Sarah Horrocks talks comics with high standards, entry level requirements, and no quarter given. Reviewing her work feels like an exam. I’m raising my hand in McGonagall’s class. Bruise, her 2014 risograph from Sacred Prism, is the first time I’ve read Horrocks’ comic output. I’ve looked at her art before, I’ve read her crit, and…
Thunderpaw: When a GIF is a Comic is Something New
GIFs! GIFs in comics. Okay. I am WILD excited about gifs in comics. GIFs in comics push the definitions, question your complacency. WHY do you like “comics?” What makes “a comic?” This is animation, this is animated, but is it not a comic? It is. It takes what a comic has to be (a series of…
A Positronic Woman’s Plea: Include Trans Women In Fiction
Earlier this year, Andrew Wheeler of ComicsAlliance listed resolutions that he wanted the comics industry to achieve. Among these resolutions was trans representation in the Big Two for superheroes. This has not yet come to pass in a prominent way. Al Ewing has Loki freely changing their appearance between male and female in Marvel Comics’ Loki:…
Sequential Sartorial: Why Does Fashion Matter In Comics?
Costuming is important in art. Clothing is more immediately communicative than body language, and art communicates. For example, Lana Del Rey’s video for her 2012 release “National Anthem.” It’s all Jackie & JFK pastiche. Towards the very end, there’s that last ride recreated, and Jackie/Lana has on the pink suit. WRONG. She wears goldenrod. Her hat…
Spoilers: EVERYBODY STAND UP: Naruto Has Left The Building
Spoilers Naruto is over. Long live Bolt, son of Naruto. Yup, friends and readers of a certain age: Naruto is finally done. The Masashi Kishimoto manga, Naruto, has concluded, leading straight into a sequel featuring the original characters’ kids. The anime, I don’t know, it’s probably eternal. But the point is that series-prime, the divining rod…
Ghost Then and Now: The Reporter is Dead, Long Live the Superheroine
The Dark Horse Comics/Team CGW character Ghost, also known as Elisa Cameron, made her debut in Comics’ Greatest World in 1993. She reappeared in a special in 1994 that developed into a series in 1995. It ran for thirty-six issues before being re-launched in 1998 for another twenty-two issues. In 2012, Kelly-Sue DeConnick and Phil…
Concrete Park and Art: Puryear Purloins Painters’ Perfections
It was the cover that caught me. Concrete Park: You Send Me Tony Puryear and Erika Alexander Dark Horse Comics October 1st, 2014 Talking to Bleeding Cool about his “artist’s journey,” Tony Puryear, illustrator and co-writer of Concrete Park, said: I majored in art at Brown [University], loving Gauguin but doing very indulgent, Morris Louis-inspired color field paintings….
Scariest Movie of My Life: Alien
Okay, this post title is deceptive. See, I’ve never actually seen Alien, but I can confidently declare it the “scariest movie of my life.” You may find this surprising. After all, Alien is often heralded as one of the more feminist sci-fi/horror flicks out there, and we at WWAC are certainly not abashed about feminism….
Yet More Violence: Michael Bay’s Transformers Against IDW’s Transformers
This post contains spoilers for Transformers: Punishment; Age of Extinction; Windblade; Dark Cybertron; More than Meets the Eye; Robots in Disguise; and Last Stand of the Wreckers. The Transformer movies, the best selling interpretation of the brand, are simultaneously the most ideologically opposed to the stories of the IDW comic book continuity and the most racist,…
Off With Her Head! Klimt Goes To Drakulon: A Discussion of Art, Reference, and Story
Gorgeous, right? This is Judith and the Head of Holofernes, or Judith I, by Klimt. Gustav Klimt is enduringly famous, as his work should be — it’s also often referenced. Judith, the subject of the picture, is an Old Testament heroine who achieves political grace by gratifying and then beheading the general who is ransacking her…
Sequential Sartorial: The Wardrobe of Colleen Wing
Sequential Sartorial! It’s gonna be a new thing! Talking about costume design in comics: GOOD costume design. This week: Colleen Wing, 2006. First things first: does anybody want my copy of Daughters of the Dragon, trade number one (“Samurai Bullets”)? Pay the postage and it’s yours. I don’t need it in my house; it’s a…
Sailor Twain and the Misty Medium
“Art is a fight to the finish between black charcoal and white paper.”—Gunter Grass Most artists know that if they are drawing with charcoal, they might as well throw themselves down an old Victorian era chimney. While it’s a forgiving medium in the sense that even non-artists can achieve a level of mediocrity with charcoal,…