Quantcast

Call for Feature Essays About Any Aspect of Popular Culture, Present or Past

Reviews > Comics

Thursday, February 9 2012

The Evolving Anthropological Tone of Star Wars in “Dawn of the Jedi”

When examining a work whose mythology is an expansive as Star Wars, it almost becomes a historiographical investigation as opposed to a literary one.


Tuesday, February 7 2012

Becky Cloonan’s Smile: Dark Horse’s Reboot of “Conan”

I'm sure the smile used by Becky Cloonan to signal her enjoyment is a perfectly good smile. But the smile she draws on Conan is sublime. It opens the character in a way very few writers have been capable of.


Monday, February 6 2012

Five Years Gone: The Folded Time of “Action #6”

Action #6's "When Superman Learned to Fly" reminds us poignantly that the superhero's struggle is never against their inner demons, but a never-ending battle to overcome the siren's call of mediocrity.


Thursday, February 2 2012

That Dame With Them Questions: Lobster Johnson: The Burning Hand #1

You can't possibly expect to write a book called Lobster Johnson and push the Lobster to the very edge of the very first issue can you? I mean that wouldn't work, would it? And therein lies the genius of Mike Mignola.


Tuesday, January 31 2012

Geoff Johns and the Batman Problem

Before Grant Morrison's JLA, the creative challenge for any Justice League writer was the overpowered Superman. With JLA Batman became the writer's peril. But with Justice League #5 Geoff Johns introduces a new kind of creative danger.


Monday, January 30 2012

Playing the Piper: Wolverine & the X-Men #4

After a philosophical split with Cyclops over care for the next generation of mutants, Wolverine returns to upstate New York, to the roots of the X-Men to rebuild the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning.


Thursday, January 26 2012

In Our Minds, and Our Everyday Behavior: Rushkoff unbridled in “ADD”

ADD offers a flawless animation of the passions and concerns regularly voiced by media theorist Douglas Rushkoff in his nonfiction.


Tuesday, January 24 2012

A Zombie King’s Quest for Restoration in “Valen the Outcast”

In Valen the Outcast writer Michael Alan Nelson reverses the usual trend of the Zombie genre by presenting a king-turned-zombie on a quest for redemption.


Monday, January 23 2012

Breaking the Fifth Wall in “Batman #5”

To say the issue is ambitious feels almost insulting, yet that is the best way to describe Snyder and Capullo's Batman #5.


Tuesday, January 17 2012

Edmondson’s Victory Over War

Nathan Edmondson's plea is for a different kind of warfare, one that can fought easily, and above all, won without the mass loss of life.


Monday, January 16 2012

The Devil Is in the Characterization in “Spider-Man #677”

"It's only an interregnum", you'll say to yourself. You can always pick up the book when Dan Slott returns next month. But then you'll read Mark Waid's beautiful, pensive pacing, and you'll be drawn in…


Friday, January 13 2012

Peter Milligan and the Bridge to Dangerous Ideas

In Hellblazer Annual: Suicide Bridge, Peter Milligan offers the frightening marriage of social media, and far more sinister forces.


Thursday, January 12 2012

Subtlety and the Narrative Fidelity of The Li’l Depressed Boy #8

If you're engaged enough, Li'l Depressed Boy will give you the intellectual wonderland of Fisher on human narration, and the emotional core of our daily lives writ large as popular culture.


Wednesday, January 11 2012

Grant Morrison and the Problem of 93 Million Miles

In Batman: Leviathan Strikes, Grant Morrison bravely returns a strong, resilient Batman to the fans after decades Frank Miller's characterization of Batman as borderline psychotic.


Tuesday, January 10 2012

Jack and Marlon, and Art and Franco

A recently discovered letter by Jack Kerouac to Marlon Brando hints at the kind of collaboration between giants we could have seen in the early 60s. In a wholly different arena, creative team Art Baltazar and Franco's Young Justice captures perfectly that same aspirant spirit.


Monday, January 9 2012

“Batman #4” Is Character Development on Display

By issue #4 of any storyarc, things should slow down. Predictably, even the high-frequency genius of the Snyder-Capullo creative team on Batman does. But it's this downturn that allows writer Scott Snyder's true vision of Batman to shine through.


