Tarot

In Tabula Idem, editors Hye M. and Iris Jay have taken the conceit of tarot and used it as a conduit to tell stories about queer characters from queer creators. The project is running on Kickstarter now and looking for a funding target of $44,000, and every story features a card from the tarot deck, with the stories in some cases serving as a sort of "origin" for how the card gained its meaning and relevance, and found a place in the deck. It's a fabulous-looking project from a team that only began work on the anthology at last year's Emerald City Comic-Con. One year later, and with the project heading to print, ComicsAlliance spoke to both editors about their vision for Tabula Idem, and what readers can expect from the completed collection.

Q: What's the worst Christmas comic you've ever read? -- @franzferdinand2 A: Folks, I have read a lot of Christmas comics. For a while, they were the only thing I actually "collected." I'd buy any Christmas story I could find, any comic with Santa Claus in it, anything that had the requisite number of sleighs and trees with lights on 'em, and as a result, I have seen some genuinely terrible Christmas stories. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of good ones too, but when you're reading every Christmas story out there, you run across plenty that are overly cynical, mean-spirited, or just plain not very good. And every now and then, you read the two-part Krampus story in Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, which is a piece of work unto itself.

Look, I think it's fair to say that I've had my difficulties with Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, Jim Balent's long-running epic of mostly-naked witchity adventure. We all have. Dubious werewolves, eel trauma, the occasional haunted bathroom area...

Here at ComicsAlliance, we value our readership and are always open to what the masses of Internet readers have to say. That's why every week, Senior Writer Chris Sims puts his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions...

It's been a while since we've talked about one of our all-time favorite titles here at ComicsAlliance, and to be honest, the past few issues of Jim Balent's Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose have actually been pretty boring. As much as I love the book, there just hasn't been anything even remotely approaching the usual level of insanity set by stories of hainted ladybits, nuclear breast implants, or

Over the past few weeks, we here at ComicsAlliance have talked quite a bit about Thor. We've covered the recent blockbuster Marvel movie, the video game tie-ins, and we've even taken an in-depth look at the SyFy Channel's low-budget knockoff...

I've been reading Jim Balent's "Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose" for the majority of its ten-year (and counting) run, and in that time it's been the most consistently amazing comic book on the stands. Admittedly, this isn't quite the traditional definition of "amazing," but it always leaves me pretty amazed...

HeroesCon 2010 was nothing short of amazing for the ComicsAlliance staff -- the highlight of the convention season, hands down -- and we'll have lots of content coming from our time at the event, but even among the rich store of wonderful moments the convention provided, one thing stands out as a shining jewel: Colleen Coover's drawing of Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose...

I make fun of Jim Balent's comics on a pretty regular basis (in fact, I tend to do it on the same bimonthly schedule that the book comes out), but don't get the wrong idea: I never want that guy to stop making comics. There is a certain kind of beautiful insanity to it that was perfectly captured in the solicitation for July's "Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose" #63, where Balent proved his

Last month, BroadSword comics announced via YouTube that after ten years of publishing the often-naked adventures of Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose, their flagship character was finally hitting the big time: Being immortalized as a tiny plastic figure as one of Art Asylum's MiniMates: And I thought it was funny when they did Power Girl...