Midnighter

Midnighter is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by WildStorm, which later became an imprint of DC Comics. Best known as a member of the rogue superhero team, The Authority, the character was created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch. Midnighter first appeared in Stormwatch (vol. 2) No. 4, before appearing in various Authority books and series and his own eponymous ongoing series. He and his husband, Apollo, have also been interpreted as a parallel of the Batman/Superman World's Finest partnership. Unlike Batman, Midnighter has certain enhanced abilities, and generally kills his opponents. In an interview for Comic Values Annual (1999), edited by Alex G. Malloy, Warren Ellis described Midnighter as "The Shadow by way of John Woo". Midnighter is rarely seen without his costume and mask. Recurring themes in Midnighter's adventures are his love of violence and killing, as well as comments on his sexuality. In 2013, ComicsAlliance ranked Midnighter as #17 on their list of the "50 Sexiest Male Characters in Comics".

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook, also called comic magazine or simply comic, is a publication that consists of comic art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by brief descriptive prose and written narrative, usually dialog contained in word balloons emblematic of the comics art form. Although comics has some origins in 18th century Japan and 1830s Europe, comic books were first popularized in the United States during the 1930s. The first modern comic book, Famous Funnies, was released in the United States in 1933 and was a reprinting of earlier newspaper humor comic strips, which had established many of the story-telling devices used in comics. The term comic book derives from American comic books once being a compilation of comic strips of a humorous tone; however, this practice was replaced by featuring stories of all genres, usually not humorous in tone.

Structure

Comic books are reliant on their organization and appearance. Authors largely focus on the frame of the page, size, orientation, and panel positions. These characteristic aspects of comic books are necessary in conveying the content and messages of the author. The key elements of comic books include panels, balloons (speech bubbles), text (lines), and characters. Balloons are usually convex spatial containers of information that are related to a character using a tail element. The tail has an origin, path, tip, and pointed direction.

Book review

A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review can be a primary source opinion piece, summary review or scholarly review. Books can be reviewed for printed periodicals, magazines and newspapers, as school work, or for book web sites on the Internet. A book review's length may vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essays. Such a review may evaluate the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers may use the occasion of a book review for a display of learning or to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work.

There are a number of journals devoted to book reviews, and reviews are indexed in databases such as Book Review Index and Kirkus Reviews; but many more book reviews can be found in newspaper databases as well as scholarly databases such as Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index and discipline-specific databases.

See also