Author Archives: Michael Hale

Truth-Telling: Tynion and Simmonds’ THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH as Art

Truth-Telling: Tynion and Simmonds’ THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH as Art

I think it can be said without the ruffling of many feathers that “comics are art.” Still, one of the biggest philosophical issues we as a society tend to run into, much like Wile E. Coyote when he crashes headfirst into a stone slab he thought was a tunnel, is the question “what is art

The Comics Classroom: THOR and the Eternal Return

Thor is a character who has long held a unique place in graphic/textual history as both a “comic” character — he was the creation of Stan & Larry Lee and Jack Kirby for Journey into Mystery #83 in 1962 — and as a religious/mythological figure. Few beings of genuine religious and mythological status (in the

Like Clockwork: The Importance of WATCHMEN, Part 1

Few comics embody perfection the way Watchmen does. Because of the significance it had on comics which would come after it, the simplicity/complexity of the nine-panel grid, and the genre up-ending plot, it is probably going to be impossible to say anything about Moore and Gibbon’s masterpiece that isn’t just in some other way repeating

Hated and Feared: HOUSE OF X and POWERS OF X Examined

Taking on the voluntary mission of being the latest — in a long line of authors — to reintroduce a famous superhero team like the X-Men, in my humble opinion, is akin to reinventing the wheel or building a better mousetrap. No matter how good your concept, and no matter how unique your perspective, there

The Comics Classroom: AKIRA, a Cyberpunk Masterpiece

It is probably going to be impossible to say anything genuinely new concerning Akira, that masterpiece of Japanese manga created by Katsuhiro Otomo (hereafter referred to as Otomo) in 1982 which then ran until 1990. The premise of the story is that, thirty years after a post WW3 Japan has somewhat started to recover from

The Horror of Internment: MAN-EATERS Under The Microscope

Trying to define “horror,” ultimately, is one of the toughest and most subjective artistic projects because, at its heart, horror relies of value judgement and opinions. What one person considers “horrifying” won’t have the same impact on another person, at least not all the time. You might read a comic, such as some of the

The Comics Classroom: Cathartic Horror, JOOK JOINT, and Mahalia

In the previous part of this horror exploration series, I mentioned how art-horror was something different from other kinds of horror, i.e. being scared from a work designed to terrify was different than being scared in the real world by a snake or anything else. While I previously engaged with New Mutants and Demon Bear

The Comics Classroom: Abstract Horror, NEW MUTANTS, and the Demon Bear

What is it about the term “horror” that so entrances us? By all rights, such a term should revolt us and it certainly should not make us want to peer deeper and deeper into the eyes of what we find abhorrent, yet there is a whole genre of material built around the idea of being

The Comics Classroom: SAILOR MOON and the Heroine’s Journey

A few years ago, while taking a course relating to Critical Theory, I had two encounters with an instructor that profoundly helped to shape my views on Joseph Campbell. At one point during discussion, Campbell’s name came up, to which I asked whether he was or was not still a viable figure within academic discourse.

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