Feb 2 2016

Saga 33

Today, Drew and Ryan M. are discussing Saga 33, originally released January 27th, 2016.

Drew: I’m currently taking a class on autobiographical comics, and the discussion thus far has centered around the question of subjectivity. Many of the memoirists we’ve examined thus far have favored the “truth” found in their subjective experience, as opposed to the “historical truth” of a more objective account, but I’ve always found the assumption that history is objective to be problematic. “History is written by the victors,” as the saying goes, revealing not only that history is necessarily biased, but also that history is more the story of wars than life. Indeed, even a historical account of a war has to consider who the story is really about: Generals? Individual soldiers? Civilians? Reporters? That last one may seem out of place, taking a narrow focus on people who neither represent the masses nor the machinations of war, but as the ones literally writing the histories as they happen, reporters are the only ones capable of giving an account that isn’t filtered through the subjective experience of someone else (as, say, a civilian’s story as told by a reporter would be). There are more layers of subjectivity to explore here, but the point is: reporters’ stories are just as important as those they cover, which makes Saga 33‘s turn to Upsher and Doff so welcome. Continue reading →

Jan 7 2016

Best of 2015: Best Writers

In such a collaborative medium as comics, it can be difficult to say where a writer’s influence on the story ends, but there’s no question on where it begins: words on the page. Whether they thrill, elate, chill, or deflate, the best writers create characters, settings, and situations we want to return to, again and again. These are our top 10 writers of 2015. Continue reading →

Dec 14 2015

We Stand On Guard 6

Today, Taylor and Drew are discussing We Stand On Guard 6, originally released December 9th, 2015.

Taylor: We are a society that loves to understand why people are the way they are. Go to any bookstore or read a small amount of investigative journalism and you’re bound to find something dissecting the reasons why a particular person has done a particular thing. While there is a fair amount of literature dedicated to the study of why people do amazing things, there’s almost an equal amount examining those famous for more nefarious reasons. Murderers, terrorists, and dictators are fascinating to many for the reason that it’s interesting to examine what would drive someone to do something truly awful. We Stand On Guard 6 explores this issue but does so not by studying a villain. Rather, it does this by examining its hero. Continue reading →

Dec 9 2015

Paper Girls 3

Today, Ryan D. and Michael are discussing Paper Girls 3, originally released December 2nd, 2015.

“Don’t trust anybody over 30.”

-Jack Weinberg

Ryan D: The Free Speech Movement, originally born out of the turmoil roiling in the belly of an America committed to both the Vietnam War and the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement, gave youths protesting a mantra regarding who is trustworthy and who is not. The original quote, spoken first in 1964 when an interviewer accused Weinberg and the Movement of being backed by Communists or some other nefarious group, asserts that people over a certain age always have an agenda. Though Paper Girls takes place twenty years after the FSM, this most recent issue’s reveal proves that the saying holds true, even in the far future, or alternate universes, or wherever it is that is invading the Earth in this ripping read. Continue reading →

Nov 30 2015

Saga 31

Today, Ryan D. and Drew are discussing Saga 31, originally released November 25 2015.

Ryan D: The hiatus is over! Superstar creative team Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples have been keeping themselves rather busy since issue 30 released a million years ago in July, hitting Comic Cons and embarking upon new series. Though Vaughn’s mini-series We Stand on Guard outsold Saga in the month of it’s debut, the Eisner-winning space opera returns with a new chapter which promises to keep returning readers satiated with its signature bend of absurdly imaginative and developed characters in an ever-expanding universe. Continue reading →

Nov 6 2015

Paper Girls 2

Today, Drew and Ryan M. are discussing Paper Girls 2, originally released November 4th, 2015.

Drew: How early in a narrative can you usually predict the ending? Usually, when we describe a narrative as “predictable” we mean that derisively, but most stories have prescribed endings — oftentimes, the genre of the story is enough to hint at the ending: how does a romantic comedy end? How about a murder mystery? What about a sports movie? There are obviously countless examples that subvert those expectations, but those play by the same rules — the ending can be flipped, sure, but the potential endings are still reduced down to a small handful of options. Unless, of course, that story “defies genre,” evading any of the pigeonholes that would dictate its ending (or at least evading them long enough for you to get sucked in). That’s exactly the case with Paper Girls 2, where the deepening mystery thwarts any expectations about what might happen next. Continue reading →

Oct 14 2015

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 10/7/15

Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, we discuss Groot 5, Plutona 2, Miracle Man 3, The Surface 4, and We Stand On Guard 4. Continue reading →

Oct 12 2015

Paper Girls 1

Today, Patrick and Spencer are discussing Paper Girls 1, originally released October 7th, 2015.

We all see what we want to see. Coffey looks and he sees Russians. He sees hate and fear. You have to look with better eyes than that.

Lindsey Brigman, The Abyss (1989)

Patrick: When The Abyss came out in 1989, the Cold War was still very much a part of the American Zeitgeist. So much so, that a James Cameron movie about underwater aliens necessarily had to address political tensions between the US and the Soviets and the fear of nuclear annihilation. Those themes are more clearly expressed in the lumpier director’s cut of the film, but even the theatrical release is colored with assumptions and anxieties specific to that period in time. I love The Abyss, but I probably didn’t see it until I was 11 or 12 (1994 sounds right), which means I was able to take it in from the other side of the Berlin Wall, and none of those relics of Cold War paranoia rang true to my personal experience. But rather than being alienating, those details tap into an existing international psychology, and create a world that is instantly recognizable as real, honest, and not so far outside the world we know. Paper Girls pulls a similar trick, filling the pages with 1988 details that don’t so much tell a story as set the scene for a story. Continue reading →

Sep 9 2015

We Stand On Guard 3

Today, Ryan D and Taylor are discussing We Stand On Guard 3, originally released September 2nd, 2015.

Ryan: Canada and America at war. Total war. At first glance, this seems highly unlikely, almost unimaginable. But at issue three of a six-part miniseries, We Stand on Guard is far past first glance. Brian K. Vaughn and Steve Skroce keep pulling back the curtains, and every reveal in this issue fits perfectly into the universe created. The real hook, aside from the soaring tension and slick action, is that the fiction is not incredibly far from the truth.

Continue reading →

Jul 7 2015

We Stand On Guard 1

Today, Taylor and Ryan are discussing We Stand On Guard 1, originally released July 1st, 2015.

Taylor: You don’t have to sort through many comics, movies, or books before you find a story about a war, on earth, set in the relatively near future. A lot of the time, these stories are a good way of capturing the zeitgeist of time in which it was written. Take, for example, much of the sci-fi written during the Cold War. What percentage of that writing focuses on a then-likely war with the Soviet Union and/or nuclear holocaust? Keeping that in mind, some might find it surprising that Brian K. Vaughan’s new series We Stand On Guard is about a future war between the USA and… Canada? Yes, the country known for its benign nature is now the centerpiece for a story about war. But why? As it turns out there are plenty of reasons which make this a promising series premier.