Justin S. Harrison

Howdy! I'm an author, critic, editor, essayist, and more. Rachel Distler illustrated my portrait. Check out her work at www.redtiebear.com.

My Favorite Work

AIPT •

Meredith Gran talks ‘Perfect Tides’, time’s inexorable march, and the internet as it was in 2000

Meredith Gran rules. Octopus Pie, her 2007-2017 webcomic, is for my money one of the medium’s all-time great works. Her major post-Octopus Pie creative project—the crowd-funded point and click adventure game Perfect Tides, launched on Tuesday. It’s terrific — a witty and thoughtful coming of age story that navigates the goofy and the heavy with care and skill amidst gorgeous artwork, compulsively readable prose, and clever puzzles. AIPT was able to speak with Gran in the run-up to Perfect Tides‘
The Gutter Review •

A Place Both Webbed and Strange: Reading Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man as a Twin Peaks Riff

“Perceptions” is a fascinating, if not wholly successful, comic. After kicking off Spider-Man with “Torment”, a story that played to his strengths as an artist and writer (visual emphasis on Spider-Man in motion, horror beats built on the grotesque and the mystical) McFarlane takes a genuine swing and tries to stretch himself. “Perceptions” is a mystery that questions society’s systems of power, a horror story where the supernatural is less terrifying than the domestic/familiar, and to some extent a deconstructive presentation of Spider-Man.

Most intriguing of all, “Perceptions” is, deliberately or otherwise, deeply influenced by and riffing on David Lynch, Mark Frost, and company’s once-beloved-then-discounted-now-again-beloved and highly influential supernatural mystery/horror/slice of life television series Twin Peaks.
The Comics Journal •

Perspective and Time in Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie

One of the things that has long fascinated me about the way comics work is the extent to which the art of it is about controlling perception. Within a panel, the reader sees a specific image. On its own, the image is an image. In concert with other panels, it becomes sequential art – the comic’s creator(s) directing the reader’s eye and mind from image to image. But it’s not just motion and the passage of time that a comics page creates; it’s the perception of them.

My Ongoing Work

AIPT •

‘Snotgirl’ #19 shifts mode and mood

Leslie Hung and Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Snotgirl never rests on its laurels. It returned from its long hiatus with a low-key look at fashion blogger Lottie Person’s newfound romance with riddle-wrapped-in-a-mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma model Caroline. It dialed up the covert life of Caroline’s long-suffering brother Virgil. It introduced a hidden past in the Japanese idol scene for Lottie’s mother, Kimiko, and her aunt, Aya. With issue #19, Hung and O’Malley have officially moved Snotgirl into the...
The Spool •

Black Bag is a mannered, merciless delight

Cerberus has slipped its leash. It was never supposed to leave the cavernous, cold corridors of British Intelligence’s chic HQ. But it did. There is a mole. Cerberus is in the wind. If it’s used, thousands will die. Badly. Thus, intelligence operative Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård) turns to George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender), a superb analyst who hates liars to ferret out Cerberus’ thief. 


There are five suspects. Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) is a rising and passionate star in...
Hyperreal Film Club •

Review: Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope — Hyperreal Film Club

Parthenope is my first Paolo Sorrentino film. I’ll give it this—it’s made me curious about his other work. From being a film dweeb, I know that he’s a well-regarded filmmaker, someone who folks get excited about. From seeing Parthenope, I know he and his collaborators can craft stunning montages and striking episodes that deftly balance the familiar and the bizarre and that they’re good at finding interesting faces. I’d like to check out Sorrentino and his crew’s oeuvre, both because of what’s s...
AIPT •

At 20 years old, ‘Strange Girl’ makes an interesting artifact

I was not wowed by Strange Girl, Eric Nguyen and Rick Remender’s 18-issue apocalyptic religious horror road story. I am, however, glad to have read it, and that it’s getting a complete hardcover collection for its 20th anniversary. It includes some solid back matter — the best of which is a thoughtful essay Remender wrote in 2011 looking back on Strange Girl, how it was inspired by his experiences growing up as an atheist kid with a Mormon extended family, and how he related to the book six year...
AIPT •

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Shines like its titular star

It’s been four years since the Solar War, four years since a mechanical failure in the launch system of your Armored Frame saved you from a battle that wiped out all but one other member of your squadron. You’re still in the Jovian Navy, and you’ve made lieutenant. Not as a pilot, but as a security officer, and you’re newly assigned to the patrol ship Gun-Dog. While one of your nine crewmates, Hansen Crwys, is the only other survivor of your squadron and still reviles you as a coward, another is...
AIPT •

