In a guest essay, Ty Matejowsky examines the once ubiquitous and now mostly forgotten movie tie-in music video format through the example of one for a movie that never existed.
Drs. Brian Cremins and Brannon Costello sit down to discuss their recent edited comics studies collection, The Other 80s: Reframing Comics’ Crucial Decade
Nicholas Miller returns with an essay on whiteness, country music nostalgia, and charting a new course to re-imagine the past and the future.
Comics / Guest Post / Politics
Guest writer, Alex Haddad examines three different comics exploring conspiracies to consider how they represent the hybridity of truth and fiction.
Part one in an exploration of how the trajectory of Tyroc’s character provides a blueprint for thinking about the arc of other black superheroes.
Dr. Anna Peppard re-examines a favorite scene from Excalibur #4 a decade after first reading it to consider how its meanings may have changed for her.
The first in our new “Critical Nostalgia” series, revisiting single issue faves from younger days, considers Richie Rich’s desire for his own future ghost self.
Considering how 1990’s The Flash on CBS was a pivotal development to the television superhero genre through fashion.
Cleaning up loose ends from the last year and making some announcements about the next.
Discussing the intersection of collecting and desire, superhero sex, and avoiding spoiler aversion with Dr. Anna Peppard.
Looking beyond representation in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and towards the contexts that inform it to consider the narrative structures used to build queer storyworlds.
Part Two of using DC’s Tyroc to consider the arc of the Black superhero.
In the final (for now) installment of the Howard the Duck reading series, we examine the duck’s shift from social satire to Marvel Comics parody.
Exploring how NYC grafitti and Gilbert Hernandez seek to DESTROY ALL LINES.
The third and final part of our round table on comics paratexts, looking at digital comics and representations of the digital in comics.
Part two of our round table on comics paratexts looks at ads, peritexts, and disruptive backmatter.
Part One in our three part roundtable on comics paratexts focuses on letter columns.
Steve Gerber’s final work on the first volume of Howard the Duck (for real this time!) feels like a losing gamble.
Guest writer Anna Peppard’s meditation on presence and absence of the Vision’s penis – and if it even matters.
BOOM! Studio’s Abbott and its illumination of whitestream culture in academia and journalism.
Batman: White Knight demonstrates the limitation of the white imaginary regarding a post-police society by simply not being be able to envision one.
In the 12th installment of our series of talks with comics scholars and teachers, we talk with Dr. Rebecca Wanzo, about her new book, the difference between caricature and stereotype, and not remembering a beginning of a political consciousness.
Examining Howard the Duck #28 – when a Wolfman writes a duck man and ends up with a bomb.
“Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn. . ” as we come to the final arc of the first volume of Howard the Duck to be penned by Steve Gerber.
Laura Grafton and Andew Deman examine the intersection of Harley Quinn’s three central relationships, with the Joker, Poison Ivy, and her audience.
When it is a surprise to the editor that both stories in a comic are written and drawn by women, it takes an engaged reader to consider the actual significance.
