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Amazon's Kindle Singles has just published a long, fascinating essay about the cultural meaning of Comic-Con by Douglas Wolk, author of the Eisner-winning book Reading Comics. If you're interested in a sympathetic but critical analysis of the Con that rules the world of genre writing, filmmaking, TV and art, this essay is a must-read. It's only $0.99 from Amazon, and 70% of proceeds go right to Wolk, so you're supporting a good writer with your purchase! More »
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Want to understand the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant but don't have the time to slog through them? In this video, comic book critic Douglas Wolk explains the concepts in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment using comics art. More »
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The technological development that's going to change the way we read forever isn't ebooks — it's footnotes. For the past few months, if you really wanted to understand DC Comics' big crossover series Final Crisis, you basically had to read each issue alongside Eisner-winning critic Douglas Wolk's blog "Final Annotations." Each time a new issue in the series comes out, Wolk goes through page-by-page, carefully documenting what you need to know. Final Crisis contains such an embarrassment of obscure DC heroes and fannish references that it actually requires a highly-trained reader to give you adequate back story. This practice of exhaustive online footnoting is one of the less-talked about ways that the internet is profoundly changing the way we read books — and not just comic books. More »
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With self-styled epic Final Crisis threatening to put big name characters like Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman through hell this summer while spending more time on obscure characters like Libra and the Human Flame or bringing fallen heroes back from the dead, you might worry that you'll need a crash course in DC Comics history to tell your Barry Allens from your Wally Wests. Luckily, Douglas Wolk plans to make your heroic dystopias much more comfortable with his Final Crisis Annotations. More »
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The biggest cheers at Wondercon weren't for killer robots, but for allegories about government conspiracies, endless wars and terrorism. Much of the weekend felt like a poli-sci seminar, except with nuclear holocausts and mutated alien bugs instead of textbooks. If you needed proof that the shadow of 9/11 keeps falling over our formerly escapist narratives, then you only needed to sit in on any one of the con's jam-packed panels. More »
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Over the weekend at WonderCon, author Douglas Wolk (Reading Comics) gave a talk about the not-so-secret allegorical tales that lurk beneath the BAM! POW! of your typical superhero comic book. I caught Wolk on the con floor and asked him to explain the political subtext of Greg Pak's recent World War Hulk series. In this video, he explains how it's all about blowback from 9/11, and why Iron Man represents the military industrial complex. More »
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What are the best songs about comic books, other than Black Sabbath's "Iron Man"? I asked Douglas Wolk on IM the other day because he's the only person I know who is obsessed with comic books and music simultaneously. (He's the author of the awesome Reading Comics and Live At the Apollo about James Brown.) The best find was a rare single from 1969 called "Nobody Loves the Hulk!" Ten more after the jump. More »
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