I have a bad habit of buying #1s of all of the series I’m interested in, and then either letting the single issues stack up or buying the trade when that drops. In Binge-Reading, an ongoing series of articles I do for Blastoff, I catch up on everything I’ve been missing since falling off the […]
This past October, I posted “Why comics?” on my social media accounts. I kept it vague, because I wanted answers from everyone. Folks who write them, draw them, read them, put them in between slabs and mount them on a wall. I wanted to know why, of all media, of all artforms, why comics had […]
It was on Blastoff Comics’ Scott Tipton’s recommendation that I pick up Grant Morrison’s seminal run on Animal Man. It’s a heavy undertaking, with 26 issues collected in three fat trade paperbacks, but with recommendations like Starman, Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., and a whole lot more great comics under his belt, Scott’s suggestions have always been […]
When it was announced that Gerard Way was heading up an imprint of comics over at DC called Young Animal (“comics for dangerous humans!”), I felt two major parts of my life colliding. There’s the now, where I’m excited to hear about great creators using their platforms to do new things in comics. And then… […]
Here we go with another installment of Marvel First! This time, we’re checked in with everyone’s favorite monster… Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk himself. This series in which the Hulk debuted, The Incredible Hulk, was published in 1962. Like all of the big Marvel #1s that we’ve looked at so far, this one was written […]
I was tempted to break away from the rules of my Marvel Firsts series to instead revisit the Spider-Man’s first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, which, while isn’t a #1 of course, features the debut of Marvel’s iconic web-slinger. But since I’ve already read Amazing Fantasy and not the first issue of the first series […]
This month, I’ve been revisiting my favorite comics to rediscover the reasons I fell in love with them to begin with. First up was Angel: After the Fall, then Y: The Last Man. My plan was to do the same for Craig Thompson’s graphic novel/kinda-memoir Blankets, but when I began to think more and more […]
Last time, I revisited Angel: After the Fall, which was the first time a monthly comic showed me the limitless opportunity for inventive storytelling in the medium, which was, at the time, new to me. My affection for that title, as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight which was being published by Dark […]
I can’t believe it was almost a decade ago. In early 2007, I went to Borders in search of some Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel books. I had recently (finally!) acquired both series on DVD and was fresh off of the first full re-watch I had since the respective finales a few years prior. […]
iZombie was the first modern Vertigo comic I loved. I remember when it first came out, and I saw that gorgeous Michael Allred cover staring at me from the shelves in the very back of Borders. I was working at Borders at the time as an employee, trying desperately to get a job writing comics. […]
This morning, I finished reading Rachel Rising. I’ve spent this day – one of the coldest so far since summer gave way to autumn – thinking about Terry Moore’s latest opus, and how much I’ll miss reading new stories about its characters. The Shadow of Death. Fear No Malus. Cemetery Songs. Winter Graves. Night Cometh. […]
There’s nothing quiet like filling October with horror movies and comics, is there? This month, as we count down to Halloween, I am tackling creator-owned comics that focus on monsters. From reinventions of classics to entirely new takes, we’re covering four tales of supernatural creatures by some of the most daring comics creators in the […]
Recently, I’ve had a bad habit of buying #1s of all of the series I’m interested in, and then either letting the single issues stack up or buying the trade when that drops. In Binge-Reading, I’ll catch up on everything I’ve been missing since falling off the monthly train. Last time, I caught up on […]
