The Night Nurse: Doctor to Superheroes
Very few superheroes are lucky enough to be invulnerable like Superman or have a healing factor like Wolverine, so what happens when they get hurt on the job? Even heroes…
Jupiter’s Legacy: Mark Millar’s view of America (The First Two Issues)
It may be cliche to say that art reflects its times, but that does not make it any less true. Mark Millar’s relatively new book, Jupiter’s Legacy, is a book…
Deconstructing Comics: Why Deadpool is Different
There’s no one set format in which all comics are written. Things vary – sometimes wildly – from writer to writer, and from book to book. For instance, an author…
Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 8
note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the…
Pregaming Infinity
Age of Ultron is barely over, but Marvel is already rolling out Infinity, which is the latest major event from the publisher. Events can be a divisive topic for a…
Expectations and Reality: Batman Incorporated
Even if you don’t read DC comics or are uninterested in the Batman family, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of Batman Incorporated. The fourteen-issue series, which wrapped up…
Who are comics for?
This week I came across the following quote from a Paul Pope article: Asked by Yang if he had tried to do an all-ages book with a franchise character, Pope…
To Kill or Not to Kill: Daredevil’s Heroic Struggle
Should a superhero kill? What happens if he does? Those are questions that are constantly being asked by creators and fans of superhero comics. Every character approaches that question differently:…
Revisiting the meaning of Asylum
Batman Annual Vol 2 #2 tackles two very interesting and interrelated topics concerning the DC Universe. The main premise of the issue is that Batman is testing security at Arkham…
Batman and the Batgirls (or, Bat Family Matters Redux)
Earlier this week, Eric took a look at how Bruce Wayne interacts with his sons and with Barbara Gordon. Today I’m going to do a similar thing, but instead of…
Batman as the Head of a Family
We often refer to all the Batman heroes as the Bat Family. That’s, of course, literally true when talking about Batman and the Robins, but it’s also metaphorically true when…
Revisiting Wolverine’s Past
It could be argued that in recent decades, Wolverine has been the face of Marvel. The only character that gets more exposure is Spider-Man. If you go to the comic…