DC Comics Research Articles

Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area by Oliver Wang

MUSIC IN NIGHTCLUBS Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area. By Oliver Wang. (Refiguring American Music.) Durham, nC: Duke University Press, 2015. [xiii, 218 p. ISBN 9780822359043 (hardcover), $89.95; ISBN 9780822358909 (paperback), $24.95; ISBN 9780822375487 (e-book), various.] Illustrations, bibliography index.Oliver Wang's Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area chronicles the historical trajectory of Filipino American DJs-from the mobile crews to the scratch DJ-through the lived experiences of practitioners and patrons. The book's title (a play on Legions of Doom, the DC Comics evil superheroes) was inspired by an allegiance between five different DJ crews in northern California's Bay Area (including South San Francisco, Daly City, Fremont, and Union City): Sound Sequence, Images Incorporated, Creative Madness, Midstar Productions, and Styles Beyond Compare (p. 27). In the first chapter, Wang notes that many of the DJs descended from the third wave of Filipino migrants to the United States: the professionals. Under U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson's Third Preference Act, Filipino doctors, engineers, nurses, entrepreneurs, and businessmen established themselves primarily in coastal areas. Second-generation Filipino Americans, the children of the migrants who settled in a metropolis, became exposed to American popular music in the discotheque nightclubs.In the second chapter, Wang documents the formation of the earliest Filipino American mobile DJ crews and their efforts to bring the discotheque experience to their community. His first informants, Sound Explosion, were the pioneers of the technique of nonstop mixing by Filipino American DJs. These three DJs- Rafael and Ricky Restauro and Sam Beltran-subsequently developed a grassroots movement for Filipino American mobile DJs that was both self-funded and financed by their parents (what the author calls soft infrastructure; p. 57). With the success of Sound Explosion, other Filipino Americans formulated similar mobile crews. The Electric Sounds and the Gogos (the only female mobile DJ crew at the time) began DJing in their own communities and generated what the author terms psychic income, which entails both monetary and currency (pp. 57, 86).Wang's concept of garage parties as liminal spaces for social interaction also lends to the perceived generation gap between most Filipino American youths and their parents. The DJs reminisced about incognito interactions between the opposite sexes, unbeknownst to parents, when they sometimes used their reputations as opportunities to mingle and find potential partners. Others treated the scene as a professional opportunity. Chapter 3 addresses sanctioned events, such as hometown association parties, weddings, and baptisms; these gradually led to the overriding popularity of the mobile Filipino American DJ in San Francisco. Concerning race, Wang's informants never asserted their ethnic identity when promoting themselves and, unlike their East Asian counterparts, rarely made references to cultural icons from their ethnicity. Therefore, most of Filipino American DJs apparently viewed themselves foremost as Americans who occasionally DJed cultural events given by their families, the only ones who were fully aware of their Filipino ethnicity.In chapter 4, Wang describes how the mobile DJs began to venture away from local events. As the mobile DJs gained recognition within their communities, event producers from San Francisco began selecting DJs from these mobile crews to work at professional nightclubs. An intriguing study from this chapter is the case of Mark Bradford, an aggressive promoter of these showcases. Bradford was a complex character. Some hold negative views of his reputation because of his alleged solicitations of sexual favors from young male DJs in exchange for covering expenses for equipment and transportation. …

Dawn of Justice, Dawn of Hope

A Review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) by Zack Snyder (Director) According to the reviews, the 2016 DC Comics film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, directed by Zack Snyder, was a disappointment. It was the eagerly anticipated first appearance of Batman and Superman together on the big screen and a box office success, grossing $166 million in North America and $422.5 million worldwide in its opening weekend, to become the fourth largest global opening of all time (Box Office Mojo, 2016). But ultimately, the film received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike, with fan-site Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 27 percent rating, signifying a bad film (Rotten Tomatoes, 2016), and Metacritic a metascore of 44 percent from 51 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews (Metacritic, 2016). For many, it failed to be the film they had hoped for (Kermode, 2016).

