by Emlyn Roberts-Harry

You may well have heard by now about the controversy surrounding this year's Hugo Awards - arguably the most prestigious awards in science fiction - but here's the short version just in case. A group of largely conservative, right-wing fans and writers calling themselves the Sad Puppies have successfully campaigned to flood the ballot with works and authors approved by them, meaning that a huge number of this year's nominees have been chosen by a relatively small group of people, in apparent protest at the increasing diversity and inclusivity in the industry and in fandom. 

by Emlyn Roberts-Harry

You'll no doubt have heard that, however temporary it's unfortunately likely to be, Marvel is launching a team of all-female Avengers during its upcoming Secret Wars mega-crossover. Bizarrely the team is called A-Force rather than, say, the Aveng-hers or the A-femme-gers, but it's still a very welcome move from a company which has lately shown an admirable commitment to putting its roster of great female characters front and centre.

by Emlyn Roberts-Harry

Even though comics are dominated by superheroes, and have been since the 1960s, people often forget that there was a period after the Second World War where they really went out of fashion. In that time, lots of other genres sprung up and gained prominence: Westerns, horror and monsters (at least before the Comics Code Authority) and romance comics. Funnily enough, two of the pioneers of the romance genre were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby; as with so much of modern comics, Kirby's influence can still be felt pretty much anywhere you look.

By Emlyn Roberts-Harry


As a rule, Spider-Man stories which try go down the ever popular grim and gritty route just don't work. As much as tragedy is a core part of what makes the character so appealing, he's still a hero who benefits from a lightness to his stories. Which isn't to say that they need to be free of angst - Peter Parker is the ultimate everyman, and every life has angst in it. It's just that trying to put him in the sort of story where we'd expect to see, say, the Punisher, is usually doomed to fail. 

By Emlyn Roberts-Harry

On 31 October this year, Roc Upchurch, the artist and co-creator of Image Comics' Rat Queens, was arrested on charges of domestic violence.

Like many fans of this wonderful comic, I was stunned by the news - but more than that, I felt betrayed. It's irrational, perhaps, but getting emotionally invested in this sort of stuff has always been one of the hallmarks of geek culture, and when the co-creator of a comic that you love turns out to be a wife-beater, it's a pretty crushing blow. It's disheartening for the fans, and it isn't going to do the comic's image any favours either.

By Emlyn Roberts-Harry

Chances are good that you already know whether or not you want to read Infinite Kung Fu purely based on the title. It's a beautifully drawn martial arts adventure by the hugely talented cartoonist, Kagan McLeod, and if you have any fondness at all for classic kung fu movies, you really ought to give it a look.

It's set in an unspecified time and place called the "Martial World", implied to be our Earth in the far future after the total collapse of civilisation. Our hero is Lei Kung, a soldier in the emperor's army who ends up being recruited by the Eight Immortals to, naturally, save the world. Cue "wax on, wax off" training montages, a trip to prison where he perfects his skills, and all the ridiculously violent kung fu action you could possibly hope for. 

By Emlyn Roberts-Harry

The latest rumour to come out of Marvel, now owned by Disney, is that they're planning to cancel all their Fantastic Four titles, including Ultimate FF, to try and hamper the chances of the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. The reason? There's apparently bad blood between Marvel and Fox, to whom Marvel sold the film rights in the late '90s when on the verge of bankruptcy.

Marvel CEO, Ike Perlmutter, is certainly in a position to enforce a decree like this. And, given the colossal multimedia success of the Avengers, it's understandable that Marvel would want to focus on them in its publications, since they're as popular now as the X-Men were in the '80s and '90s. But, leaving aside the fact that it's clearly an absurd idea to think that cancelling a handful of comics could impact a major movie's chances (given it's pretty clear that films boost the sales of the comics, and not the other way around) it would still be petty and short-sighted. 

By Emlyn Roberts-Harry

For those unfortunate people out there who aren't reading it, Rat Queens is a recent series from Image about an all-women adventuring party in a comedic, Dungeons & Dragons-inspired world. It's smart, touching, genuinely hilarious, and one of the best new books out there. And it has a cast of awesome ladies who aren't subjected to any of the usual clichés of women in comics.

They're tough without being emotionless; attractive without being sexualised; and they get to wear clothes which are actually practical for dungeon crawling. Where almost all the women in superhero comics are exaggeratedly slim with disproportionately large breasts, here we actually have a variety of body types. There's a reason why this comic has cultivated such a huge and outspoken female fan base, and why so many people are cosplaying as these characters. It's because Rat Queens encourages female readers to see themselves in the characters by presenting as many different kinds of women as it can, rather than demanding that all women conform to the one generic standard of beauty we so often see.

By Emlyn Roberts-Harry

When someone says ‘superman’, chances are that 99% of people will immediately think of a man in a cape flying through the sky. Superman is one of the most immediately recognisable figures on the planet, and it says a great deal about the talent of those who have written and drawn him over the years that he's remained so iconic.

But, as is the case with many of the most successful comic book superheroes, the real reason for his status is not his powers, but the psychology behind the character and what he represents. Essentially, he’s the personification of altruism, inspiring humanity to be the best that we can be. But it's remarkable that this is what we think of when we hear ‘superman’.

The word was coined by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, over 50 years before Action Comics #1 hit the stands. For Nietzsche, the superman (or ubermensch) is the man who is ‘beyond good and evil’, who frees himself from artificial, constructed notions of morality and stands above everyone else as a result.