Cover Story - Top 15 Simpsons Comics Covers

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This year marks the 600^th episode of The Simpsons, the little animated series that took the world by storm and then refused to lie down and die.  In all seriousness, I like The Simpsons, in fact I actually like well into the season most ground zero fans consider “past its prime.”  

Even while accepting the show has gone on far too long you still have to concede it’s become a massive pop cultural phenomena with really no equal save maybe the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of self-propagation.  

Naturally, that expansive media empire has crossed into the realm of comics, in particular during the mid to late ‘90s after the show runners realized their adult oriented prime time show had a massive audience of grade school kids.  

Matt Groening himself was involved in the production of Simpsons Comics owing to his own love of the medium and a desire to inject a greater amount of levity into a decade that’d become choked with joyless grit and today- we honor him, this is the top 15 Simpsons Comics covers.

Panel Vision - Invasion!

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The week I’m writing this marks a significant milestone for the shared television universe of DC Comics.  The CWniverse, as I call it, started out in 2012 with the show Arrow, a Green Arrow adaptation that leaned way too heavily on Batman for its identity.  

However, when they introduced Flash as a spin-off series in 2014 things started to improve, even if the first half of Flash season 1 was pretty weak.  The real turning point, for this entire endeavor, was the 2014 Flash/Arrow crossover, a blockbuster event that finally managed to inject light, fun, and weirdness into the CWniverse. 

It also brought in some serious ratings as ever since then crossovers and multi-hero universes.  All of that now culminates in an epic 4-night crossover between Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow adapting the 1989 event comic Invasion.  In honor of the occasion, I’m looking back on the original Invasion! Comics, which is nice because they’re also one of my favorite event comics of all time. 

Panel Vision - Medicine Soldiers

At the time of writing the US is paying witness to one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice and corruptions of the legal system we’ve seen in quite some time.  I’m referring of course to the native water protectors at Standing Rock facing down the corporate machinery and military police of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  

If you’re unfamiliar with the details, an oil pipeline was deemed too dangerous to go through the Dakota capital of Bismarck and so has been rerouted through native lands of the Sioux people against their will. 

Rather than just let a soulless corporation steal their land and poison their resources the Sioux have taken to non-violently blocking construction.  In response, authorities have responded with near deadly force- spraying protestors with freezing water and even shooting a woman’s arm off with rubber bullets.  

The whole thing is an absolute cluster and here are some links if you want to give support to the protesters, but we’re here to talk about comics.  Specifically, the entire situation reminded me of the comic that first got me interested in Native Rights, one of the best Batman stories of the modern era- Medicine Soldiers. 

Panel Vision - Fighting Fascism in "Black Terror"

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Edited by Robert Beach 

Well, here we are I suppose: thinking the unthinkable. In case you somehow missed it, Donald Trump is now the President-Elect of the United States. I say President-Elect because I, like most Americans, am still hopeful for some kind of pre-inauguration miracle like a devastating comet or the onset of war, but it’s not a high hope. The real question is shaping up to be “Where do we go from here” now that over half the nation gets to spend at least the next 2 years wondering or not they get to have a country tomorrow. 

Obviously, I’ve never shied away from focusing on politics in these reviews; it’s part of the societal texture through which we ingest media and claiming some “objectivity” to the state of the world is, at best, obstinate denial and, at worse, willfully misleading. What’s more, the whole reason we make art is to impose meaning and narrative onto the randomness that is life, to try and wring some measure of realization out of an all too indifferent universe. Art is how we make the world the way we’d like it to be. With that in mind, let’s talk about Black Terror.

Film Land - Moana

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Is there any pop cultural institution as broad reaching or as powerful as Disney Studios?  Certainly, there are competitors, most notably with Warner Brothers who gave the world Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Batman, and the Looney Tunes, but they still rank second place compared to Disney’s cultural dominance. 

We’re currently in the midst of Disney’s most influential period in the cultural zeitgeist, marked by unparalleled critical and box office success from subsidiaries like Pixar and Marvel, their absolute dominance of the fantasy genre through live action fairy tales, and their return to the head of the table in animated family blockbusters.

I’ve taken to calling it the Disney New Wave and Moana is the latest crest of it after the severe trough that was Through the Looking Glass.  So, how does the Polynesian island adventure film from the directors of Hercules, Little Mermaid, and Treasure Planet shake out?  Okay, it’s really okay. 

Cover Story - Top 15 Doctor Strange Covers

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So, today marks the premiere of the long-awaited Dr. Strange movie.  After months of online dialogue over the whitewashing of the Ancient One and the questionable idea of adapting a character so steeped in Orientalism the day is finally upon us.  As such, I’ve decided to mark this auspicious occasion by dedicating one of my two weekly columns to the good Doctor because that’s the whole reason they exist- thanks, hashtags.  

To be fair, I’ve actually long wanted to devote a Cover Story to Dr. Strange if only to showcase what a unique place he holds in comic book history.  Strange has always been an outlier even within Marvel’s stable of characters, and his covers have actually reflected that along with some of the best oddball art you’re likely to find in a superhero comic.  That’s just what happens when you make a book about weird wizards and inter-dimensional magic.  

Film Land - Dr. Strange

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Another season, another Marvel movie- like the cleaning of a house, it ever ends.  That’s not a criticism of Marvel’s machinery of success or even their latest outing, just a simple statement of fact.  The Marvel Studios formula and structure are such an ingrained success at this point it seems like they’ll persist through the national zeitgeist and media frontier that initially spawned it to become a pop cultural institution of eternity.  This makes reviewing their films a bit of a tricky business. 

The fact that a Marvel movie is good is, at this point, something of a given.  Every Marvel movie out there is going to be at least enjoyable and will probably be the flavor of the month for about a week or two, but the bigger question now is whether or not they’ll actually persist.  Iron Man and Captain America have graduated beyond franchises to cultural touchstones while Thor and Hawkeye still struggle for relevance.  So how does Dr. Strange stack up against its Marvel brethren?  It’s alright.