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.
The Spool •

“Mad Max: Fury Road”’s language is as impeccable as its action

An engine revs. Someone or something breathes heavily. An unseen narrator begins to speak. “My name is Max. My world is fire, and blood.” He sounds deeply weary, broken even. Beneath his soliloquy, a radio crackles to life. There are screams and gunshots. A second man’s voice, this one anonymous and enraged, yells “Why are you hurting these people?!” The opening credits roll. Max’s (Tom Hardy) haunted narration and a patchwork quilt of other voices lay out the fall of the world and the birth of the Wasteland. So begins Mad Max: Fury Road.

Fury Road turns five years old this week, and in a lot of ways it feels like western blockbuster cinema is still working to catch up to the work director/co-writer George Miller and his creative collaborators did with it. It is a gloriously rich text on every level. The care and craft put into its automotive armada – each member of which tells its own story, from the last of the V8 Interceptors to the heroic, hard-traveling War Rig to the nefarious Gigahorse.

My Ongoing Work

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
AIPT •

‘Persona 3 ReLoad’ updates a classic with care, style, and dissonance

Persona 3 ReLoad is the story of seven teens (one of whom being an android), one tween, and one Shiba Inu of indeterminate age and their battle against a bad kind of death. Not the end of individual life, but the end of all life. The premature conclusion to humanity, brought about by the schemes of one long-dead nihilist, one egomaniac who has half an idea of what he’s doing, and three young people whom the previous two chuckleheads hurt so badly they cannot see any good or meaning in living.

T
AIPT •

‘Pacific Drive’ offers gorgeous surreality and a satisfying challenge

It was the napkin dispenser that got me.

Stranded in the Olympic Exclusion Zone, my soul bound to a station wagon that will not quit even after annihilation, I was hunting for two things. The first was a way out—of the Zone and my looming doom. The second was supplies. Rubber, steel, glass, duct tape. Anything I could, with some ingenuity and the reluctant help of a brilliant, antisocial scientist nicknamed “Oppy,” shape into new parts for the car. Some supplies were as simple as off-road tires
Hyperreal Film Club •

Challengers Review — Hyperreal Film Club

Art, a top-of-the-game pro whose staff includes a world class physical therapist and whose toolkit includes custom electrolyte mixes, is in awe-inspiring shape. He is also covered in scars. And his toes? Aggghhhh. Tashi’s well over a decade out from her leg breaking, and when it happened, she received immediate, high quality medical treatment. She physically cannot play on the level she could pre-break. Patrick, the wandering tennis ronin, has not visibly taken damage on the same level as the ot
Hyperreal Film Club •

Carl Weathers made Predator’s Dillon a son of a bitch worth mourning — Hyperreal Film Club

Dillon mostly believes this. Mostly. But watch Weathers’ eyes when he furiously tries to justify his actions to Dutch. Betraying Dutch hurts—not only because Dillon’s breaking his friend’s trust and endangering his life, but also because the betrayal itself underlines how far they have grown apart. Dutch has kept his integrity. Dillon has resigned himself to shutting off his care for the men under his command—even as he realizes how much he misses fighting alongside his friend and their looking
The Spool •

Knuckles’ zany buddy comedy is worth digging into on Paramount+

So. Knuckles the Echidna attends a Shabbat dinner. That isn’t the start of a joke for an incredibly specific audience; that’s the set-up for episode three of his new miniseries. Picking up where left him, the six-episode show follows the last of the Echidna Warriors on his epic, life-defining quest to define his life with something other than epic quests and grand battles. Knuckles trying to live his life as though his mission to protect the all-powerful Master Emerald was the alpha and omega of
Hyperreal Film Club •

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Review —

If I wanted to be exceedingly catty, I would describe Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as “We have All of Us Strangers at home.” Why? The most human part of Gil Kenan’s follow-up to Jason Reitman’s 2021 homage/nostalgia piece Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the romantically shaded friendship between a lonely creative person (Mckenna Grace’s Phoebe Spengler) and an isolated ghost trapped by her regrets and loneliness (Emily Alyn Lind’s Melody). Acknowledging that Frozen Empire and All of Us Strangers are telling very different tales and targeting VERY different audiences, the comparison still tracks for me. As timidly ambiguous as Frozen Empire’s treatment of the relationship is, it’s the only part of the picture with enough of a pulse (sorry) to discuss.
The Spool •

Rebel Moon: Part Two – The Scargiver’s ponderous lore leaves a mark

At its best, director Zack Snyder’s science fantasy feels like an exciting Seven Samurai riff, steadily escalating its action’s scale without losing itself in the noise. The heroes are likable, and Skrein’s snarling turn is a genuine delight. While mostly familiar—echoes of Warhammer 40,000‘s grimly dark far future, for instance—the film boasts a well-rendered aesthetic. When something unfamiliar does pop up, like a hooded string orchestra forced to perform at an Ides-of-March-style calamity, it’s striking.

At its weakest, The Scargiver gets caught up in dispensing capital-L Lore without letting it breathe or become real.
AIPT •

‘Hack/Slash: Back to School’ #4 brings Cassie Hack’s boarding school idyll to a chaotic, crushing close

The fall. It had to come. Wandering undead-serial-killer hunter Cassandra “Cassie” Hack wasn’t going to get to finish coming of age at Darla Ritz’s Hunters for Hire and Academy for girls, surrounded by not only peers by friends (and a lover, even). She and her fellow hunter and best friend Vlad have to end up back on the road, hard-traveling, short-change heroes seeking out the grimmest corners of the continental United States for ghouls to break. That’s Hack/Slash.

