One thing that I always found hard to swallow about X-Men was how the government was so hardline anti-mutant. I guess it makes sense if you’re maintaining the whole mutants-as-civil-rights or mutants-as-militant-queers metaphors, but Marvel never seemed to want to go all in with those metaphors, so the question still lingers: Why not draft the mutants, get a bunch of superpowered cops and soldiers of their own?
When we think about “science fiction”, we typically think of two things: cerebral scifi, like the Twilight Zone, which uses speculative settings and concepts to delve deeper into the human condition; and pulp scifi, like Star Trek, which uses speculative settings and concepts as an excuse to blow things up. Sometimes a writer will try to achieve both, occasionally one thinks it’s the other, and rarely a work will effectively unite the two aspects of the genre, but overall, this dichotomy of “thinky” scifi and “explodey” scifi tends to remain unquestioned. What would – what could – science fiction that didn’t fit into either category even look like?
Beauty, as they say, is only skin deep. As I’ve said in other reviews, I don’t find art quality a strong predictor of how much I’m going to enjoy a comic, and that’s because I’m here for the stories. Yes, hideous art can ruin an otherwise enjoyable story if it interferes with the telling, and yes, a talented artist can use their pictures to tell a better story than their words alone could, but no art, no matter how gorgeous, can elevate a worthless story into readability.
Last week I criticized Broodhollow for ignoring the realities of American racism in the 1930s. This week I’m going to praise Rock and Riot for ignoring the realities of American racism in the 1950s. What gives??
I’ve never been a fan of Kris Straub’s work, to be totally honest. I always found his jokes not so funny, his characters, not so interesting, his plots, not so original. As a cartoonist, he seemed kind of mediocre. Perhaps my opinion was colored by the fact that my first exposure to him was the dreadful, clown-protagonisted Checkerboard Nightmare, back when it was still updating. But those were dark times, and all webcomics were bad back then, so it hardly seems fair to hold that against him. Even if he does strike me as an insufferable nerd-bro.