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Now running on Shelfdust! Die, Die My Darling! On Rumiko Takahashi’s The Laughing Target, by Kayleigh Hearn

"The Laughing Target has stuck with me for twenty years, Azusa’s maniacal cry still echoes in my head when other voices – other comics, other manga – have retreated into silence. How can I describe its power over me, this minor, early work by a generation-defining creator who has published over 200 volumes of original work that have sold over 200 million copies worldwide?"

Read now on www.shelfdust.com!

Issue #107 came out in 1986, three years after the final part of the then “trilogy” had been released. And things were not the same as the glory days of the franchise. Marvel were somewhat under the thumb of Lucasfilm by this point, whose licence had become increasingly costly to renew, and was notably less valuable with each year that the movies fell into the past. With editorial interference from a protective movie studio, escalating costs, and a declining readership, issue #107 was the last issue of Star Wars which Marvel published for decades.

--Steve Morris talks about the “final” issue of Marvel’s Star Wars comic from 1986 and some of the weird choices made on the comic post-Return of the Jedi.

Perfect Things and Diamond Absolutes: The Dark Knight Returns #1 – Shelfdust

NEW on Shelfdust this week! Perfect Things and Diamond Absolutes: @rhidaneelolivaw looks back at The Dark Knight Returns #1

The achingly metatextual Dark Knight Returns is a nuclear comic, playing with what you think you know, and with what you’re too young to remember.

Read Rhi's full article here about it on Shelfdust now!

🚨 NEW on Shelfdust today! Shelfdust’s Year of Evil: Galactus 🚨

Is evil what it used to be? The most popular villains in comic book history are almost all characters who debuted half a century ago, their terrifying legacy and merciless reputation continuing onwards through countless reboots and relaunches around them. Shelfdust’s Year of Evil heads back to the first time iconic villains showed up on the comic page to explore: are they still the same character that they used to be? Or have changing times changed what it means to be evil?

Steve looks back at the first coming of Galactus to see how much of that original characterisation still exists within today’s Galactus!

A Queer Beer with the Devil: Revisiting the Sensual Subversions of Daredevil #266 – Shelfdust

Queerness is a natural bedfellow of comics - even ones, like superhero comics, that have spent much of their history being officially homophobic. Between 1954 and 1989, the Comics Code forbade non-heteronormative presentations of gender and sexuality, and Marvel comics spent most of the 80s under the supervision of editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, whose version of gay pride involved the infamous boast, “There are no gays in the Marvel universe.” And yet, from their inception, superhero comics have been many kinds of queer. 

Which Absolute Batman Variant Is Worth The Most Money?