But, as drawn and written by
AIPT •

‘Persona 5 Tactica’ offers solid yet simple strategy and lovable characters

During the heaviest parts of the 2020 era of the COVID-19 pandemic, Persona 5 Royal was one of my go-to ways to spend time. Over that year, between job hunting and dodging the novel coronavirus, I played it to completion twice — acquiring the platinum trophy on my second run. If the Persona series is the breakout player in developer Atlus’ overarching Shin Megami Tensei project, 5 is the breakout’s breakout — even compared to the similarly well-loved Persona 4.
The Spool •

The impeccable Love Lies Bleeding flexes its way through bloody lesbian noir

The word for Rose Glass ( ) and Weronika Tofilska’s is “precise.” From the individual and combined performances of leads Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian (whose turn as a cunning Imperial agent was a bright spot in the often dreary third season of ) to DP Ben Fordesman’s chameleonic camera work and hair department lead Megan Daum’s wide-ranging design work, everyone on the project knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to get it done.
The Spool •

Best check out early from Hazbin Hotel

...Acknowledging Hazbin Hotel‘s successes in craft and performance, it is undone by messy writing that crashes when trying to hop tones. It is entirely possible to jump between the goofy and the dramatic in a heightened setting—sticking strictly to animation across age groups; see last year’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, for instance. Hazbin Hotel does not make that jump. Its tonal shifts are awkward and distracting, and in one case, in the four episodes watched for this review, so drastic that it throws the entire project out of balance.
AIPT •

‘Hack/Slash: Back to School’ #3 cuts through glorious glop with style and character

It’s damn good to jump back into Hack/Slash: Back to School, artist and writer Zoe Thorogood‘s exploitation/horror/action/comedy/drama entry into the greater Stefano Casseli and Tim Seeley-created Hack/Slash project. Back to School‘s first two issues showcased both Thorogood’s formal mastery (in particular, her use of color and multiple illustration styles to set and shift Back to School‘s moods and perspectives) and her delighting in grody goth-girl-and-peers-vs-super-powered-undead-serial-kill
Hyperreal Film Club •

Knockin' on Heaven's Door: A Beautiful Companion to a Beloved Series —

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door takes full advantage of its longer form and extended production time to craft a vivid (despite a generally sedate color palette) Mars, one that persists beyond what the camera captures while following Spike and company. In addition to the picture’s major players—the Bebop crew, Vincent, his former-lover-turned-hunter Electra Ovilo (Ai Kobayashi and Jennifer Hale) and a few members of the show’s recurring ensemble—the creative team keeps their eyes on folks in the crowd, people living their lives for whom Knockin on Heaven’s Door’s events are something seen in the corner of their eye, or that briefly interrupts a regular day with minimal explanation.
AIPT •

In ‘Where the Body Was’, Phillips and Brubaker skillfully dial down

Where the Body Was’ cast is a distinct bunch, all scrambling through the ennui of the mid-1980s (as Ethan Reckless notes in the opening of Friend of the Devil, “When I think of the mid-80s, I mostly think of all the bad drugs…and music I never thought we’d be listening to for the rest of our lives…It was an ugly time for the fashion of pop culture…And an uglier time for the world around it.”) A hollow man angry at the world for its venality swipes his abusive father’s police badge from his funeral and then decides to use it to play sheriff, the Sheriff of Pelican Road, and feel like the big man he wants to be to spite his hateful father’s corpse. A tween putting herself out in the world takes to the streets in roller skates, a cape, and a domino mask. A veteran who is not getting the help he needs tries to get by where he can. Kids wrapped up in bad drugs and the sour side of punk dance around getting wrapped up in each other.
AIPT •

AIPT shares its picks for Game of the Year 2023

After how amazing 2022 was, with instant classics like Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarök, we’re frankly amazed that 2023 wasn’t only just as good as 2022, but potentially one of the best years for gaming ever. Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Baldur’s Gate 3 would easily be shoe-ins for a unanimous game of the year selection in most any other year, yet they all released within in months of each other in 2023.
Shelfdust •

Care is Heartwrenching, Care is Salvation: On Mira Ong Chua’s I Want to Be Your Doll

I Want to Be Your Doll is a romance between Kirsche – a sweet-hearted young man – and Eclair, an enchanted doll who is searching to regain her history. All she can remember of her past is an eerie spell which was cast. As a cartoonist, Chua is spectacularly talented with body language. Kirsche, who’s a smart kid in over his head with the supernatural and the social, is frequently a ball of flailing limbs while Eclair, even at her most joyous and goofy, always possesses a certain impossible elegance. The physicality of their search for what they mean to each other, as illustrated by Chua, is consistently striking – whether their leads are beating themselves up for misreading (or thinking they misread) each other or breaking through their anxieties and worries to achieve lovely, genuine intimacy.
The Spool •

JUNG_E sends its late star off in melancholy science fiction style

What would you do to know your parents? Not just as parents, but as people—even long after their deaths? How would you make the most of a horrendous moral quagmire you had no choice in getting dragged into—and what would you do when that quagmire, for all its familiarity, finally became too much to bear? On a broader level, what makes us human—and what remains when we’re gone? Director/writer Yeon Sang-ho asks and answers these questions in his out-now-on-Netflix science fiction film JUNG_E. It’s a solid, thoughtful film that shines thanks to its leading trio and Sang-ho’s skill at depicting and delving into the uncanny.
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