Alack Sinner by Carlos Sampayo and José Muñoz is one of the most quietly influential comic books of all time. It’s likely inspired the look of the entire modern crime comic book genre from Sin City to 100 Bullets to Criminal. Keith Giffen spent years swiping Muñoz, and countless professional comics artists were either directly … Read more
A few things I can recommend: Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. Black Panther Party by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson. (March and Black Panther Party pair well together as they tell two sides of the same story.) Unfortunately we’re not going to … Read more
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
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
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
tldr; As of October 24, 2023 Grant Morrison’s stated preference is: “I’m much happier being described as ‘they’ but I won’t give anyone a hard time for using any other pronoun.” (Source: This essay on their Substack. It’s behind a subscription paywall but anyone with $10 can verify. For a more public but less recent … Read more
Having touched at least briefly on the “Big Three Outlaw Comics,” I’m now moving forward in this article series to what I call the “Outlaw Comics Explosion. I still have some articles to backfill, such as the missing second part of the James O’Barr series, but over the next few months I’ll be covering Poison … Read more