Blog Archives
sTHE FANTASY AND FURRY-IOUS: Xanadu, the comic book series Back in the long ago days of the late 1980s, a black-and-white comic book series appeared on comic shop shelves. Xanadu, written and illustrated by Vicky Wyman, was a cross between Rafael Sabatini-type adventure and romance and Ray Harryhausen-style fantasy and magic. The plot was both […]
Modern Comics: Misery-Inducing Piles of Grimness and Suck
Monday , 24, April 2017 Comics 17 CommentsWhy is it modern comics suck so badly? It didn’t used to be this way. I recently had cause to read several issues of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man from 1983, and they were AWESOME. Sure there were WAY cheesy things happening—a girl with a secret crush on Peter discovered he’s Spider-Man, Black Cat (his current […]
Valerian and Laureline: Ghosts and Wrath
Thursday , 20, April 2017 Book Review, Comics, Fiction 5 CommentsLast month’s review of Ambassador of the Shadows introduced the BD comic of Valerian and Laureline, a legendary science fiction adventure with a forty-five year run. Influencing visual science fiction such as Star Wars, The Fifth Element, and various anime, in summer 2017, this classic tale will arrive on the silver screen in Valerian and the […]
Note: This is an article I originally wrote for the Superversive blog way back in 2015; naturally nobody noticed. With the discussion about comics starting up again I thought it would be timely to bring it back. As I’ve made clear in the past, I’m a big fan of Netflix’s Daredevil, despite having never seen […]
Valerian and Laureline: Ambassador of the Shadows
Thursday , 23, March 2017 Comics, Fiction 12 CommentsIn the 1960s, while working in America, writer Pierre Christin and illustrator Jean-Claude Mézières met to collaborate on their next bande dessinée (BD) comic serial. Both men originally wanted to draw a Western, but the market in France had already been saturated with such stories. Instead, they turned to their other great American literary love, science fiction, […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: The Autumnlands Vol. 2 by Kurt Busiek
Thursday , 16, March 2017 Comics 8 CommentsWhy should you be reading The Autumnlands? For one, the art is gorgeous. I’ve got copies of the new Darth Vader comics, Ms. Marvel, Rat Queens, Saga, The Walking Dead sitting on my bookshelf. Only Saga has artwork that even comes close to that in The Autumnlands. It’s detailed, beautifully drawn, wildly inventive, and richly […]
The Dragon Awards: Fan Driven, Open Voting
Thursday , 7, April 2016 Comics, Fiction, Games, Uncategorized 6 CommentsDragonCon 2016 has launched a new award and invites all fans everywhere to participate: Welcome to the first annual Dragon Awards! As a part of our 30th Anniversary as the nation’s largest fan run convention, we are introducing a new way to recognize excellence in all things Science Fiction and Fantasy. These awards will be […]
Following comic books in the mid-eighties was tough for a kid. You had the choice between picking up slightly bent up copies from gas station spinner racks or else dropping a chunk of allowance money upfront so that the mailman could mangle them month to month. (And yeah, this was hard to bear either way, […]
GUEST POST: How Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller Ruined Comics by Jon Del Arroz
Tuesday , 4, April 2017 Jeffro Comics, Comment 66 CommentsJust as Science Fiction and Fantasy underwent fundamental transformations in the 1980s and beyond, the comic industry also pushed itself further and further into niche territory. It’s gone from books selling in the millions of copies to a new normal where now a few thousand people read a book. The gatekeepers of comicdom blame the […]