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Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol #20, A Companion Reader
This essay series will devote time and attention to intertextual themes in the first four issues of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol (#19 to #22). [more]
Spider-Man Was Never Just the “Loveable Loser”
“Yes siree, things are sure looking up for my favorite couple of guys–namely, me!”—ASM #12 Quick: what’s Spider-Man really all about, in one sentence? With most major superheroes, someone might have to pause a second… [more]
“The Final Chapter!”: Peter Parker, Steve Ditko, and the Greatest Spider-Man Story Ever Told
It was clear from his first appearance in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15 that Spider-Man was a very different character than any of the other super-heroes battling for justice on the newsstands at the time. Unlike… [more]
(Almost) the World’s Finest Team: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 16
Continued from last week. Millar was hardly the first comics scripter to bridle at the constraints of continuity. But few can equal his predilection for heedlessly flouting the more obvious aspects of a property’s backstory. The… [more]
The Spider-Man Moment
This is not the essay you were supposed to read today. When I first heard that we were having a Spider-Man week at Sequart, I knew pretty quickly what I wanted to write about. While… [more]
Harvey Pekar’s The Quitter: My Favourite Comic Book
I sometimes get asked what my “favourite comic of all time” is. All of us who reflect on creative works, whether that be music, film, TV, theatre, literature or any other kind of art, have… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 4
Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Marc Silvestri Inker: Dan Green Colorist: Glynis Oliver Letter: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Ann Nocenti & Bob Harras From the demon filled fields of Limbo and the drama of the Rasputin family… [more]
Buffy: Time of Your Life
This arc of Buffy Season 8 is complex and more than a little confusing for those who don’t pay strict attention. This has to be said up front for those playing the home game because… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #19
It took a long time in coming, but the pay-off is finally here. After what seems like half a year of paralyzing misgivings, Cap, the ultimate, ethical hero is back! “Fallen into weakness in the… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Catwoman Volume 2 #20
This 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]
2010: The Year We Make Contact: An Adaptation of an Adaptation
For those who, like me, are longtime readers of Science Fiction, we’re very familiar that classic literature in this genre falls into a few recognizable categories. In general, either it’s concerned with plausible technology and… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Ten
Welcome back to the nominally fictitious town of Whitehaven, North Carolina and the most delightfully repulsive story to ever go out under the Vertigo imprint — if you thought that the opening installment of Scarab’s… [more]
“Nice to Meet You, Big Guy”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 15
Continued from last week. November 1998′s Superman Adventures #25 gave Millar one last substantial shot at depicting The Batman. Putting the overwrought misjudgements of the JLA Paradise Lost mini-series behind him, he returned to the conception… [more]
Examining the Two Acts of Noah
Some major spoilers for a movie based on a 24,000-year-old portion of the Bible follow: The world in the first act of Noah is magical. It’s not just the Watchers, angels punished to serve their… [more]
“‘Cause It’s Witchcraft, Wicked Witchcraft”: Wicked, Broadway, and Revisionist Super-Heroes
When you write a weekly column, it doesn’t take long before you find yourself talking about something you don’t know anything about. For me, that moment is now, and I just want to get that… [more]
Capital Thoughts: An Open Letter on The Winter Soldier
Dear Steve Englehart, This past week, I took my Graphic Novels class to the cinema to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The class has both serious and not-so-serious comic book readers: A few are… [more]
Twilight of the (New) Gods Part 2
Death as a Beginning. Both Ragnarök and Final Crisis begin with the unthinkable: the death of a god. For Ragnarök, it is the death of Baldr that signifies that something is very wrong in the… [more]
Buffy: Wolves At The Gate
After two big story arcs starting off Buffy Season 8, it’s really here at the third that the Slayer Army really gets “down to business”. Joss Whedon and his collaborators have set up the situation,… [more]
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol #19, Addendum
This essay series will devote time and attention to intertextual themes in the first four issues of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol (#19 to #22). [more]
The Winter Soldier as an Indictment of the Post-9/11 Military Industrial Complex
SPOILER WARNING… Much like Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier wants you to view the events through Steve Rogers’s World War II lens. The events are framed through the true evil… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 3
Continued Technically speaking, well rather chronologically speaking, the next issue to be addressed in this look back at my formative X-Men years would be #230. Since I already addressed that story here on the site, I… [more]
Daytripper: A Story of Life
Daytripper’s story follows the life of Brás de Olivia Domingos, the son of a famous Brazilian author. Living in his father’s shadow, he dreams of becoming a famous author himself and having his words live… [more]
The Grind: Nine to Five With Patton Oswalt’s Olympians
Truth be told, I have about three drafts sitting on my computer hard drive that constitute my attempts at writing this essay. I have never read anything like JLA: Welcome to the Working Week before,… [more]
“Forgive me, Superman. I’m not very good at losing.”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 14
Continued from last week. Some in the UK fan community saw Millar as Morrison’s heir apparent on the JLA. But despite later claiming that he’d once turned down the chance to write the Justice League, Millar… [more]
The Politics of Captain America: The Winter Soldier
CHARLIE GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine? SARAH PALIN: In what respect, Charlie? GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be? PALIN: His world view. GIBSON: No,… [more]