Charles Gaines is conflicted. 

Can a socially responsible citizen love the characters of Marvel but hate the company of Marvel?

More importantly -- should he see the new Ironman movie or not?

This month I got a chance to interview Jose Cabrera, the creator of the weekly webcomic Crying Macho Man which has a print collection of its first year out called Prime Cut.  Cabrera's work uses caricature, parody and gross-out humor, often all at once and has been attracting notice over the last year. Cartoonist Keith Knight wrote, “Jose Cabrera's Crying Macho Man touches me in ways I cannot explain. Sharp, well drawn, and funny. It deserves your attention." 

In this review, El Santo takes a look at Sarah Ellerton's The Phoenix Requiem, a beautifully illustrated tale set in 19th Century England about a mysterious stranger who stumbles into an idyllic village.

In this month's Panels & Pictures, Derik A Badman makes an illustrated list of the various ways text is used in comics: from speech and thought to sound effects and labels.

Last month, we began delving into my third of Four Criteria which I propose help to define comics, Closure and Synthesis.  We looked at what has been a widely (though not universally) accepted concept of closure, best defined by Scott McCloud as “the phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole.”  This time around we’re going to be further exploring the other half of the criteria, synthesis.

Xaviar Xerexes focuses in on Dark Red, a fantasy webcomic by Lynn French and Joanna McKenzie.  Dark Red features some nicely rendered photo-based art work and an epic tale of war between demons and angels and the people in between.  With a a pretty small archive and the promise of a more action-packed storyline on tap, it's not a bad time to check out this webcomic.

This post will get rewritten (for now I'm just too tired!) but for now I just want to point out that the center of the new site design will display our longer articles: features, columns, reviews and interviews.  Daily news and blogging will now appear on the right column (with tabs to choose between "featured" which displays a combination of staff posts and selected user talk posts and "talk posts" which displays the five most recent user posts).

Michael Payne examines new examples of the "new cute" in comics: Dreamleak by Greg Fraser, Fuzzy Things by Jonathan Sario, and Ghost Farm by Jessica McLeod.  The "new cute" is using the tropes of "cute" to tell stories that are richer, deeper, and more heartfelt than anyone would've thought fluffy bunnies, towheaded kids, and smiling asparagus could support.

Chris Harding was kind enough to do the February cover art for ComixTalk and it gave me a great excuse to hit him up for an interview.  Harding is the creator of the new webcomic We The Robots which offers a cynical, bemused take on work and family.

Last month, Derik Badman posited his thoughts on defining comics and essayist (and ComixTalk contributor) Neil Cohn wrote a response to it.  In this month's Panels & Pixels, Badman examines Cohn's response and follows a few articles to expand on definitions and methods for identifying works as "comics."