He has no right to look this good.

I'd briefly considered ordering the Age of X: Alpha book this week simply because the Magneto costume design is so beautiful looking, and I am a sucker for Magneto. Still, the initial marketing campaign was very off-putting so instead O decided to slot that money towards a Chaykin-written Magneto one-shot. It is currently in the mail, but in the meantime @#$% Yeah Magneto has started posted some of the artwork and already I'm feeling good about my purchase. Check out this splash:



That is Magneto rocking the suit and trenchcoat look after he clears customs with a stolen identity. I'm told this is set when he first gets to the US, after the falling out with Xavier. Now, if I remember my X-men timing properly means that right now Xavier is scoping out Scott so it's within the past fifteen years. Magneto was a teenager in WWII, so he's coming up on 90 right now. That gorgeous man in that picture is around 75 years old.

Not only that, there's panels of him on a date with a much younger woman. I like this, because I'm particularly enamored of Magneto in a romantic setting. My reasons for this are complicated, though.

You know those terrible romance novels where there's an infamous bad guy who is a perfect gentleman to the heroine, so she falls for him? Not really the bodice rippers, mind you, but one of those where the guy treats her like fine porcelain but engages in violent behavior against every other character. It's this weird safe fantasy in love stories where the heroine is special enough that she is immune to the man's violent tendencies or he's somehow redeemed because sexism/chivalry keeps him from acting violently towards a woman.

Magneto romance stories use that setup, but his history acknowledges how completely removed from reality this feeling of safety is. Yeah, there's people like Rogue that he ended it with a bittersweet parting (I remember one where he told his life story in pillow talk to some girl he picked up on the beach and far as I know he just left, betcha this girl in this one-shot ends up okay too) but this guy has had some very bad breakups. Magda wisely realized that someone with that much power who is prone to paranoia and fits of rage is bound to lose it and hurt a loved one (like, y'know, their son) so she left. She leaves the children because she expects him to be so mad he'll kill her and take them. It's heavily implied that Lorna's mother was killed in a plane crash caused by Magneto. He attacks Astra on sight. Hell, even that bromance he had with Xavier ended on a really sour note.

And because they've done this, they've established that he is a bad guy who does bad things even to people he loves, they have a lot of flexibility when it comes to Magneto stories. They can explore his soft side and humanize him without erasing or trivializing his violent side because Magneto is such a huge, established and well-known villain that there's no point in trying to explain away his past or sweep it under the rug. It's there, and the writer has to accept that this is Magneto and he's been a pretty awful person. In the meantime, he's had enough softening and humanizing stories by this point that they don't come off as weird or insincere. Sure Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 was probably weird when it first came out, but by now we all know just how complex this guy is. He can be the grand world-threatening villain without losing our sympathy, and he can be the melancholy, remorseful father without losing his threatening presence.

Ultimately, this what makes him such a compelling villain. His origin and subsequent actions, all of the alternate universes where he's a good guy, all the side-switching, his love life and his attitude towards his children all mean he has our sympathy. Not only that, we can relate to him. We can see ourselves in the shoes of this guy who just randomly has all of this power and ability but has given into his rage and pessimism to end up being exactly the kind of person who caused all of his pain. We can see him as a cautionary tale, someone to pity, someone to root for and someone to fear.

And we can look at a splash page like that, of him full of hope and cheer having stolen his friend's identity and illegally entered the country, and know that he's going to become a major supervillain but still smile at how happy and roguish he is, and how great he looks in the suit.

Team-up I'd Like to See

Polaris and Quicksilver

Right now, Mike Carey's hinting that there'll be Polaris and Magneto interaction this year and I do want to read that but I've seen those two together already. I really want to see her interacting with the twins, especially after House of M. That sort of story should completely change their dynamic.

Of course, the big character dynamic with the twins was set up in a lackluster way by Chuck Austen in Uncanny X-men. Prior to that, I don't remember her really dealing with Wanda (I'm trying to put together the issues of Exiles where AU Wanda and Lorna were together) but she's had a lot of contact with Pietro. They were on X-Factor together, and later they both worked in Genosha for Magneto. Sadly, I think he left before she found out they were related because Austen has her dropping the news on them after her initial post-Genosha breakdown, during the build-up to that dreadful Wedding storyline that I hope Wanda wipes from reality in Avengers: Children's Crusade #5. It bugs me a bit that we didn't see a significant team-up between Pietro and Lorna during that.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the sisters together, but Pietro and Lorna were on a superhero team together before they found out they were related. They worked closely for a while, and I want to see how this discovery affected this. Not only that, Quicksilver is an extremely family-oriented character, and Polaris has a running plot about trying to discover her true self. These characters should want to have a relationship and talk about this revelation, how it's affected them, and just generally about the family.