Afterlove EP - review

Rama’s trying to live again. A year after his partner Cinta passed, sending him into a malaise and splintering his on-the-cusp indie band Sigmund Feud, Rama goes to therapy. He starts meeting people who could be friends or lovers. But Cinta — a ghost or a figment of imagination — is never far from Rama’s thoughts. She wants the best for Rama, but she’s just as messy as he is. At the end of September, Sigmund Feud will play a make-or-break comeback show (indie rock band L’Alphalpha provides Sigmu...
Hyperreal Film Club •

The Wolfman (2010) claws its way to a win — Hyperreal Film Club

Hopkins is having a ball as Sir John, a man who revels in his wickedness not through maniacal cackling but through perpetual wry amusement at everything—be that Gwen turning down a rich meal in the depths of infecting Lawrence with lycanthropy and getting to wake him up in the aftermath of his first rampage. He’s wonderfully despicable, and The Wolfman builds his venality from sketchy-but-perhaps-reliable to confirmed bad to full-on horrific. He’s a marvelous villain, and Hopkins is the best par...
The Spool •

Love Hurts is a messy, but delightful, kick in the heart

Love Hurts is a shambles. At 83 minutes, director JoJo Eusebio and writers Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore’s sweet-hearted-reformed-killer-gets-pulled-back-into-the-life-and-has-to-figure-out-which-of-his-lives-is-real actioner is both overstuffed and underbaked. Ke Huy Quan‘s big-hearted real estate agent, Marvin Gable, has an extensive and bloody secret history, alternately semi-cryptically alluded to and explored in such detail that the picture’s present-day story grinds to a...
AIPT •

Snotgirl #18 review

Part of the fun of reviewing Leslie Hung and Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Snotgirl has been seeing how they’re unfurling their increasingly wild central mystery while keeping their focus on their cast and how they’re changing. Make no mistake, Snotgirl is a gonzo comic that’s only getting more so. Allergy-prone fashion influencer Charlotte “Lottie” Person’s fallen head over heels for Caroline, a mercurial model involved in shady doings and who might be immortal—or at least unaging. Caroline’s brother Vi...
AIPT •

Daredevil: Born Again (Marvel Premier Collection) review

This isn’t a review of David Mazzucchelli and Frank Miller‘s seminal Daredevil story Born Again. Born Again is a terrific tale from one of the finest artists to work in U.S. comics and a frustrating, problematic, once brilliant writer. Mazzucchelli and Miller follow Matt Murdock/Daredevil to hell and back after the Kingpin gets ahold of his secret identity and sets out to ruin his life. It’s a harrowing tale, one that pummels Daredevil (and blows him up, traps him in a car that’s hucked into a r...
Hyperreal Film Club •

Under the Cold Light of the Moon, Wolf Man Mewls — Hyperreal Film Club

In practice, Wolf Man rips itself apart. Abbott gets precious little time to show how the years have changed Adult Brady since that fateful day in 1995, and the speed with which his infection and transformation progress means that while he’s constantly present, after a certain point he’s essentially playing a different and much simpler character. Neither Garner nor Firth has the space to make their characters distinct or give them a drive beyond “survive.” The Lovells could potentially be intere...
AIPT •

Snotgirl #17 review

Previously, in Snotgirl, artist Leslie Hung and writer Bryan Lee O’Malley’s surreal California fashion world noir spiral, life was looking alright for perpetually allergy-beset fashion influencer Lottie Person. She’d hooked up with her crush/fascination/object-of-obsession, Caroline. Caroline, often cutting, sometimes astonishingly cruel, revealed a previously unseen warmth as her relationship with Lottie became romantic and sexual. They had time for each other, time that was theirs and theirs a...
AIPT •

AIPT’s Best of 2024: Tsukihime: -A piece of blue glass moon- • AIPT

I am still surprised that I get to write about Tsukihime: -A piece of blue glass moon-. I own it thrice over – the physical copy I imported from Japan, the digital version of the English-language PS4 release I picked up after selling some books while unemployed, and a physical copy of the English-language Switch release that I bought to celebrate starting a new job. I’ve played both of -A piece of blue glass moon-’s story routes to completion, including both of the second route’s endings. It was...
AIPT •

Snotgirl #16 review

Snotgirl, artist Leslie Hung and writer Bryan Lee O’Malley’s striking, sunny, unsettling character study/mystery/ode to fashions eternal and transient, is back after a long hiatus with its 16th issue. I’m writing this review as a newcomer to the series, but a longtime fan of O’Malley’s other works, such as his recent animated adaptation/stealth sequel Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. To prepare for Snotgirl #16, I read the first three collected volumes — Green Hair Don’t Care, California Screaming, and...
The Spool •

We Live In Time too caught up in clock watching

Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) have the kind of meet-cute that hits with a bang, forgive the pun. A rising chef and a techie for Weetabix, respectively, they meet when she strikes him with her car. Unaware that the reason Tobias was in the road was running to get a pen to finally sign his divorce papers, Altmut buys him dinner at a kind of Americana diner cousin to the one where All of Us Strangers set its glorious heart-ripper of a climax and then invites him and his wife to...
Hyperreal Film Club •

