Thumbnail: Starting With The Impossible in Ewing and Rocafort's Post-Ultimate...
How do you do an Ultimates series post-Secret Wars, without the Ultimate Universe? The original series by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch was supposed to be a reimagining of the Avengers concept for the...
View ArticleSpider-Man Uncovered: Why The Half-Mask Look Is So Important to Peter Parker
For a film where he's maybe the dozenth biggest character, Captain America: Civil War does an incredible job of introducing the MCU version of Spider-Man. (Moderate spoilers follow if you haven't yet...
View ArticleIs 'Justice League: The New Frontier' The Best Superhero Movie Ever Made?
The best superhero film ever made isn't The Dark Knight. It's not the 1978 Superman. It's not even Spider-Man 2. No, the best superhero movie is 2008's Justice League: The New Frontier. Now, you might...
View ArticleThe Influence Of Alex Toth On Chris Samnee's 'Black Widow'
Chris Samnee is one of the best artists working in comics today. His stock has risen steadily since 2010 as he went from Thor: The Mighty Avenger to The Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom, to a long, esteemed...
View ArticleNegative Space In Greg Smallwood's 'Moon Knight'
Greg Smallwood is one of the most fascinating artists to have emerged in the last five years. His breakout book Dream Thief showcased his innovative approach to page design, classic figure work, and...
View ArticleThe Understated Brilliance Of Steve Dillon
When Steve Dillon passed away on October 22, 2016, comics lost one of its greatest masters of the invisible art. In a long and storied career, Dillon's work was characterized by concise layouts, subtle...
View ArticleHere's Why Beast Should Be Sent to Prison
Our ongoing ranking of the definitive inarguable Top 100 X-Men of All Time brought up a lot of different arguments from our panel of judges. Some people liked Cyclops, some people liked Jean Grey, and...
View ArticleThe First Nightcrawler Solo Is One Of The Funnest X-Books Ever
In a universe brimming with unique superheroes, and a franchise full of cool looks, Nightcrawler stands out. Kurt Wagner was born looking like a monster, but he takes pride in his appearance and makes...
View ArticleHow 'Captain America: Theater of War' Pays Tribute To Veterans
Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a federal holiday to commemorate the memory of the men and women who died serving in the Armed Forces. It's also the end of an interesting month for fans of...
View ArticleSay My Name: The Pleasures Of The Spoken Superhero Logo
There are a lot of ways that a comic book can reinforce the iconography of the superhero. A snappy costume; signature powers; an artist that defined the look of the book for a generation. But part of...
View ArticleFrancis Manapul's Masterful 'Detective Comics' Layouts
One of the most pleasant surprises of the New 52 relaunch was Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato's run on The Flash. With clever, Will Eisner-inspired titles pages and chaotic compositions that...
View ArticleThe Wicked and The Decapitated: The Covers of Jamie McKelvie
Thumbnail is a new recurring feature on ComicsAlliance in which we invite our writers to reflect on comic book details that deserve a little extra attention, whether it’s a favorite character, and...
View ArticleThumbnail: Medusa has the Most Amazing Hair in Comics
Hair often plays a defining role in the presentation of female characters in superhero comics, from Jean Grey’s foreshadowing flame-red hair, to Storm’s hair-centric transformation into a...
View ArticleThumbnail: 'Casanova' and Autobiography in Genre Comics
With Casanova: Acedia now underway, and a new collected edition of Casanova: Avaritia available, now is the perfect time to discuss one my favorite sub-sections of comics: semi-autobiographical genre...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Fashion Illustrations of 'Girl in Dior'
Annie Goetzinger's Girl in Dior is, unsurprisingly, a love letter to designer Christian Dior, both as a person and as a designer. The illustrations lovingly recreate many of his designs from the...
View ArticleThumbnail: Praise for 'Giant Days' Approach to Internetting
John Allison and Lissa Treiman's Giant Days is a lot of things: fun, entertaining, silly, cute... but it also offers some interesting commentary on the world of the internet in issue 3. The gang at...
View ArticleThumbnail: Destroy This Comic!
Comics carry a sense of physical prestige. When you pick one up from the shelf, it usually isn’t just lying there, blowing in the wind – it’s often wrapped up in a too-tight plastic bag, boarded with a...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Re-Masculation of Cyborg
The recent free eight-page preview for DC's upcoming Cyborg series by David F. Walker and Ivan Reis revealed a significant change for title character Victor Stone; after having his cybernetic arms...
