Tag Archives: Chip Zdarsky

Feb 21 2016

Sex Criminals 14

Today, Ryan M. and Ryan D. are discussing Sex Criminals 14, originally released February 17th, 2016.

Ryan M.: Anyone can be charming at a dinner party. A sense of gaiety and a few well-placed bon mots, and you’re a hit! But dinner parties are not where deep connections are forged. That happens when you see beyond the public facade and get a deeper understanding of what a person is like when they don’t have anything clever to say. When they are struggling to articulate their ideas, but trust you enough to listen anyway. In Sex Criminals 14, writer Matt Fraction and artist Chip Zdarsky offer up that kind of vulnerability even as their characters struggle with it. Continue reading →

Jan 6 2016

Jughead 3

Today, Ryan and Spencer are discussing Jughead 3, originally released December 30th, 2015.

Ryan M.: My name lends itself to nicknames. Since both my first and last names are easily shorted and morphed, I’ve never had the sort of nickname that doesn’t sound like my name. In middle school, I tried to get people to call me “R Money” but as we all know, you can’t give yourself a nickname. Jughead Jones does not go by a derivative of his birth name, so when the first page of Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson’s Jughead 3 ends with someone calling him Forsythe, you can tell things are not right in Riverdale. Continue reading →

Nov 30 2015

Jughead 2

Today, the Ryans are discussing Jughead 2, originally released November 18th, 2015.

Ryan M.: Nobody likes a smart ass. Of all the things adults said when I was a kid, this may be the most full of shit. Everybody like a smart ass. They are funny! They say what they want without worrying about decorum and, in doing so, disrupt the mundane. The truth is, what “nobody likes” is being disrespected. And to tell a sass-filled kid that they have the power to undermine you is to further offer them power. In Jughead 2, the new regime at Riverdale High is struggling to regain the upper-hand over King of the Smart Asses, Jughead Jones.

Continue reading →

Oct 12 2015

Jughead 1

jughead 1

Today, Ryan and Taylor are discussing Jughead 1, originally released October 7th, 2015.

Ryan: Every character has a worldview. Conflicting worldviews can be enough to fuel an entire story. Sometimes, they allow for characters to be dismissed or reduced. Jughead Jones is Archie’s food-loving, girl-indifferent, and lazy best friend. Jughead #1 digs deeper into his way of seeing the world, retroactively justifying and deepening decades worth of burger and nap jokes.

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Sep 22 2015

Sex Criminals 12

Alternating Currents: Sex Criminals 12, Drew and Michael

Today, Drew and Michael are discussing Sex Criminals 12, originally released September 16th, 2015.

Drew: Human beings find meaning in things. It makes sense as a survival mechanism — recognizing patterns or hypothesizing causal links can lead us towards food or away from danger — but it’s also not something we can turn off. A friend of mine once pointed out that you can fill one of those logical analogies (you know, “puppy is to dog as kitten is to cat”) with four totally random words and it will still make some kind of sense — that is, we can find meaning in connections that are literally drawn out of a hat. To me, that means that “meaning” doesn’t necessarily have objective basis in reality — it’s a thing that we construct because that’s what our brains do. This has some rather profound existential consequences, but for the purposes of our discussion of Sex Criminals 12, I want to focus on what it means for the characters, as this issue finds them each extrapolating meaning that might not be there. Continue reading →

Aug 5 2015

Sex Criminals 11

Alternating Currents: Sex Criminals 11, Drew and Michael

Today, Drew and Michael are discussing Sex Criminals 11, originally released June 29th, 2015.

