Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

Lena Dunham and the Renaissance of Archie Andrews (He’s Not Dead Yet)

First published on The Daily Beast, April 9, 2014. Read the original here.
Archie, that lovable doof, and his sweater set posse from Riverdale—Betty, Veronica, and Jughead—have long been bywords for the idealized adolescence of the Baby Boomers. What Norman Rockwell was to oil painting, Archie Andrews was to comic books. But with Archie himself slated [...]

Wonder Woman Makes a Triumphant Comeback in a New Comic Series

First published on The Daily Beast, March 13, 2014. Read the original here.
Amid all the recent kerfuffles at DC Comics—the Batwoman lesbian wedding that wasn’t, the brooding big screen reinvention of Superman, Ben Affleck’s controversial casting as Batman—it would be easy to overlook the most exciting reinvention in recent comic book history: Brian Azzarello and [...]

The Boy in the Suitcase

First published on The Daily Beast on January 4 2012. Read the original here.
Until recently, the term “Scandinavian import” evoked blond wood and incomprehensible instructions, not tightly packed and darkly intricate crime novels. Stieg Larsson’s Swedish shockwave The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo changed that, making northern Europe a hotspot for mystery—and [...]

On William Buehler Seabrook’s The Magic Island

First published in Tin House on March 1, 2011. Purchase the issue here.
Excerpt
I’m a sucker for a good monster-origin story. What’s Cujo without the rabies, Godzilla without the bomb?
So how about this: Imagine a man born at the end of the nineteenth century, the all-American son of a traveling preacher. He drives a French [...]

On Richard Halliburton’s The Glorious Adventure

First published in Tin House #45, Fall 2010.
I first came across Richard Halliburton during a layover in Brooklyn on my way from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New Orleans. I was moving because I’d failed to find work as a deckhand in the Caribbean, my goal for the winter. The main problem was I [...]

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