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Long Reads
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Cities and Guises
Charlee Jacob’s novella “Up, Out of Cities that Blow Hot and Cold” – which debuted in the 2000 collection of the same name before being reissued as a standalone book – is a story that takes the concept of urban decay literally. All around the world, cities are being hit by ...
Bookmarked, Comics, Profiles & Primers
Weary of Being a Woman: Dark Agnes — from Pulp to Comics
Conan the Barbarian is the best-known of the characters created by Robert E. Howard, but he is far from the only one. Prior to his early death in 1936, Howard conceived an entire pantheon of pulp heroes including the likes of Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis and Bran Mak Morn, many of whom had ...
Patreon Exclusive: Subterranean Mutant Semiotics: Morlocks, X-Factor, and the Privilege of Passing
Our monthly Patron-exclusive essay series continues. You can read all of these incredible analyses for as little as a dollar a month on our Patreon. Content Warning: This essay includes discussions of transphobia, anti-trans violence, trans-medicalism and passing.
Depictions of Fascism and Missteps of the Metaphor in X-Men: Red
This essay includes discussions of fascism, the alt-right, Charlottesville, the death of Heather Heyer, The Third Reich, Nazi ideology, and xenophobia.
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Dread in the Beast
Bodily fluids flow freely through horror fiction. Whether the substance in question is sucked out by vampires or splattered across walls by serial killers, there is a good chance that a novel of the genre will contain its share of blood, brains and viscera. In the more erotic corners of horror ...
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Haunter or Soma
Charlee Jacob invoked atrocities from across human history in the same way that a Romantic poet might invoke the Arabian Nights. Sometimes she delved into the past and found inspiration in such familiar horror reference points as Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Bathory and the witch-hunts; other ...
New Intersections: Queer Futurism and the Krakoan Body Politic
With the advent of House of X and Powers of X, both mutants and X-Pedagogy have experienced a paradigm shift. Even the ways in which the mutant-metaphor is discussed and engaged with has shifted as digital spaces such as “ X-Twitter” carve out their own Krakoan Community.
Remembering Charlee Jacob: This Symbiotic Fascination
Having spent years charting a landscape of atrocity, degradation and twisted ecstasy across her short fiction, as discussed in the previous post in this series, Charlee Jacob made her debut as a novelist in 1997 with This Symbiotic Fascination. This novel tells the story of two employees at an ...
A Tarnished Legacy: The End of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress, the once-influential anthology series that was founded in 1984, saw its thirty-fourth and final instalment this year. The series managed to survive a number of significant setbacks: one was the death of original editor Marion Zimmer Bradley in 1999; ...












