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Category: Comics

Recontextualized: Set and Setting

Posted on , by mindflowers

Bill Willingham’s Fables is a whimsical comic series about fairytale characters, set in grimy New York City. Ichabod Crane is Mayor, Beauty and the Beast have marital issues, and the Big Bad Wolf is reformed and the Sheriff. There is a hidden farm in upstate New York for Fables characters unable to blend into “normal” society. The now defunct Telltale Tales game company produced an excellent game based on the series called The Wolf Among Us. It is available on iOS and most other platforms. There are impressive female protagonists. You can read many of the comics online here.

Super: Madman, the comic

Posted on , by mindflowers

Mike Aldred’s Madman supported my sanity during my high school years and still feels fresh these days. I’ll let an Amazon review by user Golly Great describe it better than I can:

“Mike Allred’s series Madman is a bizarre pop culture cocktail. Madman pulls influence from superhero comics, B-grade science fiction films from the 50’s and 60’s and metaphysical philosophy. What you’ll find is something delightfully off-the-wall. The main character is Frank Einstein, a sort of modern Frankenstein’s monster with few memories of his previous life. His state as a reanimated human makes him a bit insecure, so he wears the costume of his favorite childhood hero, and pursues the meaning of his existence in this form. In his adventures, he runs across mad scientists, gangsters, mutating clones, government agents, aliens and cosmic beings.”

I recommend starting with Volume 2 as the first one is a bit gory and disjointed.