Marvel churns relentlessly forward, no one knows what camp is, when will The Expanse season four dates be announced, and did somebody say multi-verse?
Previously on Comics: Love is Like a Hole in the Head?
Last week, readers warned of disturbing scenes of violence against Lois Lane appearing in the opening pages of #12, a book that is made available through DC’s new Wal-Mart line with the intention of welcoming new readers in a family-friendly line. Writer Tom King responded to the criticism over at Bleeding Cool, explaining that the…
All I Want For Christmas is a Spider-Man Holiday Special
If there’s one thing I love in comic books, it’s a holiday special, and if there are two comic book series I love above all others, it’s Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. Lucky for me, those two things overlap a lot. Marvel loves a holiday special, and Fantastic Four’s family nature and Spider-Man’s traditional Parker…
Eddie Brock’s Body: An Artistic Overview of the Venom Symbiote
No matter where you look these days, listicles about the sexiest characters in comics all look the same. You’ve got your Gambits and your Thors, for example, characters whose canon beauty is basically an explicitly listed trait on their wiki-pages. Some fans swoon over Clark Kent’s earnest farm boy persona, while Emma Frost’s fierce and…
Valiant’s The Year of the Visitor
This 1994 Valiant-on-Valiant documentary has a number of joys to offer and a lot of information. One such piece is a fairly large nugget: that 1994 was “the year of The Visitor.”
Great Power Verbs Great Responsibility
It is common knowledge that Spider-Man’s heroism is driven by the realization that “with great power comes great responsibility,” but that tagline hasn’t always existed in that form. In the first appearance of Spider-Man in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15, the final panel of the story introducing the new superhero is overrun with words. It says,…
My First Comic: It Started with Spider-Man
Like so many, my first comic was Archie. Readily available on the shelves of supermarket aisles next to the gum and tabloid magazines, waiting for me to browse through it as I waited for the long line to tick down to our turn at the register. I don’t remember specific stories, but I have vague,…
The Many Ages of American Comics
Recently, I saw someone on Twitter talking about classic Golden and Silver Age Iron Man stories. I just about leapt out of my skin. I didn’t want to be that person, but it really bugged me. Why, you ask? Because Iron Man didn’t exist in the Golden Age. In fact, almost all the iconic Marvel…
A Study in Familiarity: Venom #1
Venom #1 DONNY CATES (WRITER), RYAN STEGMAN (ARTIST), JP MAYER (INKER), FRANK MARTIN (COLORIST), VC’S CLAYTON COWLES (LETTERER) MARVEL COMICS MAY 9, 2018 Ever since their official premiere in The Amazing Spider-Man #300, Venom has been a curious staple in the arachnid-themed rogues’ gallery. The dynamic duo of alien symbiote and human host has festered…
The Wedding Issue: April Fool’s Edition
Aside from “Who would win in a fight?”, no debate gets comic fans more heated than the question of whether or not superheroes should marry. In this mini-feature, former Bride Rebecca Henely-Weiss and Bride-to-Be Kayleigh Hearn take a trip down memory lane to the most significant times comic companies took the plunge and got their…
Women Making Comics: Jennifer Johnson on Creativity, Crafting Representation and Her Very First Comic (EXCLUSIVE)
When Black Mask Studios released Kwanza Osajyefo, Tim Smith 3, Jamal Igle, and Khary Randolph’s Black, they unleashed a political comics force on the often homogeneous landscape of our local comic shop. The book imagined a world where only Black people have superpowers, introducing a network of corrupt officials and shady government agents desperate to…
Go Ahead, Skip the Origin Stories
Action Comics #1 gets Superman’s origin story and “a scientific explanation of Clark Kent’s amazing strength” out of the way on the very first page, and the rest of the issue is devoted to his activities as a grown-up “champion of the the oppressed.” Though obviously his childhood with the Kents, and his infancy on…