Tag: Superhero

May 28, 2021

Aaaaaaand… Now I’m A Supervillain

A review of Natlie Walschots’ Hench (HarperCollins, 2020) By Derek Newman-Stille Natalie Walschots’ Hench is powerful inspiration for the reader to become a villain. Walshots takes her readers into the mind of a temp hench person, exploring what it is like to work for supervillains, but, perhaps more importantly, what it is like to be the victim of superhero violence....

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July 23, 2019

Secret Identities

Secret Identities A review of James Alan Gardner’s They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded (Tor, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille James Alan Gardner’s They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded, a sequel to All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, continues his exploration of the superhero. Gardner focusses his narrative on the perspective of another of his superheroes, Jools, whose...

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June 5, 2019

Intertextual

Intertextual A review of Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer: Age of Doom Part 1 (Dark Horse, 2019) By Derek Newman-Stille Throughout the Black Hammer series, Jeff Lemire has been experimenting with intertextuality, playing with his knowledge of Golden Age comics while adding modern comic sensibilities and skepticism about the genre. In Black Hammer: Age of Doom, Lemire’s superheroes, who have been...

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May 28, 2019

Disrupting Some Tropes and Reinforcing Other Tropes

Disrupting Some Tropes and Reinforcing Other Tropes A review of Jeff Lemire’s The Sentry: Man of Two Worlds (Marvel Comics, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille Superhero narratives tend to have clear boundaries between heroes and villains. They tend to play with the duality between civilian identity and hero identity, but tend to privilege the hero identity. Like most of his comics,...

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November 28, 2018

Power Dynamics

Power Dynamics A review of James Alan Gardner’s All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault (Tor, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille In All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, James Alan Gardner creates a world of heroes and monsters to explore ideas of identity. In this world, the wealthy have bought the magical ability to become Darklings through a pact with...

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June 22, 2018

Coming of Age With Super Powers

Coming of Age With Super Powers A review of Mariko Tamaki’s Supergirl: Being Super (DC Comics, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille Canadian comic writer and artist Mariko Tamaki has frequently explored coming of age and that fascinating experience of being between childhood and adulthood in comics like Skim and This One Summer. She shows an incredible ability to draw her readers...

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September 18, 2017

Golden Age Girls of Canadian Comics

A review of Kalman Andrasofszky and Blake Northcott’s Agents of PACT # 1 (Chapterhouse, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille Many of the new Chapterhouse comics seem to be focussed on the narratives of men, so it is exciting to see that Agents of PACT is focussed on women. As a fan of the original Northguard comics by Mark Shainblum, I was...

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September 13, 2017

Superhero Psychology

A review of Michael Johnstone’s “Missing in Action” in OnSpec # 105 Vol 28, No 2 (2017). By Derek Newman-Stille Can a superhero retire? Is it the sort of lifestyle that can be surrendered? Michael Johnstone’s “Missing In Action” is a tale of a superhero who is experiencing PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) after the murder of his son. He surrendered...

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July 6, 2016

Beyond the Masks

Beyond the Masks A review of “Tesseracts Nineteen: Superhero Universe” Edited by Mark Shainblum and Claude Lalumiere (Edge, 2016). By Derek Newman-Stille So often the superhero genre is treated as infantile, low brow, and therefore as un-valuable. Yet, the superhero has become our modern fairy tale, a transposition of the magical into the urban, replacing fairy godmothers with scientific experiments...

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July 3, 2016

Grey’s SUPERanatomy

Grey’s SUPERanatomy A review of Corey Redekop’s “SUPER” in Tesseracts Nineteen: Superhero Universe edited by Claude Lalumiere and Mark Shainblum (Edge, 2016). By Derek Newman-Stille Corey Redekop’s “SUPER” intertwines the medical drama with the superheroic, creating a commentary on the medicalizing of bodies that differ from a socially created norm. “SUPER” presents the reader as one of a group of...

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