Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “comics”

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Batman: Failsafe, by Chip Zdarsky

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I picked this up because it had Zdarsky’s name on it, and Jorge Jiménez’s art looked gorgeous. It was a fun read, but there are all the problems with it that I have with most modern Batman: It’s violent, absurd, and bogged down in continuity. I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t miss Batman all that much.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page, by Glenn Fleishman

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I’ve listened to Glenn on The Incomparable for years, and a rule I try to follow is to pay for creative works from creators whose content I’ve often consumed for free. This sounded interesting, I do like comics, and so I bought it on a whim. I don’t think buying a print copy was ever in the cards for me, but I wish I’d at least read it on a bigger screen than my phone: It’s beautifully designed, and there are lots of visual goodies in there.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Animal Man 30th Anniversary Edition (Book Two), by Grant Morrison

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I like this volume better, but it still doesn’t quite land with me. I suspect it’s because I’m so used to metafiction in more recent comics that I don’t appreciate the sources they’re building on! At any rate, I’m glad I read these, but I can’t say that they were life-changing for me.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Animal Man 30th Anniversary Edition (Book One), by Grant Morrison

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I feel like I’ve said this about a lot of recent comics, but while I appreciate what this contributed and what it’s trying to do, I just don’t like it all that much. I’m interested in its efforts at social justice moralizing and metafiction, and I understand there will be more of that in the second volume (which I’m looking forward to), but there was too much that felt like lazy comics in here (sexist costumes, silly crossovers and events, two-dimensional characters).

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Between a work conversation a few days ago and a podcast I’m listening to this morning, I’ve spent a lot of time this week wishing I were a regular comic book shop customer.

family's first comic con

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We are big fans of libraries in our family. In fact, live near the border between two counties, and we split our library visits between the Lexington Public Library (where we are residents) and the Jessamine County Public Library (where we are not). Luckily, Kentucky library systems tend to be fairly liberal in handing out library cards, so this isn’t usually a hassle (this was not the case in Central Michigan, but that’s a story for another time).

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I appreciate Bible scholar Thomas Römer in an academic sense, but I also sometimes remember that I first discovered him through a French comics podcast where he showed up to say that he thought R. Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis could have been more imaginative, and that’s what really sold me on him.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Sex Criminals (The Complete Edition), by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky

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I am by nature pretty prudish, and even though I’ve been successfully dialing that down recently, I still feel weird about having read this and even weirder about acknowledging that on a public website. That said, I’ve always felt like I should give this a try since it’s well regarded in comics, and after a few failed attempts in earlier, more prudish years, I powered my way through this complete edition over the past few days.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Public Domain (Volume 1), by Chip Zdarsky

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I’ve passed this up a couple of times at the library, but an article at BoingBoing got me to give it a try. It’s a fun, meta take on the comics industry through comics themselves, even if it feels melodramatic at times.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for We Should Improve Society Somewhat, by Matt Bors

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Bors has some great political cartoons in this collection, but I also don’t like political cartoons in large doses, even if that doesn’t necessarily reflect on him!

slides for guest lecture on platform perspectives, digital labor, and the digital divide

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A few months ago, some colleagues reached out to ask if I would be willing to record a guest lecture for our library science program’s LIS 600: Information in Society. In particular, they were interested in having me record something for a week on the digital divide. I am conversant on that topic, but it’s not an area of specialty for me, so I was unsure about it until I realized that some of the readings for that week touch on topics like platform design that I am really interested in through my work on social media communities.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Astro City (MetroBook 4), by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross

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It’s not the best of Astro City (and it feels awkward when trying to work with race and gender), but it’s not the worst either. I enjoyed reading some stories I hadn’t read before, and some of them were really well done.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Now Let's Go Commit Something Mildly Subversive (A Ninth Dumbing of Age Collection), by David Willis

