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Swords! In my coverage of X of Swords Creation, I asked if you’d all be interested in a follow-up Krakin’ Krakoa ep on the history of the swords in this event, and the answer was a resounding YES. Swords! More Swords!

Today I’ll answer:

*Spoilers for discussed comics may follow!*

In X of Swords, Creation, the event’s first part, Saturnyne, the Omniversal Majestrix, freezes the Krakoa vs Arakko mutant war to set them up for a tournament of champions in which each side will wield 10 majestic blades.

All the swords get named, and based on Marvel’s promotional art we can align the blades to characters. On the X side of things we have:

One thing you’ll notice about a majority of the known swords is that they tend to be broken, missing, or in some way altered prior to their re-emergence here in X of Swords. There are exceptions of course – for example, we’ve already seen both the Sword of Might and the Light of Galador return in the Dawn of X – but otherwise I’m expecting some early parts of X of Swords to deal with the gathering and retrieval of these weapons, or at least the explanation for how they are already in hand. Epic quests should ensue!

While it’s probably most well known at this point as a sword that can shut off Wolverine’s healing factor and very much kill him (or anyone with a healing factor), Muramasa is actually the surname of an immortal Japanese swordmaker, who came to prominence (in the real world, and in Marvel history) in the 1500’s! Again, this is very much based on a real person, but Marvel’s Muramasa fully leans into myths around the swordmaker, categorizing him as both immortal and increasingly mad with obsession over making the perfect, sometimes demonic blades.

The first reference to Muramasa’s blades actually runs back to Wolverine’s second solo series, and first lengthy ongoing, the Wolverine title that launched in 1988 with Chris Claremont writing and John Buscema on pencils. In the first three issues of the title, we encounter Muramasa’s “Black Blade,” a cursed weapon that controls its wielder. First, Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman is possessed by the blade on Madripoor, and then Wolverine. Ultimately the Silver Samurai collects the blade and is not possessed in a super Big Time move.

The swordmaker returned to prominence following the events of Marvel’s House of M event, when Wolverine recovered all his memories in the event’s aftermath. We learn that after the slaughter of his wife and unborn child (at the hands of the Winter Soldier no less!), Wolverine turned to Muramasa to make him a blade fully for the purposes of revenge to, and I quote with a Metallica riff behind me, “Kill ‘em all.” Thus, the Muramasa blade with fragments of Wolverine’s soul was created, and it’s this blade that has posed a danger to mutants with healing factors ever since. Indeed, at one point Daken integrated the sword into his claws in order to kill his father (Logan cut them out of his hands), and Wolvy used the sword to cut off Sabretooth’s head (although like so many Marvel deaths, “it got betta”).

Most recently, in the pages of All-New Wolverine, Laura Kinney, Wolverine, and Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel, were tricked into giving up the location of the Muramasa blade, which was then turned into Wolverine killing bullets by the Orphans of X. The bullets are used to shoot through Daken in a wound that won’t heal, but surgeons can cut around the wound to let his healing factor take effect for a larger wound (comics science!). To combat this threat, Laura visits Muramasa himself, and had a new Muramasa armor forged from soul fragments of Logan, Daken, and herself.

This will come up later, but there’s also a brief connection between Muramasa and Gorgon here, with Gorgon owing the swordmaster a piece of himself for a new blade. This could come up again given Gorgon’s inclusion in this event!

One of the highlights of the named Arakko swords is that a Murumasa blade exists on both sides of the aisle. The assumption I’m making is that one is wielded by Wolverine and the other by his arch-enemy in the making, Solem (anagram for “Moles” which means nothing, but makes me laugh at the idea of that being his name instead). There’s a possibility this could mean one of them begins wielding the Murumasa blade, and then the other obtains it for a time – effectively that it switches hands.

The Sword of Might has been a part of the Captain Britain mythos since inception in 1976 – in that regard, it’s actually the sword here with the longest Marvel Comics history. In his origin, Brain Braddock is given a choice by Merlyn and Roma between the Amulet of Right and the Sword of Might. He chooses the Amulet of Right, and over time we’ve learned that most Omniversal Captain Britain make this selection in order to inherit their power.

One of the biggest misconceptions of The Sword of Might – one that Marvel itself is guilty of! – is the assumption that it’s the same sword in the stone as Excalibur. This is not correct, at least if we’re to believe Captain Britain and Mi13 aka my favorite Captain Britain series on Marvel Unlimited. In this series by Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk, Excalibur and The Sword of Might are clearly referenced as separate entities, with separate properties applied to each. In this instance, the Sword of Might is used by the invading Skrull army to merge with other magical items into an all powerful Skrull chain.

We’ve actually seen a lot of the Sword of Might already in the Dawn of X, particularly in the first arc of Tini Howard and Marcus To’s Excalibur. After his possession by Morgan Le Fay, Brian Braddock gives the amulet of right to Betsy (thus making her the new Captain Britain), and chooses the sword of might as his dark weapon. Even after his revival at the hands of his brother Jamie (something we really should be keeping an eye on), Brian continues to dream of Merlyn and Roma and selecting the path of violence, aka the Sword of Might.

This is where we enter some interesting questions around the inclusion of Brian Braddock in X of Swords. He’s broken, angry, and quite changed from the Captain Britain we’ve known. It makes sense that he’d still feel a duty to the realm of Otherworld, and want to protect his sister and her allies, but he’s still also not actually of Krakoa.

I’m willing to bet Jamie brought Brian back as a mutant this time, if for no other reason than to mess with him. More likely, though, this is part of a deliberate scheme by Apocalypse. It seems certain that Apocalypse helped Jamie Braddock take the throne of Otherworld’s Avalon with some rationale behind the decision, and who better than an omega level reality warping mutant to toy with the mutant protection of the Braddock family, a protection that runs through generations.

Grasscutter and Godkiller are of a piece, crafted for a war between Japanese and Greek Gods. While they don’t debut in its pages, the history of the swords is most memorably showcased in the Jonathan Hickman written Secret Warriors.

In Secret Warriors, Grasscutter is wielded by Alexander, aka Phobos, the god of fear. The boy-god actually used the blade to murder his own father, Ares, in the pages of the 2006 miniseries Ares, and in Secret Warriors the blade is stained red with the blood of the god of war. Godkiller is gifted to Gorgon by the mysterious Hydra-allied Kraken. Ultimately, Phobos and Gorgon have an epic swordfight, in which both Godkiller and Grasscutter are shattered, although Gorgon uses the shattered hilt of Godkiller to seemingly kill Phobos.

