Today at the Journal, two of your trustiest souls return to these pages. The first is Marc Sobel, with a nice long read to start off your week. It's a deep dive into Yukinobu Hoshino's 2001 Nights. This piece has a bibliography, pal. Does your piece have a bibliography?
2001 Nights is the story of humanity’s exploration of the universe. Told in a series of nineteen episodes, each successive “night” represents a milestone in the gradual journey. As the title implies, the series borrows its narrative structure from 1001 Nights, a collection of Islamic folk tales from the 7th Century, and its epic scope, which spans several centuries and thousands of light years, was also inspired by Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix series.
Then we've got RJ Casey. The last time he was around these parts, he was pleased with his reading assignments, this time around? Well, this time around he took a look at the latest comic book launch of a Robert Kirkman intellectual property: it's called Oblivion Song, and RJ wasn't a fan.
I’m never sure if writers like Kirkman create comics like these to appeal to their predominantly white male fan bases, or, even when given a clean slate by Image, this is literally all they can imagine. And which one of those is worse? Every criticism of this comic (and I’m sure a television show is right around the corner) will be met with defenders rallying behind the idea of "escapism." But when brutal tragedies are actually happening and not merely plot points, it shouldn’t be too much to ask writers and artists to take a step back and reflect for one goddamn minute. If your escapism does not reflect those that are oppressed, harassed, and victimized—in short, people who need escape—then something is very, potentially harmfully, wrong.
Elsewhere, you'll find a lot of Stan Lee pieces going up regarding his current living & financial situation, with the Daily Beast being the most extensive and recent. It's a developing situation and an ugly one.
