Comic Book Herald

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Genderfluid Characters in Marvel Comics: Xavin, Loki, Sprite & the Eternals

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Genderfluidity in Marvel Comics is a complicated subject. Historically, it constitutes most of, if not all, non-binary representation in Marvel’s comics. Yet all of Marvel’s genderfluid characters seem to have similar characteristics that have become clichés on the way genderfluidity is portrayed in superhero fiction. These characteristics are :

  • Shape-shifting, or at the very least a physical and/or biological change to express the change in gender
  • Some kind of story reason to explain why their gender changed
  • Portrayals where characters have one “main” gender, and another gender they only take on rarer, more specific occasions (whereas real-life genderfluid people often oscillate between more than the binary male/female genders)

Some characters like Mystique or Jacob Gavin have also been described as genderfluid by fans, and while I do not want to invalidate the way these characters have been interpreted by fans, their actual portrayal in-universe doesn’t match the definition of genderfluidity. Despite the changes their bodies go through, they seem to identify to one specific gender (Mystique only taking on other gender identities as a disguise, and Jacob Gavin actively seeking to go back to their initial body and the gender they were assigned at birth).

Check out Part 1 of Trans Representation in Marvel here: https://www.comicbookherald.com/a-guide-to-trans-representation-in-marvel-comics/

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The Best Carnage Comics of All Time!

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Since his brooding debut in writer David Michelinie and artist Erik Larsen’s The Amazing Spider-Man #344 (1991), serial killer Cletus Kasady has become a familiar, fan-favorite fixture in Peter Parker’s rogues’ gallery as the most common host of the bloodred Carnage Symbiote.

Unlike the more amenable Spider-Frenemy Venom, Carnage has been defined by his unwavering tenacity, his murderous intent, and his ruthlessness. He doesn’t just hate Spider-Man, he hates everyone and everything. Sometimes hilarious but always hyper-violent, he’s a force of nature unlike many others in the Marvel universe, and his long and sometimes complicated history reflects it in both its lowest moments and its surprisingly dense and tense highs. Even Woody Harrelson has taken note.

That’s right, Cletus Cortland Kasady: serial killer… and serial storyteller! It’s more likely than you might think in our list of the best Carnage comics below! [Read more…] about The Best Carnage Comics of All Time!

Best 10 Thor Comics Of All Time!

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Mighty Thor Vol 2 #700, cover by Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson, 2017The least earthbound of Earth’s Mightiest, the God of Thunder has for most of his Marvel comics history been very difficult to write. After all, how do you make an ageless god interesting? Give him a hammer and a big burly target? That’s proven at least an acceptable baseline for fans across the decades. But if I really wanted to convince a modern reader on the fence to love Thor, I’d have to look to those stories where the hammer blows and lightning strikes are balanced by something like character development. [Read more…] about Best 10 Thor Comics Of All Time!

10 Best Captain America Comics of All Time!

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[Captain America vol.8 #2 by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan, Sunny Gho, Joe Caramagna]
Captain America is as much a legacy and an ideal as an individual. Having such a split identity inherently creates problem—the stuff of dramatic tension; Cap’s not wholly unlike Spider-Man in that way. Add to that, however, the inextricably political and societal dimensions of Cap as a national treasure. Writers on the title have, since 1972 at least, dealt directly with America’s social and political ills, some more successfully than others, but none had ever explicitly addressed the deep-rootedness of our society’s systemic flaws until Mark Waid’s brief 1998/99 run. Yet it would take over another decade before they’d really be looked at again but without the naivete mainstream society could still afford in the 1990s.

Unlike the take-it-for-granted introduction of Cap to moviegoing audiences in 2011, the comics creators working on the monthly book over the decades knew that the concept of Captain America had increasingly become a hard sell. A superhero wearing a national flag screams nationalism, and yet Cap’s enemies—including his worst pretenders—are nationalists and ethno-fascists. He fights for “the American Dream,” and yet the last great run to seriously tout that idea without explicitly critiquing its foundations was Mark Waid’s in the late ’90s (although he does criticize how inaccessible it was becoming, leaving out a more honest look at American history until his superb Man Out of Time mini over a decade later).

In the 21st century, both concepts must struggle mightily for relevance. [Read more…] about 10 Best Captain America Comics of All Time!

The Best Darth Vader Comics!

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The Star Wars comic book universe has spanned many decades (actually debuting right before A New Hope hit the theaters in 1977). The books have gone from canon to extended universe and back again, switched publishers multiple times, and often been mostly forgotten by fans of the films. Still, there are a heck of a lot of Star Wars comics that are easily on par with the films, and, with the exception of a few times during which the franchise lost its direction, there have always been great Star Wars comics.

Some Star Wars heroes and villains specifically benefit from their comic book counterparts receiving greater focus than the movies could allow, and one of those characters is Darth Vader. Despite his heavy focus in the films and The Clone Wars TV series, there are always going to be questions left unanswered when it comes to our tempestuous Anakin Skywalker. The comics delve further into his background, but perhaps more importantly, there are a whole lot of issues where he is fully the terrifying force of destruction we saw in the films. In the fleshing-out of his story, Vader only becomes more villainous. [Read more…] about The Best Darth Vader Comics!