A context for the supercontext: On the function of psychedelics in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles

Abstract Grant Morrison is one of the most prolific and well-known superhero comic writers of all time. He wrote his magnum opus, The Invisibles, as a 59-issue comic book series that was published under DC comics’ Vertigo label from 1994 to 2000. At the end of the narrative humanity supposedly enters into a 5th dimensional space called the ‘Supercontext’, which Morrison has at one point described as ‘everyone peaking on the acid trip that never ends’. This article clarifies and contextualizes the role of psychedelics in Grant Morrison et al.’s The Invisibles. There has been a lack of critical attention regarding the influence of psychedelics in Morrison’s work despite Morrison’s frequent comments regarding their significance in his life and writing. The first section of this article introduces some of the common formal attributes found in prior attempts to express various aspects of the psychedelic experience in the comics medium. The Invisibles is then compared with these, thereby confirming the various functions of psychedelics within the text. The next section goes on to demonstrate The Invisibles’ formal similarities with a largely overlooked influence: Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy (1984). By examining the way in which Wilson and Shea utilized William Burroughs’s ‘fold-in’ technique in order to attempt to depict a higher dimensional ‘universal consciousness’ through the formal attributes of the text, one can identify an analogous relationship to Morrison’s use of braiding to show readers the perspective of the ‘supercontext’ as a higher-dimension outside time. This relationship is identified in order to finally assert that The Invisibles can be grouped alongside other texts of an emerging genre of fiction characterized by its depictions of consciousness at a future stage of human evolution as envisioned through the author’s psychedelic experiences.

‘Making It Mine’: An interview with comics creator Dan McDaid

Abstract Dan McDaid is a comics artist and writer who currently lives in Dundee, Scotland. He has worked on projects for Doctor Who Magazine, Dark Horse Comics, Image Comics, DC Comics, BOOM! Studios, and IDW, among others. His most recent projects are Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for BOOM! Studios and Judge Dredd: Mega-City Zero for IDW. I spoke with Dan in Dundee on 28 November 2014 to discuss his career, his artistic and writing influences, and his creative process.

Copyright in Inanimate Characters: The Disturbing Proliferation of Microworks and the Negative Effects on Copyright and Free Expression

In its September 2015 decision in DC Comics v. Towle, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recognized the existence of a copyright for inanimate characters. The court held that the Batmobile – a fictional car driven by a fictional superhero – was an independently copyrightable work. This article explores the problems with the Ninth Circuit's analysis and argues that increasing copyright protection for what the authors call “microworks” is misguided and harms First Amendment interests.

‘The important thing, always, is to tell a good story’: an interview with comic book creator Erik Larsen

Erik Larsen’s career in comics spans three decades. He is the creator, writer and artist of Savage Dragon. He co-founded Image Comics in 1992 and was publisher of Image Comics from 2004 to 2008. He has also produced work for a range of titles published by DC Comics (Doom Patrol, New Teen Titans, Teen Titans Spotlight, Adventures of Superman, The Outsiders, Aquaman) and Marvel Comics (Punisher, Amazing Spider-Man, Nova, The Defenders, Wolverine, Thor, Fantastic Four: The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine) over the course of his career. In this interview he discusses his influences and shares his thoughts on comic book storytelling, art and craft. Additional topics explored include narration and exposition within the context of visual storytelling; the impact of publisher ‘house styles’ on the aesthetics of comic art; the question of whether standard industry practices and editorial restrictions mitigate against creativity and originality; Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange and Spider-Man; Jack Kirby and the Fantastic Four; and the importance of experimentation within the medium.

Monstrous Morgana: Arthurian Women as Unnatural Amazons in Madame Xanadu (2008–2010)

