Mar 27
Captain Marvel, now riding high at the box office, debuted under the name of Ms. Marvel in 1977 as a spinoff of Spider-man. Maryjane is worshipful, Peter Parker dubious, and J. Jonah Jameson chomping at the bit at her arrival. How about some other superheroines courtesy of random generation…? Superheroines. Swamp Nymph Scarlet Stalker Ms. …
Mar 12
Tales from La Vida: A LatinX Comics Anthology Edited by Frederick Luis Aldama Mad Creek Books, an imprint of Ohio State University Press, 2018 [EXTRA CREDIT: A book about a person of color (PoC), any variety, written by an author of the same variety] I’m tacking on this book as extra credit to the above …
Oct 31
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie Little, Brown & Co., 2017 (10th Anniversary Edition) [Challenge # 5: A book by a local author.] The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a semi-mythic coming of age story of a Native American boy’s freshman year. Arnold Spirit Jr. lives on …
Oct 03
If you’re from Western Europe, you will know who these characters are. If you aren’t, know that they are Asterix the plucky Gaul, his big pal Obelix, and their pet dog Dogmatix, creations of French comic writer and artist René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. They are the equivalent of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in …
Sep 30
Women-as-dragon, as a concept, has been around since ancient times. In Greek myth creatures like Scylla, Echidna, and Medusa had monstrous or dragon-like aspects, as did Grendel’s mom from Beowulf. Norse myth spoke of the dragon Nidhogg that gnawed at the roots of the World Tree Yggdrasil. And of course, there’s Lilith and Tanit/Inanana/Ishtar. They …
Sep 29
Portrayals of women with dragons continued to rise throughout the 1970s, boosted by the rising genre of adult comics, forerunners to today’s graphic novels. The French magazine Metal Hurlant (Howling Metal) showcased many of these new artists like Caza, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Moebius, who later went on to design book covers and movie and TV …
Sep 28
Before the printing press and paper production on an industrial scale, there were very few mass-produced dragon depictions in popular culture. Most of the ones I referenced in Parts I and II of this series were oil paintings intended for the nobility or wealthy merchants, or in illuminated manuscripts for the Church. The majority of …
Apr 18
Thor looks disgruntled here (or maybe pleased? It’s hard to tell) but many other superheroes would be happy to take a break from their regular rounds of protecting the innocent. Maybe even some of these randomly generated ones. (Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes remains the best introduction I’ve read to the history of …
