Comic Events and Consumer Affairs: Age of Ultron
Events and crossovers are a longstanding tradition in the world of comics. They provide a means of telling a larger story than can normally be told, and they give a…
Multiple Warheads: A Crazy Soviet Alternate History, Pun-Filled World
When I first heard about Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity I had no idea who Brandon Graham was and the solicit didn’t particularly sound exciting: Sexica and her Werewolf boyfriend…
Retelling Origins Without Erasing History: Teen Titans: Year One
I tend to read comics backwards. Well, not entirely, but usually I don’t start at the beginning and go on from there. For one, that’s a really intimidating number of…
It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s a Superman origin story!
Man of Steel has its US theatre release today. It claims to be a fresh look at Superman as well as an origin story of sorts. In honor of this,…
Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 4
note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the…
Villain takeover at DC!
No, I don’t mean Dan Didio with a fake mustache that he twirls diabolically. DC has released all of the solicits for their Villain Month in September, along with the…
Gender in Paradise
There are a lot of details in Strangers in Paradise that add up to make it an excellent book. It’s written and drawn by Terry Moore; since it’s all done…
Not the Best time to be a Sidekick
Super hero sidekicks almost have the same joke status nowadays as Star Trek’s Red Shirts. In a lot of ways they’re a relic from an old era before people asked…
Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 3
note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the…
New Image Series and One Awesome Surprise
The AMAZING Matt Fraction (see today’s post in which Kari explores his teamwork with Aja on Hawkeye) will be teaming up with Howard Chaykin for a new black and white…
Art and the Feel of Hawkeye
When I’m reading a story – in comics or otherwise – I do my best to notice and evaluate all of the elements that the creator or creators have included.…
Is the Era of the Short Batman Story Over?
It used to be the case that there were eight page Batman stories and one issue would contain a few stories. Marvel was the pioneer of having long story arcs.…