Within the American comic-book origins that started with Siegel, Shuster, Kirby, Lee, and Goodman, the ability of their costumed heroes to combat the forces of crime was paramount. The primal element of the superhero’s makeup was his ability (supernaturally or normally) to combat elements within a city or a nation that lead to the emotional…
The Comic Classroom: Re-Birth Part 3
What does it mean to live? What does it mean to die? These two questions are, quite possibly, the penultimate conundrum that bedevils mankind. To answer these questions, we have come to understand the universe through the mechanisms and methodologies of religion. However, few religions offer an identical meaning to those two important questions. While…
The Comics Classroom: Re-Birth Part 2
Perhaps one of the most interesting facets of the human mind is our ability to twist one thing into another, i.e. we tend to misunderstand what we think will be a desired trait until we actually get it. Thus, we twist said gift into a curse. One of the overriding things man has sought to…
The Comics Classroom: Re-Birth Part 1
One of the beauties about the human species is that, regardless of our beliefs in the next world, we tend to universally understand that once we die… we are gone. With the exception of the x/zombie idea, almost no mythological system has existed that predicates a way for us to return as we were. Humans,…
A Letter from The Comics Classroom
This article might seem different from the ones posted previously. My hope as the creator of the content that fills this space on the Comicosity website is that you, dear reader, have material to think about while you read of colorful people in underwear with their varied powers. Comics have changed so much from when…
The Comics Classroom: The Nature of Evil Part 2
I. Am. The. New. God. All is one in Darkseid. This mighty body is my church. When I command your surrender, I speak with three billion voices. When I make a fist to crush your resistance, it is with three billion hands. When I stare into your eyes and shatter your dreams and break your…
The Comics Classroom: The Nature of Evil
Lex Luthor: Do you know the story of Prometheus? No, of course you don’t. Prometheus was a god who stole the power of fire from the other gods and gave control of it to the mortals. In essence, he gave us technology. He gave us power. Kitty Kowalski: So we’re stealing fire? In the Arctic?…
The Comics Classroom: Into the Green
Humanity exists as but one part of nature, always tending to the planet yet never actually capable of communicating with the other parts directly. One could argue that we can learn the means of communication and language used by animals of all shapes and sizes, however this does not mean we can “connect” to Nature…
The Comics Classroom: The Horror!
The primal sensation of fear is a lot like love, at least in some regards. When we feel it this sensation can overwhelm us and, in a way, take our minds hostage. We see the object of what scares us in the darkest corners. We hear things which are not present. And worse of all?…
The Comics Classroom: Practitioners of the Bizarre — Part 2
Few names in the field of magic and mysticism perhaps send as many shivers up the spine as Merlin. As a literary figure, Merlin has a few possible points of textual origin, chiefly that of Myrddin Emrys (although this spelling as multiple variations). Looking back on Myrddin, before Monmouth or de Troyes got to him,…