Lorna is the innocent member of the family in the House of M family fight fall-out, but she was also pulled into the family substantially for the first time by the twins during this. Having been present at the climax in HoM#7 she should remember Wandaworld, her father's fit, and have some words for both the twins and Magneto. That's a mess of emotions on her end. There's huge dramatic potential here and honestly, the best time to do it is during this period between Secret Invasion and Children's Crusade while Pietro is sane but miserably alone and disconnected from his family. (When Wanda gets back, Pietro won't be nearly so starved for sisterly approval.)

Sadly, Brevoort's formspring answers suggest there is no interest in developing this in the Avengers books, and the X-books for years have focused on Magneto and Polaris over her relationship with either twin. I have my fingers crossed Peter David will do something in X-Factor, though.

I for one can't wait for Amazon Princess Blush

On Youtube, Temptalia has a two-part review of the Wonder Woman MAC cosmetics line packaging. (Via Lulubonza)

This stuff has been all over Tumblr and honestly I keep getting more excited for it. Using Wonder Woman to sell makeup is actually a really great idea and I am shocked that we don't see this more often.

I know, I know, I should be on about false patriarchal beauty shit but I'm not really anti-makeup. It's like fashion, the industry is problematic and the pressure to conform is ridiculous but for a lot of women this is an art form. We wear our creativity.

Besides that, one of the big problems we have with getting a decent Wonder Woman story is the assumption that she is a character made to appeal to the men, a part of a boy's genre in a boy's medium that should be packaged and marketed for the straight male gaze above all else. This idea is what makes people cringe at the idea of a kid-friendly Wonder Woman cartoon for little girls, or cutting down on the horrible sexualization in her art, or just really putting some effort into a female-friendly take on Wonder Woman.

Cosmetics and fashion are forms of self-expression overwhelmingly dominated by and marketed to women. Wonder Woman being used to sell cosmetics is THE concession in the "Who does Wonder Woman appeal to?" argument. This is DC admitting that Wonder Woman is character designed to appeal to women. I want some of this makeup, but if I don't manage to get any of the limited items I can take some solace in that it sold that much better than expected, and that we have such a successful example of the Wonder Woman brings in women's money rule to throw at DC.

Besides, check out the names of the items.

Sidebar Addition: The Paper Mirror

The other link I added to my sidebar besides the infamous Rule is a piece by Cathy Leamy called the Paper Mirror. That this is so unknown and unreferenced is absolutely criminally. I'm not sure where she got the title, but I really think the phrase "Paper Mirror" should be in regular use when we discuss diversity in comics. It describes exactly what many of us have been trying to say in letters and message board conversations and thirteen-paragraph blogposts.

Sidebar Addition: The Rule

Over at the top of my sidebar I added a link to the Rule from Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For. The Bechdel Test is downright mainstream by now, and I see tons of people explain and use it as a conversation opener without ever linking this comic.

Go read it if you never have. I'll wait.

I'm always a bit irritated to see people use the test without linking the comic, not because I feel credit isn't properly given--the cartoonist's name is the test name--but because it's a weaker way to get the point across. See, as good a conversation starter as the Bechdel Test might be, it pales in comparison to the comic itself. The comic itself is not effective because it sets down some sort of litmus test or even a way to analyze movies for the futures. It's effective because it puts forth in a simple punchline Hollywood's pathetic limitations when it comes to women. You react just like the characters. You laugh at the joke, then you sigh because it's true. No blog post with bullet points can get this kind of disappointment across as well as the second to the last panel.

More Poor Marketing

Young Justice preview clip from DC Women Kicking Ass.



While I didn't take to the boys in the pilot, I had some hope I'd like Miss Martian. Sadly, I haven't had a chance to see the second episode and from it's promo added to this one I'm not sure why. I mean, look at this. They are on a "stealth mission." Martians have telepathy, invisibility, intangibility, and shapeshifting. They are sneak-machines. Miss Martian has all of these cool powers she can use in a scene like this.

They decide, instead of showing us how cool her abilities are, to take a second to tell us she likes Superboy's ears. In the last promo, Kid Flash talked about how attractive she was. This is clearly the most interesting part of the character to the writers. When given thirty seconds to showcase their team, they decide twice to focus on Miss Martian's romantic aspect. I've seen one image of her flying and maybe having blown something up, and that is only after they spent more time having Kid Flash talk about how hot she is.

So, with all the powers that a Martian has, which is everything Superman has plus telepathy and shapshifting... the coolest thing they think Miss Martian does is crush on Superboy.

This promo, and the other one, send a pretty clear message that this character is boring as shit and I shouldn't a half hour on the off chance that I might like her.

"But Raaaaagnell! You shouldn't judge a TV show by it's advertising!" Well, why the fuck not? This is what THEY think is the most enticing footage from the next episode, why should I assume there's anything different in the rest?

