Quick Bits:
Comics Worth Reading takes a look at the sales numbers for Archie ComicsProgressive Ruin has a review of the (apparently kinda violent) animated Turok DVD
Here is a strange post finding a metaphor for Scientology in the Green Lantern Corps (does he have a field day with L-Ron from Giffen's JLA? Oh yes he does).Firefly's Nathan Fillion will voice Steve Trevor on the Wonder Woman animated film, so geek out.
Angry Zen Master wonders if the Oscars might be a little racist......at any rate, the awards show seems to have been a bit anti-Brad Renfro
A commenter yesterday reminded me of the phenomena in parts of the comic book industry and fandom of qualifying a female comic creator's success -- having the need to "explain" or attach an addendum to a woman's comics career, not letting them stand on their own merit.
During the course of my comics career, I've heard others "qualify" the accomplishments of many female comics professionals in one of three ways:
1. She slept her way to the top.
2. She got in through the business through a boyfriend or husband, not because she was talented.
3. She is a lesbian.
Let's take a look at each of these qualifiers briefly.
"She is a slut" is popularly bandied about even to this day, especially concerning women with high degrees of success. In the use of this qualifier, all the female's accomplishments mean nothing because of a supposed affair or series of affairs.
Sometimes a woman's success in the comics industry will be qualified with "well, she was just the wife or girlfriend of so-and-so," as if the person in question really didn't possess any talent and any achievements she made are really no more than "favors" the company paid to the boyfriend or husband in question.
When all else fails, the qualifier "oh, she's a lesbian" might be used. I used to hear this one about older women in the field a lot. While fine when the woman in question is actually a lesbian, there are a number of non-lesbian women this qualifier has been applied to. I suppose the motivation of this qualifier is two-fold: the speaker means some sort of derogatory connotation (a result of their own homophobia), and there is also the need to explain away the female's success as the result of something "different" about them.
All three qualifiers, ultimately, are meant to distract from the woman's actual work and have them judged by factors other than their comic creating/editing skills -- whether those factors are real or, more often, imagined.
Complicating matters are people in the industry who really do hold out to women as an opportunity for advancement a sexual option, and people in the industry who simply end up in romantic situations with their co-workers and hires as the result of a more-or-less innocent day-to-day familiarity (as opposed to an exploitative agenda).
At any rate, perhaps the sex lives of women in comics is none of our business, unless they themselves wish to make it so.
The third annual Glyph Comics Awards -- honoring the best in black comics and creators -- were announced over the weekend. Multiple nominations went to Fabian Nicieza for JSA CLASSIFIED #28, Jeremy Love for Zuda's BAYOU, MF Grimm for Vertigo's SENTENCES, Dwayne McDuffie for his run on FANTASTIC FOUR, and Kyle Baker for NAT TURNER: REVOLUTION and SPECIAL FORCES.
An interesting note in terms of the nominees for best character in both the male and female categories -- while Luke Cage and Amanda Waller received nods,
DC's "Legacy" characters, with the exception of
David Lapham & Eric Battle's The Spectre in Tales of The Unexpected, did not.
Perhaps, as in the case of Nicieza on the Jakeem Thunder story for JSA CLASSIFIED, it is all a matter of getting talented and sensitive writers who approach diversity in the comics they write as something organic to the story.
Why isn't Nicieza writing JSA??
Turner D. Century: Best superhero name EVER!
Oh yes, there will be Tribbles...
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