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A Merry Marvel Mutant X-Mas
In the internet world, specifically that of the comic book discussing community, I am beginning to think that I share a brain with Brett White who writes the “In Your Face Jam” column for CBR.… [more]
Enter Mr. … Miller?: The American Comics of Mark Millar, Part 1
Continued from here. Exactly when Grant Morrison landed Mark Millar the job of scripting Swamp Thing is hard to pinpoint. Millar has hinted that the GLASCAC comic convention in the late April of 1993 may have… [more]
On Canons, Critics, Consensus, and Comics, Part 1
The semester was nearly over. As a class, we had spent nearly four months reading and discussing comics, and now, in the final two weeks of the term, each student was delivering an oral presentation… [more]
Loving the Other: Warm Bodies as Post-Post-9/11 Zombie Movie
It’s easy to dismiss the 2013 zombie film Warm Bodies as a mash-up between Romeo and Juliet and the zombie genre. It’s just as easy to guess that Hollywood saw this as a potential way… [more]
Community and Geek Culture
Yesterday I talked about Big Bang Theory, a hugely popular sitcom with a largely toxic depiction of geek culture. To counter that I thought I’d talk about Community, a smaller, wonderful sitcom with a massively… [more]
The Big Bang Theory and Geek Culture
Geeks have become a spectacle. Right now being a geek is considered cool. It’s considered fairly trendy. Very few people who self-identify as geeks are the real deal. This statement may cause all sorts of… [more]
An Unknown Soldier in an Unknown War: Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier Issue #3
An exploration of the Unknown Soldier’s meta-mythology about war and the individual. Joshua Dysart reboots the franchise in Uganda. [more]
The Power Cosmic Screams: The Death of Reality in Sandman #56
The Worlds’ End Inn: here, reality goes to die. That is the conclusion one can draw after finishing Sandman #56. Existing outside of time, this nexus of infinite zeitgeist is constantly being remade and destroyed… [more]
Escaping the Cage: Martin Vaughn-James’s The Cage and the Question of Comics
In comics studies, there is a great interest in defining what exactly constitutes a comic. Scott McCloud famously begins his Understanding Comics by trying to define exactly what we can and what we cannot consider… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Two (or, The British Invader Who Stayed Home)
Believe it or not, I’ve never known a John Smith. They say it’s the most common male name in the English language, but seriously — I never went to school with one. I’ve never worked… [more]
On “The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas”
Surely among the least-known early Transformers comics, “The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas” appeared in the 26 December 1985 issue of Woman’s Day magazine. The four-page story wasn’t an insert; it was printed on page… [more]
Flowers, Fire, and Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture #1, Part 3
The next segment of The Sandman Overture Issue #1 doesn’t have a very auspicious beginning. Pages twenty-five and twenty-six open up into a spread with Morpheus flying towards his Castle and his Dreaming kingdom: now… [more]
Batman: Noël — The Redemptive Dickensian Drama
It’s not uncommon this time of year to hear the phrase “holiday cheer” being thrown around. It’s a nebulous saying, undefined, and passed around like an offering plate collecting alms for the poor. In our… [more]
Chronocops! – An Alan Moore Time Twister, Part 3
A Link in Comic Book History As Lance Parkin correctly states: “A lot of Alan Moore’s work is concerned with the history of comics – subverting it, redefining it, challenging it, or often just celebrating… [more]
Our Dearly Departed: Mortality and Death in “Cerements”
There is an inside joke at the beginning of Hamlet that few catch. Shakespeare, well known for his wit and narrative charm, deals with religion quite frequently in his plays. This is to be expected… [more]
An Unknown Soldier in an Unknown War: Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier Issue #2
An exploration of the Unknown Soldier’s meta-mythology about war and the individual. Joshua Dysart reboots the franchise in Uganda. [more]
Flowers, Fire, and Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture #1, Part 2
In the next part of The Sandman Overture Issue #1, we now get to focus on Morpheus’ tools in trade: dreams. After transitioning to page fourteen, what we have waiting for us is something that… [more]
The Best of Millar: The 10 Most Enjoyable Examples of Mark Millar’s Work for UK Publishers, 1989-1997
As in last week’s “worst-of”, the following selections are presented in no order of preference; 1. Tales From Beyond Science: Long Distance Calls, with artist Rian Hughes, from 1992’s 2000AD #776. Just as I could… [more]
Chronocops! — An Alan Moore Time Twister, Part 2
Family Time When Ed hears the name of the baby he mistakenly tried to arrest when going after Yolinda Y. Yorty in 1989, he loses his mind and tries to wed his own grandmother, Tuesday,… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #13
Cap wallowing in bed, grief-stricken over the loss of his son; in the next room, Zemo’s daughter, the shapely Jet, works a heavy bag and tells Sam that he’s no longer numero uno in Steve’s… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part One
So here’s the deal — your newbie (at least around these parts) author found himself having a few back-and-forth conversations with Sequart founder Julian Darius via Twitter over the course of the past several months,… [more]
Flowers, Fire, and Dreams in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture #1
An overture is traditionally the opening or introduction to an opera. Yet if anything in the past twenty-five or so years of the comics medium can be compared to an opera–as a masterpiece made up… [more]
Nelson Mandela: Comic Book Hero
Nelson Mandela, who passed away last week at the age of 95, certainly lived a life with enough twists and turns of fortune and fate to be included among the great comics characters. His story… [more]
The Worst of Millar: The 10 Least Commendable Examples of Mark Millar’s Work for UK Publishers, 1989-1997
Shameless? will be moving on in the new year to discuss Mark Millar’s post-1993 career with a host of American publishers. But before setting out in the direction of Swamp Thing, Skrull Kill Krew and… [more]
Chronocops! — An Alan Moore Time Twister, Part 1
Introduction In February 1977, IPC Magazines first published a new weekly British comic anthology featuring various separate science fiction stories. Consequently, it was given the then futuristic name 2000 A.D. Although this suggests that nobody… [more]