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Thor ’77-’78: On the Never-Ending Road to Ragnarok, Part 4
The Mighty Thor #265: This one is truly an ALL BATTLE ISSUE! We left off with The Destroyer, a suit of indestructible-looking armor, powered by someone’s spirit force, crashing into battle with Thor. We find… [more]
Green Lantern’s Burden: Re-Evaluating the Superhero Genre’s ‘Woke’ Moment
At the turn of the new decade, as the euphoric epoch of the 1960s finally withered away, the symbols of American optimism took on new burdens and new crises. The superheroes of the 1970s, now… [more]
With Great Power Comes Great Career Opportunities: A Character Study of Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s Zenith
Colin Smith makes some valid points in his article “He’s Not a Super-Hero, He’s Not Even a Very Naughty Boy: The Case Against Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell’s Zenith”. Zenith isn’t a superhero. That’s the… [more]
Jonathan Hickman’s New Avengers #1: Memento Mori
If Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers #1 begins with a creation story, his New Avengers starts out with a less hopeful proclamation: “Everything Dies.” Hickman’s New Avengers #1 opens with a one-page prologue providing a recap of… [more]
Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers #3: The Garden
Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run consists of multiple mini-arcs that all build and culminate with Secret Wars. Avengers #3 is the action-filled climax and the culmination of his first arc. On Mars, readers are treated to… [more]
There is Another World: Postmodernism and Identity in Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol
Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol is certainly not an easy book to recommend. On the surface, it’s a very dense work with dozens of different literary references hiding in every corner, and it can… [more]
Judge Dredd and the Rise of the Police State
The dystopian science fiction film Dredd (2012), starring Karl Urban as the titular Judge Dredd and Olivia Thirlby as his rookie-in-training Psi Judge Anderson, adapts the popular British comic strip character originally serialized in 2000AD… [more]
Send in the Clowns: Todd Phillips’s Joker
Coulrophobia. A fear of clowns. It’s kind of an ironic fear when you consider the idea that clowns are humanity’s way of making fun of its own mortality. For the longest time, I actually thought… [more]
Because I Am the Goddamn Batman: Political Ideologies and Transhumanism in Superhero Comics
Superheroes give us a way to get at the ideologies at work in transhumanism and politics. The genre of superhero comics is a fantastical take on an often dystopian version of our own real world.… [more]
Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers #2: We Were Avengers
Issue #2 acts as something of an interlude in the first three issues of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers. As Captain America prepares a new team to go to Mars, Ex Nihilo’s speaks with the imprisoned Avengers,… [more]
Academics on the Legacy of Fox’s X-Men Films
Given how fast our current news cycle moves, it is often difficult to remember a time when comic book movies thrived before the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, if we cast our minds to the early… [more]
Hell is Other People: Superheroes, Outsiders, and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Part 2
Previously, I explored the themes of Chris Ware’s landmark graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth — specifically the role and function of the superhero in this piece and even beyond in Ware’s… [more]
Hell is Other People: Superheroes, Outsiders, and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan
Chris Ware’s seminal graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth is a masterwork wherein Ware chronicles the struggles of main character, Jimmy, as he navigates through life, eventually meeting his estranged father for… [more]
Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers #1: An Avengers World is Born!
Hickman begins Avengers #1 like a creation story, the theme of creation being prevalent throughout the three-issue opening arc: “First there was nothing. Then everything.” As we will see, this is juxtaposed against New Avengers… [more]
Strange Sentiments: Stranger Things and Nostalgia
“Stranger Things Season Three, and the Limits of Nostalgia” – the Week “In Stranger Things’ Third Season, the Nostalgia Well Runs Dry” – Slate “Stranger Things Doesn’t Know How to Grow Up” – Vanity Fair… [more]
“I won’t wear one of those damnfool spandex body-condom things. I don’t have the bust for it”: Superhero Costume in the WildStorm Comics of Warren Ellis, Part 3
In How To Read Superhero Comics and Why, Klock applies Harold Bloom’s concept of the ‘agon’ to Ellis’s treatment of superheroes in his work for WildStorm. For Bloom, poets can only escape the ‘anxiety of… [more]
Capes, Cowls, and Purple: How Prince Merged the Worlds of Music and Comics with Batman and Beyond
Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958-April 21, 2016), known throughout most of his career simply as Prince, had been an important part of music since his humble beginnings with the band 94 East in 1975,… [more]
Casino Royale: Taking It in the Cojones for Her Majesty’s Secret Service
The fifth and final installment of James Bond starring Daniel Craig as Bond, currently titled only Bond 25, is set to be released in 2020. It’s notable not only because it will be Daniel Craig’s… [more]
The Road to Vertigo: The Suppression and Eventual Rise of Mature Comics and Their Readers
The legacy of Vertigo recalls the very idea of comics finally being allowed to mature; letting people swear, drink, openly take drugs for recreation, and bringing in some serious ambiguity as to what it means… [more]
JLA: New World Order Revisited or, What Makes a Story Essential?
The world of cape-comics has a rather tortured relationship with certain sets of words used to describe a character, creator or project. ‘Iconic,’ for instance, is probably one of the most overused words in our… [more]
Finding Hulko: Secondary Colors
With the Infinity War storyline wrapping up, it might be useful to take a fresh look at a pre-MCU Marvel Film, the 2003 Hulk. 2003 saw the release of both Eric Bana’s Hulk and Disney… [more]
Captain Video: Forgotten Father of the Sci-Fi Franchise
Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Luke Skywalker, the Doctor, Captain James Tiberius Kirk, Captain Video… What do those names have in common? If you said they are protagonists that launched science fiction franchises you’d be correct,… [more]
Academics on Avengers: Endgame, Part 2
As mentioned in Part 1, we got so many contributions that we had to split this article up into two parts. Below is the second half, and we hope you enjoy it. And again…BEWARE…FOR SPOILERS… [more]
Ever to Ashes: The Unadaptable Nature of the Dark Phoenix Saga
INTRO As Hollywood takes its second big stab at The Dark Phoenix Saga, the most popular X-Men storyline of all-time, certain age-old arguments about the adaptability of comics properties find new footing in our collective… [more]