Marvel's "Skrull" Promo Art

Quick theoretical question:

What would it mean if all the characters on this promo piece for the Skrull Invasion really turned out to be Skrulls?

I mean, at the very least it would explain the last Howard the Duck mini.

Tips For The Overwhelmed Collector

I just went through my comic book collection the other day, tossed 1/4. I do this periodically with all my collections -- comics, books, DVDs, toys, even clothes. I do this because I know I have a tendency to be a pack rat. And knowing is half the battle.

Are you an overwhelmed collector? With the New Year upon us, now might be a great time to take stock.

1. Has your collection squeezed you out of essential living space?

2. Do you have parts of your collection either in your kitchen or bathroom -- not by choice?

3. Does your collection make you fill up with joy or dread?

4. Do you have visions of you passing away and your family struggling to get rid of all your stuff?

5. Do you want to relocate, but your collection has become so unwieldy that it would be cost-prohibitive to move it?

6. Do you keep stuff you feel no love for just because you think they might be valuable some day or just out of the principle that you must keep everything you buy?

7. Do you spend more time with your collection or other human beings?

8. When a piece of your collection gets damaged, do you get disproportionately upset?

9. Do you keep your collection in their original packaging and not touch or read them?

10. Have you ever skipped meals because of a financial deficit caused by a past, present, or future collection purchase?


It's fine to collect things. But we must not let our collections gets out of hand or distract us from what is really important in life. Here are some strategies:

A. Please keep in mind the Zen idea of Impermanence. Everything in this world is impermanent -- finite. Everything you own will eventually end up in thr trash heap. Everything you own will eventually get damaged and crushed and turn to dust. Even that museum-quality Iron Man helmet you bought.

B. Please keep in mind that YOU are impermanent. Your days are finite. Get a calculator and figure out roughly how many years, weeks, and days you might have left. I know that sounds ghoulish, but it's a wake-up call. Decide how you might want to enjoy your time left on Earth. Certainly reading comic books and the thrill and hunt of the collection are valid ways. But being obsessive over your collections or limiting the amount of time you spend with others might not be so valid.

C. Human beings grow and evolve; their possessions reflect that evolution, or they should. If you have surrounded yourself with He-Man figure from when you were a kid but you've psychologically moved past that era, those toys in-your-face are going to drag you down. Having one or two would be okay -- having Castle Grayskull mint in box in your living room while you have totally grown out of that is not okay.

D. If you are keeping the majority of your collection mint in package without touching them, you have a problem. Unless they are vintage Megos, in which case it's okay.

E. Comics and toys of past eras have ended up going up in price because back in the 40s-70s people were not that savvy about collecting for investment. But now they are. So the prices will never go up that much for new items. Unless they're Marvel Legends, in which case it's okay.

F. Every six months you need to go through your collections and cull 1/4 of them for irrelevant items. You need to be ruthless. Never keep comic books you feel "meh" about. Because comic books add up, multiply, have babies, take over your house.

G. Some comic books are worth more as recycled paper. Meditate on this one.

H. It is hard, but not impossible, to get a person to sleep with you when you have 300 pairs of action figure eyes staring down from the shelves in your bedroom. If you are considering sharing your life with somebody who may not be into the same hobbies as yourself, you might want to put those toys or hardcover collections of Witchblade in a den or living room instead.

I. If you want to get rid of large irrelevant parts of your collection but are agonizing about how to get rid of them for more than three months, go now and toss them in a garbage bag and just dump them and run away. Then come back and read the rest of my post.

J. A lot of times we purchase items for our various collections not out of a joy for the item being collected but out of a deep emotional need. Pay attention the next time you buy a comic book or toy or other collectible whether you are buying it because you will get enjoyment out of it or because you are feeling lonely/empty/bored. Learn to recognize the difference.

K. Never buy something because the purchased item might be useful/valuable for some indeterminate time in the future. Never buy a DVD if you have a stack you haven't watched yet. Never buy two of something for "investment." Never buy because you think your unborn child might get a big kick out of it when they're 30. Believe me, when they're 30, they'll be zipping around in their Jetsons cars.

Finally -- and this is more esoteric so bear with me -- the future will place less and less importance on owning "things." The trend will be not to have a big DVD collection but to either keep purchased copies on your hard drive or disc or to stream them anytime you want. As climate changes get more unpredictable and the economy more unstable, things like relocation becomes more and more an issue. You need to be flexible. You can't be burdened by tons of stuff in your house or apartment that impedes you from being mobile. If you have ever moved a big comic book collection, you know of which I speak.

People have been collecting objects they have an affinity for and amassing little libraries since ancient times. That's great. That's human. But -- like everything -- "all in moderation."

Except if it's those cute little wind-up robots from Japan, in which case it's okay.

"One More Day" and Reboots Vs. Generational Succession

(Sigh). You know, I really see what Marvel was trying to do with "One More Day"...

"Sync" The Comics With The Movies

In the future, comics will become more in service to the other media. It's hard to have a streamlined continuity in the movie and a highly-complicated one in the comic. The non-comic reader loves Spider-Man The Movie and then goes to read the comic and is completely confused.

And so the goal would seem, to an extent, to sync up these different media versions. And so we have a Spider-Man in the comic who is single and youngish and has Harry back as his Larry from Three's Company. Because that dynamic was successful in the movies and the movies reached a mass group of people and the goal of the comics is to reach that same mass.

Reaching The Youth Market
There is the burning need to reach out to new readership. The connection is made between "new readership" and Youth Culture. The idea is that a book about a married man cannot capture the imagination of Youth Culture. The idea is that a 16-year-old can only identify with a teenager, not a thirtysomething.

The "Dependable" Fan Vs. The New Reader
But then what becomes of the thirty- and forty- and fifty-somethings who have been following Spider-Man all this time? The assumption is that despite their complaints, they always come back...because they always do seem to come back. Because they're Fans. Because as Fans, and not as members of the fickle non-fan population, they are on a level addicted to these serialized adventures -- at least, this is the assumption.

I'm not saying that these observations and assumptions are The Way Things Should Be. I'm just saying that, if I had to take a guess, these are some of the complicated, market-driven concerns that might have gone into the planning for "OMD."

"Eternal" Superheroes


The bigger issue is the need for corporations to take their biggest branded characters and keep them eternally young and pure -- as opposed to letting them grow old and change. In this view, the same way Mickey Mouse doesn't grown white fur or Shaggy settles down with a respectable job, Spider-Man doesn't get married. In this view, these characters are considered sacred and eternal.

"End-Points" For HeroesA contrasting view would be that in all great mythologies and stories about heroes, the heroes grow and have a natural endpoint. Take Hercules, for example. Or Robin Hood or Gilgamesh. They don't adventure forever. But if you have a serialized format like the comic book, how do you work with this? Do you have the hero live out his adventures, be popular, and then die? And then you cancel the book?


Some might say, "yes," these characters should grow old and die. That it's their limitations born of time, aging & mortality that add value to their lives and their exploits.

The Drawbacks Of History Without Aging
This goes back to my theory concerning reboots and generational succession. Right now comic books are at a crossroads. The natural "end-points" for Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, et al are long past due. What that leaves in their wake are deeply complicated storylines and continuities. Think about it -- if you lived for 50+ years and never grew old but had constant adventures, wouldn't your own history be quite the labyrinthine epic?

Reboot or Generational Succession?


The comic book publishers, I believe, are faced with two options: Reboot or Generational Succession.

Marvel chose Reboot for Spider-Man.

Marvel might be choosing Generational Succession for Captain America.

The question is, which solution is better?

Because there has to be a solution.

Because "eternal character" + "unbroken continuity" eventually falls apart.

"I Really Loved You In American Beauty, Mr. Cusack."

Oh, dood:



Film student interviews John Cusack, mistakes him for Kevin Spacey in "American Beauty." Or worse -- mistakes him for Wes Bentley in "American Beauty."

Other famous John Cusack movies:
"Jerry Maguire"
"Fight Club"
"Mystic River"
"The Departed"
"Walk the Line"
"Cinderella Man"
"Requiem For A Dream"
"Scream 2"
"Ferris Bueller's Day Off"
"Roadhouse"
"I Am Sam"
"The Rocketeer"
"Saving Private Ryan"
"Casper"
"Rashomon"
"The Pianist"
"Scary Movie IV"
"The Octagon"
"The Great Train Robbery"

Fangirl Fridays: The "Thank You For Buying Countdown!" Edition

What is it with comic book fans using the word "rape" and "sodomy" in connection to storylines and reboots they don't like?

"You raped my childhood!"

"They committed sodomy on the fans!"

"They're asking the long-time readers to bend down and take it!"

Now, I totally understand the rage and anguish fans have over seeing beloved characters retconned out of existence or shot in the head. But why this reoccurring sexual imagery?

Then there is the phrase "continuity porn" -- one I tend to favor myself.

How did "porn" get in there? It's just Booster Gold talking to that little damned robot.


I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and lay out some online PR strategies I think comic book companies might use to their advantage.

1) Sure, by all means have somebody from your team go on message boards as "fans" and counter the bad press. That should be part of your overall PR strategy. It happens all the time. But make sure they are people versed somewhat in actual PR training or methodology. And I'm talking current PR methodology. You can't go on a thread with your brand new spanking "Newbie" Comic Book Resources persona and counter the sea of negative reactions by posting: "No, BLANK COMIX is awesome! I'm so excited about it! You should buy it!"

First of all, you have no cred in that online community whatsoever. Very few to none posts, not so much as a "hello!" on the Introductions thread. And so you carry your unpopular opinion with you to this board or blog, and just drop it in their laps. It's the equivalent of farting in a crowded room, folks.

Such PR needs far more subtlety and a conversational tone. You should gently explain why BLANK COMIX! is, despite popular opinion, worth buying. Create a slight doubt in the naysayer's mind. Be respectful. Above all, be human.

2) Shutting down threads and fan websites is pretty much the worst PR you could possibly create. I know you feel you are "controlling" the publicity flow. But you control the publicity flow (to the extent it is even possible) by interacting with the fans, especially those who are negatively regarding your comic. Silencing and remaining silent never ever helps. By dialogue you defuse.

3) Some editors and talent are natural PR people themselves. They have sparkling, jovial personalities, are popular with fans, and possess a certain instinct as to what and what not to say. Others, however, are trainwrecks. Learn to distinguish between the two. You give a trainwreck their own unedited editorial page or sprawling Newsarama interview at your own risk.

4) Today's consumers don't like to be "sold" to. They are bombarded by sales pitches in the form of 1 billion commercials and ads every day -- on TV, in the newspapers, pasted on taxis, flashing all over their computer screen. They come to their comic book media outlet to get away from all that, to derive a little bit of pleasure from their favorite hobby.

After a while, your numerous previews on Newsarama, Wizard, and Comic Book Resources lose all impact and meaning. The readers think you are in bed with these websites; that is their perception. This perception hurts both the website and your product. It produces apathy.

You would be far, far more successful by approaching Scans Daily or a specially-selected group of personal blogs and write them a personal e-mail inviting them -- asking if they would be so kind -- to post these exclusive pages.

And then use your connections with Newsarama and the rest to run a completely different type of story on your book. Use an interesting angle. Tie it in to current events. Make a poll or contest. Something. Just make that "something" intriguing and unique.

5) Admit when you've failed. Don't get defensive. Whatever you do, don't get hostile or defensive. Or arrogant. Acknowledge popular opinion and then explain how what you are doing from now on differs from that. Try the "It's A Whole New Era" approach. Even if the distance between eras are a few issues apart.

6) Yes there is a big untapped female market out there, yes you have no clue, yes you've continued to alienate and horrify them, yes even when they buy your superhero comics they are often ashamed to be seen with them in public. No I'm not giving you free insights on how to change this.


Here is a Zen parable for you to consider:


There was a time when this was the biggest selling comic book in the world. Meditate. Then take a bath.

Occasional Links: The Custom Supergirl Edition

This cartoon from Something Positive reflects on the beloved institution of the comic book universe known as The Girlfriend:



Need Coffee points out that somebody is selling these cute little I Heart Warren Ellis T-Shirts on Amazon.com...
Which reminded me of some other cute T-Shirts for sale...


Marvel & the UN are teaming up for a comic to boost the international organization's image:

In a move reminiscent of storylines developed during the World War II, the U.N. is joining forces with Marvel Comics, creators of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, to create a comic book showing the international body working with superheroes to solve bloody conflicts and rid the world of disease.

See, now Marvel should just get the rights to GI Joe and just go to town spreading Pro-America goodness all throughout the continents and fight teh Cobra.


Some of the first official Incredible Hulk movie images are being released...

This new movie -- not a sequel -- differs from Ang Lee's version in the sense that after Bruce gets hit with the radiation, he becomes this dude:



As you may or may not know, customizing action figures to fit your character of choice (or make a better version of another company's crappy one) has become quite the move. But I thought I saw everything when I came across these mods based on the Ape Entertainment series Sullen Grey. Marvel Legends never has a figure that sported a Bauhaus T-Shirt before...


And from the sublime to the gratuitous panty shot, we have this custom Supergirl action figure...

Hey, don't get me wrong, a realize to some people that little swatch of white cotton -- that virginal Playtex triangle -- is exciting. But it's a little creepy too.

Well that's it for now at Occasional Links. And remember, kids:

"Will You Be Our Token Female?"

Can I vent here for a second?

So I get approached by this site to pitch column ideas. And they're even offering to pay me, etc.

They approached me and said, basically, "we looked around us and saw that we didn't have any female writers. So we are coming to you because we are looking for a column from a female perspective."

And so I initially thought, "well, fine. that's cool."

And from a marketing standpoint I simply knew they were looking for "Ms. Sassy Female's Female Comic Book Female Female Reviews Comic Book Grrl!"

And you know, I just didn't want to give them that pitch. I mean, I wanted the money and all. But there was just something inside me that resented it.

So I gave them a totally gender-neutral pitch, saying that while the views in the column would of course be from a female perspective (me being female), that's not what the focus would be on.

No dice. And why should it go over? If you have an entire slate of male writers, and you are approaching me because you want to fill that lone female slot (oh, is that a pun?), you damned well better get some estrogen, right?

No, approach me because I am a talented writer, because I kick ass with my writing. Because my writing can be, on occasion, witty. And if you don't feel that way, and you don't think I have the chops, don't $##$%@ approach me so I can be your token female!

You know, in my other industry (the one that pays me money), I get hired and retained based on the amount of hits and links I generate for my client. It's a veritable science. There are charts and numbers. And you know, I like that. I really, really do. Because my gender doesn't factor into it. My skills are what matter, the results I generate.

But I don't want to be a token female. You know how those action figure lines would have that one token female? And she would either be really butch or a total half-naked victim/princess? I don't want to be that action-figure.

Occasional Links: The Chun-Li Edition

What do you get when you combine She-Ra, Transformers, and good ol' cheapo toy company ingenuity?

Yes. It's good. It's full of WIN.

Do WANT.


Follow-up on DC's "let me introduce you to our backlist" response to critcism of their current monthly titles:

“We love our passionate readers who spend from $1,000 to $1,500 a year on comics, but there’s a lot more people who are willing to pay $300 or $400 a year on graphic novels and luxury editions.”

--Paul Levitz

Now, this is, to an extent, a sound strategy. The real money, in my opinion, IS in the backlist.

But you need to develop & expand your backlist. A good, well-written story will yield $ regardless of format or media.

And a backlist should reflect the best a company has to offer.

Is an Amazons Attack hardcover justified? Does DC want this hardcover to be a non-comic book reader's entry-point into the Wonder Woman mythos?

And why is BATMAN the focal point of the Amazons Attack cover? Just to confuse branding even more?


Nicolas Cage wants a Ghost Rider sequel:

"All they have to do is call," said Cage. "I would love to see that happen. That would be fun."

He's adorable, isn't he?







Dear Marvel,

Where Is my NEW WARRIORS Omnibus Hardcover, collecting the first 25 issues of this exceptional series by Nicieza and Bagley?

Best,
Valerie

PS: I will settle for a trade paperback.



Smallville's Lana Lang will be Chun-Li in the new Street Fighter movie, Comingsoon.net reports.

In other news, there is going to be a new Street Fighter movie.



Video: Still the best Street Fighter movie:

"Comic Books Will Destroy You"

How many times have I heard variations of this theme from old-time collectors, veteran comic book writers, jaded editors?

How many times?

That's what I thought about as I read EZ-STREET by Robert Tinnell & Mark Wheatley on Comic Mix. (The entire graphic novel is being serialized there for free, by the way).


I quoteth from EZ-STREET:

...I'm trying to save you from a lifetime of misery.

See -- you can be really, really good at something-- anything-- when it comes to the arts-- and it won't matter.

It's all about networking and ass-kissing and--

Frankly, it's about surviving. Winning the war of attrition. Which takes resources...

I'm not being mean. I'm telling you this because I like you...

You need to give this shit up right now. Before it's too late.

Do you want to be thirty-five years old owning nothing but deft on a credit card? Trying to break into a business you love? And finally realizing the dirty little secret--

That it doesn't love you back?!

Compare this to other off-the-record quotes I've heard in my career:

"Once you hit a certain age, you're not the flavor-of-the-month anymore. They want the flavor-of-the-month. The editors, they want to be rock stars. They want to hang out with beautiful, interesting people. And it doesn't matter if you can do the job, or what you did for them in the past. You're nothing to them anymore."

*** *** ***

"Look, if Michelangelo stepped into this office right now, I couldn't give him work unless he was a big name. I can only use big names."

*** *** ***

"Sorry I didn't make it in for the meeting today, but my arm just got numb for no reason. Doctor wanted to check it out. It was weird."

and later, the same person,

"They found me unconscious on my bathroom floor. For no reason. One moment you're awake and the next you're not."

and later, the same person,

"I'm just going to put my time in, and get out. Just another couple of years is all."

*** *** ***

"The problem is that they think comic books owes them. That's the problem with hiring fans."

*** *** ***

"I don't hate the man. But he was an alcoholic and bi-polar and he made the lives of everyone around him miserable. And yeah, I guess I hated him."

*** *** ***

"He never recovered from having to do that. He was too nice."

*** *** ***

"And then after she was fired she had all her belongings put out in the hallway for people to take."

"Did she give her time to take her stuff?"

"Nope. I think there's still stuff there. Do you want to come see if there's anything left?"

*** *** ***

"And nobody even had the decency to tell me about the new team. I had to find out on Newsarama."

*** *** ***

"And I asked them why I wasn't being hired anymore, give me a reason. I mean, what else am I good at?"

*** *** ***

(gesturing to his office)

"One day I'm getting out and selling all this on eBay. And I'm going to live like a king. I may even go to the Bahamas."

*** *** ***

"F**k that s**t, I do commercial art now."

*** *** ***

About a fairly famous comic writer:

"He's not that great a writer. But he's a great networker. He knows just what to say. And that's how he built this."

*** *** ***

"So everybody gets laid off except the same core people who have been drinking with each other every week. Funny how that works out."

*** *** ***

"I made him what he is today. Back then, he was just this greasy, nerdy fan. Didn't know how to dress. I had to teach him how to dress!"

"I-isn't that him two tables down?"

"S**t!"

*** *** ***

"I remember he picked up this desk and just threw it into the wall. And he was the type of quiet, serious guy who didn't do things like that."

*** *** ***

Heard multiple times about numerous persons:

"He's a brilliant artist. Too bad he's on the coke."

*** *** ***

"So one day he calls three of us into his office. And my friend tells me, 'you know, he's going to fire us. And I'm okay about it, but I'm worried about BLANK. I think BLANK, when he hears this, is going to break his neck. And so I need you to do something. If BLANK makes a move like he's going to break his neck, you gotta help me hold him back. You hear me? I'm serious, man. BLANK's gonna kill that mother f**ker. Promise me you'll help me hold him back!'"

*** *** ***

"I'm going to put these letters back here. And so if I die, you'll have proof of who did it."

*** *** ***

(announced multiple times)

"That's it. Today's the day I'm going to quit. I mean it. You'll have to do all this stuff yourself for now on, sorry. You'll have to tell them I moved on."

