Nightwing #115 Changes

Comics Should Be Good tracks the changes that happened to Nightwing #115 between solicitation and publication. DC seems to have truncated Devin Grayson’s storyline with Dick Grayson undercover as a villain working for Deathstroke. Just from the copy CSBG provides, it looks to me like they took connections to Villains United out of the title. We know Grayson was concerned about crossovers having ill effects on superhero comics; maybe that’s the kind of thing she was talking about.

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Queen Bee

Chynna Clugston’s never been shy about acknowledging her pop culture inspirations and interests, and in Queen Bee, it’s no different. During the talent competition, lead character Haley sings The Go-Go’s “We’ve Got the Beat”. When trying to figure out how to be popular, Haley watches classic teen movies from the 80s and today. Clugston also mentions Mean Girls a couple of times, which given how similar the plot is, may be too often. Haley is psychokinetic — she can move […]

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How Loathsome

The cover of How Loathsome features an attractive, androgynous figure naked from the waist up with arms wrapped around him/herself. S/he’s wearing black PVC pants, suggesting fetish culture, and appears to be comforting or protecting him/herself from prying gazes. It’s a great summation of the material contained within. The stories by Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane explore queer life, drug use, goth clubs, and gender experimentation in San Francisco. In the first chapter, Catherine, the narrator, meets Chloe, a “tall […]

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Scene of the Crime: A Little Piece of Goodnight

Before Gotham Central, Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark worked together on the mystery Scene of the Crime. Jack Herriman is a private eye hired by a woman to find her missing younger sister, who may have become involved with a strange commune-like group. Both she and Jack turn out to have father issues in common; when he was a teenager, Jack was raised by his uncle, a crime scene photographer who helps out on cases. Now, he’s fallen into something […]

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Dead West

The team behind the critically praised Teenagers From Mars, writer Rick Spears and artist Rob G., return with a zombie Western, Dead West. While the men of a Native American tribe are out hunting, a group of whites massacre their village to enforce their claim to the property. A young brave survives and years later takes his revenge on the town, Lazarus, built on the site. Through a ritual sacrifice, he raises the town’s dead, an unthinking mob of zombies […]

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Online Comic Fandom in 1995

At the Spring 1995 American Culture Assocation / Popular Culture Association national meeting, I presented on the state of online comic fandom using the following paper as a basis. The big three areas at the time were Usenet, CompuServe, and AOL (mainly DC’s then-exclusive content). Times have changed, ten years later, as the centers of online comic fandom (such as they are) have moved today to blogs, web boards, and invite-only mailing lists. This, by the way, was my last […]

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Teenagers From Mars

Mars is your typical Southern town. One group of kids are digging up a coffin. When they find a sword, they wind up reenacting fight scenes from Star Wars. Another guy’s ripping off the copy shop with the aid of an underutilized employee. They get away with it because the boss is convinced the kid’s on drugs; aren’t all teens? At the local Mallmart, an employee’s getting chewed out for selling a kid a comic with too much violence; who […]

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Alichino Volume 1

I picked up Alichino because I saw a preview, and I was astounded by the beauty of the art by Kouyu Shurei. Stunning, graceful figures stare piercingly at the reader, accompanied by a menacing owl. Alichino are gorgeous beings who can grant wishes at the cost of the requester’s soul. They’re lovely demons, drawn to misery and deep desires. A girl, seeking one to save her brother’s life, mistakes Tsugiri for one because of his beauty. He’s not, but he […]

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