Opening with a multilevel marketing scheme orchestrated by vampires, Moon Knight #1 hits the ground running. Or, well, Moon Knight (Marc Spector) hits a van while it’s running, fulfilling his duty as a Fist of (the absent, see Avengers) Khonshu and protector of those who travel (unwillingly in the aforementioned van) at night.
The Alchemy of Excalibur: Race, Magic, and the Mutant Metaphor
Earlier this year, in a piece for our Breaking In! series, I wrote, “The mutant metaphor means that the X-Men have the potential to represent people of marginalized genders and sexualities and people of color and especially people at the intersection of those identities. They didn’t under [Chris] Claremont, not fully, and I’m not sure…
REVIEW: Reptil #2: Field(work) Trip
Reptil #1 reintroduced readers to Humberto Lopez, the titular teen superhero who can turn into dinosaurs. In the second issue of the four-part miniseries, Humberto and his cousins, Eva and Julian, come face to face not with fossils but with flesh and blood reptiles on Dinosaur World.
REVIEW: Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence
Social anthropologist and novelist Jenny White (Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks, The Winter Thief) and artist Ergün Gündüz’s Turkish Kaleidoscope is dizzying. The graphic novel follows four characters, who are fictionalized composites of oral history interviewees, over four years in Turkey as political power shifted between different leftist and rightist groups. The comic, which…
REVIEW: Reptil #1 Is a Roaring Reintroduction
Reptil’s real name is Humberto Lopez. He was a superhero. If the name doesn’t sound familiar, don’t worry. Reptil #1 — the first issue of a four-part, post-Outlawed, post-King in Black miniseries — effectively (re)introduces the character, who first appeared in writer Christos Gage and artist Steve Uy’s Avengers: The Initiative Featuring Reptil #1.
Breaking In! With Uncanny X-Men #203
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…