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…
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…
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,…
Cover Girl: Archie and Katy Keene #1
Welcome to Cover Girl. Each month, we gather a team of WWAC contributors to analyze a new and notable comic book cover featuring one or more women. This month, Kate and Claire discuss the Bill Tucci cover of Archie and Katy Keene #1 from Archie Comics.
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…
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…
Random Conclusions We Want to See in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
The highly anticipated conclusion to the new Star Wars trilogy is upon us! We at WWAC are all excited (and apprehensive) for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker—with reason. There’s plenty of expectation for this final instalment—after all, it is meant to wrap up the entire Skywalker saga, spanning three trilogies.
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.
Four-Colour Faves: Jackie Brown presents Mister Sinister
Whether he’s messing around in the Summers gene pool, or messing around in, well, the entire mutant population’s gene pool, Mister Sinister — nee Nathaniel Essex — is one of the most enigmatic villains the X-Men have ever faced. He’s always got something up his sleeve, and that’s just a small part of his charm….
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…
