The earliest instance of yuri as a genre was found in women’s magazines, where women would anonymously publish poetry and short fiction about Sapphic relationships. These stories, much like in the west, would often end with heartbreak or sadness in order to appease Japan’s ideals on homosexuality. The 90’s and onward saw a rapid increase…
The Many Ages of American Comics
Recently, I saw someone on Twitter talking about classic Golden and Silver Age Iron Man stories. I just about leapt out of my skin. I didn’t want to be that person, but it really bugged me. Why, you ask? Because Iron Man didn’t exist in the Golden Age. In fact, almost all the iconic Marvel…
A Rebirth Retrospective: Batgirl and the Birds of Prey
This month saw Batgirl and the Birds of Prey become the latest DC Universe Rebirth launch title to end its run. Running for 22 issues, plus a special “Rebirth” issue published as a lead-in to #1, the comic was written by Julie and Shawna Benson who were tasked with tailoring the Birds of Prey— a…
A Helluva Thing: Serialized Death in Black Bolt
Death doesn’t matter in comics. 90% of the time that I spend thinking about comics, I argue against this. But if people die all the time and then come back, death can’t matter.
Rocko’s Modern Life: Still Punching My Guts
Existing is kind of gross. It’s also unreasonably hard sometimes. And because I like things I consume to reflect the realities of my life, I want my art to be nasty, brutish, and short. I like to prod the beach rubble, you see. So, as a young person I was drawn to Rocko’s Modern Life, but…
Marvel’s Silver Surfer Knocked Off Doctor Who, Becoming Great in the Process
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: An alien with a haunted past travels the galaxy with a human companion who helps him learn to love again. They visit strange worlds, filled with even stranger people, and manage to save the universe a few times along the way.
The Pre-Human Avengers: Archaeology and Marvel’s Avengers of 1,000,000 BC
Marvel Legacy #1 Jason Aaron (Writer), Esad Ribić with Steve McNiven (Artists), Matthew Wilson (Colorist) Additional Artists: Chris Samnee; Russell Dauterman: Alex Maleev; Ed McGuinness; Stuart Immonen & Wade Von Grawbadger; Pepe Larraz; Jim Cheung; Daniel Acuña; Greg Land & Jay Leisten; Mike Deodato Jr. David Marquez Marvel Comics September 27, 2017 When I saw…
Manga on Stage: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui / Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon’s Pluto
We sit on a single row of seats, backs against a wall, hands on a railing before a drop. Beneath us is the main audience, and ahead of that is a curtained stage littered along the front with scrap metal. At first glance that’s all it appears to be, but there are a few distinguishable…
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…
Paper Girls: Women Rallying Against Imperial Horror
Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Cliff Chiang (artist), Matt Wilson (colorist), Jared K. Fletcher (letterer/designer), Dee Cunniffe (color flatter) Image Comics 2015-Ongoing Paper Girls is an enthralling take on the coming-of-age genre, placing women at the forefront of a number of landscapes they rarely get to star in: ’80s nostalgia pieces, time-travel adventures, horror, and adolescent…
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,…
Not a Hero’s Journey: Queer vs Normative Storytelling in Devilman
This article does not contain outright spoilers, so feel free to read it whether you’ve experienced any incarnation of Devilman or not. It does however imply the directions things take, so bear that in mind if you want to go into the series completely ‘blind’. My title means a few things, but one of them…
