If you’ve been paying attention to Wikipedia lately, you might have noticed some new portraits of lesser-known feminist figures on the online encyclopedia. They’re all a part of the “100 Days 100 Women” series created by Rori, a St. Louis graphic designer and freelance illustrator. Although originally a personal project started with no press or…
Oscar Animated Shorts: Birds, Booze, and Bands
The Oscar animated shorts category has a few familiar faces and one director who adapted his own graphic novel into an animated short. “Borrowed Time” (7 minutes) Andrew Coats, Lou Hamou-Lhadj (directors) USA This is a short, silent Western about guilt and grief and dads, and it does that very well. The animation is made…
Oscar Shorts: Singing, Baking, and Assimilation
One take away from the live action Oscar shorts this year is that they’re not really that short these days. Only one film comes in under the twenty minute mark. While a few of these films could have really done more with less, overall, it’s a year of strong contenders covering a broad range of…
Crime and Patience: Witchblade Animated
Witchblade Animated was never an animated product. It was, as were many things from the Image founders’ personal studios and the American comic book industry of the later ’90s in general, a cypher, a simulacrum of a possibility or alternate reality. “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a Witchblade cartoon (eventually there was) just…
What is Journalism? A Review of Rolling Blackouts
Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq Sarah Glidden Drawn + Quarterly October 2016 A review copy was provided by the publisher. What is journalism? This is the primary question cartoonist Sarah Glidden pursued while traveling through Turkey, Iraq and Syria in 2010. Glidden’s friends and co-founders of The Seattle Globalist, Sarah Stuteville and…
Jackie: History Has Its Eyes On You
Jackie Pablo Larraín (dir), Stéphane Fontaine (cin) , Noah Oppenheim (wri) Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup, John Hurt (cast) LD Entertainment, Fox Searchlight Pictures September 7, 2016 (Venice), December 2, 2016 (USA) We are midway through Jackie, and Jacqueline Kennedy, standing in all black, is talking to a priest. “Was God in the bullet that killed my husband?” she asks, angry but still pointedly polite. When…
The Summer of Self Discovery or The Education of Margot Sanchez
The Education of Margot Sanchez Lilliam Rivera Simon & Schuster February 21, 2017 Margot Sanchez is a girl torn between two worlds. The first is her home in the South Bronx where she was raised and where her family owns a pair of grocery stores, Sanchez & Sons. The other is the mostly-white, private school…
Odyssey of the Amazons is a Throwback, All Right
Odyssey of the Amazons #1 Kevin Grevioux (story and script), Ryan Benjamin (pencils), Richard Friend (inks), Tony Washington (colours), Tony Aviña (colours pp21-24) DC Comics January 2017 It’s great that DC is making an effort to provide more and different Wonder Woman content in her seventy-fifth year. Legends of Wonder Woman and Bombshells, not to…
LEGO Batman Shows the Pitfalls of Toxic Masculinity
The LEGO Batman Movie Chris McKay (dir), Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern and John Whittington (wri) Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes (cast) Warner Bros. Pictures February 10, 2017 There’s a lot to be said about LEGO Batman. Written by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith,…
Weird Love Vol. 4 is a Blue Valentine [Review]
Weird Love vol. 4: Jailbird’s Romance Various writers and artists, Clizia Gissoni and Craig Yoe (designers and editors) IDW February 2017 A digital review copy was provided by the publisher Close your eyes and picture a classic romance comic. Perhaps you see a mod, stylish young woman, drawn by Jack Kirby or John Romita Sr….
Small Press Bites: IUDs, Dads, and Gangs
Here are three bite-sized reviews of some shorter books from the infinite to-read pile in my house. Keep an eye out for more round-up reviews as our small press coverage expands! Lovers in the Garden Anya Davidson Retrofit/Big Planet Comics Anya Davidson’s retro style is the star of in Lovers in the Garden, with bright…
Review: The Wild Storm #1
The Wild Storm #1 Warren Ellis (Writer), Jon Davis-Hunt (Art), Ivan Plascencia (Colorist) WildStorm (a DC Comics imprint) February 15th, 2017 Disclaimer: This article was written based off a review copy provided by DC Comics. Reading Warren Ellis and Jon Davis-Hunt’s The Wild Storm #1 is like taking the first bite of a strategically cooked gourmet…
