Elle Collins

Gord Downie, lead singer of the legendary Canadian band the Tragically Hip, is teaming up with comics writer/artist Jeff Lemire, of Sweet Tooth, Extraordinary X-Men, and much more besides, for a comic that will accompany Downie's next solo album. Secret Path tells the true, tragic story of Chanie Wenjack, an indigenous 12-year-old boy who died in 1966 while attempting to walk home to his family from the residential school he had been forcibly removed to.

Welcome to Give ‘Em Elle, a weekly column that hopes to bridge the gap between old school comics fandom and the progressive edge of comics culture. This week I'm thinking about queer subtext. Okay, full disclosure, I am literally always thinking about queer subtext. When I was in grad school, I taught a film class about queer subtext and how to find it. So that's where I'm coming from. But I'm especially thinking about it in comics.

Welcome to Together Breakfast, the feature where Elle Collins and Katie Schenkel come together to dig in and relish every last drop of Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe. With the current nightly summer schedule, we’re going to be doing a couple of these a week, and two to three episodes per column. It may be hectic, but hopefully you’ll keep up with us as we dive headlong into the world of the Crystal Gems. In the latest episodes, a fun boat trip turns into a dramatic reunion, and we find out why Greg started working at the car wash. Alone at Sea was written by Hilary Florido, Kat Morris, and Rebecca Sugar, and directed by Kat Morris and Jasmin Lai. Greg the Babysitter was written by Lamar Abrams and Katie Mitroff, and directed by Joe Johnston and Jasmin Lai.

Over the weekend, I saw Ghostbusters. I loved it, but I’m not here to review it. Obviously one of the things that everyone has talked about is the female cast. There’s been a lot of backlash against it, and a lot of people defending the choice, and a plenty saying it shouldn’t matter. But honestly, I think it does matter, and I’m all in favor of it. In fact, I want to see more women-dominated reboots of previously male-dominated properties. Here’s the thing: We need more movies with woman-led casts, and that makes a movie like this even more exciting, but there’s more to it than that. Changing up the cast automatically gives the movie a freshness it wouldn’t have had with men.

Wonder Woman #2 is the first chapter of "Year One" by Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott, with colors Romulo Fajardo Jr. The whole issue alternates between scenes of a young Diana living on Themyscira and a young Steve Trevor in the military, leading up to the famous moment when they meet. But we learn a lot more about their lives before we get there, and that's led to a particularly strong fan reaction to Diana's life among the Amazons.

The world was stunned last Thursday by the unexpected death of Prince Rogers Nelson, known to the world simply as Prince. Prince was a legendary musician, whose records crossed all boundaries of style and genre. He was widely considered one of the best guitarists who ever lived. He was equally unparalleled as a singer, songwriter, and live performer. But he was also a visual icon. In his music videos, live concerts, and movies like Purple Rain, his flair for style and unique androgynous look caught the eye of fans regardless of gender or sexuality. Upon his death, people praised his music of course, but there were also discussions about him as a role model who showed that there was no right way to be a man. Prince was an inspiration to everyone who refused to be bound in by labels and social roles.

On this day in 1985, a man walked into a bar. It was a punk bar; this was 1985 in comic-book London, after all. The man was named John Constantine, and he was there looking for a friend who had information about the end of the world. It all happened in the pages of Swamp Thing #37, written by Alan Moore with art by Rick Veitch and John Totleben; the "American Gothic" storyline was beginning in earnest, and Moore's legendary run was kicking into high gear. According to Moore, the character of Constantine owes his debut to the fact that Swamp Thing's regular artists, Totleben and Stephen R. Bissette, were big fans of the band The Police, and they wanted to draw a character who looked like the lead singer, Sting. Even though it ended up being Veitch on the pencils for Constantine's first appearance, he is unmistakably a dead ringer for the British musician.

You know what manga fans love, in my anecdotal experience? Homoeroticism. You know who else loves homoeroticism? Sherlock fans. So it was only a matter of time until someone realized that the key to cashing in on all those fans at once could only be a Sherlock manga. Today at the the ComicsPro retailers summit in Portland, Oregon, Titan Comics announced that it will publish an English-language translation of a manga adaptation of the Sherlock story A Study In Pink in June. This will mark the first time time the Japanese series has been made available in English and officially sold in the United States and United Kingdom.