Thursday, May 12 2011
Transforming the Bard Finale: Daggers at Dawn
This is the final of a three-part series of articles about Kill Shakespeare, each featuring an exclusive interview with the comic's co-creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. Read part one and part two.
Friday, May 6 2011
No Second Acts Part 2: The Public Lives of Giants
Jake the Dreaming not only offers readers an unmitigated boyhood that tilts at the world as much as Cervantes or Louis Stevenson, but also taps the changing cultural moment articulated recently by novelist Ken Follett.
Thursday, May 5 2011
I’m Starting to Root for This Guy: Branagh’s ‘Thor’ As Rachmaninov’s Second
Kenneth Branagh's Thor really is Hamlet. Larger than life, but withdrawn and meditative. It's Joseph Conrad to the kind of immersive action hero trope that has spawned thousands of Chuck Norris jokes.
Friday, April 29 2011
No Second Acts Part 1: Radical’s Reassertion of American Literature
Jake The Dreaming is Radical Studios' first illustrated novel for the iPad and iPhone. It is also the vein of American literature that goes back to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Download your full FCBD preview here
Wednesday, April 20 2011
Transforming Shakespeare 2: The Bard and “Argentinean Knife Fights”
This is the second of a three-part series of articles about Kill Shakespeare, each featuring an exclusive interview with the comic's co-creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery. Read part one.
Friday, April 15 2011
Where Your Heart Is 3: The PopMatters Exclusive with Radical’s Barry Levine
With the rise in contestation between print and digital distribution, the very medium of comics seems to be at stake. In a PopMatters exclusive, Radical's Barry Levine opens up about the company's rise, his own career path, and the future of the comics medium.
Whedon and Company: Worlds Await
The formal creation of Buffy Studies -- and therefore Whedon Studies -- was born with the creation of the online journal Slayage 10 years ago. Here the coeditor of Slayage, Rhonda V. Wilcox, offers some reflections on our obsessions with the output of a certain TV creator.
Thursday, April 14 2011
Six Reasons Why Joss Whedon Is the Perfect Director for ‘The Avengers’
It was announced last year that Joss Whedon would direct the most ambitious superhero movie ever, teaming Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye all in one enormous film. Matthew Hurd thinks Whedon was the perfect choice.
Joss Whedon 101: The Avengers
The Avengers will be Joss Whedon's most ambitious project to date, the culmination of a string of Marvel Studios superhero films, including the Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America films.
Wednesday, April 13 2011
The Roads to New Cross: The London Small Press Expo
With convention season in the US rapidly becoming a yearlong calendar event, the London Comics Small Press Expo still makes those small, personal connections between reader, newbie creator, and established pro.
Thursday, April 7 2011
Transforming the Bard 1: The “Justice League” of Shakespeare
This three-part series examines the extraordinary Kill Shakespeare, and each part includes an exclusive interview with the comic's creators. This is part one.
Tuesday, April 5 2011
Joss Whedon 101: Angel: After the Fall
When Angel -- confronted by a small army of hostile demons, a giant, and a dragon -- said to Spike, Gunn, and Illyria, "Let's go to work" immediately before the screen went to black and the series ended, fans of Angel wanted to know what happened next. In After the Fall Joss Whedon and Brian Lynch answered our question.
Friday, April 1 2011
Where Your Heart Is 2: The PopMatters Exclusive with Radical’s Barry Levine
With the rise in contestation between print and digital distribution, the very medium of comics seems to be at stake. Newcomers Radical Publishing have had the truly sublime idea of viewing other media as a death-knell, movies and gaming might be an opportunity.
Wednesday, March 30 2011
Joss Whedon 101: Sugarshock!
Originally released in 2007 on Dark Horse's MySpace page, Sugarshock! was later released in printed form in 2009. Concerning a hard rock band led by a female lead singer with an almost pathological hatred of Vikings, the band engages in what turns out to be a literal intergalactic battle of the bands.
Monday, March 28 2011
The Night Billy Buddy Died: Dr. Horrible’s Tragicomic Inversion of Spider-Man
The accidental death of Penny, the girl Billy Buddy aka Dr. Horrible loves, has parallels to the deaths of several comic book deaths, though none so much as the death of Spider-Man's girlfriend Gwen.
Thursday, March 24 2011
Cowboy DNA: BOOM! Studios’ Courageous Leap into Social Media
BOOM! Studios harnesses the power of social media. In launching Hellraiser: The Prelude as downloadable, viral PDF, they've achieved what legendary inventor of the graphic novel format, Will Eisner dreamed of so long ago.
Joss Whedon 101: Runaways
Joss Whedon and comic writer Brian K. Vaughan have enjoyed an interesting relationship, shown in part by Vaughan's writing the "No Future for You" arc of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 and Joss continuing Vaughan's great series "Runaways" for Marvel.
Wednesday, March 23 2011
Joss Whedon 101: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight
Several years after the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV, Joss Whedon with the help of illustrator George Jeanty and a string of writers continued Buffy's story in comic book form
Tuesday, March 22 2011
Joss Whedon 101: Astonishing X-Men
After the end of Angel on the WB and following his previous success with Fray, Joss Whedon has worked on a series of acclaimed comics, commencing with his pairing with John Cassaday on Astonishing X-Men.
Wednesday, March 16 2011
Stand on Earth: Reading Manga During Fukushima
The horror-quake that hit Japan this past Friday has no context in recorded history. The human price is unimaginable. But it is a cultural shift in the popular imagination from the 1980s that allows us to understand the simple heroism of perpetually rebuilding.