RSS feed for Gene Phillips
ON COMICS CHARACTERS
ON SCI-FI FRANCHISES
ON GRANT MORRISON
ON TV AND MOVIES
OTHER BOOKS
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Gene Phillips
BOOKS AND MOVIES BY GENE PHILLIPS
 Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen (contributor) |
TOP MAGAZINE CONTENT BY GENE PHILLIPS
The Power Ring and the Comic Book (Part 1)
Whenever a critic speaks of any popular work as possessing a “mythology”—a term often applied to serial, fictional narratives—the most common objection is that popular fiction is too “low”—as in, “created for the lowest common… [more]
Stan Lee, Presented
“A creative producer is very involved with the writing, even though he does not do the screenplay and is not the author of the original material. You work with the writer, you guide the writer,… [more]
OTHER MAGAZINE CONTENT BY GENE PHILLIPS (23 TOTAL)
Making a Dirty Breast of the Matter, Part 2
I want to focus on one remark made by Kelly Thompson in the essay “No, It’s Not Equal,” regarding the inequitable objectification of male and female characters in superhero comics:
Making a Dirty Breast of the Matter
In “Pulp Friction” I addressed the logical problems inherent in the position of those fans I called “anti-pulpsters,” who oppose, in one way or another, the presence of extravagant sensationalism in superhero comic books.
Pluralistic Pulp
Like most writers, I enjoy seeing one of my assertions independently confirmed by a critic working in a parallel vein.
Invasion of the Character Snatchers
In literature, I would say that it’s different. I would say, and it might be splitting hairs, but I’m not adapting these characters. I’m not doing an adaptation of Dracula or King Solomon’s Mines. What… [more]
The Return to the New 52 and the New Adult Pulp
In “The New 52 and the New Adult Pulp,” I endorsed the notion of mainstream comics embracing their heritage (yes, heritage) of extravagant sensationalism.
Consumption Junction
Human activity is not entirely reducible to processes of production and conservation, and consumption must be divided into two distinct parts. The first reducible part is represented by the use of the minimum necessary for… [more]
Meeting with Bosses Old and New
[Marshall] Field asked, “What do you want?” [Milton] Caniff didn’t even have to hesitate. “I told him full ownership [of Steve Canyon] and full editorial control.” – “Setting the Stage,” by Chris Jenson in Steve… [more]
The Power Ring and the Comic Book (Part 4)
In part 1 of this series I wrote: When DC Comics issued their refurbished versions of such characters as the Flash and Green Lantern, the heroes still fought assorted “done-in-one-story” menaces while the narratives remained… [more]
The Power Ring and the Comic Book (Part 3)
Green Lantern #18 reads like something of a reprise of issue #11, with Sinestro once again playing mind-games on the hero and luring him to Qward as well.
The Power Ring and the Comic Book (Part 2)
Green Lantern #3 makes the Weaponers of Qward the hero’s first repeat villains, as the extra-dimensional villains create an illusion to aid them in stealing Green Lantern’s power battery.
Stan Lee, Presented (Part 3)
In Part 2 of this discussion of editor / writer Stan Lee’s contribution to the creative process in the era of Silver-Age Marvel Comics, I argued that Lee had done far more than just dialogue… [more]
O Captain? Not My Captain
Captain America: the First Avenger—henceforth abbreviated to Captain—is a fairly entertaining film that illustrates both the advantages and disadvantages of applying real-world verisimilitude to comic-book superheroes.
Stan Lee, Presented (Part 2)
In the previous installment of “Stan Lee, Presented,” I argued that Stan Lee had functioned as a “truly creative editor” during his tenure as editor/writer at Marvel Comics.
The Growing of Adult Pulp
In “The New 52 and the New Adult Pulp,” I asserted that DC’s new line followed the sensationalistic tradition of American pulp magazines, upon which most (though not all) early American comic books modeled their… [more]
The New 52 and the New Adult Pulp
“Thriving on unconstrained creativity, held accountable to few standards of logic, believability or ‘good taste,’ the pulps were literary dream machines, offering regular entry to intensive worlds of excitement, danger, glory, romance. Each brittle page… [more]
How to Level a Lumpy Playing Field
In The Linking Myth I stated that I thought that the Jungian approach to understanding the myths in all the stories humans tell proved superior to any linguistic analysis.
Why Thor Soared and the Lantern Failed
Movie theaters in the summer of 2011, like most summers for the past 30-something years, were dominated by films heavy on crowd-pleasing elements, with particular attention to heavy FX content.
Seeing through Spectacles
Julian Darius’s essay Hollow Spectacle cites a current DC comic for its overuse of meaningless spectacular scenes, such as a scene in the recent Justice League #1, in which Green Lantern uses his power ring… [more]
Man of Steel, Woman of Legs
Given how often Superman and Batman have been paired into dualisms ranging from “day and night” to “Apollo and Dionysus,” it’s surprising that in the second week of DC’s “new 52” they paired the Grant… [more]
Clash of the Mythologies
I can appreciate someone like Chris Ware for his artistry, which I think is beautiful, but I think his attitude stinks, it just seems to be the attitude of somebody really privileged, and honestly, try… [more]
The Linking Myth
So why do I claim that “archetypal criticism” should be a principal (if not exclusive) means to understand the connections between mainstream and art comics?
The Future of a Re-Fusion
Not long ago, I saw a post on the the Comics Beat by former Comics Journal contributor Robert Boyd remarking upon the virtual separation of the world of “mainstream comics” and “artcomics.” Boyd didn’t comment… [more]
Chief Concerns
Back in October 2010, Scipio of the Absorbascon wrote an impassioned salute to the character Niles Caulder (a.k.a. “The Chief”) of the 1960s comic Doom Patrol by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani. As a longtime… [more]