Here is a roundup of my contributions to PopMatters so far this year:
New project: The Placing Culture podcast
I’ve started a podcast, “Placing culture,” which focuses on cultural geography, and particularly on conversations with individuals doing work at the intersections of geography, the arts, sciences, and humanities. You can follow the podcast via tumblr, Twitter and SoundCloud. The first episode, with Stephen Daniels and Lucy Veale of the University of Nottingham School of Geography, is embedded below.
PopMatters round-up for the end of 2014
Here are my recent publications on PopMatters since my last update:
In Worlds in Panels:
- From October, a critical examination of Warren Ellis’ and Jason Howard’s Trees (Image).
- From November, a reflection on GeekGirlCon 2014.
- And from this month, a look at how digital comics has affected my relationship to print.
In October, I also had a feature on narrative themes in Buffy, Angel and Grimm.
August “Worlds in Panels”: comiXology’s “My Backups” and DRM
In my most recent column for PopMatters, I look at what downloads of comics from your comiXology library means for the future of DRM:
When I buy a print copy of a comic, there are a number of things I can do with that copy beyond simply reading it myself. I can, as noted, loan it to someone else. I can give it away or even sell it. I may not have to buy the comic in the first place; in many cases I could check the book out from the library to do my reading. With print there’s a clear distinction between owning a copy of a work and owning the work itself. I can do what I want with an individual copy that I come to possess by legal means, but what I can’t do is start making copies of my own for sale or to give away; that right adheres to the owner of the underlying work.
Latest “Worlds in Panels”: comics and speculative fiction
At the end of last month, my newest column posted at PopMatters. I take a critical look at what comics mean for building fictional worlds. I focus on three series, Shutter, Saga and The Private Eye:
As in Shutter the narrative context in these books is being built out and filled in through the art more than through dialogue and exposition. The masks in The Private Eye aren’t just cool and fun to look at; they are material to the story, signifying Vaughan and Martin’s speculation on the value of privacy for the future. Difference is at the core of the story in Saga. Every new way of visually distinguishing characters devised by Vaughan and Staples is a reminder of this theme.
A Weird Fish 