adame Xanadu, written by Matt Wagner and published by DC Vertigo from 2008-2010 in twenty-nine issues, is one of DC Comics' most recent retellings ofArthurian characters operating in the modern world.1 The story focuses on the sorceress Nimue (aka Madame Xanadu) as she travels through the centuries from the idyllic days of Arthur's court until she settles in New York City in the 1930s (Issue 9, May 2001) where she remains until the series concludes in the 1960s (Issue 29, January 2011). Throughout these many centuries, she battles her nemesis, her sister Morgana (aka Morgan Le Fay), whose every behavior and interest contrasts jarringly with Nimue's. Readers easily recognize Morgana as the villain of the story because of her unchecked sexual appetite, her revealing clothing, and her bloodlust as she destroys her lovers and devotees or anyone who crosses her. Morgana dresses as an Amazon warrior determined to dominate those around her through trickery, seduction, and violence. Nimue has been constructed to appeal to a more 'natural' reading of medieval fantasy femininity based on her gentle interactions with woodland creatures, her submission to the powerful men in her story-including Merlin and the Stranger-and also her girlish, waif-like appearance that positions her as more sexually demure and passive than her lascivious sister. Even though Merlin and the Stranger often behave in ways that could be seen as also questionable or self-serving, it is Morgana's gender that marks her as the clear villain.2 Yet, Morgana appears as more than a villain; she has evolved into a monster. This series offers contrasting dichotomies of womanhood that clearly envision Morgana as the unnatural, destructive, and monstrous woman whose bid for agency, sexual autonomy, and power consistently meets with punishment and reprimand by her sister. Her contrapuntal role allows writers and readers to define that which is normal, right, and good through their understanding that Morgana is inherently abnormal, wrong, and bad.MORGAN LE FAY IN COMIC BOOKSFor decades, Morgan Le Fay has appeared in a number of comics as a villain whose unnaturally aggressive sexual behaviors have almost always been the cause of her defeat and demise.3 Since the 1950s, Morgan has appeared frequently in a number of titles published by Marvel and by DC as the sexy scoundrel and hero's nemesis.4 She was first introduced into the Marvel Comics Universe in May 1955 when she debuted in Black Knight #1. Writer Stan Lee and illustrator Joe Maneely created a large-breasted, scantily clad sorceress whose character would often materialize in many other Marvel titles over the next fifty years. In these books, Morgan battled Doctor Doom, the Scarlet Witch, Iron Man, and Spider-Woman, Marvel's first spin-off heroine.5 This Morgan has made at least fifty-seven appearances in a variety of Marvel comic titles.6 Jack Kirby later introduced his own version of Morgaine Le Fay for DC Comics, debuting in The Demon #1 in September 1972 and acting again as the eponymous hero's archenemy.7 Over the decades, this Morgan also challenged many of the great heroes of the DC Universe including Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman in the series Trinity (June 2008 until July 2009).8 Generally, Morgan Le Fay's power derives from her sexuality and desire to destroy the heroes around her by using her cleavage and charms. Unnaturally libidinous, Morgan functions as a sexual deviant whose appetite may be monstrous, but she herself is not drawn as a monster. Her sexuality certainly is represented as causing alarm and disdain, but does not always mark her as totally inhuman, especially as she battles other women who also possess their own sexual agency and peculiarities in these issues.9Morgan Le Fay's dehumanization and transformation into a monster began with DC Comics' maxi-series Camelot3000, published from December 1982 until April 1985 in twelve issues and written by Mike W Barr (writer) and Brian Bolland (penciller and inker). …

How to Build a Transsexual Superman: Reading Superman’s Emergence Alongside Histories of Eugenic Science and Gender Confirmation Surgeries

Published under DC Comics’ Elseworlds imprint, Superman’s Metropolis is a comic book retelling of the Superman origin story set within the cinematic world of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The interpolation of the Superman narrative into the film is meant to be an imaginative act that interweaves two alternative universes in order to highlight the underlying themes of identity and corporeal malleability in both texts. This creative exercise, the author argues, is not merely a coincidental interlinking but a purposeful attempt to reveal the very real impact eugenic science (and the discourses it crafted about the body) has had on the character of Superman. This article proposes another alternative version of Superman’s origin story, one that specifically disrupts seemingly stable and normative histories of the hero’s emergence and extends the connections made in Superman’s Metropolis to consider how the eugenics movement’s investment in and development of gender confirmation surgeries (previously known as sex reassignment surgeries) markedly affects the ways in which we understand the emergence of the Superman narrative. While at first a reading-together of these histories may seem widely incompatible, the author argues that the narratives of transsexual surgeries (surgical procedures that modify an individual’s primary or secondary sex characteristics) fold neatly into the Superman origin story.

Embracing Dionysius in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing

In the second issue of Alan Moore’s mid-1980s run on DC comics’ Swamp Thing , Alec Holland learns that he is not simply a mild-mannered botanist who has been miraculously transformed into a super-powered “moss man.” The Swamp Thing is a plant, a plant who borrowed Holland’s identity, a plant who only thought it was a man, all along. This essay examines how Moore’s run on Swamp Thing embraces the challenges of depiction that come with making a plant—not just a “plant-man”—the hero of a comic book. How, the text asks, might the forms of plant-thought differ from a man’s? How does it think, and what might those thoughts “look like” on a comic page? Through the run, the writing and art overcomes the confining linearity of the comic’s paneled structure and conventional points-of-view, as well as the commercial demands of writing for a presumptively adolescent audience.

