0. Looking Back in order to Move Forward One of the more interesting developments in superhero comics has been the growing popularity of comics that take familiar characters and transplant them into unfamiliar historical contexts. …
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Author: Jonathan McCalmont
Jonathan McCalmont is a critic whose work has been published at Strange Horizons, The SF Site, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Vector and The Escapist. He maintains a film and literary blog entitled Ruthless Culture and he writes a monthly gaming column at Futurismic entitled Blasphemous Geometries.
Chew… Stripp’d
Food is the archetypal First World problem. While some parts of the world starve and other parts are turned inside out by our demand for low-cost and low-fuss supplies of exotic and increasingly refined foodstuffs, …
Continue readingThe Chimpanzee Complex… Stripp’d
There is consolation in conspiracy. Whenever something terrible happens, humans look for answers and they don’t stop looking even when they have found them: It wasn’t Oswald who killed Kennedy, it was the mob or …
Continue readingIkigami: The Ultimate Limit… Stripp’d
Some would say that beautiful lives bloom only in the shadow cast by death. But while this may very well be true, how could we ever know for sure? Statements like this one and Plato’s …
Continue readingPhonogram… Stripp’d
One could argue that the enduring popularity of genre motifs is a direct result of the death of God. Prior to the Enlightenment, the people of the ancient and medieval worlds knew their place. They …
Continue readingKaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story… Stripp’d
If you wander around a second hand book shop and start leafing through old history textbooks you will rapidly notice that history used to be nothing but stories about men with beards and top hats. …
Continue readingLudwig II… Stripp’d
0. The Challenge of Escapism Like Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), we live our lives obsessed by thoughts of escape. Escape from our jobs, escape from our relationships, escape from our friends and …
Continue readingOoku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 6
Okay, so here’s the thing… I started in on the sixth volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers without bothering to re-read either the previous volumes in the series or my thoughts on those five books. …
Continue readingUniversal War One… Stripp’d
The Christian conception of redemption is an oddly commercial one. Grounded in Old Testament talk of ransoming the slaves, redemption is presented as a transaction through which Christians pay off their debt to God and …
Continue readingOoku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 5
At the end of volume one of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers, the Shogun Yoshimune asks an elderly monk to explain to her “the logic of the present custom” of using male honorifics and …
Continue readingOoku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 4
With the opening volumes of Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Fumi Yoshinaga attempts to answer the question of why it is that a culture’s values do not automatically keep step with its demographics. For example, why …
Continue readingOoku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 3
Volume One of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers posed a question of both its world and ours. That question was why there is such a thing as gender inequality when gender inequality is so …
Continue readingOoku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 2
The First Volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers ends with the newly installed Shogun asking a question of an elderly monk. This question, though apparently simple, cuts straight to the heart of her kingdom, her …
Continue readingOoku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 1 (2009)
0. A Statement of Subject and Method Fumi Yoshinaga’s Eisner Award-nominated and James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning series Ooku: The Inner Chambers is a multi-volume manga series set in an alternative version of Medieval Edo Period …
Continue readingSherlock’s Little Mistakes 3: The Great Game
0. Terms of Engagement Welcome, Brothers and Sisters, to the third weekly meeting of the Church of The Hermeneutic Christ. Blessed be the name of Sherlock and peace be upon his prophets Nero Wolfe, Jane …
Continue readingSherlock’s Little Mistakes 2: The Blind Banker
0. Terms of Engagement ydoan yunnuhstan ydoan o yunnuhstand dem yguduh ged yunnuhstan dem doidee yguduh ged riduh ydoan o nudn LISN bud LISN dem gud am lidl yelluh bas tuds weer goin duhSIVILEYEzum So …
Continue readingSherlock’s Little Mistakes 1 : A Study in Pink
0. Terms of Engagement Mystery fiction is a profoundly consolatory genre. Whether it is set in a Loamshire country house, a snow-bound train or the streets of Victorian London, the mystery novel is all about …
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