Retuning Nostalgia: Anti-Black Racism and the Cultural Politics of Country Music

Nicholas Miller returns with an essay on whiteness, country music nostalgia, and charting a new course to re-imagine the past and the future.

“Say It Loud!” Tyroc and the Trajectory of the Black Superhero (part 2)

Part Two of using DC’s Tyroc to consider the arc of the Black superhero.

“Say It Loud!” Tyroc and the Trajectory of the Black Superhero (part 1)

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.

“Burn His Words”: Abbott and the Illumination of Whitestream Culture

BOOM! Studio’s Abbott and its illumination of whitestream culture in academia and journalism.

Don’t Wait for a White Knight to Abolish the Police

Batman: White Knight demonstrates the limitation of the white imaginary regarding a post-police society by simply not being be able to envision one.

The (re)Collection Agency #12: A Conversation with Rebecca Wanzo

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.

Unstable Masks; Or, The Whiteness of the Superhero (a preview)

A guest post in the form of a preview of the forthcoming anthology, Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics.

The Hidden Fortress: No Ivy League and Legacies of Whiteness

Interrogating the complex legacies of racial injustice in Hazel Newlevant’s No Ivy League and Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude.

On Exoskeletons and Assimilation: Revisiting the Latinidad of Marvel’s Araña

Considering the role of Latinidad in Araña’s comics despite a decreasing representation of of its so-called “authentic” markers.

Epic Disasters: Revisiting Marvel & DC’s 1980s Famine Relief Comics

How well do Marvel and DC’s 1985 comics meant to raise aid for famine relief in Africa tackle the tragic events they are addressing? Short answer? Not well.

WAUGH and On and On #1: Neither Fish Nor Fowl

A return to Howard the Duck after a nearly three-year hiatus from the If It WAUGHs Like a Duck series. . .

Kept in a Jar: Broomhilda and the Representation of Enslaved Women in Reginald Hudlin’s Django Unchained

Does the 2013 comic adaptation of Django Unchained’s inclusion of an unfilmed sequence provide insight into the figure of the black woman slave?

Digging Up Ghosts: Teen Titans’ Mal Duncan & His Token Power

Using Teen Titans #41 to think through token characters and slavery as a narrative trope.

“Am I Black Enough For You?” The Respectability of CW’s Black Lightning

The CW’s Black Lighting represents the split between Black respectability and radical politics in a singular figure.

Bound By Law: Bitch Planet Comics Studies Round Table (part two)

Part Two in a scholarly round table examining Kelly Sue DeConnik and Valentine De Landro’s Bitch Planet.

Jack-in-the-Box: Race & Legacy Superheroes

Exploring the intersection of legacy and race in superhero comics through Kurt Busiek’s Astro City

Striking Back: Black Lightning and Reading Race (part two)

When Black Lightning rejects the Justice League he is rejecting white supremacy.

Striking Back: Black Lightning and Reading Race (part one)

The clumsy way superhero comic books of the post-Civil Rights 1970s explicitly address race can provide a site for imagining productive racial consciousness for black characters, while also highlighting the limits of that kind of resistant reading.

The Private “I”: Identity in the Post-Internet Age

The social nature of personal identity in Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin’s The Private Eye.

The Tangled Web of Racial and Gender Progress in Comics

Even comics that are not particularly “important” can tell us a lot about the attitudes acceptable in the editorial environments in which they were developed

The Captain Black America Needs

Leveraging Marvel’s underwhelming Civil War II to think about Black lives in the Marvel Universe.