Content Warning: this retrospective mentions abuse and sexual assault If I were to do a quick Google search, I could find webcomics featuring anything I can imagine: gay centaur Westerns, wild overarching epics with diverse casts, and autobiographical tales featuring authors of almost every gender, sexuality, and race. While comic books on the direct market keep…
Chronolink DX Is Your Next Favorite Phone Game
Let’s talk about your new favorite phone game. It’s called Chronolink DX, or as I like to call it, The Monster Mash. There is no monster mashing, but it feels appropriate to me.
Two Takes On My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness
My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness Nagata Kabi Seven Seas June 6, 2017 My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata is a manga that chronicles her own struggles with mental illness, her burgeoning sexuality, employment, fulfillment, and everything that could string all those topics together. Originally published as a webcomic on Pixiv, Nagata’s autobiographical stories were…
These Comics Will Make You Queer: Short Reviews from CAKE 2017
It’s been about a month since I attended CAKE 2017, but, as always, the work that I picked up at the expo stays with me. One of the most exciting and intimidating experiences of such an event is meeting dozens of talented artists. It’s impossible to walk out the doors without feeling that you’ve just…
NYAFF 2017 Short Reviews: Southeast Asian Films
Town in a Lake (Matangtubig) Director: Jet Leyco Cast: Amante Pulido, Dylan Talon, Miles Kanapi North American premiere: July 6, 2017 We meet Matangtubig in the darkness, shadows swallowing up what little light peeks through the windows of a moving car. Inside the car, two schoolgirls cower beside each other, bookended by two imposing men in dark…
Monument Valley 2 is a Delightful, But Too Safe Sequel
To open, Monument Valley 2 is to enter a pastel world of strange, wonderful landscapes, where everything is M. C. Escher and physics aren’t real. There’s nothing quite like the satisfying mental click when you finally crack its nonsense puzzles by sliding a set of stairs into an unlikely place or rotating a wheel just so…
Studs and Spurs: Hotblood!’s Take On the Wild West is Stunning
Nothing about Toril Orlesky’s Hotblood! is exactly what it seems. It’s a comic about the Old West, but there are centaurs. There are centaurs, but no magic. Every character is lying, but probably not in the way that you expect. There are so many layers of deception to Hotblood! that it’s at times difficult to…
The Beguiled: Gorgeous but Empty
The Beguiled (2017) Directed by Sofia Coppola Starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning Focus Features June 23, 2017 The Beguiled, directed by Sophia Coppola, is a gorgeous, but muted film. It’s an adaptation of the Gothic novel A Painted Devil by Thomas P. Cullinan and a remake of the lurid 1971…
Frameline41’s “Transtastic” Selected Shorts Series is Fantastic
When I walked into the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and settled down to watch Frameline41’s “Transtastic” selected shorts series, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. There wasn’t any particular theme to the series, and the synopses of the films posted on the Frameline41 website revealed that they varied in theme, genre, and tone….
Not Feeling the GLOW
On February 9th, 1989 WWE owner Vince McMahon changed the landscape of professional wrestling forever when he testified to the New Jersey state senate that his business wasn’t a legitimately contested sport like boxing, but instead a scripted stage show with a predetermined outcome. It was hardly a world shaking revelation to the outside world,…
Kaijumax Season 3: Marvelously Melancholy Monsters
Kaijumax Season 3 #1 Zander Cannon (Writer & Artist) Oni Press July 12, 2017 An advanced review copy was provided by the publisher I picked up the first trade of Zander Cannon’s Kaijumax series on a quiet afternoon when I was working in London’s Orbital Comics. The book quickly became a firm favourite of mine…
Finding Answers in Sophie Yanow’s What is a Glacier?
What is a Glacier? Sophie Yanow Retrofit June 2017 In What is a Glacier? Sophie Yanow masterfully weaves together a trip to Iceland, a bad breakup, immigration woes, climate change, and anxiety about death into a 32 page meditation. “How do I get better at endings,” she asks herself midway through the book, and it’s…
