Morrison Writes my Fanon!

I really need to make that into a T-Shirt.


Comic Book Resources has an interview with Grant Morrison, where he discusses some (spoilery) details of what the upcoming Final Crisis series will cover.



One thing that stood out to me was this bit, tucked away in the second-to-last paragraph. Avert your eyes, spoiler-phobes!



Supergirl and Mary Marvel are in it. They have a big climatic battle to decide how femininity should be portrayed in superhero comics!



Now, how much the results of a story beat can influence the editorial/creative direction of a company like DC- with its focus groups and market research and whatnot- is up for debate. I know Grant has claimed that his writing has influenced the real world before, but he's never had to write against Time Warner/AOL before. ^_^

A few scattershot thoughts on this for now, because I want to wait until it plays out in the text before trying to get at the delicious subtext:

-What, exactly, do Supergirl and Mary Marvel represent at this point? In her own title, Supergirl seems to be in a transition from Loeb/Churchill's elongated-torso, no-ankle-having, tantrum-throwing cipher of a character into a more realistically proportioned growing teen girl struggling with an unfamiliar culture. In the pages of Countdown Mary has been presented as an innocent girl seduced by evil into wearing a short skirt and posing for panty shots.

-There is still time for the larger DCU to re-shape Kara and Mary as signifiers, too: there's still a Supergirl arc to clear up, and Countdown #1 and DCU #0 to go. So, we'll see what happens there, and if it even matters...

-What does Grant mean by femininity, here? Is this a fight between "good girl" pin-up art vs "bad-girl" art? Or a battle between what the ideal for a female character should be like in the DCU? Or am I over/under -thinking this?

-Its things like this that make me look forward to Final Crisis more than Secret Invasion- and by extension, Morrison's writing more than Bendis'. With Final Crisis I can expect some juicy subtext to look forward to, which is great- I like my metaphor dressed in bright colours and punching each other. With Secret Invasion, all I can reasonably expect is people talking out of character. For pages on end. But it won't *really* be out of character, 'cos its a plot point!

-Morrison also wrote Bulleteer, my favourite of the Seven Soldiers mini-series, as problematic as it is. It'll be interesting to see if any of the themes in that get played into this particular bit in FC.

And really, I'm just gonna wait for the text to come out on this one before discussing it further. It'll be the fight... of the CONTEXTUARY!

(sorry)

I have seen the future, and it is Wii-ly Sweet

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/





Writing home-brew apps that use the Wiimote as a motion sensor input device for your PC.





Awesome.





Also: Non-gratuitous heroine-in-distress cover:

Birds of Prey, #117. Cover by Stephane Roux

That wasn't so hard now, was it, DC?

Countdown 14: Who Booked This?

Scans Daily has a selection of scans from Countdown 14, and while the whole freaking thing is hilarious, there's three bits I want to comment on:

1) You know your characters have no substance when even the colourist can't tell the difference between EXTREEEME~! Jason Todd and EXTREEEME~! Batman.

2) To continue the meta-commentary on the relationship between the readers and the publisher, pay attention to the conversation between Evil!Superman (henceforth called Fanboy Prime) and the Evil Monitor (hereafter reffered to as DC Comics Editorial.)

DC: We gave you a perfect, happyhappy earth. And then we invaded it.

FP: WHY?!?!

DC: Because you will buy anything we'll print.

FP: YOU'RE RUINING IT!

DC: Well, yes, but, we're still selling 70~80k books a week to you. Haw haw!

2b) I love that Fanboy Prime goes all Liefeld on the third page. Complete with flipper-feet. Oh, symbolism, how I love thee.

3) More a general comment- notice how Countdown is a lot better when they focus mostly on one storyline and don't do one-page callouts to other crossovers? Huh? Huh, DC? You paying attention here?

In other news: THRILL to my first ever poll! Who is... the FUTURE BEETLE! Also, I'm taking questions for the 10 Characters of Doom meme, after being tagged by Ami yonks ago. I've got a list of 10 characters written down, and if you post questions in the comments section of this post, like "1 breaks 5's ant farm, how does 8 help them fix it before they notice?" and I'll answer them all when I get enough questions. So gets askin'!