Thursday, January 5 2012

MAD About You: An Open Letter to MAD’s “Usual Gang of Idiots”

Thanks a lot, you Usual Gang of Idiots. You just broke Satire! Used to be I could sit back on my couch and chuckle it up because satire was just entertainment. No chance of that after your "20 Dumbest of 2011".


Tuesday, January 3 2012

Aquaman and the Literary Depths

It's all-out action as Aquaman plumbs the depths to uncover the secret of The Trench. But writer Geoff Johns deeply meditative tones make Aquaman #4 equal parts Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as George Lucas' Raiders of the Lost Ark.


‘Opera Adaptations; Vols 1-3’: A Synaesthetic Echo of the Operatic Performance

The graphic novel, in its robustness and variety, is the perfect setting for opera’s troubled universe.


Thursday, December 15 2011

Aww Yeah, Titans: ‘Tiny Titans’ Creators’ New Kind of Writers’ Room

It's the Holy Grail of DC interviews, an exclusive with Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns. So why am I stealing time to read Tiny Titans: The Treehouse and Beyond instead? Maybe it's because Tiny Titans allows me to touch base with why I read comics in the first place.


Now on PopMatters
A Painting Come to Life: 'The Mill & the Cross' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 4:00 pm]
A Far Too Safe... and Strained... 'House' (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 9:00 am]
'Safe House' Is Ersatz Edgy (Reviews) [Fri, 8:06 am]
The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader) [Fri, 7:50 am]
  1. 'Nebraska': Bruce Springsteen's 'Heart of Darkness' (Columns)
  2. The 10 Greatest Shakespeare Film Adaptations of All Time (Short Ends and Leader)
  3. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 1: From 13Ghosts to Friendly Fires (Features)
  4. The Best Games of 2011 (Features)
  5. Not-So-Central Casting: Kevin Smith and the Birth of the Reality Podcast (Features)
  6. The 10 Greatest Movie Spies Ever (Short Ends and Leader)
  7. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 2: From the Go! Team to the Phoenix Foundation (Features)
  8. Slipped Discs 2011 - Part 3: From Real Estate to Youth Lagoon (Features)
  9. Lana Del Rey: Born to Die (Reviews)
  10. The Top 15 Madonna Singles of All Time (Sound Affects)
  11. Get Off of My Cloud!: 'Collecting' Music in the Digital Age (Features)
  12. Leonard Cohen: Old Ideas (Reviews)
  13. Google and the Production of Curiosity (Marginal Utility)
  14. Carole E. Barrowman’s Authorial Journey to Hollow Earth (Features)
  15. “Don’t Let Me Fall”: Hip-Hop in the Age of Austerity (Features)
  16. Tower Songs: Townes Van Zandt (Columns)
  17. Black Bananas: Rad Times Xpress IV (Reviews)
  18. The Gay Ole Countryside (Columns)
  19. Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom (Reviews)
  20. Of Montreal: Paralytic Stalks (Reviews)
  21. Counterbalance No. 67: John Coltrane’s 'A Love Supreme' (Sound Affects)
  22. The 10 Best John Coltrane Solos (Sound Affects)
  23. Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro: A Rock Star’s Midlife Crisis or Valid Literature? (Features)
  24. A Look to the Past, An Insight Into the Present: The Use of Gender in 'Mad Men' (Features)
  25. A Tale of How Great Journalism Became Revisionist History: Grambling State U Football (Columns)
  26. Chairlift: Something (Reviews)
  27. Mark Lanegan Band: Blues Funeral (Reviews)
  28. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - "Heart Attack" (Cosmic Kids Remix) (PopMatters Premiere) (Mixed Media)
  29. The Barbaric (and Poetic) Yawp of Shelby Lynne (Notes from the Road)
  30. After Cease to Exist: The Far-from-Final Report of Throbbing Gristle (Features)
Announcements
PM Picks
Music Archive
Ratings

10 - The Best of the Best

9 - Very Nearly Perfect

8 - Excellent

7 - Damn Good

6 - Good

5 - Average

4 - Unexceptional

3 - Weak

2 - Seriously Flawed

1 - Terrible

© 1999-2012 PopMatters.com. All rights reserved.
PopMatters.com™ and PopMatters™ are trademarks
of PopMatters Media, Inc.

PopMatters is wholly independently owned and operated.
PopMatters is a member of BUZZMEDIA Music, MOG and Guardian Select.