Longform

Is it Watchmen's fault that Captain America is a Nazi? That's the strange question I found myself asking after the last month's developments in superhero comics. Thirty years after Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen made its debut, the characters are being integrated into the DC Universe as part of the current DC Rebirth publishing initiative, seemingly as totems of the sort of superhero grimnness that Rebirth hopes to move away from. Meanwhile, at Marvel, the publisher's most principled hero has been retconned as a secret agent of a far-right hate group, at a time when a vocal segment of the audience wants to see a lot more love than hate in the character's life. Both developments are indicative of a tension at the heart of superhero comics. Thirty years after Watchmen, is it time to stop pointing out that heroes can have flaws, and time instead to acknowledge that heroes can have value?

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.

What does your favourite superheroes' colors tell the audience about their personalities? Using the same color theory people use to group-think a corporate logo, or paint their room, we've been exploring what it means to superhero comics. Last time we mentioned that The Invisible Woman's blue and white is wise, and elemental, but what does invisible mean as a color? The Wasp's one constant through her many costume changes has been her transparent, flighty wings. And while Kitty Pryde, who also can't seem to settle on a costumes (or a name), isn't transparent as a color, she does actually pass through things.

In Cinemautopsy, we look back at a recent, high-profile failure and asks a simple question: What the hell happened? In this installment... a long-running superhero. The megastar lead of another wildly popular comic-book movie. A massive sci-fi epic with an all-star cast. The guy who reinvented James Bond twice. The guy who went on to launch DC’s TV empire. What could possibly go wrong?

Max Landis is a divisive figure in modern pop culture, to say the least. The son of acclaimed director John Landis, he burst on the scene as the writer of the found-footage film Chronicle, about three friends who gain immense superpowers and find their friendships tested. He’s also known for his online rants about how Rey from Star Wars is a Mary Sue, or defending the casting of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost of the Shell. So he’s a man with opinions who likes to share them. He also recently finished up his first miniseries at DC Comics, Superman: American Alien, backed up by an impressive roster of A-list art talent, including Nick Dragotta, Jae Lee and Jock. The series follows Clark Kent at various points in his life from childhood through to his early days as Superman, and takes a more grounded approach to the Man of Steel, but often skims and bounces off the ground a bit too hard.

The Amazons are queer to begin with. That’s not even up for debate. And when I talk about the Amazons, I’m talking about the ones in Wonder Woman comics, as originally introduced in 1941 by H.G. Peter, William Moulton Marston, and Marston’s partners and uncredited collaborators, Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne. The idea that Greek Myth and ancient writings are good sources for what DC’s Amazons should be like didn’t really take hold until Brian Azzarello’s run, and it didn’t serve them very well.

Most anime is adapted from manga, often produced by the manga publisher to raise awareness and sell it overseas. But what about the anime shows or film that go the other way, adapted from the screen to the page? How do those works hold up, and what changes or stays the same? That’s what Screen & Page aims to explore. For Pride Week, we're hopping in the Wayback Machine and smelling like roses to talk about Revolutionary Girl Utena!

With its eighth issue, Si Spurrier and Jeff Stokely's The Spire wrapped up last week, bringing the the series' whodunnit to a satisfying and surprisingly emotional conclusion. Given that it starred one of my favorite queer characters in recent comics, this seemed like a great time to look back over the Boom Studio series and to try to tell you, the lovely ComicsAlliance reader, why those eight issues are worth grabbing hold of as soon as you get the chance.

Writer and performance artist Mariko Tamaki is one of the breakout talents of her generation. She recently published the YA novel Saving Montgomery Sole through Roaring Brook Press, and her 2014 original graphic novel This One Summer, co-authored by her cousin Jillian Tamaki, made history last year as the first comics work to win both the prestigious Caldecott Honor for exceptional picture art and the Printz Honor for best Young Adult literature. The book also won an Eisner and an Ignatz! In recognition of her tremendous success, ComicsAlliance talked with Tamaki for a career-spanning interview about Saving Montgomery Sole, This One Summer, her performance art, and the importance of queer characters and stories in her work --- starting with a look back at Skim, the Tamakis' groundbreaking story of a Japanese-Canadian outsider at a Catholic girls' school.

“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.