Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
The simple premise of Tom Gauld’s Mooncop hides a subtle exploration of what it means to live an ordinary life, without judgment and with concern over what happens when technology overtakes it. The title character is a police officer on the moon, when everyone else is leaving. He files meaningless reports and interacts with the machines that have replaced people at the donut shop and the minimart. Everyone’s got bubble helmets, like the old visions of the future, even the […]
Read more
While I liked Icon better (because of the lead female character), the Milestone comic Static, launched in 1993, was more fun. The title character, a teen with electrical powers, was a modern take on Spider-Man. Virgil Hawkins was a kid given amazing abilities, struggling with how to use them well while juggling family and school responsibilities. The first issues were written by Robert L. Washington III and Dwayne McDuffie and penciled by John Paul Leon. I never watched the cartoon […]
Read more
Instead of a new animated movie starring Wonder Woman, to tie into this summer’s live-action film, we’re getting a re-release of the 2009 cartoon origin story called the Wonder Woman Commemorative Edition. It’s already out on digital, and the Blu-ray combo pack (and plain DVD) drop on May 16, with a new cover to look more like the movie’s marketing material. I didn’t care much for the movie the first time around, mostly because I’ve seen umpteen versions of her […]
Read more
I really love this series. Writer Sholly Fisch does a terrific job telling stories that work as straightforward Scooby-Doo adventures — where the kids have to unmask fake ghosts, while Shaggy quakes and Scooby wisecracks — while tickling us older readers hip to the references. This issue title, “Ghosts Are Not Healthy for Dogs and Other Living Things”, may give you a hint of what’s being satirized this time around. The Scooby crew have come to Karma Corners, a town […]
Read more
Although I still haven’t seen any of the individual character series (and I’d like to see at least the Jessica Jones and Luke Cage ones), this trailer did its job in getting me excited for the upcoming Defenders team-up series on Netflix. How smart is it to have one of your characters be a lawyer? He can get in almost anywhere just by saying that. Iron Fist looks like a weenie, which fits how dumb that casting approach was. The […]
Read more
The New Ghost by Robert Hunter is another in Nobrow’s line of single-issue author spotlights. It’s been out for more than five years, but I only found out about it recently through, of all things, a well-targeted Amazon recommendation. (Sometimes the computers get it right.) And since it’s a stand-alone, it doesn’t matter when you read it. Our unnamed protagonist is the new ghost of the title, following his companions through pages of deep blue night populated by faceless, formless […]
Read more
Comet TV has announced its feature schedule for May, and the focus is on Ray Harryhausen, the master of using stop-motion animation to bring to life such imaginative effects as sword-fighting skeletons. There’s a marathon of four films where he created the visual effects on Sunday, May 7, with repeats later in the month. The movies are The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973) The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960) Jason and the Argonauts (1963) […]
Read more
Gay characters have been portrayed in manga in a variety of ways. The best-known approach takes place in the yaoi genre, which concentrates on physical interactions and is aimed at women. My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame is the opposite, focused on normalizing a gay relationship to those who are uncomfortable with the idea. Yaichi is raising his daughter Kana alone. In this way, the book starts as a domestic fantasy, like Yotsuba&! or Bunny Drop, with a cute kid […]
Read more