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The State of American Comics Address, 2002
The American comic book industry, as an economic institution, is doing terribly. Artistically, however, this will be remembered as a fairly good period. Many mainstream titles are selling less than...
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A Brief Consideration of Gaiman’s Usage of Lucifer in The Sandman
Before he had his own ongoing series, Lucifer came to prominence in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. But Gaiman’s Lucifer went through three very different depictions, somewhat inconsistent with one another....
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Memoir in Ben-Day Dots
I can’t recall the first comic I ever read. I’m sure they featured in my early childhood, as my family has tattered old Donald Duck and other Gladstone comics to prove it. There were also, to… [more]
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Abstract-Empire-China: must there be a Sandman?
I am being slightly humorous with the choice of title of course, but I wish to evoke the sense that the politics in this essay have been negotiated before, in a different context. The piece… [more]
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A Closer Look at DC’s Line-Wide Relaunch: Non-Super-Hero Offerings
Beyond its super-hero offerings, DC’s relaunch includes its “dark” magic titles, which incorporates some Vertigo characters into the DCU, and also a few non-super-hero, non-supernatural titles. How do...
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On Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine’s War Stories: Archangel
There’s such an obvious distinction to be made between the two, but there’s a lot of folks who consistently fail to do so. On the one hand, there’s the Second World War story as it’s… [more]
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Grant Morrison’s Day-Glo Years: The Mystery Play
The Mystery Play is another short-form Morrison work from the “adult comics” era of the early ’90s. It feels decidedly removed from pretty much anything Morrison has done in the past fifteen years, as...
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Karen Berger to Leave DC
After a long career that included creating and helming DC’s Vertigo imprint since its inception, Karen Berger is departing DC Comics. In an industry where few editors are known to readers and fans,...
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Alan Moore on the Couch
Previously, we’ve discussed and dismissed the charges that Alan Moore or Grant Morrison ripped off anyone in any serious way. We next discussed the timeline of Grant Morrison’s career, including his...
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Peeking from Behind the Sofa: The 25th Anniversary of Violent Cases
Violent Cases is the greatest comic ever written about an osteopath. That probably sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it shouldn’t. Both of the creators, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, have made...
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The Girl Who Was Let Down: Examining Volume I of The Girl with the Dragon...
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become a very recognized international brand. It started when a Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson wrote a few manuscripts that he intended to get published. It’s said...
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Coping with Hallucination: Revolutionizing Character Internalization in Joe...
Indie comics occasionally introduce characters that would otherwise be unexpected, given that they fall outside of the norm of what is expected in a “hero.” When people think “comics,” perceptions...
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Trillium #1 Review
Trillium #1 Written by Jeff Lemire Art by Jeff Lemire Colors by Jeff Lemire and José Villarrubia Published by DC/VERTIGO Comics Rating: 8.5 (of 10) “Trillium #1 is a captivating and skillful slice of...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part One
So here’s the deal — your newbie (at least around these parts) author found himself having a few back-and-forth conversations with Sequart founder Julian Darius via Twitter over the course of the past...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Two (or, The British...
Believe it or not, I’ve never known a John Smith. They say it’s the most common male name in the English language, but seriously — I never went to school with one. I’ve never worked… [more]
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Three
First off, a correction : when we left off last time I told you we were sometime late in 1991, with promising young British comics scribe John Smith receiving a phone call from DC editor… [more]
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Four
Where were we again? Oh yeah, it’s 1992, and despite attempting to jazz things up in their low-selling Dr. Fate title by having the Helmet of Fate’s original bearer, Kent Nelson, pass the golden dome...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Five
Welcome back to 1993! Nice enough place to visit, although you might not want to live here — Actually, 1993 wasn’t a bad year at all for comics. The Invisibles got off the ground with a… [more]
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Six
In the immortal words of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “And Now For Something Completely Different —” It’s my belief, dear reader, that we live in drastic times — and that we have been for some… [more]
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Revolving Image
At Sydney’s Graphic Festival, held in the iconic Opera House last October, a trio of comic industry greats took to the stage at the invitation of comedian and MC Justin Hamilton. They were the...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Seven
Finally! Time to get down to the nitty-gritty! We’ve spent the first six parts of this series setting the stage as thoroughly as, I like to fancy, is humanly possible given the vagaries of time… [more]
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Eight
The other day I was banging out a review for issue number two of Marvel’s new George Romero-scripted zombie series Empire Of The Dead and I remarked that second issues are kind of a tricky deal… [more]
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Nine
If you wanted to define the visual aesthetic of Scarab in one word, that word would probably be ugly. Everything from Glenn Fabry and Tony Luke’s covers to the title character’s costume/second skin...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Ten
Welcome back to the nominally fictitious town of Whitehaven, North Carolina and the most delightfully repulsive story to ever go out under the Vertigo imprint — if you thought that the opening...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Eleven
Like you, I’m not quite sure what Glenn Fabry and Tony Luke’s cover for Scarab #5 is exactly supposed to be depicting other than some weird electricity coming out of our protagonist’s head, but it… [more]
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“Try Telling That to a 23-Year-Old Who Just Wanted to Play with the Toys”:...