(never did it)

*** *** ***

"Great artist, horrible human being."

*** *** ***

"Great writer, horrible human being."

*** *** ***

"Great editor, horrible human being."

*** *** ***

"Have you ever heard the one about Wally Wood?"

*** *** ***

Advice on writing comics:

"Read books, dammit! You already read enough comics. Read some f**king books!"

*** *** ***

"But when all is said and done, I really believe he loves those characters."

Occasional Reviews: Buy Ms. Marvel & She-Hulk!

She Hulk #24
Writer: Peter David
Artists: Shawn Moll & Victor Olazaba

Ms. Marvel #22
Writer: Brian Reed
Artists: Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan

The current arcs of She-Hulk & Ms. Marvel are surprisingly introspective and sensitive works in the sense that a lot of attention is paid to the psyche of the superheroines in question. I hesitated to type the last line for fear that unless I wrote "She-Hulk becomes a celestial goddess with the mind of a fetus who is emotionally enslaved by Cosmic Spider-Man" the books might lose that all-important "mass appeal" cachet. And that would be a shame.


Which brings me to a broader (see, I said "broad," I made a funny) point --

I do not believe that superheroine comics that are not simply cheesecake vehicles can survive depending on the "usual" Wizard Magazine reader demographic alone. Comic books starring complex, strong, clothed females need a broader (puns I have a million of 'em) reader base. They need a more vocal reader base. They need a reader base that communicates with the publishers in question & let them know when they're doing it right.

Because the fact is, if books like She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and the current Wonder Woman and Benes-less Birds of Prey fail, they communicate to the publishers that positive superheroines don't sell books. What is even more crucial, if Birds of Prey with its new female artist Nicola Scott fails, or if Wonder Woman with scribe Gail Simone fails, that will also communicate that "women can't sell comics."


Never mind the other factors. Never mind marketing (or lack thereof). Never mind previous successful track records. I'm telling you, that's how it is perceived when the higher-ups have the numbers of sold books in their hands. And in the end, while I think the fact of the gender involved does make things a bit more complicated, it all boils down to those numbers.

But the Ms. Marvel "The Monster and the Marvel" & She-Hulk "Jaded" storylines are the sort of complex, textured character-studies of superheroines that critics complain they don't see enough of. Carol Danvers and Jennifer Walters are active, independent, and hard to pin down. They aren't mentally-fragile Suicide Girls or "full-bodied women" with the brains of newborns.


But hey..."Suicide Girls: The Comic." That would make a lot of money, wouldn't it? I mean, the idea is pure genius. And that's the tragedy of it in a nutshell. As a marketer, I know that "Suicide Girls: The Comic" would sell a million copies. It's a great license for a comic book company. It would get a ton of PR, and sell a million copies. Even if the art was so-so. They could even skip the art and go straight to a fumetti, just use photos and word balloons like those soft-core porn mags from the 1970s.
She-Hulk & Ms. Marvel could easily become cheesecake books on the level of Red Sonja and Shanna the She-Devil and sell a lot more copies. But then you soil these strong characters. Do I think in the past some of the covers of each title were devised to "reach out" to the cliche fanboy Wizard Magazine readership? Sure. Do I think DC's Catwoman has sexed-up covers by Adam Hughes in order to attract that very same readership? Sure.

But see, that strategy ultimately fails because you've enticed the readers with boobies on the cover and then there's no or not enough boobage inside. It's false advertising.


In the end, like I said, it comes down to numbers. Sales. If we do not support books like She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Wonder Woman now, we cannot complain. The companies have room for only one "superheroine" book each to "carry." And those are currently Spider-girl & Manhunter. Those are good-will superheroine books that are carried by publishers irrespective, to an extent, of sales. They meet the quota. Everything else comes down to numbers.

Only when a comic book starring a white heterosexual male gets cancelled, nobody questions whether white heterosexual males can really "sell" comics.

And that's why, along with the quality of the titles, I'm pushing for Ms. Marvel & She-Hulk. Plus, it looks like Ms. Marvel might be a Skrull according to some solicitations art. And She-Hulk's sidekick is a Skrull. You like Skrulls, don't you? What role will they play in the great "Invasion" event? Ooohhh, don't you want to find out? Captain America might come back! And Irving Forbush!

Occasional Links: The Mr. Rogers Lovefest Edition

Heidi Meeley points out in her blog the discrepancies between the original solicited Catwoman #74 cover...
and the final one:
At the risk of falling into a pit of my own hard-won cynicism and cold-blooded marketing analysis so soon after the holidays, I will temporarily keep my mouth shut and invoke the following:



It's never really good when they can Google "Your Name + Hitler" and come up with several pages worth of hits.
I don't feel that Will Smith meant to say that the Nazi dictator was Awesome with an A, but when you're doing a press junket for a so-so I Am Legend remake during Christmas time, there's no need to get into strained metaphors utilizing genocidal maniacs. I don't want a history lesson from Smith, Brad Pitt, or even Sean Penn. Well, maybe one from Ellen DeGeneres, because she's so damn pleasant.



Did you know that Cathy Lee Crosby of That's Incredible fame was the original TV Wonder Woman? I was trying to forget this, personally.


Over at Digital Femme, Cheryl points out that Misty Knight has lost her trademark Afro:

I liked the fact that Misty was a character who was secure enough and loved herself enough that she wasn't going to dump a vat of caustic lye on her head or risk scarring herself with hot metal in order to look acceptable.

This reminds me of when I was twelve and sitting next to an African-American girl at the beauty parlor. She was having her hair straightened, and I was having a perm. Why can't females be loved for who they truly are, dammit?! See, now I'm going to be cranky all day.

Incidentally, when I saw the title of another Cheryl post, "Yo, OS Heads!", I really didn't click the link thinking it was about me.

Really. I'm not that egotistical.

Really.




Fast on the heels of the "Fatgate" controversy, Jennifer Love Hewitt feeds the homeless in a heavily-covered media event. Is this her (or her publicist's) way of symbolically saying, "I don't stuff my face, I stuff the face of others?"

UH-OH!!!! MY CYNICISM IS COMING BACK! QUICK:



Kids, if you don't like the way your current comic books are written, remember:


See, here is where I think DC marketing is brilliant. By currently producing some lackluster titles now, consumers are forced to turn to where the money *really* is -- in the backlist. Monthly copies at your comic shop are mere pennies to a big corporation, whereas Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com net the big cash -- and with mainstream audiences, too.

Of course, in several years when the amount of trade-paperback worthy new material dwindles, there may be a little gap in quality backlist. But there will still be plenty of readers who haven't been introduced to Watchmen, Kingdom Come, and Batman tales from the 1940s.

And let's face it, all the mainstream companies are putting out expensive collected editions of stuff whether the sales or quality warrants it or not. It's standard now to, in many cases, plan the collected edition at the same time the original is being produced. If it has a gorgeous cover, beautiful binding, and shrinkwrap it MUST be worth that $25 or $30 or $50, right?

And where will DC's next ground-breaking works of art like Watchmen, Dark Knight, Kingdom Come, Batman Year One, Starman, or V for Vendetta come from? And does it really matter?


And now: THE KINKS!

Holiday Round-Up

Have you ever tried to buy a Christmas tree the day before Christmas? We settled on a tasteful white wire tree, about four feet tall, covered in little lights.

"Can we hang ornaments on this tree?"

(consulting instructions) "Well, it says here not to hang ornaments on wire, cord, or lights."

"Does wire mean the branch?"

"That's not much of a branch."

Well, it looks lovely in the dark.

Presents were exchanged to the sound of a selection of holiday music on ITunes. When it was over, there were the remains of numerous hastily-opened Marvel Legends packages all over the room. Thank God they don't put those in that clamshell packaging anymore.


Santa was very nice to me this year. First off, I received a copy of World's Greatest Toys: Mego 8"Super-Heroes. This is an insanely researched coffee-table book about Mego action figures featuring giant Chip Kidd-esque photos of the toys on detail. Let me tell you, many of these toys were not meant to be blown up to that size. The Captain America doll has staring googly eyes like a Keane painting. But I really enjoyed the book, and stated my intention to start investing our savings in mint Megos on the Kresge card, which went over well.


Next, I got a Mary Marvel action figure in her white "variant" dress. This is before she became a filthy evil slut. I like the Captain Marvel line of action figures in general, and have put the two-pack with "Hoppy" next on my list.

Finally, I got a microwave oven. Microwave ovens are one of those things you take for granted until you do not have them. Actually, the oven I had before this was an inherited item, about the size of a Buick, and covered in faded wood tone. We called it The Cancer Oven. So this present was much appreciated, and best of all it accommodated the scope of my cooking ability.

Christmas morning brought waffles and the WPIX Yule Log. By 12:00 it was announced that "Christmas is over, back to work." But as of 8:40 this morning, I feel as if I am still there, somewhere, in that Yuletide paradise. I think it's the damn tree.

Occasional Links: YouTube Yule Log Edition

If your holiday DVD collection is a bit on the sparse side (like mine -- I mean how many times can I watch that South Park Mr. Hanky special?), YouTube is a great resource.

Christmas TV Special Montage: When it got to Full House, I started blubbering away.

Vintage Toys R Us CommericalFrom the 1970s: Toys R us and Christmas were always inextricably linked in my mind. It's the greed factor, I know.

Erasure's Andy Bell and Melissa Etheridge sing X-Mas: Worst Lip-Synch Ever!

Cingular's Christmas Story Parody Ad: "You'll poke your eye out with that cell phone!"

DirecTV "Movie Villains" Christmas Ad:


The Monkees Go Christmas Tree Shopping: And looking damn cool doing it!

A Pac-Man Christmas (abridged version): Thankfully edited so you don't waste too much of your life.

Star Wars Holiday Special: Also thankfully edited. With the Jefferson Starship!

"A Better Or For Worse" Christmas: No, I didn't know they made this one, either.

Barking Pee Wee Herman "Jingle Bells": Yes. Exactly.

A Charlie Brown Heavy Metal Christmas

A Charlie Brown "Scrubs" Christmas

A Charlie Brown Christmas Alternate Ending (NSFW)

A Charlie Brown Pulp Fiction Christmas

Eric Cartman Sings "Oh Holy Night": Sublime. One of my favorites.

That Rankin Bass X-Mas Cartoon With The Mouse: You know the one.

That Tom And Jerry Cartoon Where Tom Almost Lets Jerry Freeze To Death: (shudder)

"The Snowman": Fast-forward to around 9:30 to see him all melted. And that's the end of the cartoon. Damn intellectual cartoons!

Carl Sagan's Global Warming Christmas Special: With Tom Hanks as Dean Martin.

An Andy Williams NBC Kids Christmas Special: With Punky Brewster, the Cosby Kids, and a young Joey Lawrence!

You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch, "House" Style:


Christmas With Harley Quinn

Child Gets Nintendo 64 for Christmas, Goes Insane: Nope, this holiday isn't getting too materialistic.

A Foamy Christmas (NSFW)

Lobo ParaMilitary Christmas Special (NSFW): Remember Lobo? He was cool once.

Santa Claus Pwns The Martians

Scared of Santa Claus: Montage of photos of kids scared by department store Santas

Santa Claus Is Watching You by Ray Stevens: Stalking is apparently prime humor fodder.

Frosty the Snowman Meets Al Gore (NSFW)

Urban Legend: Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Swimming Bird Death Plunge

Cute Little Bird Rides Christmas Train

Red Bull Christmas Commerical: Three Wise Men give Red Bull to baby Jesus, claims it has angelic powers.

And Let's Not Forget The YouTube Yule Log:

Poll: Which One Of These Is The New Captain America?

Marvel has officially announced six (count 'em SIX) candidates to fill in ol' Wing Head's boots. Vote in the poll to the right to make your choice heard. I mean, not that Marvel is going to change who it is just because you said so. I mean, the story is probably already written, even pencilled! But at least you will have enjoyed the thrill which is participating in a poll. And really, isn't that what America is all about?

Comic Book Trending For The Coming Years

Here are some comic industry trends/predictions I anticipate for the next couple of years. I don't base any of it on things I have specifically heard from other people, though in some cases I have analyzed news and data in the media to come up with these predictions. Also, I have to warn you that some of this is wrapped up in "jargony" business terms which might be kinda boring.

* In a year or so, it will pretty much feel as if the "One More Day" Spider-Man storyline never happened. Not that OMD will be reversed, but that the new continuity will be accepted and things will just move on. While I don't see a huge "Spidermania" spike (like, say, an "X-Men" #1), the books will be solid sellers and I don't see them going down in readership.

* "Final Crisis" will probably have a slight sales advantage over the "Skrull Invasion" event, especially in terms of a short-term sales spike.

* I see DC focusing more on acquiring hot artists than maintaining core writers. The idea being that it's a win-win situation: they can have more control over their storylines while at the same time grabbing readership (and presumably the attention of the not-insubstantial Wizard/Newsarama audience) with flashy art talent. In this sense, DC might "switch" roles with Marvel -- Marvel focusing more on writer-spawned books by people like Brubaker, Bendis, and Slott.

* I see Marvel grabbing some defecting DC writers; which might be significant in that these might be writers that are considered classically "DC."

* Rather than developing its own "Zuda" like initiative, I see Marvel more likely to acquire an already functioning & thriving webcomic company.

* Across the board I see more outsourcing of "extra-curricular" publishing enterprises -- rather than depending on internal development. For example, while a venture like Minx has been developed internally, in the future new publishing offshoots would be done by outside contractors or "packagers."

* Following trends in the workforce in general, there will probably be more outside agents/freelancers/vendors helping to put out the comic books than internal on-site staff. In the future -- say, within three years -- the new editor of a title may not be chosen by who on the staff would do the best job, but which freelance editor might be best for that specific project. Rather than shaping the project to fit the staff, staff is sought externally to fit the project.

* I see an outside business venture/merger/restructuring more effecting DC than any proposed Final Crisis "reboot" might. The biggest changes will not come from editorial planning but larger business strategy in response to change.

* I see Marvel being connected with a huge Time Warner level company within two years. I don't see this as much as a corporate father-child situation as in TW/DC but with Marvel bringing a bit more to the table -- more like a brother-sister situation.

* I don't see Wildstorm getting cut off from DC so much as functioning more as a manager of new or existing publishing imprints & licensed products. They will not so much come up with the concepts themselves, but be assigned them and asked to work within certain parameters. The biggest change would be the center of power & decision-making. I don't see there being a separate "Wildstorm Universe" anymore, either.

* I see the need for a separate "Ultimates" universe as getting more and more reduced. I see Marvel working towards its own "Crisis" like event with the purpose of consolidating the multiple versions of their characters and thus reducing brand confusion. I see DC heading pretty much in the same direction, in terms of consolidation & simplifying continuity.

* I see adaptations of the comics more and more dictating and setting the direction of the comics themselves. In that sense, as much as the comic books are theoretically "research and development" for the movies, the movies (the successful ones, at any rate) dictate the content and direction of the comics. This has of course been happening for a while now, but it will be more pronounced and obvious.

* The online comics media will get largely bought up/sponsored by larger interests. This means several things. More staff/columnists will get paid. More of a demand for "quality" articles and columns. Bigger budgets. More of a pop-culture aspect integrated in order to maximize audience. I don't see any of this leading to a more "hard-hitting" investigative journalism, though their might be an increased focus on "Lying in the Gutters" type rumor columns (because they're fun).

* A bunch of prominent blogs will either be sponsored by/moved over to larger venues or be stopped/put on hiatus/reduced in posting frequency. Factors: Google ads/web ads boom is over, bloggers getting older with more responsibilities. Larger factor -- the blog "boom" is dying out to the extent that instead of everybody & his mother doing them, only the hardcore will continue. Blog use largely gets co-opted by the media and marketing forces. The average person may wish instead to more quickly broadcast their happenings through a streamlined Facebook type format. The Facebook/fully-integrated format will become more popular than out-and-out blog use. This does not mean that blogs are dying out. It just means that people will turn to different online applications & formats to express themselves.

* Back to Wildstorm -- I see most of DC licensed product, including children's material, finding their way to Wildstorm or another outside studio/branch/packager. This also works well because a lot of the licensees are on the West Coast where Wildstorm is.

* I see DC doing more of a premium "Archive Edition" release of key titles in digital format, for purchase on DVD. I don't see them doing an opening of the "archives" online as Marvel is doing. I see this as because DC regards their backlist as highly valuable in the reprint market, which is true. "Invisibles" is worth far more to them as a series of trade paperbacks than as a digital online comic.

* Conversely, I see Marvel going even further in the digital comic arena. I see that as something they wish to corner the market on and perfect. It would be more likely for Marvel to start offering some of their first-run mainstream titles online than DC -- and I see Marvel doing this on a regular basis in a couple of years.

* MySpace as we know it is largely dead, except as a venue for teens and rock bands. Not specifically comic-related, but I thought I would just toss that chestnut out there. Oh yeah, and Facebook me.

* There will be an overall "youth oriented" style/approach that has been born of manga but will surpass manga. A company would be better served researching & developing that "youth culture" dynamic/aesthetic than simply glomming on to manga. The manga boom is over. Any company who wants to seize the youth market has to be intuitive enough to anticipate that next step.

* The next hot comic format is oversized/portfolio/tabloid/omnibus edition. Stop making little bitty digests, they are dying out. Just because you put it in a cute little book format doesn't mean you have instant kid appeal, though it might rack up better in a bookstore.

* I see Dynamite Entertainment being the next big company. I'm talking in terms of talent, licenses, mainstream appeal, and the acquisition of other companies' characters.

* There might be a weird "reshuffling" of certain characters to other companies. It might feel downright unsettling.

* Marvel gets the GI Joe license again. Okay, this one is more wishful thinking than anything else. But I can dream, can't I?

* If you noticed that I haven't talked too much about Countdown/Final Crisis, it's probably because I see other factors that eclipse it and the importance of whether The Flash will be rebooted or not. I see change. The sales will probably be very decent for Final Crisis. The Countdown issues that lead into it will probably be on a much higher level of quality. The last issue of Countdown might even break sales records, and I would expect a cliffhanger of gargantuan proportions. I just see DC heading into a new overall directional phase and philosophy, especially as it pertains to their superhero titles.

* I also see change for Marvel, but it's more evolutional and planned-out than the change for DC might be. I think if I had to categorize Marvel, I would say that they have been anticipating change in the industry, models of product delivery, and needs of the public for some time now. With DC it will be more about a radical streamlining and pruning. But with Marvel it will be more of letting things change in stages, a continuity of change. And I'm not going to say one approach is better than the other. The proof will be in the comic shops.

Top Ten Angsty X-Mas Moments

For such a festive holiday, there are an awful amount of angsty and uncomfortable moments in pop-culture Christmas celebrations:

10. A Christmas Story Boy gets tongue stick on pole.
This scene was the "Saw" or "Hostel" of my eight-year-old life.
Left much to the imagination, none of it good.

9. A Christmas Carol There are so many morbid scenes in this story:
dead Marley in chains, Tiny Tim dies, Scrooge gets dragged into Hell.
The happy ending seems to be tacked-on after Victorian focus-groups complained.

8. The Snowman Spoiler alert: this classic cartoon (they always play it on public television) ends
with the "Frosty" stand-in melting away to nothing in front of the kid. The end.
Life's tough, little kid! And snow melts! Get used to it!

7. "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" 'Nuff said.

6. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

That big white giant with the pointy teeth was really scary...
but not as scary as that train with square wheels. Very David Lynch.
And what was wrong with that girl doll, anyway? I never got that.

5. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

The evil Burgomeister declares war on Santa and kids everywhere.
Burns toys, declares death to every first born child. Too much drama.

4. It's A Wonderful Life Jimmy Stewart tries to commit suicide -- instant family holiday classic!

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas Charlie kills the tree. Blockhead.

2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Grinch steals Christmas, abuses dog.

1. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" A toe-tapper until you realize that it's about starving children. Then the guilt starts.

Bonus: No room at the inn.

Why The Death of Connor Hawke Bothers Me

Okay, here's a list:

1. After the fast one that was pulled on us with Green Arrow, I can't even tell if Winick is serious.

2. Roy Harper is pretty redundant as Red Arrow. At least as a doper or as the poor schmoe in love with a crazy assassin he had something that stood out. But Connor was soooooo much more unique and marketable than him.

