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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]
Academics on Avengers: Endgame, Part 1
Avengers: Endgame is a cinematic generational event. The epic conclusion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first arc that began with 2008’s Iron Man and encompasses twenty-two films. As of this posting, Avengers: Endgame has grossed… [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 2
The Authority’s ‘sister’ title, Planetary was also launched in 1999, following a preview story included in the WildStorm titles Gen-13 and C-23 in September of the previous year. Conceived as a series in which Ellis… [more]
Jordan Peele’s Us: Untethered
“There we are – demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow… [more]
Avengers: Endgame, Iron Man, and America
Disclaimer: this article includes spoilers starting in the third paragraph, so I wouldn’t read too far if you haven’t watched Avengers: Endgame yet. It also won’t make much sense if you haven’t watched Endgame and… [more]
The Invisible Art that Makes The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Works & Worlds of Herbert Crowley
Recently, I read an article by Noah Charney about Davie Bowie and William Boyd’s connection to an obscure American abstract expressionist artist Nat Tate, operating in the mid-twentieth century, who destroyed most of his paintings,… [more]
A Birthday Card for a Friend
One of my childhood friends turns 80 today. Perhaps he’s your friend too. [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 1
The title of this essay comes from lines spoken by the character Jenny Sparks in Warren Ellis’s first issue as writer on the WildStorm title Stormwatch (#37, July 1996), after she is recruited to the… [more]
Academics on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Released on December 14, 2018, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a movie that shouldn’t exist. Superhero movies have been dominated by live action adaptations for well over a decade, while animated comic book movies have… [more]
This Next Experiment and the Values of Fun: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part III
In our second article, I wrote about Undertale, the presence of W.D. Gaster in the game and its code, the collaborative dynamic between Toby Fox and his audience as well as the implications it had… [more]
Breaking Panels, Breaking Time: Examples of the Connection Between Panel Construction and Narrative Time
In Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, he makes the comment, “To kill a man between panels is to condemn him to a thousand deaths”. An incredibly evocative piece of language, and very poetic in itself. But… [more]
Preliminaries in Undertale: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part II
Where we last left off, I wrote a general outline of how Toby Fox’s work in game hacking, music creation, and his participation in and moderation of EarthBound forums helped influence his development of Undertale,… [more]
EarthBound Dress Rehearsals and The Beginnings of Interaction: Toby Fox and Gaster’s Deltarune Part I
It feels like everyone, and their mother too, has already been talking about the first chapter of Toby Fox’s new video game Deltarune, the spiritual sequel to the popular 2015 independent game Undertale. So many… [more]
So Long, Iron Fist—We’ll Miss Ward Meachum Most
Netflix recently cancelled Iron Fist after two frustrating seasons of mediocrity. At least season two was a marked improvement in many ways over the first—robbing Danny Rand (Finn Jones) of the Iron Fist and giving it… [more]