Requiem For Jennifer Walters

I picked up this old issue of She-Hulk yesterday. First series, from the 1970s. There's a scene where her boyfriend -- this white guy with an afro and big mutton-chop facial hair -- asks her to change back to Jennifer Walters before she meets his parents. So she'd be "presentable." Apparently, this was not the first request he made of this nature.

And she grits her teeth and does it, but thinks, basically: "This is the last fucking time I'm doing this. This is bullshit."

And I was taken aback by how adult and mature that little sequence was -- how it went past issues of superheroics and comic book mayhem and cut to the heart of something very real and human.

You know: throwaway 1970s comix, bubblegum junk, kinda gimmicky blah blah.

But it had something of value in it, something that survived past the decades and still touched me.

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I realize some of the posts I did over the last week or so really struck a cord, and I'm really fucking glad they did.

That's all. I'm going to continue to write as I've been writing, and that's it.

And this isn't that famous National Lampoon cover where they're going to shoot the dog if you don't read the blog. There are no dogs to be shot -- no kittens, orphans, Ewoks, or any other adorable creature has been put in danger due to my excessive ego.

Just don't read the blog if you do not like it. Poof! Magic.

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Yes, sometimes I write about things like porn. Maybe unbecoming of a woman.

Women's romance novels are full of porn. Haven't picked any up recently, but as of the 1980s, they were full of porn. Written porn, but porn nonetheless.

My first introduction to the concept of bestiality was from a romance novel. I still remember the dog's name. Jurgen.

"Oh Jurgen," she sighed, arching her back even further, "you are my best friend!"

Seriously. The book even taught me that you needed lube to have sex with your pet. And this was a mainstream romance novel that my friend took out from the library. We were maybe eleven.

Now obviously, with the advent of Family Guy, the edge has been taken off extra-species intimacy. Brian the Dog is sort of an iconoclast in that respect.

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I think women have been taught to be be ashamed for any desires they might have for porn. To the point where if it's referred to at all in that context, it's called the far more "pretty" name of "erotica." I think it's the patriarchy's fault (I mean, what isn't?), but it's also sorta feminism as well. And I've sorta bought into it too, but it's me cutting off my nose to spite my own face. So leave me be in the valleys of my own psychodrama, one day I'll figure it all out.

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There won't be any randy dogs named "Jurgen" in my comic book writing. Though if Avatar Press is still around in a few years, maybe we can talk about it.

But I really feel that the reason we haven't had a "Grant Morrison" of female writers yet -- a question I am asked all the fucking time -- relates back to that scene I described in She-Hulk. We don't need more Jen Walters.

It won't be enough anymore to simply write a decent superhero comic and have the public coo patronizingly at the wonder of it all. I think the next breakthrough female comic book writer needs to stir shit up. I mean: seriously.

Easier said than done. I know several really good female comic writers with edgy styles that don't get a hell of a lot of work, and I think it's sort of criminal. I think, despite some flaws, Devin Grayson at least wrote some outrageous stuff and broke taboos. In many of these cases, said edginess is cited by them as the reason they *don't* get work.

I really don't know if my writing is really that good to ever get to a place where it might change things and make an impact.

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Fuck it, my writing really is that good.