Justin S. Harrison

Howdy! I'm an author, critic, editor, and essayist based in Austin, Texas.

My Favorite Work

Hyperreal Film Club •

For John Woo, the Best Way to Get to A Better Tomorrow During Uncertain Times is Brotherhood — Hyperreal Film Club

With the opening of 1986’s A Better Tomorrow, director John Woo and star Chow Yun Fat captured “cool” with skill and style that very few have been able to  match since. A crew of gangsters, including life-long friends Sung-tse Ho (Ti Lung) and Mark (Chow), watch their counterfeiting operation produce sheet after sheet of faux dollars. As they inspect the freshly minted funny money, Mark takes a $100 bill, sets it ablaze, and uses the flames to light a cigar. Clad in a dashing longcoat and ultra-...
Anime Herald •

How "Call of the Night" Uses Its Vampires to Build Its Structure

Vampires, as a storytelling tool, come with rules. They’ll vary depending on the type of vampire and what sort of story they’re telling, but one rule stands out as a reliable constant: vampires are nocturnal beings. Barring unusual supernatural powers or an explicit plot to blot out the sun, most vampire stories have a hard limit on when key characters can be active, one backed by potentially explosive consequences. Call of the Night, mangaka Kotoyama’s five-year vampire romance, turns this limi...
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

Anime News Network •

Game Review: Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is one of the best games that I've played in 2026. It's a thrilling, arcadey fighting flight sim whose design team seems to have had a ton of fun playing with their game's form. Its level design, barring one inordinately frustrating late-game chokepoint, interlinks a rewarding level of challenge with creative mission parameters. Its aesthetics are impeccable, from its loving recreations of real life fighter jets to its sweeping, gorgeo...
AIPT •

‘The Dissidents: Autocrats! Vigilantes! Communists! And Cartoonists!’ is passionate and unflinching

Derf Backderf knows the score. Over his decades-long career as a cartoonist and comics creator, Backderf has built a bibliography packed full of memorable, striking work. My Friend Dahmer, which Backderf based on his high school friendship with the future serial killer, is both humane and unsparing. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio examines the 1970 Kent State shootings with care and precision. Backderf’s latest, The Dissidents: Autocrats! Vigilantes! Communists! And Cartoonists!, is just as sharp...
AIPT •

‘Lovers of the Empire’ Vol. 1 peers into history through a fun romance and splendid fashion

The year is 1929. 19 years ago, the Empire of Japan annexed the Empire of Korea. Its capital was Gyeongseong, which is today Seoul. Many Koreans are poor. Some have become wealthy and powerful. The most successful Koreans in Gyeonseong showcase their wealth with modern, western-style education, fashion, and popular and culinary culture. This is the stage that artist and author Yudori (Raging Clouds) sets for Lovers of the Empire, her historical romance, newly published in English.Arisa Jo is the...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded’ #8 starts to unveil long-hidden secrets

A game is a collection of mechanics and rules, built to interact with each other and the players in a structured way. Ideally, the players have a good time thanks to the challenges that the structure creates. A great game is a work of art and a work of craft, built by the creative use and application of tools. Among those tools, few are as slippery as hidden information. In “Maps,” the 8th issue of DIE: Loaded, creators Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen reveal some of their secrets to both their...
AIPT •

‘Heaven’ sees Katie Skelly wrap a thoughtful coming of age in a bloody grindhouse mystery

Dolores “Dolly” Sanchez is not doing well. She’s stopped practicing gymnastics. Her parents are going through an acrimonious divorce. Dolly is isolated, lonely, and bordering on actively self-destructive. She finds a lifeline in a rumor. Allegedly, there is a strip club called Heaven on the edge of the edge of town. Half the time though, it doesn’t seem to exist. As Dolly’s mostly-estranged friend Jenny notes, a customer who had their world rocked one night found the club gone the next. Jenny an...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded’ #7 rolls up with a welcome return

It is great to have DIE: Loaded back in the game. Six issues in, the sequel to Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen’s so-called “Goth Jumanji” has consistently proven itself an excellent comic. Loaded’s first story arc, “Zero Sessions,” ended with a wallop of a turn. It was both surprising and made utter, terrible sense. DIE: Loaded #7, titled “Cosplay,” marks the start of “Git Gud,” the comic’s second arc. To make an admitted groaner of a joke, Hans and Gillen don’t need to git gud. They’ve been te...
AIPT •

‘The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time’ is beautiful and insightful, with grating stumbles