At some point in this event it may be worth digging deeper into the character of Gorgon, whose Marvel history includes almost incalculable murder and leading several factions of Hydra. Gorgon’s mutant amnesty on Krakoa is one thing, but his inclusion as a Captain is a much bigger deal than I’ve made of it so far. I’ll also note here that in X-Men #4, it’s pointed out that Gorgon’s Captainship is dedicated to protecting members of the Quiet Council, specifically the Autumn leaders (Magneto, Prof, and Apocalypse), yet in X of Swords: Creation, Apocalypse wanders into Otherworld without Gorgon as part of the fellowship. Weird oversight!

While I don’t know if Gorgon already has Grasscutter and Godkiller remade – this certainly seems like a task up Forge’s alley – he is shown wielding two blades in the pages of X-Men #4, when he maims and amputates human military forces during the Autumn council’s business meeting. Gorgon’s possession of both blades is based on these connections, and the Marvel key art that features him among the Krakoa 9, wielding one sword in each hand. This does raise the question, though, if Krakoa is missing a swordbearer. Could this be S.W.O.R.D.’s role?

Since the Technarch ally Warlock can transform into virtually anything, Doug Ramsey wielding Warlock as his sword makes plenty of sense. The “Team Supreme” have been combining their might since forming a bond in the mid 1980’s New Mutants, with Doug frequently wielding Warlock as his armor, given his own vulnerabilities in combat situations.

We’ve actually seen this very recently in Giant-Sized Storm with Doug wielding a Warlock mech suit in The World. I questioned this at the time, but this is actually kind of odd, because the previous two appearances of Warlock (X-Men #7 and Giant-Sized Nightcrawler) it was clearly a secret that Warlock was around. Doug even made Magik swear not to tell anyone. And now here he is, well past that point, without any explanation given.

Warlock’s impact on mystical realms is particularly interesting to me. How does the unknowing agent of the Phalanx impact Otherworld? In the past, we’ve seen the techno-organic virus have a significant impact on Limbo, with the entire realm infected prior to Inferno. Combine that with the fact that Doug and Warlock have clearly planted some seeds on Krakoa way back in the pages of House of X and you have a team supreme with way more of a potential impact on X of Swords than you might initially expect.

If anyone has a chance of knowing what Krakoa thinks about all this, it’s Doug. It’s crucial to remember that much of X of Swords is about rejoining the two lands that were one, and I actually think it’s a possible outcome that at the end of X of Swords it’s no longer Krakin’ Krakoa but Obsessin’ Okkara (and hopefully not Analyzin’ Arakko – we’ll workshop these). Doug’s inside track, plus whatever behind the scenes work he’s doing with the techno-organic virus could have vast implications.

Speaking of New Mutants, Illyana Rasputin’s Soulsword is one of the most well-known mystic weapons in the Marvel Universe, and forever linked to the character. In her 80’s miniseries, Magik creates the Soulsword using her own life energy and magic, and over time anyone who wields the sword becomes the ruler of Limbo, like Illyana has been for large stretches of her history. This may also be the easiest sword to account for, as Illyana has seemingly had it throughout the Dawn of X.

One of the biggest questions I still have is how Limbo compares / stands in contrast to the dimension of Amenth where the Arakko mutants have been trapped. In the early stages of the build to this story, I theorized that these mutants were in fact trapped in Limbo itself.

It’s also worth noting that in the past when Illyana’s been in harm or taken off the board, the armor and soulsword have transferred to Kitty – now Kate – Pryde. Given Kate’s recent resurrection in the pages of Marauders this could be a nice way to integrate her character into the event.

Perhaps splitting the Soulsword could be a path to getting the Krakoa mutants their 10th swordbearer as well.

The most deliberately set-up blade in X of Swords has been present since Teen Cable found it in the foot of a monster in the Dawn of X’s Cable #1.

The sword is immensely powerful, and the Galadorian spaceknights planned to use it to entirely conquer Earth and create a new Galador. We’ve also seen Cable use the sword in Creation to power the transporation device that connected himself Cyclops and Jean to SWORD. Don’t forget too, we have old man Cable trapped in some red hellish dimension – could he be in Amenth planning for this moment?

As far as I can tell, the Starlight Sword has not been used in Marvel before, but based on naming connections to the Starlight Citadel, and Betsy Braddock role as Captain Britain in this event, every implication is it will be a new sword Betsy wields.

Heading into X of Swords, in the pages of Excalibur, Betsy and Saturnyne finally have a confrontation, and address Betsy’s new standing as Captain Britain. Essentially, Saturnyne is mistrusting of Betsy’s mutant loyalties, and how they’ll compete with her own Omniversal protector priorities. This is theory, but granting Betsy a Starlight Sword as part of this contest could be Saturnyne’s way of testing Betsy as her champion, granting her strength to ensure the protection of Starlight Citadel.

It’s interesting to consider what this sword might be made of, too, considering the forging we’ve seen happening in Saturnyne’s chambers in the Free Comic Book Day pages carried through into the Creation issue. There’s a possibility that the sword could be forged of extra dimensional alien powers.

If this is how this all plays out, it’s interesting that Saturnyne would take such a deliberate role in the proceedings. She’s kind of taking a neutral tournament ringleader role at the end of Creation, so arming Betsy as her champion certainly seems to put her on the apparent side of Krakoa. I’m not sure Saturnyne really cares who wins, though, so long as they leave the Starlight Citadel and Otherworld peacefully, which suggests one of the Arakkan swords could also be of her making – arming both sides to continue playing the middle.

Before I get into any Marvel history that might connect to this blade – spoiler: there’s not much! – I’ll say I’m confident The Scarab will be a brand new addition to the Apocalypse arsenal and mythos, since Hickman and Howard are very much rebuilding Apocalypse throughout their respective and coalescing narratives. We didn’t know he had a family before this event, surely there’s room for a secret sword.

Plus, we have seen Apocalypse wielding a sword in flashbacks to the splitting of Krakoa and Arakko, and given the historical import of those images, I’d have to think it’s going to be the same sword, likely locked away in one of his temples for safekeeping. What will be interesting is what kind of mystical properties the Scarb might contain, whether it’s imbued with powers and technologies of the Celestials that Apocalypse has benefited from over the years as well.

