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superhero
Last Born: An Interview with Patrick Meaney
The act of discovery is one that often leaves an impression that can have lasting effects on an individual, shaping future actions that may have otherwise been passed by. I first heard of Sequart’s own… [more]
How Carmine Infantino Designed DC’s Silver Age
DC Comics’ Showcase #4, cover dated October 1956, is usually recognized as the book that launched the so-called Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash and effectively reviving the superhero genre. The iconic cover… [more]
Steranko and the Moment of Silence
When the common person on the street conjures an image of what a comic book writer or artist looks like, they most likely picture a quiet, unassuming man, a passive person—the direct opposite to the… [more]
Don’t Ignore the Art: Reviewing and Commenting on Comics, Part 2
Line Work (Pencils / Brushwork) One of the first things I look at when opening up a comic is the style that’s being used. Is it more lifelike (realistic) or cartoonish (iconic)? Scott McCloud discusses… [more]
“The Spirit of Hatred or the Spirit of Love”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 27
Continued from last week. Other aspects of Millar’s closing tilt at Swamp Thing were less praiseworthy. Though the final arc appears to show little of the swaggering misogyny that saturated his earliest work for 2000AD,… [more]
Robert Crumb’s Best Art Was Some of His Most Subtle
The partnership between Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb was one of the more curious, and one of the most artistically satisfying in all of comics. Friends for years before even considering making comics together, these… [more]
The Embiggening Superhero: A Review of G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel #1-5
Kamala Khan is a Muslim/American teenager growing up in New Jersey and, like all teens, she’s insecure and unsure of her identity. Her family’s traditional cultural values stand in stark contrast to the society she… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Namor the Sub-Mariner Volume 1 #30
Last Christmas 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 a time… [more]
“The Notion that Mankind is Diseased and Must be Replaced at all Costs”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 26
Continued from last week. The conflict between Millar’s two opposing teams of Masons appears to represent a clash of empathy and hubris, tolerance and tyranny, good faith and a world-razing secularism. Where one Lodge is… [more]
Guarding the Galaxy from the Discount Bin: Star-Lord: The Special Edition
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m not in love with the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. I know this puts me in the comic book community’s version of the flat Earth society, but I’m fine with… [more]
Why Aren’t Horror Comics Scary?
Six months out from its announcement at 2014’s Image Expo, we’re still waiting for a solicitation on Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s “The Nameless,” a book that I can guarantee you, based on those two… [more]
“The War Between the Super-Freemasons”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 25
Continued from last week. Millar’s command of his craft wouldn’t significantly improve over the remainder of his time on Swamp Thing, though progress would undeniably occur. He’d dial back on the degree of redundant dialogue… [more]
X-Men: To the Outback & Beyond… Prelude to Inferno
Genosha was now in the rearview mirror but for the last several issues, ever since her dream sequence with S’ym, something had been building with Madelyne Pryor. The demon “stabbed” her in the heart with… [more]
“A Martyr for All Mankind”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 24
Continued from last week. At first, Morrison and Millar’s scripts were religious only in the very broadest sense of the term. With the former’s influence clearly dominant, Swamp Thing’s series-opening crisis of identity is clearly framed… [more]
Ang Lee’s Hulk and Seriousness in Comics Movies
I came across a quote from Ang Lee made in 2012. It was during press for the film Life of Pi. Lee said he wouldn’t have been able to do the film without learning about… [more]
My So-Called Secret Identity: An Interview with Will Brooker
Dr. Will Brooker is no stranger to this site. He and his creator-owned comic My So-Called Secret Identity have been featured multiple times either within the context of an interview or a review. Dr. Brooker has most… [more]
Brian’s Comic Book Grab Bag: Cage #15 Volume 1
Last Christmas 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 a time… [more]
“[The] Most Morally Objectionable Comic DC Has Ever Published”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 23
Continued from last week. As ever, it’s impossible to precisely disentangle Morrison’s influence from Millar’s. Yet Swamp Thing’s storylines and themes certainly bear the stamp of many of the former’s recurrent passions; magic and folklore,… [more]
Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol #21, A Companion Reader
This article series is an informal annotated bibliography for Grant Morrison’s first four issues of Doom Patrol. Have I ever seen an annotated bibliography before? Apparently not. [more]
Seed Catalogues: A Consideration of the Encyclopedic Comic Book
When my son was much younger, we visited his classroom one evening, to meet his teachers and to see the work he had produced over the course of the year. As he showed me around… [more]
Killing the Planet: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 22
Continued from last week. Those first four issues of Swamp Thing by Morrison and Millar set the template for the rest of the series. The pretence of an everything-you-know-is-wrong reboot was swiftly abandoned, and “Alec… [more]
Women in Super-Hero Movies: We Still Have a Long Way to Go
I was watching Tomb Raider last night, and while I love Angelina Jolie and the movie, there is one scene that makes me absolutely crazy at the beginning: Angelina Jolie’s character, Lara Croft takes a… [more]
James Bond’s Scrambled Eggs Recipe and Ian Fleming’s Quirks
The James Bond films are, in many ways, fairly weird and offensive to notions of good taste, political correctness, and plausible storytelling, but many of us are used to their excesses and enjoy them as… [more]
Banned Books Week 2014 Features Comics
This year for Banned Books Week, always an important week for libraries and literature awareness, the focus will be on comics. By encouraging people to choose and read a book that has been challenged, somewhere… [more]
Fighting for Control: Present Masculine and Feminine Emotion in X-Men: Days of Future Past
I very much enjoyed X-Men: Days of Future Past. Even with its flaws, who can complain about that ending, or the post-credits scene? Hands down, my favorite element of the film, outside of the ending,… [more]