Introduction: The 1970s

Initially, our thinking about this special issue, 1970s, began with Woman. television series ran from 1975 to 1979. As children we watched, amazed by her magic belt, her nonviolent golden Lasso of Truth, her bullet-deflecting bracelets, and, of course, her killer (though not deadly) tiara. In our girlhood memories, she stood for all of us: Woman the Chicana, Woman the South American Amazon. For us, she was the outsider woman hero with whom we could identify. And then came the cyborg, the Bionic Woman, whose television series ran from 1976 to 1978. On the big screen, too, there was Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones, and a host of super women who would feed our imaginations and make us believe we were, indeed, Free to Be.These popular versions of empowered women reflected the revolutionary potential of the 1970s. Following the various strands of activisms around civil and human rights in the previous decades, women activists-second wave feminists-worked to shape new paradigms for thinking about gender, sexism, racism, sexuality, reproductive rights, religion, labor, colonialism, technology, art, music, and the environment. They transformed accepted notions of female power regarding their bodies, their pleasure, and their work. And they launched a host of interventions and institutions that will continue to haunt and inspire for generations to come.The Feminist Press itself began in 1970. Its journal, W5Q. (originally published as Women's Studies Newsletter), first appeared in 1972. same year, Ms. magazine launched its inaugural issue, which featured the headline Wonder Woman for (fig. l). accompanying image de- picts a towering woman warrior whose utopian ideal can effect real-world changes and defeat the machines of war, whose stride spans the length of a street, and whose golden lasso protects a city encased in its electrified pyramid. She seems to signal a new era, an era in which peace and justice seemed within reach. In the magazine, Gloria Steinern claimed her as a feminist icon, an inspiring symbol of female power. As feminists we know plenty of real women, wondrous in their power, whose labors sought to change the world in the decades (and centuries) before and after the 1970s. Even Ms. magazine's Woman imagery stands on a legacy; it extends a 1943 cover of the comic book issue #7 that envisions a future President Woman pictured among a crowd of women who voted her into office (Matsuuchi 2012, 122). That future is still to come.Separate from Ms. magazine, DC Comics sought to incorporate the Zeitgeist of 1970s Woman as feminist in its 1972 Woman Women's Lib. comic book's editors commissioned a series from black and gay science-fiction author and feminist ally Samuel R. Delany, who envisioned six parts, with a different villain, in the series:The first was a corrupt department store owner; the second was the head of a supermarket chain who tries to squash a women's food co-operative. Another villain was a college advisor who really felt a woman's place was in the home and who assumed if you were a bright woman, then something was probably wrong with you psychologically, and so forth. It worked up to a gang of male thugs trying to squash an abortion clinic staffed by women surgeons. And Woman was going to do battle with each of these and triumph. (2001)Ann Matsuuchi describes this 1970s moment in Woman's feminist history as an opportunity to explore the politics of representation as they inform feminisms in popular culture. In the issue The Grandee Caper, the only one published before the series' abrupt cancellation, Woman wears pants. And, like the comic's noteworthy brown women characters, she looks for employment in New York's Lower East Side. When a department store owner wants to exploit the women and simultaneously capitalize on Woman's brand, the women unite to organize for equitable pay. …

Ladies who lunch: Man-eating femmes fatales in contemporary visual culture

Abstract This article explores the legacy of the Sirens in contemporary visual culture, considering the persistent theme of women who, like these mythical beings, would bewitch and then devour men. It considers the significant and highly visible problem of representations of femininity, focusing on how the connection between women and cannibalism reflects the common trope of the danger inherent within the female body. The various, and often interwoven, responses of allure, fear and revulsion provoked by such a display of female power emerge in the works that will be closely focused on here: John Longstaff’s painting The Sirens (1891), the film Teeth (2007) by Lichtenstein, the Queens Of The Stone Age music video Sick, Sick, Sick (2007), and the characters Poison Ivy from DC comics (1966–) and Mileena from the video game franchise Mortal Kombat (1993–). Though other examples will be discussed, these texts are noteworthy not simply for the images that they offer but, perhaps more so, for their place within popular culture. Unlike the arguably limited reach of fine art, these texts are widely engaged with and so disseminate these ideas about women to a broad audience. The dangers inherent within the female body manifest in these media in numerous ways, envisioned variously – and often simultaneously – as abject, erotic, maternal, monstrous, natural and, ultimately, unknowable.

From Penny Dreadful to Graphic Novel: Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s Genealogy of Comics in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen1

In 1890, British media mogul Alfred Harmsworth launched the halfpenny comic magazine. By reducing the page size and opting for the cheapest paper and ink, Harmsworth was able to undersell his competitors’ penny-priced output and created a publishing success that was widely imitated and ushered in the age of comics as a mass medium (Sabin, Adult 21). In 2002, DC Comics started its series of Absolute Editions, which reprint popular titles that originally appeared as pamphlets in oversized hardc...

