I love wrestling. I’m part of a large, vocal, and often underestimated audience of women who love wrestling. I love the options it presents as a storytelling medium! I love the most over the top elements. I love the possibility of stories that explore characters and storylines beyond what is shown on TV. Let’s even…
We Need to Talk About Mantis’ Abuse in Guardians of the Galaxy 2
When it was announced that director James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2 would feature Pom Klementieff as Mantis, I was cautiously excited. In the past I had criticized Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy for its moments of casual misogyny, but overall found the film to be a nice change of pace after the middling…
Image 25: Top Cow’s Matt Hawkins’ Full Trajectory
From some guy in a line to COO of a 25-year-old publishing imprint, Matt Hawkins saw the glory days of Image, and stayed around for the aftermath. There are plenty of interviews covering the Founding Fathers of Image’s early days as masters of their new domain. The twentieth anniversary interviews Jason Sacks carried out for…
Previously On Comics: Back Once Again With the Dull Behaviour
Last week in comics started off plenty loud with an internet outcry over harassment suffered by Marvel Comics editor Heather Antos after she posted a picture online of herself and several coworkers sharing milkshakes in honour of the late Flo Steinberg. Comics creators, fans, and journalists all rallied under the hashtag #MakeMineMilkshake to show solidarity…
Bullying in the U.K. Cosplay Scene: What Can Be Done?
Cosplay in the UK has been going on for long time, and I have found myself being involved in it, to a greater or lesser extent, for the last decade. I love cosplay. I love making it. I love wearing it. I love seeing what other people do with it. It has helped me become…
Redrawing the History of Wimmen’s Comix
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Acquires Original Works from Wimmen’s Cartoonists Comics by women have a hard time breaking into comics history. Strip queens Edwina Dumm, Jackie Ormes and Rose O’Neill footnote the newspaper legacies of Winsor McCay and George Herriman. The Wimmen’s Comix movement during the 1970s underground too often serves as…
Divided States of Hysteria: A Form Letter of Dismay
Content Warning: This post discusses depictions of fictional violent racist acts. Due to the unique format of Image Comics as a publishing company, response to their individual titles is hard to register. Following the discovery of the lynching and genital mutilation illustrated on the solicited cover of issue four WWAC has put together the following form…
That Bad Boy Image #1: Big Behaviour Bars
Welcome to That Bad Boy Image! A weekly column where we commemorate 25 years of Image by making a very statistically accurate graph to showcase just what those naughty boys and their driving-seat successors are up to during this most momentous quarter century celebration of one of the biggest shakeups in comics history– the founding of Image Comics. WHERE THEY WERE:…
X-Men Toys: You Dare Call Those Things- Human?
I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell out of love with the X-Men. I certainly like a fair amount of the things the franchise has produced, but it’s just that, a product, and no one has worked harder to remind readers of that fact than Marvel themselves. The moment that did it for me…
Previously on Comics… Lucie Ebrey, Dwayne McDuffie
Five long years marked — young English cartoonist and illustrator Lucie Ebrey finished up her daily diary strip, with an extra-long rumination on what it’s all meant. What does it feel like saying goodbye to an avatar you’ve lived behind for five years? I don’t know, but here’s what it feels like to watch: Here's a…
Lady Pendragon: What You Want to Know About Matt Hawkins’ Guinevere
Another in our series examining the women of Image Comics’ first decade — this time, Top Cow’s Lady Pendragon. “We all were sorta young and brash and thought [the heyday of Image] was gonna last forever, and… it didn’t. And so, the fall was kinda hard? And dealing with that — Extreme Studios went out of business, and then…
Fatphobia in the Never Changing Comic Book Landscape
EDIT: an incorrect fact has been removed from this article. Superhero comic books retain the ability to deeply wound their audiences. What do they propagate a desire for? Thinner women. “Superheroine” is still, despite occasional pushback from Marvel’s (Adrian Alphona’s) Gert Yorkes and Valiant’s Faith, synonymous with “titty, yet thin.” They define a “correct” template, and…