Now that the DC cinematic universe is fully committed to nose-diving straight into the ground, with rumours of Ben Affleck itching to abandon the world of Batman and Mel "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" GIbson being courted to direct Suicide Squad 2, we take a look at a safe space for beleaguered fans of the caped crusader and his heroic chums.
On this week's Sight Unsound: Superman is the hero we really deserve, not some fascist, borderline psychotic billionaire in a bat costume.
Suicide Squad will age as well as a rotting corpse would in the sun. It makes Batman v Superman looks like a modern masterpiece.
In one of Marvel’s boldest and most shameless attempts to completely take control of my bank account and various financial assets, the venerable comic… hmm, think of something bigger and more world-conquering than a behemoth… oh I know… the venerable comic cthulu has announced a series of hip-hop album inspired variant covers to be released throughout October.
Described often as a space opera, Brian K Vaughan’s fantasy epic Saga is so much more than that. It's a luscious and wonderfully imagined piece of work and as my favourite comic on the stands right now, it's one I regularly recommend to everyone, especially those in need of an introduction to comics.
Blankets is a huge, whopping piece of literature. At 582 pages long it’s not mucking about. Honestly though, I think you could plough through this book in about three hours. Which is exactly what I did the first time. Craig Thomson’s second graphic novel is an astounding, blisteringly honest piece of autobiographical work that I fell in love with from the first moment I opened it.
Did Marvel already outdo Secret Wars? Well... no. But they did create a work of crazed genius that you need to check out.
Marvel Comics isn’t very good at secrets. Oh sure, it had that big one back in ’85, which went so well that it inspired the entire concept of company-wide crossover summer events. Every 'crisis', every 'age of', every act of vengeance, and every time Atlantis gets its Speedos in a twist and decides to bombard Manhattan, you can trace it right back to Secret Wars. Since then though, the magic seems to have waned somewhat.
Just an all-American boy living the all-American nightmare.
If like me you were raised in a terribly small town in England during the 80s and had very limited access to American culture save for whatever early Saturday morning cartoons were shown on ITV, then you'll have no reason to have read or even heard of Archie Comics and its supremely apple pie vision of a sanitised American high school. However right now in the mutating, shiftless teen-years of the 21st century, Archie Comics is providing some of the most gruelling, captivating and deeply nihilistic horror in any form of media. So what the hell happened?
Although despite being five seasons in, The Walking Dead could still learn some lessons from its comic book counterpart.
My true love of comics developed when I started to branch out into the non-Marvel, non-costumed branch of the comic book world. From the fascinating mouse themed exploration of a time spent in a concentration camp to the delicate, heart-achingly lovely coming of age story that is Blankets. I loved it all. Soon I found that artists and writers were doing things with comics that they couldn't get away with anywhere else, and boy can they go dark!
