the asides about the Oneida Free Love community were great, and a reminder history, even in a period of American history stereotyped as stuffy and prudish, is wilder than dry articles make it out to be.

Charles Guiteau was also a bigger asshole irl, but put that down to a charismatic actor more than the writing itself.

the tower of death has apes for all occasions

lettering the thumbs goes a long way to a good page composition.

maximalist is probably the wrong term here, but I think you get what I mean.

it burdens the page and clutters the art.

(superhero books also have a big problem in a lack of consisently good action art, but honestly these aren't separate problems. There are great action artists in the west but their presence on action books isn't the norm that it should be.)

there's a place for maximalist writing in comics, even super hero books. More of it should be in narration than popping out of a web slinger's mouth. it gets to the point of the character delivering a monologue in half a second while fighting a mutant hippopotamus in down town Chicago.

even something relatively new like John Wick quickly got driven into the ground with sequals and spin offs.

(though its kind of incredible there were only two predator films before the 2000s, compared to something like Rambo or Rocky that also got sludged into pop culture mush fairly quickly)

the anime movie by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (the Ninja Scroll/Vampire Hunter D guy) was pretty good.