View ArticleTheme And Motif In 'The Sandman: Overture'
The things about The Sandman that I recall the most fondly aren't what most others think of. In my experience, an overwhelming percentage of readers are quick to talk about the characters, or the...
View ArticleHarley Quinn and Poison Ivy Sitting in a Tree
A few days ago DC casually outed two characters that everybody had always thought were a couple, even if it had never been actually stated on-panel anywhere. Responding to the question, "Are Harley and...
View ArticleThumbnail: Matt Murdock, Super Chef!
Daredevil as the world's greatest cook. It's hard to resist that one-line pitch, so when 'Hell's Kitchen', written by Si Spurrier and drawn by Jonathan Marks, cropped up in solicitations of Secret Wars...
View ArticleThumbnail: Emma Frost's Wardrobe is Malfunctioning
Emma Frost is stylish. Allegedly. I mean, that’s what I’ve been told, over and over again, by the dudes who write and draw her. She’s a scion of the Boston brahmins! She attends the swankest parties,...
View Article'Tomb of Dracula': Back Off, Dad, I'll Dress How I Like
Tomb of Dracula came out of Marvel between 1972 and 1979: start date, one year after the CCA let up on vampires. This was a year after Hammer’s increasingly psychological Karnstein Trilogy wrapped up...
View ArticleThumbnail: For Phil Jimenez, More is Always More
There’s an anecdote told in a trade for DC’s weekly series 52. In an issue halfway through the run, Phil Jimenez was given a page breakdown from Keith Giffen that asked him to draw seven statues of...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Mystical World of Marvel's Crazy Headdresses
Womenswear in superhero costumes hasn’t always been about skintight, sexy unitards. In the early Silver Age of comics, readers saw the inception of the mystically-inspired heroine; one imbued with...
View ArticleThumbnail: In Praise of the Superheroic Male Miniskirt
There are many things you can point to in superhero comics as examples of sexism and gender essentialism. Today we will ignore those. Today, we come not to bury comics and their handling of gender...
View ArticleThumbnail: Yoshihiro Togashi, Master of the Fight Scene
Hunter x Hunter is about people classified as “Hunters” that specialize in finding and hunting things. Sometimes these things are rare jewels, and sometimes they’re human corpses. Over almost 20 years,...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Distillation of Ideas in Mike Del Mundo Covers
Comics covers are strange beasts. While comics themselves are sequential art --- pictures arranged in just the right order to tell a story or convey an emotion --- covers freeze that process into a...
View ArticleThumbnail: Pacing And Violence In 'Stray Bullets'
As endemic as violence is to mainstream comics, it's rare when you see a representation of it that inspires an appropriate level of shock. That's to be expected in superhero comics, where the gap...
View ArticleWhat 'Steven Universe' Teaches About Being Between Two Worlds
Being mixed race is an endless, exhausting lesson in liminality. There are days you’re unshakably confident in who you are and your place in the world, followed by days you are wrecked by the ambiguity...
View ArticleThumbnail: How 'No Mercy' Gets the High School Experience Right
I took six AP classes over the course of my high school career. I was president of the Readers’ Club. I won awards for poetry and public speaking. But because I was not uniformly incredible at...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Epic Sound Effects of Russell Dauterman's Asgard
There is probably no superhero comic better known for the lettering of its sound effects than Walter Simonson's 1983-1987 run on Marvel's Thor. John Workman's lettering on that seminal, still-beloved...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Heroic Villainy of Professor Moriarty in Comics
Professor James Moriarty, the “Napoleon of Crime” and the arch-nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, is one of the most iconic villains in fiction. And that’s always been a little odd. As any die-hard...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Arrogance and Endurance of Doctor Doom
It’s been said that Doctor Doom is not just one of the greatest supervillains of all time but rather that he’s the supervillain, the one that defines them all. Whenever Doom appears, he's always a huge...
View ArticleThumbnail: The Eclectic Cast Of 'Contest of Champions'
The core concept of Marvel’s Contest of Champions ongoing series is based loosely on an app based loosely on a comic from 1982. In the game, by developers Kabam, The Collector tasks you as a summoner,...
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