It all began in ninth grade with Gravitation. While I was worrying over my sexuality and identity as a young woman, I found how easy and sexy it was to escape into the pages of yaoi manga. A good friend of mine had a lot of it on her shelves and I scheduled back-to-back sleepovers…
Birthright: Of Comics and Closets
When I was asked to write this article, I was flattered, but a little unsure of myself. It certainly massaged my ego a bit to think that I might have something substantial to contribute, as a trans woman, to the ongoing discussion of LGBT people in comics. And then there was of course the uniquely-affirming…
Ghost Then and Now: The Reporter is Dead, Long Live the Superheroine
The Dark Horse Comics/Team CGW character Ghost, also known as Elisa Cameron, made her debut in Comics’ Greatest World in 1993. She reappeared in a special in 1994 that developed into a series in 1995. It ran for thirty-six issues before being re-launched in 1998 for another twenty-two issues. In 2012, Kelly-Sue DeConnick and Phil…
The Wicked, The Divine, and The Mythology—Part 3: Baal and Inanna
This series intends to briefly point towards the original mythological material, compare it to the Gillen and McKelvie comic adaptation of it (The Wicked and The Divine), and speculate about possible meanings and foreshadowing by using a bit of background knowledge. Part 1: Amaterasu and Lucifer Part 2: The Morrigan and Baphomet The end of the first…
Scariest Movie of My Life: Alien
Okay, this post title is deceptive. See, I’ve never actually seen Alien, but I can confidently declare it the “scariest movie of my life.” You may find this surprising. After all, Alien is often heralded as one of the more feminist sci-fi/horror flicks out there, and we at WWAC are certainly not abashed about feminism….
The “Death” of America’s Saturday Morning Cartoons
Greetings WWAC readers, please welcome guest author Meredith Guthrie. Meredith is a media scholar at the University of Pittsburgh where she studies children’s media, fandom, advertising, body image, and digital media. You can follow her on Twitter @Meredithea. First, a note: Although a lot of ink was spilled a couple of weeks ago about the death…
Spiritual Gender-Bending in Solanin
SPOILER WARNING: This essay contains spoilers pertaining to Inio Asano’s Solanin
Yet More Violence: Michael Bay’s Transformers Against IDW’s Transformers
This post contains spoilers for Transformers: Punishment; Age of Extinction; Windblade; Dark Cybertron; More than Meets the Eye; Robots in Disguise; and Last Stand of the Wreckers. The Transformer movies, the best selling interpretation of the brand, are simultaneously the most ideologically opposed to the stories of the IDW comic book continuity and the most racist,…
The Apocalypse Isn’t The End of the World: Ragnarök and Reading Comics Narratives
After the initial media head-scratching about the announced title “Thor 3: Ragnarok,” people have latched on to the idea that the 2016 Thor movie will be about the end of the world. As a religion scholar, I have a hundred things to say about this! I’ll give you a few pointers for watching the end…
Katherine Tanski’s Teaching Comics Part 2: The Amazing Spider-Man
This is part two of my retrospective/nostalgia journey through my time as a graduate student teaching comics in the “early days.” Part one, my love letter to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics can be found here.
The Wicked, The Divine and The Mythology — Part 2: The Morrigan and Baphomet
This series intends to briefly point towards the original mythological material, compare it to the Gillen and McKelvie comic adaptation of it, The Wicked and The Divine, and speculate meanings and foreshadows only available with a bit of background knowledge. Issue #2 ended with a huge cliffhanger: a new god (it is possible indeed, Laura!)….
Trigger Warning: Fantasy vs Reality
I hate the dark. As in full-on shaking, bones trembling, sweat-breaking-out-along-the-nape-of-my-neck fear. It’s a strange thing to admit to people because being afraid of the dark is something children fear. Being afraid of the dark is something people associate with weakness and immaturity. So no one thinks twice when they turn the lights out on…