The Sword #4 & Booster Gold #6

If one was to be really, really, grossly unfair to The Sword (Image Comics, by Jonathan and Joshua Luna), one could describe it like this:

A poor crippled girl is healed by her father's secret, magic phallus (read: Magic Sword) just as mysterious strangers slaughter her whole family; now, using the power of the phallus, she determines to avenge her family's death, by stabbing them (with a phallus).

And you can't tell me that, on some level, the Luna Brothers aren't somewhat aware of the Freudian undertones:

But really, sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and what The Sword actually is, is another fine character study wrapped in a fantasy/sci-fi setting- the Lunas do a good job of drawing characters whose motivations and voices you can buy into in just a few panels.

They're hardly paragons of Feminist Comics Virtue, by no means, but they do write female characters who have their own agency and aren't just eye candy for hormonal fanboys.

Why, yes, I have seen the covers for their previous series, Girls. If those turned you away from this book, give it a chance.

Oh, and in other news, Booster Gold (DC, words by Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz, art by Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund) brings its first story arc to an end. How do we feel about that, fellas?



Booster Gold is what happens when you put out a book that is fun, funny, and yet still full of action and doesn't shy away from the drama; it is what happens when you get a creative team who so obviously love what they're doing, and let them stay the hell away from your company-wide crossover cluster-

Oh, what was that? #7 is a freaking Zero Hour tie-in?

I can't believe I'm looking forward to that. Damn you, Johns and co! Damn you to hell!









Aw, Booster. I can never stay mad at you.

Being Slightly Unfair 2

I love this phrase so much I'm making it a regular thing. ^_^

I know that, at this point, picking on Greg "Pornface Lightbox" Land and One More/Brand New Day is as done do death as All Your Base jokes, but, come on:



Don't you just hate it when the comic does all your work for you?

(Image courtesy of this thread on Scans_Daily)

Green Lantern's Light!

Which Power Ring would come to you?

You have the ability to overcome great fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps. Your ring will guide you to Oa where you will be instructed in the proper use of your newfound powers as Green Lantern of sector 2814.
Take this quiz!








Quizilla |
Join

| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

It probably helped that I can remember the oath pretty much verbatim.

OMFG Blue Beetle #22 is so great.

Seriously. I'm squeeing every two pages or so. Its so freaking good, I got a warm feeling right in my crotch, and now I have to tell you all about it.

Why is it so good? Is it because of the warm characterization, snappy dialog, the perfect recap page, two subplots that advance measurably and contain small emotional payoffs in only two pages apiece, the main plot getting into gear with exposition that doesn't really feel too forced, a nice little super-hero smackdown and setting the stage and raising the stakes?

And moments like this:


For every issue of Blue Beetle you don't buy, God kills a Sinestro-Kitten.

Holy shit, and I haven't even mentioned my two new favourite characters yet.

Danni Garrett: Granddaughter of the first Blue Beetle, heir of Ted Kord's gizmos and scientific smarts, and made of win.


And, of course, Tovar.

(Whose visual resemblance to Kid Devil is entirely co-incidental.)



I demand a Tovar mini-series! Now!



All I'm really saying is, if you don't purchase Blue Beetle, and it gets canceled, then you have helped to murder something unique and precious.

In other news, Crime Bible is still good. But you knew that. Batwoman (Kate) and the Question's (Renee's) relationship is written well, believably, touchingly, and without exploitation. (Seriously: It feels wrong to call them Batwoman and the Question. They're Kate and Renee. That is the mark of characters you buy into and believe in- that they gain real names.) But you knew that too. Mathew Clark's art is expressive and moody and great except for a couple of panels where Renee's eyes go all manky, but you didn't need me to tell you this.

What you need me to tell you is:


Stacy is the glue that holds the GCPD together.

No, wait, thats not it.

Oh yeah. Here it is.



That dude Flay is stone cold.

...
...
...sorry.

The Streets Just Ain't Safe No More

It's crazy on Christchurch streets, says Mayor

Christchurch mayor Bob Parker says he cannot recommend walking on Christchurch streets after midnight as new figures show the city is the most violent in the country.

