Essays and articles

It’s Generic! So Why Did Marvel Publish This Comic?

First published in Shelfdust | June 2025

It’s 1984. Alan Moore has just taken over writing duties on DC Comics’ Swamp Thing, beginning one of the most lauded runs in comic book history. Marvel publishes the iconic, fan-favourite ‘The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man’ in The Amazing Spider-Man #248. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles appear for the first time – and the rest is pop-culture legend. 

But not everything is so memorable. A friendly comic-shop clerk once told me that at least thirty percent of any ongoing superhero comic book is filler: just there to keep the wheels spinning on the brutal monthly publishing schedule. They’re Bizarro World’s ‘event comics’; the polar opposite of “nothing will ever be the same!” They are, in a word, generic.

Read the full essay at Shelfdust.

Shade the Changing Man #58: An Irrational Self-Interest

First published in Shelfdust | June 2024

Sometimes I forget that, for the longest time, comics were disposable. Miss an issue? You might never find it again. Even Marvel and DC’s collected editions of ongoing titles were sporadic at best, so you might face gaps in your collection. I remember having to guess at plot permutations, my knowledge skipping like a stone…

These days, I wouldn’t even hazard a guess at how many collected editions of Sandman there have been in softcovers, hardcovers, and fancy slipcases. And yet its Vertigo cousin, Shade the Changing Man, has never been collected in full. I couldn’t reach for a paperback to write this; I had to extract a longbox from under my bed and dig out issue #58. New collected editions have only just begun to find publication now in 2024, thirty-four years after it was first published. It’s always been the red-headed stepchild of Vertigo’s flagship titles – but why?

Read the full essay at Shelfdust.