Link: Most Memorable Moments of Marvel Women Semifinals List

I owe you guys a "How a return to magic-based powers can actually save the Scarlet Witch as a hero" post, but it's getting late in my timezone. Instead, go read the list of Most Memorable Moments of Marvel Women at Girls Read Comics Too, and let them know if you want to do a writeup. Some nice ones made it, too. Jan walking out on Hank when he hits her, Storm beating Callisto, Valkyrie's "I do NOT hate men, Sub-mariner, I merely KNOW I’m as GOOD as they are", Jean Grey in Dark Phoenix Saga and so on.

No Wanda, but on the bright side that means no "No more mutants."

Also, I don't mean to brag but--Wait, yes I do. Two of those are ones I suggested, the Jan Van Dyne and Valkyrie moments.

Defending Quicksilver (Hang on, this is a long one)

I've been meaning to blog for a while on Quicksilver's mental breakdown, mainly to answer fans who think that there's no fixing House of M, Son of M, and Silent War without a Skrull or possession explanation. Really, there's a number of points in the storyline that a writer can seize on and use to exonerate him without pulling in a new mind-controlling villain into the mix or saying it was an imposter. I don't know if Bendis or Hine put them in there on purpose, but they're there and I think Peter David at least saw a couple.

In the first place, the already accepted explanation for his complete breakdown is a pretty fucking good one. In House of M he's portrayed as a good but extremely foolish man. Bendis is actually sympathetic to the twins. He makes Pietro play the villain not by setting things up to get everything he wants (like he could), but by setting up a place to hide his sister and sacrificing his own happiness. He gives his father the benefit of the doubt and convinces his sister that Magneto could be a good guy if he had nothing to be afraid of. He gives up his own independance and becomes the obediant, adoring son his father has always demanded. The end result? The old man crushes him to death, he gets resurrected by Wanda (which, judging by Hawkeye's odd behavior afterwards, probably has a temporary effect on the brain chemistry) and awakens the next day to discover that his sister has left him, taken his power, and taken the powers of 99% of his species.


Thing is, I have run into fans that don't think this is enough. That's okay, because there's quite a bit more going on here.

I actually like the first issue of Son of M, because they play this up really well. He's dejected, miserable, powerless, blames himself for M-Day, and when he finally looks past himself to realize just how much harm he did when he was trying to help he finds it so painful he throws himself off a building. Hine really manages to put forward just how depression he's in at the beginning, so when Spider-man's tirade puts him over the edge to self-harm it doesn't seem out of nowhere or a sudden attempt to get sympathy for the character. It seems like this is a person who is that depressed, albeit because of his own actions.


Hine paints a sympathetic portrait of a man becoming a monster, but he doesn't ever call back to the fact that Pietro's a good man. He just has the events unfold and gives us Pietro's view of himself and others during this time. That's actually what ends up ringing false. Pietro is believable in a sickening way when you've been reading him up to this point, but if Son of M #1 was your first exposure to the character you'd think he was always self-centered and short-sighted rather than suffering from an incapacitating bout of depression and that this was him finally getting the results his actions were going to lead to. Crystal's statements, and part of why I hate her so badly in this, suggest that he always had a selfish dark streak and that that was what dissolved the marriage and none of her actions or even her awful uncle screwing them both over. She's an ex-wife who's bad egg of a husband has returned looking for her, and she's strong to tell him off. We're supposed to empathize with her as the virtuous partner. Luna comes off as innocently not knowing how bad her father is. Because we've read Quicksilver, we know he was a real good guy and a good father and husband who tried his best but Hine never lets us see the man Pietro was before M-Day. /He doesn't explain how a good man like Quicksilver be responsible for House of M--leading us to conclude that Pietro was a bad man (or that he has been retconned to be a bad man all along)--or explain how a good man would be driven to stealing those crystals, leading us to conclude that Pietro's nature is supposed to be a selfish bad man being revealed for once because he's lost his power.

It's really skillfully done, the mood and the pacing and the voice all support the story and character, but there is absolutely nothing even acknowledging that he hasn't always been selfish and ruthless. We have to add that ourselves as readers. There are, however, a couple of things in House of M and Son of M together that hint that he's losing it for an external reason.


There's the mood in the first issue of Son of M. There is a great cover where the artist shows everyone as moving superfast while Pietro's standing still, but inside there's a different problem. Pietro's not upset everyone else is moving fast. He's upset that he is moving slow. We know from years of characterization that Quicksilver's powers aren't just running, that he actually perceives and thinks at a greater speed than anyone else. That's why he has a patience problem. He has time to get bored in between words. If he lost all of his powers, everyone else would seem faster like on the cover. He wouldn't be able to keep up with conversations or events, everything would confuse him because it would just be going at a much greater pace than he's used to. Instead, he understands everything that's going on around him, and he perceives himself as going at a snail's pace. He doesn't see other people as going faster, he even asks how they can stand being so slow!