He is suggesting a "draconian" crackdown on alcohol sales as a way to combat the problem.
"Walking around our streets after midnight is not something I'd recommend to people," Parker said yesterday. "It's crazy out there."

Of course, there is another, personally reasonable solution.

This Makes Owesome a Happy Panda

Context: DC's western title Jonah Hex had been criticized for utilizing rape as a plot point like every other issue. So, when the first issue of the relaunched Bat Lash (ostensibly a lighter-toned book) ended with a female character being threatened with sexual assault, many people- myself included- just kind of held their heads in their hand and groaned.

Which is why the Newsarama preview for issue two makes me very happy indeed.

I know its just co-incidence that this comes a couple of days after the Something Positive cartoon but I'd really, really like to see this be a trend.

Fancy that.

The folk at Dynamite Entertainment and Top Cow (Famous for such fine all-ages reading fare as Witchblade and Magdalena) are doing one of those inter-company crossover thingies designed to boost the profile of their properties to each other's respective audience: This time, its The Darkness and Eva: Daughter of Dracula: in this case, the Darkness is a long-running independant horror comic and Eva is a newer character who seems to be an attractive girl with a sword.

The astute comic book reader will recognise this ploy from 62.35% of the comics published between 1992-1998. The covers would feature buxom lasses wearing clothing in inverse proportion to the size of their busts, and muscular dudes standing in the shadows with, like, tentacles or shadows or shadowy tentacles coming out of their backs. Like all the great ideas in comics publishing, this idea got real old real fast, and I see nothing in what has been released so far about this project to indicate otherw-

Well, wouldja look at that. Female character whose breasts aren't the focus of the picture, wearing clothing exposing only a socially acceptable level of flesh holding a sword in a determined pose with a facial expression that doesn't indicate submission or undue sexual excitement.

Aw, Top Cow comics covers. You're all growing up. ^_^

Being Slightly Unfair

I was re-reading the vicsage.com interview series with Greg Rucka tonight, and this bit made me immediately think of Judd Winick, Green Arrow/Black Canary, et al:

EN: Maybe that’s the proper question to ask, not why, or when, or who, but what did the Question’s death bring to the story….

GR: There are multiple answers to that, I think. First and foremost, it was a good story, that did what a good story should do — it left an impact, it made the reader feel something, and it had worth. It wasn’t, shall we say, just killing a character for the sake of seeing their blood spill.

I think that that is what really ticks me off about the way GA/BC has been going: Ollie's "death," Connor's "death"... they're so... emotionally hollow and cynical. They're cheating: getting a cheap rise from the reader with a cheap shock. Its about as sophisticated as scaring a horror movie audience with a character turning the corner to be confronted with a major chord, and combined with all the other arbitary character deaths over the DCU lately, about as meaningful.

Hopefully, now that Greg Rucka's going back to freelancing, he'll have time to give writing workshops to Winnick and DC's other hatchet men. Lord knows they need it.

Why I Read Them Wimmins Blogs

Almost all of my comics blogosphere reading is comprised of blogs by female comics fans who tend to comment on issues of gender in comics: Karen Healey, Ami Angelwings, WFA, Leftarrow, Ragnell, Tamora Pierce, Occasional Superheroine. I agree with many of their points and hopes for mainstream comics, but thats not all of it. I identify with the feminist comics movement for purely selfish reasons.

I want comics to be better. I want better stories.

A story is comprised of many different bits. There's the plot. There is text and subtext. There are themes, intended and unintentional. There are characters, and their characterization.

There is no feminist comics agenda, or hive-vagina mind. But the common thread I've noticed in all the feminist comics blogs I've followed is:

They want female characters to be fully fleshed out, to be allowed to achieve their full potential. They want the stories to be better.

I can get behind that, and can't understand anyone who can't.

And Now, In Bizarre Censorship News...

I present to you, the censored and uncensored covers for Atlantis Rising: Number One.





















Worked it out? No, its not my weird gamma settings on my scanner which make the underater people look like they've been sunbathing in Chernobyl. Here's a hint:








An accident with a photoshop filter, or yet more evidence that society is intolerant of Fish-People and their perfectly natural, if not beautiful, foot claws? YOU decide!

