Archive | Guest Columns

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Kirby’s Significant Other

Jack Kirby did everything in comics, staying with comics in its darkest days and brightest nights. He covered every genre, including romance, which he co-invented. He developed new comics techniques like the Kirby krackle and the use of photo collage. He created a dynamism to characters that was later called the Marvel style. Jack Kirby […]

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Jack Kirby and The Kid, Part II

  In 1953, Atlas tried to revive Captain America and Bucky. It didn’t work, and it annoyed Simon and Kirby because they thought it infringed on their work on Captain America. So they went out to outdo Atlas’ version. What they came up with was Fighting American and Speedboy. Initially, Fighting American fought Communists the […]

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Jack Kirby and The Kid

  Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko are the comic-book artists best known for “other” worlds. But where Steve Ditko’s “other” was strange (pun intended), Kirby’s was overwhelming. Ditko’s Eternity was ethereal, literally a doorway in humanoid form. By contrast, Kirby’s Galactus is overwhelming, almost a burden on the page. But Kirby had a polar opposite […]

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The Long Shadow of Jack Kirby

When I first tread into the world of big two superhero comics, I had plenty to wrap my head around. Time lines, crossover events, reboots, 5,000 different Batman stories, decades of history. Comic books are intense and a touch intimidating in that way. But that wasn’t all. It absolutely blew my mind – and still […]

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Beta Ray Bill – I’m a Fan

When I told friends I needed to read Thor stories this month for research purposes, they started throwing names of issues and creators at me with enthusiasm. Thor’s a popular guy/god/hero. In the flurry, one story was almost universally recommended: Beta Ray Bill’s first appearance. I’m not one to write off popular opinion but there’s […]

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Asgard, Oklahoma

  …Asgard, Oklahoma. (Just giving folks unfamiliar with J. Michael Straczynski’s Thor run a moment to process that. We good? We’re good.) It’s one of those ideas where you have to wonder what the writer was thinking. It’s one of those ideas that shouldn’t work – the kind that can’t work, that fans will detest, […]

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Thor and the Mighty Thor

In Melbourne there was a nursing home which was the premier residence for holocaust survivors. The home understood their issues, these people who feared their nightmares: not the ones they had but the ones they had lived through. They feared the sound of train whistles and as dementia took some of them, they feared the […]

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Meet Loki

Loki, the wicked black sheep of Asgard, is the adopted brother and archenemy of the Norse god, Thor. He’s known as the “God of Lies and Mischief,” and he revels in spreading chaos and upsetting the plans of his fellow noble immortals—as well as finding schemes and ploys to tout his intelligence and wit in […]

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The Women of Thor: The Dark World

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following piece contains a couple of references to events in THOR: THE DARK WORLD that you owe it to yourself to experience without knowledge aforethought, so if you haven’t seen the film yet but you intend to, just bookmark this piece and come back after you’ve watched it. Here endeth the lesson. […]

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THOR Is the Best Marvel Movie

  I mean, besides The Avengers, of course. Let’s not get crazy. I remember going into Thor fully prepared to hate it. I didn’t want to, as some of my favorite comics take place in either Asgard or Asgard, Oklahoma, but there were just so many things that could have gone wrong. The Marvel Cinematic […]

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The Top 10 Magicians in Comics

  Not all comic-book superheroes derive their powers from radiation, toxic spider bites or mutated DNA strands—some are legitimately magical. Now, when I refer to magic, I don’t mean your standard pull-a-rabbit-out-of-a-hat-at-a-birthday-party magic, I’m talking otherworldly hocus-pocus. The kind that involves cheating death by joining your soul with Cthulhu’s next of kin. Challenging mythical creatures […]

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Welcoming the Future, Treasuring the Past.