J. Caleb Mozzocco
The Obamas Return For Another Surreal Adventure In Steven Weissman’s ‘Looking For America’s Dog’
Is America lost, or has America merely lost its way? That’s a question that a little more than half of the Americans who voted in this year's presidential election --- those that cast their votes for the former Secretary of State and United States Senator over the scandal-plagued, race-baiting demagogue with no experience in government at all --- have likely been pondering in recent weeks. I suppose we’ll find out over the course of what promises to be a very tense, very anxious few years.
Here’s a much easier, less stomach-churning question; Has America lost its dog?
Yes, yes it has, at least within the pages of Steven Weissman’s Looking For America’s Dog, the sequel to his Barack Hussein Obama.
Romeo Remixed: Ronald Wimberly’s ‘Prince of Cats’ Is Comics As Cross-Media Hip Hop
Ronald Wimberly is hardly the first person to note the similarities between Shakespeare’s poetic dialogue and hip hop, and stage a performance of the former in the trappings of the latter. Nor is Wimberly the first to note the parallels between modern gang culture and the warring houses in Romeo and Juliet. Nor is he the first to extrapolate an entire new story based on a minor character in one of Shakespeare’s plays.
He may, however, be the first to do all of that simultaneously, while including other elements of apparent personal fascination, and the first to do so in the comics medium. The result is the original graphic novel Prince of Cats, originally released by Vertigo and recently remastered and reissued by Image. The book stars Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, the “fiery” dueler who is mocked with the words that give the book its title. The dialogue reads like Shakespeare, the action moves like manga, and it looks like nothing else --- even if the sources of the individual elements are readily apparent.
Jill Thompson’s ‘The True Amazon’ And The Secret Strength Of Wonder Woman’s Confusing Origins
Gender is far from the only thing that separates Wonder Woman from her DC Comics peers Superman and Batman. One rather dramatic difference that has grown more and more pronounced over the course of the last three decades is the fluidity of the character’s origins.
Jill Thompson’s Wonder Woman: The True Amazon responds to the ambiguity around Wonder Woman's origins, not simply by filling a perceived hole with an analogue to Batman: Year One, but rather by capitalizing on that fluidity to tell a Wonder Woman story unlike any other.
Tom Gauld On ‘Mooncop’, His Melancholy Comedy About A Cop On The Moon [Interview]
British cartoonist Tom Gauld's new graphic novel Mooncop imagines an actualization of the lunar colony concept of moonshot-era pop culture as it might be if the colony had followed the path of our collective gradual disenchantment with space. Gauld employs his signature simple style in service of a story that is at once an accomplished work of deadpan comedy and a meditation on the passage of time. ComicsAlliance spoke to to Gauld about his inspiration and his work.