Another 50 glass-shattering entrances

Tomorrow is Gotham Calling’s sixth anniversary! It’s also been almost a year since I broadened the blog’s focus beyond Batman comics, so it makes sense to look back at how things have evolved since then…

It turned out to be a strange year, especially this final stretch. Because of the pandemic, I decided to start posting twice a week, but I’m not sure how long this is going to last. I also wrote more about non-comic book novels (in addition to a couple of posts about cinema), which is something I quite enjoy doing every once in a while, even if this will always remain a blog primarily about appreciation and recommendation of genre comics.

As promised, there are a bunch of new sections. WRITERS OF SUPERMAN COMICS covered the work of Steve Gerber and Scott McCloud with the Man of Steel (posts on Mark Millar and Rick Veitch are on the way!). FANTASTIC ADVENTURES delved into horror short stories, trashy sci-fi war comics, two-fisted fantasy, science fiction prose, and Alan Moore’s takes on other people’s franchises. For HARDBOILED CRIME, I wrote about The Spirit and The Shadow as well as about a few detective novels and noirish comic book anthologies. SPYCRAFT & WARFARE also grew quite a bit, with posts not only on comics (starring Nick Fury and the Unknown Soldier) but also on spy literature and WWII films. In SUPER POWERS, besides mapping the subgenre of superhero horror movies, I spotlighted a couple of my favorite series from recent years: Astro City and Imperium. I’m into all of this different stuff, but I assume most readers have more specific preferences, so feel free to navigate the list of categories on the right bar as you please. I tend to alternate reading and writing habits quite a lot, so I’m sure your favorite sections will keep getting updated on a more or less regular basis.

When I feel more interested in form than content, I often find myself wondering about the specific potential of the comic book medium and how it has beeen articulated with other media. Lately, I’ve been particularly fascinated with covers’ powerful ability to trigger our imagination, so GLIMPSES INTO AWESOMENESS has largely given way to AWESOME COVERS, which specifically highlights cover artwork. Likewise, ART OF HORROR COMICS has mostly focused on covers so far, but there will be more variety next year (probably something on Jack Kirby’s The Demon). As for WEBS OF FICTION, since this section ceased to be exclusively about Batman-themed intertextuality, I did a bunch of posts on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The War of the Worlds (having recently binged the Zatoichi film series, I might focus on those movies soon).

Meanwhile, I continued to expand the initial Batman-related sections. I wrote about Chuck Dixon for WRITERS OF BATMAN COMICS’ (either Ty Templeton or Ed Brubaker are bound to be next), recommended a few trades and a 1990s’ reading order in BATMAN COMICS FOR BEGINNERS, discussed the franchise’s plural approach to gun control in POLITICS OF BATMAN COMICS, and spotlighted a handful of minor villains in GOTHAM CITIZENS (still no Spoiler or Condiment King write-ups, though…). ART OF BATMAN COMICS got some pieces on Graham Nolan and on logo pages, yet I’ve also branched out this section into COVERS OF BATMAN COMICS and GOTHAM INTERLUDES.

Speaking of Batman art, I tend to use these anniversaries to celebrate visual tropes of Batman comics, like the Dark Knight’s propensity for loud kicks in the head and for crashing through glass in order to surprise his opponents. Here are another fifty glorious examples of the latter: