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. Content Warning: This essay includes discussions of transphobia, anti-trans violence, trans-medicalism and passing.
Depictions of Fascism and Missteps of the Metaphor in X-Men: Red
This essay includes discussions of fascism, the alt-right, Charlottesville, the death of Heather Heyer, The Third Reich, Nazi ideology, and xenophobia.
My Sex-Positive, Feminist Graphic Novel, Tracy Queen, is Being Shadow Banned
You may have heard whispers about shadow banning—that thing social media platform do where they block or partly block users and/or their content in a sneaky way so that, as Wikipedia puts it, “it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.” The practice seems to have started as a…
The Magik of New Mutants’ Illyana Rasputin
When an image of a horned demonic girl in armor crossed my Twitter timeline in 2018, I felt drawn to her. Illyana Rasputin looks like an untamed demon and a battle hardened human. In the recent trailer for the New Mutants film, I feel like we see a glimpse of both demon and human in…
Pretty Deadly, Pretty Cautious
I have loved Pretty Deadly since I first heard about it. The title, the creators, and the ideas fit everything I wanted from a new creator-owned series in 2014. And it has delivered. The Shrike, The Bear, and The Rat are awesome tales, combining the best parts of comics as a storytelling media. A wonderful…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Dread in the Beast
Bodily fluids flow freely through horror fiction. Whether the substance in question is sucked out by vampires or splattered across walls by serial killers, there is a good chance that a novel of the genre will contain its share of blood, brains and viscera. In the more erotic corners of horror literature, readers are apt…
Patreon Exclusive: Transforming the Narrative: An Analysis of The Transformers: The IDW Collection – Phase One, Volume One
Each month, we will be publishing exclusive essays by our contributors on various topics. In our first Patron-exclusive essay, Doris V. Sutherland explored the 2018-2019 run on Wonder Woman by G. Willow Wilson. This month, Nola Pfau takes on The Transformers: For those not in the know, 2018 wrapped up a thirteen-year span of Transformers…
Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This Rewrites a Depressing Ending To One Of Female Empowerment
Spoiler warning for I Am Not Okay With This Season 1. Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This is a refreshingly brisk and ultimately optimistic adaptation that upends the awful, depressing ending found in Charles Forsman’s graphic novel of the same name. Content warning: discussions of self-harm and suicide.
A Knives Out Sequel Shouldn’t Prioritize Benoit Blanc
Knives Out was easily my favorite movie I saw in 2019. I’m a sucker for a good mystery, lavish set design, and biting social commentary, particularly when it plays with form as much as Knives Out does. I saw it twice, the first time hooked by the premise and carried along on exhilaration, the second…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Haunter or Soma
Charlee Jacob invoked atrocities from across human history in the same way that a Romantic poet might invoke the Arabian Nights. Sometimes she delved into the past and found inspiration in such familiar horror reference points as Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Bathory and the witch-hunts; other times she ripped tales of murders and warfare from…
New Intersections: Queer Futurism and the Krakoan Body Politic
With the advent of House of X and Powers of X, both mutants and X-Pedagogy have experienced a paradigm shift. Even the ways in which the mutant-metaphor is discussed and engaged with has shifted as digital spaces such as “ X-Twitter” carve out their own Krakoan Community.
Saladin Ahmed and Sara Alfageeh’s Amulet Offers Hope for Good Comic Book Arab Representation
“In the world of comic books,” wrote Jack Shaheen, “one is about as likely to find a good Arab as the camel is to pass through the eye of a needle.” Instead, they often appeared as some of the stereotypes in television and film that Shaheen would become known for writing about: terrorists, sinister sheikhs,…