Now, technically, in the oversized Black Knight: Exodus one-shot from 1996 (in a story that manages to cover Dane Whitman, Apocalypse, Exodus, and Sersi of the Eternals!), there’s a mutant acolyte of Apocalypse named Scarab. While this Scarab does have strong enough skin to break Exodus’s sword, the idea of the X-Office reaching back to reference this Scarab feels about as likely as a Liefeld Major X tie-in suddenly getting added to the event.

Going back to this flashback, too, consider the line “The Twlight Sword of the enemy tore the world asunder, and what was one became two.”

Who is this enemy? In my very first theory video after the C2e2 announcement of the event earlier this year, I drew connections between the language here and the Twilight Sword of Marvel’s history, most famously wielded by Surtur against Asgard in Walt Simonson’s classic Thor. But now that we’ve seen Amenth, the dimension where these demons come from, and some of the dimension’s history in X-Men #12, I think it’s still a huge question who was actually leading this invasion, and why. The implication is that it’s the character Annihilation, but there’s more to this than meets the eye.

There’s no known “Skybreaker” weapon that I’ve found, but the name has been associated with Storm before, in the pages of the Greg Pak written X-Treme X-Men. In the first alternate reality the team visits, Storm, aka Skybreaker, is a Goddess and married to Thor. It would be cool if Storm’s blade was somehow forged using alternate reality goddess energy, but I doubt the connection will be that literal.

If anything, X-Treme X-Men is worth revisiting because it involves tracking down evil Xaviers across reality, which of course mirrors many readers interpretations of Charles Xavier’s actions in House of X.

As it stands, this gives us a pretty blank slate for Skybreaker. While the name does have an Asgardian ring – obviously Beta Ray Bill’s Stormbreaker is a parallel – I’m hoping Skybreaker is forged in the vibrainum vaults of Wakanda. This is a weird place to announce this theory, but I’m increasingly convinced Ta-Nehisi Coate’s 2021 plans of Black Panther and the X-Offices 2021 plans for Storm are going to merge into a huge storyline – I won’t say what just yet! – and forging this sword for her in X of Swords would be some fun groundwork.

There are a handful of other famous X-swords that could have been a part of the event, but really the only one I’m kind of disappointed not to see is the Cerebro Sword, which felt like some pretty deliberate set-up for the X of Swords event. Regardless, these are our swords, and our champions, and I can’t wait to see how X of Swords plays out from here!

The post Krakin’ Krakoa #94: Everything To Know About The X-Men’s Swords in X of Swords! appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Zack & Dave cover your questions, poll results, and recap the Marvel Comics of 1986 parts 5 & 6!

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My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Six: 1987 Pt. 1 —

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It begins! The 60+ page “Creation” kickoff to X-Men: X of Swords is here, marking the epic beginning to the 22 part X-Men event of 2020.  The launch book is fantastic, effectively a Lord of the Rings for the Krakoa era of X-Men, with plenty to dig into.

Today I’ll answer:

Writer: Jonathan Hickman & Tini Howard

Art: Pepe Larraz

Colors: Marte Gracia

Letters: Clayton Cowles

Hickman’s X-Men

X of Swords event

We open with the first horsemen pounding on the gates of Otherworld, approaching the Starlight Citadel, on their ultimate march to Krakoa. As we learned in X-Men #12 last week, these first horsemen are the children of Apocalypse, and have been trapped in the dimension of Amenth of generations. The first horsemen leading an assault on the tower of Del Di’Lorr. The speak exactly like Hickman’s East of West horsemen.

What is the Starlight Citadel? The Starlight Citadel is summarized nicely as “the most literal representation of the conjunction of all realities.” It is the nexus of all realities. As we’ve learned in the pages of Tini Howard’s Excalibur, the Citadel is without it’s customary Captain Britain Corps defense, which has left it to Opal Luna Saturnyne, Omniversal Majistrex to protect the Citadel – and by proxy, reality.

Hickman’s back on his Wheels within Wheels grind here, a frequent refrain back in his work on Marvel’s Secret Warriors, and a decent metaphor for plots seeding plots and the constant motion of story found in his superhero work.

In Krakoa, Summoner comes busting through the External Gate on the back of a huge Demon, with a dying Banshee. It’s far from shocking that Apocalypse’s plan to send Banshee, Unus the Untouchable (poor Unus) and Summoner into Arakko alone came up wanting, and if you aren’t already getting Summoner skepticism at this point, you’re a little behind the curve my Krakoan pal.

This is generally applicable throughout the entire book, but DAMN do I love Pepe Lararz and Marte Gracia’s ability to bring demonic and supernatural creatures to life.

Apocalypse brings his schemes to the Quiet Council, and Krakoa acknowledges he gave Apoc approval for all this. Apocalypse doesn’t really have council approval for all this though, with Magneto in particular deeply questioning his actions. Again, Summoner giving us his account of what happened with no backup (banshee is in a coma in the healing gardens) should raise some eyebrows.

Small detail but weird that Professor X calls Apoc En Sabah Nur, and not his mutant name

For the most part, the Council is opposed to Apocalypse leaving the External gate open and maintain access to alternate realms (and in this case near direct access to the Starlight Citadel of Otherworld). As Kate points out – for the first time we’ve seen in a council meeting! – they still have access to Avalon.

I did also find it interesting here that the enemies of Krakoa that are named – Homines Verendi, The Flower Cartel, Xeno, and Orchis – leave out The Children of the Vault, who have been named the most dangerous threat to mutants by Professor X himself.

Hell yeah Krakoa: Council votes to destroy the External Gate since it leaves them vulnerable, but Krakoa tells Doug “You need to understand you are guests here. Our coexistence is collaborative and wonderful. It’s a union of shared interests, but I am the land. And the land is mine.“

This was actually something I brought up in the Live Krakin’ Krakoa X of Swords prediction party, but we have not gotten a lot of insight into how Krakoa feels about mutants! This is a great start.

Apocalypse has to gather volunteers, leading to an interesting hodgepodge team, which has been one of the more interesting components of Krakoa – since all the mutants are together all the time, the team’s are less standardized than they’ve been in the past.

The fellowship: Apocalypse, Summoner, Rockslide, Rictor, Siryn, Beast, Angel, Polaris, Havok, Monet

There’s a really nice quote about what’s coming for Apocalypse in “Memory is long. History is longer. And the truth will outlast both.“

One of the joys of the Dawn of X is given the scale of mutants that can be in any story, there are all kinds of long lasting relationships that still haven’t been explored more than a year into the Hickman era. One such is Angel and Apocalypse.