The moral world of Superman and the American war in Vietnam

In Superman #216 (1969), Superman intervened in the Vietnam War. Until this point, DC Comics had kept Superman away from any of America’s wars in comic books. During the Second World War, Superman urged Americans to buy war bonds on the cover of comic books, but within the comics the closest he came to fighting was breaking up a spy network. DC had Superman go to Vietnam in part as a response to servicemen’s letters requesting his presence and indeed used this as a plot point within the story, with servicemen writing to the Daily Planet asking why Superman was not helping. Superman’s intervention occurred at a time when American public opinion had turned against the war, especially after the Tet Offensive in early 1968. The article discusses how DC handled these ethical and moral issues and the reaction of readers. The Vietnam War, the social upheaval of the 1960s and a shift in audience to slightly older readers which made the comic less of a children’s medium forced DC to break out of the small moral world they had created for Superman in which stasis and charity defined his character.

Marvel and DC Characters Inspired by Arachnids

This article compares arachnid-based Marvel and DC comics characters. The composition of a comic book character often has interesting ‘real-life’ influences. Given the strong connection between arachnids (especially spiders, scorpions and mites, all belonging to the zoological class Arachnida) and human beings it is not surprising that they have inspired many fictional characters. We recorded 84 Marvel Comics characters and 40 DC Comics characters, detailed in the dataset that accompanies the article (Da-Silva 2014). Most characters have been created recently, since the 1990s. Marvel has significantly more arachnid characters than DC. As for taxonomic classification, the characters were based mostly on spiders (zoological order Araneae). Of the total characters, the majority are human beings, but an overwhelming number have at least some typical arachnid features. Villains (60.91% of total) are significantly more numerous, considering the sum of the two publishers. Arachnids have bad reputation for being dangerous (Thorp and Woodson 1976; Ruppert and Barnes 1996). Since the public usually considers spiders, scorpions and mites “harmful” in general, we expected a larger contingent of villains. However, there was no statistical difference between the amount of villains and heroes in Marvel characters. It did not happen probably due to the success of one character: the Amazing Spider-Man.

The craft of comics: an interview with comic book artist Norm Breyfogle

Norm Breyfogle has been a professional comic artist for more than twenty-five years. He is perhaps most widely recognised for his six years (1987–1993) spent illustrating various Batman titles for DC Comics, most notably Detective Comics, Batman and Batman: Shadow of the Bat. He also illustrated several prestige edition one-shots set within the Batman narrative universe, including Batman: Birth of the Demon (1992) which he hand-painted, and the ‘Elseworlds’ stories, Batman: Holy Terror (1991), Batman: The Abduction (1998) and Batman: Dreamland (2000). His recent credits include work for Archie Comics and two years pencilling the ‘Batman Beyond’ stories in Batman Beyond Unlimited for DC Comics. In this interview he discusses his artistic process; image–text relationships in comics; the aesthetic principles that inform his work; ways in which motion and sound are conveyed within comic book art; drawing Batman; and working in the superhero genre.

Break free: understanding, reimagining and reclaiming stories in Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory

This article investigates Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005–06. New York: DC Comics) as a metafictional treatise on the writing and reading of comic books in general and the superhero genre in particular. It examines how Seven Soldiers functions as Morrison’s commentary on the way contemporary culture tells stories, the way we interpret, reject and ultimately reclaim our role in narratives, ranging from the intimate to the ‘end of the world drama’. In the process, a paradigm for interpreting this landmark series is suggested, one whereby each component speaks to an aspect of the comic-book reading/writing experience: Zatanna, the mainstream comic reader; Bulleteer, the new reader; Frankenstein, the process of reimagining; Shining Knight, a reimagined end product; Klarion, the juvenile reader resistant to adult notions of seriousness; the Guardian, the adult reader recapturing their imagination; and Mister Miracle, the link between Seven Soldiers and Morrison’s wider superhero writings.

