Friday Night Fights

CHAPOW!

Blue Beetle indirectly named second-most competent superhero.

City Crime Rankings:

The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugar Land, Texas.

El Paso was ranked the second safest city with cities of a population of 500,000 or higher. El Paso was the third safest city in the same population grouping last year.

Ooo..

Kalinara found news on the Dresden Files comic book.

Butcher's writing the adaptation. (Which could be good or bad -- I like that the author of the books is adding a new plot to the series, but novelists don't always translate well to comics.)

I'm with her that I'm a bit disappointed Morgan's white in the comic. I got the impression somewhere in the first book he was black and was actually surprised when people pointed the casting out as a change. And Murphy's back to blonde.

The series is awfully whitewashed to begin with, and its pretty bad in the early books. Like Butcher didn't notice the only character who wasn't white was Susan for several novels and so started to filter in the Knights, the Council, Rawlins and Carlos when he got the off chance. All relatively minor characters.

Catching Up

I just got back from an exhausting Thanksgiving visiting my sun-worshiping mother. She keeps the most ridiculous hours, up and about at times no sane person would consider, and expected me to conform.

Hopefully, the daylight didn't do too much damage to my skin and eyes. I normally avoid the stuff if at all possible, so my resistance is probably pretty low to it.

Posting should start again when I catch up on the blogs and the news and get bored of the new doll and the cookbook I found back home.

To pass the time until my inevitable next post, you anonymous commenters can fight each other in the comments of this post.

Ugh!

Just when you thought it was safe to return to Green Lantern:

They're using that hideous porn costume in the Star Sapphire action figure!

And this is, of course, the only female figure in the new batch. There's no Soranik, there's no Iolande, there's no Arisia, there's no Laira, there's no Boodika, there's just an old Kingdom Come Jade figure (funny how they made a Jade figure only for the Elseworlds where she got a costume with a glowing boob window) and a Katma Tui animated figure that won't stand up because she's wearing fucking high heels!

I'm filing down the jewelry on Fairy Barbies to try and get R'amey Holl and they give us porn-costume Star Sapphire to play with.

Bastards.

Last Lines: Wonder Woman #14 (Spoilers)

I realize now that I'm the only one who hasn't blogged a review. Well, it was really good and I am not very good at the positive reviewing thing. I tend to just go "ooo..." when I react to something I like and that's not very interesting to read.

But I feel a bit nostalgic for when I did do weekly reviews, so let's examine the last line of the issue.

"Kill all you find!"

This is said when arriving on a particular island.

Those of you who read the issue, stop and think for a moment about who is on that island. She was right in the opening part of the book.

Think about the speaker. The leader of a bunch of Nazis.

Now, think about this character's history and the team membership that seems (at least according to lines dropped in JSA and one conversation with Wildcat last issue) to still be in continuity. Then think about how likely she is to react to a bunch of Nazis who intend to kill her.

Think also about this character's history of lacking restraint in battle.

There are very few ways that this encounter could suck, even fewer of which tend to be found in a Gail Simone comic.

Booster Gold #4

I consider myself a jaded superhero/science fiction fan, but I'll admit the setup for next issue threw me for a loop. I was expecting Melodramatic Superhero Time Travel Plot Cliche #4, which gives the protagonist the exact opposite objective.

That is a way to make things interesting, though. Its highly unlikely DC will let them succeed, which means we'll get to see the good guys deal with failure and scramble to fix what they can. However, if they do succeed (and we get a sliver of a chance of this because DC has a big crossover coming up and we know they like to juggle shit around when they have crossovers planned) we get to watch several DC writers frantically try to adjust to the new timeline.

Granted, both options could result in the writers and editors falling flat on their faces, but success really wouldn't be the least bit impressive if there wasn't a decent chance of screwing things up very badly.

Eh.

In kind of a bleh mood lately. Will to blog hovering slightly above nonexistent. Motivation at subterranean levels. Absent-mindedness currently in the stratosphere, so ideas are not really surviving long enough to reach actual blog post form.

