Category: Comic Books

Comic Book Review – Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley

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SecondsCover

Seconds is a 2014 graphic novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley, well known as the author of the Scott Pilgrim series. The story follows Katie, a young woman in a transitional stage in her life. She is a talented chef who has worked at a successful restaurant —Seconds — for the past four years. Wanting to take her talents to greater heights, she currently works toward opening and co-owning her own restaurant. One night she is visited by a strange girl who gifts her the opportunity, in the form of a magic mushroom, to right her mistakes. As things start to fall apart on a particularly bad day Katie takes advantage of this gift, starting her down a path to not only make her life better, but perfect — disregarding the rules in the process.Read More »

Comic Book Review – Judge Vol. 1 & 2

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This past week I started the manga series Judge by Yoshiki Tonogai. The series is a drama, horror, and psychological thriller. It is the sequel to the series Doubt, which was written and illustrated by Yoshiki Tonogai as well. Though it is a sequel series, as far as I can tell Judge is not narratively connected to Doubt. Each volume was published in North America by Yen Press in August and November 2013 respectively. The series will total six volumes long, with the fifth coming out this October.Read More »

Marvel’s Reinventions: Captain America and Thor

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May contain slight spoilers to various Marvel Comics story lines.

Though this is now old news to anybody who follows comic books, some changes in upcoming Marvel Comics storylines has created quite a lot of buzz across the internet. I am referring to the news that the next Captain America is going to be African-American and that the next “Thor” is going to be a woman.

To go into more specifics about this turn of events, Thor the character is not changing gender, but rather a female character — who as far as I know is yet to be identified — will be wielding his iconic hammer Mjolnir, thus granting her “the power of Thor.” Meanwhile, Samuel Wilson — better known by his superhero alter-ego The Falcon — will be taking up the mantle of Captain America due to Steve Rogers losing his super soldier powers and rapidly aging.Read More »

Chester Brown’s Paying For It

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PayingForIt

Over the past few days I found myself reading Paying For It: A comic-strip memoir about being a john by Chester Brown. It wasn’t the first time I’ve read Brown’s work, having gone through Louis Riel a few years ago. Rather than review it, I want to address my experience with the work because of how it challenged my viewpoint on the world.Read More »

The Hard Goodbye & Subverting Male Power-Fantasy

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This past week I decided to reread an old favourite of mine; Sin City: The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller. I first fell in love with this story watching the film adaptation in 2005’s Sin City, where Mickey Rourke played the protagonist Marv, a drunken, thuggish, trench coat-wearing bruiser, who goes on a bloody spree of revenge in the name of his short-lived lover Goldie. I was captivated from the first viewing, and it is easily a movie I’ve re-watched more than any other. I’ve read the comic book volume through a number of times as well.Read More »