The Comics Journal

There are comics that everyone agrees are brilliant but nobody seems to talk about. Usually they’re sui generis, works that came out of nowhere and inspired no imitators, little islands of imagination that fit awkwardly into any critic’s attempt …

When a comics publisher goes under, it leaves a lot of orphan licenses behind.  Some get scooped up into loving homes, some bounce from halfway house to halfway house, while others are left to wander the earth, forgotten.  So it …

Michael O’Donoghue, founding member of National Lampoon and the guy opposite John Belushi in the very first Saturday Night Live sketch, is one of my favorite literary assholes, up there with James Joyce. I guess I’m amused by Irish misogynists …

To be a truly irritating manga nerd, it’s important to obsess over at least one untranslated manga, boring people with long descriptions of its veiled glories and bitching about the myopia of the U.S. manga market and/or the unappreciative gaijin …

Selecting subjects for this feature, I’m forever torn: do I choose comics with deep personal significance in my life or comics that speak to some universal quality with exceptional grace? Or, alternately, do I pick out the weirdest thing I …