Marvel Comics response to the idea that the “damn feminists are ruining everything” leaves something to be desired.
Cartoons can inspire rage – but they can also tell the stories of the marginalised. A panel from The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Lothian Children’s Books, an imprint of Hachette Australia, 2006.
In the month since the the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, the significance of visual representation has been a topic of much discussion. Political cartoons have the potential to reinforce problematic stereotypes…
The Guardians of the Galaxy – whose protagonists are a morally-gray motley crew – could be seen as a satire of the classic hero tradition.
BagoGames/Flickr
A. David Lewis, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
A beautiful assassin. A superstrong thug. A star-lost child of the ‘80s. A sentient tree. A gun-toting raccoon. Meet the morally gray protagonists of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, the film that raked…
Lynda Carter as Diana Prince in the New Original Wonder Woman. Her bullet-deflecting bracelets are made from an impervious metal: feminum.
Retrogasm/Flickr
In the epilogue to Jill Lepore’s new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, we learn about Wonder Woman’s importance to the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Lepore briefly notes Wonder…
When superheroes die on the page, fans have learned not to mourn their deaths.
FRacco/Wikimedia Commons
A. David Lewis, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Among comic book fans, there’s the joke that the only characters in superhero comics who stay dead are Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben, Batman’s parents, and Captain America’s sidekick Bucky. For everybody else…
In the fall of 2010, as The Walking Dead was about to debut on TV, I launched my Media Genres: Zombies course at the University of Baltimore and examined what that horror subgenre reflects about our culture…
“A few days rest in billets”.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library
In its new exhibition, the British Library celebrate the subversive history of the comic. As ever, such a complex heritage can hardly be covered in such a show. But it is a symptom of a more widespread…
Let’s pause to consider the rich mythology of this 75-year-old icon.
James
This year the world’s most popular superhero, Batman, celebrates his 75th birthday. From inauspicious beginnings in a six-page comic to the transmedia anchor of one of the world’s largest media conglomerates…
The release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes in the middle of a slate of super heroic movies including Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: Winter Solider, and the second in a series of X-Men prequels…
The Australian Government has sought to use comics to deter would-be asylum seekers from boarding boats to Australia.
DIBP
This week, two very different Australian comics about asylum seekers have received widespread attention. The first is At work inside our detention centres: A guard’s story by Melbourne comics artist Sam…
Jon Tjhia in front of Lachlan Conn’s imagery for Disorient Express at Radio With Pictures 2012.
Miles Martignoni
We’re calling it a blind date between radio and comics. Radio With Pictures, to be performed this Sunday at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Graphic 2013 festival of comics, animation and music, is…
The character of Superman has had a storied intellectual property history, having spawned countless imitations and emulations in comic books, films and popular culture.
Wikimedia Commons
Who is Superman’s greatest threat? Evil genius Lex Luthor? General Zod from the Phantom Zone? The doppelganger Bizarro? Super-villain Brainiac? Kryptonite? Or is it intellectual property law? In 2013…