I’ve been batting around an idea in my head for an academic paper/conference presentation (probably for next year’s PCA/ACA) and I’d like to do something that I’ve done before that has worked out pretty well for me. I want to outsource some of my thinking and brainstorming to the internet. What I’m looking for here…
So if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter you might know that I started a podcast a couple months ago, primarily with Wayne Wise and Katya Gorecki (but also a rotating cast of other people) devoted to pop culture. VoxPopcast (or Vox Populorum… we gave it two names, but everyone seems to be focusing…
Last week I saw an image for a cover to a Popeye comic. This version, drawn by Steve Mannion featured Popeye and Bluto with exaggerated vein popping musculatures and Olive Oyl reimagined as a sexy femme fatale in the style that, at least to me, is most close evocative of Salma Hayek’s character from Deserpado. At…
In the name of continuing to pimp out my media whore appearances (I like that phrasing, I wonder if I can just add “media whore” to my CV), I figured I should mention that I did another podcast appearance this week which went up this morning. This time I’m a guest on Danny Anderson’s The Sectarian…
Now that my class on comics is over, I can get back to focusing on some of my own work. It’s another one of those times where I am doing some research for a comics paper and so it’s totally useful for me to just outsource some of my research to the internet. In this…
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 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…
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…
So this fall, I have been given the opportunity to teach a class of my own design at Duquesne University. I’m calling it “Sex, Violence and Comics,” and in a way, I guess I’ve basically been preparing for this all of my life. I mean, I like sex, I like comics, I like viole… umm…
What’s geeky? Comics and statistics. What’s really geeky? Using them both together. A couple months ago, I mentioned that I had been tracking sales on comics starring female characters. This was related to an academic paper I was working on (one that I am finishing up to present on Friday). My primary reason for tracking the sales was…
Recently, my friend, and frequent conference collaborator, AJ Ortega posted a story about one of his students complaining about a short story he assigned for them to read. The story was “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl or Halfie)” by Junot Diaz. AJ’s student felt that it was inappropriate for a teacher…
Had some time to do some sketching… well, ok, I never have time, but I wanted to do some sketching to clear my mind instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing. So I decided to do the Iron Fist sketch card that I’ve been meaning to do forever to go with the…