The development of vampire fiction throughout the nineteenth century is often boiled down to four key authors. Dr. John Polidori established the genre in 1819 with his short story “The Vampyre”. James Malcolm Rymer demonstrated that vampires could find popular success through longer-form storytelling with his penny dreadful saga Varney the Vampire, completed in 1847….
[PATREON EXCLUSIVE] Fumetti Nightmares: Belzeba, Italy’s Intersex Imp
Our monthly Patron-exclusive essay series continues. You can read all of these incredible analyses for as little as a dollar a month on our Patreon. The erotic-horror fumetti published in Italy through the seventies and eighties may seem arcane to outsiders. The plots of these comics are built around sex, violence and combinations of the two,…
Questionable Content’s 17-year Journey From Edgy Shocks to Queer Comfort Food
Do you remember what you were like 17 years ago? I do, unfortunately. In 2003, I was a little 12-year-old shithead who was starting to discover the edgy humor of the mid-2000s. Jokes built around transphobia, homophobia, and ableist slurs were the funniest things on the planet for a good chunk of my teenage years…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Dark Moods
In Charlee Jacob’s fiction, the modern landscape of mass media and urban sprawls is never far from the barbarism of the ancient world. An earlier age of weird divinities and brutal religious rites is present just below the surface of those millennial cityscapes, ready to burst forth into the lives and minds of contemporary humanity….
[Patreon Exclusive] Mahou Josei Chimaka Embodies Me As An Adult Magical Girl Fan
Our monthly Patron-exclusive essay series continues. You can read all of these incredible analyses for as little as a dollar a month on our Patreon. Published on the digital comics magazine Sparkler Monthly, Mahou Josei Chimaka is a magical woman webcomic and graphic novel created by cartoonist Kate Rhodes and animator Jennifer Xu (known together as…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Geek Poems and Wormwood Nights
In 2005, the same year that Vestal was published, Charlee Jacob’s novella Wormwood Nights was given a limited edition run by Bloodletting Press.
Marauders #11 Buries Kate Pryde’s Jewish Legacy
Kitty Pryde has been a favorite character for Jewish superhero fans since her inception, but Marauders #11 insults everything about her identity. Created by John Byrne and Chris Claremont in 1980, Kitty is notably one of the few Marvel characters who has been depicted as Jewish since her creation. By comparison, Ben Grimm, who was…
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…
Green Lantern in 2020: Is There a Future Beyond the Thin Green Line?
Green Lantern has had a strange time in the first 20 years of the century. The ongoing comic series rose from a perennial B-list entry to DC’s pantheon of heroes to become the biggest franchise in their stable, thanks to a wildly popular and commercially successful decade-long run from writer Geoff Johns. This revamp, during…
Tokyo Tarareba Girls: A Love Letter To My What-If Women and Third Places
I didn’t know where to start this piece. I am overwhelmed and tired all the time. But through the quarantine there has been Tokyo Tarareba Girls (TTG) by Akiko Higashimura. From its first full page, TTG was a shock. The banner congratulating Tokyo for hosting the 2020 Olympic Games was such a rude reminder of…
[PATREON EXCLUSIVE] Bakuman Is a Comic about Death Note
In 2003, writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrator Takeshi Obata collaborated for the first time on a manga called Death Note, serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2003 to 2006. Death Note was a huge hit across demographics, later turned into an anime, stage play, and multiple live action adaptations. This article will discuss the manga…
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…