Eureka

I really like Eureka. It’s about a town full of geniuses, where someone rather like Tony Stark (Ed Quinn, playing “Nathan Stark”) runs a secret government research lab. His ex-wife is the top administrative official (Salli Richardson), and she’s attracted to the new sheriff in town (Colin Ferguson), a well-meaning but not-too-smart former US marshal. One of the best parts of the show is the way it plays opposite to prevailing TV stereotypes. The smartest guy in town (Joe Morton), […]

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Girls Discover Wizard Sexist

Recently, a bunch of online commentators have been discussing how Wizard‘s how-to guide objectifies women. At first, all this hoo-hah sounded to me rather like Claude Rains’ character in Casablanca: “I am shocked, SHOCKED to find that gambling is going on in here!” Who doesn’t know that Wizard is targeted at adolescent (in mind if not still in body) males? Of course their view of women is of unknown creatures only to be stared at, because that’s how teenage boys […]

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The Dreaming Volume 1

In this original graphic novel by Queenie Chan, twin girls enter a remote boarding school in the Australian wilderness. From the beginning, there’s an air of something wrong. The girls are warned that they must pretend they’re not twins, only sisters, because of an odd prejudice on the vice-principal’s part. Their aunt, headmistress of the school, leaves as soon as they arrive. The quieter, more sensitive girl begins acting in a way that worries her more outgoing sister. Disturbing pictures, […]

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Platinum Studios Snows NY Times

Platinum Studios must have a great press agent. Although they have yet to publish a comic, they’re written up in the NY Times, this time for being webcomic leaders. I can’t begin to count the inaccuracies and misleading statements in this piece. How about the first paragraph, which says that the webcomic audience is “limited to a niche group of comic book creators and their most ardent followers”? Webcomics are more widespread and have more outreach than print serial comics. […]

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The Revival

This one-shot interested me because there are relatively few comics out there that deal with religious faith in a mature manner, without relying on the stereotype of the crazy fanatic. The Revival is the story of a couple journeying to a revival meeting in Kentucky in 1801. The particular gathering dramatized here was, according to the author’s research, “the largest camp meeting [the United States] had ever seen…. Estimates of attendance ranged from 10 to 25 thousand.” This scope isn’t […]

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Case Closed Volume 13

Like an episode of a good television serial, the latest edition of Case Closed by Gosho Aoyama may not be outstanding or unique, but it is entertaining in a fashion consistent with the series overall. (The most recent entry in the series I’ve reviewed was volume 11.) First comes the conclusion to the last case from the previous book. I do wish that they would divvy up the chapters better, or more prominently label the books — I would have […]

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BOP! More Box Office Poison

This slim volume is a great companion to the Box Office Poison phonebook. BOP! More Box Office Poison reprints Alex Robinson’s short stories from the SPX anthologies (there was a piece in each volume from 1997-2001), Private Beach #4, and the color special published by Antarctic. It also contains Robinson’s 24-hour comic and a new story showing how Caprice’s friends deal with her ex-boyfriend. Since most of these were written as stand-alone stories instead of chapters in the bigger graphic […]

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50 Reasons to Stop Sketching at Conventions

The immensely talented Stuart Immonen (Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman: Secret Identity, Nextwave) doesn’t draw sketches at conventions any more, and he’s not too fond of attending shows, either. This self-published mini-paperback collects his fifty reasons why, reprinting four-panel strips that originally ran as webcomics. Comic artists and their fans often have a love/hate relationship. The new eight-page introduction puts the strips into that context, explaining that these experiences, weird as they might seem, aren’t terribly unusual on the convention circuit. […]

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