In the midst of this build-up, we have even more exciting news: We’re Hickman/Mueller mapping Otherworld baby! This is quite fun, and I think going to go a long way to making Excalibur even more interesting, as one detractor I’ve felt in that book is a chaotic sense of place as the Mutant team makes its way through the realm.

We’ve either seen most of these realms before, or find out some more info about the Otherworld Kingdoms in the next data pages in this issue, but the one real interesting callout is  #13 – Mercator – Highlighted in blue.

Absalom Mercator, otherwise known as Mister M, is one of two Omega Level Mutants we still haven’t seen in the Dawn of X (the other is Legion), and that sure doesn’t seem like an accident. Mercator projection is also a whole school of cartography, which is an intriguing connection to this map of Otherworld, although I won’t pretend to understand maps literally at all – I can barely make it home from work without my GPS rolling.

The page that made me the happiest of anything in this entire comic comes from The Otherworld Kingdoms map where we’rehitting Otherworld history, and in particular the Alan Moore / Alan Davis Captain Britain work hard! In the span of one page on the Fair Courts and Foul Courts, we get The Fury, Mad Jim Jaspers, Roma, Merlyn

The main reason this is thrilling is I have a Krakin’ Krakoa coming this weekend (it’ll be Krakin’ Krakoa #95) on the Alan Moore and Alan Davis run on Captain Britain and it’s connections to the Hickman era of X-Men, and this data page cements that relevance in ways I yet again totally precogged.

So given I’m covering this in depth in another video, I’ll just say that these are all absolutely crucial, historical elements in the history of Otherworld and the pages of Captain Britain, with Jaspers and the Fury offering serious threats to mutantdom in the future. I’m also fascinated by the presence of Roma and Merlyn here, who I thought had fallen prior to Saturnyne’s ascension (in the past Opal Luna has effectively reported up to them, although now that relationship is inversed).

Apocalypse is genuinely emotional upon the sight of his long lost children, and I buy that this is actually a huge poignant moment for him. This is definitely the softest we’ve seen Apocalypse – and he pays for it – but honestly his arc through both Excalibur and X-Men has justified these feelings.

Of Genesis, the horsemen tell Big Daddy A: “Gone. Destroyed. She fell under the twilight blade.” If anything, this frankly confirms my theory – growing in size and strength – that Genesis and Annihilation are still actually the same person, and that the Summoner’s story was a ruse.

I still love my theory that Annihilation could be Rasputin. But again if we look back to the Genesis and Annihilation showdown in X-Men #12, and we consider what we know now about our pal Summoner, the changes that this story lies somewhere between half truth and metaphor is a distinct possibility.

Unsurprisingly, horsemen and Summoner stab apocalypse, in a sudden betrayal of their father and grandfather. We learn about the same time that Summoner betrayed Banshee and Unus (nobody touch poor sweet Unus!), not shocking there either!

While the story definitely sets us up to think this might be coming, the important thing here is that Apocalypse does not see it coming at all.

“I am a Summoner of many things… Most of all lies”

Really feel for Rockslides Arakkon chess game with Summoner.

Everything goes absolutely to hell for the Krakoan party

One aspect that goes overlooked throughout the series, and really throughout Excalibur to this point is just how powerful Saturnyne is in her domain of Otherworld, and as the ruler of protecting all realities. The comic’s opening quote supports her power, stating: “All I see, I own. And I am unsatisfied with the state of things.”

With a snap of her fingers Saturnyne freezes both Krakoan and Arrakan, and gets to have a conversation and set up the rest of the event on her own terms.

Saturnyne plays matchmaker setting up the duel between Arakko and Krakoa, after first flexing her power and turning Death into a cute lil wolf pup.

All the swords get named. On the X side of things we have

The items that most get my attention on the Amenth side are 1) The Twlight Blade – is this the same thing as the Twilight Sword Surtur has wieleded in Thor comics? 2) Pogg Ur-Pogg being both crocodile monster AND a sword himself, with the implication that the swords are wielding a Crocodile monster 3) Muramasa listed on both sides of the aisle! Marvel’s been teasing Solem as Wolverine’s new archenemy, and remember, Apocalypse talks of the God-like mutants he had to banish to Amenth. Solem could be of Earth before Wolverine, potentially an ancestor, wielding the same kind of blade.

If folks are interested in a Krakin’ Krakoa deep dive on the swords specifically, let me hear it in the comments, as most of them tend to have fairly interesting comics histories on their own.

As Cable and Rachel read Banshee’s mind for clues about what really happened, Saturnyne tells Cable / Rachel of something that can help. Scott knows what it is. My initial guess given AIM bodies is something with The World? But it appears to be more about space travel to specific space station.

Scott, Jean, Cable plunge Cable’s dope sword into a trans space teleportation platform, which powers up SWORD orbital space station.

Given the official confirmation of a S.W.O.R.D. ongoing by Al Ewing and Valerio Schiti (which, I will not for the last time, mention I totally called in my How Hickman’s X-Men Will Conquer the GalaXy video!), this is incredibly exciting.

Intriguingly, all we learn of the SWORD station at this point is that it’s like totally out of action.

So why would Saturnyne send them SWORD? Well, she’s corralling alien entities, perhaps that’s where answers lie? My guess here, would be contact made with the other faction of Arakko natives who took a different approach like Summoner mentioned in his story to Grandaddy A in X-Men #12.

Now, early in the oversized issue, we actually get a return to the 2020 Free Comic Book Day Tarot Card teasers. Reprint the X-Men FCBD pages of catching a star-beast in context of the event. Literally reprinting the FCBD pages in their entirity… kind of disappointed initially, but the text is completely different.

Importantly, too, The X-Office (of course) remembers there’s an original Hellion named Tarot! She does reading data pages! Tarot readers the world over – mutant and not – are pulling the same cards as Saturnyne.

In the original: Eight of Cups card presents two different women, with Genesis feeling disullionsment and abandonment, and Annihilation’s side reading “That which was once the harmonious lifting of voices is now a mocking echo-then silence.”

The updated reading of the card is recontextualized given what we know from the X-Men #12 prelude issue. “Someone’s heart has been left empty” “She has been waiting for something more. Will she turn away? Will she be turned away? A woman like this keeps her cup close.”

New theories? From Tini Howard interview, Tarot is another kind of sequential art. So I think the card readings are in the order they’ll occur in the event. Tarot’s own readings are very interesting.

