Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 7
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…
Comics Time Capsule: 1991 (Robin: A Hero Reborn)
It’s really interesting to think about how quickly the world changes around us. Whether we’re talking about popular culture, politics, or technology, things are constantly moving. The media produced during…
Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 6
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…
What (Else) Makes a Hero?
Last week I took a look at four superhero characters – Batman, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and Starfire – and what made them decide to put on their costumes and…
Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 5
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…
What Makes a Hero?
Mainstream comics have traditionally featured superheroes or, more recently, anti-heroes. Whether it’s Batman, Starfire, Captain Marvel, or Iron Man, the characters that inhabit most of the comics published by the…
Is Violence the Only Way?
When my wife and I were thinking about daycare for our daughter we visited a lot of centers and got their welcome packets. One of them mentioned that kids were…
Comic Events and Consumer Affairs: Age of Ultron
Events and crossovers are a longstanding tradition in the world of comics. They provide a means of telling a larger story than can normally be told, and they give a…
Multiple Warheads: A Crazy Soviet Alternate History, Pun-Filled World
When I first heard about Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity I had no idea who Brandon Graham was and the solicit didn’t particularly sound exciting: Sexica and her Werewolf boyfriend…
Retelling Origins Without Erasing History: Teen Titans: Year One
I tend to read comics backwards. Well, not entirely, but usually I don’t start at the beginning and go on from there. For one, that’s a really intimidating number of…
It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s a Superman origin story!
Man of Steel has its US theatre release today. It claims to be a fresh look at Superman as well as an origin story of sorts. In honor of this,…
Understanding Japanese Culture, Humor, and Gender Through Love Hina Part 4
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…