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…
Leaning on the Closet Door: X-Men+Fantastic Four and Trans Allegory
Content Warnings: Suicide, Depression, Dysphoria, Transphobia, Gaslighting, Anti-Trans Legislation, Murder
For a Valiant Cinematic Universe to Succeed, They Need a Little Faith (Herbert)
The superhero tide isn’t ebbing any time soon. Year after year, we see new adaptations of comic book properties arrive on every screen we have access to. From familiar names to relative unknowns, viewers are being bombarded by some new hyper-powered being or other. Valiant entered the game this March with their live-action adaptation of…
I Don’t Need Adornments: On Phantom Thief Jeanne’s Maron Kusakabe
Content Warning: This piece contains discussion of rape. Recently, I changed the wallpaper on my phone to Phantom Thief Jeanne, the titular heroine of Arina Tanemura’s ’90s manga series Phantom Thief Jeanne. It was beautiful, but I soon wanted to change it to Maron Kusakabe, Phantom Thief Jeanne’s civilian identity. This was due to the fact…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Vestal
Charlee Jacob’s vampire novel Vestal was published in 2005, the same year that Stephenie Meyer gave vampires a newfound popularity with Twilight. Jacob had tackled vampires before, of course: her debut novel This Symbiotic Fascination was in part a vampire tale, and she also wrote enough vampire short stories to fill an entire anthology, The…
[Patreon Exclusive] The Marvel Girl Next Door by Kayleigh Hearn
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. There are remarkable green dresses that linger in our pop culture memory. Scarlett O’Hara draped in mountains of velvet. Jennifer Lopez wearing Versace, her neckline plunging perilously low. Kiera Knightly in…
Community Spaces, Alternative Marketplaces: Indie Comics and Culture
Over the last decade, the growth of independent, “indie,” or creator-owned comics has broadened the comic book landscape and birthed a new wave of creators who aren’t adhering to conventional standards. The demand for non-superhero material from publishers outside of the Big Two (Marvel and DC) has empowered creators to carve out their own space…
Comics Culture: Visiting a Comic Book Store in Russia
Back in the Before Times when people could still go outside and interact with each other in close proximity, I went to Russia to visit my relatives, whom I haven’t seen in several years. From December 2018 to early January 2019, I stayed at my aunt and cousin’s apartment in the southwest end of Moscow,…
[Patreon Exclusive] Happily Ever After? A Fables Retrospective
In 2002, a comic that I would come to love deeply started coming out. It was a story of fairy-tale characters trying to live in the ‘real world’, and built on how deeply flawed all of these characters tended to be. I was still years away from moving past superhero comics, I had yet to…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Cities and Guises
Charlee Jacob’s novella “Up, Out of Cities that Blow Hot and Cold” – which debuted in the 2000 collection of the same name before being reissued as a standalone book – is a story that takes the concept of urban decay literally. All around the world, cities are being hit by disasters: the Eiffel Tower…
DC Comics Just Made a Statement that Could Significantly Change the Comics Industry
Since the coronavirus crisis began, the comics industry has been in a scary place. With publishers doing their best to keep operations running smoothly using remote and telecommuting processes, the often reclusive work of comic book creators seems like it should be one of the few safe and stable jobs to have during this time….