The sequence of events:

Next Time: The Krakoan Reads – A New Death

The post Krakin’ Krakoa #93: X-Men X Of Swords Pt. 1 – Creation Review! appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

This week on Creannotators, I talked with cartoonist Kyle Starks about his work on Old Head, one of my favorite graphic novels of 2020, a comedic masterpiece about a retired NBA player taking on Dracula and the monsters in his neighboring castle. Oh, also we talk NBA. Like, a lot.

On Comic Book Herald’s ‘Creannotators’ I’ll be interviewing some of my favorite creators in comics about specific runs, graphic novels or series, looking for their insights on the inspirations behind the work and ideas or hidden material readers may have missed. Creannotators is an audio/visual annotative guide to enjoying the intricacies and thinking in the art. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the comics!

Old Head Is:

Cartoonist: Kyle Starks

Colorist: Chris Schweizer

——————————————————————————————————-

Music for Best Comics Ever by Anthony Weis. Check out more music at anthonyweis.com.

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The post Creannotators #18: “Old Head” Interview With Cartoonist Kyle Starks! appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

This weekend marked the first ever Comic Book Herald Youtube livestream, and it went pretty well! I got to talk X-Men with Verno of The Cerebros podcast, and Ernie of Blerd Without Fear, and we dove into our X-Men: X of Swords event theories before kickoff on 9/23/2020! If you’re excited for the X-Men event, check out the (spoiler heavy!) conversation below.

Spoilers for discussed comics will follow!

It was a lot of fun and I hope to have more livestreams on the Krakin’ Krakoa youtube work coming in the future.

Music for Best Comics Ever by Anthony Weis. Check out more music at anthonyweis.com.

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The post Krakin’ Krakoa #91 Live! X-Men: X of Swords Prediction Party (with Blerd Without Fear & The Cerebros!) appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Marvel comics of 1986. Squadron Supreme!

Chris from Chrises on Infinite Earths is our guest this week. You can find Chris:

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On this episode we cover the following issues (all available via Marvel Unlimited):

My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Six: 1987 Pt. 1

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You can find more Marvel Comics guides on Comic Book Herald at:

https://www.comicbookherald.com/the-complete-marvel-reading-order-guide/

mymarvelousyear.com

Music for My Marvelous Year is credited to Disasterpeace. Support for My Marvelous Year comes via Patreon backers, for as little as $1 a month.

Make sure to subscribe now in order to get every reading list for every year of Marvel Comics! Subscribe to the Podcast! — iTunes, Google Play, Pod Feed

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The post Marvel Year Twenty-Five: 1986 Pt. 6 (With Chrises on Infinite Earths!) appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

This week on Creannotators, I talked with creator Dave Chisholm about his work on the excellent Chasin’ The Bird, a graphic novel about the life of jazz legend Charlie Parker. We talk jazz history, bringing Parker’s mythology to this moment in time, and the distinct visual challenge of conveying music in comics.

On Comic Book Herald’s ‘Creannotators’ I’ll be interviewing some of my favorite creators in comics about specific runs, graphic novels or series, looking for their insights on the inspirations behind the work and ideas or hidden material readers may have missed. Creannotators is an audio/visual annotative guide to enjoying the intricacies and thinking in the art. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the comics!

Chasin’ The Bird is easily one of my favorite graphic novels of 2020, and one I expect we’ll be seeing on a lot of year-end best-of lists.

Chasin’ The Bird Is:

Creator: Dave Chisholm

Colors: Peter Markowski

You can find more from Dave Chisholm here:

Thomson Heller Detective Interstellar

Tyranny of the Muse

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Music for Best Comics Ever by Anthony Weis. Check out more music at anthonyweis.com.

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The post Creannotators #17: “Chasin’ The Bird” Interview With Creator Dave Chisholm! appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Marvel comics of 1986. Elektra Assassin by Frank Miller & Bill Sienkiewicz!

On this episode we cover the following issues (all available via Marvel Unlimited):

My Marvelous Year – Marvel Year Twenty-Five: 1986 Pt. 6

Up Next:

You can find more Marvel Comics guides on Comic Book Herald at:

https://www.comicbookherald.com/the-complete-marvel-reading-order-guide/

mymarvelousyear.com

Music for My Marvelous Year is credited to Disasterpeace. Support for My Marvelous Year comes via Patreon backers, for as little as $1 a month.

Make sure to subscribe now in order to get every reading list for every year of Marvel Comics! Subscribe to the Podcast! — iTunes, Google Play, Pod Feed

If you like the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!, to help us reach more readers & listeners!

The post Marvel Year Twenty-Five: 1986 Pt. 5 appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

Following my review of 2020’s X-Factor #1, I saw a fair amount of commentary from listeners and readers wondering why there’s all this focus on character sexuality in the book, specifically with queer X-Men. Hot on the heels of Marauders #12 and Kate Pryde’s same-sex kiss, the question is of course resurfacing, making it a good time to really dig into the relevance and importance of sexuality in the world of Marvel’s X-Men.

Up front, I’ll admit this is a sensitive issue and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. This is my own attempt to wrestle with these recurring questions, and dissect them in the context of X-Men comics. While I think it would be nice, I don’t anticipate this conversation will change hearts and minds regarding perceptions of sexuality and gender in our world, but I do hope it will specifically address how these issues are integrated into Marvel’s X-Men comics, and why, at the end of the day, it makes sense and is a substantial net positive.

First, it’s useful to clarify what readers mean by “all this focus on sex.” Notable examples from the Dawn of X, the era of X-Men comics following writer Jonathan Hickman’s return to Marvel with House of X / Powers of X, include the following:

As you can likely gauge from the examples, the conversation is less around the general horniness of the X-Men on their Krakoan island paradise (although certainly that gets a lot of discussion as well!), and more targeted toward queer or minority identity now being included in the pages of these comics.

The fact of the matter is that members of the LGBTQIA+ community in particular have been long withheld from X-Men Comics, and Marvel comics.

Historical reasons to avoid making queer relationships explicit are due to societal pressure, and for Marvel Comics specifically, due to editorial pressure. According to an article on “Prism Comics,” during Jim Shooter’s late 70’s into 1987 tenure as Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief, there was an alleged “No gays in the Marvel Universe” policy. This can partially be assumed to reflect the desire to follow the Comics Code Authority, the Red Scare/McCarthyist propaganda directive that arose out of Frederick Werthem’s “Seduction of the Innocent” in 1954.

