| Book Review -- "It Is The Bad Time," Edited By Kazimir Lee Iskander |
2016 |
593 |
Bad Time focuses on horror, specifically the aim to cultivate a sense of dread in the cartoonists themselves. Again, Iskander from the book’s foreword: “My mission statement was simple—every artist involved should write a comic that would contain at ... |
| Book Review -- “Pascal Girard’s Petty Theft.” |
2014 |
766 |
A key to unlocking Pascal Girard’s Petty Theft is the book’s French title, La Collectionneuse (“The Collector”), a title shared with a 1967 film by New Wave auteur Eric Rohmer. Girard may have borrowed this title as a way of announcing a creative deb... |
| Book Review -- "Paul Joins The Scouts" |
2013 |
1810 |
If you’ve enjoyed any (or all) of Michel Rabagliati’s previous graphic novels, you’ll love Paul Joins the Scouts, a French-to-English translation of Rabagliati’s Paul au Parc (2011) recently released by Conundrum Press. Scouts is also a fine introduc... |
| Book Review -- "Treasure Island: Part I" |
2014 |
897 |
Book review of Connor Willumsen's Treasure Island: Part I. |
| Book Reviews -- "Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin" By Pierre Assouline. "God Of Comics: Osamu Tezuka And The Creation Of Post–World War II Manga" By Natsu Onoda Power. "Looking For Calvin And Hobbes: The Unconventional Story Of Bill Watterson And His Revolutionary Comic Strip" By Nevin Martell. |
2010 |
663 |
Three recent books—Pierre Assouline's Hergé, Natsu Onoda Power's God of Comics and Nevin Martell's Looking for Calvin and Hobbes—aspire to be comprehensive, accessible biographies/critical studies of their subjects, though these books vary widely in ... |
| Column -- "The Ballad Of Axe-Faced Anne: Comics, Criticism, Contexts" (Part One) |
2012 |
549 |
Reading a comic book once made me sick. Like other Baby Boomer kids, I fell in love with Silver Age Marvel Comics, especially the Kirby/Lee/Sinnott Fantastic Four. I was imprinted by Lee’s narrative voice (simultaneously melodramatic and folksy) and ... |
| Column -- "The Ballad Of Axe-Faced Anne: Comics, Criticism, Contexts" (Part Two) |
2012 |
434 |
Reading a comic book once made me sick. Like other Baby Boomer kids, I fell in love with Silver Age Marvel Comics, especially the Kirby/Lee/Sinnott Fantastic Four. I was imprinted by Lee’s narrative voice (simultaneously melodramatic and folksy) and ... |
| Column -- "Devils And Machines: On Jonah Hex And All Star Western" |
2012 |
560 |
My complaint here is that Hex’s idiosyncratic qualities, including the series’ ambiguous, Western-style protagonist, and its focus on the ethics of torture, have been paved over by All Star Western’s pandering to the market. An unexpectedly lively co... |
| Column -- "Kirby: Attention Paid" |
2011 |
499 |
Last month, I wrote that my “Monsters Eat Critics” column would focus on genres other than superhero comics, and this month my topic is (cue trumpets) Jack Kirby’s Silver Age Marvel art. But I can’t help myself. I love the detail in Jack Kirby’s art.... |
| Column -- “My Back Pages" |
2013 |
593 |
Column/Essay |
| Column -- "My Friend Dave" |
2013 |
1260 |
Column published in The Comics Journal |
| Column -- "Night And Day: Notes On Building Stories" |
2016 |
420 |
Building Stories? Take your time, and read it carefully. An obvious quality of the book/box is how its narrative spreads across its fourteen different pamphlets, posters and books, forcing the reader to choose where to begin and how to progress. Ware... |
| Column -- "One Life, Many Books: Michel Rabagliati’s Paul" |
2013 |
738 |
I read Paul in the Country (2000), Paul Has a Summer Job (2002), Paul Moves Out (2005), Paul Goes Fishing (2008) and The Song of Roland (2012), and enjoyed them all, but I couldn’t shake my suspicion that Rabagliati’s art was too emotionally and visu... |
| Column -- "Pluto And Doubling" |
2011 |
556 |
Welcome to the first installment of “Monsters Eat Critics,” a monthly column I’ll be writing for TCJ.com. I hope that “Monsters Eat Critics” sounds like the title of a Z-grade science-fiction movie, because I plan to write about genre comics, includi... |
| “Hawkeye Supercut." |
2015 |
1451 |
Read and appreciated by a horde of fans before me, Hawkeye—written by Matt Fraction and often drawn by David Aja—is worth our attention. Marvel released Hawkeye #1 in October 2012, and to date 21 issues have appeared, with most of these collected int... |
| The Lives Of Insects: On Photography And Comics |
2012 |
728 |
Feature Essay |
| “A Mad Look At Toes: A Tribute To Al Feldstein.” (Part Of A Celebration Of Mad Editor Feldstein) |
2014 |
946 |
I’m bugged by much of the mainstream media attention given to Al Feldstein’s passing, because it feels less about the editor himself than about websites providing Boomers with yet another opportunity to wax nostalgic: “Mad’s editor died? Too bad. Hey... |
| Providence: Lovecraft, Sexual Violence, And The Body Of The Other |
2016 |
6470 |
The subject of this essay is the first six issues of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ Providence, but let me begin with an apology. In Comics Journal #278 (October 2006), I wrote a negative review of Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost Girls, arguing that M... |
| Spain Rodriguez: Tributes |
2012 |
662 |
A tribute to the comic book artist Spain Rodriguez. Contributors include Craig Fischer. (Part of a celebration of underground cartoonist Spain.) |
| Teeth, Sticks, and Bricks: Calligraphy, Graphic Focalization, and Narrative Braiding in Eddie Campbell’s Alec |
2011 |
1766 |
No Abstract |
| Tributes To Richard Thompson |
2016 |
789 |
A celebration of newspaper cartoonist Richard Thompson. |
| Worlds Within Worlds: Audiences, Jargon, And North American Comics Discourse |
2010 |
1124 |
Let me begin by describing four recent acts of comics criticism, all connected to each other like dominoes falling: 1 English translation of Le Piège diabolique (Paris: Lombard-Dargaud, 1962) published in the U.S. by (...)2The first act: In 2007, ... |