We know the statistics because they are so very proud of them: Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has overseen more than 230 executions, the most of any governor in modern history (his predecessor, George W. Bush, still holds the record for executions per year with more than 30)....

My brother is ill -- seriously, tragically, out of his mind. For a couple of years he was on medication and seemed to be turning his life around: he was able to be a father to his son, able to finish the college degree he had walked away from during...

Joe Sacco's latest book is a return to Palestine and the origins of Sacco's own career in comics journalism, a field he has all but singlehandedly created out of the example of his remarkable work. Palestine was published serially by Fantagraphics beginning in 1993 and collected into book form a...

Perhaps the best thing about Avatar has been its ability to get under the skins of rightwing commentators who are shocked (shocked, I tell ya!) that the film privileges New Age earth mother love over the military industrial complex and the Family's brand of muscular Christianity. But while the Right...

The first nine months of Barack Obama's presidency have witnessed accomplishments (pulling the economy back from the brink) and disappointments (the broken promises to the gay and lesbian community). If you are of a certain age, you have seen this strange and often dispiriting first year blend of callousness, courage,...

I love opening weekend for new comics movies. Not because all (most?) of the movies are good, and certainly not because the vast majority of them are even half as good as the books from which they were adapted. No, I love them because for these brief but increasingly frequent...

Each week, it seems, brings another doomsday proclamation about the future of American literacy. This past week's entry came from Stanley Fish, who opened his New York Times blog with what is for professors, young and old, a recurring lament: the inability of students to "to write a clean...

Every year or so, the video game industry releases its latest demographics on its audience. And every year the big news is that the video game player is growing older (this year's result: 35). This is good news for the video game industry, which conveniently sponsors the study, eager for...