3. Yes, I said "marketable." I know to refer to an ethnic character as "marketable" is shocking -- most action figures I suppose should be of white men. But Connor was a very attractive character with a great costume design. He was instantly recognizable. Whereas Red Arrow is boring. Yeh, I said it -- boring.


4. I've always felt that these "ethnic" reboots/versions of established characters would get phased out eventually. I realize that it's a cynical thing to say. But intuitively I could just anticipate it. And I feel killing off Connor sets a precedent.

5. Yes, Connor Hawke was a character that truly had an ambiguous sexuality. Never mind that Peter Parker speculation..this was the real deal. Even the editors knew it. I think he was even close to actually being officially bisexual -- though in the end that never happened. But the fans "adopted" him as being bi. And that's another reason I think Connor was so unique -- and a character with a lot left to explore and write about.

6. This comes too soon after the whole Green Arrow thing. It's like the method used to write these characters is one extreme event after another. I don't think this benefits either Green Arrow or Black Canary. It just smacks of not knowing these characters and not knowing how to write them.



Oh, but I'm sure that the sales will spike.

Whatta Revoltin' Development This Is!

But when I heard "Billie Jean" play on the radio at the local coffee shop the other day, I tapped my feet -- I really did.

Occasional Links: The Misfit Toys Edition

Captain America: Fun With Flags

You get points if you can recognize which flag is on the newly-designed Captain America's chest...


Toy Hall Of Fame

Retro Crush lists their top toys of all time, including The Great Garloo, Milky The Marvelous Milking Cow, and Care Bears.

Missing from the list:




Review Of The Week


Johanna on Green Arrow/Black Canary:

"I only read this book because I am a total fangirl for artist Cliff Chiang. The storyline, by Judd Winick, is Ass."

What she said.

Also, I think the death of Connor sucks ass. More on that later.


Boobie Prize



Here are the top boob-themed gifts for the mammary-obsessed. Don't worry, the link is from a women's culture website so it's not sexist.

Now, if this link was posted on, say, Wizard -- what would happen?


Context context context!


Hulk Hogan: "Shut That Mouth!"


When asked what celebrity he would like to pummel, Hulk Hogan replied,

"Without a doubt Rosie O'Donnell. Somebody needs to shut that big mouth up."

Translation: "That opinionated full-figured lesbian angers me. Someone should continue the time-honored legacy of physically attacking those who aggressively defends the rights of those currently not in power. Perhaps if that was to take place, she would be intimidated into not expressing her opinions anymore."


Rosie responds on her blog:

"its like a gang of gross guys
a club almost
old dumb white and on tv"

Yes.

Btw, I was always a Rowdy Roddy Piper fan instead. Always said what was on his mind, never needed to artifically "bulk up," and was basically a jolly non-conformist.


And he wasn't afraid to wear a skirt.


Snipes Sniping


Wesley Snipes told Entertainment Weekly recently that on Blade Trinity David Goyer, the film's producers, and New Line Cinema treated him like...

"the new ho on the block.''

He also believes that he might be blacklisted by Hollywood for his suit against New Line.

Getting a kick from all that drama:



One step closer to solo movie:




Video: Rhonda McDonald

Old Sexeh, New Sexeh

My old idea/goal of being teh sexeh:



My new idea/goal of being teh sexeh:


One drop acceptance, two drops age, and a dash of common sense. Also, I had to cut wearing the contacts down to a minimum, they're giving me teh eye fungus.

And Converse are very comfy on my feets. I'm a 9 wide.

Spider-Man: Gay Metaphor?

Blog @ Newsarama points out a thread on Brian Michael Bendis board where Gail Simone gives her two cents on Peter Parker's sexuality:

"He's awesomely gay."

Thus begins a thread where the sexualities of various superheroes are discussed.

Never did pick up a gay metaphor about Spidey...I always thought he was more the "Charlie Brown" of the Marvel Universe. Couldn't do anything right. Killed his Christmas tree. Thought his 80-year-old aunt was more worth saving than his entire marriage and future family life. You know.


Though as an aside, in these sorts of humorous debates about "who's gay?" -- is there not some offensive stuff in them? I mean, not from Gail -- but from other posters on the thread, saying that you can "tell" a character is gay because of his "limp web shooting wrists" or his association with rainbows. Limp wrists, ejaculating "web fluid" in men's faces, etc. Is that offensive at all? If the corresponding cliches were thrown about to refer to some other group, wouldn't it be considered offensive?

I dunno, I'm just asking. I mean, geez: I posted that cartoon from Scans Daily the other day with that supposed "Jughead is gay" cartoon. But still...it seems like using cliches about homosexuals is the last "acceptable" thing in the media...that, and stereotypes about Middle Easterners and Asians. Oh, and of course it is totally okay to bash Christians in popular culture, because, well, the Crusades and Pat Robertson.

Remember when Jack Tripper used to do that "gay" routine in Three's Company?

I suppose that was very funny when I was six and the world was thirty years younger.

Occasional Reviews: Booster, Zombies, and Jamie McKelvie Oh My

Booster Gold #5
Writer: Geoff Johns & Jeff Katz
Artists: Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund

Good God, this issue was emo. Booster out-emo's Peter Parker in "One More Day" in this issue.

Basically, Rip Hunter sends Booster back to "stop" the shooting of Barbara Gordon by the Joker -- the logic (if you can call it that) being that Booster's pal Ted Kord will be saved.

This is like taking the Zapruder film and editing in Luke Perry. Or editing in Ben Stiller playing Luke Perry.

It's not that the issue isn't uber-respectful of the whole Babs Gordon mythos. Quite the opposite. I think I heard Elton John's "Candle in The Wind" playing when the old Batgirl flashback begins. Or was that "Wind Beneath My Wings?"

But then things take a sharp turn for the super-emo when Booster starts getting beaten up by the Joker. An extended scene plays out where Booster is getting his ass handed to him only to be brought back to the present by Rip only to insist he be returned to the past to continue to get his ass handed to him.

The message is clear, folks -- Booster is no longer the slap-happy comic relief we have all come to know and love. He is now Penance.

More Blue Beetle machinations round out the tale. I really hope this is not leading to phasing the new Beetle out. But if I was Jaime Reyes, I'd come up with a "plan B."

Rating: B-
Emo Rating: A+


Marvel Zombies 2 #2
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Artiss: Sean Phillips

Is this idea getting old yet? No, not quite yet. Well, it might just be Michelle Pfeiffer old, but not Kathleen Turner old.

The big news for this issue is that Zombie-Spidey has finally gotten a conscience. Now it looks like good zoms and bad zoms will duke it out. Oh, and a sub-plot about some guys. And zom Hawkeye with the chick robot body cries if you leave him alone.

The cover has nothing to do with the book, and I don't know how the android Human Torch could be a zombie, but it looks cool 'nuff.

Cool 'nuff.

Rating: A-


Suburban Glamour
Writer & Artist: Jamie McKelvie

I file this book under "youth culture," the perfect example of a non-manga book that teenagers would be drawn to. It would have made a perfect Minx book, or at least something Vertigo should be putting out. How did Image Comics become the place for titles like this? How did it make the jump from Rob Liefeld to Phonogram?

A teenager dreading the dreary world of adulthood finds out that she is really a princess of the fairy people. Yeah, I had that fantasy too. McKelvie's awesome art and slick color palette takes it out of the realm of Books of Magic and The Sandman and places it firmly in an ultra-hip world of Hippy McHipperson. I wish I could wear this comic as a T-shirt.

Rating: A




Justice League of America #15

Writer: Dwayne McDuffie
Artists: Ed Benes & Sandra Hope

Oh, so the whole last arc was just a set-up to Salvation Run?

I see.

And according to the editorial note, this issue takes place before the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special?

I see.

Justice League is a headlining DC title that is on the level of Superman and Batman in terms of importance. It shouldn't be used as a nexus for various points of arrival & departure for other titles and events. DC is so much better off just leaving the book alone to create a rich tapestry of new story ideas.

Rating: B-

Occasional Reviews: Salvation Run

I'd like to start these reviews by giving a quick recap on how, in the final analysis, I can tell a book truly sucks or not.

A sucky or even simply mediocre book makes my brain glaze over. Consequently, I can't read them straight through, because the writing is so bad that I feel I am losing valuable minutes of my life I will never get back again. In such cases, I will try to get to the end of the book, but reading balloon after balloon of stilted dialogue is impossible.

A good book will carry me effortlessly to the last page. This does not even have to be a book on the level of Grant Morrison. I consider any comic that is not a painful boring trip to the last page to be a winner. I don't ask for a lot. Just no suckage.

With this proviso, I will review Bill Willingham & Sean Chen's Salvation Run.

I pretty much wrote Salvation Run off as another trite Countdown spin-off and had no plans to read it. Then I ran into artist Sean Chen at the last Big Apple Convention and he invited me to review it. But not only did he invite me to review it -- he insisted I be honest about it, not to candy-coat.

So now I was faced with the task of reviewing the book of a person I know and being completely honest -- whether it was good or sucky.

But Salvation Run was a total surprise and revelation to me.

It's very much the literary heir of the original Suicide Squad, not just in terms of its use of some key characters from the series like Rick Flagg, but in the way it succeeds in making you care about the villainous characters it showcases. In that way, it is also a lot like Thunderbolts.

The premise is that all of Earth's villains are being exiled to a harsh planet to be removed from polite society. Ostensibly they can build a new world for themselves on this planet, as it contains all the elements necessary to foster human life. But the odds are stacked against them -- perhaps purposely by forces that would rather see the villains all deceased.

Bill Willingham's writing is fast and witty and filled with little "moments" that are unexpected and brilliantly executed. For example, in issue #2 you have a sequence where one villain is mortally wounded and everybody wants to leave him behind. Another pair of villains insist, however, in sparing his life. You soon find out that they are not doing this for humanitarian reasons, but to "feed" the injured party to the first wild beasts they come across. And there is a whole series of these moments sprinkled through the issue.

Both the Joker & Lex Luthor are in issue #2, and have their moments to shine and express their own unique viewpoints. Willingham gets through to the essence of these characters, and doesn't just use them as attention-grabbing "guest-stars."

The art by Sean Chen is perfectly suited to a story of this scope and a cast of hundreds. It's clean, distinct, and makes every villain in a scene "pop." His panel & page compositions deftly contain the multitude of figures within it -- never looking "messy" or crowded. In that sense, Chen serves very much a George Perez-type role.

To be honest, most of the DC books I buy each month I buy so as to keep up with what is out there and make my reviews. There are only 2 or 3 tops that I actually look forward to month-to-month and consider myself a collector of. I would consider Salvation Run among that number.

Quite frankly, I consider Salvation Run one of the best books DC is putting out at the moment. It is a credit to the editor that Willingham feels comfortable enough to "run" with the story and not feel "crushed" by the need to fit in with continuity and larger events. A good editor can contend with even those types of constraints and still create a safe and encouraging environment for the writer to practice his craft.

This is not to mean that Salvation Run is not tied into the overall Countdown scheme -- for example, if you haven't read this month's Justice League, issue #2 might not make as much sense. But I wouldn't quite classify the title as "continuity porn." It rather stands on its own as a fascinating tale of survival and villainy.

Rating: A

"Touched By A Ghost Rider"

Newsarama reports that Ghost Rider #18 will reveal that the leather-clad avenger is actually...an angel. Writer Daniel Way explains:

"Roxanne prayed, on Johnny's behalf. And her prayers were answered...just not in a way that she would've necessarily wanted. Understand--and I hope this was clear in the book--Johnny did, in fact, make a deal with the Devil. Johnny Blaze's soul, upon death, is payable to Hell. But that was trumped by the deal that Roxanne made with Heaven on Johnny's behalf. In order to "save" Johnny, Heaven--specifically, Zadkiel--bonded the Ghost Rider, an angelic spirit (or Power...of the the Sixth Choir, specifically), to Johnny's soul, thereby making him...well, an angel."

Unsure of where Johnny Blaze "fits" in the Organization:



Unsure of what Daniel Way actually said, but feels pretty confident he disagrees with it:



Emo (just because):

Occasional Interviews: HAZED's Mark Sable

Comic book scribe Mark Sable might be familiar to regular readers of this blog for his connection to the controversial Supergirl #16. Well, as I discovered when I sat down to interview him, he has a heck of a lot more cool comic stuff on his resume. His critically-acclaimed Grounded, with Potter's Field's Paul Azaceta, is currently available as a trade-paperback, and the first issue of his mini-series Fearless has just hit the stands (both books published by Image Comics).

Now Sable might be set to court a touch more controversy with his dark comedy about sorority life, Hazed, a graphic novel by Image currently being solicited by Previews and set for a February shelf date.

OS: Were you always a comic book fan?

MS: Definitely. The theme of my bar mitzvah was Marvel Comics. They had shirts with a caricature of me in Iron Man's Silver Centurion armor which said “I had a marvelous time at Mark's Bar Mitzvah.

OS: Did you always want to write comics and create your own characters, or did that come later?

MS: I think I went through that arc that everybody does, where I read comics up until high school and then I discovered the opposite sex. I got back into comics in college, but in between that period is when I discovered I really wanted to be a writer. And actually my formal training is in screenwriting & plays.

OS: Is comic writing still something you want to do, or do you want to make the leap to film?

MS: It's one of those things where I'm almost ashamed of my screenwriting thing, because I'm afraid people will think I'm trying to break into screenwriting through comics. Really, they are both things I want to pursue.

OS: In terms of comic work, what was your first book?


MS: Grounded from Image Comics was my first. Grounded actually started out as a screenplay that I was shopping around, and one day it occurred to me that it might work well as a comic. I was friends with Mark Powers, an X-Men editor at Marvel Comics. I asked him if he knew any up and coming artists that might be up for Grounded, and I lucked out with Paul Azaceta. Then we put together the pitch and went to Image with it. They just really said yes on the spot, which I credit to Paul's art.

OS: I think your writing and Paul's art really meshes together well. Was it very collaborative experience for you two?

MS: We were separated by coasts and by time zones, but we talked on the phone & e-mailed a lot. I tend to script very tightly, but as time went on I got to trust him to do his own thing.

The other member of the team is Nick Filardi, who does the colors. Nick's amazing in terms of just picking up the subtext of scenes and getting the mood just right without my having to spell it out for him.

OS: It sounds your experience with Image was overall a happy one.

MS: Completely.

OS: And you really lucked out with all the critical acclaim for Grounded as well.

MS: I really did, and honestly it made me a bit more nervous coming into the comic work after that. Because now I have to live up to those cover quotes.

OS: What was your next work after Grounded?

MS: Grounded did relatively well for Image; the first issue sold out and we went to a second printing. In Spring of 2006 I was approached by Jeanine Schaefer, an assistant editor at DC Comics. She was a fan of Grounded and asked me to pitch. I did two issues of Teen Titans with Sean Murphy that have yet to be published but which are completely pencilled and inked, and then I did some Supergirl stuff.

OS: Any reason why the Titans issues didn't come out? Were there continuity issues?

MS: My Titans arc was supposed to be the first meeting of the Titans and Flash's Rogues Gallery, and I think it didn't work with their overal continuity plans (The Rogues killing Bart, Countdown, etc.)

OS: Tell me about working with Jeanine Schaefer.

MS: Jeanine has really been wonderful. I got to work with her very closely with Teen Titans and she gave really great notes. I was a little nervous coming into it, because at Image you're pretty much your own editor. You hear horror stories about getting stupid notes from editors, but everything she suggested really did make the story better. And I'm really happy for her getting the Associate editorship. She's really a person who I can see, if she really wants it, going pretty far.

OS: Would you say she's a rising star?

MS: I really feel that she is. She's smart and has a good instinct for editing. She's on Robin right now, and she loves Tim Drake and has a real feel for the character.

OS: You currently have the first issue of Fearless on the stands...


MS: That's out from Image and my co-writer is David Roth, who is a television writer from California. Our artist is PJ Holden who is a 2000 AD artist from the UK. Fearless is about a superhero who is addicted to an anti-fear drug. He can't fight crime or function in his personal life without the drug because he has a crippling anxiety disorder. Later issues get into the origin of that disorder.

OS: How does Fearless differ from Grounded?

MS: Grounded was an irreverent take on superheroes whereas Fearless is more a straight superhero book -- although the concept itself is a twist.

OS: I found that in Fearless the art really gives you a sense of the main character's anxiety. There was also one scene with a half-mask that seemed like an homage to that old Ditko Spider-Man...

MS: That's definitely what we were going for.

OS: Fearless is a four-issue mini-series...do you have any plans for the title past that?

MS: Depends on how the sales do, but we definitely have more ideas.

OS: And now you have this new graphic novel Hazed.

MS: Yes, it's also from Image, is currently being solicited in December's Previews -- and hits stands in February. It's also being printed in a manga-sized format.

OS: What is Hazed about?

MS: Hazed is a dark comedy about sororities and eating disorders – Heathers or Mean Girls with a college setting. The story is about the brutal journey of three girls through sorority life.

OS: From reading the preview I see that the main character, Illeana, goes through some sort of transformation...

MS: Well, there's essentially two protagonists. Illeana is, for lack of a better term, an "alternative" girl who is not overly concerned about how she dresses and is passionate about women's issues. Her roommate is named James -- after model James King. James King has a quote I actually use in the book: "I just want everybody to want to be me." Hazed's James is a legacy student whose family always wanted her to be a sorority girl.

James & Illeana end up as unlikely roommates...and one gets into the sorority and one doesn't. The how and why of this is the twist.

The villain of the piece is the slightly older Val, who in the world of the sorority is the "falling star." And part of the book is exploring this weird relationship between the sisters and their sorority mentors which is both nurturing and competititve. Because every new girl might be a potential threat.

OS: So there's an ambivalence at play.

MS: it's a passive-aggressive sabotage going on. From my own observation, it's rather an awful world.

OS: How did you get interested in writing about sororities?


MS: I went to Duke for undergrad -- whch has a very big Greek system. I think the sororities outnumber that fraternities, and that something like 60% of women on campus are in one. So you've got some of the smartest women in the country, who have so much more going for them than just their appearance, get completely obsessed with looks and how to appeal to guys.

And the sororities become institutionalized versions of this attitude, encouraging these women to look like wafer-thin models and to get involved in that hookup culture. I think it damages these young women's self-esteem a lot.

So my research was just observing that culture on campus, and in the beginning I wrote it as a play, "Purge." My girlfriend at the time, who was in a sorority, read the play and said "oh, you're exaggerating this." That some of the things I wrote about, like "circling the fat," were more like urban legends.

OS: What is "circling the fat?"

MS: In "circling the fat" the idea is that the sisters will strip girls down to their underwear and circle the areas of their bodies where they "need" to lose fat.

And my point to my ex was, even if it was an urban legend, it's one that has stuck around, and is symbolic of what was being pushed on college women. Later on, as I dated more sorority girls, they would say that they indeed went through things like that during hazing. So on one hand I felt vindicated that I didn't do a hatchet job on sororities, but on the other hand I felt worse because this stuff was actually happening to women.

OS: Do you think this would a book women would enjoy reading?

MS: Well, “women” is a very big, general catagory. Obviously if you're in a sorority, you bring your own experiences into it. Beyond that, this big sister/little sister relationship dynamic is intriguing. It seems distinctly different from male relationships of that type. Guys can just get their fights out and hit each other -- whereas with the women it can often be far more passive-aggressive and subtle.

I certainly don't want the book to represent my view of women or sororities in general. It's a slice of life, purposely exaggerated.

OS: What would you compare Hazed to?

MS: "Even meaner and harsher than Heathers." Like Heathers, but smarter, meaner, and funnier. I was weirdly influenced by, of all things, the film Full Metal Jacket; the first half of that movie with the Marine training reminded me of sorority hazing. In fact, they call it hazing in Marine Corps as well.

OS: Tell me something about the artist.

MS: Robbie Rodriguez has drawn Hero Camp and Maintenance from Oni, as well as Stephen Colbert's upcoming Tek Jansen.