Drew: I’ve played the “what superpower would you want” game enough to know that most people will settle for “flight” or “invisibility.” Does that predictability speak to the overwhelming awesomeness of those powers, or some failure of those individuals to be creative? I think it might actually speak to how we think about superpowers: they’re so arbitrary as to be kind of meaningless. Indeed, there are relatively few characters whose powersets are actually limited to just “flight” or “invisibility,” giving even those most popular choices the air of not quite being enough. Which is why Sex Criminals is such a revelation. “A series about a couple with the ability to stop time” doesn’t get nearly the reaction as “A series about a couple with the ability to stop time when they orgasm.” Part of the charm is the novelty, sure, but the premise requires that sexuality play a central role in the series. That makes it unique beyond its superpowers, as issue 11 takes us into the private lives of virtually every character via their sex lives. Continue reading →

May 26 2015

Kaptara 2

kaptara 2

Today, Patrick and Michael are discussing Kaptara 2, originally released May 20th, 2015.

Patrick: Fun personal fact about me: I get sorta stressed out writing about some of the more prestige comics that Retcon Punch covers. While something like Saga or Nameless or Velvet might be both excellent and full of meaning, those creators are savvy enough to obscure any absolute reading of their work. The masters know enough to resist reducing their work to an easy slug line. I find the exact same quality to be true of Chip Zdarsky and Kagan McLeod’s Kaptara. Is it a subversion of high fantasy tropes? Or does the naturalistic, jokey approach to storytelling invalidate any comparisons one could draw to the standards of the genre? Issue two hints at commentary on celebrity, politics, gender dynamic, but doesn’t stay with anything long enough to make a point. But it may just be Kaptara’s refusal to make any point that makes it so damn fun. Oh, and the Cat Tanks. Obviously. Continue reading →

Apr 29 2015

Kaptara 1

kaptara 1

Today, Michael and Mark are discussing Kaptara 1, originally released April 22nd, 2015.

Space, why you gotta be like that?

Kaptara 1

Michael: Compared to other genres of fiction, science fiction is still relatively young. Despite this, most science fiction — smart science fiction — relies on the intelligence of its audience in the way that it references and respects the space epics that have come before it. We’ve made similar observations in our write-ups of recent sci-fi books like Saga and Nameless: good science fiction trusts that even if you haven’t seen every Star Wars or Alien film, you will be familiar enough with the situation that they are trying to honor, re-enact or subvert. And when you’re dealing with a comic book produced by an independent publisher like Image, there is more freedom to directly reference these situations and tropes in-story. Such is the beauty of Kaptara. Continue reading →

Mar 19 2015

Howard the Duck 1

howard the duck 1

Today, Patrick and Ryan are discussing Howard the Duck 1, originally released March 9th, 2015.

Patrick: Why do you take a chance on buying a brand new issue of a brand new comic book series the day it comes out? When you think about it, you’re taking a pretty big risk regarding the quality of the thing you’re about to read. I suppose the worst thing that can happen is that you’re out four bucks and about eighteen minutes. But there are so many damn comics, and I know I’m always looking for place to cut my pull. Number ones, though? I roll the dice on those several times a week. But for every number one I do read, there are like 80 I don’t. So what’s the alchemy that made me pick up Howard the Duck 1 over, I don’t know, Spawn Resurrection 1? The character? The publisher? The artist? The writer? That’s a question the issue itself poses: how did you come to Howard the Duck? Continue reading →

Feb 4 2015

Sex Criminals 10

sex criminals 10

Today, Patrick and Ryan are discussing Sex Criminals 10, originally released January 28th, 2015.

Patrick: I think we’re slowly starting to emerge on the other side of the age of the anti-hero: when your Tony Sopranos and Walter Whites and Don Drapers were the coolest guys on TV. If there’s one thing these guys all have in common — other than your suspicion that you couldn’t be friends with them in real life — it’s that they all know what they want. The means and methods by which they achieve their goals can be questionable, but as long as they continue to express an honest desire, the audience never goes away. It’s strong, and somehow morally correct. Even when their worlds are crashing down around them, we have faith in the anti-hero’s unwavering need to get what they want. So where does that leave us with characters that don’t know or can’t articulate what they want? That’s a relatable trait, probably more relatable than any of us would like to admit. Continue reading →