In 2004, Ed Brubaker began a critically acclaimed run as writer of Captain America. There’s a reason it was critically acclaimed – it was fantastic on pretty much every imaginable front. It took the best of the spy genre, infused it with noir and sci-fi, and pretty much redefined both the title and the eponymous […]
I didn’t read the Hurricane Sandy issue of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye (#7) until last month, almost a year and a half after the actual storm. I’m living in California now, but when Sandy hit, I was shacked up in New York. Long Island, actually. My living situation was strange – I was […]
Every great superhero has a nemesis. Batman has the Joker, Superman has Lex, Iron Man has the Mandarin, Spidey has Green Goblin (and, like, three other arch-nemeses, because f@#$ Spidey, right?), and so on. These villains have risen above the rest of the ne’er-do-wells to provide a real and ongoing challenge for the heroes we […]
Even though Hawkeye has had the staying power to last in the Marvel universe for about 50 years, it seems his appearances in recent Marvel films have made him more popular than ever. Clint Barton hasn’t had a ton of screen time, but somehow Jeremy Renner made the character resonate with fans. Maybe it’s his […]
Marvel is putting out some damn good comics. That’s been the case pretty much always, I think, but the House of Ideas seems to be on a winning streak that doesn’t end. Brian Michael Bendis is soaring high on Guardians of the Galaxy and his X-Men titles, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are pretty much […]
So you want to be Hawkeye. You want to take a bow and arrows and fight crime. Fair enough. But is it really possible? And if it’s possible, can you afford it? Being Hawkeye might not be as expensive as being Batman or Iron Man, but it’s not cheap. Let’s assume you have the fitness, […]
I know I’m not alone here when I say that I’ve seen Marvel’s The Avengers about twenty-seven times. Joss Whedon is my favorite writer, the Marvel Studios flicks are my favorite superhero films, and each of these actors seems veritably born to play their respective roles. The film – and those leading up to it […]
When I think of families in comic books, the word that comes to mind first is tragedy. I don’t turn to comics to get feel-good stories about relatives. That’s not to say they don’t exist or to say it’s the way it should be, but so many heroes have devastating backstories involving their parents’ death! […]
When comic books began, they were for children at home and soldiers at the front. For the first group they were aspirational, for the second group they were escape. As such the center of the stories was a young man free to act. Family was restricted to wards who were partners to the hero (Robin, […]
Jimmy Olsen is not your average hero. He’s a dorky, bowtie-wearing, camera-toting, “super-duper”-saying, down-on-his-luck ginger. (It’s cool, I can say it – Jimbo and I are pals in our gingerness.) He’s most often referred to as a step below a sidekick – he’s not Superman’s crime fighting second-in-command. He’s the guy’s pal. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy […]
That. Right there. That is one of my favorite comics of all time. It’s written and drawn and colored (and maybe even lettered?) by the legendary Adam Hughes. It showed up in the landmark seventy-fifty issue of SUPERMAN/BATMAN back in ye olde pre-New 52 days of August 2010. But we’ll get to all that. First, […]
Family is a fluid term. The most obvious way to define who is a family member is determining whether you have blood and genes in common. But, your partners count as family and so can your friends. Some families have two parents, some families have children, some don’t. The Endless don’t fit into the average […]
We have all seen the discomfort comic book editors have with family. Spider-Man never was married after Joe Quesada did a deal with Mephisto and blamed Peter Parker for it. He said it was difficult to write good stories with a married Spider-Man. So having to beat the villain in time to do something for […]
