Black Knight is not a terrible character, nor is Black Knight #1 a terrible story. But it is an example of terrible storytelling. One of the more baffling trends in the modern age of comics has been the proliferation of the first-person narration boxes as a storytelling devise. A synthesis of the third-person narration boxes…
Held up in some abandoned Soviet mining facility was the enemy, a Templar-esq secret society called Trinity with ties to the Vatican and roots back at least as far as the Crusades. They may not have been as nefarious as the Nazis that other archaeologists frequently faced, but for Lara the conflict was personal: one…
Alienation, paradoxically, is one of the most universal human emotions. It is no great leap of logic that led to the fictional aliens of literature and cinema being appropriated as metaphors and megaphones for creators to opine on the subject of alienation to their audience. And as popular culture’s most well known alien, it likewise…
“There came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat. On that day, the Avengers were born – to fight the foes no single superhero could withstand! Heed the call, then – for now, Avengers Assemble!” These are the iconic lines which preamble innumerable issues…
The Ultimates is a name which carries heavy expectations. Just as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight redefined the character of Batman for thirty years since (in large part for leading to Year One, upon which Batman Begins had its foundation, and more recently being the main influence behind Dawn of Justice and the DC Cinematic…
“And God saw that the wickedness of Man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made Man on earth, and it grieved Him in His heart.” These words, taken from the sixth chapter of Genesis,…
It’s the scene from Attack of the Clones in the arena on Geonosis where the small cadre of surviving Jedi are encircled by the Seperatist droids, their slaughter imminent, when a laser blast suddenly streams from above, Yoda having arrived with an army of clones in tow to rescue our heroes. It’s the scene in…
Superman has been around since June of 1938, for over seventy-seven years. For at least the last twenty, and almost certainly longer, many critics and commentators have questioned whether the big blue boy scout is still relevant in the current age, suggesting that he may no longer be a hero with a place in the…
With regards to form, very little separate the comic book or the graphic novel from its close cousin, the children’s book. The former is told entirely through pictures, with writing superimposed over the illustrations themselves, whether in the form of dialogue balloons, thought bubbles, or narration boxes. The later alternates between writing and illustrations, with…
For all the success of The Martian and the hype anticipating The Force Awakens, the annals of popular culture will not remember 2015 as the year of space fiction, grounded or fantastical; no, 2015 is destined for the moniker of “The Year of Espionage.” One of the most critically successful games of the year has…
The Hub City Review 