‘The Thing That Makes Captain America Great’: On ‘Captain America Comics’ #1 (Part Two Of Two)

Continued and concluded from yesterday’s piece, which can be found here. 2. Worst of all, Robinson’s script displays a fatal misunderstanding of how Steve Rogers needs to be portrayed in the period prior to his transformation into Captain America. There are, after all, limits to how far a reinterpretation can go before it starts to […]

What Not To Do With Captain America’s Origin: On 2009’s ‘Captain America Comics’ #1. (Part One Of Two.)

James Robinson, Marcos Martin, Javier Rodriguez and Cory Petit’s What Makes The Man, from 2009’s Captain America Comics #1, is a fond and respectful tribute produced for the 70th anniversary of Marvel Comics’s precursor publisher, Timely. Fleshing out the period immediately prior to Steve Rogers’ transformation into Captain America, it strives to add to his […]

The Vikings Are Coming!: A Modest Gallery Of Comicbook Reimaginings Of Viking Age Culture.

Every week’s comics reading seems to bring its own unexpected theme. Recently, I’ve been repeatedly bumping into takes on Vikings in the stories I’ve been reading. None of them have lacked charm … 1. from 2012’s The Judas Coin by Walter Simonson with Lovern Kindzierski and John Workman. 2. from 1949’s Radio Fun Annual, creator/s […]

I’m Sorry That I Can’t Throw A Dinosaur For You: A Modest Gallery Of Comicbook Terrible Lizards

And so, to the first of what I imagine will be, over time, but the first of many galleries of comics pages featuring dinosaurs … 1. from 1978’s Devil Dinosaur, by Jack Kirby with Mike Royer and George Roussos. 2. from Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, from 1995’s The Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, […]

Secret Bases & Supposedly Secure HQs: A Modest Gallery Of The Out-Of-Sight Places Where Comics Characters Retreat To.

And so, with the new week thoroughly underway, might I present a modest and hopefully beguiling gallery of just a few of the kind of places where comics characters go to live and work? 1. from 2007’s X-Factor: Life & Death Matters HB, by Peter David, Dennis Calero, Cory Petit, Jose Villarrubia et al. 2. […]

A Few Thoughts On Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator.

By chance, I discovered that the second Hellboy story to appear in print, and the first that I ever saw, is now going for truly eye-watering amounts of money. A four-page black and white mini-comic that came with 1993’s Comics Buyer’s Guide #1070, it’s a slight and overly wordy tale that, for all the glee […]

On Jack Kirby In The Seventies.

A two-part essay I wrote for The Comics MNT about Jack Kirby’s work in the 70s has just been brought out from behind the sites’ Patreon paywall. I wrote it during the well-celebrated hundreth anniversary of Kirby’s birth last year, when it was heartening to see the media, mainstream as well as niche, paying respectful and […]