Noah Berlatsky
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Jonathan Fetter-Vorm Battle Lines Is A Civil-War Comic Hollywood Can Learn From
The graphic novel chooses smaller, complex stories over one larger narrative—an approach that fits both the form and the subject.
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BBC The Robots of Orphan Black
Throughout pop-culture history, clones and robots have served similar purposes, exploring anxieties about class and labor.
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BOND 360 Reenacting War to Make Sense of It
A new documentary follows a group restaging battles from Vietnam, including enthusiasts hoping to emulate the reality of conflict, and veterans trying to better understand it.
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Wikimedia The Petty Etiquette of Discrimination
Fights over ill-advised tweets and overblown laws aren't distractions—they're how we revise the social norms that govern our lives.
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Vertigo/Scholastic Harry Potter's Forgotten Predecessor
25 years ago, Neil Gaiman introduced another bespectacled teen boy with a magical destiny.
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Mario Anzuoni/Reuters With Culture, Guilt Can Sometimes Be a Good Thing
Being ashamed of personal taste is pointless, but it's important to be aware of what makes you feel bad in the first place.
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Wikimedia/Oxford University Press/The Atlantic People Haven't Had Enough of Silly Love Songs
A new book reveals the secret history of a much-maligned genre, from general embarrassment to authoritarian censure.
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bioraven/Shutterstock Fighting the Anti-Vax Movement With Lawsuits
Could litigation accomplish what facts haven't been able to?
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Amazon Point of Honor's Impossible Post-Racial Dream
The proposed Amazon series tries to make sympathetic heroes of white Confederate slaveowners by choosing to largely brush aside the issue of slavery.
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Elizabeth Shafiroff/Reuters The Women of #BlackLivesMatter
Netta Elzie unwittingly joined a growing community of black, female activists after Ferguson.
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Amazon The Man in the High Castle: When a Nazi-Run World Isn't So Dystopian
Amazon's new TV series simplifies (and inverts) novelist Philip K. Dick's original, more sinister vision of everyday evil.
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Mark Anderson/Flickr/The Atlantic Archie and the Unexpected Virtue of Forgetfulness
What the classic comic's lack of continuity says about the increasingly serialized nature of storytelling
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DC Comics Wonder Woman: Learning to Love the Comic Behind the Icon
The ubiquitous character gets the most attention, but the little-known comic that introduced her deserves praise as well.
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Adrees Latif/Reuters Hashtag Activism Isn't a Cop-Out
An organizer of Ferguson protests argues that social-media tools encourage demonstrations, rather than deflating them.
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darioferrini/Flickr No One Needs to Know Who Paul McCartney Is
Celebrity, unlike influence, has an expiration date, but the value of older pop culture still shines in Kanye West's collaboration with the ex-Beatle.
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Tim Chong / Reuters Readability Is a Myth
There aren't "difficult" books and "easy" ones. There are books that are difficult for some people, and easy for others.
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mLu.fotos/Flickr Go Ahead, Get Outraged
It isn't new, and it isn't just an Internet phenomenon—it's an essential part of living in a democracy.
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Jim Young/Reuters When Chicago Tortured
The Second City is still grappling with a long history of police brutality.
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Emma Brown/Flickr Alaska's Prostitution Law Isn't Working
In 2012, the state reclassified sex workers as trafficking victims rather than criminals—but a report says the new language hasn't altered the way they're treated by police.
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Sandy Huffaker/Reuters The Comic-Book Guys Quivering in Fear of Cosplay
The backlash against fans—especially women—who dress up might speak to some gender anxiety on the part of nerddom's gatekeepers.