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This actually has an absurdly long(er) title that I refuse to include in its entirety. I appreciate the effort, but I think it might break something somewhere on my web workflow. It’s interesting to read this volume with knowledge of what’s coming up in the series! I can see plots being set up that I might not notice otherwise. Not all of those plots are my favorite, but I still really like this comic, so I’m looking forward to them anyway.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Boys Weekend, by Mattie Lubchansky

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There’s a certain flavor of bizarre that makes for great fiction, and this comic is that. It’s a story about gender transition and transphobia, a critique of tech bros and libertarian business types, and… a science fiction story featuring a Cthulhuesque cult? There’s a bit more gore than I normally tolerate in comics, and the art style isn’t what I’d identify as my go-to preference, but everything fits together in a surreal but profound way.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou Deluxe Edition (Volume 1), by Hitoshi Ashinano

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Manga is one comics tradition I’ve never really gotten into, but I was impressed by someone else’s description of this series on Micro.blog and decided to give it a try. There are some manga conventions I’m still getting used to, and I don’t know that I fully “get it” yet, but it’s fun! The “cozy apocalypse” vibe it gives off is nice, and I’m looking forward to reading the next volume.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Social Fiction, by Chantal Montellier

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I’m glad that so many French comics are now available in American libraries, and it’s a pleasure to read something that came from the influential Métal Hurlant. This is one of those reads, though, where I understand why the work is important, but it just didn’t land with me.

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Teaching password security in class today, so time to talk about Ozymandias’s total lack thereof in Watchmen (and how dumb it is for a computer to say “almost there!” when you enter an incomplete password).

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Really want to make a joke involving Holy Saturday and the 1990s comic arc “Reign of the Supermen,” but those ingredients are all I can come up with.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Nancy Wins at Friendship: A Nancy Comic Collection, by Olivia Jaimes

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This time, kiddo checked this out on hoopla, and I decided to read it, too. As I’ve said before, gag-a-day comics aren’t really my thing, and as delightful as Nancy is, I still can’t say that it’s my favorite.

media I consumed in 2023

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My dad has been logging the books he reads since he was a teenager, and I’ve always wanted to try something like that out. I gave it a go in 2022 with a notebook, but I quickly realized I wanted to journal that information, too. Since I journal in Day One, that meant logging reading digitally, so at the end of 2022, I started building some Siri Shortcuts for blogging about books.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Nancy: A Comic Collection, by Olivia Jaimes

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I don’t really like gag-a-day strips (or many comic strips at all), but Jaimes’s run on Nancy speaks to me in a way I can’t explain. I checked this out from the library for kiddo but ended up reading it myself.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga Volume 11, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan

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I had to refresh myself on the last few volumes before tackling this latest one, and there are still lots of details I can’t remember. This series is gory, crude, and profane in ways that ought to turn me away from it, but it’s just so compelling. Great art, powerful characters, and good story. Maybe I should actually subscribe to issues as they come out? I’ve never read comics in a monthly format before, but I don’t know if I want to wait as long as I had to for this next TPB.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 4, Death of Spider-Man, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley

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I’ve complained a lot about superhero comics nonsense throughout this series, but it’s still depressing to finally show that a 16-year-old wouldn’t survive all of these fights. It’s an interesting wrap up for this character, and I ought to find and read the Miles Morales series, but after 26 TPBs in a couple of months, I think I need a break from Spider-Man. There are other books I ought to read, and on the comics landscape, I hear there’s a new Saga TPB to get caught up on.

