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It’s the 15th Anniversary of Free Enterprise
As with my previous recap of Chasing Amy here on Sequart, it’s time to take a trip back in time, to that dear departed 20th century. Released exactly 15 years ago this week, Free Enterprise… [more]
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol #21, A Companion Reader
This article series is an informal annotated bibliography for Grant Morrison’s first four issues of Doom Patrol. Have I ever seen an annotated bibliography before? Apparently not. [more]
Seed Catalogues: A Consideration of the Encyclopedic Comic Book
When my son was much younger, we visited his classroom one evening, to meet his teachers and to see the work he had produced over the course of the year. As he showed me around… [more]
Six Reasons Why the Kingkiller Chronicle is the Next Game of Thrones
Everyone knows about Game of Thrones – seriously, everyone. Fantasy fiction fans can gloat that they’ve known about it since 1996, when George R. R. Martin published the first Thrones novel. The HBO series has… [more]
Killing the Planet: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 22
Continued from last week. Those first four issues of Swamp Thing by Morrison and Millar set the template for the rest of the series. The pretence of an everything-you-know-is-wrong reboot was swiftly abandoned, and “Alec… [more]
Not Your Father’s Classics Illustrated
“Who’s there?” It’s the opening line of William Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet, and it’s also one of the most important. Like all great opening lines, “Who’s there?” sets the tone for the entire story. … [more]
Green Lantern: How Not to Write a Comic Book Movie Supervillain
Green Lantern has gotten a bad rap. Critics like to point out that if a DC movie doesn’t have Batman or Superman, it doesn’t work. Some blame Ryan Reynolds as being miscast. Some say Martin… [more]
James Bond’s Scrambled Eggs Recipe and Ian Fleming’s Quirks
The James Bond films are, in many ways, fairly weird and offensive to notions of good taste, political correctness, and plausible storytelling, but many of us are used to their excesses and enjoy them as… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 8
Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Marc Silvestri Inker: Dan Green Colorist: Petra Scotese Letter: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Bob Harras With this issue, Marc Silvestri is back on pencil duty along with Dan Green on inks. In… [more]
Buffy: Turbulence
From issues #32-40, the climax of Buffy Season 8 plays out on an epic scale. We have yet to have a visit from Spike and Angel, for example, and they’ll both make appearances as circumstances… [more]
Fighting for Control: Present Masculine and Feminine Emotion in X-Men: Days of Future Past
I very much enjoyed X-Men: Days of Future Past. Even with its flaws, who can complain about that ending, or the post-credits scene? Hands down, my favorite element of the film, outside of the ending,… [more]
An Unknown Soldier in an Unknown War: Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier #4
Joshua Dysart explores the “eye-for-an-eye” model often used against violent “terror” groups in Africa and the Middle East in this issue of the Unknown Soldier #4. [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Suicide Squad Volume 1 #26
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]
“Make Him a Monster Again, Make Him Dangerous”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 21
Continued from last week. Morrison later made a point of emphasising how central his contributions to Millar’s Swamp Thing had been; “I worked out a large scale thematic structure based on a journey through the… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Thirteen
And so the big wind-up (or wind-down, depending on how you look at things) begins — I have no idea how much tinkering John Smith had to do with “The Power And The Glory,” his… [more]
The Lion, the Witch, and The Art of Neil Gaiman
Does Neil Gaiman ever get into your dreams? I don’t mean literal dreams where you toss and turn in the middle of the night and wake up convinced that the Goodyear Blimp is being piloted… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #20
Steve Rogers wakes in a hospital bed. He’s been dreaming of his mother, whether she made the right decision to stay with her worthless husband. Maybe it was a mistake; maybe she just should have… [more]
Game of Thrones and True Blood: I Read the Audiobooks!
Eric Northman describes Oklahoma as empty, economically exploitable territory containing nothing but oilrigs and Indian casinos in Charlaine Harris’s final Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Ever After. While not all of Oklahoma matches this description, the… [more]
Why Worldbuilding Matters
A staple in genre fiction is the act of worldbuilding; when a creator crafts a mythology of certain fantastic elements and illustrates how they interact within the setting of the story. It is not just… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 7
Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Rick Leonardi Inker: P. Craig Russell Colorist: Glynis Oliver Letter: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Bob Harras When we left our mutants last, the team had returned to their Outback home following a… [more]
“I Spent Time with Coulson. He’s a Good Man.”
I trusted Phil Coulson from the first moment he appeared onscreen, because he reminded me of someone I knew, a good man, who had a good heart. He was self-effacing and simple, with a sharp,… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Superboy Volume 4 #35
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]
Zombie Tramp: Exactly What it Sounds Like
One of my favorite features of comics is that, unlike prose fiction, you can judge a visual book by its cover. Covers can mislead you by juxtaposing compelling external art with mediocre artistic guts (shout-out… [more]
If a Bell Chimes at Midnight, Does it Make a Sound?: Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight
It’s my favorite picture. If I wanted to get into Heaven on the basis of one movie, that’s the one I would offer up. [1] –Orson Welles This week Marvel releases the first collected volume… [more]