ON COMICS CHARACTERS
ON SCI-FI FRANCHISES
ON GRANT MORRISON
ON TV AND MOVIES
OTHER BOOKS
DOCUMENTARY FILMS
Magazine Archives for:
2014
Switch to calendar view.
ZomBeing and Nothingness: Part 2
Previously: Being faithful to your genre, monsters as liminal beings, and horror as fascination. Beyond Thunderdome If the archetypal zombie story is apocalyptic, it’s worth considering what apocalyptic stories actually are. Chandra Phelan notes that… [more]
Rat Queens #8: Violet Rebels Against Expectations
After the dark twists and turns and plot developments that featured so prominently in issue #7 of Rat Queens, ending in an attack on the town of Palisade by the tentacled god himself, issue #8… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: The Man Called A-X Volume 1 #3
On Christmas Day 2013, 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… [more]
Sword of Doom: So Close
I feel like this may be the start of many samurai reviews I do. This one was good, but also not? [more]
Oh, My Aching Cranium! : Jack Kirby’s OMAC Deconstructed And Reconstructed, Part Five
Hey, look! It’s our “girl” from the cover—and apparently she’s got a name and everything! Dear readers, allow me—by way of Jack Kirby, of course—to introduce you to Lila, a manufactured “Build-A-Friend” that comes our… [more]
A Voice in the Dark, “Get Your Gun” #1: A Review
A Voice in the Dark was easily one of the best reviewed and most talked about titles published by Image Comics and Top Cow last year. The story of Zoe Aarons and her life of… [more]
“Terminate This Pregnancy”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 37
Continued from last week. Millar makes more use of the topic of abortion in Swamp Thing than most superhero writers do in a lifetime. In each case, abortion is used either as a symbol of… [more]
The Last Temptation of Supe: Christian Overtones in “For the Man Who Has Everything”
On those rare occasions when I teach students about superhero comics, one question that always comes up is what defines a “hero”. Is, for example, a hero simply an individual who does heroic things? Or… [more]
Delivering the 20th Century, Part 3: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell
In re-reading From Hell, it’s hard not to marvel at the liberation Alan Moore seems to be enjoying. Despite the brilliance of his earlier superhero and horror stories, there was often still a sense of… [more]
“A Narrative Structure in Which Despite a Series of Ridiculous Mishaps, All Goes Well”: On Multiversity: The Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World #1
Nearly a month ago the Multiversity event kicked off in grand fashion. Not long after that I took a lengthy and in depth look at the first issue. With the release of The Society of… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Dying of the Light
After putting them through the wringer with Inferno, Chris Claremont gave our merry mutants a two issue break filled with shopping and drinking while simultaneously broaching the fallout of the event and introducing Jubilee. Now… [more]
Thoughts on Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
“There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the… [more]
American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion by A. David Lewis: A Review
One of the markers of modernity is the concentration on, as well as the definition of, self. How the self is created, defined, and the limits of this identity are all modern questions that seem… [more]
Discovering McGruder’s Black Jesus: “I Gave at the Playground,” Episode 4
Fighting the struggle to unite a broken community in Compton, Black Jesus seems to meet his match in Black Jesus, episode 4 “I Gave at the Playground.” This complicates McGruder’s construction of Jesus more so… [more]
More Fascinating Storytelling in City on the Edge of Forever, The Original Teleplay
Before I get into my discussion of issues #3 and 4 of this excellent IDW Star Trek comic series, City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay, I should correct a factual error I… [more]
ZomBeing and Nothingness: Part 1
“A Zombie movie that never ends” Like a lot of people, I love reading The Walking Dead and I’m not always sure why. Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Tony Moore’s book is ludicrously successful, not… [more]
You Can Keep Snyder’s Wonder Woman; I’ll Just Watch Buffy
A comment I often see among fans of superhero movies is “Why can’t they make one with a female lead!?” or often simply, “Why can’t they make a Wonder Woman movie?” The answer is complicated.… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Shi: Heaven and Earth Volume 1 #4
On Christmas Day 2013, 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… [more]
Oh, My Aching Cranium!: Jack Kirby’s OMAC Deconstructed And Reconstructed, Part Four
“Man, that cover scared the shit out of me when I was a kid!” You have no idea how many times I’ve heard or read various iterations of that same statement made in regards to… [more]
Is Having No Wonder Woman Movie Better than Having a Bad One?
A recent clip of Fox Newsbots prattling on about superheroes without any tangible connection to reality has been making the rounds this week, just as has happened many times before. Among the many idiotic things… [more]
On The Act of Killing
I suspect The Act of Killing is going to be eternally seared into my memory. Anwar Congo’s smiling face isn’t going fade soon. The last article I wrote I included this quote from Russian director… [more]
Overcoming the Status Quo: Wonder Woman, Superheroes, and the American Criminal Justice System (Part 3)
In this three-part series, I explore where superheroes fit into popular conceptions of criminal justice in the United States, and the potential for Wonder Woman to help improve those conceptions. In Part 1, I looked… [more]
“Her Deepest, Hidden Secrets”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 36
Continued from last week. As so often before, Murder In The Dark saw Millar indulging in two of his greatest fascinations: body horror at the expense of helpless female victims and the tradition and dogma… [more]
Colloquium #8: Orange is the New Cape — CW Cooke on Solitary
Markisan interviews CW Cooke on Solitary, his upcoming superhero prison drama from Devil’s Due Entertainment. CW talks about the challenges of working on a creator-owned indie series, the politics of prison, what makes the mixture… [more]
Delivering the 20th Century, Part 2: Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell
Last week’s column looked at the origins of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell. This week it’s time to dive into some of the highlights from the first half of the book. The Prologue,… [more]