Monthly Archives: January 2018

Jan 26 2018

Doomsday Clock 3: Discussion

by Spencer Irwin and Michael DeLaney 

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Spencer: What’s the most controversial element of the original Watchmen? For my money, it’s the pirate comics. I understand and appreciate the in-universe reasons for choosing pirates, and I understand their function in reflecting the themes of the story in a sort of parallel narrative, but I’ll admit that, while many readers consider them sacred, I’ve skipped them in all my subsequent Watchmen rereads. To me, those segments have always felt tantamount to the supplemental material in the back of each issue, something extra and non-essential, important more as an intellectual exercise than as an interesting narrative, or an interesting part of the overall Watchmen narrative, in their own right. Issue three of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Doomsday Clock introduces this semi-sequel’s own version of the pirate comics: the noir movie. I have similar issues with these segments as well. Continue reading →

Jan 26 2018

Camp, Parody, and Political Edge in Batgirl 19

By Mark Mitchell

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Last July, I wrote at length about Batgirl 13’s full-armed embrace of the campy spirit emblematic of the Batman TV show of the 1960’s, and with Batgirl 19 Hope Larson, Chris Wildgoose, and Jose Marzan Jr. continue to lean into that care-free aesthetic. Continue reading →

Jan 26 2018

A New Perspective Benefits Avengers 677

by Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The nice thing about team books is the wide and varied casts that allow the creative team to explore each story from multiple perspectives. The nice thing about weekly series is the sheer amount of space they have to work with, giving them all the time in the world to explore even the most wide and varied of casts. That seems to be the idea behind Avengers: No Surrender. Thus far Mark Waid, Al Ewing, and Jim Zub (with Pepe Larraz on art) have used each issue to explore the perspective of a different Avenger. While the first issue largely used Lightning as an outside POV and the second didn’t lean enough into Falcon’s unique perspective, Avengers 677 digs deep into its spotlight Avenger, Quicksilver. Continue reading →

Jan 26 2018

Mighty Thor 703: Discussion

by Taylor Anderson and Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Taylor: One of the hardest lessons to learn growing up is that everything has a cost. This is a particularly difficult lesson to learn because when we’re young, things tend to not really cost all that much, if anything at all. It’s only once we become adults and begin to age that literally everything has some cost associated with it. Want to go out and drink all night? The cost is a hangover. Want to get a master’s degree? The cost is crippling student debt. Heck, even want to find love? The cost is putting in the time and effort to cultivate a meaningful relationship with someone. This isn’t to say that things aren’t worth their cost – love is a good example of something that more than pays for itself. However, the cost of things always has to be collected, as Jane and her friends learn in Mighty Thor 703.

Continue reading →

Jan 25 2018

Amazing Spider-Man 794: Discussion

By Drew Baumgartner and Taylor Anderson

Amazing Spider-Man 794

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night, cause I’m Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. “What about getting up after five hours sleep?” Oh that’s Morning Guy’s problem. That’s not my problem, I’m Night Guy.

Jerry Seinfeld

Drew: I’ve never heard anyone defend procrastination. We know it’s stupid and lazy, passing off the problem on our future selves, but we still do it, anyway. Charitably, we might describe this as some kind of prioritization or planning maneuver, but more often than not, it’s just putting off whatever work needs to actually be done. But here’s the thing: there are rarely any consequences for procrastination. I mean, sure, you might put writing your term paper (or government budget) off so long that you completely blow your deadline, but so long as you don’t fall into that trap, procrastination is more of a recipe for annoyance than it is failure. Case in point: Spidey’s delayed showdown with Scorpio in Amazing Spider-Man 794. Continue reading →

Jan 25 2018

Form Trumps Myth in Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps 37

By Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

My Green Lantern fandom often feels like a relic from a time before I truly understood what I loved about comics. I love the limits of the medium — the way an artist has to imply light and sound and movement and time all on a still page which literally possesses none of these qualities. So much of a comic story, for me, is in how it is told, rather than what it’s telling. But Green Lantern is a myth-making franchise, and the moment-to-moment storytelling can often be measured by the twists and connections it makes to its own winding history. Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps 37 eschews that entirely, pulling one of Superman’s Big Bads into the ring for some refreshingly innovative visual storytelling. Continue reading →

Jan 24 2018

“Adventures” in Aging in The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson 1

By Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Where are we gonna go, now that our twenties are over?

The Menzingers, “Tellin’ Lies“

I turned 30 last year, and it was both as overwhelming and as underwhelming as I’d been led to expect. It was underwhelming in the sense that I didn’t (and still don’t) suddenly feel any different, but also overwhelming in the sense that it’s a major life milestone, a pretty decisive end to my youth. You’re “supposed” to have your life together by 30, to have some sort of direction, but so many of us (especially now in the Millennial generation) don’t. I often feel just as aimless as I did at 18, only with the added bonus of feeling like my opportunities to find that direction have all but vanished. I’m not necessarily full of regret, but I still can’t help but to sometimes look back at my youth with nostalgia for all the possibilities I once had, and I’m rather certain I’m not alone in that regard. Nick Wilson, the titular star of Eddie Gorodetsky, Marc Andreyko, and Stephen Sadowski’s The Further Adventures of Nick Wilson, certainly knows how I feel. Sure, he once had all the direction in the world, but now he’s as aimless as the rest of us. Continue reading →

Jan 24 2018

Upping the Ante in All-New Wolverine 29

By Michael DeLaney

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

I think the best writers at DC or Marvel are those that incorporate the past — warts and all — while paving the way for the future. With secret origins, even secreter origins, clones, children and magical swords, Wolverine has a complicated and silly comic book history. Leave it to Tom Taylor to take on some of that silly and make it a strength. Continue reading →

Jan 24 2018

Testing 007’s Limits in James Bond: The Body 1

by Drew Baumgartner

James Bond The Body 1

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Hey, is James Bond actually a good spy? I mean, sure, he always manages to escape from the villain’s compound, but he also (almost) always fails to evade capture in the first place. Indeed, I might argue that his very capacity to think quick and get out of tight jams is a bit of a crutch that he uses to make up for his utter inability to preplan and avoid those tight jams altogether. Maybe international espionage is just that hard to plan for — it never seems to go the way M says it will — but it’s hard not to feel that Bond’s reliance on improvisation might also leave his preparation skills underdeveloped. He knows he can figure it out in the moment, so why bother with anything else? It’s an attitude that makes the assignment in James Bond: The Body 1 kind of perfect — MI6 doesn’t have much intel beyond that an assassination attempt will happen, so who better to send in? Continue reading →

Jan 23 2018

What in the Ever Loving Hell is Happening in Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man 299?

by Taylor Anderson

Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man 299

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

You know those Russian dolls where you find smaller and smaller dolls inside one another until you’re left with just a tiny, little one? Sure you do — everyone knows about them even if they might not know that they’re called Matryoshka Dolls. Well what’s the opposite of these dolls? One where the dolls somehow continue to get bigger and bigger in some brain-twisting way that defies physics and space? I doubt there’s a name for such a doll, but if there was one, it would be called Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man 299. Continue reading →