Over the past few days, I’ve had to pull together a literature and composition course for the fall semester. As I thought about the course, I moved from Appalachian literature with writers such as Crystal Wilkinson, David Joy, and S.A. Cosby to mystery novels with Cosby and others to my already planned “The Reverberations of World War II” syllabus for a more introductory course. … Read More “Who Watches Superheroes?” Syllabus
At the end of Carmen Maria Machado and Dani’s The Low, Low Woods, El and Vee uncover the generational violence against women in Shudder to Think and they confront Josh, the teenager that sexually assaulted them at the beginning of the series, as he and other assault Jessica. When Vee punches Josh, she narrates, “I’ll never forget how small he looked. How I felt like … Read More “Boys will be boys,” Vigilance, and Survival in Machado and Dani’s “The Low, Low Woods”
+ carmen maria machado, comics, dc comics, gender, graphic novels, sexual assault, sexuality, the low, low woods
When Jaydn DeWald introduced me to Carmen Maria Machado and Dani’s The Low, Low Woods, I knew that I wanted to include it in my “Monsters, Race, and Comics” class. Jaydn also introduced me to Machado’s “The Husband Stitch,” and before starting The Low, Low Woods we read and discussed Machado’s story in class. One of the overarching themes in both texts deals with the discrediting of … Read More Credibility and What One Believes in Carmen Maria Machado and Dani’s “The Low, Low Woods”
+ comics, dc comics, gene luen yang, Gurihiru, lillian e smith, martin luther king, jr, superman smashes the klan
Hate sells, and it’s profitable as hell. This isn’t anything new or revelatory, I know. Lillian Smith pointed it out in Killers of the Dream when she talked about wealthy whites, in order to maintain their power, enlisted poor whites in hate against African Americans and others following Reconstruction and into the Jim Crow era and beyond, flattening whiteness. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed … Read More Hate, the Oldest Commodity, in “Superman Smashes the Klan”
+ comics, dc comics, deadshot, democracy, democratic socialism, EC Comics, january 6, nightshade, rick flag, suicide squad
Over the course of this blog, I’ve written, extensively, about the ways that comics address political and social issues. The “preachies” in EC Comics are perhaps the most obvious examples of this. Today, I want to look at May 1987’s Suicide Squad #4 written by John Ostrander and drawn by Luke McDonnell. “William Hell’s Overture” is a self-contained story early Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run, … Read More Self-Interest and The Common Good in “Suicide Squad” #4
Interminable Rambling 