EDIT: To clarify: The "Toes are Icky" version can be found on the publisher's website; the uncensored version is the cover to the printed book.

Diana and Clark: Just Friends

Gail Simone's new run on Wonder Woman commenced with the recently published Wonder Woman #14, and she continues to use Nemesis as a romantic foil. Which I don't mind one bit- he's handsome enough, I suppose, and not a complete douche. I don't really buy the hasty retcon that he no longer remember's Diana's superheroic identity, but hey, you can't win them all.

Partly its because romantic foils for Wonder Woman are so darn scarce: Steve Trevor, back before the Crisis, was a bit of a wet blanket. Post crisis, Etta Candy bet Diana to tapping that ass. In yo' face chosen of the Amazons!

So that really leaves Batman and Superman. Of the two, Bats has probably got the most going for him: he's suave, he's a hairy-chested globe-trotting badass, and he's the Goddamn Batman:




On the other hand, he is the Goddamn Batman.

Superman, though, is waaaay out of the picture. For one, he's married. And Diana don't play that. Two, they did try dating... Once. Way back in... the PEREZ ERA!

George Perez' reboot of Wonder Woman has a lot going for it. He got rid of the silly "has no strength when bound by... a MAN!" weakness, it has some gorgeous art, and is generally a lot less offensive all around. By and large. Etta Candy doesn't have an obsessive compulsive desire to gorge herself, for example.

(Incidentally, I plan on making another post about how glad I am Etta made an appearance in WW#14. Stay tuned, but here's a hint: I think Etta is awesome.)


And then we get moments... like this.

Diana has been in Patriarch's World a while now, and is chillaxing in her friend Julia Kapatelis' house. Coming from a society of women, she's still not used to this whole "man" thing yet. They smell funny. Never pick up after themselves. And yet...



...Superman makes her face explode.

Understandably confused by these recurring dreams, which might be explained by the epic amounts of Superman Fan Club magazines strewn about her bed-



She does what anyone would do.

She gets nekkid and prays to Eros.



She gets no answer, because Eros was way too busy reading Frank Miller's 300.

Also: She's trying to figure out if her feelings towards Superman are the same that her mother harbours towards a thug that seduced her, robbed her, and let the men under his command rape her people? Diana needs to get some... healthier relationship role models, is all I'm saying.

Seeing as her gods have abandoned her, she turns to the next most logical source of guidance on all matters of the heart.



This is Vanessa Kapatelis, the daughter of Diana's best friend and mentor Julia Kapatelis. She's like thirteen years old. So she sets Diana straight- you've got to approach him, talk to him a bit, tell him how you feel, go on a series of dates to determine if you both feel the same wa-

Oh, no she doesn't. She calls Diana's pimpPR person and gets her to set them up.

They meet up in a field somewhere; presumably to get away from the inevitable media junket that would surround the Date of the Titans, but as it turns out, the setting simply reminds Clark of the football field on Prom night back at Smallville High:



After this tumultuous start, their date only gets progressively worse- they travel to scenic Olympus, only to find that Darkseid and his crew have crashed the joint and wrecked the furniture. So they spend their entire romantic first date doing the classic "lets fight a little bit 'cos Darkseid tricks us into fighting each other, then team up to defeat the enemy" bit, though if you ask me Diana looks like she's enjoying the first part a little too much-



-and eventually they whoop enough ass to make everything right again. Hooray.

Hermes whisks them back to the deserted field where they started, and then Supes reveals that he's learned a little something from this experience:



Namely, that Wonder Woman is gonna kick his ass but proper if he tries to get fresh again.

For reals.

Crime Bible: Five Lessons in Blood #1 is rather good.

But you don't need me to tell you that. Oh, no. Greg Rucka + crime fiction + character that he really, truly loves = Great Comics. Its almost like the Sixth Law of Awesomdynamics.

I'm digging this Tom Mandrake fellow on art as well. He's good value.

What you need me for is to remind you that:



Renee Montoya is Damn Serious.

For real.