Remakes are a tricky endeavor, creatively. At their best, they’ll see a dedicated creative team finding a new angle on a beloved piece of work, or introducing a beloved project to a new audience. Think of the crew at CAPCOM who built Resident Evil’s mostly beloved remakes, or Type-Moon’s stupendous Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-. At their worst, they’ll fail to translate the success of the original work, or worse, end up as misconceived boondoggles.Metafiction is a tricky endeavor, creat...
AIPT •

‘Until Then: Afterimages’ Offers a Welcome Return to Polychroma Games’ Well-Written Adventure

Until Then, Polychroma Games’ 2024 coming-of-age/quantum physics and time-shenanigans-heavy science fiction adventure title was a damn fine game. Its protagonists were lovable and dimensional, with moments of grace and venality alike that consistently rang true. Its art was reliably striking. Its narrative skillfully combined coming-of-age and science fiction to push both in fun ways. In contrast, some of the minigames interspersed throughout the main game could be frustratingly finicky; Until T...
Hyperreal Film Club •

Power Ballad: A Song Not Worth Listening to More Than Once — Hyperreal Film Club

The song, “How to Write a Song (Without You),” explodes. It draws rave reviews, seizes ears the world over, and gets airtime anywhere and everywhere, including a mall where Rick happens to be buying some sneakers. He knows “How to Write a Song (Without You),” and not the way that everyone else on the planet knows it. He’s impressed with what Danny’s done with the piece, particularly its bridge, but he’d like his share of the writing credit. The money wouldn’t hurt either. The trouble is that Ric...
AIPT •

‘Dead as Disco’ Early Access Review: A stylishly satisfying beat-em-up with high potentials

Dead as Disco is done. Once, they were an eclectic and wildly creative band fronted by big-hearted drummer Charlie Disco. Now Charlie is long dead, and his bandmates have all found themselves working for the omnipresent Harmony Corporation. They’re still making music, but not together, and not for themselves. Everything they do, every song they sing, every fan they win, is for Harmony’s sake. Charlie would have hated that, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s dead, after all.Or he was dead, at an...
AIPT •

AIPT’s Top Picks from Summer Game Fest 2026

I can’t lie, this year’s Summer Game Fest might actually be the first time it felt as if E3 was back in spirit and in hope. From PlayStation kicking off the week with a massive State of Play lineup to the main Summer Game Fest showcase to XBOX spotlighting their own reveals, to indie games knocking it out of the park as usual, and to Nintendo wrapping it all up with a cherry on top through its hour-long direct. No stones were left unturned as there was something for every gamer this week, and at...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded Vol. 1: Zero Sessions’ proves itself no mere expansion pack

One story arc in and DIE: Loaded, Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen’s sequel to their excellent “Goth Jumanji” horror/fantasy comic DIE, has matched its predecessor play for play and turn for turn. Its first collection, Zero Sessions, honors the work that’s come before by breaking off from it. DIE is Loaded’s base, but not its blueprint. Where DIE was about a group of estranged friends who had to settle scores they did not think could be settled, Loaded is about a group of more-or-less strangers...
AIPT •

‘Usagi Yojimbo: Kaito ’84’ #3 strikes a winning balance between past and present

Jared Cullum and Zack Rosenberg’s Kaitō ‘84 was a fun riff on Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo for its first two issues, but both struggled with balancing the series’ new players and setting with paying homage to Sakai’s work. At its best, the series has introduced likable, compelling characters who riff on their in-story ancestors while being more than an edo-period samurai who happens to be wearing Air Force 1s. At its shakiest, it has devoted extensive page time to establishing that noble thief Kai...
AIPT •

‘Aphelion’ Misses its Moonshot

Aphelion, a new sci-fi adventure from DON’T NOD (Life is Strange, Jusant, and Lost Records), has a fair bit to recommend it, but is, ultimately, frustratingly unsuccessful. The opening hours are solid from a gameplay and narrative standpoint, and build to a compelling peak at the game’s mid-point. Its climax, however, is undone by an unwelcome combination of imprecision, jank, and poor set design in gameplay and a late shift in narrative focus from what had been the game’s core to a comparativel...
AIPT •

‘Everything in Color: A Love Story’ is an impeccably crafted comic autobiography

At their best, autobiographical comics are their creators’ study of themselves: their life as they’ve lived it, the connection between their artistry and their experiences, their examination of their self-perception. Their approaches to sequential storytelling are as key as the stories they choose to tell. In Zoe Thorogood’s peerless It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, for instance, Thorogood employs a wide range of styles to depict the assorted facets of her personality, from a self-portrai...
AIPT •