Whether through a stroke of brilliance or a major mistake on Hine's part (*it seems natural to paint someone as being constantly aware of their lost power but really, if he is used to having 5 times as long to process everything, he shouldn't be able to hold a conversation or react at the just slightly too slow speed he's shown reacting at), Pietro's powers are only halfway gone. FYMaximoffs on Tumblr speculated that he hadn't really lost his powers in M-Day, and was just suppressing them out of guilt. Myself, I'd been thinking that Wanda really wanted to depower her brother (thinking it would help him because as much as he loves his powers he's had a lot of social difficulties from them) but messed it up and only got it partly right, fucking his head over even more. The idea he did it himself from the trauma makes more sense, and I prefer it a lot. Whatever caused it, his powers are partially there and causing him to lose his sanity. He's lost his family and he knows it's his fault. He has only one skill, being a superhero, and he can't perform that job anymore. Then Spider-man comes along and tells him (I am not exaggerating) he has no reason to live.

Once he gets to Attilan? Hine actually establishes that someone up there fucks with his mind. This story actually excuses him for his idea to steal the Mists. The Inhumans punish the bad guy and ignore that his brain was fucked with for the umpteenth time when talking about how horrible Pietro is (like they do whenever Maximus fucked with his head, I hate the Inhumans so much), of course, but the writer does put it in there.

And this wasn't Maximus. There is yet another psychic who thinks Pietro's mind is his to mess with so he can achieve his own goals--really, why have we not had a story where someone addresses that psychics (Professor X, Moondragon, Maximus, and now this Videmus dude) don't seem to care about Quicksilver's sanity or rights? Is it the high-speed brain, does it come off as a buzzing that annoys them and they have to stick their hands in there and stop it? Marvel needs an alternate universe where there are no telepaths and as a result all of Magneto's children (and a number of other characters) are in fine mental health. And Magneto needs to see it so he can stop taking his kids to Charles Xavier rather than real therapy.

*Ahem* Back to the original subject, Secret Invasion also establishes a Skrull presence in Attilan. As a result, I look at this and see even more people manipulating Quicksilver in addition to the rogue telepath he connected minds with, the brain moving too fast thing, the depression, the trauma of having been killed by his own father and been brought back to life by a woman with the power to make things go horribly wrong, and then the mental stress of either having a witch use him as a power familiar to focus a spell that changed reality/history and then one that changed the whole multiverse or having to help mentally guild an ultra-powerful reality warping emotionally unbalanced mutant in creating a coherent reality. (Oh, did I mention that I think the Scarlet Witch basically used him as her cat when she cast the House of M and M-Day spells? Well... more on that in the "Ways a clever writer could save Wanda" post I'll probably get to before the next issue of Children's Crusade.)

So that takes care of everything from M-Day to the to the Terrigen Mists. He was losing his sanity and getting desperate, so he tries what he can to get his powers back. What he can try is to expose himself to a dangerous chemical that warps his physical body, has undocumented effects on the human/mutant mind, does nothing to solve his problem of his brain moving faster than his body, and triggers a power that has an even greater detriment to his sanity: Time Travel. Pietro's very first use of time travel is to meet his horrible future self, a future self who tricks him into murdering someone and exposing himself to that drug more. From this point on, he takes it more and more and gets worse and worse until he gets thrown into detox for the Quick and the Dead, goes through withdrawal and his natural powers come back completely. It's pretty obvious that all of his actions from that point onwards were to be attributed to the Mists. I'd argue that the actions leading up to it can be excused as temporary insanity, too, because of the trauma in House of M #7 and the disconnect between his perceptions and his actions.

This brings us to House of M. Nothing can save the character from that, right? Well... Maybe Magneto can.


In House of M #1 Magneto finds Pietro at his sister's bedside and demands to know why he's there. That little question is glossed over but it is the oddest thing for Magneto to say. This is Quicksilver of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch here. Also known as Pietro "Is my sister going to be alright?" Maximoff. Now, I didn't read Excalibur but if Wanda is ill, why wouldn't he be there? We know as teenagers she used to get sick when she used her powers too much, and he used to take care of her during that. He's been playing nursemaid for her at least since they were 13. The thing to question here is that he hasn't been at her side constantly, rearranging the bedding, bringing her water and chicken soup, reading to her, doing anything that can possibly be done to care for a sick person. The only explanation for that question is that Magneto's already made it clear that he's not supposed to be there, probably to prevent Wanda from accidentally hurting him.

