There’s the strapping, Teutonic Kevin Plunder, also known as Ka-Zar, Lord of Marvel’s Savage Land! In the mid 1960s, the company’s founding brethren, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, salvaged his exclamatory name from a pulp character who was originally Timely Publications’ answer to Tarzan. Lee and Kirby made Ka-Zar (the son of a British anthropologist, [...]

In 1975, a group of mutants whose comic had been long-canceled found fresh success with Giant Size X-Men. Writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum (during what comic historians call the Bronze Age) dialed back the camp and infused the concept of weird, outsider heroes with more realism. This meant that international characters like the [...]

Within the comics industry, creating characters that are alternate riffs on the icons (like Superman and Batman) has become a craft of its own. I examined this phenomenon in another post, but wish to revisit it because some riffs are so smashingly successful that it’s hard to envision the comics landscape without them. Astro City, [...]

Superheroes and magic are two of fiction’s most persnickety elements. Precise working rules for each need to be established clearly, or any hunt for genuine drama will turn up snipes. For much of the 2000s, Marvel Comics worked hard to ground their characters in realism and bring them to wider audiences (primarily moviegoers). While the [...]