‘Usagi Yojimbo: Kaito ’84’ #2 risks slipping too far into Usagi Yojimbo’s shadow

Jared Cullum and Zack Rosenberg’s Kaitō ’84, their 1980s-set riff on Stan Sakai‘s legendary rabbit samurai comic Usagi Yojimbo, does a lot right. Cullum’s artwork riffs on Sakai’s style while building its own visual language. His character designs lean into the cast’s animal natures, and his action scenes emphasize physicality and force. His colors are sumptuous, whether he’s capturing a deep red twilight, the grimier corners of Osaka or a surreal, nightmarish vision of the distant past. Rosenbe...
AIPT •

‘Dead as Disco’ preview: A promising music brawler

Charlie Disco has returned from the dead. He wants answers from and vengeance on his former bandmates, who’ve become twisted by the power they wield as internationally adored idols. Consumed by narcissism and drunk on power, the idols’ response to their former friend’s rise from his grave is to try and kill him again. Charlie won’t have it, and so engages his one-time bandmates and their assorted goon squads in spectacular, on-beat beatdowns.Dead as Disco, which launches in early access on Steam...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded’ #6 flips the table

DIE, Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen’s reliably excellent horror/action/role-playing-game/Goth Jumanji comic, has never been shy about the works it was inspired by and in conversation with. The questions of inspiration, influence, and interpretation in story and gamecrafting are not as key to the story as the protagonists facing themselves in a world they were pulled into by the home-brewed tabletop role-playing-game DIE when they were teenagers, but they’re a consistent presence. Indeed, the f...
AIPT •

‘Romeo & Juliet and Godzilla’ lets down strong art with a disappointing script

Tom Scioli’s Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theater is a delight of a comic, combining inspired nonsense (In the Red Corner, Godzilla! In the Blue Corner, Jay Gatsby and the G-Force, including Sherlock Holmes, the Time Machinist, and Cyborg Jules Verne! From the skylight, with a steel chair, Dracula!) with beautiful, creative action and insightful riffs on The Great Gatsby’s title character. The newly launched Monsterpiece Theater Presents anthology takes its predecessor’s basic premise, Godzilla vs. c...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded’ # 5 swaps narrative playfulness for formal playfulness

Lao Tzu wrote this in the Tao Te Ching, as translated by Ursula K. LeGuin:
Are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are the leaders that people know and admire;
After them, those they fear;
After them, those they despise.
When the work’s done right,
With no fuss or boasting,

The DIE RPG rule book introduces its sixth and final character class, the Master, like so:

The Rules rule, and you rule the Rules. And you never, ever cheat.



Oh, this is the GM section. We can...
AIPT •

‘Kaitō ‘84’ #1 reinterprets Usagi Yojimbo for the 1980s

Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo is one of the great American comics. Wandering rabbit ronin Miyamoto Usagi’s adventures, be they one-shots, serials, or alternate universe tales, are reliably exciting and thoughtful. For my money, the series’ high points (Grasscutter and the long story told across Duel at Kitanoji, Travels with Jotaro, and Fathers and Sons) are about as close to perfect as comics get. While Usagi’s adventures are tales of Japan’s Edo period, over his 42 years in comics, the good-heart...
AIPT •

‘Scott Pilgrim EX’ is as much a delight for its world as its brawling

Tribute Games’ Scott Pilgrim EX feels like a homecoming. On one level, that’s literal: some of the studio’s members (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion) cut their teeth with 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, and now they’ve come back to their old (and, given the gameplay, literal) stomping grounds. Also back are New York pixel rockers Anamanaguchi, whose soundtracks to the game and the 2023 Science Saru anime Scott Pilgrim Takes Off  have shap...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded’ # 4 sketches the continuity of power fantasies

Four issues in, and Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen’s DIE: Loaded has consistently worked to craft a tale that twists and subverts the shape of the original DIE. Loaded‘s visual language for its unfortunate party and their powers run in opposite directions from the first series’ cast (Loaded‘s Dictator Margaret wields her horrifying powers ike a bomb, where DIE‘s Dictator Ash let their horrifying powers flow like water). Narratively, Loaded‘s cast are facing a world they know at best a sketch o...
AIPT •

‘DIE: Loaded’ #3 rolls for discomfort

One of the great pleasures of Stephanie Hans and Kieron Gillen’s horror fantasy comic DIE is their comfort with discomfort. The original series, which followed a group of estranged friends trapped in the world of a home-brewed tabletop role-playing game that they’d only barely escape as teenagers, regularly featured impressively thorny character work. Take, for instance, Ash, the character with perhaps the strongest claim to being the book’s overall protagonist. Throughout DIE, Ash struggled wit...
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