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.
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.
‘Goodnight Punpun’ Is The Strangest Manga Of The Year (And One of the Best)
Inio Asano's Goodnight Punpun is unlike any other manga you've ever read. It's the sort of convention-defying, senses-shattering experience you get when reading Will Eisner or Chris Ware for the first time. It takes notions of what manga can be --- of what comics can be --- and throws them right out the window. It's at once achingly familiar and deeply alienating.