Article 10: Cape Fear
By Paul O'Brien
Readers with a spandex phobia tend to criticise superheroes for their simplistic Silver Age morality - but the genre's not just been sitting there waiting for Grant Morrison to arrive. The critics need to face their fears and face the facts, says Paul O'Brien.

Craig McGill Is Mentally Ill
By Craig McGill
PART ONE: Like a lot of people, journalist Craig McGill wants to break in to comics. Like a lot of people, he hasn't managed it so far. This is the first hand account of one man's folly - McGill's attempt to create a web-publishing venture without resorting to 2000AD porn.

Cassandra Complex: Welcome Back
By Antony Johnston
San Diego, the Christmas of comics, is over for another year. Antony Johnston didn't go, but the view from across the water is that Christmas is looking smaller, and even the biggest present - a real chain of comic bookstores - could still be a lump of coal.

Wish You Were There? - A report from the San Diego Comic Con 2002
By Alistair Kennedy
Missed another chance to stand in a huge room full of sweating comic fans in the California sunshine? Ninth Art's Alistair Kennedy went to the San Diego comic convention, so you wouldn't have to.

Article 10: The Strange Case Of The Unwed Husband
By Paul O'Brien
Renewed success in the cinemas has changed corporate comics. Is there cause for concern when the 'spin-offs' are more important than the product, or is character development an overvalued concept in superhero fiction?

Salacious Illustration: Story Bored
By Nick Locking
Why can't comics be more like prose? Why can't they be more like film? Well, why the hell should they be? Comics are such a perfect storytelling medium, Nick Locking argues, that they've spoiled him for just about anything else.

The Occidental Tourist: The Year Of Ordering Dangerously
By Rob Vollmar
The American market for manga is very different to the market for Western comics - and very different from the manga market of only a few years ago. Rob Vollmar looks at how SAILOR MOON and manga formats have created a minor boom.

Things To Come: Previews August for comics shipping October 2002
By Chris Ekman
Bob Fingerman is back with the essential BEG THE QUESTION, plus there's the latest releases from Ariel Schrag, Warren Ellis and, yes, Pablo Picasso. But the big choice this month is between DK2 and YOUNGBLOOD. Right?

Stereotypical Heathen
By Samuel Teer
Uncool is not the new cool. The old cool is still doing just fine. And it's something comics need to tap in to, says Samuel Teer. If the industry's ever going to be more than a hobby for nerds, what it needs is passion, sex, and glossy magazines.

Article 10: Automatic For The People
By Paul O'Brien
Is there any room for oblique storytelling in serial fiction? Large parts of the comics reading audience have dismissed AUTOMATIC KAFKA as impenetrable and inaccessible. Can it hope to succeed where THE MONARCHY failed?

Older essays