Friday, August 27 2010
Missed Directions Reboot: Assembling ‘Unthinkable’
Reading comics promotes specific psychic resiliences, ones that go beyond well beyond the comics page and carry on into civic discourse.
Thursday, August 26 2010
Things Will Be Worse Now: John Reed and Breaking the Spell of History
With his most recent book, Tales of Woe, John Reed takes a creative and a commercial risk in producing a 'handmade alien object'.
Wednesday, August 25 2010
MAD’s Maddest Artist Gets Even: Don Martin Strikes a Blow for Creators’ Rights
In 1988, MAD's Don Martin helps set the stage for the move towards comics creators' rights in the '90s.
Pressing Issues: Wizard Press and the Trapeze of ‘90s Fan Culture
Following the apparent reconciliation between Wizard and Frank Miller in 2005, have issues are the publication's quality of journalism finally been settled?
Tuesday, August 24 2010
Swamp Monsters and Stoners: When Mainstream Comics Tuned In, Turned On and Dropped Out
Writer Steve Gerber's 39-issue run on Man-Thing exemplifies a crucial period in the development of comics: when the mainstream and underground collided.
Trail Blazers in the World of Academia
As we continue to enter this new era in which comics become more integrated into both the larger popular culture and the resulting professional areas that examine it, it is important to remember that until very recently it wasn’t always so.
Monday, August 23 2010
Milagro: Image Comics Makes Creators’ Rights an Issue for a New Generation
Image Comics was the game-changer. Not only did they proactively assert their rights as creators, but instilled in those to follow, the notion of creator autonomy.
Life and Anti-Life: Kirby’s Fourth World Gambit
Already having established himself as the co-creator of the Marvel Universe, Jack "the King" Kirby, ran very little risk in moving to rival publisher DC. The gamble of producing a single story told over four distinct titles however, proved to be an incredible commercial challenge.
Thursday, August 12 2010
Catwalk: Images of Female Power
For over 70 years Catwoman's Selina Kyle has been a character to offer a more credible voice to questions of power in the representation of women in comics.
Wednesday, August 4 2010
Confederacy of Bad-Asses #2: The Life of Reilly
From here on in for the next few years, The Punisher would be published exclusively under Marvel’s mature-readers MAX imprint, allowing Ennis to explore the character in a more realistic setting, with more swear words and fewer men in capes.
Monday, August 2 2010
Captain Jack As a Digital Weapon: Launching ‘Torchwood’ Comic #1
Is Torchwood the true “digital weapon” that can successfully market its stories in any medium—not just TV episodes, but also novels, radio plays, and now a comic book?
Wednesday, July 28 2010
“Patty Hearst Heard the Burst”: Joshua Dysart’s Unknown Soldier
It’s impossible, while reading Joshua Dysart and Alberto Ponticelli’s superlative Unknown Soldier, to not think of the late, great Warren Zevon’s ballad of Roland, the so-called “headless Thompson gunner”, and his seemingly endless battle. Perhaps there's a reason for that.
Wednesday, July 21 2010
Lone Wolf and Cub Part 7: A Wall of Swords
In the classic Lone Wolf and Cub writer Kazuo Koike achieves the redemption of the villainous Yagyu Clan by a meticulous depiction of their fighting style, the infamous Wall of Swords.
Thursday, July 15 2010
Getting Better Than They Are: Harvey Pekar Obituary
At the age of 70, comics giant Harvey Pekar passed on July 12th. Survived by his wife of 27 years, Joyce Brabner, and his daughter Danielle, Pekar leaves a legacy of having nurtured a generation of cartoonists.
Thursday, July 8 2010
Goblin on Our Back: Norman Osborn’s Path From Killer to Savior and Back Again
Marvel’s writing staff of the last seven years created an iconic, status quo-shifting series of events that redefined a universe and, most importantly, showed a staggeringly real, organic evolution of a character whose time, many thought, was over.
Wednesday, June 30 2010
Who Is Henry Pym, and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About Him?
Dan Slott has redeemed the founding Avenger and leader of the "Mighty" team, deftly and expertly removing him from the ghetto of mischaracterized misanthropic anti-heroes just in time for the Heroic Age.
Thursday, June 24 2010
Confederacy of Bad-Asses 1: You ‘n Me, We Onna Same Side, Homes
The first in a series of Iconographies examining Garth Ennis-scripted Punisher villains spotlights Barracuda, one of the Punisher's sickest, most deranged enemies, who also turns out to be almost the exact same man.
Wednesday, June 16 2010
Gotham After The Rain: The Cult of Personality of Batman and Robin
Morrison's "Bat-God" gets a makeover after the seeming death of Bruce Wayne, revealing Gotham's near-deification of not just the man, but of everything from the costume to his methods to his legend and legacy.
Wednesday, June 9 2010
It’s Not Easy Being Green: Swamp Thing, Ecology and the (Sometimes Slimy) Nature of Being
Continuing the critical analysis of the Swamp Thing character as it transitions from creative control of Len Wein and Berni Wrightson to Alan Moore, Steve Bissette and Jon Totleben.
Wednesday, June 2 2010
It’s Not Easy Being Green: Swamp Thing, Ecology and the (Sometimes Slimy) Nature of Being
New Swamp Thing scribe, Alan Moore evolved the character in the early 1980s by introducing stories around the frailty of human consciousness into a book which until then examined human/plant interaction.