Not dead.

Managed to semisubstantially meet at least one blogging commitment.

WFA updates will happen before the end of the weekend.

Pleasantness

I went to the store today expecting Simone's first issue of Wonder Woman, and was surprised by a new Courtney Crumrin story, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen trade at a discount and All-Star Superman.

Wonder Woman starred a version of Diana I like, a version of Nemesis I like, and Themiscyra is not forgotten.

There was a one-page characterization scene between Kyle and Donna in Countdown this week.

Concept art for a Dresden Files comic book. (And a teaser blurb for the tenth book.)

Oh dear.

Umm....

Hey, don't blame me. Blame society. For better or worse, geeks (and here, I mean male geeks) are considered cool. Not as cool as guys who, you know, are good-looking and have lots of money. But still pretty cool. Obviously, girls can be geeks, too, but they're slightly more limited in what interests they can pursue and still maintain respect in the eyes of the world. Girl gamers? Cool. Girl comic book fans? Cool. Girl doll collectors? Not so much.

Okay, who told this poor guy he was considered cool? Because that was not nice.

Submission Call!

18th Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans

Where: Trouble: More Than Bargained For
When: November 30th
Deadline for Submissions: November 28th
Contact: anna[at]annaoverseas[dot]com and submission form

Special Request:

I'll be looking for any posts that fall into the idea of Feminist Sci Fi and Fantasy, but I'm hoping espeially to see a lot of posts on gaming this month - from Tabletop to LARP, from MMORG to MUDs, from Let's Pretend to CCGs, anything that you'd define as gaming is of interest!

Notice: Accepting Volunteers to Host the 19th Carnival. Email Ragnellthefoul[at]hotmail[dot]com if interested.

Numbers

Kalinara was writing her post about Thunder when she messaged me asking how many college-aged/teenaged black female superheroes (not fully-grown career-aged women like Storm and Vixen, but early 20s/teenagers). I could come up with.

She were stumped at two, Thunder and Empress (Empress who will never be seen again because Peter David couldn't resist making a dumbass pun with her name). I thought of XS, and then realized bitterly that neither she nor Kid Quantum (who was a pretty cool character and the fucking leader of the Legion of Superheroes for a while) counted because they were retconned out in the last reboot in favor of the New Diverse Legion of Super-Heroes (also known as "a large group of white kids, a green kid, a blue kid, and a black kid who almost never gets panel-time").

So we were still at two. We consulted the Museum of Black Superheroes.

Managed to come up with Bumblebee and that one X-woman Grant Morrison introduced (the one with the fly wings who had kids with the chicken-boy).

Beyond that we had Peekaboo for a supervillain who could be redeemed.

Reaching past DC and Marvel properties, I can think of Tesla Strong, the Rocket from Icon and Slingshot from Dynamo 5.

Oh, and that woman who flew in Major Bummer. (I think her name was Val.)

That brings us to 11 total. 4 in limbo (only 1 that I've seen in the last two years). 2 retconned out. 1 a villainess (also in limbo). 1 in a universe no longer published. 3 active in ongoing series.

For blonde college-aged/teenaged women alone I can think of Supergirl, Secret, Arrowette, Spoiler, Wonder Girl, Saturn Girl, Speedy, Arisia, Terra, Buffy, Dagger, Dream Girl, Rose Wilson, Flamebird, Husk, Valkyrie, Dolphin, and Andromeda.

18. Without looking. 6 active in ongoing series. 6 in limbo (4 that I've seen within the last two years). 3 dead. 1 retired. 1 retconned out. 1 retconned into adulthood (but still active).

Now, the white superheroines I listed are just the blondes. That is not counting characters with red, black, or brunette hair. That is just young women with yellow or white hair.

And I didn't have to look up people to come up with 18 blondes. But I had to find a website to jog my memory to think of more than 4 black women.

Something's off here.

Wait a minute.

Isn't 2.5% of "not significant money" not significant enough money to hurt the company if you fork it over?