Why I think Robbie's work fits so well for Hazed is that it's a very harsh book in a lot of ways -- and he's got an expressive, almost cartoon-like style that softens it. His work also reminiscent of stuff like the animation on Adult Swim, and is very dynamic & plastic.


OS: What's next for Mark Sable?

MS: Well, I have a new project from DC coming up. I can't tell you much about it yet, but it stars a solo character who has never had a solo series before -- and also was in a cartoon that is no longer on the air.

I've also sold an animated series to the Cartoon Network which is - surprise, surprise -- superhero themed.

OS: Just to wrap up, I read in your online bio that you're the only person who has worked with both Charlie Rose and Howard Stern...

MS: I was a intern for Charlie when I was in college. And then in grad school I became first an intern, then a production assistant, and finally am assistant director for Howard Stern. They were great people to work for, and, in my opinion, two of the best broadcasters in the world. And they have more in common than you think.

A Very Lulu Holiday Party

"Teen Boat" co-creator John Green, Yours Truly,
and the NYC Friends of Lulu chapter's Miranda Mason

A bunch Of Friends of Lulu-ites braved the snowy-slushy City weather to help ring the holiday season at the Beauty Bar last night. There we shared some toasts, discussed the future of the organization, and contemplated the $10 drink-and-a-manicure special.

Friends of Lulu Treasurer and artist extraordinaire Marion Vitus
with her husband John Green


F.O.L. Memebership Secretary & Marvel Comics editor Nicole Boose,
ComiXology columnist and Columbia University librarian Karen Green,
and artist and Estrigious.Com member Hwan Cho


Friends of Lulu anthology editors MK Reed and Robin Enrico

Occasional Links: The Dancing Batman Video Meme Edition

Teh Internets, they are the dead today:


Pretty soon I'm going to have to dust off some old Superdickery covers.

Well here are some assorted items...

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund was kind enough to invite me to their Member Appreciation Holiday Party on Monday night. Heidi over at The Beat has all the cool photos with Moby and stuff, whereas, alas, I only have some grainy shots taken with my cell phone:


So you'll just have to take my word for it that it was quite the awesome event. I mean, Moby was there. I hate to harp on Moby, but Moby was there.

In case you don't know, the C.B.L.D.F. is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights for members of the comics community. It's a great cause and you could support it by being a member, donating, or buying something from their website.

Plus, Moby was there.
Next up, much praise to regular OS reader Angry Zen Master -- better known as Jamie Noguchi -- who, along with his collaborator Rob Balder, scored the #6 spot on Time Magazine's top ten graphic novels of 2007 for their work on the webcomic Erfworld.Time Magazine used the term "graphic novel" to cover a whole range of formats -- webcomics, monthlies, and actual graphic novels. I guess "graphic novel" is like a buzzword with the mainstream intellectual set.

Marvel Zombies 2 was #4, by the way.

Wizard Magazine shows off its sensitive side by recommending Persepolis in their gift guide videocast (it's around 2:22 on the vid). It's for "the person in your life who normally doesn't read comics." I like how the announcer all of the sudden looks more sensitive, with his eyebrows getting all bent and soft, as he mentions Persepolis in the midst of Marvel Zombie action figures and R2D2 replica trash cans.


But screw it, at least they're mentioning it.

Meanwhile, The New York Post continues its particular brand of classy journalism with the headline, "Ike Beats Tina To Death." Get it? Because Ike Turner used to beat Tina, and now he died before her, and...

Word play! I loves me some puns and domestic violence wordplay.

Finally, I have to inquire as to the appeal of this fellow:


I'm sorry, I just don't get it. They've got a giagantic inflatable version of this guy hovering over Macy's in New York City, and it's just...ick.

I'm still bored. If any of you hear of anything cool, let me know.

Call For Submissions: The Friends of Lulu "Design-A-Lulu" Initiative

Hi, All:

We at Friends of Lulu are looking for a few good artists (oh, heck, actually we're looking for tons) to donate their talent to Friends of Lulu's Design-A-Lulu Initiative, a fundraising and increased public awareness effort in which we ask artists to dream up their own interpretation of our Lulu mascot.

If you can find the time to help Friends of Lulu by contributing your own unique "Lulu" design, we would most appreciate it.

Here are the specs & pertinent info:

* Our preferred deadline is by the end of January, but we will happily extend it where needed.

* Colored art is preferred but B&W is fine.

* Art should be scanned at 300 dpi.

* Torso-and-head shots preferred, though if you're inspired to draw full-body that's okay.

* Though your initial inspiration can be our original mascot Lulu, unique interpretations are welcome and encouraged.

* Who is "Lulu?" She's the Everywoman who reads and/or creates comic books.

* A variety of ethnicities, races, and body types for your Lulu are welcome as well.

* A request will be made for original art so we can auction it all off in a Lulu fundraising event.

* Selected art will be used for a variety of Friends of Lulu fundraising/promotional purposes, including website & flyer art, T-shirts, stickers, and buttons.

* We will initially post the art on our blog as it comes in, then later set up a permanent gallery on our site.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me. Thanks for your time!

Best,
Valerie D'Orazio
President, Friends of Lulu

One Collector's Plea: More Sexy Female Action Figures!

From a conversation on the action figure message board The Fwoosh comes one stalwart collector's opinion on the relative merits of the Marvel Legends line:

No female figure in the ML line, is realistically sexy, in my opinion.

I few days ago I saw a figure of Elseworld Supergirl from DC direct and I notice that the sculpt of the torso area is impressive, for a 6 incher. It has all the elements of sexiness, at least in the comic book context.

1. Big boobs (this should be a no brainer)
2. Small waistline (ditto)
3. Defined abs (thought not very muscular)
4. Big and tilted hips.

I was wondering if the torso articulation in female MLs is the key factor in preventing them from becoming sexy. Well, if we can consider a non articulated Face Off Hulk to still be the best Hulk figure, then maybe we can tolerate (or even prefer) a non torso articulated female.

Well, articulation or not in the torso area, I noticed that no female character in ML is sculpted to be sexy.

Now that Hasbro is going full swing on the 12 inch Icons line, isn't it ironic that the Jean Grey that we saw is even flat chested? Should she be more defined now that she is in 12 inches?

Occasional Links: The Chachi Arcola Edition

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The Strange Allure Of The Geeky Guy In The Short-Sleeved Button Work Shirt

Brand New Day's Peter Parker and NBC's Chuck Bartowski: separated at birth?

















and...

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Kristen Bell In Slave Leia Outfit


Hey, this Slave Leia s**t never gets old, does it? It's like the gift that keeps on giving. Here's a great idea: let's get that special record Carl Sagan shot out into space 30 years ago for the aliens with the best of what Western Civilization had to offer and add the Slave Leia meme to it. That, and a couple of episodes of "House."

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Woman Claims She'd Never Be Married If It Wasn't For Engaging In Traditionally Male Geeky Passtimes

Westbrook likes to say that she never would have married if it weren't for gaming. She and her husband Kevin Morrell were set up by mutual acquaintances, and on their first date she mentioned she liked "Star Wars" comics. He, a gaming enthusiast, suggested watching a movie about "swords and guns." They immediately hit it off and they were soon gaming together.

Well, it's all rather better than EHarmony, I'll tell you that much. Every question on EHarmony is like, "are you passive or are you aggressive?" You get like 250 questions like that. Then you get an e-mail notice that says "Dwight from Newark" would very much like to date you. Then Dwight e-mails you. You read Dwight's profile, and he says he's looking for "no game players, time wasters, or phoney-baloneys." You decided to pass on Dwight, but chicken out from e-mailing back to tell him so. Then Dwight e-mails you back 4 or 5 times with subject headings like, "ARE YOU THERE?????????" It's awesome.

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Scott Baio No Longer Single


That is all. Go back to what you were doing.

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Is Jughead Jones Gay?

A Scans Daily poster cites this cartoon as proof Jughead is gay:


I will once again turn your attention to the definitive answer to the question, as delineated by the Archie Comics website:

It seems that from the very start, in his very first appearance in PEP COMICS #22, Jughead hasn't had much interest in girls. How could he even have time? There's too much food to eat and too many naps to take!

Of course, this could just be a brilliant example of "spin" on Archie Comics's part. But it makes sense to me.

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Video: "The Strong Women In TV Awards"
We at the Occasional Superheroine blog want to salute all the talented actresses (and the men who write for them) who won big at the Strong Women In TV Awards.

The Supposed Female-Superiority Agenda In "Wonder Woman"

Geez Louise, this article about Wonder Woman from The Sun has a bit of the snark about it, insinuating that Gail Simone's latest run might have a female-superiority "agenda":

The Amazing Amazon owes her longevity and popularity in large part to the politically incorrect idea that Marston etched into her DNA: Maybe women really are superior to men. Ms. Simone downplays any larger agenda in her run on Wonder Woman.

"I just want to give the reader as good of a story as I can write," she said.

But in the first issue of her relaunch, Wonder Woman fights a gang of super-gorillas before realizing that they're not evil, merely misguided. Bringing the fight to a halt, she lets them move into her apartment, but only after their leader kneels and kisses her lasso. Not many superheroes turn their enemies into roommates, especially when their enemies are talking gorillas. But while the new Wonder Woman series portrays its heroine as strong and compassionate, it also carries a whiff of slightly sexualized dominance. In other words, as she enters 2008, Wonder Woman is finally back on track, just the way her creator wanted her.

I sincerely doubt the latest Wonder Woman is truly "anti-man" or about "female superiority." And I don't really see such a stance in Simone's other comics, which seem pretty gender-balanced.

As for the assertion that Marston's original conception of Wonder Woman was truly about female superiority, I have to disagree. It's like saying that businessmen who secretly go to dominatrixes to get their asses beat are really feminists. It's all about a kink. There are more images of women in submission in Marston's Wonder woman than anything else.

And really -- DC Comics supporting a female-superiority agenda? C'mon.

Cat-Tastrophe

So one of the cats I'm helping cat-sit is missing from the apartment this morning. Turn the house upside down to find her, nothing. I volunteer to stay home and wait to see if she comes out from "hiding." We hear a faint mewling from the hallway. A boy runs up to us and says there's a cat stuck in the elevator shaft.

Cat is wedged between elevator cab and wall. Have no idea how she got there. Nothing is holding her up. She is just stuck.

Somehow, I expected 911 to be a bit more concerned. I mean, you've seen those news stories where a cat gets stuck somewhere and they hold vigils until they get the critter out.

In the end, BF rescues cat by shoving his sweatshirt in the space and giving her some traction to pull herself out.

The cat's back feet look injured. We put her in a carrier and speed off for an emergency trip to the vet.

The vet says cat is fine, just a few cuts on back feet. Gives me a whole battery of kitty antiseptics and opiates. Kitty has already had her first dose of the opioid, eyes dilated, very "chill."

Waiting outside with carrier for car service. Michelle Williams walks by.


Welcome to my world.

Occasional Links: Pajama Party Edition

"Dateline: Anime"
An eye-witness report by yours truly on last weekend's New York Anime Festival is up on the Friends of Lulu blog. Complete with hot pics of intense fellows in black shirts playing Magic The Gathering!


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"Comics: The Ron Paul Effect"

Presidential candidate Ron Paul tells Comic Mix who his favorite superhero is...the answer might surprise you!

Paul's choice leads one poster on the John Byrne message boards to comment,

"That's an obscure choice, even for comic book fans. Ron Paul really is trying to cater to the internet geek vote."

I dunno, if he was catering for the internet geek vote, he might have more luck with "Naruto."

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"Custom Sexy Bra And Panty Padme"


...for the Star Wars collector who has everything, brought to you from the makers of "Custom Sexy Leather Bondage Padme"

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"Knock Up Backtrack"

Was filming "Knocked Up" a sexist experience or the best experience of Katherine Heigl's career?


Her first quote on the subject:

"a little sexist”

second, later quote:

"it was the best filming experience of my career."



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"Kitty's Delivery Service"

So after all my bitching about mainstream comics publishers failing to catch the manga wave, I find out that Marvel has made a deal with Del Ray to produce X-Men manga:

It’s the X-Men as you’ve never seen them before, with the storyline fashioned as a private school shôjo comedy. (Shôjo manga is aimed at girls and often covers popular subjects such as comedy, romance, and drama.) As the only girl in the all-boys School for Gifted Youngsters, Kitty Pryde, a mutant with phasing abilities, is torn between the popular Hellfire Club, led by flame-throwing mutant Pyro–and the school misfits, whom she eventually bands together as the X-Men.

Marvel, I have just one word for you: Yaoi. Pronounced, "YOW-we," as in "Wowee!"

Wolverine/Gambit. Logan's the old pro, Gambit's the young newbie trying to make it in Xavier's school. That's all I'm saying. I'm done now.

(tip of the hat to The Beat for the article)

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"So Wertham Wasn't Completely Full of S**t"


Scanned excerpts from Fredric Wertham's classic anti-comic screed "Seduction of the Innocent" reveal that the doctor was also against racism in the funny books:

"White men in jungle books are blond, Nordic he-men, athletic and shapely, while the colored natives are characterized as subhuman. The superman type of comic book also needs an endless stream of criminal "foreign-looking" people to justify the constant use of force and superforce. These are always Negroes, Jews, Slavs, and Orientals, characterized by irregular features, swarthy skins, physical deformities. While the United States spends millions of dollars to persuade the world that hatred is not an integral part of American life, millions of U.S. comics exported all over the world show an endless stream of prejudice-producing images."

This of course started a bit of a discussion on the comments section of the blog where the pages were reproduced. One commenter said that Wertham's anti-racism stance might have just been a "cover" for his nefarious anti-comics agenda. Another defended Wertham, pointing out that he did work for civil rights. But as always, it is the gut-response from a comic book lover on the blog that rather stops the conversation cold:

"This (Wertham's) article was the direct cause of the burning of my entire E.C. collection."

See? Pin-drop.

For the record, my mom thought those Marvel Handbook "Books of the Dead" were pretty goddamn morbid. But didn't burn them. She just laughed at them. I think it would have been cooler if she burned them. 'Cause then I woulda felt more like a rebel and less like a total geek. (article found at Journalista)

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Video: Pop-Culture Reality Check

When many of your parents were young, this was considered "edgy" sexualized entertainment that all the cool kids were into:

In other news, a woman with Annette's posterior would have been ambushed by today's media as being "too fat." I think Amy Winehouse is our generation's Annette.

Where Are All Teh Female Comics Readers?

Where are all teh female comic book readers? Which way did they go?

Have you seen them? Do they even exist?


Do they have teh money? Do they buy teh product?


Do they like teh action stories and teh fight scenes?


Where are all teh female comic fans?


"They're not real comic book fans, they just like manga.
A completely different animal.
Manga is spun from taffy and delivered on moonbeams."

However manga is made, the fact is that females do like reading fantastic illustrated stories with action in them, they are actively seeking such entertainment, and they are spending lots of money on such entertainment and their related products. And when I went to the New York Anime Festival, where these pictures were taken, I saw hundreds upon hundreds of "fangirls" for manga.

To figure out how to attract masses of female readers to your comic book company's offerings, especially the demographic from tweens-early twenties, go to anime & manga conventions. And talk to these young women and ask them what comics they would like to see. You do not necessarily have to produce manga -- but find out what essential qualities about manga drive these females to buy them.

Knitting Frenzy

What does an Occasional Superheroine do for relaxation?

Knit, of course!

Comic Mix's own Martha Thomases did the impossible -- she actually taught me how to knit!

What do you think of my work so far?

I've got some extra stitches here and there, but I think it could be an awesome scarf.

Pretty soon, I will be able to knit a whole suit!

New York Anime Festival: This Is Youth Culture

How does mainstream comics crack the ever-more elusive "kiddie" market? Well, had they purchased booth space at last weekend's New York Anime Festival at the Jacob Javits Center, they might have started to have a clue.

The main thing that hits you when you enter this convention is that it is filled with YOUTH.

There were teens and tweens and little kids with their parents EVERYWHERE.

And it wasn't just about a specific type of comic -- in this case, manga -- or style or type of artist.

The vibe at the New York Anime Con was about a whole YOUTH MOVEMENT.

It's a movement in which males and females more or less equally participate. It's a movement that is racially inclusive. It's a movement in which consumer participation and customization is essential. It's a movement not about collecting but experiencing. It's a movement complete with a whimsical aesthetic that I am only beginning to understand.

And whether Peter Parker is married or not or Batman is Bruce Wayne or not makes not the single whit of difference to them.

If mainstream comics does not make a better effort to understand this youth culture, they might still have a bit of fair success with the older market. But they will both competely lose the youth market. And they will at the same time fail to plant the seeds for the next generation's interest in their products.

I am willing to bet that lot of this hesitation of the mainstream to embrace and study this emergent youth culture is because they personally don't "get" manga. Frankly, manga might not be something they would be interested in reading/editing.

The key here is that there has to be a willingness on the mainstream's part to look beyond the fact that they don't "get" it. They have to be willing to embrace the idea that what the "kids" want is not what they want. And that's hard, because rolled into that is the realization that they are getting physically older. It's the realization that there is a whole line of generations out there that are ready to assume their place on the queue of life.

I don't "get" great portions of manga. I don't "get" Naruto. I don't "get" large parts of this anime scene. But I accept the fact that this culture is a widely popular one and that it behooves me to learn about it and understand its appeal.

Which brings me to my final point. As I said before, the energy surrounding manga culture is not just an art style or a book format. You cannot hire an artist to draw manga-style art and give it a soap-opera theme with robots or whatever and write it with the energy of American comics. Neither can you package any damn thing you want in a manga-sized book and say "presto! we have Youth Culture product!"

They aren't looking for "Teen Titans." They are looking for "Teen Titans Go!"

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 8: Conclusion

The last selections & fragments from my unpublished memoirs:

Every good superhero has a Moment of Truth where they either get their powers, receive clarity about their mission in life, or both.

For Spiderman, it was when a radioactive arachnid bit him during a science fair.

For Batman, it was when his parents were killed.

For the Hulk, it was being caught in a nuclear blast.

For Catwoman, it was getting shoved out that window.

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The mid-00’s saw a sharp rise in feminist consciousness in comic book fandom. It seemed as if all the “secret” female comic readers, newly empowered by the internet and communication tools such as forums and blogs, woke up at the same time -- screaming to be heard and counted. Things that were always considered simply part of the comics “canon” -- the perpetual bondage of superheroines, or the sexualizing of violence towards women -- were now being spotlighted, singled out, held up to scrutiny.

Why did Frank Miller draw the Black Canary on the cover of a recent issue of “Batman and Robin” like she was a prostitute, half-naked and motioning like she was going to take off her top?

Why was teenage Stephanie Brown, who was briefly the female Robin, dispatched in a series of lurid S&M poses, being tortured by a phallic power drill? And why was a toy later made of the perpetrator that included the power drill as an accessory? (there was also a toy made of Dr. Light, rapist of Sue Dibny, as part of the “Identity Crisis” line)

Why was the Black Cat, lover/rival of Spiderman, suddenly getting a rape written into her origin story, a rape that is used as the reason why she became a supervillain? Why is rape or sexual abuse used over and over again as a motivating factor for female characters?

Suddenly, the treatment of females both on the pages of comic books and behind-the-scenes became a hot topic. And I knew what I had to do and I really preferred somebody else do it.

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In “Batman Returns,” after Selina Kyle is pushed from the office window and is magically revived by some crazy cat mojo, she trudges back to her apartment, dazed but still Selina, still that shy bespectacled secretary. But slow and steadily gaining speed, like the onset of a subway train coming down the tracks, she transforms.

She smashes idealized representations of the world, her world, the world a woman is supposed to strive for and someday, if she’s good, inhabit -- tears apart stuffed animals, obliterates her doll house with its tiny perfect furniture, spray-paints over the image of a saccharin kitten on a pink t-shirt.

She tears a black jacket into shreds -- then stitches it back together again as her new cat-skin. Selina takes no pains to hide the stitches, she revels in them, they are part of her new persona.

Then she grabs her whip and cartwheels into the night.

