So the last time I talked about Crossover for the site, I ended things with a cliffhanger about the fascinatingly horrifying final page. A page that invoked such a great amount of cosmic dread in me, I couldn’t help but laugh like a maniacal lunatic at the sheer scope of its wrongness. I laughed and laughed at every single element of it, because it was just… W O W. Now that the first volume of Crossover
Reviews
Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Pursuit of Queer Planets
The (Un)Queer Planet
In Michel Warner’s Fear of a Queer Planet
Warner observes that the plaque represents humanity through the image of a white, naked man and woman (ibid). He describes how this representation says much about the normative assumptions upon which Sagan, and by extension the American institution, understand ‘humanity.’ On the two figures, Warner writes:
They are not just sexually different; they are sexual difference itself. They are nude but have no body hair; the woman has no genitals …To a native of the culture that produced it, this bizarre fantasy-image is immediately recognizable not just as two gendered individuals, but as a heterosexual couple…, a technological but benign Adam and Eve. It testifies to the depth of the culture’s assurance (read: insistence) that humanity and heterosexuality are synonymous. This reminder speeds to the ends of the universe, announcing to passing stars that earth is not, regardless of what anyone says, a queer planet (ibid: 21). [Read more…] about Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Pursuit of Queer Planets
The Old 52: Action Comics & The Birthplace of Modern Morrison
When they began their run on Action Comics in 2011, Grant Morrison was at a crucial juncture in their comics career. After returning to DC in the early 2000s following the end of their run on New X-Men, they launched into a staggering creative frenzy that took them through the first act of their Batman epic, their cult classic take on The Seven Soldiers of Victory, and the multi-Eisner Award winning All-Star Superman with their defining artistic partner Frank Quitely, along with significant contributions to the acclaimed 52. Their mid-naughts imperial phase culminated when Dan DiDio finally handed them the keys to the kingdom and allowed them to do their take on a classic DC Crisis event, leading to the seven-issue Final Crisis with J.G. Jones and Doug Mahnke. Instead of delivering a classic crossover action comic (heh), Morrison wrote a baroque, austere story about the apocalypse powered by symbolism and metaphor as much, if not moreso, than by narrative logic, an ontologically dense exploration of DC’s icons that contrasted them with grimy images of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World New Gods to advance Morrison’s concept of the Justice League as the gods of the Fifth World. [Read more…] about The Old 52: Action Comics & The Birthplace of Modern Morrison
A Retrospective on Captain America, Heroes Reborn
The 90s were a tough decade for Marvel. They started off great – In 1990, Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 sold 2.5 million copies and a year later Rob Liefeld’s X-Force #1 sold 5 million copies and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 sold 8 million copies. Then in 1992 all three of these artists and a handful of others left Marvel to form Image. Then in 1996, Marvel was forced to file for bankruptcy. Between these two events, we got Heroes Reborn
The Hickman X-Men (Re)Read: House of X #5, Pt.2 – The Mutant Renaissance
III. Renaissance & Celebration (pgs6-19)
And we’re back—at the start of HOX/POX. With so many mutants having died before the Hickman era and not a few of the same being teased in HOX/POX previews and the mystery of “the pod people” in HOX 1, we knew that mutant resurrection was going to be key to the start of Hickman’s run.
Related:
[Read more…] about The Hickman X-Men (Re)Read: House of X #5, Pt.2 – The Mutant Renaissance