Pulp & Pages

Slashers 101 is Stacie Ponder’s zine-sized cartoon-format exploration of her favorite horror subgenre. If you’ve seen one, you’ve kind of seen ‘em all. Stacie Ponder actually has seen ‘em all.

There is a lot going on in the spy thriler Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, so take notes.

This is the definitive work of modern vampire fiction, and the best Halloween fiction appropriate for any time of the year. Have you read it or skipped it?

Horror comics share one important thing with horror movies: Most of them don’t really scare you. The ones that leave a mark mess with your head. They follow you to bed after the story’s done and make it hard to drift off to sleep. Here are 13 that do just that.

Pretty much everything that you know about Frankenstein is wrong.

Here are ten recent comic releases, some hyped, some not, all interesting in some way, even if they’re interestingly terrible. Hell, one’s got a haunted vagina.

Through dark imagery, ingenious use of flashbacks, and a razor-sharp wit, Vonnegut created a timeless commentary on war and human bloodlust that gets the point across without ever being preachy. Did you skip Slaughterhouse Five?

As before, we’ll be looking at how newcomer-friendly a comic is, how well it stands on its own and if it’s any damn good.

Why would we suggest that a guy should read a book about lovers? Perhaps because it was banned for years, its publishers taken to court, and sold out the first day the ban was lifted.

If you’ve ever thought about getting into comics and haven’t known where to start, we shoot straight on title after title in this series. Some of these are good, and some are damn good.

As before, we weigh whether the comic is newcomer-friendly, whether it stands on its own and doesn’t require buying another title to get more of the story, and whether it’s any damn good.

If you’ve been wanting to follow the adventures of Superman or Batman or Swamp Thing but you’ve been holding back because you feel like you’d have to wade through thousands of comics stories even to understand what’s happening … now’s a good time to start.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t just a book for chicks. The social commentary may be outdated, but the satire is so implicit that the narrative remains solid and humorous.

We finally conclude the saga of Spider Jerusalem and his Filthy Assistants.

If you like the movie, then you must check out the book. Its ability to entertain with economy, its original, fully-realized characters, and its open willingness to let silence and implication do the dramatic heavy lifting…