One of the most prevalent and consistent themes in books about the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany is the belief foreign powers held that it was most important to not act rashly and judge Adolf Hitler and his peers prematurely. This is particularly prominent in Erik Larson’s work In the Garden of Beasts, which details the […]
Comics Should Be Decent: A Discourse About Discourse
Nick Hanover: The other day, Abhay Khosla mentioned Loser City in a post about why comics don’t really excite him anymore. (We were in there as an example as people he thinks are okay and still talking about the scene in interesting ways.) It’s a messy but worthwhile read about his frustrations with the industry […]
Comics Needs to Stop Viewing Support Strictly in Financial Terms
Yesterday, Marvel Senior Vice President of Publishing/Executive Editor Tom Brevoort weighed in on the harassment that caused Mockingbird writer and New York Times bestselling author Chelsea Cain to leave Twitter, suggesting the support that Chelsea Cain and other targeted creatives really need is more issue sales: It’s a frustrating response to a complicated problem that’s made all […]
Solving the Alex Ross Problem
For lots of people, the first and most obvious artist Alex Ross gets compared with is Norman Rockwell, but I think at this point a more fitting analogue might be director Robert Zemeckis, auteur of films like Forrest Gump and Castaway: beloved by consumers and many critics, yet also one who inspires a zealous hatred […]
Questionable Comics: Nic J. Shaw and Taylor Esposito
This week’s Questionable Comics spotlights two of comics’ best letterers, Nic J. Shaw and Taylor Esposito. Nic is up first, and has lettered projects for publishers as diverse as Image, IDW and more. What current projects are you working on? The Fix with Nick Spencer, Steve Lieber, and Joseph Ryan Hill at Image; Karma Police with Chris Lewis, […]
A Tale of Two Entitlements: Is it Fandom or Comics That is Broken?
Last year, I wrote an editorial on Airboy and accusations of transphobia that were levied at that comic’s creators. Though I mixed in criticisms I had of Airboy from issue one, the main point I tried to get across was that the best possible strategy Airboy’s creative team could take was to listen and try to understand why fans were […]
ymmv – Character Flaws
ymmv .18 – Character Flaws A narrative that glides on rails, containing perfect characters that are faultless, is boring on every possible level. A story full of people doing dumb things– to move the plot forward because the writer is lazy or making poor choices because the writer isn’t smart enough to see the obvious– […]
Good Bad Guys: What Marvel’s Villain Problem Reveals About the MCU
“When was a kid, I wanted to be a Batman villain when I grew up.” – Jello Biafra By now you’ve probably heard about Marvel’s villain problem. After 12 movies and counting, Marvel studios has, despite its outrageous critical and commercial success, been pilloried across the internet for its perceived failure to establish more than […]
The 100 Best Comics of the First Half of the 2010s: Part 1, 100-81
People tend to reminisce about long gone eras, arguing that things were always better way back when. But when it comes to comics, there’s no denying that the 21st century has seen the medium explode in unprecedented and unpredictable ways. For many people, that has come primarily in the form of the advent of the […]
A Chorus of Silence: On the Impossibility of Reporting on Chronic Abusers in Comics
For two years, David Fairbanks and I have been investigating predatory figures in comics. We can’t tell you specifically what about. We will probably never be able to tell you anything other than the fact that it involves allegations of sexual harassment, creative theft, nonpayment of collaborators and other bad behavior. That’s because the comics […]