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"Occasional Superheroine Vs. Gilgongo Comics!"

"She's sullying our beloved institutions!"

"I'm glad somebody spoke up!"

"Thank-you, Occasional Superheroine, for giving me the courage to write about my own story."

"Personally, I don't believe a word of it."

"You made me question why I enjoy seeing images of rape."

"You a really powerful writer; don't give it up."

"I know for a fact that the industry is completely not like this at all."

"Comics Gave Me A Broken Vagina: Strange But True Story!"

"But how do you define 'sexual harassment? If I tell a woman she has a nice blouse, is that harassment?"

"Considering that they started out as a titty publisher with mob ties this should come as no shock..."

"Help her pay the damn bill already!"

"I cried after reading this."

"What, so now we have to censor out rape in comics? Like it doesn't exist? That's bullshit."

"Cheesecake art is not rape -- I just wanted to clarify that."

"I was sexually molested as a child --"

"I was sexually harassed at my job --"

"I was discriminated against because of color --"

"I was discriminated against because of sexual orientation --"

"You are really brave. You don't know me, but I just wanted to say that."

"If you need any knees broken, I know people..."

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And that's all I can print from my memoirs. It's a little choppy, I know. And it is far more feminist than I remembered it. There was a lot of good stuff there, but a lot of it had to remain unpublished. And I'm keeping them unpublished not to protect the guilty, but because to put out the names and situations involved would only reinforce a connection to those individuals that I would personally like to cast on the net of Forget. I'd like to forget them and everything concerning them. Memory Hole time.

One more curiosity from the various manuscript drafts. At one point, it was suggested I write out the individual names of each person I knew from the industry and give my opinions on them. This list was, as you can imagine, quite the pisser. Most of this had been later deleted, but in one draft one entry had accidently not been cut. Here it is:

Dan Didio; Vice-President, DC Comics Editorial

I am often asked what my impression of Dan Didio was, especially after having worked for him briefly when he first arrived at the company and began turning it into the “New DC.”

He seemed like a pretty likable guy.

But I don’t know that you can ever say you really “know” a person that far up the food chain, especially in today’s business world.

I think...he tried to be both a nice person and a balls-of-brass no-nonsense corporate executive. And that is one motherfucking hard balancing act.

Back to our regularly-scheduled blog.

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 7: "But They Haven't Even Heard Of Sue Dibny!"

more excerpts from my unpublished memoirs. this part is pretty fragmented and has a lot of edited out material

The lay-offs at Acclaim Comics devestated me. But more than that, it convinced me that the comic book industry was unstable and that I was better off concentrating on another field. In the Dunkin Donuts near the unemployment office, I grimaced into my coffee cup and swore never to get into comics again. Directly across the street, unbeknownst to me, was DC Comics.

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DC Comics, like Acclaim, considered itself a “family” -- albeit one spread over several floors and in control over some of the most iconic characters in the world. To be the caretakers of Superman -- a universally-loved, almost deity-like figment extolling Truth, Justice, and the American Way -- was a great responsibility.

I remember pausing to stare at the life-size plaster Superman as I arrived for my interviews. Me, in a black suit and heels, him in blue pajamas.

“You’re on the wrong floor,” a receptionist helpfully told me.

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I had put out a cold mailing of resumes to the company, inquiring about any positions that might be open. Within two days after the mailing, I got this message on my answering machine:

“This is is Blankity-Blank at DC. It says here in your letter that you’re a ‘fangirl’ -- which is kind of scary, hahaha. I would like you to come in for an interview.”

“Fangirl” was the cute euphemism for “female comic book fan.” It is derived from the term “fanboy,” much as Batgirl is derived from Batman and Eve was derived from a rib.

By the time I arrived at DC’s offices later that week, I had four different interviews within their editorial department set up. It seemed that there had been a relatively recent departure of a young woman on their staff, and they were hankering to finally replace her. It looked like I would be it.

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I arrived at DC during a period of transition for the company. Despite producing some of the most hard-hitting and innovative comic books over the last twenty years -- comics like “Watchmen,” “The Dark Knight Returns,” and “The Sandman,” the company was still considered antiquated and even “corny” next to industry juggernaut Marvel. Part of the reason for this lay in the same criticism my father had of the company -- their characters were too “nice.”

DC’s flagship character, Superman, was still sporting his spit-curl and spouting goody-goody platitudes when “cool” superheroes like Wolverine, The Punisher, and Cable were mowing down their enemies and selling millions of copies. With the exception of several successful movies starring Christopher Reeve and an interesting reboot of the comic by John Byrne, Superman remained pretty much the same way he was when I was a kid. He was a god and a boy-scout all rolled into one. Even his recurring enemy, extra-dimensional imp Mxyptlk, called him a nerd. And Mxyptilk was a balding midget in purple tights.

Several gimmicks were attempted in the late 80s and early 90s to make Superman more “relevant.” He grew his hair long like Fabio. He was married to longtime girlfriend Lois Lane. He (seemingly) died, and his new logo was a bleeding “S” on a black field. This was probably the Man of Steel’s finest moment since Chris Reeve in the movies -- being dead. Which says a lot.

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I have a knack of blocking painful things out of my memory. Here's a great example:

One morning while riding the subway on the way to DC, a book by TV psychic Sylvia Browne on predicting the future in my hands, the car I was on suddenly stopped with a jerk. We were on the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge. Then, just as suddenly as we stopped, everybody ran to one side of the train, looking out the window at the Manhattan skyline.

The subway car tilted to one side. People started screaming. Cell phones went off.

I pushed myself past the crowd, squinted at the buildings, and tried to divine what everybody was so upset about. I heard one person mention the smoke coming out of the World Trade Center towers.

But I was looking right at them. They were fine.

What smoke?

When the train finally made it into the City, I noticed that the streets were emptier than usual and that there were pockets of people hanging back here and there, talking amongst themselves or on cell phones.

Arriving at DC, I was surprised to find many of the offices empty. Somebody told me that everybody was in the conference room, and that we were under attack.

I watched both of the Twin Towers collapse on the big television at the DC Comics conference room.

Then everybody scattered.

My eyes swept desperately over my other coworkers, looking for anybody to cling to. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know where I was going.

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When you see a character like “Superman” on the big screen, or pick up an issue of “Batman” or “The Teen Titans, what you may not realize is that one of the people who had the biggest impact on bringing that character to you in its present form was the comic book editor. The comic editor -- who is sitting in his or her office in New York City, fielding calls from harried freelancers, eating Chinese take-out and drinking Sprite, and seeming, not unlike such working stiffs as Clark Kent and Peter Parker, pretty goddamn ordinary.

The comic book editor hires the talent. The comic book editor vets the plots and scripts and has the veto power to halt or allow certain storylines. The comic book editor’s desk is where the buck stops, his or her initials on the final proofs being one of the last stops on the particular issue’s journey from idea to the newsstand.

And their humanity seeps through the endless steps in the comic creation process -- through red tape, vouchers, several script drafts, endless pages of artwork -- to bring you the four-color defender of justice that is the defacto archetype of the Hero in our society.

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The culture I stepped into was like the world of the comic book fan on steroids. Take your average 15-year-old fanboy, place him in a magical land where his hobby is not a social disadvantage but, rather, the currency of the court, and watch him cut loose.

It was a culture of acquisition, as the mentality of the comic book collector was all about acquisition and conspicuous consumption. Status was determined by how many comic books one had in their office, and how expensive the editions, and whether they were still in the original plastic or not. Social functions for my circle invariably involved opportunities to spend money on our habits -- toys, books, DVDs. To not spend the money, to not buy every single new thing right when it came out, would trigger feelings of lack, depression.

And so I got into the habit of buying things I didn’t really want and sure as hell didn’t need just to fit in, just to compare notes with my buddies. Stacks of toys, DVDs, and other collectible items accumulated, unopened, on my shelves at home and under my desk at work.

It just felt good to have them. I felt safe and padded.

And if I tried to leave a lunchtime fieldtrip to Toys R’ Us or Virgin Megastore without a purchase, my coworkers would pout. They would accuse me of not being good to myself, of acetic self-denial, of having the temerity to say there was no Santa Claus. As so I would buy the Scooby-Doo Barbie, the Star Wars action figure set, the South Park DVD, the latest piece of useless shit, and all would be fine.

Safe. Padded.

Another obsession we shared was food. It was said that the first thing that happened to you once you joined DC was gain 20 pounds. Which I easily did. Our whole day was built around our meals -- sweets and coffee for breakfast, a big lunch at a Chinese Restaurant or the Time Warner Cafe, and multiple runs to the vending machine. At night we might all meet up again, this time for a movie and drinks, with a whole posse of freelancers in tow -- and take the time to once again shop, if we could.

Once there was a plan go to a strip club after work, which I balked on and excused myself from, making me look like a killjoy in front of the invited artists and writers.

“They have good food there! I mean, it’s not like it’s all one big sex thing. And the dancers love it when women come there, they'll give you lap-dances for free!"

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So we rode a coast of sugar and our childhood possessions, in our corporate NeverNeverland. It was the fuel that kept us running, that kept the company running.

My skin had actually, by this point, developed a gray cast to it. I would grab handfuls of my flabby thighs or stomach or arms and just marvel at the way the flesh bubbled up in cellulite, pale and speckled with blemishes. I half-expected to wake up with a tail and donkey-ears like in Pinocchio.

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I cannot stress to you the Biblical level of sorrow the ending of trading comics for swag created in my coworkers.

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One editor I worked for was Dan Raspler. I was very intimidated by the prospect of working for Raspler, and it was rumored that I wouldn’t last a day with him; that his brash, oftentimes curt approach would scare the dickens out of me and send me packing.

But Dan was one of the best bosses I ever had.

He instilled in me a sense of confidence, telling me I was more than capable to edit on my own. To Raspler, I was not “the lady in the room.” He wasn’t concerned with the fetishistic aspects of my eyewear, or forced me to engage in torturous internal dialogues concerning the possible drawbacks of aggressively voicing my opinion as a woman. I was an editor. And he expected me to fucking edit.

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The first appearance of a Supergirl was in Superman #123, the result of a wish by Jimmy Olsen that his buddy have a proper female companion and helpmeet. Perhaps this “Super-Girl” was born more than from just a philanthropic desire to help a pal out, as she strangely possessed Jimmy’s red hair and the color scheme of his outfit (though later reprints of the story would recolor her as a blonde with the standard blue and red costume).

But at any rate, this super-female proved to be more than an apt counterpart to the Man of Steel...maybe even TOO good. Superman begins to get annoyed at Super-Girl’s exploits, how she is essentially getting all his best gigs. Call it “stepping on his toes,” showing him up, what you will. Thankfully, this little farce is put to bed after she is exposed to a massive dose of Kryptonite. Jimmy puts Super-Girl out of her misery by wishing her out of existence.

But the fans loved her.

And so, in Action Comics #252, Kara Zor-El, first cousin of Superman, arrives on the scene in a rocket. After a sufficient period of time being watched over by her older relative, she officially begins her crimefighting career as Supergirl. Virginal, good-natured, and clad in a cute blue dress and red booties, Kara quickly became the sweetheart of the DC Universe.

If you type the word “Supergirl” in any Google image search, some of the first images that will pop up are pornography. The superheroine has been the secret and not-so-secret object of lust for hundreds of thousands of comic book fans since her arrival in 1959. Graphic novelist Chris Ware touches upon this erotic obsession with the Girl of Steel in his book “Rusty Brown,” as the main character, a little overweight outcast boy, has sexual fantasies over his Supergirl action figure in the middle of class. I’ve known many comic aficionados who can tell similar stories of being ushered into the mysteries of manhood by their childhood crushes on Kara and other female superheroes.

But for the longest time, Supergirl remained pure -- sweetness and light, the supergirl next door. Then in 80’s, during the epic mini-series “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” Kara dies -- the classic cover for the issue a pieta of sorts with a crying Superman holding her bloody, lifeless body. Of course, you can’t keep a good superheroine down -- or permanently deep-six a lucrative licensing opportunity. And so she was brought back. Sort of.

In 1988 a radically new Supergirl arrived, her previous origin and history written out of existence (maybe ol’ Jimmy wished it away again). Now she was just a blob of sentient protoplasm created and shaped by the nefarious Lex Luthor of an alternate universe. Called Matrix, she was in many ways a blank slate, a stripling, a woman-child with all the powers of Superman.

Sales picked up.

Perhaps sensing the limitations of such a concept, in 1996 writer Peter David had Matrix fuse her mind and body with that of headstrong teenager Linda Danvers, creating a refreshing twist on the original Supergirl concept that both hearkened back to the classic version and gave her a much-needed depth. If woman-child Matrix was Jeannie, then Linda Danvers was Samantha Stevens -- independent, intelligent, and sometimes even complicated.

And the sales numbers, while initially strong, began to slide.

By the time I entered the picture, “Supergirl” the comic was headed for the chopping block. I racked my brain trying to come up with a suitable new Supergirl artist. I was very ambitious at that time and really wanted to find that one “big thing” to do that would really prove to management that I had what it took to be an editor.

Finally -- genius. Ed Benes, an older veteran artist who had recently adopted a slick, sexy new art style -- emphasizing tits and ass. This was the one, my brilliant plan.

“What if we make Supergirl really hot? Really sexy, like Witchblade and Tomb Raider? That will immediately get sales up.”

It was genius, I tell you. An equation so simple that management slapped themselves upside the head at not thinking of it before. The answer was, “simply add sex.” Never mind that Supergirl was ostensibly an underage character. I mean, I was an underage character myself and that never stopped any man from sexualizing me. It was normal. It was brilliant. Benes was on the book. T & A was everywhere -- on Linda Danvers, on Linda Danvers’s mom, on Linda Danvers’ s grandmother.

Sales skyrocketed, and management responded by making the Maid of Might increasingly more and more sexy. Before long, Peter David’s Supergirl was witten out completely and a variation of the successful “Matrix” character was reintroduced.

Essentially, the new Supergirl was the alien equivalent of a doe-eyed Swedish exchange student. She often found herself in situations where she was conveniently naked, in showers, or bending over pool tables, color shading accentuating her butt-cheeks.

“Ya, I’m Supergirl. Teach me, Earth man.”

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Okay, here we go:

Are you familiar with “The Dick van Dyke Show” at all? They play it on Nick at Nite sometimes.

Imagine a plot where Dick’s wife Laura -- played by America’s Sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore in capri pants -- gets raped. From behind. On camera. By, say, Floyd the Barber from “The Andy Griffith Show.” Later on in that episode, Laura finds out she’s pregnant, only to be murdered and her body set on fire by a shadowy villain. The last scene is Dick cradling the charred body of his wife in his arms, crying.

“Dude, that might might just be the coolest episode of ‘The Dick van Dyke Show’ ever!”

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The question was put to us:

“Why is Marvel so successful?”

I raised my hand,

“I think their books appeal to those that feel like outsiders in society, and makes them feel like somebody understands their pain. Like in “X-Men” and “Spiderman” -- these people are misfits, hated and feared by the ‘normal’ world. Just like teenagers feel. But books like the X-Men tell them that they’re okay.”

But it was another opinion that held sway.

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DC has had a number of female characters raped and/or victims of sexualized violence, even before “Identity Crisis,” the two biggest being Batgirl & Black Canary.

In the Batman special “The Killing Joke,” Batgirl is shot in the spine, paralyzed, and then subjected to something “worse than death” by the Joker -- the implication being rape.

In the mid-80s, in the miniseries “Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters,” fan-favorite Black Canary was slowly tortured by bad guys and then “made sterile” -- the implication being that part of this torture was sexual in nature.

It should be added that the aforementioned scenes take place in critically-acclaimed comic books, considered classics in the medium.

So given these prior events in the “DC Universe,” what made “Identity Crisis” so much different?

Perhaps it is that both in “Killing Joke” and “Longbow Hunters,” the writers were working against the System to bring gritty, hard-to-take realism to their books. Somehow, I really doubt that the Powers That Be were jumping up-and-down thrilled that these moneymaking icons of their superhero universe were being put out of commission, especially in such a gruesome way. But the writers involved, Alan Moore and Mike Grell respectively, pushed for these storylines both to shake Comics out of its “fanboy” complacency and to add depth to the characters and their lives.

Being essentially sexually assaulted dramatically changed the way Black Canary related to her boyfriend, Green Arrow. She didn’t want to be touched. She had mixed feelings about getting intimate again, about continuing her crimefighting work, and about her identity as a woman who can no longer bear children.

Similarly, Barbara Gordon, the ex-Batgirl who is now wheelchair bound, has been sensitively written as a character dealing not only with a handicap -- probably the only major one to do so besides Marvel’s blind Daredevil -- but with her own sense of violation.

Contrast this all to the genesis of “Identity Crisis” and the death of Sue Dibny.

Here we have a case of the System instructing the author to do what Moore and Grell fought to do 15 years previously. Instead of the sexual violation in question arising organically during the course of the story, you get more of -- if you will forgive the pun -- an insertion, a cut-and-paste. It’s like the difference between the “shock” scene in “The Crying Game” and the “shock” scene in “Basic Instinct.”

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Sexual harassment -- I hate saying it, I hate reading my name next to the words, I feel it makes me seem as if I am some sort of radical feminist tearing down Shakira posters at the workplace, biting some hapless fellow employee's head off for telling me I'm wearing a pretty dress.

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An editor once explained to me that only mean people -- real nasty ballbreakers and backstabbers -- made it in the comics industry. He also told me that witches were real, and that he was the victim of such an attack by the wife of a fired freelancer.

"When women get really pissed, you gotta watch out."

One day, the following challenge was set before me.

It involved a freelancer who had a habit of delaying handing in his work because he was such a damned perfectionist. I was told to go into my office, close the door, call the freelancer, and scream at him until he cried. I wasn’t told to simply “be firm.” I was told to scream at him until he cried and scare the living shit out of him.

And so I did what was asked; I screeched like a maniac at the poor devil, threatening and berating and insulting. And the freelancer started freaking out, sobbing at one point.

I was sobbing too -- not exclusively out of pity for my prey, but because the sheer shock to my system sent my blood pressure through the roof, the massive release of adrenaline flooding my body and causing my limbs to shake. I thought I was going to have a heart-attack.

I couldn’t stop shaking, even minutes after I hung up. My skin, bright red, burned as I tried to calm down. I kept trying to reel my heart in, but it kept furiously banging against my ribcage.

Then my computer blacked out.

Then my computer turned on again. Then an eerie whining sound hummed from the hard drive, followed by a chorus of similar whines coming out of the other office.

Then the overhead lights started to blink on and off. Then the lights died.

I ran to a coworker's office and joined him as he stared out the window in bewilderment. Our gaze was matched by hundreds of other people in the building across the street staring our their windows at us. A few waved or shrugged their shoulders.

My eyes felt below to the traffic lights, which were out, and the clot of cars that started to accumulate on Broadway.

At first we thought it was terrorism, but then it was confirmed that New York City was having a massive power failure.

Once again, like in 911, everybody at DC scattered. I walked the streets alone and in a daze, making my way through the crowd outside, the free emergency bottle of water the company distributed in my hand.

I stayed the night at my mother’s vacant apartment in the city, after convincing the doorman to give me the spare key. A man with a cell phone light helped me navigate the pitch-dark stairway. In the morning I woke up, took what I thought was going to be a brief stroll, and noticed that the grocery stores were rationing food, long lines forming outside Dagostino’s and Gristedes. I never stopped walking, but continued in one long, focused hike from 40th and 3rd to the Flatbush area in Brooklyn.

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One woman who never seemed to give a shit about maintaining her membership in the Heroes Club was Selina Kyle, Catwoman.

A common motif of the modern version of Catwoman is that of the ravaged/beaten/defeated body of Selina Kyle left to die in the gutter as a bunch of cats anxiously surround her body. This, to me, has been one of the most powerful, heartbreaking images of women in all of comic book history.

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I was given a complimentary copy of “Identity Crisis” #1.

The first thing I did was look for my name in the credits. Then I flipped to Sue Dibny’s death scene.

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The name plaque on my door kept falling off. I tried to secure it with tape, but it would still fall off.

