CW: Transphobia, Use of the term “trans-trender,” biphobia, homophobia
All We Ever Look For: Orphans & Adoption in Fantastic Four
CW for mentions of child abuse What is it that sets Fantastic Four apart from other team books? Though the roster rotates slightly throughout the years as characters move in and out of each other’s lives, everybody knows the Fantastic Four will always be Susan Storm, Reed Richards, Johnny Storm & Ben Grimm. This consistency…
Crystal is the Worst Person in the Inhuman Royal Family, Change My Mind (You Can’t)
This is a story about a girl named Crystal.
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Season of the Witch
Season of the Witch was nearly the last Charlee Jacob novel to be published (only one more, Containment, was to follow), yet it was the first that she wrote. She penned it in the ’80s, after which it remained a “trunk novel” until 2016. Jacob evidently revised the manuscript to some extent prior to its…
Best of WWAC 2020
In spite of it all, WWAC contributors continued to do what we do best in 2020, and that’s write passionately about comics. So why not toot our own horn about some of our best writing — the pieces that really resonated with us and/or made us proud…
Tangerines, Berries, Pirates: Finding your Family in One Piece
A centering theme prevalent across the whole of Eiichiro Oda’s long-running opus One Piece is families, or more specifically found families. In the framework of early One Piece (the East Blue Saga), this is most strongly seen in the context of the Arlong Park arc with Nami, the Straw Hat pirates’ navigator.
Welcome Home, Jean: A Trans Reading of House of X
In 1991, like many, I discovered the X-Men — Marvel Comics’ merry band of mutants. People born with fantastic and imaginative powers who live in a world of humans who hate and fear them. First through the beloved animated series, and soon after via the X-Men comics I fell in love with the characters. At the time…
PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Infinite Crisis: Fifteen Years Later
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. This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of DC’s Infinite Crisis event, which itself was published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths. That notorious series, published between…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: The Myth of Falling
Published in 2014 by Sinister Grin Press, The Myth of Falling is both Charlee Jacob’s final collection of short stories and the single most personal work in her bibliography. In most of her collections, save for Up, Out of Cities that Blow Hot and Cold with its brief introductions for each story, Jacob allowed her…
Welcome to the Church of DC’s FanDome
On August 22 and September 12 we experienced the majesty of DC FanDome, an event billed as a ‘first-of-its-kind virtual experience for DC superfans’. Sorry, no regular fans allowed! This is for the true believers. This is all about the power of the fan, or is it just a way to invoke a false sense…
Vampires on the Margins: Forbidden Desires
One reason for the enduring appeal of the vampire as a concept is its erotic element, and this is something that manifests in both heterosexual and homosexual terms. From the lesbian vampire exploitation films of the seventies to the queer undead of Anne Rice’s bestsellers, modern audiences have come to expect vampires to exist outside…