Kristy Valenti considers some of the many ways in which San Diego takes you back to your teenage years.

Kristy Valenti compares The War at Ellsmere to a pair of prose novels dealing with young women in prep schools, and the alienation they can face.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at competition between women in Archie Comics and in Suzue Miuchi's Glass Mask.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at a pair of recent works by Roger Langridge.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at two similarly-themed works.

Kristy Valenti reviews a trio of minicomics acquired at the Stumptown Comics Fest.

Kristy Valenti reviews a Free Comic Book Day offering from a trio of small presses.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at a publication of the 1978 Delaware Valley Comicart Consortium.

Kristy Valenti has some Elizabethan inspiration this week.

Concluding her trio of Northwest con reports, Kristy Valenti gives her take on the recent Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon.

Kristy Valenti continues her coverage of the best cons in the Northwest as she reports on Seattle's recent anime festival.

There are a lot of conventions in the Pacific Northwest in the spring, and Kristy Valenti is covering some of the best. First up, Seattle's premiere general-interest comics event.

Done with her series on 80's movie adaptations, Kristy Valenti turns her attention to a collection of Ronald Searle cartoons from the 1940's and 50's.

Kristy Valenti continues her examination of comics and manga adapting 1980's films, looking at the first two volumes of Tokyopop's current series based on 1986's Labyrinth.

Kristy Valenti continues her series on 1980s films adapted to comic books.

Kristy Valenti reviews Tokyopop's 2008 OEL manga based on the 1984 film.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at Krazy Kat creator George Herriman's illustrations for Don Marquis' "archy and mehitabel", and at a 1971 animated film inspired by them.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at exploitation filmmaker Jack Hill's body of work and wonders whether mainstream comics couldn't take a cue from his handling of roles for women.

The conclusion to Kristy Valenti's look at the work of up and coming cartoonist Thomas Boatwright.

Kristy Valenti talks to Edgar Allen Poo and Cemetery Blues artist Thomas Boatwright.

Kristy Valenti reviews an entry in SparkNotes' No Fear Shakespeare graphic novel adaptation series.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at an anthology of old DC romance comics.

Kristy Valenti reviews three volumes from DMP's Edu-Manga series of biographies for children.

Kristy Valenti has some lesser-known minis for your holiday-shopping consideration. Or, just some cool things to look for in the small-press area at your next con.

In an attempt to get into the holiday spirit, Kristy Valenti reviews Manga Claus, a 2006 Santa satire.

Taking a look at an academic reference work, Kristy Valenti reviews D. Aviva Rothschild's Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book-Length Comics.

Kristy Valenti takes a look at the drawings of French filmmaker/artist Jean Cocteau in this week's Uncharted Territory.

Kristy Valenti continues her quest for a satisfying vampire comic, this time trying out Marvel's adaptation of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter.

Kristy Valenti runs down what went on this year at San Francisco's Alternative Press Expo 2008.

In an attempt to find a good vampire comic, Kristy Valenti takes a chance on a mid-80s offering from Marvel.

Kristy Valenti presents the conclusion of her look at Dan Clowes' Like a Valvet Glove Cast in Iron and Tim Hensley's soundtrack to the comic.

In the second part of her Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron profile, Kristy Valenti talks to Tim Hensley, the man behind the soundtrack.

Kristy Valenti compares the experience of reading Clowes' seminal work to that of reading Moore and Campbell's From Hell.

This week in Uncharted Territory, Kristy Valenti takes a look at the way the end of DC's Minx line of graphic novels was foreshadowed when the books began appearing on the shelves at Seattle's public library.

Kristy Valenti examines the first volume in Dark Horse's reissue of Richard E. Hughes and Ogden Whitney's Herbie.

This week, Kristy Valenti reviews a work by the French cartoonist Killoffer.

Kristy Valenti reports this week on the Brunetti-Tomine-Clowes panel at this year's Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival in Seattle.

This week in Uncharted Territory, Kristy Valenti takes a look at one of the major works of Osamu Tezuka.

This week in Uncharted Territory, Kristy Valenti reviews a mini she picked up at San Diego, and profiles the creator, Chicagoan Laura Park.

Comic Con commentary lives on, but this time Kristy Valenti is giving advice that you can use anywhere you go. So it isn't really another SDCC '08 recap. Really, it isn't.

Kristy Valenti gives her subjective take on San Diego Comic Con, 2008.

In the conclusion to her profile, Kristy Valenti reviews each of the three books and reveals what led her to read them in the first place.

In the first of a two-part look at several recent books that deal with real- or almost-real-world topics facing young women, Kristy Valenti compares the books' depictions of a variety of issues.

This week in "Uncharted Territory," Kristy Valenti takes a look at the two volumes of the Twisted Sisters anthology from Kitchen Sink Press.

