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Archetypes of Conflict: Weaponized Narratives in “Parliament of Rooks”
“How does the story end?” is a legitimate, but not often enough asked, inquiry of our narratives. Imagine any fairy tale. The Tortoise and the Hare embodies the weathered adage, “slow and steady wins the… [more]
“The End” Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing #50
Swamp Thing #50 “The End” Writer: Alan Moore. Editor: Karen Berger. Artists: Stephen Bissette, Rick Veitch and John Totleben (and special thanks to Tom Mandrake). Colorist: Tatjana Wood. Letterer: John Costanza. Cover Date: July 1986.… [more]
“That Slightly Dodgy, Anarchic Material”: Shameless? Part 20
Continued from last week. The obviousness of Millar’s influences would become more and more of a problem as his work for Fleetway continued. Of course, 2000AD had been founded upon a deliberate policy of appropriating and… [more]
Miracleman, Chapter 9 Concludes
We’ve begun discussing chapter nine of Alan Moore’s Miracleman (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), illustrated by Alan Davis. Today, we continue our exploration of that chapter.
The Garden and the Wilderness – Walking Dead #13-19
The “prison saga” is one of the longest-running and commercially successful arcs in Walking Dead history, and also captures better than any other storyline to date how the “garden and wilderness” theme is unique to… [more]
Tyrant Issue Three: The Egg
The third issue of Steve Bissette’s Tyrant is devoid of any title, which is odd. Every other issue opened with a strong title page. Perhaps Bissette wanted to distance this issue from the others, as it… [more]
“A Worm Shouts a Magic Word”: “Shameless? Part 19
Continued from last week. Millar hardly made it easy for the reader to sympathise with his protagonist. Arthur Montgomery is as unconvincing as a type as he’s unsympathetic as a character, and it’s only in… [more]
Miracleman, Chapter 9: The Masculinity of Miracleman
We’ve begun discussing chapter nine of Alan Moore’s Miracleman (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), illustrated by Alan Davis. Today, we continue our exploration of that chapter.
Yet Those Hands Will Never Hold Anything: Emiya Shirou as the Interactive Superhero of Fate/Stay Night (Part 2)
Continued from part one. At some point in the superhero trope, the hero has to start building on the foundation of their training and perfecting their powers. For Shirou, this results in the mangling of… [more]
Humanity, Heroism, and Action: Grant Morrison’s Action Comics #8
The issue begins inside the bottle city of Metropolis as Lex Luthor explains that he has no desire to be rescued by Superman and then tries rationalizing his alliance with the Collector as a plan… [more]
Sandman’s Soft Places: Travelogue Through the Dreaming
Corporeality is overrated in the comic book multiverse. Grant Morrison’s theoretical conceptualizations of the infinite reality have interwoven themselves through the vein of modern storytelling, but Gaiman’s play on this concept is also well documented… [more]
“The Summoning”: Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing #49
Swamp Thing #49 “The Summoning” Cover date: June 1986. Writer: Alan Moore. Artists: Stan Woch and Alfredo Alcala. Editor: Karen Berger. Colorist: Tatjana Wood. Letterer: John Costanza This issue opens with a recap of the… [more]
“It’s A Rare Thing to be Ordinary These Days”: Shameless? Part 18
Continued from last week. In fact, it’s more than possible that Morrison actually had a considerable influence upon the format of Zenith: Tales of the Alternative Earths. Four years previously, he’d written his own series of… [more]
Miracleman, Chapter 9: The Avoidance of Liz Moran
We’ve begun discussing chapter nine of Alan Moore’s Miracleman (parts 1, 2, 3, and 4), illustrated by Alan Davis. Today, we continue our exploration of that chapter.
Yet Those Hands Will Never Hold Anything: Emiya Shirou as the Interactive Superhero of Fate/Stay Night (Part 1)
The super-hero genre is something that has not only cross-pollinated into different media, but has–in itself–been subject to a considerable amount of scrutiny. Superheroes have been changed into gritty, horrifyingly realistic beings by the Revisionism… [more]
The Garden and the Wilderness: Walking Dead #7-12
The second arc of Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead follows Rick Grimes and his group of survivors dealing with the ramifications of being forced from the sanctuary of their roadside camp site and back into the… [more]
Tyrant Issue Two: Blood and Berries
The second issue of Tyrant starts on a more introspective note than the first. Steve Bissette opens the story with a quote from Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo: Somewhere in here I was born, and there I… [more]
1986: D.P.7 — Reality Vs. Fantasy
The previous installment recounted how in the landmark year of 1986, Marvel and editor in chief Jim Shooter introduced the New Universe, a new fictional reality, that was intended to be a more realistic setting… [more]
From The Saviour to Judge Dredd and Zenith: Shameless? Part 17
Continued from last week. For a brief moment in early 1990, Millar’s career appeared to be unambiguously prospering. As of May, Trident had, in addition to The Saviour, added Millar’s The Shadowmen to their schedule. Though… [more]
Humanity, Heroism, and Action: Grant Morrison’s Action Comics #7
After a two issue break, Superman is back to battle the Collector of Worlds and save Metropolis. Strapping an oxygen tank to his back, Superman is going to leap into space to reach the Collector… [more]
The Old World: Comics and Cultural Reclamation in Sandman #38
Worthy expressions of folk myth are few and far between in the mainstream media, but persist as the most iconic means of contemporary storytelling. At the conclusion of A Game Of You, Gaiman introduces a… [more]
“A Murder of Crows”: Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing #48
Swamp Thing #48 “A Murder of Crows” Cover date: May 1986. Writer: Alan Moore. Artist: John Totleben. Editor: Karen Berger. Colorist: Tatjana Wood. Letterer: John Costanza. We are off to an atmospheric start in this… [more]
“Celibacy Being Such a Drag”: Shameless? Part 16
Continued from last week. It often appears that Millar is determined to deny any interpretation of his work that he doesn’t approve of. Yet as we’ve discussed, he repeatedly fails to produce comics whose political content… [more]
Future Progressive, Past Regressive: Livewires
Adam Warren’s Livewires is Perfection. This is not a word I use lightly, especially when the thing involved is a one-off project by a person who is often considered a not-very-major-creator[1] ™ but Livewires: Clockwork… [more]
The Garden and the Wilderness: Walking Dead #1-6
Image Comics’ monumentally successful ongoing series Walking Dead presents itself as a story of survival – specifically the survival of the comic’s protagonist, Rick Grimes, in an apocalyptic world that has been overrun by flesh-eating… [more]