Name: joshua (arkadin)

Age: 27

Are you L, G, B, or T (or just friendly): Decidedly "G"

Relationship Status: Depends on who I'm impersonating at the time. I mean, single... I mean, in a relationship... I'M NOT A SKRULL!

Are you DC or Marvel: When I was a kid, all Marvel all the time. In high school, it was all about Vertigo. Now I go all over the place, depending on who's writing (and I dabble in manga, too).

Favorite Title, Author, and Artist: Of all time? Um... How about top three of each? In that case it's Sandman, Invisibles, Swamp Thing. Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman. Jeff Smith, Tim Sale, Darwyn Cooke.

Comic book character you would most want to date: I've always had a bit of a crush on Bobby Drake...

Hottest Comic book character: Oy. That's hard. Peter Parker's been drawn pretty well occasionally over the years, but when done right, nothing beats Bruce Wayne in a tux.

Superpower you would most want to have: Oh dear god invisibility. No contest.

Titles you currently read: I'm kinda one of those "wait for the trades" guys the industry hates, but I keep up with Grant's runs on Batman and All-Star Superman. Oh and all the Hellboy-related books.

If you were trapped in another reality which five books would you hope to have with you: The complete runs of the Sandman and the Invisibles for sure. The Bone one-volume edition. Watchmen. From Hell.

Other stuff about you: I'm a doctoral student in English literature at the University of Chicago, about to enter my orals examination year. My primary focus is modernism, but I do a lot of work with film as well, and am starting to read up on my theology in preparation for my dissertation. In a couple of years, I'll be teaching a course I create from scratch, and am setting up the pins to teach a course on the Mythos of the Superhero - we've had "Graphic Novel" courses taught here before, but they all focus on those "literary" books like Jimmy Corrigan and Persepolis and what have you. Nothing wrong with those books (other than Persepolis, which is either badly written or badly translated, I can't tell which), but I'm more interested in how the concept of the Superhero is getting short shrift. Part of it, I think, is the actual term "Graphic Novel," which, while we can thank it for giving comics a bit of street cred, also ended up artificially delimiting two separate genres - there were "Graphic Novels" which were serious and worthy of study and "Comic Books" which were not. This, as we all know, is hooey. So I plan to start the course with Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, and end up with, I suspect, Animal Man. Should be fun. ^^

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So there you have it - October's reader of the month. Cue the applause!