They currently receive nothing from the use of their content on the Internet; and they are asking for a flat percentage of 2.5% of revenue. The AMPTP wants to pay .3%, and they claim that it's too soon to tell if they can make significant money from offering content on the Internet. Writers and much of the known universe understandably find this a little absurd, especially as members of the AMPTP continue to tell their stockholders about the millions to be made from new media.

Recommended Reading

How the Bitch Stole Comics

This illustrates my point better than I could.

In a recent comment section I said that comparisons between the recent Wizard cover blurb and segregation based on the "Continuum of oppression" fell under the "Slippery Slope" logical fallacy.

For those of you who are curious as to exactly what is meant by "Slippery Slope Fallacy", see the second half of this post.

Also on that website is a great example of a parallel made between the Civil Rights movement and feminists who want better comics of the sort I was complaining about earlier.

Obsidian got a speaking part?

Why wasn't I informed? Why did I have to wait to read JSA #10 a week late to find this one out? I mean, he was talking for at least three pages there. That's HUGE for this character. That's more panel-time than he's had the entire series.

Maybe they'll actually use him in a fight in a few issues.

Okay, maybe that's too much to expect. But wow. Obsidian actually got a speaking part.

Tangibly close now.

Wonder Woman #14 preview's up!

(I can't believe it, since I whined so much when they got picked up for the book, but I really missed the Dodson art.)

Finally caught up on my comics.

Countdown Week 26 has what is now my favorite "Donna Troy Dodges Death" sequence.

Jason deserves to be hit on a regular basis for being a jerk all the time.

I think I'm starting to love Donna Troy.

She's just so casual about this sort of thing by now. She punches Jason (Actually, his still having internal organs on the inside of the chest after she hits him twice is evidence that she has excellent control over her strength) and then scolds him for being rude, and rather than reassure Kyle (who is, wonderfully, the only one who didn't realize she wasn't a goner and is pretty thrown by the whole revelation) she seems to just roll her eyes at him and rattle off some exposition.

"Yeah yeah, Jason's a really big asshole but not that big an asshole. Bob helped. Let's get on with the multiverse-wide scavenger hunt."

She's coming off (over all the specials and the weeklies) as this bland sweet-natured person who has just enough flexibility in her character to be temperamental when the writers need her to be, and is resilient enough to always be good for either a fake death or a real death. I can honestly see the appeal now.

In fact, I think its safe to say I'm reading Countdown for Donna right now almost as much as Kyle.

I want to see her die and/or hit Jason again.

Oh, for the love of little green leaves!

Stop making segregation comparisons when talking about sexism!!!

Please.

It makes you look like an asshole, which makes any further conversation awkward and/or hostile.

Oh, and while I'm here...

Everyone who read this post and thought that "lowest common (male) denominator" means "men are the lowest common denominator" needs to retake English next semester.

You fail reading comprehension.

Seriously, that's really fucking bad because I specifically added the "(male)" because presumably the lowest common female denominator would involve pushing a completely different set of stereotypes. (I don't know, bodice rippers or boy bands or whatever stupid insulting stereotype of fangirls you figure is the worst.)

To be honest, I made a mistake by not specifying "straight male" because a "lowest common (gay male) denominator" would be quite different as well. I apologize for that oversight.

But the prevalent idea came out of fucking nowhere.

I mean (and I know I'm repeating myself but dammit some people seem to need that), the very reason I added the (male) is because if I had put "lowest common denominator" in reference to a magazine that caters directly to men, that is calling men the lowest common denominator. By adding the (male) I was leaving room for an equal low involving an all-female audience or an audience of mixed gender. (Note to those seeking a lowest common mixed gender denominator: Explosions appeal to everyone.)


Still, some unbelievably idiotic readers read that and thought I meant the opposite.

Now, I admit, I've put out my poorly worded phrases and my mixed messages. There have been miscommunications that are entirely on my shoulders in the past.

This is all on the distant end, though. I don't know how anyone fucked up reading that one.