-Art by Trico

Like any other backpack-toting American kid in the nineteen-nineties, the one thing I looked forward to each week (well, after TGIF) was Saturday morning cartoons. My absolute favorite show was X-Men The Animated Series which led to frequent trips to old, dusty comic shops to buy Series ...

Jean Arp, "Untitled (College with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance)". 1917

"In Europe and America, grey is the color most associated with boredom, solitude and emptiness. It is associated with rainy days and winter.“ -Wikipedia ”Grey: Boredom“

”Grey is my favorite color“ -Counting Crows ”Mr. Jones“

I ...

“Well, are they?”

Gary Numan (and Tubeway Army) posed that question in 1979. These days it has more relevance that ever before.

“It's cold outside, and the paint's peeling offa my walls.”

As winter approaches in the Southern Hemisphere (winter is coming) my thoughts naturally turn a little ...

It's that time of year again, the big blockbuster movies are coming and Marvels first movie of the year and contestant in this years superhero smack down is Captain America: Civil war.
Based on the massive Marvel crossover comic that saw Marvels superheroes taking sides over a controversial government ...

Today we'll talk sequel and series character arcs, and focus on the cinematic portrayal of Iron Man

Last Week we talked about character arcs. They're an important element of fiction writing…although a lot of the time, there is no arc! But a strong, unpredictable character arc can ...

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Satanic Ninjas are after a magical item of power and a sexy space pirate bounty hunter is slaughtering alien monsters, meanwhile nerdy all American teen Eddie just wants a hot date for the high school prom!
This is a gorgeous pastiche/parody of all the best of the 1980s: heavy ...

Last year for Black History Month I profiled Black Panther, the first black superhero (see that newspost here). This year I’m sticking with the black comic character theme with a mini-history of Chuck Clayton, one of the first non-white characters in Archie comics.

These days Chuck is an established ...

The years following my college graduation, the most frequent questions asked by my peers and older adults were: “What did you major in?” and “What do you do?” Initially, the questions would bother me because I could not give a direct answer to the second question without feeling inadequate. What ...

If you haven't noticed, 2016 is all about pitting superheroes against one another. This coming spring, we'll have Captain America facing off with Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War, and DC's two biggest heroes at odds in Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice. But forget about ...

Jesus is running for president under the republican ticket! What could go wrong? Quite a lot it turns out… His beliefs contrast a little bit with those of the party. Jesus goes off message and cross-country on an iconoclastic road trip with Pope Francis and a kid documenting the whole ...