Longform

Preacher Ma'am: How Does 'Alamo' Hold Up Today?
Preacher Ma'am: How Does 'Alamo' Hold Up Today?
Preacher Ma'am: How Does 'Alamo' 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 all over. Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon --- with Pamela Rambo on colors, Clem Robbins doing the lettering, and Alex Alonso editing the whole deal --- set their pencils down with "Alamo," and their final word on the series asks us: who deserves salvation, who has earned damnation, and does it even make a difference in the end?
Understanding Hawkman: How A Simple Concept Became A Mess
Understanding Hawkman: How A Simple Concept Became A Mess
Understanding Hawkman: How A Simple Concept Became A Mess
This week sees the release of Marc Andreyko and Aaron Lopresti’s new DC Comics miniseries, Death of Hawkman, which seemingly promises to kill off the confusing cluster of continuity masquerading as a character for good. But how did Hawkman get this way? What single decision led to decades of confusion, and how can it be fixed? There may be a solution, but if we’re going to address the Hawkman problem, first we need to understand it.
Tom Gauld On 'Mooncop', A Comedy About A Cop On The Moon
Tom Gauld On 'Mooncop', A Comedy About A Cop On The Moon
Tom Gauld On 'Mooncop', A Comedy About A Cop On The Moon
British cartoonist Tom Gauld's new graphic novel Mooncop imagines an actualization of the lunar colony concept of moonshot-era pop culture as it might be if the colony had followed the path of our collective gradual disenchantment with space. Gauld employs his signature simple style in service of a story that is at once an accomplished work of deadpan comedy and a meditation on the passage of time. ComicsAlliance spoke to to Gauld about his inspiration and his work.
Give 'Em Elle: Wonder Woman Is Queer, Now Say It In The Comic
Give 'Em Elle: Wonder Woman Is Queer, Now Say It In The Comic
Give 'Em Elle: Wonder Woman Is Queer, Now Say It In The Comic
We seem to have missed a step somewhere. Just a few years ago, having a queer character in a superhero comic was a huge deal. There would be boycotts and mainstream news stories. And now we’re told that it’s totally not a big deal for Wonder Woman, the most important female superhero in history, and a third of DC Comics’ trinity, to be queer. It’s so not a big deal that you should have already known. It’s so not a big deal that it doesn’t even need to be directly stated in a DC comic, and in fact to do so would be clumsy and unnecessary. But shouldn’t there have been a step in between? A moment when it was no longer forbidden for Wonder Woman to be queer, but not yet such a casual affair that to even state it in her comic would be passé? A moment when it would be appropriate to show Wonder Woman’s queerness in a comic book, rather than telling it in an interview?
We Can Be Heroes: Superhero Tech And Disability
We Can Be Heroes: Superhero Tech And Disability
We Can Be Heroes: Superhero Tech And Disability
Superhero comic books and shared universes are full of fantastical technology that enable people to fly in suits of armor or even walk down the street on hydraulic stilts. However, the superhero universes still struggle to reconcile the advanced technology of their worlds with the day to day reality of people living with disabilities.
How Graham & Roy's 'Prophet' Revival Smashes Expectations
How Graham & Roy's 'Prophet' Revival Smashes Expectations
How Graham & Roy's 'Prophet' Revival Smashes Expectations
If you’d told me a few years ago that outstanding science fiction could be spun out of a reboot of an old Rob Liefeld comic with that one guy with the swords who grimaces a lot and has padding glued to his face, the first question I’d have to ask is, "Which one guy with the swords was that? There were a couple." The answer would be Prophet, one of the most fruitful experiments to come out of the 2012 retooling of the defunct Extreme Studios line, and one of the most genuinely enthralling sci-fi comics of the past decade.
The 'Saga' Continues: Vaughan & Staples' Masterwork
The 'Saga' Continues: Vaughan & Staples' Masterwork
The 'Saga' Continues: Vaughan & Staples' Masterwork
When a comic runs for a long while at a consistent level of quality, with a single reliable creative team, it can often slip out of the conversation. When it launched four and a half years ago, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga was the talk of the comics town --- a critical darling and one of the crossover hits that helped make Image Comics what it is today. With the comic now in its seventh volume and approaching its fortieth issue, I decided to revisit Saga and look at how it has changed, and ask whether it still deserves the kind of attention it enjoyed in those early days.
The Issue: Cold And Alone In 'Transmetropolitan' #8
The Issue: Cold And Alone In 'Transmetropolitan' #8
The Issue: Cold And Alone In 'Transmetropolitan' #8
Welcome to The Issue, where we look at some of the strangest, most interesting, and most distinctive single issue comic stories ever to grace the medium. For Sci-Fi Week at ComicsAlliance, we're looking at one of comics' best single issue science fiction stories. Transmetropolitan writer Warren Ellis is probably the king of the single-issue story. Transmet is absolutely packed with memorable one-off issues. “Another Cold Morning” might just be the best.

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