In November of 2015, Marvel Studios joined forces with Netflix to release their second in a planned series of five 13-episode television series. The show, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, was to be based on the 2001-2004 comic book Alias, and it’s central character, Jessica Jones. Alias, written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Michael Gaydos and David Mack, was the first title… Read more →
I actually first discovered Fun Home last Spring, when a Broadway-obsessed friend showed me a clip from the Tony Awards in which cast members of the musical version of the book sang the song Ring of Keys, in which a young Allison Bechdel has a moment of self-discovery upon seeing a butch woman for the first time, desiring the freedom to act… Read more →
There are many kinds of monsters in the world. This much is clear in Image Comics’ Monstress #1, written by Marjorie Liu, and drawn by Sana Takeda, who both last teamed up in Marvel’s X-23. Of course, the presence of monsters in this book is a given, thanks to the name, but Liu works at a deeper truth to what it really… Read more →
From it’s first page, Akira is an intriguing, action-packed graphic novel that immediately draws the eye. The very first panel drops a bomb, literally, and along with it, pulls the reader to want to read on. For the first few pages, too, stunning coloring works alongside the plot and dialogue, attracting the reader visually just as much as with the… Read more →
At first glance, Pretty Deadly #1 is probably one of the more confusing comic books I’ve had the pleasure to read. Filled with many drastic scene changes, mysterious characters, and vivid coloring and imagery, there is clearly a lot going on on this first issue of Kelly Sue Deconnick and Emma Rios’ book. Much of what is going on too, is… Read more →
What is story telling? In Lynda Barry’s graphic novel What It Is, storytelling is chaos. It is imagination and creativity. It is images, and most evidently, it is memory. Barry’s book is split generally into two sections. The first contains much of her own stories and memories from childhood, interspersed with hundreds of images; the pages purposefully chaotic and all over… Read more →
A woman sits on a toilet, pants around her ankles, and her mind deluged with a mess of jumbled, paranoia-induced thoughts about her latest misadventures. Several issues earlier, the same woman sits passed out at a bar, a still-smoking cigarette in one hand, and a glass of half-drunk liquor sitting near the other. Between these instances are moments that include… Read more →
Within this original page of Alias #2, written by Brian Michael Bendis, drawn by Michael Gaydos, and produced by Marvel Comics, the central character, Jessica Jones, is panicking in reaction to something she has just seen, and accidently caught on tape. What she believes she was setup to have caught on tape is Captain America, without his identity hidden. Through… Read more →
In Will Eisner’s “The Super,” the titular character is fairly well fleshed out for a story that takes up all of about twenty-six pages in Eisner’s Contract with God. He’s not a particularly good or even nice landlord, and is often shown insulting his own tenants, and failing to complete his duties as landlord, drawn then as a rather gross,… Read more →
A self-proclaimed feminist comic, Kelly Sue Deconnick’s Bitch Planet began making waves from the release of its very first issue, with the cover sporting the question, “Are you woman enough to survive?” above the image of a woman with both middle fingers flung above her head. The new series, produced by Image Comics, manages both to reflect and criticize old prison exploitation films, all the… Read more →