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Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Bloodstrike Volume 1 #2
Last Christmas my brother gave me a booster pack of random, non-sequential issues from a variety of popular comic book titles that syndicated in the late eighties to mid nineties. The nineties was a time… [more]
“Take a Look Inside My Mind”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 29
Continued from last week. It’s impossible to believe that Morrison and Millar’s Swamp Thing wasn’t intended as an allegory. For all that Morrison’s original plans appear to have been significantly modified by his junior partner,… [more]
Guarding the Galaxy, Part 2: Cosmic Avengers
One of the papers I usually assign in my composition course is a cultural antecedents essay. The students choose something from popular culture and then examine its relationship to its cultural antecedents. Or, put in… [more]
Eternal Return: The Enduring, and Problematic, Influence of The Dark Knight Returns
When the Man of Steel sequel was officially announced at Comic-Con back in July of 2013, director Zack Snyder claimed that the film would be “inspired” by Frank Miller’s classic Dark Knight Returns. Even though… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Gen13 Annual 2000
Last Christmas my brother gave me a booster pack of random, non-sequential issues from a variety of popular comic book titles that syndicated in the late eighties to mid nineties. The nineties was a time… [more]
The Politics of Batman, Part 1: Batman vs. Osama bin Laden
The following is an excerpt from the book War, Politics and Superheroes: When Frank Miller announced that he would be crafting a graphic novel in which Batman would confront real-world terrorist Osama bin Laden, journalists… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Inferno Part 2
The son of Scott Summers/Cyclops, Nathan Christopher, is finally in the hands of his demonically twisted mother Madelyne Pryor aka The Goblin Queen. Her promises to turn the world to ashes seem very probable given… [more]
Only Humanoid: Everything Louder than Everything Else
Armies Writer : Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Picaret Art : Jean-Claude Gal I always found it hard to square my ideas of what European (well, French) comics was meant to be with what most of it turned… [more]
“Old Souls, Dark Agendas”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 28
Continued from last week. The final pages of Millar’s Swamp Thing depict the Earth on the eve of a historically unprecedented golden age. (*1) Humanity has been empathetically transformed through the god-like Swamp Thing’s influence,… [more]
Completing the Trilogy: Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane
I’ve never been much of a summer person. I can barely swim, don’t really enjoy the beach, and hate hot weather. But something about summer clicked for me this year. Even though we weren’t able… [more]
Oh, My Aching Cranium! Jack Kirby’s OMAC Deconstructed and Reconstructed, Part One
If there’s one work by the King of Comics that polarizes his legion of fans, it’s his short-lived 1974 DC series OMAC. Appearing to take place in a future universe all its own (as was… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #22
Cap, now a shriveled old man, lies in a bed in the Avengers’ Manson. Banner runs tests on him and reports that there is no trace of the super-soldier serum in his blood. Tony Stark… [more]
Cosplay and Body Shaming
Cosplay, at its best, is about people having fun dressing up as their favorite movie, anime, game, or other characters and joining like-minded people. But we live in the real world and things involving other… [more]
A Tale of Two Dark Knights…
Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (or DKR) has long been considered one of the greatest works in comic books. Since its release in 1986, it has been lauded as an industry-changing story that helped… [more]
Phonogram, Music, and Silent Comics
Music is important in Phonogram: The Singles Club, the second mini-series of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram series. (A third is slated for publishing at some as yet determined point in the future and… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Daredevil Volume 1 #336
Last Christmas my brother gave me a booster pack of random, non-sequential issues from a variety of popular comic book titles that syndicated in the late eighties to mid nineties. The nineties was a time… [more]
How Carmine Infantino Designed DC’s Silver Age
DC Comics’ Showcase #4, cover dated October 1956, is usually recognized as the book that launched the so-called Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash and effectively reviving the superhero genre. The iconic cover… [more]
Don’t Ignore the Art: Reviewing and Commenting on Comics, Part 3
Comics Journalism with Lucas Siegel (Newsarama Site Editor) and David Pepose (Newsarama Reviews Editor) Because this article is geared in many regards to help encourage readers and reviewers to develop a more critical eye, especially… [more]
Steranko and the Moment of Silence
When the common person on the street conjures an image of what a comic book writer or artist looks like, they most likely picture a quiet, unassuming man, a passive person—the direct opposite to the… [more]
Don’t Ignore the Art: Reviewing and Commenting on Comics, Part 2
Line Work (Pencils / Brushwork) One of the first things I look at when opening up a comic is the style that’s being used. Is it more lifelike (realistic) or cartoonish (iconic)? Scott McCloud discusses… [more]
“The Spirit of Hatred or the Spirit of Love”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 27
Continued from last week. Other aspects of Millar’s closing tilt at Swamp Thing were less praiseworthy. Though the final arc appears to show little of the swaggering misogyny that saturated his earliest work for 2000AD,… [more]
Robert Crumb’s Best Art Was Some of His Most Subtle
The partnership between Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb was one of the more curious, and one of the most artistically satisfying in all of comics. Friends for years before even considering making comics together, these… [more]
It’s Pronounced [sin-KEV-ich]
For years I called him Bill “See-EN-key-a-wix.” That is, until somebody told me it was “SINK-a-vich.” Of course that was wrong too, but in a way, that’s as it should be. Most of us don’t… [more]