Seeing Sounds / Hearing Pictures – A Round Table on Sound & Comics (part one)

Part One of a scholarly round table exploring the intersection of sound and comics.

Despite the Genocide: Deconstructed Masculinity and Thanos Fandom

Critiquing Thanos and the limits of deconstruction.

The (re)Collection Agency #11: A Conversation with Marc Singer

In the 11th installment of our series of talks with comics scholars and teachers, we talk with Dr. Marc Singer about his new book Breaking the Frames, the state of comics studies, and which is worse, recommending someone watch Aquaman or read Kingdom Come.

Where Everybody Knows You’re Men: NBC’s Cheers & White American Masculinity

When manhood and nation are synonymous women just become a way for men measure patriotism.

Closing the Comics-Gate: On Recognizing the Politics of Comics

Comicsgaters are wrong because comics have always been political, but those politics weren’t always as great as they are sometimes made out to be by comics’ defenders.

Brief Comic Book Reviews (Dec 19, 2018 to Jan 16, 2019)

Brief review of comics released between (mostly) December 19, 2018 to January 16 – including Runaways #16, Bitter Root #3, and Fantastic Four #5.

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?

“I AM (not) FROM BEYOND!” – Situating Scholarship & the Writing “I”

Our 2018 Year-End Meta Post considers the role of the personal – both identificatory perception and the labor of writing itself – in scholarship.

Guess Who’s Coming Home for the Holidays: Intergenerational Conflict in Bitch Planet

Everyone’s Grandma is a Little Bit Feminist” from Bitch Planet: Triple Feature #5 asks us to imagine what makes an older relative inappropriate in a dystopic society.

The (re)Collection Agency #10: A Conversation with Margaret Galvan

In the 10th installment of our series of talks with comics scholars and teachers, we talk to Dr. Margaret Galvan about comics archives, keeping a spreadsheet of a comics collection, and the importance of research into grassroots periodicals in the study of queer comics.

YA = Young Avengers: Asserting Maturity on the Threshold of Adulthood

Young Avengers provides a fun and thoughtful exploration of the contradictions inherent to the transformation from adolescence to adulthood.

Brief Comic Book Reviews (August 22 to Sept 5, 2018)

Brief reviews of recent comics released August 22 to September 5, 2018; including Border Town #1, Black Hammer: Age of Doom #4, and Paper Girls #24.

Alpha & Omega #11: An Evolutionary Dead-End

The final installment of our reading series examining both version of Omega the Unknown, this time examining The Defenders #76 and #77, in which the original series was wrapped up after being cancelled.

Mind the Gaps 2018! The First Annual CSS Conference

An overview of Mind the Gaps 2018 – the first annual conference of the Comics Studies Society.

The (re)Collection Agency #9: A Conversation with Michael Sharp

In the 9th installment of our series of talks with comics scholars and teachers, we talk to Dr. Michael Sharp about what crossword puzzles and comic strips have in common, being a late comer to Marvel Comics, and the 1980s through the prism of Bloom County.