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I was invited this week to give a sermon in January for an online congregation from Toronto. Last time I preached there, I referenced a story from Astro City and got told in a YouTube comment that mixing comics and the Bible was bad taste. Tempted to double down in January, but that would be petty.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 1, The World According to Peter Parker, by Brian Michael Bendis and David Lafuente

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I don’t know how to deal with the renaming and renumbering going on in this series, and trying to read up on it on Wikipedia is just making me more confused. This is very clearly a “reset the status quo” effort, but it’s not entirely bad? Bendis continues to mistreat Mary Jane, and I feel like it’s actually getting worse, so that’s not great. I do like the dynamic of Aunt May taking in more and more superheroes, though, so we’ll see how that turns out.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol 21, War of the Symbiotes, by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

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I really shouldn’t like this volume. I don’t care that much about Venom or Carnage, and I think their Ultimate origin stories are dumb. Gwen Stacy got treated terribly earlier in the series, and this comic book resurrection is as silly as her death was stupid. Yet, I thought the framing story was interesting, Venom is compelling as an eldritch villain, and I… enjoyed myself? Dunno what to make of all that, but four hearts it is.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 19, Death of a Goblin, by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

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I feel like this series found its groove again! I miss Bagley’s pencilling, but Immonen makes a fine replacement. A lot of the stuff that bothered me in recent volumes has been redeemed here: Kitty Pryde is interesting instead of just a drama device, Norman Osborn gets some depth, S.H.I.E.L.D. is engaged with as the creepy organization they are, and it turns out that comic book nonsense can actually be fun sometimes.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 18, Ultimate Knights, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley

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I’ve complained a lot about comic book nonsense in recent volumes, and there’s plenty of it here, too, but this pulled a lot together in a way that just plain works. Interesting crossover action, classic Spider-Man morality of superheroes, good art, interesting stakes. I guess this is why I keep reading this series.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 17, Clone Saga, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley

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I almost gave this four hearts because I kind of like how it turned out, and it did touch on some good Spider-Man themes. However, I then remembered all the comic book nonsense that happens here—and the way that so many of these issues demonstrate how terrible it would be to live in the (Ultimate) Marvel universe.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Fall: Volume One, by Jared Muralt

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I picked up this comic about a post-pandemic-apocalypse from the library on a whim. I have mixed feelings about this genre—especially since it’s hard to believe that it was begun before COVID-19. The story is somewhat interesting but choppy, and the characters are compelling but flat. The translation is rouuuugh, and I wonder how much better it might be in the original German. What saves this for me, though, is how clearly Swiss it is.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 15, Silver Sable, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley

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There’s some interesting stuff here, including Bendis’s riffs on power and responsibility and how that relates to secret identities. However, there’s too much welding to the broader Ultimate universe, including introducing characters I just don’t care about. I also still feel like Peter’s attitude toward MJ is more low-level misogyny than anything justified.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 14, Warriors, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley

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Definitely not my favorite of the series. Lots of crossover nonsense with characters I don’t really care about. Way too much casual misogyny (Peter toward MJ and creators toward the women they put in impractical fanservice costumes). Starting to question my commitment to this series binge.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Queen & Country Definitive Edition: Volume 02, by Greg Rucka

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This volume was excellent. Much more of the Sandbaggers vibes and less saving the world spy fiction. I ordered the third volume today!

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It’s finally happened: I’ve seen a comic book panel that has the same style as the Take On Me music video.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Queen & Country Definitive Edition: Volume 01, by Greg Rucka

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I’ve been wanting to read this since binging all three series of The Sandbaggers, since I’ve seen it repeatedly referred to as a spiritual sequel. They weren’t kidding—the first story arc feels like a remix of the show! The third story arc was the least interesting to me (and probably the reason this didn’t get full marks). The first two deal with the cynicism of espionage and the brokenness of spies in the way I expected the series would, whereas the third arc felt more like a traditional spy story with maybe some furniture moving for future arcs.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Ultimate Spider-Man: Vol. 13, Hobgoblin, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley

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Peter and MJ’s relationship is one of my favorite things to follow in this series, and that makes this volume a real disappointment. It seems like so much of the story is built around forcing drama and idiot balls into these two characters for the sake of adding twists and turns to the plot. Plus, it really comes through in this volume how often MJ is treated as an extension of Peter instead of a character with her own depth and agency.