Continued from last week. That “bloody big shadow” of Alan Moore’s extended far beyond the pages of Swamp Thing. Trying to compete with his achievements on the title was a daunting enough prospect....
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Twelve
So here’s my theory: sometime between submitting his final scripts for Scarab #5 and #6, John Smith got word — probably via editor Stuart Moore — that DC wouldn’t be going ahead with his project… [more]
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Sneaking Barry Allen Back: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar, Part 20
Continued from last week. Millar’s habit of writing Swamp Thing tales, which demanded the presence of off-limits DCU characters, never entirely faded. Even at the climax of his run, and despite almost...
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Thirteen
And so the big wind-up (or wind-down, depending on how you look at things) begins — I have no idea how much tinkering John Smith had to do with “The Power And The Glory,” his… [more]
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Bugged Out!: Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Fourteen: Indigo Primer
Before delving into the eighth and final issue of John Smith, Scot Eaton and Mike Barreiro’s Scarab, we need to take a brief side-step and examine an earlier Smith creation, the trans-dimensional...
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Bugged Out! Scarab Reconsidered 20 Years On, Part Fifteen
All good things, as they say, must come to an end. As must all bad things, and all mediocre things… and all truncated, confused, ambitious, intriguing, but ultimately, hopeless things. And so it was...
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Happy 75th Birthday, Harvey Pekar
Last week, the date of Harvey Pekar’s birth (October 8) passed again, for the fourth time since his death in 2010. This time, it would have been Pekar’s 75th birthday and many admirers, friends and…...
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Smorgasbord #4: Civil War, the Musical
It’s a busy post NYCC season as Shawn and Tom make their through a heap of news and declarations: new Marvel Comics events, the cancellation of the Fantastic Four, Vertigo’s expended line, Captain...
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“About Sixty Per Cent Happy”: The American Superhero Comics of Mark Millar,...
Continued from last week. The rest of Millar’s Swamp Thing tales shared the same weaknesses as River Run, although they only intermittently reflected the same strengths. The likes of Twilight of The...
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The Fountain Comic Book: Many Roads to the Same Summit
The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky’s heartfelt sci fi masterwork, had a difficult road to the screen. This story is fairly well known: by 2002, he had written and designed the film, hired actors and...
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Hinterkind Volume One Lacks Humanity
The concept of the ruins of the United States devolving into factionalism has been well-explored in other post-apocalyptic literature, but Edington refreshes the idea by incorporating monsters and...
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5 Movies that Deserve Comic Spin-Offs
As this writer got into reading comics, he noticed that dozens of movies are comic adaptations. It was a startling realization to see Men in Black, The Mask, Wanted, Oblivion, The Crow, Kick-Ass,...
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Richard Bensam on Minutes to Midnight: Twelve Essays on Watchmen
As part of its ongoing Patreon campaign, Sequart runs a Book / Movie of the Month Club. Patrons get a digital copy of a Sequart book or movie at the beginning of each month, and… [more]
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Another Day, Another Dollar: Harvey Pekar’s Last American Splendor
For the last few years of Harvey Pekar’s life, he was on a creative roll. His American Splendor comic had never really gone away, but in the 1990s and early 2000s, Pekar was focusing more… [more]
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Smorgasbord #42: The 99% Strikes Back
After a week off, Shawn & Tom are back to deal with the fallout from Shelly Bond’s firing from Vertigo, Oni’s new imprint, the release of Captain America: Civil War, movie announcements for both...
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Give the Devil His Due: Review of Lucifer Season 1
Even before Lucifer premiered its pilot episode on 25 January 2016 it was already disliked and panned by fans of the comic, Lucifer and the character’s original presentation in Sandman. The advanced...
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Sequart Releases The British Invasion
Sequart Organization is proud to announce the publication of The British Invasion: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and the Invention of the Modern Comic Book Writer, by Greg Carpenter. Moore....
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The British Invasion in Current Previews Catalog
If you like to make all of your hard-copy purchases through your Local Comics Shop, and you want The British Invasion: Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and the Invention of the Modern Comic...
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The Road to Vertigo: The Suppression and Eventual Rise of Mature Comics and...
The legacy of Vertigo recalls the very idea of comics finally being allowed to mature; letting people swear, drink, openly take drugs for recreation, and bringing in some serious ambiguity as to what...
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There is Another World: Postmodernism and Identity in Grant Morrison’s Doom...
Grant Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol is certainly not an easy book to recommend. On the surface, it’s a very dense work with dozens of different literary references hiding in every corner, and it can…...
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Sequart Releases From Bayou to Abyss: Examining John Constantine, Hellblazer
Sequart is proud to announce the publication of From Bayou to Abyss: Examining John Constantine, Hellblazer, edited by Rich Handley and Lou Tambone. British occultist John Constantine elevated Alan...
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