The Crow (2024) Is the Cinematic Equivalent of a Flat Soda — Hyperreal Film Club

It doesn’t last. Roeg wants Shelly dead for reasons both practical and fantastical. Thus, when he gets a bead on her, he dispatches the goon squad. He has no idea who Eric is, but when he stumbles across what was supposed to be an execution, the goons are all too happy to off him too. And then he comes to in a ruined train station, filled to the brim with crows and watched over by a raggedy man who knows the score. The books need to be balanced. Eric and Shelly’s death was too terrible and left...
AIPT •

'Until Then' is a certified and sci-fi heart-ripper • AIPT

Mark Borja, Until Then’s protagonist, isn’t lost in his dreams but isn’t awake either. A teenager in the suburbs of the Philippines, Mark lives alone and drifts through his days. Aimless as Mark’s teenage daydream may be, it’s not a hollow daze. He’s got his best friends Cathy Portillo, who’s trying to figure out who she wants to be, and Ridel Gonzales, who’s got meetings lined up with producers for a short film he’s making happen. He’s got the piano; he inherited his love for it from his mom, a...
Hyperreal Film Club •

The Crow’s crow can’t bring you back, but it can point you towards the way through — Hyperreal Film Club

As “Eric Draven, amiable rock guitarist, and all-around good guy back in the world of the living for a short while,” Lee builds an abiding warmth that grounds and bolsters The Crow’s more sentimental scenes and contrasts the relentlessness of his action. Brief flashbacks with Shinas show Eric as a loving, romantic partner, happy to be goofy if it makes Shelly laugh. With Hudson and Davis, Lee is wearier, acutely aware that he’s returned for vengeance, vengeance, and vengeance. Eric knows that he...
Hyperreal Film Club •

Fly Me to the Moon: Review — Hyperreal Film Club

Cole and Kelly’s physical attraction is immediately evident to both following a lightly charred meet cute. Their emotional attraction is a thornier matter—Cole is so duty-bound that he won’t let himself see beyond the mission, while Kelly is so committed to her certainty that hustling is how she gets by that she struggles to view the world as anything but transactional. Fly Me to the Moon’s greatest strength is Johansson and Tatum’s chemistry. They blend their shared sexual attraction with frust...
AIPT •

'Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance' offers diabolical duels amidst a compelling campaign • AIPT

A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater’s gorgeous rotoscoped nightmare Philip K. Dick adaptation, is one of my favorite films. One of my first favorites. It burrowed into my brain and rewired circuits. I’m not making the comparison just because I am an irretrievable nerd. Thematically, Linklater’s film and Shigeo Komori and company’s Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance share key concerns — the destruction wrought when ruthless powers go up against each other, the costs of getting caught up in those fig...
The Spool •

Kill goes in when taking names and faces but stumbles elsewhere

Amrit Rathod (Lakshya) is a commando. He is a peerless soldier among peers. He’s as ruthless as he is skilled, and when he fights, he wins. It might be a slugfest, and he cannot walk off a hit like it’s nothing, but if someone fights him, he’s the one who walks away from the fight. He’s also a good friend to his fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) and a loving partner to his girlfriend Tulika Singh (Tanya Maniktala. When Tulika’s wealthy father arranges her engagement to someone she doesn’...
AIPT •

‘The Bikeriders’ roars when chasing myth but sputters when trying to embody it

The Outlaw Biker is a hell of an image—a free spirit, bound not by laws but by brotherhood, making their way in the world through grease, grit, skill, and a powerful engine. The jackets, the colors, the flair, and the machines themselves. It’s an enduring piece of post-World War II US iconography, one that’s seduced and shaped everyone from romantics to jackasses to romantic jackasses.

With The Bikeriders, director/writer Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special) aims to dig into the myth and what m
The Spool •

Ultraman Rising strikes out

Big old monster brawls are a delight. They’re one of the great pleasures of the series, the Eiji Tsuburaya-created science fiction series that’s brought joy to folks worldwide for 58 years and counting. While the series kicked off with the monster mystery series in 1966, it was (launched in July of that year, shortly after wrapped), the tale of a benevolent alien superhero who lived among humanity and fought aliens, giants, and giant aliens alongside a human Science Team (in capital letters).
Hyperreal Film Club •

Review: Richard Linklater's Hit Man —

In his seminal essay “Notes on Film Noir,” director and screenwriter Paul Schrader wrote that a noir protagonist:

“…dreads to look ahead…tries to survive by the day, and if unsuccessful at that, he retreats to the past. The film noir’s techniques emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, insecurity…In such a world style becomes paramount; it is all that separates one from meaninglessness.”

Hit Man, the latest from Austin’s own director Richard Linklater and actor Glen Powell, looks
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