Artifact: Media

Which of the blistering array of transmedia forms does your tale manifest in? Is it a book, a film, a play? A tv show we’ll marathon for days and days?

  • Horror in Anime and Gaming
  • Building a Better Predator: Werewolves
  • Horror in Music

    Horror in Music

    In today’s installment of Zen and the Art of Screaming, we examine the role of horror in music—from musicians selling their souls to the devil for fame & fortune, to artists whose appearance and sound conjure images of demons and hellfire.

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  • Unpacking the Myths

    Unpacking the Myths

    In this, the fourth installment of Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, your host Jeromy Foberg discusses the many differences between pirates and piracy as they exist in fiction and how they existed.

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  • The Sandman, Part 2

    The Sandman, Part 2

    In this instance, we’ll explore how Gaiman revitalizes the roles of women and trans/queer characters (a segment of the comic book population which has been trampled by sexist expectations in the comic book medium previously). We will also explore how he resuscitates the roles of family identity (an age-old and worn-out theme in the hands of other authors). Familial identity and gender identity are two of the strongest threads of the entire series, and they take on a new and vivid existence through The Sandman texts.

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  • Ballad of the Blue Bomber
  • The Sandman, Part 1

    The Sandman, Part 1

    We owe one of the greatest sea changes in comic book history to the “British Invasion” of the 1980s and ’90s, from the likes of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. Watchmen and The Sandman ushered in a new era of comics as a legitimate storytelling medium, not just a shallow arena for tights-clad muscle men secure in their abilities to the point of cockiness.

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  • J-Rock Invasion
  • Superheroes in Flux–Watchmen Part 2

    Superheroes in Flux–Watchmen Part 2

    Authorship in comics is a tricky business. Superheroes and the trajectory of their identities, more often than not, take on lives of their own. The legendary ones are written by slews of authors and drawn by dozens of different artists. At peak popularity, they go on to live in video games, movies, TV shows, and even the covers of lunchboxes. This is both the modern norm and this is how it has been for decades; it is the art and business of comic books as we know them. But what happens when the author fights this process tooth and nail, and what does that indicate for the meaning of his work? This is exactly the case for Alan Moore over his long career.

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  • Heavy Metal and Horror