The 2016 Suicide Squad film was, to put it kindly, disappointing. Sure, it won an Academy Award for its hair and makeup styling, and clutched a Grammy nomination for Twenty One Pilots’ song “Heathens,” but it left a lot to be desired. In theory, the Suicide Squad’s mission is a noble one: gather the most…
Patreon Exclusive: G. Willow Wilson’s Wonder Woman: A Retrospective
Welcome to the first in a new exclusive offering for our Patreon Patrons. Each month, we will be publishing exclusive essays by our contributors on various topics. In our first essay, Doris V. Sutherland explores the 2018-2019 run on Wonder Woman by G. Willow Wilson.
Copter Crash: Isabel Fall and the Transgender SF Debate
On New Year’s Day, the latest issue of the digital science fiction magazine Clarkesworld went live. The line-up included a mixture of established talents and new names; in the latter category was Isabel Fall, who contributed a story entitled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter.” Isabell Fall’s piece was available on the website for…
The Art of Birds of Prey
If you have read my work on WWAC, you will know that visual culture is my ‘thing’. By that I mean, I’m all about the art, especially how pop culture riffs on famous artists and plays with their iconic images. Late last year, DC released original character art for Birds of Prey. I was already…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: This Symbiotic Fascination
Having spent years charting a landscape of atrocity, degradation and twisted ecstasy across her short fiction, as discussed in the previous post in this series, Charlee Jacob made her debut as a novelist in 1997 with This Symbiotic Fascination. This novel tells the story of two employees at an electronics shop, Tawne Delaney and Arcan Tyler;…
Casting Call: Why a Mixed-Race Kate Bishop in Hawkeye Makes Sense
When I saw that Hailee Steinfield was the frontrunner to play Kate Bishop in Disney+’s Hawkeye, I messaged everyone I knew about it. Finally, someone like me was going to play an Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) hero: a mixed race Filipinx person who fell into the “ambiguously brown” category. While my excitement was not universal…
What’s a Homestuck Fandom After the Epilogues?
Let me tell you about Homestuck. Homestuck is a webcomic, first published by Andrew Hussie in April 2009. The comic consists of static captioned images, animated GIFs, Flash pages with music and animation, and interactive “walk-around Flashes” recalling early-2000s video games. The story follows a group of internet friends who play a beta version of…
A Tarnished Legacy: The End of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress, the once-influential anthology series that was founded in 1984, saw its thirty-fourth and final instalment this year. The series managed to survive a number of significant setbacks: one was the death of original editor Marion Zimmer Bradley in 1999; another was publisher DAW dropping the series with the 2004…
Ladies-in-Waiting (Las meninas) Is a Docu-Drama about Murder, Ambition, Deceit, and Palace Intrigue
As a Spanish professor with an affinity for comics and graphic novels, I am known to make time to peruse the comic book stores whenever I get to Spain. But I also have a special affinity for the great masters of art, and so I also make sure I have time to visit El Prado…
Batwoman’s Julia Pennyworth Casting is All Wrong
In episode seven of Batwoman, ‘Tell Me The Truth,’ viewers were introduced to Julia Pennyworth (Christina Wolfe), Kate Kane’s (Ruby Rose) mentor and Alfred Pennyworth’s daughter.
The Performative Horniness of Dawn of X
Adjoining bedrooms. That was all it took for the X-Men’s most infamous love triangle to suddenly become a canon poly triad in the minds of fans everywhere. Elsewhere in the same issue, we bore witness to Corsair’s partner hitting on Rachel Summers, his granddaughter, another character generally accepted as queer despite only the most subtextual…
Comics and Kink: Greg Land and the (Sexy) Digital Art Debate
Happy holidays, dear readers! I hope you’re enjoying Black Friday, or finally dredging up your social willpower (and finances) for the upcoming Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa cycle. In honor of this uniquely busy period in our lives, I’ve decided to take pity on you and provide an easy, breezy, lightly sexy read for you to enjoy.
