Longform

Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime's collaboration has already produced a number of interesting and exciting crime comics, and their flagship title Peepland is the cream of the crop. Written by Christa Faust and Gary Phillips, with art by Andrea Camerini, it's based on Faust's own personal experience of the seediest parts of Manhattan in the '80s, focusing on the peep shows of Times Squad. With one issue available now and another out this week, Titan has provided us with a creator commentary by Faust and Phillips, describing their thought processes behind each page, including stories from Faust's life, and notes about the real life inspirations for certain characters and locations.

There are lot of things that make Spider-Man one of the most interesting and captivating characters in the Marvel Universe, but one of the franchise's greatest strengths has always been his supporting characters, and even more specifically, his love interests. For a character known for his "Parker Luck", he's attracted the attention of several impressive, accomplished, and beautiful women. We've put together a guide to some of the most important romances in Spider-Man's life.

The Boy And The Beast is the latest film from Mamoru Hosoda, Hayao Miyazaki's heir apparent. It's a poignant fable about growing up and parenthood, as well as a stunning, fun adventure film. Screen & Page looks at the appeal of the movie, and its adaptation as a manga by Renji Asai.

Does politics belong in comics? Can comics influence politics? And what impact do we expect the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States to have on the comic industry and on the stories it tells over the next four years? ComicsAlliance contributors Elle Collins, Kieran Shiach, Tom Speelman, and Tara Marie join editor-in-chief Andrew Wheeler for a roundtable discussion about the relationship between politics and comics.

Titan is launching a whole line of comics based on the Hammer Studios horror films, starting today with The Mummy #1 by Peter Milligan and Ronilson Freire. Milligan is a fascinating choice of writer for this project, best known for classic books like Shade the Changing Man and Enigma at Vertigo, and X-Statix at Marvel. Milligan writes cerebral and often surreal comics that are unlike anything else out there. Peter Milligan has provided ComicsAlliance with an exclusive commentary for The Mummy #1. This commentary contains spoilers, so if you haven't read the issue yet, pick it up online or in stores today, and come back here for the inside line.

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 films 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. Today, we're looking at a video game adaptation that stands effectively as a horror tale in its own right, while retaining its originators' sense of mystery and unease: Higurashi: When They Cry!

While it may be overstating the case to describe superhero comics as our modern myths in a post-religious age, there are certainly some stories that have taken on a near-mythic quality as "the stories you have to read": Watchmen; The Dark Knight Returns; All-Star Superman; The Death of Captain Marvel; "The Night Gwen Stacy Died." These stories are held in high esteem, often for a generation or more. For Fantasy Week here at ComicsAlliance, I wanted I'd dive into a run that's not only held up as one of the defining Marvel stories of the 1980s, but also the high point of its particular character's history. I wanted to know: is Walter Simonson's legendary four-year run on Thor, and the stories related to it, really that good, or just fondly remembered by the people who read it as kids?

It's Fantasy Week here at ComicsAlliance, and it's also one week until Halloween, so what better way to celebrate both than with a look at an anime and manga about a young shrine maiden waging a war on monsters. This is Blood-C, a spinoff of a spinoff of a movie that got its own movie!

This week there’s been a lot of talk and controversy surrounding J. Scott Campbell’s Midtown Comics variant for Invincible Iron Man #1, featuring the 15-year-old Riri Williams, AKA Ironheart. Fan response to the cover pointed out the highly sexualized depiction of Riri and the inappropriate decision to assign the cover to an artist known for his pin-up work, but things got worse when Campbell and other creators responded to the controversy. Campbell and his defenders’ rebuttals featured the typical lines about social justice warriors and censorship, and creators in this situation seem to always assume that they’re infallible when it comes to the art they create. Yet another week of controversy in comics has me asking; What’s so wrong about stopping to listen to what people have to say?

We live in a time when hate speech directed at marginalized people has become too commonplace in public and political rhetoric; a time when the demonization of Muslims, immigrants, transgender people and others masquerades as a defense of security or virtue; when nostalgia for "the good old days" sanctifies a past in which marginalized people were deprived of respect, voice, or power. The fear-mongering of politicians seeps down into everyday conversation, feeding commonplace prejudices. Even so, it's still shocking to hear that sort of rhetoric presented on the stage at a comic convention by one of the industry's most high profile authors, especially at a panel discussing LGBTQ themes in Marvel's X-Men comics. Yet at last week's New York Comic Con, writer Peter David indulged in exactly that sort of hate speech, in this instance directed at one of the world's most easily and persistently scapegoated communities: the Rromani people.