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Don’t Ignore the Art: Reviewing and Commenting on Comics, Part 1
What’s the difference between a comic book and a novel? The answer seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? Yet, it still confounds me to no end that someone will take the time to write a review… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Namor the Sub-Mariner Volume 1 #30
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]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Sixteen
Honest, folks, after this, we’re all done here. I know, I know — Scarab the mini-series is done already, but let’s consider this something of a postscript to look at what ended happening with the… [more]
“The Notion that Mankind is Diseased and Must be Replaced at all Costs”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 26
Continued from last week. The conflict between Millar’s two opposing teams of Masons appears to represent a clash of empathy and hubris, tolerance and tyranny, good faith and a world-razing secularism. Where one Lodge is… [more]
Guarding the Galaxy from the Discount Bin: Star-Lord: The Special Edition
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m not in love with the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. I know this puts me in the comic book community’s version of the flat Earth society, but I’m fine with… [more]
Alan Turing in Context, Part 2
Since my last writing, Tor has finished posting the graphic novel of Alan Turing’s life, The Imitation Game, by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis. You can find my comments on the first part here. What… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Inferno Part 1
The first major crossover of my time as devotee of the Uncanny X-Men, Inferno marked the culmination of year’s worth of story, a vast majority of which I was unfamiliar with at the time, and… [more]
Asterix the Gaul, Captain America, and Steroids
What if Tyrion Lannister had Popeye’s super powers? What if Thor had the appetite and I.Q. of Cookie Monster? What if the Spartacus universe was cross-pollinated with the Smurfs? Well, then you’d get Asterix, Obelix,… [more]
Why Aren’t Horror Comics Scary?
Six months out from its announcement at 2014’s Image Expo, we’re still waiting for a solicitation on Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s “The Nameless,” a book that I can guarantee you, based on those two… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1 #67
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]
Cosplay and Color: Skin Tone and Character Portrayals
Among my other duties for A-Kon is administering the social media pages, the Facebook group in particular. Recently there was an interesting debate on the use of cosmetics and other techniques to alter one’s skin… [more]
The Room
The Room is clearly establishing itself as the current cult classic in the vein of Plan 9 From Outer Space. I first watched it with two friends during a day when we were deliberately seeking… [more]
Sturm und Drang: Germanic Influence on Shingeki no Kyojin
Seid ihr das Essen? Nein wir sind die Jäger Spoilers to follow: The bestselling manga Shingeki no Kyojin by Hajime Isayama has been adapted to television, inspired several video games, and a commercially successful English… [more]
Bugged Out! Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Fifteen
All good things, as they say, must come to an end. As must all bad things, and all mediocre things… and all truncated, confused, ambitious, intriguing, but ultimately, hopeless things. And so it was that… [more]
Indian Culture in Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji)
I will warn you now: this article has spoilers. What I have in mind would be impossible without them. So, that said, allons-y! In the anime series Black Butler, episodes 13 – 15 introduce us… [more]
“The War Between the Super-Freemasons”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 25
Continued from last week. Millar’s command of his craft wouldn’t significantly improve over the remainder of his time on Swamp Thing, though progress would undeniably occur. He’d dial back on the degree of redundant dialogue… [more]
Larry Gonick, Thomas Jefferson, and the Fourth of July
The first time I proposed teaching a comics class, someone asked me what I wanted to call it. “Um … Comics? Comic Books? Something like that,” I said, thinking it should’ve been pretty obvious. The… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Prelude to Inferno
Genosha was now in the rearview mirror but for the last several issues, ever since her dream sequence with S’ym, something had been building with Madelyne Pryor. The demon “stabbed” her in the heart with… [more]
Alan Turing in Context
If you are reading this on a computer, and you almost certainly are, you owe a small debt to Alan Turing. He was the genius code breaker in WWII who theorized and created the first… [more]
Optimus Prime, Pedophile
Did you know that the beloved leader of the Autobots had a fetish for underage girls? Or that a Megatron look-alike not only shared the same fetish, but repeatedly tried to rape those girls? Or that… [more]
When the Good Guys Deserted: On the Blaster Saga, Conclusion
Continued from yesterday. The following American issue — #37 (Feb 1988), also by Budiansky, Delbo, Akin, and Garvey — follows up on the Throttlebots plot. It also features Ratbat and the Earth-bound Decepticons, who haven’t… [more]
Why “Man of Iron” May Be the Best Transformers Story Ever Told, Conclusion
Continued from Wednesday. As the final chapter of “Man of Iron” begins, the British military has unearthed a portion of the side of the buried spacecraft. It’s now clear that the hill in question formed… [more]
When the Good Guys Deserted: On the Blaster Saga, Part 4
Continued from yesterday. Issue #36 (Jan 1988) doesn’t only mark the conclusion (such as it was) of the Blaster saga. It also marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Optimus Prime — a year… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Warheads Volume 1 #5
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]
Transformers: Headmasters and Cycles of Violence
When the Headmasters toys debuted, Marvel’s Transformers comic was selling well, in part due to the excitement surrounding 1986′s Transformers: The Movie. And so the Headmasters got to debut not in the monthly Transformers comic but… [more]