Author name: Stephen Geigen-Miller

Stephen Geigen-Miller writes comics, prose and free-associative paragraphs that seemed to make some sort of sense at the time. His geekdoms are many and long-standing, and include science fiction, fantasy, comics, tabletop role-playing games, and endearingly bad kaiju movies. Stephen co-created and co-wrote the scifi comic series Xeno’s Arrow with writer/artist Greg Beettam. He co-created and wrote the trope-tacular urban fantasy webcomic Cold Iron Badge with artist Patrick Heinicke. Stephen lives in Toronto, works at the University of Toronto, and has two children. He writes in the bits and pieces of time in between everything else. You can learn more about him via his blog, or follow him on Twitter.

Cover of The Order of the Circle
Blog Posts

Comics Review: The Order of the Circle

Elisabeth Mkheidze’s art is strong throughout. Characters are clearly delineated and distinct, and their emotional states are conveyed effectively through expression and body language. Some comics artists tend towards conveying intense expressions too strongly, and characters’ faces look like caricatures or theatrical masks as a result. This seems like a small point, but in a graphic novel with a protagonist who spends virtually all her time on the page some combination of furious, terrified, and grieving, it’s important.

Cover of DIE Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker
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Comics Review: DIE Volume 1 – 4

Although graphic novels and books sold well overall during the pandemic, with comic shops and book stores closed, discoverability and conversations around new books took a hit. Some amazing work was released without the fanfare it deserved. One of those was a remarkable 20-issue dark portal fantasy, since collected in four volumes. It asked what would happen if a group of teenagers was transported to the world of their table-top roleplaying game – and what would happened if, twenty-five years later, as traumatized, broken adults, they had to go back.

Let’s take a look at DIE.

Blog Posts

Comics Review: Penultimate Quest

Let’s start with the element that surprised me the most: Penultimate Quest is absolutely not a comedy. Going in clean, with no more information than what’s on the front and back covers, I was expecting much more of a genre parody than actually appears. I could make a case for the book as satirical, but it’s not the ha-ha kind of satirical; while there’s genre deconstruction taking place, its expression is far more tragic than comic. This is not a “Mornin’ Ralph” “Mornin’ Sam” send-up of adventuring as a grind.  

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