I’m not a 2000 AD reader, exactly. I’d kill a man for Slaine: The Horned God, I liked the Dredd trades my old local library had, and I’m pretty into the Judge Anderson stories I picked up at Thought Bubble last year, but I’ve never been a weekly purchaser. I tried for a while more than…
Calgary Expo Responds Swiftly to #GamerGate Infiltration
Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, the largest Canadian-owned pop culture convention, boasts an attendance of over 97,000 as of 2014. And as of yesterday afternoon, they have also been at the center of a harrassment-based media vortex following social media reports that a paying exhibitor was selling #GamerGate merchandise featuring the hashtag and the hate movement’s…
This is My (Animal) Jam
I am a gaming mom, so it should come as no surprise that my kids have gotten into gaming too. They enjoying watching me play games like Dragon Age: Inquisition, and I even let them add their two cents to the process when appropriate. But when mommy needs to have some sexy times with her pixel…
Compulsive Reading: Some Notes On How We Read Mental Health
Megan Purdy asks the questions in this round table discussion responding to several comics tackling mental illness, and its resultant behaviours. Sara Lautman’s comic Some Notes on Compulsive Hair Pulling is beautiful and affecting. The comic is about Lautman’s struggle with trichotillomania: how she got her diagnosis; how she deals with it; how she relates,…
He Wrote Our Soul Music: Remembering Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett was an important author–to a lot of you, to a lot of your faves (Kieron Gillen, for example), to a lot of us. Here’s how. Rachel Stevens: I remember working at a library part time in high school, and tracking down every Pratchett book I could find. I think the first work I…
PAX East 2015 in Indie Games: Games are for Everyone
“Games are for everyone,” we say to ourselves, or on Twitter, or when our moms ask us about #GamerGate: “That’s why this is happening. Because some people think games are for everyone, and some people don’t.” PAX East 2015 is a convention that’s out to prove it: games are for everyone. And you know what?…
Fat, Fashion, and Femininity
Fashion is for skinny people. This is what I believed for most of my young adult life. I was an early bloomer, a little on the chubby side, and pretty down on myself because of it. Even into my first year of college I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t buy the pretty clothes until…
Women As Superheroes: A Comic Drawing Workshop to Celebrate 40 Years of The Feminist Library
A free comic workshop led by artists Sally Jane Thompson, Rachael Smith, and Karen Rubins in London at The Feminist Library? I’d signed up faster than you can say sequential-art-salon-in-Southwark.
Virtual Soldiers and Heroes “In Real Life”
In Real Life Cory Doctorow (w), Jen Wang (a) First Second Released: October, 2014 In Real Life is one of the most underrated graphic novels of 2014. By Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang and published by First Second, In Real Life is a story about how to be your own hero, and make the world…
Happy Public Domain Day! (except you, United States)
Happy Public Domain Day! Today’s the day when people around the globe cheer for creative works that are now eligible to be freely used for any purpose… except in the United States. January 1st marks the expiration of copyright protection terms for creative works, usually the creator’s death plus a certain number of years, thus allowing…
R/W: The Real and the Robotic
What does it mean to write a realistic novel? Or a realistic screenplay? Does psychological realism depend on the use of one or another sets of literary tricks? Does it feel real — is that the ultimate test? Some weeks ago now, a famous writer said that Shakespeare sucks because his work is unrealistic and…
Britain, Books, Politics: Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan Said “The Ban on Sending Books to Prisoners Was Always an Absurd Policy”
If you had to hide drugs, would you hide them in a book? I wouldn’t. And if I was relying on drugs as either a balm or a currency during time spent in prison, would you say “well the exact thing she doesn’t need in her life is books?” No! Because you aren’t a bonehead….