Imagine having a perfectly normal life as a teenager. Your parents provide for your every need and desire because of their immense wealth, but they also lay out strong boundaries for what you can and can’t do. You’re not spoiled…
Marvel is adding a line of graphic novels to their expansive publishing list. Rather than compendiums of monthly releases, these new books will be stand alone stories written for the graphic novel format. Publisher’s Weekly has all the exciting details.
My review of Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead is the Cannonball Read V review today at Pajiba. Check it out.
When I first heard about Yugioh in the 90s, I thought it was a ridiculous concept. It seemed like the worst kind of commercialism. It pandered to children. It was an anime and manga series designed to promote a real…
When I’m not writing here or at my regular gigs (or ghostwriting/editing all over the place), I teach educational theater. One of my favorite subjects to study and explore with students is Shakespeare. There’s a beauty and magic to his…
I’ve spent more time covering male-targeted anime than female targeted anime at Sketchy Details. The plain truth is that more shonen titles get released in America and impact the way anime and manga are talked about stateside. The beauty of…
One thing that fascinates me about anime culture is the heavy emphasis on music. Shows have so much music to pull from that Japanese theater companies are able to license titles for stage adaptations and use a lot of the…
A special school exists for strong and talented students. It is the Death Weapon Meister Academy. Students are paired up into field-ready combat teams to hunt and capture evil souls. One student acts as a meister, the weapon master, and…
Click the pictures full size images in this post. It’s a lot of black and white manga art and the details are too fine to make out at the smaller size. Manga is read right to left. Imagine you’re back…
I originally published this piece in October and I still like it a lot. Elfen Lied is a very rich anime to write about. There are so many ways to approach the sci-fi/horror about the abuse and enslavement of an alternate strain of human evolution. It’s a great, mature anime that I enjoy revisiting every few months.
It’s very telling that the first panel I knew I absolutely had to see at Quinni-Con 2013 was called The Philosophy of Pokemon. If you’ve read my work for any period of time, you’ve realized by now that I like…
Gantz is a hyper-violent anime, adapted from an even more outrageous manga, that posits a very unusual interpretation of the afterlife. Imagine if you didn’t actually die at the exact moment your body dies. Instead of being done with the…
There are a lot of Pokemon webcomics out there. Rare Candy Treatment examines the odd quirks of the Pokemon universe. Super Effective is a slapstick reimagining of the manga, complete with black and white tones. Nuzlocke’s Hard Mode brings an…
Check out this really well-written account of how Ulysses by James Joyce was labeled obscene and then allowed to be published in the United States from the CBLDF. Ulysses is one of my all time favorite novels and the arguments against its publication weren’t even related to the really dark, absurd, or shocking elements of the story. How could they be? The book was blocked after Episode 13 was published in a little NYC magazine. You can’t blame Molly Bloom on this one.
Obscenity Case Files: United States v. One Book Called Ulysses