I don’t love the X-Men. This is partly because I started reading superhero comics when they were neither front nor center, in that little window when the Inhumans were a big thing, and it’s partly because mutants and the creators working on their books remain—in 2021—predominantly white. The latter is often forgiven in light of…
Comics Academe: 2020 in Review
To close out 2020, Comics Academe asked contributors to write about the conferences, articles, and books that had the biggest impact on them. They attended virtual conferences and comic cons and read, wrote, and were recognized for groundbreaking work in and around comics studies.
REVIEW: Champions #3 Needs a Change
Champions #2 was “a lot of dialogue and very few action scenes.” Champions #3 is, likewise, a lot of words, but the change in line artist elevated the overall narrative. The ending, however, left a sour taste in my mouth.
REVIEW: Champions #2 is a Muddled Metaphor
Champions #1 was “a lot of talk and not enough action.” Champions #2 isn’t much different, with a lot of dialogue and very few action scenes. Its biggest failure, however, is to not treat its teenage superheroes as superheroes, even as they fight to be recognized as such.
REVIEW: Champions #1
“The Champions have always been about standing up against what’s wrong. Standing up for people who can’t always stand up for themselves. And doing the work that the adult super hero community is too busy fighting among themselves to do,” says Ms. Marvel in Champions #1, an issue largely defined by infighting among the team’s…
Race in DC’s Middle Grade and Young Adult Comics
Over the last two years, DC Comics has released more than a dozen titles geared towards children and teenagers, many of which are written by women and feature, as leading characters, girls. However, although a number of these books have people of color on their creative teams, whether as writers or artists, most feature white…
Spotlight on Nadia Shammas
Recently announced as the writer of a Ms. Marvel graphic novel to be published by Scholastic, Nadia Shammas might be a new name to some of you, but she isn’t new to comics. A former Marvel intern, Shammas edited CORPUS: A Comic Anthology of Bodily Ailments (which was covered by WWAC here and here), co-wrote…
Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed Provides Choppy Representation
Wonder Woman: Tempest Tossed by writer Laurie Halse Anderson, artist Leila del Duca, colorist Kelly Fitzpatrick, and letterer Saida Temofonte is a new but not entirely different telling of the story of Diana, Princess of the Amazons, and it is ambitious. This coming-of-age story for the would-be Wonder Woman brings her out of Themyscira and…
The Making of “The Blue Age of Comic Books”
Two years ago, I was presenting original research at the first annual Comics Studies Society conference. A week after that, I wrote my first WWAC article, in which I wrote about the paper I gave, “The Blue Age of Comic Books,” linking to an early version still (and for the foreseeable future) available online. A…
Four-Colour Faves: The Marvelous Ms. Resha Talks Ms. Marvel
Kamala Khan was brought to life in 2014 by editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker, writer G. Willow Wilson, and artists Adrian Alphona and Jamie McKelvie and has claimed many titles since, including a Hugo Award for best graphic story for Ms. Marvel: No Normal. Sales of the first volume of the series topped the…
Outlawed #1: Ballad of a Teenage Superhero
Outlawed #1, by Ewing, Jacinto, and Grundetjern, is an ambitious one-shot, meant to disrupt the status quo of the Marvel Universe. At least, the status quo for teen superheroes: superheroes whose superpowers don’t quite translate to systemic power.
Superman Smashes the Klan Part 3: Superman Finally Smashes the Klan!
Following Superman Smashes the Klan: Part One and Part Two, Part Three delivers on the promise of the series title: Superman, finally, smashes the Klan. With the help of series protagonist Roberta Lee, Superman not only beats up the bad guys but also accepts himself for who he is.