According to History.com, it wasn’t until 1989 when the Code would allow for an openly gay character in Marvel or DC superhero comic books! There are creators who work in characters coded as gay prior (JM Dematteis work with Arnold Roth in the pages of Captain America comes to mind), but Marvel’s Northstar was the first to come out as openly gay in 1992’s Alpha Flight #106, a momentous declaration that was then largely ignored for years.

Even after this, equating queerness with “sexual perversion” persisted, as Marvel has often labeled any books featuring actual queer characters as “adult” or “for mature audiences only.” This was the case in 2002 when Marvel announced the Rawhide Kid would come out as gay in a Marvel MAX comic.

Following this announcement, in a (far from perfect) appearance on Crossfire in 2002 with host Tucker Carlson (for real), the strongest argument Stan Lee could muster was the following Seinfeldian point:

“Let me just mention that Marvel Comics, we are entertainers. And we do books for everybody. And the characters in our books represent everybody. In the “X Men,” we have characters from all nationalities. We have both sexes. I didn’t write this book. I only learned about it yesterday. But I think it’s fine. Among us today, there are gay people. We have one gay hero. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m sure there are gay heroes who exist.”

Fear of accepting queer characters on the page is historically met with cowardice, to the everlasting failure of Marvel and the industry at large. Even the aforementioned Rawhide Kid’s coming out party (and I don’t want to oversell the importance of that book because it stinks!) was walked back only a few years later. That’s very recent history, and it’s far from the progressive uncompromisingly agenda-driven radical Marvel gets painted as by some of the angrier voices in this conversation.

The last decade has decidedly improved on this deeply unbalanced past, from the first same-sex wedding in the pages of Astonishing X-Men #51, to the very recent 2020 wedding of Wiccan and Hulkling in Empyre: Avengers Aftermath.  Still, I think it’s crucial to acknowledge Marvel’s playing catch-up after decades of failure to represent queer communities. And there’s still plenty of work to be done.

Historically, the X-Men exist as a representation of oppressed minority groups across the board, born (to a degree) out of the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, and growing in scope and scale since. The mutant metaphor is flexible, and the perspective you bring from your own life can often shape what you’re going to get out of a story. When you feel your own oppression in these stories, that is true for you as a reader. Pretending that’s not true just means that’s not a part of your perspective. And it’s ok to miss things! I miss elements of comics all the time! Listening to other voices, though, can help expand that awareness.

Again, X-Men is particularly well-suited to metaphorically capture struggles for equality, with a group of mutants sworn to protect mankind, even those who fear and hate them. As Sara Century puts it in a Syfy.com article, “This franchise is a rarity in how consistently it has focused on highlighting the fallacy of bigotry as a major obstacle in its character’s lives, and portraying all forms of intolerance as being deeply wrong. That is what has drawn such a wide audience to X-Men, and it is what makes it stand out for so many readers. Outsiders have always flocked to this concept, and for very obvious reasons.”

One of the clearest examples of the X-Men standing in for real world minorities comes in 1982’s Marvel original graphic novel #5, God Loves, Man Kills, by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson. In “God Loves, Man Kills” Christian evangelical preacher William Stryker launches a massive religious movement centered around his absolute hatred of mutants. The combination of religion-fueled intolerance, and a congregation full of protesting humans with signs like “Go Home Mutie!” makes for a distinct, all too familiar connection to real-world bigotry. X-Men comics have varied in their approach to tackling these issues since, but the modernization of X-Men as a metaphor for oppressed minority is firmly cemented in the Marvel canon.

In recent years, the mutant metaphor has more deliberately extended to LGBTQIA+ communities. One of the most frequent talking points lately is how modern depictions of known character’s sexuality may differ or seemingly run counter to their comics history. We saw this a lot with Iceman over the past 5 years, when writer Brian Michael Bendis revealed – in classic comics fashion, through time travel and mind-reading! – that Bobby Drake has been suppressing his gay sexuality. A thing that gets lost in a Marvel character coming out as queer later in their life is the idea that unless they were “Out and Proud” in the shared history of these properties prior to this point, the *new direction* simply doesn’t match up. But even in reality, this is simply untrue.

When discussing Iceman’s sexuality, writer Anthony Gramuglia says, “That rings true for a deeply suppressed gay man. A person suppressing their sexuality that intensely would appear to everyone else like an average straight person because that’s what the role they’re convincing themselves they occupy. They aren’t JUST trying to fool everyone around them. They’re trying to fool themselves.”

It’s not the same thing, but I’d also note that as comics fans we’re accustomed to big bold new changes that present the possibility for new stories. We accept these things as readers constantly; they are what keep a decades running universe occasionally fresh. Just look at Moira X! Prior to Hickman’s X-Men, Moira MacTaggert was a human ally to mutantkind, and one time love interest of Charles Xavier. Now she’s a mutant replaying lifelines, and the single most compelling concept in superhero comics. There’s a conservative type of reader who rejects these changes in favor of “staying true to the good ol’ days,” but for me, these are the ideas and new angles I live for.

With Iceman, I will fully admit, the character as a gay man works best when understanding him as a closeted individual trying to pass, rather than retroactively arguing these were the intentions of the creators. Because for all their positive contributions to social justice, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – I don’t believe – created Bobby Drake with the intention to show he was gay. If you’re interested more in retroactively examining the character’s history for clues that *are* there, I’d recommend the “Out Cold’ series of essays on Shelfdust.com.

In the more recent example of Kate Pryde in the Dawn of X, there’s a long history of bisexual subtext that is unquestionably part of the creator’s intent. From an interview with Chris Claremont on Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men: “With Kitty, the basic idea was, while she dated lots of people when she was an adolescent, the primal love of her life has always been Rachel.” That’s actually part of the creator’s intent he never quite made explicit.

I don’t think this is Claremont retroactively trying to pull a JK Rowling either. Again, from Century on SyFy.com, “Well into the ‘80s, more and more queer subtext was played out on the pages: Illyana Rasputin and Kitty Pryde wrestling with each other in bed; Storm and Yukio’s fling; Mystique and Destiny appearing only in tangent to one another; Northstar’s lack of interest in women; Rachel Summers in her entirety… there was a lot of implied queerness in Claremont’s X-Men run.”