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In the comic book mini-series “Identity Crisis,” a group of superheroes do A Very Bad Thing and later conspire to cover it up. The decision to have a plot line where America’s Finest commit a series of amoral acts was part of the restructured DC’s plan to compete with Marvel by proving that yes, they too had superheroes who could act like bastards.

Specifically, the heroes decide to get revenge on the man who raped civilian sweetheart Sue Dibny by magically “wiping” the man’s brain. Sort of “Eternal Sunshine Of the Infinite Mind” meets “A Clockwork Orange.” Realizing that they stepped over the line and did the comic book world equivalent of taking the suspect out in the back and shoving a billy-club up his ass, they decide to make a pact of silence on the incident. It would be as if it never really happened at all, as long as everybody kept their mouth shut.

Unfortunately, Batman was a bit of a liability -- so in order to keep the silence, they turned on him and “wiped” his brain too.

But the idea of a team of superheroes who can’t be trusted and overstep their moral boundaries had become very popular by the early 00’s. Books like Marvel’s “The Ultimates” and “Supreme Power” and DC/Wildstorm’s “The Authority” spun tales of government-sanctioned super-powered guardians who were more amoral than moral, often saw civilian casualties as mere “collateral damage,” and were at times a bigger threat to the well-being of the public than the villains were.

Woven into these books and even in traditional titles such as “The Justice League of America” and “The Avengers” was the idea of larger conspiracies involving corrupt government officials and corporate empires -- stories that portrayed the Western World as teetering on the brink of fascism, with the superheroes on the run from the societal institutions they once trusted. I mean heck, when Lex Luthor is the President of the United States, who can you trust?

Though such conspiracy narratives in other media have been popular since the Watergate-era, Alan Moore’s “The Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” and Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” were the first comic books to introduce the idea of questioning the authorities -- even if those authorities wear blue pajamas and spout some nonsense regarding “truth, justice, and the American way.”

The greatest irony of all is that, as pointed out in a previous chapter, with “Identity Crisis” the “authorities” -- the Company -- specifically asked for a story that was about corrupt authorities. If characters like the Flash and Wonder Woman and Batman were going through their own private self-examinations as to the nature of what it meant to be a “hero” and who they really were in relation to that concept, DC Comics was engaged in its own identity crisis.

What exactly did DC Comics stand for anymore? Where had they been, where were they now, and what direction would they take in the future?

At the very moment they were still engaged in asking those questions, the conflicting answers being played out in the four-color adventures they pumped out weekly, I was bedridden and couldn’t very well give a shit.

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“Don’t be a doormat...again!” she wrote to me, pleading to me.

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When you add the words “just business, nothing personal” you invoke the presumed mutual understanding that this is all ok, that later on, at the local sports bar, we will all sit down and do Jagermeister hits and laugh the whole thing off, doffing our corporate Clark Kent glasses and allowing ourselves to be the human beings we really are.

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Following the success of “Identity Crisis,” DC Comics immediately rushed into the next blockbuster mini-series, “Infinite Crisis.” The book was a follow-up to 1985’s “Crisis On Infinite Earths,” and both titles addressed the issue of managing and redefining the large, diverse, and often contradictory stable of characters the company produced over the years.

But in order to really milk this cow for all it was worth, there was an 80-page lead-in comic, the imaginatively-titled “Countdown To Infinite Crisis.” The plot involved how Max Lord, the friendly corporate despot (think Donald Trump) who bankrolled an incarnation of the Justice League of America, was secretly a complete and total back-stabbing rat-bastard. In one graphic scene, Max shoots his friend Blue Beetle in the head, brain-matter splattering everywhere.

What was particularly shocking about this sequence was that Lord and Beetle’s claim to fame -- as well as that of the dead Sue Dibny -- was a lighthearted, humorous version of the Justice League that ran in the 1980s. How did this wacky cast of characters make such a transition?

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One day at work, I remember we were all talking about this episode of "The Sopranos" that had just aired. It was the one where the character played by Joey Pantoliano gets confronted by Tony over his killing of a prostitute. Joey's character can't understand why Tony is so upset, because he thought it was understood that a prostitute's life is worthless anyway.

Though I had a reputation for being rather quiet and serious, I shocked everyone with suddenly performing a dead-on Joey Pants imitation:

"She was a hoo-er! She was a dirty hoo-er!"

This made everybody burst out loud laughing.

"Do it again! Do it again!"

"She was a hoo-er!"

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 6: "The Punch Line"

...and here is another excerpt from my unpublished memoirs...

Julie Doyle took her empowerment where she could find it: 1)the occasional tumbler of liquor, 2) a love of literature, and 3) witchcraft

Julie considered herself a witch -- a psychic, a medium, a witch.

And while such fanciful claims might sound crazy to the casual reader, they seeped into my unconscious, they steadily accumulated over time, they rocked my motherfucking world. Before I knew it, I saw Julie Doyle as some sort of guru, a wise-woman. Maybe it was simply because she was the first real female friend I had ever had. Or maybe it was because when I was around her, I actually felt that the fact of my femaleness wasn't a dreadful mistake.

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One day, as we sat at the local campus diner, Julie enthusiastically described an idea she had for a comic book. She had received the idea in a dream the night before.

“Okay, so you have this really plain girl -- Lamb -- who has no personality. She’s like a shell. Quiet, passive, pale. She’s like a doll.” Julie paused and motioned with her ringed fingers at her neck, her hand snapping at the soft freckled flesh like jaws. “And this demon comes along and bites her on the side of her neck. Like, there’s this big gaping wound, like a chunk was taken out.” She splayed her fingers like a waterfall in front of her face. “There’s blood everywhere. But the blood doesn’t spill normally. The red of the blood ‘colors’ Lamb. It dyes her hair, colors her skin, paints her clothing. The bleeding doesn’t kill her. It gives her superpowers. What do you think? Are you okay? Are you choking?! Here, have some water...”

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One day an acquaintance talked to Julie, lifted her ponytail, and gave her a lingering wet kiss on the back of her neck. This woman was an “out” bisexual, and apparently Julie interpreted the act as some sort of sexual overture. When the woman left, my friend asked me to accompany her to the lavatory so she could wash the kiss away. Once there, she told me, as an aside,

“If you ever kiss me like that, I will punch all of your teeth out.”

I didn’t process what she said until we were back down the hall, almost at the counseling office. I paused at the door, looked back at her, and said:

“Jules...I feel kind of offended by what you said to me. Because...I think I might be bisexual.”

She didn’t speak to me for a month after that.

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“Love and Rockets” follows two parallel storylines: one, about an extended family in Mexico, and the other about two young women who are in love with each other. The latter, about sweet, good-natured Maggie and acerbic, hot-tempered Hopey, was the first real narrative about female homosexuality I had ever read. In “Strangers In Paradise,” lesbian Katchoo is in love with possibly bisexual Francine; soap-opera ensues. If we follow the concept of hegemony, the publishers and creators of these comics are trying to impart their values onto us by the works they have created; in this case, presenting a positive depiction of same-sex relationships.

In contrast, homosexuality in mainstream comic books -- besides the sophomore girl-on-girl action kind designed to titillate male audiences -- has been largely absent, as it has been on most traditional media. Had I not run into “Love and Rockets” and “Strangers in Paradise” when I did, my next “departure point” vis a vis lesbians and the media would have been Willow and Tara on the television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” several years later.

I had never considered myself gay, bisexual, or otherwise before that crucial day when Julie threatened to punch my teeth out. I couldn’t even fathom what other women did with women, though the “Archie” porn parody comic “Cherry Poptart” had sought to give me some idea several years previously.

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What all Julie's magic couldn’t do was change the realities of our current situations.

I was depressed and ashamed over failing to report one of my professors, who had made a pass at me, for sexual harassment. The man had given me all these recommendations, all these opportunities...I was even on-track to be a Rhodes Scholar. Now I wondered if all the accolades were really because of my intelligence. I hated doubting my abilities this way. But I never reported him. And I felt shitty because of that, shitty for both myself and any other students whose lives he played around with.

But I wanted to graduate with honors -- with no hassle, no blemish.

I mean, who wouldn’t want that?

Meanwhile, Julie struggled with an unfaithful boyfriend, financial difficulties, and family strife. The deteriorating situation with her boyfriend in particular -- a flighty Goth type who had at least two other women on the side and did not seem to reciprocate the intensity of her devotion -- had an increasingly negative effect on her psyche, one that expressed itself on her skin.

When I had first met Jules she was a borderline “sci-fi/fantasy geek,” as was I, and dressed rather conservatively. By this point, however, she had ditched her spectacles for mirrored granny glasses, dangled silver pentagrams and coffins over her exposed cleavage, and wore black, leather, and lace. She even dyed red streaks into her jet black hair. The effect, as she walked/stalked through the campus, was striking and frightening.

Perhaps the metamorphosis was all for her boyfriend, to be more like him, so he could love her with all the exclusivity and completeness that she desired. Or maybe all her flirtation with the occult had gotten too out of hand.

Then her boyfriend left her.

And shortly thereafter, on the eve of my graduation, I was offered a job at a comic book company, Acclaim.

To the horror of my teachers, graduate school counselor, and Julie, I accepted.

**********************************************************************************

The first words Acclaim editor-in-chief Fabian Nicieza had for me when I told him my lifelong dream to work in the industry was,

“My condolences.”

Acclaim Comics was a relatively young company with an influx of cash from its new corporate parent and big plans for the future. It was a grand utopian experiment that stressed, in its managerial style, equality and democracy.

The company cruised along on its ambitious publishing schedule. As one project launched after another we were filled to the brim with optimism, brainstorming bigger and bigger ideas, trading fantasies about possible Hollywood stardom as our characters were brought to the big screen.

Sure, we were Underdogs, competing with two giants, DC and Marvel. But we had integrity on our side. Though Fabian maintained a wry cynicism about the industry, the main thrust of his leadership style stressed a respect for his workers and the vision of a place where all that hurtful corporate bullshit wouldn’t touch good people.

Consequently, our weekly editorial meetings were held with all the cozy informality of one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats, the staff sitting around his office on cushions and couches. Fabian wanted to hear everybody’s opinion -- from editor to assistant.

I was known as the “baby” in the group, the youngest. The Innocent.

Then I was told one day,

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but...you know what you remind me of, sitting at the back of the room, quietly observing? A baby Klingon. You know how like in Next Gen the baby Klingon patiently waits and learns and looks so cute? And then one day, when he’s old enough, he picks up a big spiked club.”

I didn't take it the wrong way. I was very encouraged. Before then, I never would have thought I had what it took to even be a baby Klingon.

***********************************************************************************

With Jules still in college and me enmeshed in the world of Acclaim, it was inevitable that we would drift apart. She never approved of me working at the comic company, and she thought the medium was utterly beneath me. She accused me of “going corporate,” of giving up on our dreams, of trying to fit in. But more than that, she accused me of letting her down, abandoning her.

For my birthday Jules came over, popped her copy of “Interview With A Vampire” into the VCR. We drank and talked until 2:00 in the morning, the movie long ended, silent snow on the television screen. Her head lolled onto my shoulder, long dark waves of hair spilling onto my neck and chest.

A few days later, we had a massive fight. Actually, she did all the fighting, and I just stood there dumbstruck. I thought the news that I had a new boyfriend would make her happy. I thought it would make her happy because maybe she was afraid of my bisexuality, and the fact that I was now a full-fledged card-carrying hetero would reassure her. But it didn't. I couldn't understand what I did wrong.

***********************************************************************************

The last time I saw Julie Doyle was a year later at a reunion party at the old alma mater. I ran into her in the hallway, not expecting it, not expecting her, unprepared. She was skinner than I remembered, almost gaunt, her cheeks covered in some sort of angry red acne; her body clad in a tight leather skirt and bustier, a large silver wolf’s head fighting for space with her pentagram for real estate over her breasts.

When her sharp bird-eyes locked with mine, I felt this incredible rage and hatred, hurt and disgust, everything, shooting back at me. She looked at me with an expression like I had just killed her entire family, burned her village down to the ground. I almost pissed myself.

Shaken, I cut the reunion short and headed directly out of the campus, never to return.

When I got back to work a couple of days later, the New York office of Acclaim Comics closed down, and I was laid off.

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 5: "Tales From The Refrigerator," "Mothergods and Destroyers," and "Julie Doyle"

Excerpts from my unpublished memoirs:

"Tales From The Refrigerator"


After the incident at the comic book store, I had stopped collecting. Just to look at comics brought back bad memories. But also, I had kind of grew out of them. The 1980s had been an era of well-written comics and complex female characters. In contrast, the Nineties were about flash, gimmicks, and superheroes that looked like they stepped out of a wrestling ring.

The “adolescent male fantasy” formula was in full swing. Female superheroes lost a lot of the characterization and focus that made them so compelling to me in the previous decade. In the place of great characters like Rachel Summers, Raven, and Kitty Pryde were two-dimensional mannequins drawn with pendulous breasts, wasp-waists, and thonged behinds.

It was clear to me that mainstream superhero comics had become a party I just wasn’t invited to anymore.

Instead, I started reading these strange black and white comic books that weren’t about superheroes at all. They were just about...people. Just people. And some sex and the occasional alien. They had weird names like “Hate,” “Love and Rockets,” “Meatcake,” and “Strangers In Paradise.” A lot of comic stores kept these books in the back with the porn; I hated to weed through back-issues of “Wendy Whitebread Undercover Slut” and “Cherry Pop-Tart” to get to them.


Reading these comics felt rather dangerous and antiestablishment, which fit in perfectly with what I was learning in college. All the old authorities I was taught to revere without question -- the church, the government, even the television networks and McDonalds -- were systematically taken apart by the crack team of liberal professors that staffed my university. And one of the topics that influenced me the most was the concept of hegemony.

The basic idea of hegemony is that the dominant class in a society does not necessarily need to keep the masses in line by force. Instead, they can bloodlessly maintain their empowerment through the influence of the media, education, and cultural practices. For a specific example of hegemony in action, look at comic books.

The dominant force in comics is the white male. White males started the comic book industry, most people who work in mainstream comic books to this day are white males, and the most of the comic creators are white males. Not surprisingly, most superheroes are white males. The fact that most heroes are white males has an cultural influence on society. It gives people the unsaid but implicit message that white males are hero material to the exclusion of other groups of people.

Within the pool of extant superheroes are a smaller segment of superheroines. These gals have a somewhat bigger responsibility on their shoulders than their male counterparts, because how they are depicted is very telling of both how the dominant class views them and, either consciously or unconsciously, wishes society to view them.


Take, for example, a sampling of comicdom's most well-known superheroines and female characters, as compiled by comic book writer Gail Simone in her “Women in Refrigerators” list on the Internet. “Women In Refrigerators” contains a list of over 100 female comic book characters who have been killed, tortured, raped, or have had some other trauma. If we follow the idea that the dominant class uses elements of culture like the media to promote their own point of view to the exclusion of other points of view, what does the portrayal of the significant female characters in mainstream comic books say about the dominant class’ attitude towards women?

Anyway, that’s what I learned in college. Among other things.

The first sense of any sort of community with women that I experienced in my life happened in college. Before that, I always felt apart from those of my own gender -- felt like the weird girl who liked comic books and just wouldn’t fit in. Up to that time the my friends and acquaintances had almost been exclusively male.

My immersal in male-dominated peer groups and cultural influences shaded greatly my perception of women and how they should be regarded. Media such as the Howard Stern radio program, professional wrestling, horror movies, and, of course, comic books presented women largely as accessories, window-dressing, victims, objects. Assertive women were “whiners,” harpies, “feminazis.” Females who complained about abuse and harassment were weak, troublemakers, and very possibly liars.

And any woman who was too intellectual, too unique, too uncaring of the prevailing cultural hegemony of the day was most probably...a lesbian!

This was the set of cognitive tinkertoys I carried with me into estrogen-filled world of feminist literature, female empowerment rallies, and women’s spirituality.

I was like Big Bird at a Hobbit concert.

**********************************************************************************
"Mothergods and Destroyers"


The most famous of the beautiful, remarkably powerful, and therefore patently dangerous superheroines was Jean Gray from the X-Men. Obediently at the side of X-Men leader Professor X’s wheelchair and the faithful girlfriend of fellow teammate Cyclops, Jean was the model female superhero. But when she died and was brought back to life with the immeasurable power of the otherworldly entity known as the Phoenix, she became unstable and open to evil. After destroying an entire planet -- admittedly, one populated just by sentient trees, but still a pretty heinous act -- she had to be destroyed. Years later, her daughter from an alternate timeline -- Rachel Summers -- will get gutted by Wolverine for similar reasons.

But comics has boasted a long line of other female characters that get too powerful and need to be “put down.” As early as the 1960s Green Lantern’s girlfriend, Carol Ferris, was granted power by the cosmic amazonian “Zamarons” and henceforth became the evil “Star Sapphire.” In the Marvel Comics major “event” “House of M,” the Scarlet Witch becomes insane and uses her formidable chaos magic powers to basically rewrite the entire universe to her specifications. And as will be discussed in a later chapter, the ultimate villain in the DC Comics miniseries “Identity Crisis” is not one of the “usual suspects” but a self-confident, aggressive female lawyer (shades of Gloria Allred & Nancy Grace, perhaps?).


However, the particular “crazy/powerful” comic narrative that is especially apropos to this chapter concerns a female character from a smaller company, Valiant Comics. She was Erica Pierce, scientist and abused wife, who, after absorbing cosmic power, set off to remake the universe in her own image (right after murdering her husband of course). Naked but for a loose, sheer garment, her hair wild, her eyes kohl-smeared, focused, and just a little mad, she declared:

“...from here I can end it all and start again. I will bring order and unity to all existence...”

She was no longer Erica Pierce, but the “Mothergod.” Her mission: to “set things right.” And she shook the Valiant Universe to its foundations, nearly destroying it before being exiled into a convenient wormhole.

One can only presume that Pierce remained in that wormhole -- seething, planning -- through the many years after that particular storyline, as Valiant would see the changes in management and financial backing that would transform it into Acclaim Comics, and as a series of events would happen that would lead me to that company’s doorstep.

*********************************************************************************

"Julie Doyle"
I met Julie Doyle in college...

Julie Doyle was a fighter. Even in the cradle she was ten fingers curled in effort and anger, born with a hole in her chest, her first infant memories that of tubes and needles and scalpels. She was tiny, bookish, graced with flame-blue eyes and a huge mane of wavy black hair that fell over her body in neatly brushed but unrestrained growth. Early on she learned that being pretty and defenseless made her a constant target, her unmannered and guileless enthusiasm for intellectual pursuits making it even harder for her.

Perhaps the first real blow was an incident in her adolescence, something murky and undefined that happened in her house and led to her seeing the pasty faces of vampires by her drafty window and encouraged her to keep a butcher knife by her bed. It was an aspect of her rich personal mythology that I knew not to press her on.

Juile was far more forthcoming about her Superheroine Moment, however, telling it to me in great detail, telling it to me in slow, clear words, mapping it out for me so my stupid brain full of delayed reactions would get hip to it, could comprehend the moral within.

When she was a teenager Julie was attacked at a party by the boyfriend of her best friend. Knocked to the ground, held down, boxy boy-flesh pressing against her petite frame, pinning her. Her glasses knocked off and stuttering across the parquet floor, out of reach, her affected dim eyesight making the event even more frightening. She did not know if it was sexual or simply violent. She simply curled those little fingers into talons and scraped and fought and wrenched her body away from him, screaming at her friend to stop him.

But her friend would not stop him from hurting her.

And after Jules slid away from his grasp, after she fled down the stairs and out of that tidy suburban house, wild and crying into that tidy suburban night -- runrunrunrun -- she swore never to be in such a vulnerable position again. Her face spotted in red and white blotches, her large blue irises framed with bloodshot, she ignored her mother’s complaints:

“Well this is what happens when you go to these parties! Why did you go?! This is what happens! Why can’t you be normal?!”

Julie peeled off her torn stockings and swore to herself that she would never be powerless again. It was her Superheroine Moment, like Selina, like Diana Prince, like Phoenix.

