Charlotte Finn
Preacher Ma’am: How Does ‘War in the Sun’ Hold Up Today?
In War In The Sun, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Steve Dillon and Peter Snejbjerg, everything changes forever. It's a promise that means nothing in most comics, but when Preacher says it, it follows all the way through. While Preacher is a lot like a superhero comic, it has one key difference: things change, and change greatly, and stay changed.
Did Fandom Kill the All-Ages Superhero Comic? [Kids’ Comics]
It’s not a radical idea to say that superhero comics should be for children, but it seems an increasingly radical idea in a time where a Marvel comic recently had Hawkeye shoot Bruce Banner through the eyeball. All-ages comics at the Big Two are the exception, not the rule. Are the demands of continuity the reason why? Does "everything should fit together" inevitably create, for lack of a better term, "tone bleed"?
Super-Bad vs Super-Dad: Should Your Kids Be Reading ‘Captain Ultimate?’ [Kids’ Comics]
It’s Kids’ Week at ComicsAlliance! As the summer draws to a close and young comics fans get ready to go back to school, we’re presenting a week of articles focused on great kids’ comics, including comics recommendations for younger readers. Hey! Kids’ comics!
In Benjamin Bailey, Joey Esposito and Boy Akkerman’s Captain Ultimate, evil flourishes when good heroes go bad, and good flourishes when one single kid believes in the greatest, most noble superhero of all.
Down the Cracks of the DC Universe with Garth Ennis and Russ Braun in ‘Sixpack & Dogwelder: Hard Travelin’ Heroz’ [Interview]
It’s not easy being a superhero. Your allies all talk in catchphrases, your best friend is into dog-on-person action, and racism still hasn’t been solved despite Green Lantern and Green Arrow giving it their best shot.
But hope springs eternal, and now the DC Universe’s most... somethingest heroes are stepping up to the plate in the Hitman spinoff mini series Sixpack & Dogwelder: Hard Travelin' Heroz. ComicsAlliance spoke with artist Russ Braun and writer Garth Ennis about what to expect from this latest return to the grungier side of superheroism.
Falling Off the Whiz Wagon: ‘All-Star Section Eight’s’ Journey Through Addiction
When Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Hitman ended, it ended definitively for almost all of its characters --- including the collection of heroes called Section 8, who would have to sweat for a lifetime to reach the lofty heights of the Z-list. So I held off on buying All-Star Section 8 --- written by Ennis, drawn by McCrea, with colors by John Kalisz, letters by Pat Brosseau and covers by Amanda Conner and Paul Mounts --- because I didn’t feel the need to revisit it.
But eventually I did, and I was not expecting what I got: affection wrapped in sheer nihilism, a pointed critique from a very unexpected angle on how the Big Two superhero universes work, and nothing less than Ennis and McCrea’s own Flex Mentallo.
Preacher Ma’am: How Does ‘Dixie Fried’ Hold Up Today?
As someone who thought she was a dude in the late 1990s, Preacher was the comic I looked forward to every month more than any other. As someone who knows she isn’t a dude in the mid-2010s, I’m looking back on this series and examining what still works, what doesn’t work, and what its lasting legacy is.
In Dixie Fried the cast starts to settle into a routine, and one of the greatest strengths of the series comes to the fore, even as characters turn out to be not what they seem and the series’ perspective on religion turns out to be more nuanced than expected. Dixie Fried was written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon, and features colors by Matt Hollingsworth, Pamela Rambo, and James Sinclair, letters by Clem Robbins, and was edited by Axel Alonso.
Preacher Ma’am: How Does ‘Ancient History’ Hold Up Today?
As someone who thought she was a dude in the late 1990s, Preacher was the comic I looked forward to every month more than any other. As someone who knows she isn’t a dude in the mid-2010s, I’m looking back on this series and examining what still works, what doesn’t work, and what its lasting legacy is.
This week, it's a break from the regular series as writer Garth Ennis and editor Julie Rottenberg assemble a series of one-shots set in the Preacher expanded universe. What will different artistic styles bring to the table, and what can the tone of each one --- from frivolous to a serious as a tombstone --- tell us about how well fiction ages?
Preacher Ma’am: How Does ‘Proud Americans’ Hold Up Today?
As someone who thought she was a dude in the late 1990s, Preacher was the comic I looked forward to every month more than any other. As someone who knows she isn’t a dude in the mid-2010s, I’m looking back on this series and examining what still works, what doesn’t work, and what its lasting legacy is.
This week, we look at the stories collected in the third volume, Proud Americans, courtesy of writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon, colorist Matt Hollingsworth, letterer Clem Robbins, and editor Axel Alonso, with covers by Glenn Fabry. These stories are all thematically tied together by reconciling what seems to be with the way things are --- the myth versus the reality --- although in one case, we may not know it yet…
Preacher Ma’am: How Does ‘Until the End of the World’ Hold Up Today?
As someone who thought she was a dude in the late 1990s, Preacher was the comic I looked forward to every month more than any other. As someone who knows she isn’t a dude in the mid-2010s, I’m looking back on this series and examining what still works, what doesn’t work, and what its lasting legacy is.
If Gone to Texas was the fizzle, Until the End of the World is the bang. The second collection, by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, with colors by Matt Hollingsworth, letters by Clem Robbins, and covers by Glenn Fabry, includes issues #8 through #17, and it's where Preacher truly takes off for me, all because of the lead-in story, which gives the collection its title.
Lost in Transition: ‘DC Comics Bombshells,’ And Why the Second World War Is ‘Like This Now’
“It’s like this now.”
Those four words are about as DC a phrase as one gets in comics, more than any quote from any comic, because they summarize DC’s approach to all of its worlds and all of its continuities: we want it to be like this, so It’s like this now.
It’s why there’s been anywhere from two to five reboots of the universe during the time I’ve been reading comics. It’s why there’s a multiverse, and why any attempt to bury the multiverse never lasts. And that multiverse is how we’ve wound up with Bombshells, the digital-first series based off a collection of statues issued by DC Direct, written by Marguerite Bennett and illustrated by a team that includes Marguerite Sauvage, Wendy Broome, Laura Braga, Stephen Mooney, Ming Doyle, Ant Lucia, and Bilquis Evely.