Stephanie Brown. If you’ve been a reader of DC comics in the past few years, that is not a name that will leave you feeling neutral. Folks tend to get pretty heated when the blonde Batgirl comes up. That’s not uncommon among the fanbases of the other characters that have been left by the wayside […]
Archive | Guest Columns
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Thor: The Dark World – A Spoiler-Free Review
Thor: The Dark World tore up the box office last weekend and with good reason. It was a fantastic follow up to Thor with just a few weak points. I can’t speak to how true it was to the comics and whether it was a solid superhero movie in that regard, but I can say […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]