The EC Archives: Extra! Johnny Craig, John Severin, Colin Dawkins and others (writers and artists) Dark Horse Comics April 11, 2018 This collection presents the entire run of Extra! which ran for five issues in the mid 1950s, each one comprised of a number of short comics stories and some sojourns into short prose fiction–what…
Secret Weapons Volume 1 and #0: Owen
Secret Weapons, Vol. 1 Eric Heisserer (writer), Raúl Allén (artist), Patricia Martín (artist and letterer) Valiant 2017 Secret Weapons, #0: Owen Eric Heisserer (writer), Raúl Allén (artist), Patricia Martín (artist and letterer) Valiant March 14, 2018 Look. Do you want a ragtag interracial band of misfits to form a supportive team led by a competent…
The Castle Offers Fictions Within Fictions
If you’re going to read a comic co-written by Brian Michael Bendis and Kelly Sue DeConnick and edited by Sana Amanat, you probably want them all to be pretending to adapt a novel written by a fictional character from a television show. Right? Isn’t that what people want? That’s what happened in 2011, when Marvel…
American Gods Vol 1 is Not Quite A Melting Pot
American Gods Volume 1: Shadows Neil Gaiman (Story and Words), P. Craig Russell (Script and Layouts), Scott Hampton, Walt Simonson, Colleen Doran, Glenn Fabry (Art), Lovern Kindzierski, Laura Martin, Colleen Doran, Adam Brown (Colorists), Rick Parker (Letterer) Dark Horsem February 28, 2018 The American Gods comics adaptation is both beautiful and well-paced. P. Craig Russell…
The Shadow Hero’s Shadow is New Super-Man
Welcome to the non-negative Year of the Knockoff on Women Write about Comics! Long ago in the wilds of October 2016, I wrote a guest post for the American Studies blog that discussed how Gene Luen Yang’s 2014 graphic novel The Shadow Hero seems like a rhetorical successor to Superman, particularly because its hero, Hank,…
Draw the Line Offers Inspiration with Broad Strokes
Draw the Line Various creators, Myfanwy Tristram (editor) 2017 Draw the Line is an anthology webcomic, in which “over 100 comic(s) artists present positive political actions anyone can take.” It recently won the Broken Frontier Award for best Web Comic in 2017, and it does indeed offer a wide array of positive actions aimed at…
Go Ahead, Skip the Origin Stories
Action Comics #1 gets Superman’s origin story and “a scientific explanation of Clark Kent’s amazing strength” out of the way on the very first page, and the rest of the issue is devoted to his activities as a grown-up “champion of the the oppressed.” Though obviously his childhood with the Kents, and his infancy on…
Shakespeare on the Page: A Better Way
I was recently rereading Manga Shakespeare: Twelfth Night, and found myself surprised all over again by how much I like it, and how well it works. The Manga Shakespeare series, published by Amulet/Abrams in the US & Canada or SelfMadeHero in the UK, uses a “manga” drawing style (but the western left to right reading…
Fun Home On the Page and the Stage
Small and Big, Close and Far, Same and Different The award winning Broadway musical Fun Home, based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir of the same name, is now on tour. By the time this goes to press, the production will most likely be in Schenectady. Or Providence. And somewhere else after that. Whenever shows go…
Made Men #1 Lumbers to its Feet
Made Men #1 Paul Tobin (writer), Arjuna Susini (art), Gonzalo Duarte (colors), Saida Temofonte (letters) Oni Press September, 2017 Made Men #1 would have felt like fun progressive pulp in the late 50s, early 60s, but feels dated now. It tells the story, largely in first-person captions, of a young woman calling herself Jutte Shelley….
The Dracula File Offers Bite-Sized 1980s Horror
The Dracula File Gerry Finley-Day, Simon Furman and Ken Noble (writers); Eric Bradbury, Geoff Senior and Keith Page (artists) Rebellion: 2000 AD October 16, 2017 (Originally serialized in SCREAM! issues 1-15, 1984 and Holiday Specials 1985-1988) The Dracula File offers cozy horror nostalgia. Both the art style and the text—“Meanwhile, behind the Iron Curtain, a KGB…
Kid Sherlock #3: “Missing Equipment” by Justin Phillips and Sean Miller is Light and Fun
Kid Sherlock #3 Justin Phillips (writer and letterer), Sean Miller (pencils and inks), Lesley Atalansky (colors) Action Lab Comics August 23, 2017 In the third issue of Kid Sherlock, the playground equipment for classroom 221 at Baker Elementary has gone missing, and the eponymous kid Sherlock and his faithful pal Watson solve the mystery of…