Crisis over
It’s appropriate that I concluded writing about Crisis in the week Thatcher died. Her presence was all over Crisis; she appeared as Gloria Monday in Dan Dare, she appeared as herself with her emasculated late Cabinet in True Faith, she appeared symbolically in a panel of The New Adventures of Hitler when John Bull was … Continue reading
Crisis of identity
I haven’t written about everything that appeared in Crisis. When I write about Third World War I’ll probably have covered more than half the stuff that appeared in its pages, because Third World War was close to half of what appeared in its pages. I wrote about New Statesmen in an early series of blogs … Continue reading
What it’s like for real people
Rereading New Statesmen Epilogue and Prologue by John Smith, Sean Phillips and Jim Baikie. There was a time, about 10 or 12 years ago, when the DC universe was dominated by a new generation of its marquee heroes. Grant Morrison’s JLA had Wally West, Kyle Rayner, Connor Hawke, Steel, Zauriel who was intended to be … Continue reading
A headful of loose change
Rereading New Statesmen chapters 7-12 by John Smith, Jim Baikie and Duncan Fegredo. Comics have never made it far enough into the cultural mainstream to become studied objects, to be tested against the -isms. They’ve been working too hard to catch up with literature and movies to worry about where they stand with modernism, with … Continue reading
A big gaudy picturebook
Rereading New Statesmen chapters 1-6 by John Smith, Jim Baikie and Sean Phillips. Things that were hot, post-graphic novel revolution: limited series. Painted comics. British writers. Bloody violence. Character deaths. Morally ambivalent protagonists. Straight up nasty protagonists. First-person captions. Sex and sexual deviance. Real-world political angles. Corruption in high places. Pseudoscience. Literary techniques. Literary allusions. … Continue reading
Suggested For Mature Readers 