At their worst, X-Men stories completely glaze over their characters’ uniqueness and let the mutant class issues that Uncanny X-Men was built on dissolve into bland, sanitized adventures that stare down “God Loves, Man Kills” from an opposite corner of the storytelling spectrum. When writers really understand what they’re doing, as Kathryn Immonen and Phil … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #98: ‘Wolverine and Jubilee’ #1
SPOILERS IN HERE, FAIR WARNING: Well, marketing-wise this issue did everything Marvel wanted it to for me. The 11th-hour pre-release hype about the death of the Human Torch made me want to know how Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting were going to dispose of him, and I stained my fingers black stretching and wrestling with … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #97: ‘Fantastic Four’ #587
Link Sausage: 1/2/2011 Happy New Year, everyone. Stuff’s going to be changing gears on my end Monday as I step into the MSJ program at Northwestern’s Medill School for 2011, but just because I’m not freelancing full-time, it doesn’t mean that the gears are going to come to a complete stop pay-work-wise (thank goodness!). Anyway, … Read moreLink Sausage: 1/2/2011
Of the big three pamphlet comics publishers who launched their own comiXology apps in 2010, Image Comics came the closest to achieving the storefront and selection that I would like to see as a reader and iPad owner. $1.99 is pretty much the ceiling for what I’m willing to pay for a 24-page digital edition … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #96: ‘Morning Glories’ #’s 1-3
I’m sure that if William S. Burroughs had ever been given the opportunity to direct a Ziegfield Follies segment featuring a thousand performers playing Tintin and Rosebud from “Citizen Kane,” audience members would have walked away with approximately the same sensation that reading Charles Burns’ graphic novel “X’ed Out” from Pantheon leaves on the mind. … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #95: ‘X’ed Out’
The days have been really packed the last month or so with my daily professional posting elsewhere and other fun things like my MacBook Air review for MTV Multiplayer and the shot-by-shot “Green Lantern” trailer breakdown I did for MTV News. Here’s what’s had my attention during the last week though: • My old colleague … Read moreLink Sausage: 12/1/2010
You know those montage pages at the end of DC books like Superboy #1 this week that foreshadow a couple of storyarcs worth of major events? That’s sort what this $3.99 first issue of Captain America: Man Out of Time from Mark Waid and artist Jorge Molina felt like. Waid’s dialogue was in great form … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #94: ‘Captain America: Man Out of Time’ #1
DC’s new Jeff Lemire-scripted Superboy series has been one of their most anticipated launches of the year, and after reading through issue #1, you’ll probably see the common ingredients it shares with Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman and Smallville and immediately understand exactly why that is. That’s not to take anything away from the original … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #93: ‘Superboy’ #1
Beetle Bailey eclipsed the 1,000-newspaper mark with its circulation in 1965 and was only the second comic to do so after Blondie. For a year marked by Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” declaration, conflict in Vietnam, and marches in Selma, Alabama, Beetle Bailey: The Daily and Sunday Strips, 1965 from Titan Books presents a artifact … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #92: ‘Beetle Bailey: The Daily and Sunday Strips, 1965’
Two of my favorite moves Marvel has made in the last few years involved relaunching their What The–?! brand as a Robot Chicken-styled absurdist take on their universe and re-introducing Strange Tales as a vehicle for indie creator populated anthologies. The initiatives asserted an awareness of Marvel’s places in the broader ecosystems of online media … Read more100 Days, 100 Comics #91: ‘Strange Tales II’ #1