Category Alternating Current

Cross-talks on individual issues.

Apr 12 2017

Paper Girls 13

Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Paper Girls 13, originally released April 5, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Spencer: The best sci-fi creators find a way to distill their grand ideas and concepts down to situations and emotions their audience can connect with and relate to. Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang have been wizards at this throughout Paper Girls, using their story to explore themes as weighty as prejudice and generation gaps and as mundane as family and growing up. Issue 13 distills that idea even further, slowing their ongoing story to a crawl and instead using the journey to naturally draw out the cast’s view of themselves, their families, and growing up in general. The result is never anything less than completely engaging. Continue reading →

Apr 12 2017

Batman 20

Today, Michael and Drew are discussing Batman 20, originally released April 5th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Michael: I have been beyond impressed with Tom King and David Finch’s “I Am Bane” — an arc that contextualizes every issue of Batman that can before it. Previously I wasn’t won over with King’s take on the Dark Knight but “I Am Bane” makes me ready and willing to see where he takes the character next. Continue reading →

Apr 11 2017

Hawkeye 5

Today, Spencer and Drew are discussing Hawkeye 5, originally released April 5th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Spencer: A defining trait of Hawkeye is that they’re a bit of a “hot mess.” For all their skill as archers, both Clint Barton and Kate Bishop tend to be disheveled, disorganized, and often immature in pretty much all other aspects of their lives. This likewise applies to Kate’s new job as an L.A. P.I., a job she’s thus far succeeded at largely through luck and improvisation rather than skill. Thankfully for her, though, it turns out that this may actually make the job a perfect fit for her. Who better to teach that lesson than fellow P.I., and the “Queen of Hot Messes” herself, Jessica Jones? Continue reading →

Apr 11 2017

Eleanor and the Egret 1

Today, Patrick and Ryan M are discussing Eleanor and the Egret 1, originally released April 5, 2017. As always, this article containers SPOILERS!

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Patrick: Comic book fans have a weird relationships with the medium. For as much time as we spend staring at visually stunning works of art, we tend not to place too much value on what the art itself means to us. Oh sure, we can complain that some something is too cartoony or too pin-up or too grim-dark, and we can praise action sequences and cool-looking costumes, but all comic art is necessarily tied to something beyond the art itself. There’s a story, a message, a political point of view, a joke — the art straining to express something other than itself. Eleanor and the Egret is poised to flip those priorities, insisting on both the value and the meaning of the art by making it both subject and medium. The first issue is delightfully soothing, and nearly impossible to analyze against psychological and narrative norms. It’s so singularly beautiful, I wish I could eat it. Continue reading →

Apr 10 2017

Jughead 14

Today, Ryan D. and Taylor are discussing Jughead 14, originally released April 5th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Ryan D: After five years of teaching high school, it became clear to me that I do not envy teenagers in this decade. Kids have an entirely new plane for making mistakes to which I was not privy in the early 2000s — one which revolves around the ubiquitous little pocket-computer everyone has now, coupled with unlimited internet access and an expectation to hold a social media presence. Technology is, in many ways, a blessing and provides opportunities beyond our dreams less than twenty years ago, back when the world-wide web pretty much just hosted cool websites like “HampsterDance,” but I can only imagine the trouble I would have gotten into if I were sixteen today. Jughead Jones finds himself in a predicament in issue fourteen, a very modern problem, and he just can’t seem to please everyone when the internet is involved.

