American comics were almost entirely childish and pretty insipid after the Senate hearings in the mid-’50s. Unsurprisingly there was a reaction to this, and some cartoonists started putting out alternatives, full of drugs and sex and anti-estab[…]

I’ve often been told that what makes Watchmen “unfilmable” is its complexity: this is surely not true. Generally this argument confuses complexity for detail, which nowadays is bread and butter to a sufficiently obsessive director a[…]

Having mentioned ’60s superheroes, at Marvel and DC, and Alan Moore, I thought I’d talk about those who tried to take the genre somewhere else in past years.
Steve Gerber
It was Steve Gerber who got me back into comics in the ’70s, […]

All of my favourite newspaper strips were at the comedy end of the market – and it is worth noting here how big an influence Segar’s Popeye was on adventure strips. Nonetheless, there were some great adventure strips, back in the days whe[…]

EC
It was, more than anything else, EC’s powerful horror comics that led to uproar and US Senate hearings in the ’50s – and for years afterwards, comics were aimed more squarely at children than any time before or since.
They don&#8[…]

The problem with any film of this second Narnian book is that — while it has strong scenes and beasts galore — the logic behind its structure is, more than anything else, Aslan Arses About (for c.1300 years). He’s not a tame lion, y[…]

The last item (bar a bonus insert) in this series was on European comics. Two of the all-time great children’s creators could have been covered there. It’s worth noting that comics have been a medium aimed overwhelmingly at children, espe[…]

i: i am rereadin THE SANTAROGA BARRIER by frank herbert ftb i am co-host of A BITE OF STARS A SLUG OF TIME AND THOU, and we need to start our homework for SERIES TWO
ii: i have probbly not reread it since i was in my teens (= the 70s what were we thi[…]

(I thought it was worth adding this review of a recent release as a supplement to the recent piece on old DC superhero comics).
The second Flash volume is, for me, the best Showcase* collection yet. I love Carmine Infantino’s art on these old c[…]

I remember long ago constantly being told that European comics was a mature artform for adults, to be envied. There is material like that, and material of the very highest quality – but my god there’s a gigantic amount of beautifully draw[…]