She pressed her white palms to her clammy, mottled face, blocking out the sight of it, the memory of when she was prone, vulnerable...

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 4: "Catwoman", "Sid's Comics Get Stolen", and "Jack"

...and here's even more excerpts from my unpublished memoirs:

"Catwoman"

The first cracks in the delicate ecosystem that was my comic store and its immediate environs, after my ex-boss had made his move and fired me afterwards, took place during one of Noah’s famous Halloween parties...

I dressed like Catwoman. I always liked Catwoman -- she was independent, didn’t take any shit, and presumably, fucked any man she wanted with impunity. She was one real motherfucking old-school ball-breaking bitch.

Her first name is taken from Selene -- Greek goddess of the moon. The pantheon of Greek goddesses, by the way, is a great place to find all manner of motherfucking old-school ball-breaking bitches.

Her last name, on the other hand, is just some generic WASP bullshit -- you know, just like all the rest of those comic book characters.

Selina first appears on the scene as the beautiful diamond-thief “The Cat” in “Batman” #1. Immediately she has to call Bats on the carpet for being a patronizing asshole.

Catwoman (with a pissed-off facial expression like somebody farted): “Well, what’s the matter? Haven’t you seen a pretty girl before?”

As the years went by, Selina unaplogetically continued her reign of thievery, delighting in outsmarting the Law and Batman, leaving claw-marks set in man-flesh in her wake.


I first encountered Catwoman as a child while watching the “Batman” television show. Actress Julie Newmar perfectly captured the wild, assertive, and patently amoral essence of the character. I remembered thinking, while watching the villainess strap down Batman and Robin to a giant frying pan and grease them down, how much I wanted to be like her, and how much of a wuss the prim Batgirl was in comparison.

But by the late 1970s it was apparently decided that the ol’ gal needed to be “toned down.” She reforms and marries Bruce Wayne, even having a child with him. Of course, this version of Selina, having been bereft of her only claim to fame -- being an antiestablishment butt-kicking ball-breaking bitch -- soon dies.

After witnessing her basically throwing away her old identity in exchange for what she REALLY wanted all along -- a strong man to guide her to the light -- I didn’t mind seeing her go. Even as a kid, even when I watched those rare moments on the TV series where Catwoman would get all mushy and vulnerable with Batman, I knew that this motivation was bullshit. All “giving it up for a strong man” got you was my dad and my mother’s two boyfriends.

The next big era of Catwoman’s career does not take place until the late 80s, where, in books like Frank Miller’s “Batman Year One” and Mindy Newell’s “Catwoman: Her Sister’s Keeper,” Selina is depicted as a former prostitute and dominatrix with a dark painful past. Her mother had committed suicide when she was very young, and her father was an alcoholic who eventually drank himself to death. Some fans might have complained about the explicit, gritty turn the character took, but to me it made perfect sense and the mature themes only added to the depth of the character.

I looked cute and sexy in my kitty ears.

**********************************************************************************

Here is what happens when a mild-mannered hard core comic book collector realizes that his prize comics have been stolen:

"Sid's Comics Get Stolen"


...Then I began to notice that several shelves of Sid’s comics seemed to noticeably lean to one side...like there were gaps...

And so me and Sid discovered that Freddie, who had recently boasted of a new part-time job he had gotten, one that allowed him to give me a big stuffed gorilla for Valentine’s Day, had been systematically stealing all of Sid’s prize books.

Now, Sid, as I believe I’ve mentioned before and will most probably mention again, was a nice guy. He was calm and peaceful, tender and understanding. But as we finished going through all his comic book boxes, all his shelves, all his milk-cartons, all the stacks that covered two bedrooms in my two-bedroom apartment, the man put his hands up to his head, mashed his hair between his fingers, and howled,

“I’M GOING TO KILL THIS FUCKER!!!!!!”

I threw myself against the front door and refused Sid, who by this time had the nunchuks in his hands, passage.

“You’ll go to jail!”
“I don’t care...I don’t care anymore...”
“He’s just a boy...”
“He’s EVIL! He’s a little evil bastard that has to die!”
“You’ll get thrown in jail...”
“My comics...oh, oh, my comics...”

And so Sid, defeated, knowing I was right, crumpled into a heap on the floor and sobbed, pausing every once in a while to shout to God in Job-like agony and bewilderment.

Feeling guilty, I would spend the next months buying most of the pilfered comics back -- though, as Sid reminds me to this day, not all.

***********************************************************************************

And, another year older and somewhat more cynical, I once again attend Noah's Halloween party...

"Jack"


...me and Sid marveled at the sheer intoxicating wretched condition of humanity, shrugged our shoulders, and got our costumes ready for Noah’s Halloween party. This time Sid dressed like Marvel Comics character Secret Agent Nick Fury -- basically, an old suit and an eyepatch. And I?

I bought a purple dinner-jacket, some green hair gel, and a makeup kit and became The Joker.

It was a balls choice, as far as I was concerned. I mean, what woman in her right mind would don the costume of Batman’s most fearsome enemy? I was so unsexy, and yet so dead-sexy, my gender completely blurred.

I practiced laughing: “Oh, whoo-whoo-hahaha...”

Because as tough as Catwoman was, she was still, in the end, a woman.

After the craziness with the threats and the stalking, after, in spite of my outward bravado, the utter vulnerableness I felt, I needed to feel protected. And, borrowing a page from Bruce Wayne’s playbook, I decided to get crazier than the crazies.

Nobody recognized me at the party...

At one point I was sitting next to this ruddy-faced drunken Israeli. He addressed me,

“Hey, Jack!”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah...Jack!”
“Why are you calling me Jack?”
He motioned to my face,
“You know, like Jack Nicholson...Batman!”

Years later, whenever this man would see me in the neighborhood, he would scream out,
“JACK!”

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 3: Spicy Tales and Strange For A Girl

and here is some more excerpts from my unpublished memoir:


"Spicy's Legacy"

Fetish and comics go way back; go together like salt and pepper, Frick and Frack, Joanie and Chachi. One popular online database, “Comic Book Bondage Cover Of The Day,” boasts almost 2000 comic book covers from the entire range of the medium’s history. The majority of these images feature women in various forms of restraint. Almost 60 of those covers are from “Wonder Woman.”

There is also a burgeoning online subculture of those who enjoy “superheroines in distress.” Websites showcase low-rent analogues of popular female superheroes like Wonder Woman, Batgirl, and Supergirl tied to chairs, tied to bombs, tied to fences, and tied to each other. When I started my own blog in early 2006 and began analyzing feminist themes in comics, the most hits I got were from keyword searches like “superheroine defeat” and “superheroine rape.”



The publishers of the mainstream comics, at least from where I sat, were not unaware of the genre’s kinky lineage. Fetishy “pinup”-like covers winking at the “Spicy Tales” legacy were a regular staple. Some comic book artists even use shots from underwear catalogues, porn magazines, and fetish material as photo-reference.

And as recently as one month before I write these words, I was contacted by a young comic creator who said he was directed by his editor to “passive up” the leading lady of his story. The editor told him that the female character was too assertive and that would turn readers off, and that comic books were essentially in the business of, I quote, “presenting male adolescent power fantasies.”

This is not to say that those who are into such things as bondage and sadomasochism are bad, or that there is a need to have another “morality sweep” of the industry as was done in the 1950s under psychiatrist Fredric Wertham. But the traditionally high number of images of women in submission in comics indicates to me that either most readers are into S&M or that there is something else at work. Or maybe it’s just an unconscious legacy of the Donnenfeld years, the lingering ghosts of “Spicy Tales” and Marston’s bizarre sexual politics.

Sometimes, when I look back on it, I wonder why so many female fans stuck with the medium the way they did. I mean, what exactly did they get out of these stories that were not written or marketed for them?

“I wanted to read stories about heroes. I had a fantasy that I might have those superpowers and save the world; doesn’t everyone?”

**********************************************************************************
"Strange For A Girl"

I didn’t realize that my hobby, comic books, was “strange for a girl” until I became a teenager. There is a comforting unisex quality about early childhood -- boys can get away with playing with dolls, girls with dump trucks and toy guns. I toted my stacks of “Detective Comics” and “The Avengers” in my bookbag, sometimes leaving some schoolbooks behind to make room. While other girls were asking for Cabbage Patch Kids and My Little Ponies for Christmas I wanted (and got) a Batmobile.

But when I reached junior high school everything radically changed. Sex had entered the picture, something that, as a late bloomer, I didn’t quite recognize until much older. All I knew was, the same boys that used to hang out with me on the steps of the playground, trading comics, now wanted to have sex with me. They didn’t want to discuss Wolverine and Batman anymore. They wanted to fuck me. And it wasn’t the fact that they wanted to fuck me that bothered me -- because I hardly understood the concept anyway -- but that I had lost these vital compatriots in the fandom of comic books.

I was devastated.

I was also set apart -- considered weird -- because of my hobby. A girl reading “Superman” just did NOT happen. It was not until my second year of college that I met another female who read superhero comic books. And in an age-bracket where simply wearing the wrong jeans or sneakers could get you ostracized, proudly announcing my love of comics was like a social death-sentence.

I remember getting confronted in the schoolyard when I was 14 by a bunch of girls, me sitting by a fence reading the latest “Teen Titans,” the ringleader of this particular clique grabbing the top of my comic and crinkling it with her long fingernails. The valley between me and this girl was so vast; our tastes, our reps, our whole lifestyles.

And I knew deep down that if I just took my mother’s advice and threw out the comics, if I just kowtowed to the System and painted my fingernails and flirted with boys and did all those things that girls in John Hughes movies did, I could be at the other end of this particular equation; I could be on the side that is popular and not on the side that gets laughed at and stomped-on.

But I just didn’t believe that I should have to change who I truly was as a person. I mean, the idea of doing that fucking infuriated me!

My heroes at the time were the X-Men. They were essentially a bunch of outcasts who had to contend with a society that hated and feared them. I took great comfort in reading those books, and I think it not an exaggeration to say that stories by such comic creators as Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Walter and Louise Simonson, and others kept me going during some of the most trying years of my adolescence. It’s the same old story you will hear from a lot of hard-core comic aficionados: “childhood sucked, but comics made it bearable.”

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine Part 2: Wonder Woman

more excerpts from my unpublished memoirs:


I am a female comic geek. I have many other facets to my personality, but, in essence, this is what I am. I suppose it is still rather uncommon to be a woman who reads comics, but not as uncommon as it had been in the 1980s and early 90s when I was growing up. But before I try to convey to you what is was like to be a female comic geek during that time, I need to back up and give you a little bit of context.

The medium of graphic storytelling -- words plus pictures -- is in-and-of-itself NOT a gender specific medium. It is, to my mind, a universal. In fact, the comic book may do the novel one better by being a more direct, effective avenue with which to spin a tale -- something that can appeal and communicate across all different ethnic, regional, economic, and social strata.

This being so, why has the comic book been stereotyped as belonging almost exclusively to the domain of males?

I could give an easy answer -- because males started the comic book industry. Almost all of the comic book editors and writers and artists from the Golden Age of comics, the 1940s, up to the 1980s were male. And so they presented stories about men for boys, because that was all they knew. To be fair, they also offered romance comics for girls; because that was all they knew females to have interest in. Because certainly women were not interested in saving the universe.

Further, the seeds of the modern comic book industry were planted in the rich “pulp” and nudie magazines of the 1920s and 30s. DC Comics progenitor Harry Donnenfeld preceded “Superman” and “Action Comics” with a line of sleazy sex-and-sadism storytelling magazines with titles like “Spicy Detective Stories” and “Spicy Adventure Stories.” These publications were, according to “Men of Tomorrow” author Gerard Jones, showcases of the “rageful male fantasy” -- covers depicting scantily-clad women in bondage being menaced by some wild beast or thug or African witch-doctor.


From such fallow fields I cannot imagine how any level of sensitivity to females -- sensitivity to their dreams, their desires, their goals, their selves -- could have entered into the picture except by slow and awkward seeping, through the decades slowly seeping.

And yet, I’ve heard of many female “secret readers” of this superhero material, women in their 40s and 50s and 60s who have told me that they indeed preferred “Captain Marvel” over “True Romance,” who followed the exploits of the X-Men and Batman as closely as I did. They read these books because they were exciting, because they opened the door to escapist fantasy, because they were about HEROES.

Of course, there was only a small percentage of females among those heroes, and they tended to wear swimsuits or teensy little skirts that threatened to show off their panties at any dangerous moment. But beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

Chief of all these female superhero role-models was Wonder Woman -- the same guardian of the universe who enjoyed a brief sojourn on my wall when I was eight. My first question about Wonder Woman, even as a child, was -- why was she wearing a bathing suit while all her compatriots at the Justice League had full costumes? Weren’t her legs cold?

Wonder Woman -- much like the comic book industry -- was also born out of a kinky, “Spicy Tales” type of aesthetic. As designed by crackpot psychologist William Moulton Marston, the superheroine, originally named “Suprema,” was “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” According to Marston, the unique physiology of the female body contained “twice as many love generating organs” as the male, though lacking the assertive quality to fully live those desires out. Enter Wonder Woman.


The first life of Wonder Woman, encompassing the Golden Age of comics to the “morality crusade” of the early 1950s, was almost exclusively one of cheesy sadomasochistic adventures that lie in quality and tone somewhere between “Superman” and a male fantasy of lesbian sorority hazing rituals. Though Marston kept promoting the book as the first great volley for the “new woman,” as the embodiment of female empowerment, it merely dressed up many of the themes of the earlier “Spicy Detective Tales” pulps with superhero garb.

Here is a summary of a typical issue, Wonder Woman #2:

The Greek god Mars oversees a new shipment of female slaves, who are marched into his throne room dressed in prison stripes and chained by the neck in a row.

Prisoner: “EE-EEK! OH! AWWK!”

The Axis powers contact Mars about lending a hand in the war effort. Mars asks one of his pretty slaves, who is manacled hand and foot,

“You are a woman--tell me! Who are the best human tools to use in capturing a girl -- the Nazis, the Japs, or Italians?”

Prisoner: “Oh, the Italians, Master! Girls go crazy over dark, handsome men with titles!”

Thus a plan is hatched to have a suave lady-killer, “Don Unaldi,” seduce Wonder Woman. Though the Amazon tries to resist Unaldi’s charms, she, like most women, cannot resist an Italian wearing a monocle. Unaldi electrocutes Wonder Woman, then ties her in a punching bag, then has chains welded to her feet, then parades her in full bondage in front of a full-length mirror while she weeps.

Wondy laments,

“When an amazon girl permits a MAN to chain her bracelets of submission together she becomes as weak as other women in a man-ruled world!”

In another scene, she is chained to a wall and says, dejectedly,

”I CANNOT break these chains! I-I’m being punished for my stupidity!”

Yep.

***********************************************************************************

I have always been ashamed of Wonder Woman. She has been marketed as the icon of the Strong Female, even appearing on the cover of the first Ms. Magazine in 1972. But to me, it’s like if Shaft was evolved from Amos n’ Andy. I’m supposed to be grateful that the comic book industry saw fit to make this bathing-suit wearing bondage queen into the supposed icon of empowered femininity -- grateful for this crumb that has been tossed to my gender by a conclave of older white men in suits?

But though Wonder Woman’s history is a burden I have a hard time getting past, my own history is also a burden I have a hard time getting past. Perhaps me and her deserve a reprieve, an opportunity to start over again, an “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” moment.

***********************************************************************************

...and here is a far older fragment from the memoirs, when it was going to be a gonzo dark satire with fictionalized interludes:
Interlude: "Sensational Woman" -- Her Life And Times

Gilgongo! Comics is proud to present, on the eve of her 60th Anniversary (and she doesn't look at day over twenty-one), the one, the only, the icon...

Sensational Woman!

Born on a magical realm of gods right off the coast of Sicily, Sensational Woman found herself in the unique position of being the only nubile young woman on the whole island. Consequently, she stayed in an iron fortress overseen by a kindly eunuch who taught her how to box, wield magic, and drive small imaginary aircraft.

One day, all the men on the island decided that they really needed sex but lacked the social graces to achieve such an objective in the standard way i.e. Miss Manners' Book Of Sex Etiquette for Gods And Other Evolved Beings. So they decided en masse to dig a big tunnel under the iron fortress, take out the eunuch like Scatman Crothers in "The Shining," and bang Sensational Woman.

But Sensational Woman couldn't allow herself to be raped by all those men, because then she would, under some theocracies on the globe, be guilty for being a slut and eligible for death by stoning. So she hopped in her imaginary helicopter and flew away to America, where things are fair.

In the U.S. she was quickly inducted into the Heroes Club, a team of the Earth's Greatest Defenders led by the man of might known as The Thickness. The group decided they needed more of a feminine touch around their hallowed halls, someone they could sort of, you know, talk to in order to, uh, relieve their tension.

Sensational Woman's association with the Heroes Club lasted 65 issues, until which time she felt a need to build an iron fortress for herself on the club compound. At first, it seemed she was merely cobbling together a frame for some sort of patio. But then, as the reinforced steel door to the fortress, rivets blazing in the sun, shut closed one day in July, The Thickness was overheard muttering to himself, "She's building a goddamn iron fortress. Gotta call the lawyers."

Memoirs Of An Occasional Superheroine, Part One: "Superman Vs. Batman" and "When Comics Got Violent"

Folks, I am currently uninspired to blog at the moment. I figured I'd just be honest about it with you. I'm sure this happens to bloggers all the time. Between looking for full-time work, seasonal stuff (maybe I, like Greg Rucka, have S.A.D. too), last-minute holiday stuff, home renovation stuff, cat stuff, stuff stuff -- it's just a lot of Stuff.

Well, here's a curiosity for you to look over. As I've mentioned before, I wrote a manuscript based on my "Goodbye To Comics" posts. A whole damn book. I seriously doubt it will ever be printed in its entirety. That is largely my decision. Maybe my mom was right, so many years ago -- maybe there are some things that *are* better left unsaid.

But here, and in the posts that follow, are some of the printable excerpts from that work.

Oh, and don't worry, Those Who Are Unnamed. You are still Unnamed, not even a hint. But do not think you are unappreciated. You helped me write this.

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Batman Vs. Superman
(from chapter one)
I read my first comic book when I was three years old. It was an oversized collection of old Batman stories. I remember going through the whole book and drawing in eyeballs in every Batman face, the blank eye sockets of his cowl immediately disturbing me and begging revision.

It took me a while to understand that Batman was a hero. I thought he was some sort of demon. When I got older I understood that the pointy “horns” and eyeless stare were just part of a persona he assumed so he would be scarier than the scary people, sort of beat them at their own game. But even now as an adult I will occasionally still fill in the eye sockets with my ball-point pen.

Most of the Batman stories I read when I was young were reprinted from earlier, happier eras; but even with such whimsical tales of the Bat and his dog and his boy and his amusement-park world of giant typewriters and ice-cream cones, I distinctly knew something was “off” about him. I knew that he was fucked-up.

His parents were killed right in front of him by a robber when he was a child, and he spent the rest of his life vainly trying to address this pain by bringing other criminals to justice. I knew that, no matter how authoritarian or heroic he was, no matter how many stories ended with the bad guys getting neatly carted away and Bats and his pals laughing at the camera and giving each other high-fives, the very fact that he was dressed like a 6-foot winged mammal pointed to some fundamental disturbance in his psyche.


Batman, or rather his alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, was a walking wound; and that aspect of the character first opened the possibility to me of the comic book as being something beyond simple throwaway entertainment, a medium capable of producing more than “Heckle and Jeckle” stories and tales of men who could telepathically communicate with sea otters.

I also had a book filled with old Superman stories. I always thought that Superman looked like my dad, because they both had the same blue-black hair and were both very muscular. My father was an amateur bodybuilder. He was a little on the short side, but his chest and arms were huge. He hung out at Ferrigno’s Gym, owned by television’s own “Incredible Hulk,” Lou Ferrigno.


Daddy was always getting more and more muscles, and he had shaved the hair off his chest and baked himself into a dark brown tan to accentuate his sculpted physique. He used to take glamour photos, posing, flexing his muscles like Charles Atlas; front view, side view, back view. I think he could have went pro. At the time I thought he really could be a superhero. But not like Superman.

