Disclaimer: This review is based on a review copy provided by the cartoonist. Short horror fiction has perhaps the widest reach of all genres. Campfires, midnight radio, parody advertisements, pulp fiction for eight-year-olds, and anthology television all boast a firm ground in the genre-format. Readers and viewers alike love the twist in the tale that so…
Review: Delilah Dirk and The King’s Shilling
Delilah Dirk & The King’s Shilling Tony Cliff First Second March 8th, 2016 Disclaimer: This review is based on an advanced copy from the publisher and may contain spoilers. Just as I finished reading Delilah Dirk and The King’s Shilling, it was announced that Disney acquired the film rights to the comic series by Tony Cliff. Set in the…
Review: Red Sonja #2-6
Red Sonja Vol. 3, #2-6 Marguerite Bennett (writer), Aneke (illustrator), Aneke & Diego Galindo (illustrators #4-5), Jorge Sutil (colorist), Jorge Sutil & Morgan Hickman (colorists on #3), Erica Schultz (letterer) Dynamite 2016 Disclaimer: This review is based on advanced review copies from Dynamite. I had been anticipating Bennett’s work on Red Sonja ever since Dynamite…
Dice Vice: Lords of Waterdeep, a D&D Board Game
Hello tabletop gamers! I’m on a serious Dungeons & Dragons tear right now, so I’m going to talk about Lords of Waterdeep, a worker placement tabletop game with a D&D theme. Last month I wrote about libraries and gaming, specifically about investigating playing D&D with some of my library teens. So this month I’m going…
Short & Sweet: TCAF 2016 Edition
Angel and I had a blast at this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF); a free festival for the public where they can check out cool indie comics, creators and panels. I wrote about my experience of the festival which you can read here. We grabbed a ton of comics but couldn’t review our entire haul due to…
Hook Rules! Disney’s NEW Live Action Peter Pan Can Only Drool
The humdrum Cinderella and half-assed Jungle Book weren’t enough — Disney is continuing with its program of turning old cartoons into new live action CGI films with a live action adaptation of Peter Pan. Wait, didn’t we just do this? No, that was Pan, the awkward and unpopular movie with Hugh Jackman as Captain Hook and…
Carve Your Name in the Rockface: Arielle Soutar’s Art of Lettering
When I spoke to Zach Clemente about his Mountain cycle comics, he had plenty to say about his steady collaborator, Arielle Soutar. Clemente and Soutar have collaborated with a different cartoonist on each book, but she has provided the typography and logo work for all ClementeWorks scripts. And they’ve known each other since school! I wanted to…
Kate and Gin’s ’90s Nostalgia Roadtrip: Xena #1
Xena: Warrior Princess #1 Genevieve Valentine (writer), Ariel Medel (artist), Nanjan Jamberi (colorist), Rob Steen (letterer), Jenny Frison (cover artist) Dynamite April 13, 2016
Fainted When She Saw My Body: Social Construction of Monstrousness in Saga
What is a monster? The easy answer is an “unnatural” being—your zombies, ghosts, or vampires. Stories from Frankenstein to The Walking Dead showcase the idea that humans can become monstrous through action, perhaps even more monstrous than the undead. Critics like David J. Skal and Stephen King argue that fictional monsters are metaphors, vehicles to…
Returning to the Four Lands: A Shannara Chronicles Roundtable
Season one of The Shannara Chronicles came to a dramatic close, then spiraled into a cliffhanger that promised more adventures in the post-apocalyptic fantasy world. Based The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks, the show takes us on the journey of half-elf Wil Ohmsford (Austin Butler), human rogue, Eretria (Ivana Basquero), and the elf princess,…
Orientalism in Big Trouble in Little China
Before you read this: did you watch the Dr. Strange trailer? You should, because I’m going to compare it to Big Trouble in Little China, a movie thirty years its senior. “Why?” you ask. Because John Carpenter made BTLC with the understanding that Chinese-ness is context and not just culture, and that the mixture of…
Build Your Own Mountain: A Conversation with a DIY Comics Writer-Publisher
Review copies are nice, but review copies that you’d be excited to buy are better. Zachary Clemente sent me two comics that he self-published, with Arielle Soutar on lettering, and Kelsi Ricks (Remnants) and Ricardo Lopez Ortiz (Immolation) putting image to page. I wanted to know more about the connections between these two books, and, lucky…