Sewer Mutant Podcast, Season 2, Episode 2: Alack Sinner Sewer Mutant is back and we’re delving into the pre-history of the Dark Age of Comic Books with a look at Alack Sinner by Carlos Sampayo and José Muñoz. First published in Europe in 1975, this private detective/noir series laid the groundwork for Frank Miller’s Sin … Read more
Ahhh, the Golden Age of Comics. When heroes were unambiguously good, and the villains were unambiguously evil. An era before all the sex and violence and politics and the cash grabs and the gimmicks, when comics were just wholesome fun. Well, not quite. The Golden Age featured darker content than one might think. The goldenest … Read more
Sewer Mutant Podcast, Season 2, Episode 1: Introducing the Dark Age of Comic Books The Sewer Mutant podcast is back at last! And I’m joined by a new co-host, John Ekleberry, who you might remember from the Sewer Mutant episode on James O’Barr. We’re starting a podcast companion to the History of the Dark Age … Read more
I’m doing two years here since I didn’t do a “best of” last year (Actually, I’ve never done one, but I did write about my two favorite comics of 2023). 2024 My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Feriss It’s about an unsolved murder. It’s about family, chosen and otherwise. It’s about the holocaust. It’s … Read more
Dark Age Milestones Part 1 tldr; For purposes of this series I define the Dark Age of Comic Books as running from 1985 with the publication of Crisis on Infinite Earths # 8, the death of Barry Allen, to 2000 with the publication of Ultimate Spiderman # 1. But we’ll be looking at a number … Read more
DC just announced a Vertigo Comics revival with 10 new titles. To mark the occasion, here’s what I wrote about Vertigo in my June 25, 2019 newsletter. Last Friday DC confirmed that it’s sunsetting the Vertigo imprint, along with some other brands like Zoom and Ink. Instead, there will just be three brands: DC Kids, … Read more
Faust: Love of the Damned co-creator David Quinn is back this July with The Addiction, his first new comics work published since the final issue of Faust in 2012. Quinn is joined for this crime/horror/superhero/food series by co-creator/co-writer Vincent Zurzolo (co-owner of Metropolis Collectibles) and Claudia Balboni (known for Killer Queens from Dark Horse). The … Read more
Since the release of the first photos of Bill Skarsgård as The Crow, he’s been compared to the Jared Leto Joker. Which is fair enough: It was the first thing that crossed my mind as well. But I soon remembered an older touchstone: The Crow: Wild Justice mini-series from 1997. The new Crow film is … Read more
The Crow and the Caliber Years: James O’Barr Part 2 Part 1: The Crow Creator James O’Barr’s Early Years Part 2: The Crow and the Caliber years Part 3: After The Crow: The Works of James O’Barr James O’Barr has published around 416 pages of sequential art in his life, not counting things he wrote … Read more
Sewer Boyz Sewer Boyz (No relation to Sewer Mutant!) is a bootleg TMNT comic featuring a bunch of different artists doing their take on the Turtles orchestrated by Erwin Papa. The book tells a brief story about the Turtles taking on the Shredder. Some pages are drawn by two or more? artists, showing wildly different … Read more