Beautiful Darkness is the kind of comics we need more of. It not only has a sustained thematic subtext, but uses the images to convey information not present in the text. Too often we default to a double dip of narrative from text and image. As readers we're taught to treat the illustrations as secondary. This album, using the full power of the medium, elucidates a story that couldn't exist in another form. Highly recommended.
Black and White Wonder – Illustrations from Inside the Pulps
Thrill at the Muck Man! Be Amazed by the Dolphin of Thunder! Wonder at a rocket robot with a tail for a nose!
Illustrations by Jack Gaughan, Norman Nodel, Ed Emshwiller, and Virgil Finlay.
Bender Bends Time – Anachronism
his amazing piece of Alex Schomburg's airbrush art might have served as inspiration for Mr. Bender Rodriguez, but can we really believe that it will survive for another thousand years?
Vague Tales Looks like Heavy Metal Feels – Review
The reading experience is akin to listening to heavy metal as an adolescent, not the silly faux-pagan heavy metal that we see in retrospect, but the dangerous, devil-borne heavy metal we believed it to be at the time.
Ennugi – The Value of Death in a World with Extra Lives – Review
What do we see when we bring a mirror into the mirror world? What vision of our reality can we find there? Ennuigi plays with futility, dread and petty addiction as readily as Super Mario Bros. plays with coins and magic mushrooms.
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers Rewatch, Episode 2: New Frontier
Episode two isn't as overstuffed as the first, but it manages to push the population of the universe ever outward.
Is Ghibli Magic Replicable? – Mary and the Witch’s Flower Review
Mary desires most to get the adventure over with, and the audience can't help but feel the same.
Hold the Door – Thoughts on Nostalgia
If you ever run up against guilt for buying a toy, or watching a cartoon, or getting wrapped up in a story from your childhood, move past it.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula Animated Thirty Years Early – Anachronism
Of course, the solution to this conundrum is obvious. Dracula survives the events of the movie (set in 1897) and moves to Bongo Congo to menace King Leonardo under the assumed name of Mr. Mad. He is immortal after all.
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers Rewatch, Episode 1: Phoenix – Some One Asked For This
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers starts out roughly. If there is folly in its ambition, there is virtue also. The show's dedication to world-building sets it above the competition. Effort is made to establish a plausible universe with recurring races, planets, technology and conflicts. It rises above its premise of space western to become more of a space opera in the Star Trek vein, and it does it all in twenty-two minutes. Well, it tries.