This story was created by Steve Englehart, Neal Adams, and Frank Brunner. They are three of the greatest names in comic-book history and we may have underestimated them. The story itself is seriously overlooked. Suspiciously so. By that I mean the story has not been reprinted as a trade, which is kind of odd. Makes […]
Author Archive | D. Jason Cooper
Lady Mechanika, An Appreciation
Lady Mechanika – Joe Benitez and MM Chen writing; Peter Steigerwald, Martin Montiel, and Joe Benitez art Steampunk is a strange genre. It is books, comic books, movies, television shows, cosplay, objects, music, and much else. To find an art genre which is also a movement you’d have to go to art deco in the […]
A Look Back at DAREDEVIL: YELLOW
Karen Page is dead. She became a heroin addict, a porn actress, was lied to to convince her she had AIDS, and was killed by Bullseye. Bullseye has not suffered enough for this. But though he lives, Karen Page does not. She has become a tragic figure and I don’t think her death has ever […]
Daredevil’s First Makeover
Every superhero changes over time. Things have to be retconned or just plain rewritten to present them to a new audience or just stop embarrassing yourself from what you did back then. Sometimes it’s a just a new writer with a new idea or just natural change because of the needs of story. We’ve gone […]
That Brand-New Black Magic
Black Magick is about to receive the highest accolade any comic book can receive: becoming a television show or movie. In this case, it’s a television show on cable or streaming and that makes sense. The writing is quality, the focus is on characters far more than on action, and things are restrained. By that […]
Marvel’s SON OF SATAN
When Marvel jumped into the Silver Age it was based on science: go into space, get super powers from cosmic rays; get caught in a gamma radiation bomb blast, get super powers; your dad get caught in an accident at a nuclear power plant, he’ll keep his hair and you’ll get super powers; evolution is […]
Suicide Squad and the Reviews
I have seen dogs re-eat stuff that had more brains than some of the reviews of Suicide Squad. Review after review trots out half-baked considerations of plot or expectation. They say where their expectations aren’t met but I don’t think they could explain why they weren’t met. For example, they missed the centerpiece of the […]
The Secrets of the Origins of Aquaman
Superheroes are often closely associated with their origins, even close to a century later. Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider, but when he got his powers he didn’t stop a criminal who later killed his uncle. Some 54 years later, he is still associated with that origin. Bruce Wayne sees his parents die, […]
Parallel Worlds
When I read some of the stories of alternate universes, from The Flash of Two Worlds to Crisis on Two Earths to Crisis on Infinite Earths to all the many, many others, I think of string theory. Strings are one dimensional and smaller than the quarks which make up subatomic particles. These strings still have […]
Mutants Didn’t Always Rule
In culture, comics, science fiction, and politics there has always a confusion between mutation and mutatis mutandis. A mutation is a random change of the genetic structure. Mutatis mutandis is Latin for “after the necessary modifications.” In the popular mindset evolution makes everything better and better .So it was that the first mutant superhero was […]
Silver Age Marvel
The Silver Age is remembered as a return of civilization following the Wertham-MSM-book burning Dark Ages. Like all turns in history there is truth in this and much more truth that gets away. In the Golden Age there were many comic book companies. All American, DC, EC, Timely, Centaur, MLJ, Quality, Fox Feature Syndicates, Fawcett, […]
Krazy Kat and Plastic Man
Comic books started with comedy, and have returned to it in its down periods ever since. Originally, comic books reprinted newspaper comic strips. This is where we get the ‘comic’ in comic books. Superheroes and drama took over – mostly. There were still comic sidekicks almost none of whom are ever remembered by anyone except […]
On a Cold Dark Year
It was cold. But that was not the heart of it. It was cold that lay around the heart of it. There had been a series of volcanic eruptions, but the big one occurred in the year that Napoleon was defeated. Mt. Tambora in Indonesia exploded in one of the most massive volcanic eruptions since […]