Imagining the future can be tricky. On one hand, we picture ourselves wearing jetpacks, flying through the open sky to get to work in the morning, and sending our relatives off (if we’re lucky) to live in space colonies on the moon. Love triumphs over our petty hatreds and we live in peace, not just…
COMIC LOVE: An Ode to Catman
Oh, Catman. If you were hoping this week’s entry was going to be a font of philosophical pondering, turn back now. My love of Thomas Blake, the man of the yellow and orange, is not rational, ethical or even natural. It even makes my husband nervous. Sure, it’s pretty unlikely the actual Catman will ever…
COMIC LOVE: Another Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
A mythical warrior wielding armaments of legend. A hero encased in metal who becomes a living weapon. A normal man thrown into extraordinary circumstances armed simply with a shield. A big green monster caught in the crosshairs of a secret government agency. All told, seven soldiers out to save the world from an incursion too…
COMIC LOVE: Hopelessly Devoted
Anyone who knows me at all knows I am not particularly musical. It’s not just that I can’t play an instrument or carry much of a tune. I don’t even have much of an ear for music. My iPhone, at any given time, has about a dozen songs on it — ones that would make…
COMIC LOVE: What Batgirl Means to Me
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve wanted to write this column since before I had a column to write, or a website upon which to place it. And I’ve had butterflies in my stomach about it for almost just as long. Batgirl, and by extension its cowl-bearing character Barbara Gordon, isn’t just…
COMIC LOVE: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Sword
If there’s any truism worth adapting to the pastime of reading comic books, it’s that a good shop is hard to find. In summer of 2011, after several years of ordering my comics online, I decided it was time to go back to shopping locally. Sure, I was saving a few bucks by buying through…
COMIC LOVE: Law & Order on Trial
The morality of comic book characters never used to be up for debate. If you were a superhero, you wore a bright costume, helped kids rescue kittens and shook hands with the police when you dropped off the criminals you apprehended, sometimes without even having to land a punch. If you were a supervillain, you…
COMIC LOVE: Super-Heroines, Stains and All
My favorite comic book characters have invariably always been the ladies. Maybe because there were less of them when I was growing up. Maybe because their costumes were more fabulous than those of their male counterparts. Probably because, when written with care, the super-heroines always seemed more intuitive, more vulnerable… just more real than most…
COMIC LOVE: Better by Half
It’s been almost nineteen years since I came out, not quite half my life, but edging closer to it year after year. Even way back then, I felt like I was coming into myself late, twenty-one years old and in my last year of college. Today, I read about out LGBT teenagers in high school…
Comic Love: Batman Day – A Wayne Enterprises Charity Gala
Batman Day is approaching, and what better way to celebrate it than to help out some kids? Laura Rose (@BatsDontKill) and “Lady Batman” (@HowBatmanAmI) of Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham, UK, have organized a raffle to raise money for the Children’s Hospitals of Birmingham. There are prizes from heavyweight creators like Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Gail Simone…