The young Kitty Pryde joins the X-Men as a young teenager in Uncanny X-Men #129, a comic with a release date of January 1980 and a story that kickstarts the official “Dark Phoenix Saga.” Kitty would go on to become a central POV character in the X-Men’s Claremont-verse, bridging the gaps between X-Men, New Mutants, and Excalibur more than any other character in the world. Kitty’s journey – again starting as a fourteen year-old mutant coming to terms with her powers – is very much about finding her place, and understanding the Jewish mutant woman she’s becoming.

This extends to sexuality as well, as it does for so many in their formative adolescent years. The most prominent (and permitted) example is Kitty’s flirtation with Piotr Rasputin, Colossus, a character she’s had romantic ties to as recently as 2018’s fake-out wedding issue. At the same time, there are recurring examples of Kitty’s closest female friends suggesting deeper connections, bordering on romantic. These examples can be found in Claremont written issues from the mid-80s into the 90’s and all the way through to 2002’s all-but-forgotten Mechanix miniseries. Most famously, in order of chronology:

Kitty Pryde & Illyana Rasputin

There’s an undeniable bond between Kitty and Illyana who become fast, extremely close friends at the Xavier Institute. From Kitty’s literal – generally unexplained – bond to Illyana that causes her to take on Illyana’s Soulsword armor when the New Mutants are seemingly killed by the Beyonder in New Mutants #36, to their now infamous tickle-fight (alone in their bedrooms) in New Mutants #63, Kitty and Illyana are a consistent subtextual reference.

Kitty Pryde & Rachel Summers

Kitty and Rachel are very close throughout the entirety of Excalibur, and while of course characters can just be friends, there are enough moments in these comics to suggest there’s more to it. As already mentioned, Claremont has since declared Rachel “The love of Kitty’s life.”

Kitty Pryde & Courtney Ross (Sat-Yr-Nine)

One of the absolute most deliberate examples occurs in the pages of Excalibur, when Brian Braddock’s love interest Courtney Ross makes clear seductive overtures to Kitty. In his own online forum, long-time Excalibur artist and Chris Claremont collaborator Alan Davis said of Kitty and Courtney, “although I knew Chris had some plan for Sat-Yr-9 to corrupt Kitty and that the various Cross-time versions of Saturnyne were attracted to Kitty, I had no idea what, if any, the goal of this relationship was to be. I just played it as a lesbian affair.” You can criticize the intent or execution, but there’s no denying this was meant to yet again show Kitty as interested.

Kitty Pryde & Karma 

The X-Treme X-Men mini Mechanix is a general footnote in the canon of Claremont written X-Men comics, but it focuses wholly on Kitty trying to find herself in college after the death of her father in the New X-Men destruction of Genosha. During this time, Kitty reconnects with longtime New Mutant Xi’an Coy Manh, aka Karma, an out lesbian. The two share several tender touches, conversations, and glances.

To be clear, it’s not like this subtextual queerness is without problems. Nola Pfau writes for the Eisner-Winning comics website Women Write About Comics, “Chris Claremont is a straight man, and while his attempt to push for queer inclusion in the ’80s was admirable, every single potential relationship involving the character contains a level of age-inappropriateness; Illyana Rasputin is a decade younger than her, artificially aged up, Rachel Summers is older and fresh out of a relationship with an even older future version of Kate herself, and “Courtney Ross” (actually the villainous Sat-Yr-9) is an adult improperly seducing her on her fifteenth birthday. Even her primary male crush, Piotr Rasputin, is approximately five years older than her, putting him above the age of twenty-one to her fifteen.”

Nonetheless, it’s all very much there, even if culturally Marvel refused to admit it. In her excellent essay, “Kitty Queer,” Sigrid Ellis writes, “Ego-dystonic homosexuality was removed from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1986. New Mutants #36 was published in February 1986. When it was written, lesbianism was legally and medically a perversion. Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, the writer and artist of New Mutants at the time, could not say that Illyana came to the rescue of her some-time girlfriend Kitty who had been defeated by a demon with a penchant for classic bondage porn. But they could write it, and draw it, without ever acknowledging that is what they were doing.”

The primary reason I think these moments and others like them are essential to X-Men Comics – and frankly comics in general – is that representation matters enormously.

I’ve been watching a lot of Hamilton since it released on Disney+ on July 4th, including some interviews with the immensely talented cast. And one thing I’ve talked about with family is the merit and value of “Story of Tonight.” As a song, it’s less upbeat, less instantaneously catchy, it wasn’t ever a favorite. It’s fine. Listening to an interview with Leslie Odom Jr, who plays Aaron Burr, though, he’s talking about that song specifically as an eye opening moment for him in terms of diversity – and I’m paraphrasing – “I had never seen four people of color on stage just talking about friendship.” He had never seen that in the arts before, and it was powerful. That gives me a different perspective on the merit of that moment in the show. That’s what diversity and representation can do in comics like X-Factor, Marauders, and across the Dawn of X. It lets oppressed groups see themselves in places they never have before.

An enormous part of X-Men fandom is deeply engaged with the soap operatic structure and the romantic entanglements of these characters that we become so attached to. The part that’s easy to take for granted is that historically most of these plotlines – for example Rogue and Gambit, in a cyclical will they/won’t they – are standard heteronormative relationships. In the gazillion variations on Rogue and Gambit’s romance, I’ve ever seen anyone ask “Why does their sexuality matter?” It’s taken for granted this is quote-on-quote “normal.”

The same goes for the love triangle between Scott Summers, Wolverine, and Jean Grey. That’s been a huge part of the comics, the animated series, the movies, every X-Men story ever told! Their sexuality, and romantic partners absolutely matters to readers, and has for generations. It’s inarguably a part of the X-Men narrative.

Why should that not extend to queer characters? Why should that be withheld from them? This absence is damaging to the X-Men’s central thesis of creating a fair world for the oppressed and the different. As Gramuglia writes, “The lack of [queer] parallels leads to two negative results: it lessens the relevance of the X-Men’s metaphor and it weakens the discussion of oppression in the real world. Both of these problems keeps the X-Men saga from resonating with its queer audience, which is increasingly confronted with bigotry in the form of harassment, hate crimes, and governmental oppression. ”

One of the leading realities for avoiding queer relationships in comics is of course fear, hate and bigotry. It should go without saying that those are unacceptable rationales.

