What’s the Difference? Terminology
Welcome back to the eighth installment of me talking about the age of sail. In this column I’ll be talking about some of the terms used to describe pirates and their close kin, as well as what each means.
Topic: Film Studies
Etiquette & Chain of Command: Dos and Don’ts
Welcome to the seventh installment of Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, a series looking at the fantasy and the reality of being a sailor in the modern age. Today we’ll be covering etiquette and the chain of command aboard a tall ship, as well as various superstitions and commonly asked questions.
Maintenance and Preparation
Welcome to the sixth installment of Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, a series looking at the fantasy and the reality of being a sailor in the modern age. Today we’ll be examining the maintenance and preparation of a tall ship.
A Day in the Life of a Tallship Sailor
In this, the fifth installment of Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, your host Jeromy Foberg discusses the day-to-day life of a sailor aboard a tall ship.
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.
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…
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…
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…
Superheroes in Flux–Watchmen Part 1
Comics, as a genre, are deeply rooted in history and pop culture. In order to understand any part of modern comic books (or graphic novels) one must first understand the history behind them. The two works I will focus on in this essay are Alan Moore’s Watchmen, a story of remarkably normal superheroes, and, to…
Warts and All
The comic book as a storytelling medium is a remarkable and unique creature. Comic book icons have a flexibility and a capacity for redirection. Characters with solid decades-long histories and worldwide popularity, paradoxically, do not achieve it through a rigid retelling of the same stories, but through their endless ability to adapt their meaning. Well-known…