But Pietro's in the room in House of M #1, and this can't be the first time he's been there. And maybe... it's not the first time Pietro's tried to help Wanda control that power. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time he's applied his will to a mystical situation to try and help her (see "Nights of Wundagore", which is either magic or a result of Wanda's power by the Bendis retcon so it applies either way) and they probably couldn't have created a world so intense without having practiced first. Maybe whatever caused Wanda to lose her sanity got passed onto Pietro and amped up the stress level, leading to his own actions in that miniseries. If they go by that hateful idea that those powers cost Wanda her sanity, can you imagine what they did to the guy who's not built to have them? If it's just magic getting out of hand it makes even more sense that he was affected. And if she's being possessed or affected by some external source then that's probably been passed on to him by the opening of the miniseries too.

My point is, for a clever writer (or even just one with eyes) there's no reason to completely retcon out the past few years to save Quicksilver as a heroic character. His actions in Son of M were terrible, but there was major external interference causing it. Any combination of the items I mentioned above could be explored in a scene where someone questions Quicksilver's return to the Avengers and you can use him cleanly afterwards.

Crystal, on the other hand, would benefit greatly from all of us forgetting this miniseries ever happened.

Women in Comics Wiki

Ladies Making Comics just set up a new project we can all participate in:

I went on a long strange trip last night. A niggle of an idea about a special, irregular feature on women of the Golden Age of Comics has ballooned into a full-fledged wiki focused entire on women of all comics forms (comic books, newspaper strips, webcomics, manga) throughout history. It’s extremely bare-bones right now, but I hope with your (and the rest of the internet’s) help, it can be ground zero for all information about women in comics.

I’ve already done one page, Kathryn Immonen’s, to get a feel for the format. Go add your own!

Scarlet Twilight could have used a parallax view.

I've mentioned earlier that I consider Wanda Maximoff the Parallax of this decade. Think about it. She was a Silver Age hero who suffered a worldshattering tragedy that was resolved in her storyline but used by a new creative team as an excuse to turn the character into a crazed villain and reboot the franchise. She was made powerful to an unusable extent and the resulting madness was central to a universe-changing crossover where she attempted to rewrite reality to undo the tragedy. After this, she becomes a boogeyman in the superhero community, a name dropped to conjure the dark possibilities of a trusted friend turning into an enemy.

With Hal and Wanda we have a male character and a female character having served the same purpose for the company, written in an incredibly similar character arc but handled differently in some very unsettling ways. Take point of view, for instance.

Hal Jordan as the star of the solo Green Lantern title gets a story following his point of view when he loses his mind. We follow him (the issue after he has made peace with the Coast City destruction) on his attempts to rebuild his hometown, through his painful realization that he can't sustain the illusion, through his justification for needing to gain more power and lash out at his friends, through his wild rampage until the book is officially handed off to his successor Kyle. Then, once Hal's journey into madness has been properly documented through his eyes so we all know the flimsy reason that the hero we've all read and loved for thirty years is now the main villain of the series, and his successor has been chosen, the camera goes to another character. The momentous reveal of Hal's transformation to his shocked friends and teammates in a teambook comes only after the Fall of Hal Jordan has happened in his own book, following Hal as it happened and featuring scenes that showed his state of mind as it deteriorated.

Wanda Maximoff as a member of the Avengers teambook doesn't get this treatment. Her turn towards the dark side is told through other viewpoints, by the surrounding characters speculating about her mental state. Way back when they started this womb crazy mess in "Darker than Scarlet" her memory was erased, she spent time catatonic, and she lost her sanity for a bit. Agatha Harkness, Magneto, Quicksilver and the Wet Coast Avengers provided the exposition during this when they discussed Wanda. Wanda, having no memory of the trigger for this (thanks a bunch, Harkness) was not able to express this reasoning herself, she could just say Bad Girl things and be egged on by her father. It wasn't until after this story arc concluded that she regained her memory of the children and could express the pain she'd endured in her own words.

Avengers: Disassembled is even worse in this respect. It's a mystery. Wanda's turn is the big reveal at the climax. We don't even get to watch Wanda undergo this breakdown as other characters explain, the entire matter is a secret while we follow the others. And while one could argue that we saw it in Darker than Scarlet, the entire matter was resolved in the interim. This book retconned the resolution away, and didn't show the second breakdown in detail at all. Anything in between that dealt with Wanda's feelings about her children was erased so we have never gotten the Wanda POV to this story. (Or if we have, it was in a side-book that wasn't part of the crossover that somehow I and the other obsessive Wanda fangirls managed to miss completely) For the second time we don't get Wanda's point of view, and here we don't get to see her until she's completely gone. The surrounding characters explain EVERYTHING. Dr. Strange explains her powers, her mental state and the changed continuity (contradicting all prior statements he's made about the character and erasing the resolution of the trauma that triggered this breakdown), while Wanda is offstage. When they fight Wanda, all she says is a grim "Leave my children alone" a few times. We can pity her, and we can infer where she's coming from.... But we never get to see where's coming from.