A lot of people, I suppose, are smart enough to mask this prejudice with the suggestion that it’s not the sexuality that’s the problem, so much as the focus on the “woke” agenda over a “good story.” Again, the sarcastic turn of “woke” into a pejorative as opposed to the literal “wake up” call it’s meant to be – as if that was a bad thing, taking in new information and waking up to your surroundings, and heaven forbid learning from others – this is all odd to me.

This focus on reducing all thought to “make good story” is deeply misguided, and woefully inadequate criticism. On Comic Book Herald, I rank and evaluate and discuss thousands upon thousands of comics. I’m able to do this through a site I created and a platform I’ve built, but I make no bones that clearly my definition of “good” is going to lead to plenty of readers who disagree with me! I talk about this a lot on the My Marvelous Year podcast I do, but in the first few years of running the reading clubs on CBH and MMY, there are a billion examples of people telling me “hey this story you love, it stinks, or didn’t work for me at all!” And nobody should be shocked or surprised about this!

Now certainly, there can be critical consensus or even popular consensus around a work’s quality, but let’s not sit here and pretend this is easily and universally defined. Your definition of good is probably not mine, is not probably not your neighbor’s, is not your family’s, etc. We all recognize this and yet there are all these caveman cries for “make good story.” The fact that it doesn’t work for you alone does not make it a “bad story.”

There’s an implication in loudly decrying stories inclusive of queer sexuality that *this is all Marvel publishes now*. The absolute irony of this is as Marvel slowly works to make up for decades of completely absent representation, they are called out for *too much sudden representation*. For the most vocal critics, the only acceptable solution would be if Marvel attempted to catch up at a rate so glacially slow that they never really came close to making up for lost time at all. Given the historical context, the desire to see Marvel tell stories like they “used to” is a desire to see Marvel never broach these topics at all.

There’s also a willfully oblivious nature to these comments – especially when bandied about at the publisher level – that ignores the fact if I look across the Dawn of X, there are plenty of titles that aren’t really digging into queer relationships *at all*: X-Men (mostly), X-Force, Hellions, Giant-Size X-Men, Cable, X-Men / Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Fallen Angels and New Mutants. It’s a vast majority of the line!

This is of course true for the majority of Marvel Comics throughout history as well. The attempt to paint modern efforts of representation as “sudden” and “forced” is really just an excuse to say you preferred the absence of queer characters in Marvel’s history. And that history is not equitable. Not by a long shot.

If it feels like Marvel is cashing in on a modern trend by making characters queer, that’s because that’s the direction the world is moving. According to a summer 2020 Gallup poll, American support of same sex marriage is at an all time high, approximately 67% or 2 out of 3 people. This isn’t a fad, it’s the gradual bent of a nation fighting for equality. Marvel has always been the world outside your window, so it’s only right that public perception could shape character’s fictional realities as well. This doesn’t really absolve Marvel’s failures, but it’s disingenuous to pretend this is something a corporation is peddling irrespective of significantly positive cultural trends.

When all the comics you loudly don’t like have a perceived agenda of diversity, it’s worth examining those common threads and really considering whether you’re open to new perspectives. Why do these additions stand out *so much* as a reader?

As an example, Leah William, David Baldeon and the creative team’s X-Factor #1 is a highly engaging first issue, exploring aspects of life on Krakoa, the 5, resurrection protocols, and several characters we haven’t seen much of in the Dawn of X. You can talk about this issue extensively – and I *did* in my review – without focusing extensively on the queer relationships. It’s a facet of the fabric, and for all the reasons I’ve outlined, a force for good, but it’s only one piece of a multi-faceted story! Criticisms that the comic is lost to a social justice agenda are deliberately obsessing over fictional character sexuality in a way the story isn’t even doing!

When the comic does make mention of character’s sexual identity, it’s to showcase the variance and variety of queer individuals in the world, to showcase different personalities and different interests to avoid singular stereotypes across communities. Daken is super different than Prodigy, and yes, they’re both bisexual. This is a deeper level of representation, and a logical progression from the simplicity of Stan Lee’s earlier implication that Marvel’s “one gay hero” was a real nice effort to hit a quota.

At the end of the day, explicitly putting queer characters on the page is enormously important. It can’t just be left to the background, it can’t just be subtext, and pretending that’s enough. It’s not enough. It matters for people in the minority who are now reflected, it matters for other minority groups who are not reflected that can now one day see themselves reflected, and it matters for non-minority readers who are otherwise less familiar or exposed to the existence of these groups. It matters.

It’s a way of saying this exists, this is real, and it exists in our world too. In other words, you are real, you matter, and you exist. All of you.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100316054502/http://prismcomics.org/display.php?id=1304

https://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/12/13/cf.opinion.rawhide.kid/

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-code-authority-kept-lgbt-characters-out-of-comics

https://news.gallup.com/poll/311672/support-sex-marriage-matches-record-high.aspx

Out Cold: Iceman’s Queer Subtext in Chuck Austen’s X-Men

https://web.archive.org/web/20081025052645/http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid63952.asp

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/x-men-as-a-queer-metaphor

The Performative Horniness of Dawn of X

https://medium.com/reflections-of-a-grown-up-fan/why-arent-there-more-lgbtqa-x-men-ff3d5b4619c6

“It came out of nowhere” pic.twitter.com/E4oYw0rLuc

— tycon ⊗ (@aliastager) September 10, 2020

100 – Unexpected Wonder, with Chris Claremont

The post Krakin’ Krakoa #86: Why Does Sexuality in X-Men Comics Matter? appeared first on Comic Book Herald.

This week on Creannotators, I talked with creator Sloane Leong about A Map To The Sun, the graphic novel’s incredible colors, studying the game of basketball, and her sci fi Image series Prism Stalker.

On Comic Book Herald’s ‘Creannotators’ I’ll be interviewing some of my favorite creators in comics about specific runs, graphic novels or series, looking for their insights on the inspirations behind the work and ideas or hidden material readers may have missed. Creannotators is an audio/visual annotative guide to enjoying the intricacies and thinking in the art. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the comics!

A Map to the Sun from First Second books is one of my favorite new comics of 2020, a poetic exploration of five girls of color forming a women’s basketball team in their underprivileged high school. Sloane Leong’s expressive artwork and inventive use of color creates a vivid emotional journey well worth reading.

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Music for Best Comics Ever by Anthony Weis. Check out more music at anthonyweis.com.

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For the Comic Book Herald reading club through every year of Marvel Comics, check out mymarvelousyear.com

The post Creannotators #16: “A Map To The Sun” With Sloane Leong appeared first on Comic Book Herald.