Superman, according to Dad, was “too nice.” Boring. A joke. Corny as hell. “Superman always tells the truth.” “Superman never kills anyone.” “Superman fights for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” The perfect man, the perfect gentleman, the perfect citizen, the perfect American. What place did he have in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate world? Did he really think anyone was buying his “nice guy” routine? What was his catch?


Nobody ever did anything for altruism anymore. I mean, Batman was a crime-fighter, but his primary motivation was not the defense of humanity but his own neurotic attempt to “fix” his past. Batman was fucked up and of questionable morality; and that was exciting. Not this barrel-chested George Reeves bullshit. Truth, Justice, and the American Way; it wasn’t the version of America this son of Italian immigrants knew, with three children in a tiny apartment and an avalanche of credit card debt.

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When Comics Got Violent
(from chapter one)
It was also the first time I traveled through New York’s Greenwich Village. They had some of the coolest shops there, filled with images and ideas and resources I had never encountered before, not even in my many trips to my local Brooklyn Public Library.

It was on one of those trips that I noticed that Comics had changed.

It was an issue of Batman. In the comic, a woman put a pair of opera glasses to her face. Blades poked out her eyes.

“Daddy, can I buy this issue?”

It was so horrifying, so...compelling. It was like the volume on violence in comics was turned up within such a short amount of time that I never saw it coming. There was another comic I had heard about but couldn’t afford, “The Killing Joke,” where the perennial Batman villain The Joker shoots fan favorite Batgirl in the spine. Just the description kept me awake at night.

But the comic book during this period that had the greatest impact on me was an issue of Marvel Comics’ “Uncanny X-Men,” #207. In it, a super-powered teenager named Rachel Summers gets confronted by the hero Wolverine. Wolverine must stop her from killing a deadly foe. Rachel questions Wolverine’s hypocrisy, considering that he is known for killing thousands of bad guys himself with his super-sharp set of claws. Why is it ok for him to do it and not her?

Wolverine: “Justify it--rationalize it--however you like, it’s still wrong...”
Rachel: “I don’t care!”
Wolverine: “You should. You better. We call ourselves heroes, girl -- that means we have to stand for something, no matter how hard or how much it hurts.”

But Rachel defies Wolverine and dares him to kill her. And he disembowels her.


A hero disemboweling another hero. Or, more specifically, an anti-hero disemboweling another anti-hero.

I must have read that issue a hundred times that Spring & Summer. Comic books were growing up, and so was I.

Greg Rucka Decides Not To Renew Exclusive With DC

Is editorial micro-management of plotlines and events starting to give their writers "fatigue?"

Greg Rucka has decided to not renew his exclusive with DC Comics, saying in part:

"I’ve been in a slump for the last six-to-eight weeks or so, dealing with a variety of issues related to writing in general, and my writing in particular. Continued frustrations in dealing with people who really ought to know how to do their jobs properly, for instance..."

Rucka had been exclusive to DC since 2003. And while it is not confirmed that an adverse reaction to editorially-driven comics is what partially drove him to make the decision, I would have to think that some writers are starting to get a mite frustrated with The System.

Personally, I think that the editorially-driven approach -- especially with those writers who have been around enough to maybe deserve a bit better -- eventually wears the talent out. It can demoralize them, make them feel like they're not writing their own stories. And when the work itself suffers because of mandated plotlines or crossovers, and the fans complain, it falls in the writers' lap. They are just trying to fit in the mandated plot points, but it comes out stiff and inorganic to the story. And then the writers get blamed.

Just some thoughts.

New Comic-Art Handout By Church Sez: Don't Be Alone With A Priest!

Here's a page from an anti-abuse coloring book put out by the New York Archdiocese:

"At first glance, "Being Friends, Being Safe, Being Catholic" is what you'd expect from a Christian handout: lessons in loving thy neighbor and knowing we're all special in God's eyes, plus a fun word search with names of people whom kids can trust (parents, counselors, teachers). Many of the book's cartoon-sketch drawings, which were created by a church volunteer, are light in tone and narrated by an angel looming overhead. But on one page, the angel warns of an online predator—with chest hair exposed—who attempts to chat with a child; on another (shown above), the angel implies that children should make sure they're never alone in a room with a priest."

At first I thought this was a parody, but no.

I see the need for this sort of literature. But if you're a child and are being warned not to be alone with a priest...all the trust in the figure of the Man Of The Cloth has gone out the window.

It reminds me of this priest that had a pretty bad rep as as a stern disciplinarian. And I remember one time this boy was pulled out of our class -- by his ear! -- by this priest and dragged into his office. And the boy came back all red-faced and shaken. And we were all like "wow, Father Blank really put the fear of God into him!" Rumor was, years later that priest was busted for molestation.

I had another friend when I was a teen who had gone to the same parish. Used to throw rocks at the statues of the saints in the courtyard, broke up the statue's fingers. Used to be an altar boy. Sort of insinuated that something had happened back then.

But me? Nothing ever happened to me at the church. I was a pretty good student. I won this keychain with a fish on it for a Bible quiz. Years later, as an adult, I went to confessional and mentioned that I thought I might be bisexual. The priest in the booth asked me to describe any same-sex fantasies I had in detail, and inquired if I was clothed or was wearing underwear in them. Apparently there was a difference in the amount of Hail Marys depending on the fantasy wardrobe.

But I still like those little Virgin Mary Statues.

Occasional Links: The Super-Poke Edition

Tubby: American Gigolo?


A Little Lulu story in which Tubby leverages his appeal to the opposite sex for material goods, and the sisters learn to get their groove back.

Also, the similarities are striking:

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Is your relationship Facebook-worthy?

"When a couple was "going steady" in the 1950s, the young man might have let his girlfriend wear his Varsity team sweater or given her his fraternity pin. But the 1960s swept aside those rituals. Now the Facebook link has become a publicly-recognized symbol of a reasonably serious intent short of being engaged or moving in together."

To poke or not to poke?

"i was hanging out up at a conference in Seattle, and all of a sudden poke wasn't this weird thing that meant i wanted to bang someone... it was like a light tap on the shoulder in the blogosphere. i started scrolling down a list of friends on my mobile phone and just poking several people at random. poke, poke, poke. and i giggled at myself. i was giddy, drunk with the power of poke!"

MySpace or Facebook?

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Comic Book Guy: Stereotype?



Cheryl starts off a debate as to whether the "comic book nerd" stereotype has any validity. (And does she get called a "bitch" for simply expressing her opinion and also happening to be a member of the double-x chromosome club? Why yes she does. Shocking...simply shocking, I say!)

"Sadly, reader-of-superhero-comics equals emotionally-stunted-fanboy to many. Normal adults enjoy their superheroes in video games, television shows and movies. Superheroes are about to have the best year ever. Readers of superhero comics? Well, they need much better PR. We aren't all Comic Book Guy! Someone needs to tell the masses that so that guys aren't afraid to leave that Infinite Crisis trade in plain sight. Or buy it in the first place."

She elaborates in the comments section of another post:

"I have to wonder how much of my own behavior is affected by that stereotype. Love & Rockets, Strangers in Paradise, DMZ and Stagger Lee are prominently displayed on my bookshelf next to ‘real’ books, but I’ve got my old X-Men and WS books tucked away in buckets from IKEA on the bottom of the floor."

And then there is the quote from me at home last weekend, reflecting not so much on the indy vs. superhero comic issue but the single-copy vs. trades:

"Honey, let's get a big box to put all the floppies in...and just keep the trades and hardcovers on the shelf. Because these comic books look nasty on the shelf."

And you know what? I stand by that. They look nasty on the shelf, all bent-up with no spines. Even Hippy McHipster can get away with reading fluff like DC's Our Worlds At War if it's in a handsomely-bound book format. But a single-issue with one of those adds for Corn Nuts on the back cover? Nerdy.

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"Would Frank Miller and Jim Lee combined make s**t?"

Two geeks read Goddamn Batman, as envisioned by Mighty God King:

"GEEK ONE: S**t yes! This s**t is a parody!
GEEK TWO: Frank Miller is feeding us s**t and making us love it!
GEEK ONE: I love reading s**t!
GEEK TWO: This is classic s**t right here!"

(via Journalista)

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Meet A Cartoonist Who Has Balls!

At Neatorama.

Note to self: if you're going to do a Google image search on the word "balls" -- be prepared. Actually, if you're going to do a search on "Supergirl," be doubly prepared.

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Video: What I like do when I'm alone and nobody is looking:

Follow-Up: "Oh No, They're Sneaking Teh Gay Into My Comic Book!"

The blogger who inspired my post "Oh No, They're Sneaking Teh Gay Into My Comic Book!" reflects on the controversy:

"In case you missed it, the Pink Crowd found my post last week about Frenchie's orientation."

The Pink Crowd.

The Pink Crowd?

Teh Pink Crowd:

Is Jennifer Love Hewitt Fat?

So I'm sitting down to have a donut and a cup of tea when I read this on the gossip site TMZ.

It's a picture of a woman in a swimsuit from behind and the caption reads, "Name That Butt"

And I click on the link and it's a picture of Jennifer Love Hewitt with the caption,

"We know what you ate this summer, Love -- everything!"

Is she fat?

That post and a related one have the most wretched comments I have ever read. They are either from eating-disorder cases who say Hewitt should be ashamed of herself for being so obese, or from men calling her a fat pig. Of course, she also had some defenders...especially guys who wanted to prove so much that her butt did not offend them that they offered to...well, you know.

But why I am never reading TMZ again is because as I read those posts, I felt myself having a desire to throw up my donut. I've never had bulimia or threw up my food to maintain my weight, but I just felt sooooo guilty at that moment. I was like: "oh God, I'm eating a donut -- I'm going to become obese."

How many eating disorder cases out there *did* relapse because of your post, TMZ?

Hewitt herself responded on her site:

"I've sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women's bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I'm not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image."

And for the record, I don't think she's fat. Her ample chest is, as far as I know, real -- and it would make sense that the rest of her body, especially as she matured, would be as ample. What's truly unhealthy, in my opinion, is not women like Hewitt, but women who are naturally curvy who diet to the point of being rail-thin -- their still-large heads seemingly perching on their emaciated frames. Case-in-point:

Betty gotta love herself!

The Wisdom of Farting Chipmunks

I was watching the trailer for this pretty painful CGI adaptation of Alvin and the Chipmunks, and thinking the usual cooler-than-thou thoughts about what a piece of crap it was.

But then it hit me, grasshopper:

They are not making this movie for me!

Yeah, it's an abomination compared to the classic stuff. Yeah, it's an abomination compared to the Chuck Jones Christmas special. Yes, making hyper-realistic computer renderings of the Chipmunks misses the whole point of their absurdist charm.

"What were the producers thinking?", I asked myself.

But you know, the producers of the upcoming Alvin and the Chipmunks movie are not making this movie for the benefit or patronage of my age bracket.

My glory days as an attractive kid demographic ended somewhere after Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers and before Power Rangers.

Remakes of classics like Alvin, Scooby-Doo, Garfield, and even Horton Hears a Who are finely -- maybe even cynically -- calibrated to reach out to the youth of Today.

Extend the metaphor to the comic book industry where appropriate.

New Friends Of Lulu Posts!

Hi all,

We've got a couple of new posts on the Lulu blog...

Book Reviews:
Yeah, It Is! by Leslie Ann Stein
Sorcerers and Secretaries by Amy Kim Ganter
Legion Of The Superheroes In The 31st Century
Marvel Adventures: The Avengers

What We're Doing RIGHT NOW To Make This The Best Year For Friends Of Lulu Ever!
2008 is gearing up to be a great year for Friends of Lulu and we are all pretty excited!

Now, I realize that the phrase “gearing up for a great year, yay!” is kind of nebulous. You might be considering joining F.O.L. or renewing your membership but might not able to gauge from the website alone what our present activities are. So I figured I’d let you in on our progress as we go along — what we are working on RIGHT NOW for Friends of Lulu.

Feel free to comment on the posts and/or participate in our message board.

Best,
Val

My Zuda Picks For December

The latest Zuda comix are up for the December competition, and I've picked my top 5.

1. Adventures of Maxy J Millionaire -- cute strip about a little stuffed doll who thinks his owner is a slut when he catches her sleeping with her boyfriend. Hijinks ensue. A very Paddington Bear feel, except with anorexic hookers.







2. Development Hell -- The art is not flashy, but this Dilbert-like strip about the ins and outs of blog culture kept me engaged & laughing. I've actually worked for a web development firm, so the humor was very familiar to me (as well as the occasional moment of existential despair).







3. The Crooked Man -- This entry is a dead ringer for old adventure Sunday comics like Terry and the Pirates. The most "mainstream" of the entries, in that it is a straightforward action tale.







4. Avaste Ye -- The art is pretty low-tech, but this story about a slacker who becomes a pirate after he quits his job has a certain "Office Space" appeal.









5. The Mundane Overrated Adventures of Spudman -- A guy wakes up one morning to find out that he has inexplicably turned into a potato. Give this guy a DCU exclusive!






Overall I found the offerings this month far more engaging and diverse, across-the-board. Not enough werewolves in Stetsons, however.

More "Red Hulk" Previews

It's pretty slim pickens, as it seems to only be a few unlettered pages from the beginning...

But what the hell, I'll share 'em with ya. I think the McGuinness art looks sweet.

From Hulk #1, out in January:
(click for bigger size)

Do I Buy The Floppies Or Wait For The Trade?

Case in point: Marvel Comics' Picture Of Dorian Gray.

I'm a big fan of the Oscar Wilde novel the comic is based on, and the art in the preview looks pretty solid.

But do I collect the individual issues, or wait for the trade paperback?

If I wait for the trade, then I will have a handsome volume for my bookshelf and in theory maybe save some cash.

But if I don't support the book now, will there ever be a trade for it?

Or if I buy the floppies now and then find out halfway through that a trade is being solicited, will I get annoyed?

This is the eternal question with my floppies, these days.

What do you think?

"Oh No, They're Sneaking Teh Gay Into My Comic!"

I think the post at this blog sums up every way you can say "I do not like teh gay" without actually admitting that you do not like gays.

What was the impetus of the post?

"The Young Avengers trade. What did it do, you ask? Well, I finally got around to reading it, and it was wonderful. It was full of Avengers, Avenger wanna be's, time travel and Kang acting particularly nasty. It was great. UNTIL the last two pages when the writer slips in the fact that two of the characters are dating each other! "

Which characters? Hulking & Wiccan, of course.

The poster immediately follows this up with:

"Why do I care?"

So there shouldn't have been a reference to Wiccan & Hulking's relationship because it's not something this reader cared about? Aren't there a lot of stuff in the comics we read that we don't care about? I skim through whole scads of cosmic mumbo-jumbo in "Death of the New Gods" because I don't care about it. Can't say it ruins the whole series for me.

"Let's add this to rumors of Nightwing being gay, a gay Batwoman, the new Question being gay… I'M SICK OF IT!"

Why is he sick of it? Because he does not like teh gays? Apparently not, because a paragraph later he says:

"If you want to add a gay character, fine!"

Well that's just awesome. But there is a proviso:

"Add a gay character, but start with him as gay."

This line refers to "retcons" of older characters as gay. But I think Heinberg pretty much conceived Hulkling & Wiccan as gay from the start. So what is the problem?

"...why is it so important to let us know the sexuality of a character right away? Straight characters are not immediately introduced as straight, but gay characters are almost immediate "outed" as gay."

Well, when a character like Spider-Man is showed having a romantic relationship with MJ, that's sort of tipping us off as to his probable sexual preference. Unless, of course, Peter Parker is teh bisexual.

"Since I'm ranting anyway, when did it become a requirement that every superhero team have a gay character?"

Here we go....

"Why is it in my face??????"

Oh, because there's sooooo many gay characters in mainstream comics. It's overwhelming.

"...I really think it's all Warren Ellis's fault."

(grabs popcorn, sits back in couch)

"If Stormwatch/Authority hadn't been such a success then I don't think this would have happened."

Heavens!

"I don't care what you do in the privacy of your own home."

Of course not.

"I don't care if you like men or women or sheep or even horses."

Ah, the old "conflating-homosexuality-with-bestiality" gambit. Clever.

"Live whatever alternative lifestyle you like but don't force it upon me."

How does a lesbian Batwoman = putting a gun to this reader's head?

"Seriously, I feel that the whole gay culture has been thrust upon me in the last five years. And, thanks to all of this, not only do I get to have the birds and bees talk I get to incorporate the sometimes bees like bees instead of birds talk."

So now we are at teh "gay bees" stage of the conversation.

"You want to know why I don't read Winnick?"

Because he didn't remember that Black Canary could have harmlessly disabled not-Ollie with a sonic scream?

"Seriously, every series he has touched turns up another gay or aids related character."

Wait, Winick gives AIDS to comic books he touches? What?

"I got it JW. It was a big deal and I am really sorry that you lost a friend, that sucks, but leave me out of your grieving process."

Sensitive.

"Same goes for Devin Greyson."

Well, who here didn't see that coming?

"You want to talk diversity? WHO CARES?"

Well, some people care, actually.

"All I'm saying is enough is enough and let's get back to superheroes beating up supervillians and leave all the other stuff at home."

Okay, so let's take all the romantic aspects -- girlfriends and boyfriends, dating, etc. -- out of mainstream comics. Let's just have Thor bashing in Hulk's head with his Mjolnir hammer over and over again.

Added bonus: some gems from the comments section:

"Writers like Greg Rucka not only want greater diversity in comics, but do so at the expense of white, hetero males. Rucka had single-handedly eliminated nearly every white male in Gotham during his tenure on the bat-books."

(after explaining he's against gay marriage):
"Ironically, I really like a lot of music performed by gay artists: The Village People, Queen, Elton John, the Indigo Girls, the Smiths and Morrisey. I tend to steer clear from overt “gay” only themed songs (sometimes you can’t listen too closely)..."
So they're good enough to make the music you like but not good enough to get married to the people they love? Why do I get a picture in my head of Archie Bunker telling Sammy Davis Jr. that he's a good performer?

And the best:
"I for one am so friggin' sick of heterosexual characters being shoved into my comics that I could scream. I mean, why does it MATTER that Spider-man and Mary Jane are a couple? I don't want to know that! Why do people who choose to live the heterosexual alternative lifestyle feel the need to force that on me?!

I blame Superman and Lois Lane for all of this."

Occasional Links: The Jack's Back Edition

I still like Jack...

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Best Butt Forward


Lady, That's My Skull thinks that this Mary Marvel pose from Countdown #22 is bit exploitative. Well, I don't know about that, but...


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It's Beyond Me

Hey, if you had an appearance by this fellow in the latest Countdown...


...would you put Bea Arthur on the cover? I'm just asking.

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Hey, He's F**king Batman!

Kevin Smith agrees with the idea of casting relative unknowns in the new JLA movie:

"It’s not like you can put Brad Pitt in it and he’s gonna be more important than f**king Batman. Or Superman. Like the characters themselves are the f**king stars of that movie."

His pick for the casting of Batman?

Michael Keaton. Because he's F**king Batman.

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Assorted Bits...

Comic Mix points out on the Suicide Girl website what might be considered the original Suicide Girl...

You might want to chase that with The Largest Bottle Of Wine In The World...

Keep up with all the arcane intricacies of the Dark Knight viral marketing campaign at Superhero Hype...

Ben Affleck & James Gandolfini's Surviving Christmas rated #1 worst holiday movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly...oh c'mon, how bad can it be?

Honey? Are you reading this? I know you didn't want to see "Christmas With The Kranks" the other night, but this might be a good one...

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The Best Superhero Toys In The Universe

You can keep your DC Direct & Marvel Universe action figures...

The best superhero toys in the world were made by Mego.

TwoMorrows Publishing is offering a free 32-page preview of their magnum opus on all things Mego, Mego 8-inch Super-Heroes Worlds Greatest Toys.

But for me the most awesome Megos are the wacky overseas editions, such as faux Robin...


...and crappy Spidey

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Just add Yakkity-Sax!

Video: Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. Simply wrong.