We never get Wanda's viewpoint until House of M and even then the vast majority of the story is told through the viewpoints of Magneto, Wolverine, and Quicksilver. Out of eight issues we get Wanda's point of view in one scene of issue one (before Prof. X tries desperately to suppress it for her own good, of course), and a few scenes issue seven, most notably before she takes out 99% of her species. That's not really even one issue. We get Wolverine's viewpoint steadily for over five issues.



That, of course, is still much better than what we're getting from Children's Crusade, where everyone except Wanda tells the story of how Wanda lost her sanity. Iron Man, Magneto, Quicksilver, Wiccan, and Dr. Fucking Doom have all told us about Wanda's life and her mental state, while Wanda stands there clueless and powerless. We're coming on the halfway point and she's still a total amnesiac.

And yeah, there's an argument that this is all over being in a teambook rather than a solo book, that this is to preserve suspense and that sexism has nothing to do with this difference, but with this being such an important matter for the metaplot of the Marvel Universe, with Wanda's behavior being so vital to rebooting two major franchises.... Surely they could have spared an issue or two during one of these crossovers to spend some substantial time inside her head after the reveal? Walk through Wanda's delusions with her? Show how wanting her children back led to destroying her adopted family?

Disassembled was ridiculously massive. House of M had 5 full issues of "Getting the band together." Children's Crusade is on issue four and they just now got to giving Wanda lines. These stories are dragged out to an amazing degree, but when it comes to exploring the complex mind and emotions of a woman suddenly everyone's into compression and it's sufficient to have a man come in and give his expert opinion of "bitch crazy."

Happy Birthday, Dad

In honor of my father's birthday, I once again present my favorite superhero cop, Jim Hammond the original Human Torch. Here is Jim's first week on the job as recounted by Roy Thomas and Rich Buckler.



Yeah... That guy didn't really cause him much more trouble after that.

Daughters of the Dragon: Samurai Bullets

I finally picked up Daughters of the Dragon: Samurai Bullets by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Khari Evans. I have had this mini for a very long time but been unable to motivate myself to read it. I'd initially skipped the book based on the preview art, but people with trustworthy tastes kept recommending it so I picked it up. The problem was that each time I went to read it I found myself flipping open to a page of particularly egregious cheesecake. An unnecessary buttshot, and unnecessary cleavage focus... No crime so severe as what Benes has committed against a narrative, but still enough to make me sigh and put it aside. The faces were still distinctive and expressive, though, so I didn't completely write off Khari Evans, I just waited until I was in a receptive mood.

When I finally did get into it, I was glad I gave it a chance. The writing is FANTASTIC. The characters were so lively and likable, the pacing was perfect, the dialogue funny. I've read Misty Knight guesting in a few other things, and been fond of her for a while but this was the first time I'd seen the team together and Colleen was instantly a favorite. She's bright and cheerful and perceptive and energetic. Everything I love in a character.

The plot was engaging, helped along by the pacing. They knew just when to break it up for a humor breather, and when to open with an action scene and--most importantly for this sort of story--to end on a high note. Those last few pages of issue six were pure joy.

And when it came down to it? I even liked the artist. He does incredible expressions and hair and knows how to setup a page so the story flows, and a fight you can follow. There were a lot of butt and boob shot, but the posing and body language primarily got across their personalities and moods. The characters were distinctive, not all drawings of the same woman in different poses. The facial expressions were focused on conveying emotion rather than attractiveness. And as the story went on the T&A seemed to lessen so maybe he working on it.

I do understand that the art is referencing a style of movies and fashion, but I do think the sexualization went beyond style to the point we had a packaging problem for the story. I know back when this first came out I wasn't the only one looking at the preview art and shuddering at nipples visible through every outfit, not a bra in sight, butt shots, thong underwear, lingering cleavage downshots, cutaway fashion, faulty zippers and so on even in fight scenes. This stuff is a dealbreaker for some people, and I'd bet for more people than would rate the same touches as making it a must-buy. I know if I hadn't heard good reviews I'd never have bothered.



That's pretty terrible when you think about it, because you know that feminist comic series so many of us are asking for? The one with an unqualified passing of the Bechdel test, with female heroes and female villains, with women who have well-deserved badass reputations, with friendship between women and a optimistic ending? That almost nonexistent superhero story for women? Yeah... If that's something you want, this would be a good place to look.

Marvel Women Most Memorable Moments

Girls Read Comics Too has the first couple polls up. They feature instances of women doing stuff rather than being powerless and clueless while heir fathers and sons fight to save them for coming on five issues now.

Marvel Marketing Pisses Me Off Again

Play along with me, readers, as I list the ways that the Avengers: Children's Crusade #5 solicit pisses me off. Can you guess all six?

