When I was a very young kid growing up in the United Kingdom, my parents owned a convenience store. Every week, comics would arrive on our doorstep and on those mornings, I would put on my bathrobe and slippers and separate the comics from the newspapers. It was my supposed …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 04/28/2021
As I continue to teach online, the paradigm of the student weighs most pressingly on my mind. You see, most kids don’t realize that the word ‘student’ is not just a descriptor, but a title. It’s a title that historically used to hold great weight in society. When individuals identified …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 04/21/2021
Did a significant historical event occur when you could say: you were there? Hell, the last year has been one elongated example of that, I suppose. But there are moments that you know matter. The dominant part of the word ‘history’ is ‘story’ and there are so many stories in …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 04/14/2021
Every once in a while, it’s reassuring to know that what’s important to you sometimes shows up in the media you enjoy reading. Simply put: the comics for the list this week definitely resonate with me for the things that I value in my life. Whether that’s family, principle, or …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 03/31/2021
If you’ve ever gone through part of your day and wondered what’s missing today, then you’re not alone. I think we’ve all experienced that sort of absence at some point in our lives. Absences open the door for all sorts of stories: lost things to find, creating friendships or to …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 03/24/2021
Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, circumstances can make them hidden and stealthy or blatantly obvious and overpowering. They are twisted in a variety of ways. Sometimes they have been affected that way by time or some are that way by design. The one thing they all have in …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 03/03/2021
I have come to realize in my years of existence on this planet that bravery is not a consistent state of being, but rather a state of mind that one can achieve when the moment is upon us. When beset upon by all sides, when your back is against the …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 02/03/2021
More than ever, we look to the items of comfort that tide us through the challenging times. Though we can see the end of these days, I can admit to finally feeling the strain of the last ten or eleven months. Last year, after March, I completely taught from home. …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 01/20/2021
I find that looking fondly back at the past helps me to look forward to the hopes of the future. That’s the province of comics in my opinion. Comics are the rightful successor to the pulp literature of yesteryear. These were stories that captivated the imagination but were set in …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Comic Review – 12/02/2020
I’m hardly what you might call a cat lover. I prefer the stable and honest predictability of a dog’s companionship over the fickleness of a feline personality. If cats could talk, their tone would be condescending; their manner would involve forced tolerance and their attitude would be a demanding one. …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 11/25/2020
Back in March, the common perspective around us began to take on an extremity of panicked proportions. In fact, there were post-apocalyptic jokes being thrown around social media that this virus was going to herald the beginning of the end of the world as we knew it. That accounted for …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 09/30/2020
You ever have one of those weeks when it’s Wednesday and the rest of it just seems foreboding? That’s where I am this week. Maybe it’s the rising COVID numbers; maybe it’s the bleakness of the rest of the year, but at the same time, I have to say, reality …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 06/24/2020
You can’t plan everything in life, you know? I mean, you can set favourable conditions, work things towards your advantage, but life just has a way of surprising you. Sometimes for the worse, to be sure, and I think we’re all experiencing some of that now, but also, life just …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 01/15/2020
I think I love Undiscovered Country for the same reason why I haven’t gotten rid of cable TV. Please don’t think my flippancy indicates any sort of disrespect to creators, Scott Snyder, Charles Soule, or to the talents of Giuseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini, Matt Wilson and Crank, so let me …
Read More »Captain Kirk’s Weekly Comic Review – 12/26/2019
I was teaching about what resonates in communicating a message to an audience to my students this week and one of the points they glommed onto was emotion. At this time of year, emotions run high. Eliciting an emotional response from a viewer, reader – whatever the medium, is the …
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