When we analyze comics, it is very common to find emphasis on the sequential aspect of the comic’s language. As if the continuity of images in a certain order could be the most significant quality of comics. Despite that, it is a reality that the images in a certain order have the capacity to represent…
SPURS AND STRIPES: Cowboys, Art, and a Love for Both
“Can two dudes ride the same horse,” she asked into the phone. Adding it to her mental list of research questions she’s already asked. Red didn’t know if two people could ride on one horse or what happens when someone is bucked off a stallion or what the typical schedule is for a ranch hand…
Anatomy of a Panel: David F. Walker and BITTER ROOT
To say that David Walker is a creative super-force of nature would be an understatement. Prodigious author of award-winning comics. Author of widely acclaimed YA and adult fiction. Writer of incisive pop cultural criticism and journalistic scholarship. Maker of documentary films. Passionate and dedicated professor across all the storytelling arts at Portland State University. It’s…
Learning to Love the Legion [Bonus]: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #5
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! It feels weird to be writing a fannish examination of the latest Legion of Super-Heroes comic, ensconced in my locked-down New York City apartment. I haven’t been outside in three days, but my wife is a social worker in the ER of a large hospital. Today she went to work and saw…
Transmyscira: Exorcising the Ghosts of the 20th Century with IRON MAN: EXTREMIS
Let us not become the evil we deplore. – Rep. Barbara Lee, September 14th, 2001 I couldn’t take it any longer. I grabbed a microphone and said, ‘I’m no fly on the wall. I am the hornet that stings.’ There was an immediate uproar, so not having anything more to say, I shouted out,…
#MakeComics: Writer/Artist Niki Smith
How do the pros #MakeComics? We’re here to tell you. Comicosity is picking the brains of a pro who is killing it in the comics industry, and for this round I was lucky enough to talk to Niki Smith! Niki is the writer and artist of the recently released The Deep & Dark Blue, as well…
REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA and its Debt to Shinji Wada
Do you know? Do you know? Have you heard this story before? A pink haired young girl seeks to protect her friend, a bullied young woman with a bindi mark on her forehead. What the pink haired girl doesn’t realize is there’s more to her friend then she’s able to recognize and the girl with…
Dark Knights, Better Tomorrows, and Other Ways to Write BATMAN
Have you ever wanted to write a Batman story? Have you ever wanted to take pen and paper to wear the cape and cowl and bring The Dark Knight to Gotham? Don’t be bashful – you still have a noir caper in the back of your mind begging to be solved, that buddy cop team-up…
Anatomy of a Panel: John Jennings, Damian Duffy, and PARABLE OF THE SOWER
Extraordinary comics creators in their own right, when joining forces the inestimable John Jennings (artist) and Damian Duffy (writer/letterer) pull off the superheroic. For over a decade, this virtuoso dynamic duo have channeled their co-creative talents into radical revolutionizing of the comics scene. Already in 2008, they pushed the art of comic book storytelling beyond…
Health and Inclusivity: The Hard Road to Peace in FAR SECTOR
Sometimes, our journeys take us further than we ever expected. What we end up reaching has its own vestiges of our past as we uncover new experiences. In similar fashion, Sojourner Mullein, or Jo, is a new Green Lantern sent to the far reaches of space in N.K. Jemisin, Jamal Campbell, and Deron Bennett’s Far…