What do I love about Captain America? For one, he is a moral compass whose virtue extends beyond the confines of his book. Like all boy scout heroes, one can usually find their way if they’re willing to ask themselves, “What would Steve Rogers do?” It may seem a little naïve and childish, but having […]
Author Archive | Doug Saribay
Remembering Stan
“It’s hard to believe that one vengeance-crazed man has trapped both the Spider-Friends and the X-Men! But he’s more than a man. He’s part robot, part living computer, and his mad scheme of revenge threatens to destroy the entire X-Men mansion, and everyone inside!” That is the voiceover narration from season 3, episode 7 of […]
The One(s) Where Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel Dated
Spider-Man has some of the most infamously bad romantic luck of any character in fiction. His love interests have, to name a few, been thrown off bridges, been on-again-off-again supervillainesses, and been retconned out of a successful marriage (still pretty bitter about that one.) But one that often gets overlooked is the extremely brief fling […]
Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Politics of Super-Heroes
Black Panther is an interesting hero. He is an official card-carrying member of the Avengers, but his primary loyalty lies with his own country, Wakanda. In addition to patriotism, it comes from a higher calling as king of his country. Wakanda has long abided by a policy of isolationism, choosing to hide away and keep […]
An Extraordinarily Human Life
When I was little, I would ask my mom to safety pin a towel around my neck and I would run around the house talking in a voice that was somewhere between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Christian Bale’s Batman. I wrote the longest essay in class when my 2nd grade teacher asked us to write about […]
Face it Tiger, The Old Rules Don’t Fly Anymore – Looking at RENEW YOUR VOWS
As a kid growing up in the ‘90s, Mary Jane Watson was the only girl for Spider-Man. My main source of exposure, Fox’s animated “Spider-Man” cartoon show, didn’t even mention Gwen Stacy or Betty Brant. To me, Peter and MJ were as indisputable as Clark Kent and Lois Lane. They were supposed to end up […]
Looking at “A League of One”
I have a confession to make. I didn’t know anything about Wonder Woman for a long time into my time reading comics. I knew her by sight, sure. It’s hard not to; she’s one of the most iconic and referenced characters in pop culture. Eventually, there came a point where I felt like it was […]
Going Cosmic
Once upon a time, a curious me wanted to catch up on Avengers history. Through some digging, I found a name that kept popping up on the top 5 greatest Avengers stories of all time: The Korvac Saga. So I found myself a trade copy and decided to see what all the hubbub was about. […]
In Defense of Iron Fist (Or, Why Is Iron Fist Cool?)
I am not white. I grew up in a predominantly white community in San Francisco’s East Bay. If you’re familiar with the East Bay, you know how many places that applies to. Even in lieu of the handful of other people in school who shared my ethnicity, their interests diverged from my own, and so […]