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DC’s Impact Imprint: A Look Back
The idea was for DC Comics to launch an entire new set of books aimed toward younger readers. The launch of these books would cross over from comic shops to the mainstream and try to… [more]
Comics in Other Media
Superheroes have been in our language for years. Nearly every American, somewhere along the line, has been exposed to superheroes or comic books either directly or peripherally. In the least, we all certainly could name… [more]
Did the Dark Knight Strike Again? Frank Miller’s New Digital Reality
The longevity of comics depends on the effort to give them relevance and context in history. The medium’s survival relies on its connection with its contemporaries.
The Valiant Tangent — Magnus Robot Fighter #1-4 (Steel Nation, Part 1 of 2)
Welcome back to The Valiant Tangent, a column whose goal it is to chronicle the stories and characters of Valiant Comics and the things that made them not only cool, but some of the greatest… [more]
The Valiant Tangent — Solar: Man of the Atom #0
Welcome to The Valiant Tangent, a column whose goal it is to chronicle the stories and characters of Valiant Comics, and the things that made them not only cool, but some of the greatest of… [more]
Dino of Two Worlds: Dean Haspiel’s Action Autobiography
One of the weirdest comics experiences I’ve ever had was reading Jack Kirby’s “Street Code”, an autobiographical tale of his past that was reprinted in the intriguing STREETWISE collection a few years ago. Kirby wrote… [more]
The Valiant Tangent
Welcome to the first installment of The Valiant Tangent, a series of articles whose goal it is to chronicle some of the stories and characters from Valiant Comics, and the things that made them not… [more]
Fall of the Mutants, Part 3
Well, we made it. Here’s the last part of Fall of the Mutants and let me just say, “Whew! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” In other words, this “crossover” was… [more]
Fall of the Mutants, Part 2
In the debut article, we examined the first third of Marvel’s Fall of the Mutants, a crossover from the late 80s that tried to shake up the status quo of the participating X-titles. This week,… [more]
Fall of the Mutants, Part 1
The quest is a simple one: There are a lot of crossovers out there for you to dive into, and Sequart is going to try to steer you toward the better ones. Welcome to a… [more]
Bugjuice and Bebop: Steve Lafler’s Musical Comics
Steve Martin once noted that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s difficult to make interesting statements about music without losing hold of the essence of the art itself. It’s even more difficult… [more]
The “M” is for “Mediocre”
House of M #1 Marvel Comics – Brian Michael Bendis (w); Olivier Coipel (p); Tim Townsend (i) Well, I guess this means summer is officially here. DC started its tent-pole summer event about a month… [more]
MoCCA 2005: Ten Great Mini-Comics
The vast majority of my purchases at MoCCA were minicomics, seeing as how I order what I want from the larger publishers through my local comic shop. (Someone give me a gold star.) Readers only… [more]
Working with Dirt
The following is an introduction to a comics short fiction meant to appear in the academic journal Arisa, published by the Center for Contemporary Islam at the University of Cape Town. The short story, “Rubble,”… [more]
Retelling the Telling
It is a telling moment to be sure. One in which Peter Milligan neatly gives away the carefully-constructed game woven thus far and later in the Enigma. He writes of the titular character: He sits… [more]
The USMC vs. the Commie Space-Insects
Earthboy Jacobus Image Comics – Doug TenNapel (w/a) Earthboy Jacobus, the newest graphic novel from creator Doug TenNapel (whose previous works, Creature Tech and Tommysaurus Rex, were excellent), is an odd book to even attempt… [more]
Exploration, Becoming, History
2005 is at least significant on two fronts; it is the centennial of The Day the Rules Changed, of Albert Einstein’s Specific Theory of Relativity, also, it is the year in which Transformers: the Movie… [more]
Optic Verve Strikes Back
Fantastic Four #527 Marvel Comics – J. Michael Straczynski (w); Mike McKone (p); Andy Lanning (i) I’ll be real honest: I’m not a huge JMS fan. The part of his work that the majority of… [more]
On In the Shadow of No Towers
In 2004, coinciding with the Presidential elections, Art Spiegelman released In the Shadow of No Towers. It was the first time his work had penetrated the bookstore since his Maus, which had since won a… [more]
Mister Chon, Suddenly I Wish to Leave Your Island (A shrill partisan talks about Birth of a Nation)
Do comics have a liberal bias? This seems like a loaded question because most conservatives will tell you everything has a liberal bias (You know, not counting the Supreme Court, the FCC, our new electoral… [more]
Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You (Chon discusses the Phoenix comic without mutants)
As I was walking through Chinatown last weekend, admiring the endless tanks filled with multicolored koi (which is my new passion of the moment), I noticed something very odd. The little Asian kids were mostly… [more]
A Trip to Sin City
Frank Miller is the man generally credited for taking Batman and returning the character to his roots (through his groundbreaking works The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One) as a take-no-prisoners hard-ass. For a… [more]
Do SexBots Dream of Electric Skeet? (Chon’s going to have apologize to his mommy after this one)
Remember when I said superhero comics shouldn’t lose their sense of wonder, because bad things happen? Well, um… yeah. Anyway, as you now know, Sue Dibny was brutally raped and murdered in a cheap shock… [more]
“Lacking on Every Level”
Avengers #500 Marvel Comics – Brian Michael Bendis (w); David Finch (p); Danny Miki (i)I almost didn’t review this, for a couple of reasons. Here’s the score: No matter what I say, for good or… [more]
Call Samus Davis, Jr. He’ll vouch for me! (Your Humble Servant endorses The Cartoon History of the Universe)
Comics made me a smarter person. Not necessarily bragging here; it’s not as if I’d just said, “comics made me the smartest person in the world” (because my brain’s staggering capacity for intellectual growth at… [more]