Year-End Meta 2020: Additions, Corrections, Updates & Announcements

Cleaning up loose ends from the last year and making some announcements about the next.

“On the Edge of Greatness”: First Ones’ Tech and the Non-Binary Politics of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

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.

“Jimmy Olsen—SUPER Freak!” – Disability and Superman’s Pal

How the limitations of Jimmy Olsen’s transformations limn the dynamics of superhuman embodiment.

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.

Colonial Hottie: Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman and Brand Israel

A crucial interrogation of how Gal Gadot’s Israeli identity and IDF experience are used to sell her authenticity in the role of Wonder Woman.

The International Comics Art Forum 2017

An overview of the 2017 International Comics Art Forum conference in Seattle, WA.

The (re)Collection Agency #5: A Conversation with Andréa Gilroy

The fifth in our conversations with comics scholars. This time with Dr. Andrea Gilroy, discussing how the tensions between image and text in comics reflect the messiness of identity, and how Ninja Turles and picture bibles might lead to being a comics scholar.

Girl, You’ll Be an Invisible Woman Soon: Defining Serial Characters

Thinking through how readers conceptualize a character and the degree to which such a characterization can be independent of how the character acts in the actual stories she appears in.

“Lo, There Shall Be An Ending:” Meditations on the End of the Fantastic Four

Marvel Comics hasn’t published a Fantastic Four title in over a year, and its absence marks a serious lack of imagination.

Marvel Five-in-One: Prominent, Notorious and Invisible Black Lives of the Marvel Universe

Exploring the limits of diversity in a white supremacist framework through a five-in-one look at 1978’s Marvel Two-in-One.

“Yo Soy Yancy Street!” El Thing About Place & Identity

A recent Marvel story connecting Groot to Puerto Rican culture via a visit with the Thing to Marvel’s Lower East Side analog, Yancy Street got me thinking about place and identity.