Continue reading →

Apr 7 2017

Rock Candy Mountain 1

Today, Taylor and Mark are discussing Rock Candy Mountain 1, originally released April 5th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There’s a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

Harry McClintock, “Big Rock Candy Mountain”

Taylor: Like a lot of people, one of my first introductions to the world of folk music was through the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. Made up entirely of traditional American folk songs, the soundtrack is a classic on which it’s hard to pick a favorite tune. Still, if I had to chose one song from that tracklist, I might just go with “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” It has everything you would expect in a folk song. A catchy little melody, a simple rhyme scheme, and of course, lyrics that are at once wistful and cynical. Writer and artist Kyle Starks makes no bones about this song being the source material for his new Rock Candy Mountain series, but how does it stack up next to the old ditty? Continue reading →

Apr 5 2017

Black Cloud 1

Alternating Currents: Black Cloud 1, Drew and Michael

Today, Drew and Michael are discussing Black Cloud 1, originally released April 5th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Drew: We all have some tolerance for ambiguity in stories. It’s what allows mysteries to remain mysterious until the final act, and just generally keeps us guessing about what our characters might do next. Tolerable levels of ambiguity might be called “intriguing,” but once that tolerance threshold is crossed, that intrigue curdles into confusion. There’s no hard rule for finding that threshold (which I suspect varies from person to person), but I suspect it hinges on the faith in the creators. That is, audiences will sit through moments where they have no idea what’s going on so long as they trust that it will all make sense in the end. Audiences tend to have a supply of that trust as a kind of benefit-of-the-doubt, which is why they can abide flash-forward cold opens, but that supply can be exhausted if the creators don’t work to reassure the audience that they can be clear when they need to be. Alas, such is the case with Black Cloud 1, an issue so dense in teasing mythology about storytelling, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for actual storytelling. Continue reading →

Apr 5 2017

Spider-Woman 17

Today, Taylor and Michael are discussing Spider-Woman 17, originally released March 29th, 2017 . As always, this article containers SPOILERS!

Taylor: My ten-year college reunion is fast approaching this summer, and with it so approaches the acknowledgment that I’m basically who I’m going to be in life. At my five year reunion it was fun to see old friends and also consider how we still still had much of our life in front of us. Now, solidly in my thirties, it’s pretty apparent what trajectory my life is going to take. For better or for worse, people at the reunion will judge me by this metric and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it except choose not to care. Where did I learn such sage-like wisdom, you may ask? From the heartening and fun somewhat final issue of Spider-Woman, I answer.

Continue reading →

Apr 5 2017

Outcast 26

Alternating Currents: Outcast 26, Ryan and Drew

Today, Ryan D. and Drew are discussing Outcast 26, originally released March 29th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

Just when they think they have the answers, I change the questions.

“Rowdy” Roddy Piper

Ryan D: If you are writing a serialized work of fiction — especially one which you plan to keep going for an extended period of time — then you must ask yourself: how do I release information to my audience? Questions proposed by the initial thesis of a work (i.e. “why would a man dress up like a bat to fight crime?”) need to be answered eventually for the readers’ intellectual illumination; however, if you answer these questions too quickly without supplying new ones (i.e. “what happens when this bat vigilante tries to take on an apprentice?”), then there’s no way your story can go for more than a few chapters. In Outcast 26, Robert Kirkman, who has written at this point 165 issues of his most commercially successful series The Walking Dead, again proves his ability to sustain an interesting initial concept by supplying the audience with nourishing answers before shifting the questions in a way which makes me keen for more. Continue reading →

Apr 4 2017

Hadrian’s Wall 5

Today, Patrick and Mark are discussing Hadrian’s Wall 5, originally released March 29, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Patrick: Simplicity is an illusion. Every relationship that falls apart, every job that is lost, every hope that is abandoned comes at the end of a long, complicated road with no singular culprit. But it’s human nature to try to compartmentalize these things: she left because I cheated; I was fired because I was always late; I don’t have time to pursue my dreams. That’s clean, almost absolving us of our sins of disappointment. Hadrian’s Wall 5 delivers the answer to the series’ central mystery to this point, only to pivot from solution to inevitably more-complicated problem, insisting on the non-simplicity of this narrative. That dovetails nicely with Simon’s own memories of his failed relationship with Annabelle, which failed not through a singular action, but because these people were incompatible. Kyle Higgins, Alec Siegel and Rod Reis’ story of murder-in-space refuses to be anywhere near as simple as the first four issues would have you believe. Continue reading →