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Magazine Archives for:
2014
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Review of Community Season 5, Episode 10
Season Two’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was one of the best Community episodes ever. It was a perfect melding of form and theme. The episode’s gimmick was telling the entire story through a Dungeons and… [more]
Perfect Chaos: Why the Joker is the Greatest Comic-Book Villain
Simply put: the Joker is the greatest comic book villain of all time. But before I get into the whys, let’s define “great”. The greatest villain doesn’t need to defeat all other villains in a… [more]
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol #19, A Companion Reader
The first four issues of Grant Morrison’s run of Doom Patrol are rife with allusions to popular culture and the fine arts bound by a love of opposites. [more]
Manifest Destiny #1-5, or “Lewis and Clark vs the Vegetable Zombies”
The slug-line description of Manifest Destiny, a comic by Chris Dingess and Matthew Roberts, is “Lewis and Clark go west to fight monsters”. That would be interesting enough right there, but thing that gives this… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Part 2
Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Marc Silvestri Inker: Dan Green Colorist: Glynis Oliver Letter: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Ann Nocenti continued With the eulogy to their previous lives delivered last issue in Deadly Games! , with this… [more]
The Crying of Timeline 919: Casanova
In the backmatter for issue #1 of Casanova, (Image, June 2006) Matt Fraction compares the story to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound production technique—where hundreds of different instruments and sounds are compressed down to a… [more]
“This is Not a Dream, but a Plan”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 12
Continued from last week. There are other indications that Millar might have been a major contributor to the new JLA’s origin tale. In the Justice League’s own title, Morrison had scrupulously ensured that his innovations were… [more]
Moving Pieces into Place with Serenity: Leaves on the Wind #3
In the new Serenity comic, issue #3 of Leaves on the Wind, there’s a lot of ground covered in very little time. If there’s one issue where we can feel the story not exactly slipping… [more]
Captain America, Alan Moore, Alex Ross, and the Truth
I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. The Captain America film is coming out, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Captain… [more]
Sex Criminals #4-5 Review
What’s going on with our heroes, the sex criminals, for issues #4 and 5? Well, a bit of sex, a bit of criminality, and somewhere in there a bit of reality intrudes. This continues to… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #17
Captain America # 17 is ostensibly about Dr. Mindbubble’s attack on Nick Fury and SHIELD. Mindbubble seems to be doing the bidding of Iron Nail, who argues that SHIELD exerts “fascist control” over the planet.… [more]
Review of Arrow Season 2, Episode 16
There comes a time in just about any season of television where a show has to slow down for a bit and push its pieces around the board. Slowly edging forward conflicts and building to… [more]
The Eric Stephenson Thing
So… that address Eric Stephenson gave at ComicsPRO recently seems to be making lot of waves (in the still small pool of American comics) and while there were things to be applauded there were, also,… [more]
Review of Community Season 5, Episode 9
VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing might be my favourite episode yet of Community’s fifth season. It’s not necessarily the best one – the b-plot was a bit weak – but it made me laugh in… [more]
Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Eight
The other day I was banging out a review for issue number two of Marvel’s new George Romero-scripted zombie series Empire Of The Dead and I remarked that second issues are kind of a tricky deal… [more]
Cody Walker on Noir City
Cody Walker, Webmaster here at Sequart, has put together a Kickstarter for the second issue of his comic book Noir City. JULIAN DARIUS: You and your co-writer, Rich G. Valerius, have been working on Noir City… [more]
Sandman: Omnia Mutantur Nihil Interit — Hope for the Exile
The words of Ovid’s Metamorphoses bear the emblematic slogan of Sandman #74, the second to last Sandman of it’s original run: “Omnia Mutantur Nihil Interit.” Gaiman’s translation of the phrase in the comic is “Everything… [more]
20th Century Boys, Volume Five
This is an important volume, deserving of a particularly long write-up. You’ve been warned. This volume starts the conclusion of Kenji’s story, and introduces the next part of this tale – Kanna’s story, which takes… [more]
The Secret Origin of the JLA, and of “Mark Millar” Too: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 11
Continued from last week. It would be another seven months until Morrison and Millar’s next public collaboration on the Batman. In that time, the new JLA title would establish itself as a remarkably successful reboot. Its… [more]
300 Things I Hate about 300: Rise of an Empire
[NOTE: the following essay contains spoilers. As to whether a film that’s already rotten can be “spoiled” … well, that’s a debate for another time.] You know it’s a bad sign when you only have… [more]
Superhero Accessories: Part Two: Truth, Justice, All That Stuff
…continued from here. DC have long had a problem fitting Superman into the grimmer world the DC Universe has become now its readership mostly consists of adults. It’s clear that senior editors feel the ‘big… [more]
Capital Thoughts: Captain America #16
Issue #16 of Captain America lacks a lot of things, including Captain America, who does not make an appearance except in a hallucination where he appears as the Red Skull’s domesticated pet—I kid you not.… [more]
Review of Alan Moore’s Jimmy’s End
I honestly don’t even know where to start with this one. How do you review anything by Alan Moore, much less a short film he’s written? The guy’s a genius. I’m not simply saying that… [more]
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol, A Companion Reader
This essay series will examine intertexual themes in Grant Morrison’s first four issues of Doom Patrol (#19 to #22). [more]
Celebrating 15 Years of Cult Classic The Goon
After going through three publishing houses, multiple collaborations, and the eternal wrath of “Margaret Snodgrass”, The Goon has reached its 15th anniversary (or ‘gooniversary’, as creator Eric Powell punned on Twitter). I personally love The… [more]