The short version: Jimmie Robinson's Five Weapons is a textbook example of how to create a first issue that leaves readers wanting more as soon as possible. Robinson introduces the main character, uses his unfamiliarity with the setting as an excuse to drop a lot of information on us, gives us brief and evocative descriptions of the cast, seeds a few mysteries, delivers a good amount of action, ...

It's weird being black sometimes. People have expectations that they just assume are true, you know? People at parties want to discuss race relations and Obama all the time for some reason, your non-black friends will grade your blackness, people want to touch your hair, and worse. There are all these little things that don't mean much on their own, but taken together, it paints a pretty decent ...

You should judge books by their covers. That's what they're there for, right? Covers are designed to catch your eye, interest you in the contents of a book, and to set the tone for a book. Kids' comics tend to have bright covers with a lot of simple action. Covers for grown-ups may be abstract or concrete, violent or sexy, and those descriptors set the stage for what's inside the book's ...

I've been black since the day I was born, reading comics since before I could properly read, writing about comics since 2005, writing about the intersection of race and comics since 2006, and purposefully writing about the intersection of race and comics since 2007. I spent February 2008 through February 2011 doing a series of daily, and then frequent, posts on black history in comics, ...

Some people deserve to die. They're so vile or anti-life that leaving them alive would only result in misery for everyone they meet. At the same time, is it right to kill them? In Red Team, Garth Ennis and Craig Cermak are exploring this conundrum. The titular Red Team are a small squad of elite police in New York City, and one day they decide to murder a criminal they can't collar the normal ...

Uncle Ruckus -- no relation -- is one of the funniest parts of Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks cartoon. He's the ultimate black white supremacist, as eager to appease every caucasian he ever met as he is to denigrate any non-white who steps within an eighty-eight mile radius of him. He's thrown a brick at Martin Luther King Jr., tried to exorcise a black ghost with tactics straight out of 1955, ...

I really dig behind-the-scenes stuff and process books for comics and cartoons. It's not that I want to learn how to make my own so much as I enjoy seeing how things are put together. It can lead to a deeper appreciation of the work in question, which is always cool. Sometimes you like something more after you get to see how it's put together. And in the worst case scenario, checking out an art ...

Let me be the first to apologize to you, on behalf of the entire comics press. We screwed up. We were too focused on the wrong events in 2012. We spent tens of thousands of words on Avengers vs X-Men, Before Watchmen, Night of the Owls, and we missed the fact that there was a bigger, better, and extremely satisfying crossover sitting right under our noses. Not all of us -- a few of our ranks ...

Moto Hagio's Heart of Thomas, recently translated and released by Fantagraphics, is my first proper introduction to the shounen-ai, or "boy's love," genre of manga. I have friends who are into yaoi and boy's love, and they have been remarkably generous with their time, knowledge, and gag gifts of yaoi versions of comics I like, but it isn't quite my thing. I generally like comics that are all ...

Pulling apart a good comic is like trying to figure out the secret ingredients in a great dish. You have to go on taste and feel alone. The dish's sharp bite could be basil or pepper, and the juicy taste could be thanks to primo meat or a long-term brine. You'll never know for sure, but trying to figure it out? That's a lot of fun. I read Hellboy In Hell -- impeccably drawn by Mike Mignola, ...