Douglas Wolk

My many obsessions include vegetarian cooking, the philosophy of aesthetics, James Brown, post-punk, intentional communities, ukulele tablature, fake Beatles and really long novels. Mostly, though, I'm obsessed with comic books, and I cover them for Techland.

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App Review: GarageBand for iPad

One of Apple’s selling points for the iPad 2 was the introduction of a five-dollar app version of their music-creation-and-editing software GarageBand. The short version: It’s not the Perfect Instrument; it’s not as powerful as the full-featured desktop version of GarageBand. It’s a toy, and it’s not worth buying an iPad solely to have access [...]

“Sailor Moon” Manga Returning to America

An entire generation of American girls got their aesthetics permanently shaped by the Sailor Moon animated series. The anime, though, was based on a series of manga by Naoko Takeuchi–the apotheosis of the “magical girl” genre. And, while the English translations of Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon manga volumes were immensely popular in the U.S. between 1997 [...]

Emanata: Cartoonists, Moment By Moment

There’s a little trend in comics blogs that’s turned up over the past few months: Tumblrs devoted to a specific creator’s work, reprinting a single panel or a single page at a time, out of their original context. A Moment of Moore, one of the more prominent ones, is dedicated to Alan Moore’s work. Whoever’s [...]

The Comic Book Club: Xombi and Fear Itself: Book of the Skull

This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up discussing what we picked up. This week, Evan Narcisse, Graeme McMillan and Douglas Wolk talk about Xombi #1 and the Fear Itself: Book of the Skull one-shot.

Europe to Get Tough on Facebook Privacy Issues?

European politicians are a circumspect bunch: they don’t tend to call out American tech companies directly. Still, the speech that European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding delivered yesterday left little doubt that the European Union is giving Facebook and Google Street View the stinkeye over privacy issues.

The Three Songs You Need to Download This Week

There’s a lot of music online–more than most people have time to keep up with. That’s why you’ve got us. Every week, we’ll point you toward three excellent new downloads or videos from chart-topping stars, cult favorites and unknown geniuses.

Five Great Free Comics For Your iPad

So you stood in line (or waited for the delivery person), and now you’ve got your iPad 2, and you’ve heard how good comics look on it. Still, you want to take a look at some good stuff before you start running up a hefty Apple Store bill. Here are five awesome comics that won’t [...]

Emanata: Where Is the Romance?

The most fascinating comic book I’ve seen this week came out in the spring of 1968, and has never been reprinted. You can see a little bit of the gorgeous cover of Falling In Love #99 up at the top of the page, drawn by the late Cuban-American artist Ric Estrada. A mod-looking young woman [...]

The Comic Book Club: Night Animals and Batman Inc.

This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up discussing what we picked up. This week, Evan Narcisse, Graeme McMillan and Douglas Wolk talk about Brecht Evens’ Night Animals and the third issue of Batman Inc.

The Three Songs You Need to Download This Week

There’s a lot of music online–more than most people have time to keep up with. That’s why you’ve got us. Every week, we’ll point you toward three excellent new downloads or videos from chart-topping stars, cult favorites and unknown geniuses.

Creepy, Brilliant Short Story Remix Is a Video of Tattoos

The original incarnation of Shelley Jackson’s short story “Skin” was written in 2003 to be published on the bodies of 2095 volunteers–in the form of tattoos, one word per person, in black ink. (“As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will have died,” Jackson writes. “The author will [...]