Look, the secret is out: Nobody can really tell the difference between competing club sodas, and even individual flavors are tough for folks to identify when the brightly colored can is taken out of the equation. La Croix has been sitting pretty at the top of the sparkling-water mountain for a while, and that seems…
It’s been a long, hot, Riverdale-less summer, but Dial M For Maple is here with a special treat: an interview with Tiera Skovbye, a.k.a. the mysterious Polly Cooper. While on a press tour for her new movie, Summer Of ’84, Tiera jumped on the phone with host Cameron Scheetz to discuss the future of the Cooper clan, the…
Just a few short months after their previous project together came to a close, Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins return with a new story. At first glance, Black Badge #1 (Boom! Studios) has more in common with Lumberjanes than Grass Kings, opening with a handful of boys traveling together as part of a scouting group.…
I’ve been enjoying consensual nonmonogamy for the past two years, in part thanks to your column and podcast. I have a delightful young lover, and our connection has evolved into a kind of Master/slave relationship. I “allow” her to fuck other men and women, and she delights in asking my permission and recounting the…
Few comic-book artists understand the power of darkness like Nate Powell. Darkness hides potential horrors, but it can also create intimacy, bringing people together by keeping the rest of the world out of sight. Powell fluctuates between these two facets of darkness in his new graphic novel, Come Again (Top Shelf),…
In an early chapter of Ling Ma’s debut novel, Severance, a genre-savvy character details the difference between vampire and zombie stories. “With vampire narrative, the danger lies in the villain’s intentions, his underlying character. There are good vampires, there are bad vampires… [The zombie narrative is] not…
Harley Quinn just returned to Earth after an intergalactic adventure that threw her head-first into the world of the New Gods, but she might not have a home to go back to if a greedy Coney Island real estate developer gets his way. Writer Sam Humphries began his run on Harley Quinn with a three-issue story that was…
FriendsLikeUs has long been a gem of podcasting, providing women (and particularly women of color) a place to sit down and unapologetically discuss their lives in the world of comedy. These conversations are often quite frank, touching as much on the issues of the day as the minutiae of the stand-up scene and all with…
Nico Walker enlisted in the Army as a medic at the age of 19. Shipped off to Iraq, he participated in over 250 combat missions. He returned home 11 months later as ravaged as the IED-bombed Humvees that came to symbolize his tour of duty. Heroin helped numb the trauma, followed by robbing banks.
The year was 1993, and superhero comics were in the middle of a period of over-the-top storytelling that took the grim and gritty ideas of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and hooked them up to an IV drip of Mountain Dew and steroids. At the same time, the world of alternative comics was making major strides in…
I’m a 27-year-old woman living on the East Coast. I’ve been sexually active and on birth control since I was 16—almost always on the pill. I recently switched to the NuvaRing, which I had a bad reaction to: I had no libido at all and extreme mood swings/bouts of depression I could not live with. My boyfriend and I…
Few foods straddle the middle of the Venn diagram between “wholesome, pastoral staple of the American diet” and “hotly contested ethical minefield” quite like a glass of milk. According to culinary historian and journalist Mark Kurlansky, many of the nutritional and moral questions surrounding human consumption of…
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?
Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.
There’s no shortage of comics addressing the state of the world, either confronting the political climate directly or with a bit more subtlety. The New World #1 (Image) is only one such vision, set in a middle future just a couple decades out that echoes the present. After nuclear blasts wiped out significant parts of…
I’m gay and have been dating a guy for 10 months. He’s great overall, and I would say for the most part we both want it to work out. But I am having a problem with his friends and other lifestyle choices. All of his friends are straight, and almost all of them are women. All of my friends have always been gay men,…
Gareth Evans’ The Raid films are two shining stars of modern action cinema, following a special forces cop in Jakarta, Rama, as he beats down wave after wave of attackers in increasingly elaborate action sequences. The movies don’t spend too much time delving into the complexities of the lead character, instead…
“Iconic” is a word people often use to describe the music of James Bond. Like the clothes, cars, and gadgets of the early films, John Barry’s original 1960s arrangements feel like immutable elements of the franchise’s titular character. It just isn’t Bond if you don’t hear that certain chord progression. In the second…
Each of the three characters in R.O. Kwon’s gorgeous, ambiguous debut novel is lying. There’s Will, an ex-believer who moved across the country to escape his Christian upbringing and attend a new college, where he pretends he’s rich enough to fit in with the other wealthy students. His girlfriend, Phoebe, hides her…
Reviving a dormant superhero property is a tricky endeavor, especially when creators attempt a back-to-basics approach that tries to recapture the magic of a bygone era. To pull this off successfully, the team needs to understand the qualities that made the original concept so engaging, but also account for the ways…
