The Girl In Superman’s Past” is desperately in love.
On Crime Does Not Pay
Some of it is still shocking.
On Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine’s War Stories: Archangel
There’s such an obvious distinction to be made between the two, but there’s a lot of folks who consistently fail to do so.
On “Vengeance of the Molecule Man!”, by Steve Gerber, Gil Kane, and Joe Sinnott
There’s something of the world before the meteor fell about the Marvel Comics of the mid-Seventies.
On Alan Brennert and Jim Aparo’s Batman story, “Interlude on Earth-Two”
It may not seem like so at first, but everything is broken in Alan Brennert and Jim Aparo’s Interlude On Earth-Two.
On Robert Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated, Genesis Chapter 22
What to do when trapped with a front-line, world-class bore?
On Superman Vs. the Amazing Spiderman
Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man was the most impossible thing. It simply could not be. It was a category error, a fanboy’s absurd daydream, a conceit to be associated with an alternate Earth where each family… [more]
On Green Lantern Corps #1: Of the People, By the People, For the People, Screw the People
I don’t know how to write about this, and I’m extremely nervous about trying to do so. Truthfully, I can’t deny that I’m tempted not to try.
On Aquaman #1, by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis
It seems that Geoff Johns isn’t writing scripts anymore so much as lists. And after the fashion of the unassimilable tourist abroad, who believes that the folks around him will understand what he’s saying if… [more]
On Hickman and Ribic’s The Ultimates #1: Yet More Stories for Boys
On the evidence of Messrs. Hickman and Ribic’s The Ultimates #1, the fundamental concerns of feminism haven’t yet become a matter of public concern and debate on Earth 1610, or (it needs to be said) in… [more]
On Legion Lost #1, by Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods
Even putting the context of DC’s “New 52″ initiative aside, it’s difficult to imagine a situation in which Legion Lost might qualify as even a barely-adequate comic. For it’s such an awkwardly and unhelpfully written book… [more]
On Feeling Compelled to Boycott Greg Land’s Uncanny X-Men
I can’t do it, I just can’t. It doesn’t matter how much I admire Kieron Gillen as a writer, and admire him I most certainly do. He’s undoubtedly one of the best half-dozen writers currently at… [more]
Why Carlie Cooper Matters (in Just One Panel)
It’s hard to suppress the suspicion that there are comic-book creators who have quite deliberately chosen to ignore the business of storytelling in favor of butt-shots and throw-downs, pin-ups and continuity porn.
Captain Britain and the Comforting Myths of Englishness
In Paul Cornell’s Captain Britain and MI:13 #1, the eponymous Captain is killed by a Skrull missile during an alien invasion of Britain. As is the way of super-hero comics — and as was something of a habit… [more]
Flashpoint: Hal Jordan and the Strange Askew Culture of Comic-Book Excellence
It’s impossible to believe that DC Comics was careless where it came to Flashpoint: Hal Jordan. They must have known exactly what it was that they were doing. The powers at 1700 Broadway, NYC, must… [more]
Why I (Don’t) Hate Bat-Man, Part 2
In which we continue our look, begun here, at the first year of the Batman’s existence.
The Pop Manifesto
It’s not the responsibility of a manifesto to make sense. It’s the job of a manifesto to make it appear that the things which it claims to oppose don’t make sense.
Why I Hate Bat-Man, Part 1
The Bat-Man was not a bad-ass. He was an idiot.
On Flashpoint #1: Sex, Gender, and the Superhero Crossover
We’ll talk of the value of Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert’s Flashpoint #1 solely in the context of a superhero comic at another time, but it’s worth saying in passing that it’s in many ways a… [more]
The Mighty Thor, the “Frail and Feeble” Donald Blake
What are we to make of the hero and his alter ego in “The Mighty Thor and the Stone Men from Saturn,” from August 1962?