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Capital Thoughts: Captain America #15
Iron Nail… Cap’s newest villain. Inventing a Cap villain can’t be easy. Any new character is immediately compared to the Red Skull, among the most iconic villains in comics, right up there with Batman’s the… [more]
#SixSeasonsAndAMovie: Why Community, and the Meta-Geeks Who Love It, are Having a Moment
With an epic narrative to rival the trials of Odysseus and his men, any fan of Dan Harmon’s “Community” can recount its constant struggle to remain on the air. In fact, the current hashtag on… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Five
Welcome back to 1993! Nice enough place to visit, although you might not want to live here — Actually, 1993 wasn’t a bad year at all for comics. The Invisibles got off the ground with a… [more]
Fray: Slayage in the 24th Century
Dark Horse and Joss Whedon first explored the “vampire slayer” world in the 2001-2003 8-issue miniseries Fray, widely available now in TPB. With an original script by Joss Whedon, conceived and written during the troubled… [more]
“Nice to Meet You, Big Guy!”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 5
Continued from last week. Though he’d never again see one of his scripts feature in any of the Batman’s many headlining titles, Millar would return to the character over and over again throughout the Nineties. It’s… [more]
On the Art and Cycle of Proper Suffering: The Artist-Figure in Phoenix: Karma
It is neither a new nor a culturally specific idea that art is created through suffering: that the figure of the artist is an individual who must experience great ordeals in order to accomplish his… [more]
The Champions: A Bridge Between Genres and Time
The Champions as term and footnote When most people hear of the term “The Champions,” they think of the iconic song created by Queen. Others think of the 1975-1978 Marvel comic series or various other… [more]
Justifying Deicide: Lyta Hall’s Feminist Journey in “The Kindly Ones”
The final arc of Sandman proceeds to bookend the series with cameos and homages to earlier plots. The feel here is different from previous arcs; Gaiman explains elements as they come, rather than holding back… [more]
“Just Don’t Do It Again”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 4
Continued from last week. How was it possible for Millar to show so much respect for Bruce Wayne’s back story while portraying such a deeply unconvincing Dark Knight? Though the writer’s take on Wayne was ludicrously… [more]
The Curious Case of the Omnipresent Consulting Detective, Part 1
He’s one of the most popular characters in literary history, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a time when Sherlock Holmes was more visible than the past five years. Offhand, I can’t think of another… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #14
Issue #14 nicely ties up the Nuke story-arc. Nuke justifies his psychotic murder spree by stating that he’s only doing it for the troops, and to keep America strong. He further states that Cap, despite… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Four
Where were we again? Oh yeah, it’s 1992, and despite attempting to jazz things up in their low-selling Dr. Fate title by having the Helmet of Fate’s original bearer, Kent Nelson, pass the golden dome onto… [more]
“Thus strangely are our souls constructed…”: DC’s Frankenstein in Post-Millennial Publication, Part One
Frankenstein (or, rather, Frankenstein’s creature): that oft studied literary figure, that icon of cinematic horror and, upon closer inspection that almost universal and perpetual figure in the comic art. Appearing in various titles from a… [more]
Buffy Goes to the Comics: An Introduction
Joss Whedon once claimed that he would continue to engage with the characters of his doomed Firefly series in any possible medium, including “etchings”. As intriguing as a woodcut series sounds, either for Firefly or… [more]
“There are Some Things in Life It’s Best not to See”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 3
Continued from last week. The suspicion that Millar idled his way through his years at 2000AD is at least in part countered by the contents of Favourite Things. For it seems unlikely that he would have… [more]
On Canons, Critics, Consensus, and Comics, Part 3
This week marks the final installment of our search for a comics canon. As I mentioned in the first column, I recently conducted a survey of the people who contribute to Sequart. A total of 25… [more]
20th Century Boys Volume Four
This is an exciting volume. A lot of it focuses on Shogun being generally badass. Shogun acts rather like a vigilante in this volume. He’s continually saving abused women from Thai gangsters. At first this… [more]
Development of the Spiritual Psychosis: “The Kindly Ones,” Chapters 1-3
After absconding to an inn outside the bound of time and reality, Gaiman takes the reader on to the final arc that constitutes The Sandman (discounting the coda material The Wake). The first three issues… [more]
Will We Ever Get a Definitive Superman Film?
With a character that has 75 years of history there has been many graphical representations of Superman. From Grant Morrison’s description of a Circus strongman to the silver age kiss-curl to the mullet of the… [more]
“Yes, Alfred. Time for Bed.”: The American Comics of Mark Millar, Part 2
Continued from last week. Favourite Things was the first mainstream superhero tale that Millar had ever sold. Previously, he’d depicted the costumed crimefighter as a horror-hybridised symbol of corruption and cruelty, as with The Saviour and… [more]
On Canons, Critics, Consensus, and Comics, Part 2
As I explained in last week’s column, I recently asked my fellow Sequart contributors to answer the following question: “What are the 10 greatest works in the history of the comics medium, and who are the… [more]
How the Final Season of Breaking Bad Invalidates the Entire Show
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a Breaking Bad fan. Hell, I watched the first episode when it aired for the first time, and I loved it. I loved the second episode too, in large part… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Three
First off, a correction : when we left off last time I told you we were sometime late in 1991, with promising young British comics scribe John Smith receiving a phone call from DC editor… [more]
20th Century Boys Volume Three
This is definitely the best volume of the series so far. Now that’s almost a false statement in a series like this, because this volume’s quality is utterly dependent on the two prior. Without their… [more]
Locke & Key and the Poetics of Space
“In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” – John 14:2 Last month’s final issue of Joe… [more]