(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates) I know y’all spend a lot of time talking about superheroes, given Ta-Nehisi’s lifelong predilection for Spider-Man, Batman, and various members of the Marvel mutant universe. As a former comic-book nerd myself, who hopes that his cherry copy of Uncanny X-Men #266 (first Gambit appearance!) will someday fund his son’s education, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'comics'
I Saw the Shadow of No Parting From You
April 2nd, 2010 · 1 Comment
The last week’s been mighty rough, as we suffered through an illness akin to that which Pip endured toward the end of Great Expectations. Yet just as Dickens’ hero pulled through the ordeal to hear the joyous news that Joe and Biddy got married, we have come through the other side with lifted hearts and [...]
Tags:books·Charles Dickens·comics·competitive eating·Great Expectations·housekeeping
The Absolute Nadir of Animation
January 15th, 2010 · 11 Comments
One of the greatest movie-review slams we’ve come across in recent months is Nathan Rabin’s brutal takedown of I Hate Valentine’s Day, the latest project from My Big, Fat Greek Wedding mastermind Nia Vardalos. The whole pan is full of choice insults, but the apex comes in the kicker: “If the comic strip character Cathy [...]
The Universality of Whaam!
October 29th, 2009 · 4 Comments
We’ll confess, we often scoff at university courses that focus exclusively on contemporary pop culture—as much as we would have liked to have taken “The Simpsons as Satirical Authors,” for example, we’re not entirely convinced those classroom hours couldn’t be better spent slogging through Ulysses. But we’d make an exception for a comparative literature course [...]
Tags:comics·education·Gundala·Indonesia·superheroes·The Simpsons
The Original Action Jackson (er, Jaxon)
February 27th, 2009 · No Comments
A big slab of my research for Now the Hell Will Start took place in the bowels of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I spent way too many hours jacked into the library’s microfilm machine, flipping through wartime copies of the Chicago Defender. As you might expect, a lot of what caught [...]
