Days of Future Then: Reflections on X-Men Comics & “Days of Future Past” (Part One of Two)

This is Part One of a two-part series of posts on the classic X-Men comics arc, “Days of Future Past,” which originally appeared in X-Men issues #141 and #142.

Reviews in Brief (4/16 to 5/14 – 2014)

XX-Men: The Failures of Brian Wood’s All-Woman X-Team

X-Men’s record of including women is still only good in relation to the rest of superhero comics.

Reviews in Brief (3/19 to 4/09 – 2014)

Reviews in Brief (3/12/2014)

Reviews in Brief (2/12/2014)

Brief reviews of: Hawkeye #16 | Ms. Marvel #1 | She-Hulk #1 | Superior Spider-Man #26 | Thor, God of Thunder #18

“Let’s Rewrite Some History”: Captain Marvel & Feminist Revisionism

The first major story arc in DeConnick’s series is an attempt to write Ms./Captain Marvel into a revisionist feminist text – a laudable attempt to make manifest the purported feminist subtext of the character.

On the Interpretation of Mind MGMT

Matt Kindt’s Mind MGMT unfolds like a dream, but what do dreams mean, if anything?

Oglaf: Sexual Phantasmagoria (NSFW)

The shock of the queer in Oglaf undermines a genre where uber-masculine hyper-hetero adventures are the norm.

Robert Mayer’s Superfolks: Grist For The Mill

A resource that better writers can mine to develop something more sophisticated.

Dan Slott’s She-Hulk: Derivative Character as Meta-Comic

At the heart of Dan Slott’s run on She-Hulk is a alternately critical and nostalgic concern with continuity and rupture in serialized superhero comic books.

Titans Together! Superhero Sidekicks & The Anxiety of Influence

Understanding of the anxiety of influence is required in order to really understand sidekick superhero comics.

Black Lightning Always Strikes Twice! – Double-Consciousness as a Super-Power.

Jefferson Pierce’s “blackness” is explored in relation to his superheroic identity, but doesn’t get anywhere.

“Invisible (Watch)Men: The Impossibility of the Black Superhero”

Miles Morales or Trayvon Martin are more likely to be victim of a “heroic” vigilante than to be one.

Fantastic: From the First, No Family is “Traditional”

The very idea of a traditional family is a delusion.

Do-Or-Die Hawkeye. . . Erm. . . Bed-Stuy

Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye takes place in Bed-Stuy, but where are the black people?

“I AM A MAN!” Machine Man, Robot Desire and Racial Assimilation

The generic “human” these robots want to be is a white human.

Black Goliath: “Some Black Super Dude”

Black Goliath is a title that never got a chance to really develop and it suffers from the problems of a lot of early attempts to bring ethnic characters into the limelight.