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE #5 (of 9)
Written by ALLAN HEINBERG
Pencils & Cover by JIM CHEUNG
THE SCARLET WITCH WAR IS ON! Latveria becomes a battle-ground as Magneto battles Doctor Doom — and the Young Avengers take on the Avengers — to determine the ultimate fate of the Scarlet Witch. But the mysterious reappearance of the time-traveling Iron Lad unleashes Wanda’s reality-altering powers upon the timestream itself, changing the game, and the Marvel Universe, forever.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

To be fair, I do like some of the things Heinberg is doing (though honestly, I think everyone so pleased with the last issue just has lowered the bar so much that if Wanda's not actively murdering people they consider it a good thing) but the way Marvel is pushing--and in other places not pushing--this series and Wanda's storyline annoys the living fuck out of me. Everywhere they tell us that Wanda is "criminally insane" and responsible for a more effective genocide than her father could have dreamed of. Every indication is that if they do bring her back, they aren't going to fix any of the real problems she caused and give her a real redemption. And everywhere I look there is no foreshadowing and hell, no reference at all to this storyline in any of the surrounding books, as though there is no intention that it will change anyone's opinion on Wanda in the future.

Now we get this solicit, which contains the following implications:

Battle lineups don't include Wanda, she's just the toy being fought over. For the fifth issue of the third event in the seventh fucking year, she's just a toy being fought over. I really don't see the need for a clever meta-commentary about this for a character who was an active decisionmaker from 1964-2004, with one fucking exception in the 80s so they could retcon away those kids you brought back (apparently so they can decide her fate for her).

"Reality-altering powers" I foolishly thought we were through with this "Wanda is a Nexus Crawler" bullshit. Billy gets magic, they have always treated it as magic, and Pietro's experience with Cthon was treated as magic too. Why are not okay with the magic explanation again? What was wrong with a soft retcon? I mean, they retconned out all the previous interaction with Dr. Strange with Disassembled? Why not just fucking forget those two pages? Or we could find out that was an imposter rather than Dr. Strange? Or mind control? Why do we have to go back to the exact problem that Bendis invented to make her unusuable as a hero to begin with?

Iron Lad releashes Wanda's powers upon the timestream. See Problem 1. Once again, she doesn't get to make decisions, someone else makes them for her. At issue 5, we really should be past the sort of shit that makes No More Mutants look good.

The cover does a thing I really hate, and it's not just a Cheung thing but something that has been bugging me on and off for years. Wanda and Pietro look like they are very different ages and different levels of attractiveness. Funny how whenever an artist does that, it's always the female twin who looks hotter and younger?

April? Issue 4 was out in January. You can't even keep to a bimonthly schedule here after you put this fucking special off for over two years?

Changing the Marvel Universe forever. I know, I've been wanting this to have a confirmed effect on the rest of the line... but they found a way to tease that and annoy me too. I would not put it past them to be serious here, and using the opportunity of another Wanda appearance to implement some M-Day or One-More-Day-style change they've been aching to shove in there. Something that, like M-Day, they plan to pin on her CRAZY Nexus Crawler powers that she can't control and can never redeem herself properly for, because they want to make it permanent. So, nothing real changes about Wanda (she's still a crazy weak woman who can't control her powers and needs her male family members to care for her) but they get to use her as an excuse for whatever shitty change they can't blame on Mephisto now.

Shit. This is how Storm and Black Panther aren't going to be married anymore, isn't it?

(ETA: Okay, that last one might not be so bad, but that still won't change the first five problems with this solicit.)

Link

Found and shared this on Twitter (via) earlier today, the famous story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr convincing Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek:

“I hope you will get the story right this time, because for some reason, no one has ever gotten this story right,(laughs). I, after the first season, because my heart was still on Broadway and the performing arts part of me, the musical performing arts of me was yearning to leave. I never intended to be an actress other than in the theater. So for me, TV and movies, that was something to help me get from here to there. And so it was a shock for me to be cast in Star Trek . A shock and a joy. I was performing in England at the time of the inception of the show and my agent tracked me down in Paris and told me that they were doing a show called Star Trek, assuming that I’d know what that was. Because I’d been in and out of the country for so long.

Now I’d known Gene Rodenberry since he’d given me my first TV starring role in a show that he’d done called the ‘The Lieutenant’. And he was one of the first people of that stature that gave me encouragement. He called my agent and said can you find Nichelle, because I need her for a role in this show and wherever she is, get her back here because I want a woman head of a department on the bridge. He changed the role from a man heading communications on the bridge and he wanted a woman of color. He wanted me and I came back and got the role. So the first year went by, and I enjoyed doing the role, to me at that time it was very challenging [laughs] but I played my role to the hilt, being the head of communications and all that and by this time the show had aired and I was starting to get notice and on the side I’m singing at places and people are hearing me and calling and I’m thinking, “Oh this is my big break! I have to leave this little show and go do it! I was thinking Broadway here I come!'

