Zainab Akhtar’s ShortBox is one of the best bets in independent comics, offering a quarterly selection of comics and art prints by some of the industry’s most fascinating cartoonists. (Full disclosure: Akhtar is an A.V. Club contributor.) ShortBox comics have racked up multiple Eisner Award nominations, and Akhtar…
To create a successful one-shot, you need to know how much story can fit in a limited page count. You can pack a cosmic superhero story into 48 pages, but it’s difficult to give that a satisfying narrative arc with fully realized characters. This is the case with The Quiet Kind (Dark Horse), a one-shot introducing a…
While season one of 70 Million examined the roadblocks impeding criminal justice reform, season two opens with a focus on the work toward solutions within local communities. The season premiere takes place in New Orleans as reporter Eve Abrams investigates a prison system largely funded by the impoverished, their…
You likely know the work, though you might not know the name: J. Michael Straczynski. A writer for hire in the truest sense, Straczynski, or Joe to his friends and JMS to his fans, can seemingly write anything. Maybe you grew up on his cartoons he scripted: He-Man, She-Ra, The Real Ghostbusters. Or the television…
There’s something extraordinary about how comic books depict environments. Because pages are composed of individual panels, creators have the opportunity to spotlight many different parts of a setting. These separate images come together in a layout that moves through the space, and the larger page functions as a…
For four years, Jane Foster assumed the role of Thor, fighting to protect the ten realms as the god of thunder while also battling cancer in her human life. Jane’s time as Thor ended beautifully, but her superhero journey is far from over. With her cancer in remission, Jane briefly transformed back into Thor at the…
Four years ago, Archie Comics gave the world Archie Vs. Predator, an absolutely outrageous miniseries that sent the alien murderer to Riverdale and put him in the middle of a love triangle with Betty and Veronica. Written with subversive wit by Alex de Campi and drawn in the classic Archie style by Fernando Ruiz, the…
I am a bi, white, married man—35 years old and living in a big Midwestern city. I’d like to know what’s going on in my psyche—from a sex-research perspective. I’ve been hung up on cuckold fantasies with my female partner for years now. I’m a creative person and I’m especially fond of creative fantasizing in bed, and…
“That’s why they get away with it, because people like you think they deserve it.”
In 1990, a groundbreaking exhibit by artist Robert Mapplethorpe arrived at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and practically turned the city upside down. “The Perfect Moment” was a collection of 175 black-and-white photographs shot in Mapplethorpe’s signature style, including explicit depictions of BDSM acts…
Tom King’s run on Batman has been a wild ride of twists and turns, an unpredictable series that veers from meditative introspection to bombastic action as it dismantles and dissects Bruce Wayne’s character. King’s run on the main Batman series concludes with “City Of Bane,” the culmination of Bane’s gradual takeover…
Billed as “microdoses of the straight dope” and somewhat charmingly subtitled Fictional Nonfiction, Chuck Klosterman’s Raised In Captivity is of a piece with his prolific cultural criticism. Best known for his music writing and the 2003 essay collection Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs, Klosterman comes across as…
In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
Mystère at the Treasure Island in Las Vegas is currently the longest running Cirque du Soleil residency in the city, first premiering on Christmas of 1993. In celebration of Dumbo’s release on Blu-Ray and DVD, Disney invited us down to Vegas late last month to get a real circus experience. We talked to some of the…
The international success of the Marvel movies has made Marvel a global brand in a way that it’s never been before, so naturally the publisher would try and reach out to readers outside of the U.S. Last year, Marvel Comics partnered with Chinese tech giant NetEase to introduce new Chinese superheroes in comics…
My fiancé and I have been in a relationship for 11 years. His best friend is one of his exes, and that has always bothered me. What do I do?
Needing Guidance After Getting Engaged
Test opens on a young person in the cab of an 18-wheeler, sparking anxiety in the reader about vulnerable hitchhikers and the threat long-haul truckers can pose. But expectations are thwarted as Aleph, Test’s protagonist and the fragile-looking young person in question, is released from the cab without incident and…
In the backroom of a doctor’s office in rural Indiana, eight women, a weight loss group, sit around a large mahogany table drinking chardonnay. The conversation has turned to sex. Lina, a mother of two young children, is married to Ed, who hasn’t French kissed her in 10 years, the thing she wants more than anything in…
Just your typical, heartwarming story of healthcare in America: guy gets new insurance, then finds out his new copay on a prescription is $700 at his local drugstore—but somehow it’s only $25 at a supermarket down the street. The guy is Dan Weissmann, a journalist who happens to be hosting a podcast about the…
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