Kristy Valenti gives some advice that you'll be thankful for when it comes time to move your comic collection, one day.

In Uncharted Territory this week, Kristy Valenti reviews the book accompanying the Metropolitan Museum of Art's summer exhibit of fashions "inspired" by superheroes.

Inventing a brand-new concept, Kristy Valenti speculates on which creators should be attached to which projects when movies-into-comics becomes the next big thing.

In the conclusion to her homage to Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise, Kristy Valenti takes a look at the strip's clear plotting and its treatment of gender and ethnicity.

Kristy Valenti examines the artwork of Jim Holdaway and Enric Badia Romero in the second part of her profile of the classic espionage strip Modesty Blaise.

This week in "Uncharted Territory", Kristy Valenti presents the first part of a profile of Modesty Blaise creator Peter O'Donnell.

Having suffered no illnesses or injuries this time around, Kristy Valenti this week provides an exhibitor/fan's perspective on the recent ECCC, one of Seattle's several major annual cons, and one with a major indie flair.

This week in "Uncharted Territory," Kristy Valenti reveals the dress code around the Fantagraphics offices and gives a run-down on the best tees she's acquired so far.

This week in Uncharted Territory, Kristy Valenti does the rounds and takes a look at the FCBD offerings of a selection of Seattle-area comic book shops.

The conclusion of Kristy Valenti's latest profile discusses how Aimee Major Steinberger's travel-manga came together and how it differs from a typical travelogue.

This week in Uncharted Territory, Kristy Valenti profiles an otaku's story from Go! Comi.

The title says it all - this week in "Uncharted Territory," Kristy Valenti describes her experience at Seattle's manga con.

In the conclusion of her examination, Kristy Valenti turns her attention to girls, comics, and manga.

This week, Kristy Valenti begins an examination of the implications of gender on sequential-art reading habits by taking a look at the YA market for boys.

In part two of her interview, Kristy Valenti covers Matt Kindt's award-winning contribution to Lost Girls and the development of his storytelling technique in Super Spy and 2 Sisters.

In "Uncharted Territory" this week, Kristy Valenti present the first of a two-part full-length interview with Matt Kindt, creator of the Pistolwhip and Super Spy graphic novels published by Top Shelf.

Part two of Kristy Valenti's profile of Dorothy Gambrell takes a look at how a webcomic creator scrapes together a living while trying to balance multiple projects.

Kristy Valenti profiles Dorothy Gambrell and her hit webcomic Cat and Girl this week and next week in "Uncharted Territory."

In part two of her profile of the minicomic distributor, Kristy Valenti takes a closer look at Bodega's entries as an indie publisher and the company's expanding mission.

In part one of a two-part profile, Kristy Valenti talks to Bodega Distribution's Randy Chang, and reveals what it takes to distribute mini-comics in today's market.

In part two of her profile of Bill Blackbeard, Kristy Valenti relates the history of the landmark book, The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics.

Few in the comics field would disagree that we're living in the Golden Age of Comic-Strip Reprints. But this would not be possible without Bill Blackbeard: his contributions to the medium include his dogged preservation of early 20th century newspapers and his seminal book The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics.

By this point, comics and cinema/television are naturally associated. However, the connection between comics and other art forms such as theater, music and poetry is harder to make. Perhaps because the "superman" meme was circulating long before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster fastened it to their creation, the Man of Steel is the notable exception to this.

It's been estimated there's something like one comic shop for every 1,000 square miles in the U. S.. As such, L.A. suffers from an embarrassment of riches: it's an epicenter for quality comics retailers.

Warren's deft touch with Thugboy and Emp's warm relationship, which naughtily began while each was thugging and superheroining, respectively, is another ingredient that causes Empowered to gel

Between the last Dirty Pair series and the first volume of Empowered, Warren survived on freelance work such as a comic for a videogame magazine, a Livewires miniseries for Marvel and a run on Gen13 for DC/WildStorm.

Only two columns into Uncharted Territory, and Kristy's already strayed into territory that's charted: Adam Warren's superhero/manga mashup, Empowered Vol. 1.

Even though Esther Pearl Watson's comic Unlovable is exposed to 80,000 readers in the bimonthly feminist magazine Bust, her work is virtually unknown in comic shops, save for her self-published minis and her contributions to The Best American Comics 2006 and Blab! anthologies.

Fleep and Bookhunter, two of Shiga's mystery/thrillers, are arguably his most well-known works to date. Perhaps not coincidentally, Dylan Williams' company Sparkplug has published both of them, lending Shiga's work better productions values (and most likely better distribution than his self-published comics).

Although he sites Malaysian cartoonist Lat as his key influence, Jason Shiga's comics read very much like, and indeed, borrow quite a few tropes from Agatha Christie novels - both artists manage the high-wire act of entertaining their readers without sacrificing the complexity of their mysteries.