Comics Review: “NYX”

This is the first of a series of posts dealing with Marvel's New York mutant enclave, known variously as "Mutant Town" and "District X." Throughout its lifetime of roughly six years, the neighborhood saw many changes in its meaning and configuration. It first appeared in Grant Morrison and John Paul Leon's New X-Men #127 (August …

“Notices of New Books”: Comics in the New York Times, 1855

While I was reading David Kunzle's Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer, I came across the title of a comics album published in the United States that I had never seen before, The Wonderful and Amusing Doings by Sea and Land of Oscar Shanghai. According to Kunzle, the story "obviously derives from [Töpffer's album …

Introducing: Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck

I have returned over the last few posts to Rodolphe Töpffer, anticipating him in the review of David Kunzle's The Early Comic Strip, introducing him with Kunzle's The Nineteenth Century, and delving a little deeper with Kunzle's Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer. As these reviews suggest, one of the founding assumptions in much …