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Best Star Wars Comics To Read Before Episode 9

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We’re still a few months away from the release of Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker and while official sneak-peek details have been thus far relatively sparse, it goes without saying that speculation throughout fandom is at an all-time high. 

As the concluding chapter to one of pop culture’s watershed sagas, so much is riding on how this movie unfolds. Sure, there’s been the fist-pumping teaser trailer and action figure reveals such as the mysteriously red-uniformed Sith Troopers, but really it’s still mostly wide-open curiosity as to where these breadcrumbs go. As such, here’s some suggestions from Marvel’s catalog of canonical Star Wars titles to serve as some “pre-game” fan fuel, hopefully informing the flavor and enriching the background of the upcoming film… [Read more…] about Best Star Wars Comics To Read Before Episode 9

The Best Joker Stories Of All Time!

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The Joker is the perfect comic villain, with high scores across every conceivable grade. He’s instantly recognizable. He’s the dark reflection of Batman’s psychotic, violent tendencies. Joker’s got range, allowing him to be funny and charming while terrifying others.

Best of all, he never loses track of being terrifying. No one does bad better than him, and the few times he tries to be good? He’s worse.

Here, then, are some of the Joker’s best moments.

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Ahead of Their Time: 10 Revolutionary Comics That Inspired the Medium!

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Human beings tend to notice things late. Comic book superheroes were a thing for two full years before Action Comics #1 got people’s attention. There were heroes wearing Bat, Spider, and Strong Man outfits long before Bruce, Peter, and Clark. And it’s not just comics; Fleet Walker was the first to break baseball’s color barrier; fish and chips are Portuguese; even the pyramids are Brazilian.

The cause of this is partly because of marketing (honestly, the branding campaign around the pyramids has been stellar). But partly it’s because human beings are spectacular at noticing trends, not origins. So today, we’re going to give you a look at 10 of the comic books that came before the beginning and set the ball rolling. [Read more…] about Ahead of Their Time: 10 Revolutionary Comics That Inspired the Medium!

Jonathan Hickman Creator Profile – The Essential Reading List

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The best way to come into Jonathan Hickman’s writing is to understand what he was before. Before the dizzying page count and before the awards those pages earned him.

Before the beginning, Jonathan Hickman was a graphic designer. An exacting profession that makes order and beauty out of chaos by focusing on the slightest fraction of an inch. And an art form obsessed with ripping away what’s unnecessary to reach a purer, more memorable state.

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Katsuhiro Otomo — Building a Destroyed Future

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In March of 1933, poet Paul Valéry came to the defense of his own work by saying “Aux yeux de ces amateurs d’inquiétude et de perfection, un ouvrage n’est jamais achevé — mot qui pour eux n’a aucun sens — mais abandonné.”

Meaning “In the eyes of those who anxiously seek perfection, a work is never truly completed—a word that for them has no sense—but abandoned.”  The phrase was repeated only months later by a different French publication who distilled it down to only the parts in bold. [Read more…] about Katsuhiro Otomo — Building a Destroyed Future