So, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, a couple of my students requested that we have a lesson on costumes and cosplay on Halloween. Since that’s theoretically a lot of the research I’m doing for my dissertation and because frankly it just sounded fun, I agreed. Now I’m putting together that assignment and lesson plan.…
I started the PCA/ACA paper I did last year with an anecdote about a little girl that I met at Baltimore Comicon a couple years ago. She was three years old and dressed as Harley Quinn. Here’s an excerpt from the story: In September of 2012, while attending Baltimore Comic Con, I met a three-year-old…
I am a black man, born in the 1970s, who grew up as such a comic book nerd that I decided to go out and get a Ph.D in it. Today, Luke Cage has his own TV series. I just got home from work, so I have not watched a single episode yet. More so…
Starfire It’s another one of those times where I had a snazzy idea for teaching a concept in my comics class and realized “hey, you know what would be fun? Why don’t I outsource my materials gathering to the internet?” And really, I don’t have a good reason. In fact it’s…
So the students in my Comics class asked if they could dress as their favorite characters for Halloween. I said sure, I certainly won’t make it mandatory, but whoever wants to can go for it and maybe we’d even structure a lesson around the cosplay phenomenon for that week. I have 34 students. 24 girls…
I have to say, the best part of teaching a class about funny books has been being able to take my ideas and blog about them and ask people for ideas and get actual useful ideas back. This was really useful back when I was trying to pick my book list. So I figured I’d do…
I don’t think I was ever looking for a Suicide Squad movie. I don’t think anyone was. It’s not like Batman v. Superman. There’s no point as a kid where I was growing up saying “God, I hope one day there’s a movie of this.” That was a huge advantage to WB. Because, a year ago…
Hmm, now here’s something that I really kinda want feedback on but I wonder how many people are going to be willing to comment given the subject matter. Ah well… lets see. Let’s talk about geek porn! A few weeks back, I tweeted that I was watching porn or academic research but that it was totally 100%…
(This is a review of the Batman: The Killing Joke animated movie adaptation that was just released. I’m going to mostly avoid spoilers if I can, but they will be there. But the book is from 1988. Honestly, there isn’t much to spoil… but if you’re worried about that… well, i guess that’s your damn fault for waiting…
So, with my most recent book I’m reading, I’m getting into a domain of comic book (well, in this case more properly geek culture in general) study that I don’t really know as much about, at least not formally. Fan culture. Specifically, so called “fanon” and “fanfic” communities. I’ve come to really like just posting…
Now here’s a concept I haven’t given much thought to. People who follow my Goodreads updates might have noticed that I’ve been spending this summer reading a lot of academic theory books on comics and superheroes. I’m currently reading The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines by Mike Madrid. Good book very…
This is another one of those posts like my last couple based on random thoughts I’ve had while doing my current research. Right now, I’m reading Jeffrey A. Brown’s Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and Their Fans. It’s a very interesting book. I’ve had it for a while and read part of it before but never read…
So, as sort of an addition to my last blog post (about racial representation in superhero comics)… I’ve been reading a book called Dangerous Curves, by Jeffrey Brown. Mostly it is about gender and fetishization of female characters in action stories (movies mostly, but also comics, TV and novels). In other words, the kind of…
One of the nice things about my academic research being focused on comic books is that it’s a lot easier to have random people respond to my thoughts (or spark them) than it would be if I were into something like medieval lit or something. When I asked people to give me ideas on gender…
Just about two years ago, I wrote a blog post about how I didn’t really like the idea of making Sam Wilson, the Falcon, into the new Captain America. I actually stand by that. My reasoning at the time (and now) wasn’t the typical geek reasoning which basically boils down to a fear of change…