On Marshall Rogers and the definitive Batman: an interview with American comic book writer Steve Englehart

Steve Englehart wrote scripts for eight issues of Detective Comics (#469–#476) which were published by DC Comics between May 1977 and August 1978. The first two issues were pencilled by Walter Simonson and inked by Al Milgrom, and the remaining six issues were pencilled by Marshall Rogers and inked by Terry Austin. The entire run was reprinted by DC Comics in a ‘deluxe format’, five-issue, limited series entitled Shadow of the Batman, which was published throughout 1985/1986. The cover of the first issue of Shadow of the Batman announced the stories as ‘Batman Classics’, and each issue of the series featured new wraparound cover artwork by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. This was apropos given that many had considered the Englehart–Rogers–Austin collaboration to be synonymous with the ‘definitive’ interpretation of Batman since these issues were first published. Stories from the eight-issue run have been reprinted in both volumes of The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told and also in The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told collection. And for almost four decades Marshall Rogers has been widely regarded as one of the very best Batman artists. This interview explores the contributions that Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers have made to Batman and his universe and answers the perplexing question of why the definitive Batman writer–artist team did no further work on Batman.

Generous Exclusion: Register and Readership in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

As Lev Grossman’s review of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) informs us, Diaz’s novel is “an immigrant-family saga for people who don’t read immigrant-family sagas.” However, Grossman also remarks, it “wouldn’t really be fair” to term the novel a family saga in that it is so much more than this, “a mixture of straight-up English, Dominican Spanish and hieratic nerdspeak crowded with references to Tolkien, DC Comics, role-playing games and classic science fiction.” To fix it in one particular category or genre, Grossman seems to suggest, is to miss a central point of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Now the central point of Diaz’s novel is in fact rather difficult to locate. It tells the tale of the members of a Dominican family who are trying to make their way in the United States. In doing so, the text shifts its narrative focus back and forth between New York and Santo Domingo, New Jersey and the Dominican countryside. Consequently, it appears obvious that Diaz is keen to voice the concerns of the migrant, preferably in a register that rings true to the cultural and linguistic background of a given migrant’s specific situation. I will be arguing, however, that this most obvious theme of all, the migrant experience, is articulated much more effectively by means of the novel’s multiple registers. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao works not just as a tale of immigration, not only as an account of American imperialism, and not merely as a condemnation of the brutal history of the Dominican regime. The novel effectively addresses these concerns, but it achieves much more. Paradoxically, it is in this very more—in the continued transcendence of the apparently central theme of migrancy—that Diaz’s novel presents its most successful approach to the migrant experience through linguistic and thematic digressions that seem to have nothing at all to do with

Frame to frame, composition, light and shadow: an interview with comic book artist Gene Colan

American comic book artist Gene Colan (1 September 1926 – 23 June 2011) was one of the premiere Silver Age artists for Marvel Comics during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to co-creating the Falcon (the first African-American superhero introduced in mainstream American comics) and Blade (the basis for the Blade film series), he is widely known for his critically acclaimed work on a range of Marvel comic titles, including Tales to Astonish, Daredevil, Tomb of Dracula, Howard the Duck, Captain America and Dr. Strange. Throughout the 1980s, he drew a range of titles published by DC Comics, including Batman and Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, Jemm, Son of Saturn, Nathaniel Dusk, Night Force and Silverblade. Colan’s storied career in comics dates back to 1944, when he first began doing illustration work for Fiction House. He is affectionately remembered by fans around the world as ‘Gentleman’ Gene Colan, and over the course of his legendary career he worked in virtually every genre ever touched by the comic book medium, including romance, adventure, mystery, science-fiction, humour, war, westerns and crime, in addition to his acclaimed work within the superhero genre. His moody, cinematic art style made his work instantly recognisable. In this interview (undertaken via email in 2007) he discussed the evolution of his career in comics.

J.H. Williams III’s Batwoman and the depth of the surface: visualizing a new definition of identity as embedded in the skin

Hillary Chute suggests ‘if comics is about mapping, it is also about bodies – about locating them in space and time’ (‘Comics Form and Narrating Lives,’ Profession 1, 107–117). If scholars envision comics as body narratives, we must also consider that which covers the body: the skin. This article offers a reading of J.H. Williams III’s work on the contemporary DC Comics series Detective Comics and Batwoman, exploring a new vision of the subject and its mapped presence on the surface of the body. These narratives embedded in the surface avoid the disjuncture between sign and signifier in categorizations of identity as various performances retain a presence on the skin. Thus, without denying the performative nature of identity, this article explores the after-effects of the performance – how its palimpsestic presence maps time and space onto the surface of the material body. Furthermore, by turning to skin, the materiality of the body is brought into focus without reducing our discussion to biology; instead the self is found in the folds of skin, where the biological and the social meet.