In 2017, it’s not unusual to learn about women who have made major advances in science, technology, literature but have never been given the real credit they deserve for it. Rosalind Franklin was almost certainly the person who made the actual discovery of the double helix. Alice Guy’s husband took credit for the movies she […]
Three Billboards and the Exploitation of Black Activism
Around the midway point of Martin McDonagh’s new film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Frances McDormand’s righteously angry Mildred heads to work, only to find a post-it note on the door from her co-worker Denise (Amanda Warren) reading “I’ve been arrested :(” Mildred is immediately aware that Denise’s arrest is because of Mildred’s war against the […]
“Long Lost” #1 has the Creeping, Eerie Pace Every Horror Comic Needs
Long Lost #1 refuses to answer questions. Written by Matthew Erman with art by Lisa Sterle, the book sweeps through plot points without pause, giving new information on almost every page, with an art style that varies in tone sometimes panel to panel. The book reads like a horror film, giving us enough character details […]
Katie Skelly and the Vampiric Principle of Self-Discovery
Fairbanks: I stopped by Katie Skelly’s table at SPX 2015 and bought a copy of… basically everything, having only seen her art and heard your glowing reviews of her work. So why don’t we start with that: what is it about Skelly’s work that causes her to stand out so prominently amid the great sea […]
Hazel Newlevant’s Sugar Town is as Sweet and Pleasant as Its Name
Stories about queer people can sometimes feel incomplete, even shallow. Even in 2017, it seems like a lot of stories focus on the sex, probably because that’s what straight people are likely to get hung up on when it comes to queer relationships. It’s foreign and novel, and just a bit naughty. But because of […]
Open Mike Eagle’s Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is a Fearlessly Self-aware Work
Successful musicians often hit a point in their careers where the more universal feelings that fueled their early work, like desperation and hunger and a need to prove yourself, fall away as they instead reflect on the alienation of fame and the touring life. Open Mike Eagle isn’t a household name yet but his career […]
Winnebago Graveyard Offers Ample Thrills but Needs More Space to Tell its Story
No matter how often we took them, family trips always made me uneasy. I’d sit in the back seat imagining all the ways we could meet untimely ends, burning through books and comics that only provided further nightmare fuel. What is the American interior but a patchwork quilt of ideal murder spots and forgotten places […]
The Deuce is New York at its Ugliest and Most Captivating
Nostalgia for New York’s most decrepit years is a dangerous drug in film and tv. It emboldens creators, convincing them any half-assed idea they’ve got lying around can be brilliant if they drop it into a setting full of garbage fires, addicts and porno theatres. A simple look back at recent heavily hyped failures like Vinyl […]
Made Men is Too Poorly Stitched Together to Stand On Its Own
There’s this Comedy Bang! Bang! bit where Scott Aukerman is telling Reggie Watts about some new films he’s going to be in this summer. All of them are named after an innocuous phrase that they take extremely literally, like An Apple a Day, and as Aukerman goes on they get more and more absurd. I bring this […]
In Sarah Nelson’s Daniel, Toxic Masculinity is Vampiric
Over time the metaphorical meaning of the vampire has diversified, shifting away from its earliest existence as a literary representation of xenophobic beliefs. Whatever cultural fear or anxiety vampires come to represent is dependent on the context of the story and the storyteller’s motivations. Sarah Nelson’s Daniel, a horror webcomic about a young man turned into a […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- …
- 34
- Next Page »