Tom Speelman
To Boldly Go: A Comics History of Star Trek
It's Star Trek's 50th anniversary and between the well-received Star Trek Beyond, the fact that all of Trek is available streaming basically everywhere, a new TV show coming next year, and the continued release of new novels and comics, it's a good time to be a fan of the USS Enterprise and its brethren.
Comics have been a part of Trek lore from almost the very start. Beginning in 1967, when the original Trek was wrapping up its first season on NBC, Gold Key published a series that only had two consistent features: an irregular publishing schedule, and an almost total disregard for how the characters actually looked.
The History Of Tarzan In Comics
Created by Edgar Rice Burroughs and premiering in the October 1912 issue of pulp magazine The All-Story, Tarzan of the Apes has become one of the most well-known heroes in fiction. He's been in hundreds of films, novels and video games, with the latest film, The Legend of Tarzan, hitting theatres this past weekend.
But Tarzan has perhaps cast his biggest shadow in comics. Spanning newspaper strips, comic books and webcomics under a rainbow of comics greats, Tarzan has been a steady presence in the medium for almost 90 years.
The Case For Bisexual Peppermint Patty [Pride Week]
Between the new television cartoon, last year's remarkable CGI movie, the new comics put out by Kaboom and the themed strip collections put out by Fantagraphics to supplement the The Complete Peanuts series, it's been a good time to be a fan of the work of Charles M. Schulz. But in absorbing a lot of this stuff, something leaped out at me that I can't push aside: Peppermint Patty --- formally known as Patricia Reichardt --- should be bisexual.
How Black Panther Pioneered Modern Comics With ‘Panther’s Rage’
One of the major misconception that informs this idea is that, prior to 1986, there were no serious superhero stories. That's emphatically untrue. The late Silver Age and Bronze Age were full of dark, mature superhero stories ---"The Death of Ferro Lad," "The Night Gwen Stacy Died," etc, --- but there's one in particular that stands above the rest for how much it foreshadows the current mood of superhero storytelling; "Panther's Rage," a 13-part epic that ran bimonthly in the pages of Jungle Action from 1973-1975.
Written by Don McGregor and pencilled by Rich Buckler, Gil Kane and Billy Graham, with inks by Klaus Janson, P. Craig Russell and Bob McLeod, and colors by Glynis Wein, "Panther's Rage" was the first great Black Panther story, combining a thrilling saga with a series of great stand-alone tales.
New ‘Peanuts’ Cartoon Brings The Comic Strip To Life [Review]
Last year's Peanuts Movie did the near-impossible and pulled off a successful translation of Charles M. Schulz's iconic style and characters from their native 2-D to CGI. That technical breakthrough was the film's real marquee attraction; the story was just a greatest hits. Structured over an entire year, you got the Red Baron, the Little Red-Haired Girl, the whole deal. Despite the deep melancholy and ennui at the strip's heart, Peanuts is a comic ultimately built on comfort and refuge.
Knowing that, it's easy to see why the new Boomerang/Cartoon Network series, Peanuts, went the route it did. Rather than attempt to modernize or emulate newer shows like Steven Universe or Adventure Time, Peanuts opts for a familiarity that perfectly evokes the feel of the comic strip.
‘Dragon Ball’ Freeza Arc To Get Full Color Release (But Don’t Call It ‘Dragon Ball Z’)
Viz Media has announced that it will continuing its efforts to republish all of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga in lavish, oversized, full-color editions with the first volume of the legendary Freeza Arc, available in print and digital on May 3.
The classic storyline, which initially ran from 1990-1991, sees Gohan, Krillin and Bulma head to the planet Namek to find Dragon Balls to revive their friends. They learn that the all-powerful alien warlord Freeza is after them --- as is the terrifying Vegeta --- and the hunt is on.