The rest here.

I don't understand Marvel sometimes.

Remember 90s X-men? Remember this guy?



Joseph. He showed after Magneto was "killed" in the whole Onslaught mess, and everyone assumed it was the old man de-aged with bonus amnesia. And for a while he was on the X-men as they milked the whole distrust the stranger who strongly resembles our worst enemy for all it was worth. During this, he got romantically entangled with Rogue, and it worked nicely because it had the positives of the romance with Magneto, where a guy actually treated Rogue like a worthwhile person (fuck you and your bullshit macho entitlement attitude Gambit) without the negatives of him really being a hateful old man and the main villain of the franchise. (Though again, directed at Gambit, when your biggest romantic rival is the main villain of the franchise and that guy actually treats her BETTER than you do, you suck.)



As time went on, Joseph proved he was a genuinely noble soul and real hero in his own right, and the people who thought he was Magneto began to think Magneto could have been a good guy if only the psychic airline had lost his baggage. Then two things happened (and as 90s X-men went I'm not certain which came first): 1) Magneto came back, and 2) We met Mommy.



See, Joseph was just a clone of Magneto, created by his mad scientist ex-girlfriend in order to kill him.

Yes, that's right, Magneto has a good-guy clone-son and an evil mad scientist ex-girlfriend who wants to kill him... and Marvel is not using either of them.



It's weird, too. Astra is a really, really horrible person, but I really like her. She was apparently in the Brotherhood pre-Uncanny X-men #4, but left for ideological reasons or because Magneto wasn't screwing her or because Magneto dumped her or all three. The falling out was apparently over greed, Magneto wants to rule the world and establish his demographic as the one in power, she wants to rule the world and get rich. It was amplified by the sexual tension they had. She is incredibly fixated on how she felt about Magneto and how attractive he still is and how he either turned her down or dumped her, to the point that her preferred method of killing him is to clone him and tell the clone to call her Mommy. Because despite the fact that she knows he's a jackass and she wants to kill him, she still thinks he's one hell of a man.

For his part, he thinks she's a greedy soulless monster who cares nothing for her own people and is sworn to kill her on sight. He has called her deluded, so she may be a stalker-bad-guy rather than an ex, but I don't trust Magneto not to have taken a lover from his early cult when a woman was so readily up for the position. I mean... he was kinda creepy around Wanda sometimes (though not as bad as Xavier with Jean) and she was underage, his daughter, and completely repulsed by him. Astra's good-looking, older, and--even now that she hates his guts--really freaking hot for him. Also, he certainly seems to hate her a lot more passionately than he hates anyone else who's left the Brotherhood.

Also, I love the way they talk. Magneto is very lofty and formal, Astra is disrespectful, flippant, rude, and colloquial. She calls Joseph "Joey", and continually makes comments about how attractive Magneto is, comes on to Nightcrawler, reduces everything to it base level and constantly mutters about the shoddy alien tech that she's stolen and is using to attack him. Oh, and when she doesn't get to kill Magneto or take over the world by taking advantage of human gratitude, she says this:



I can't believe no one wants to use this character. I mean, how many supervillains, crazed parents, or psychotic ex-girlfriend/stalker characters have this much fun playing just one of those roles? She's having the time of her life being all three, and even stops to shake her fists at the heroes at the end!

But sadly, no one seems interested in her or her poor kid. Joseph dissipated after throwing all his power into the magnetic field of the earth to fix damage his old man did, and Astra was apparently "taken care of" off-panel by Apocalypse sometime. Really, they should bring both back, Rogue deserves a better love interest and Magneto certainly deserves more enemies.



That's probably the main reason I like her. There's an ex-wife/ex-girlfriend stereotype that writers love to play with, where the hurt woman dogs the poor innocent guy all over the place. Usually, this woman is very unbalanced and the wrong was completely out of proportion with result. Basically, it's always Carrie Fisher chasing the Blues Brothers all over Chicago so she can kill both because Jake left her at the altar. He's a jerk, but she's going way overboard.

With Magneto? He's responsible for how much horrible misery? Beyond the whole genocidal maniac thing, just look at his personal life. His first wife left him because he killed a whole bunch of people in front of her. He lost his temper and crushed his own son to death once. He is the worst possible scenario of that smooth guy who gets you on his side and then reveals that underneath he is--to quote his daughter--just this horrible person. You can completely side with any woman who says "He treated me like shit and he needs to die" even if she's as objectively awful as Astra.

Maybe that's it. They don't really want that stereotype to be someone that you even slightly side with, and if the guy in question is Magneto you know he did something horrible to her. Personally, I want Marvel to make a thing of this. I want this to be a Magneto problem on multiple fronts. Because not only do we have Astra in limbo, we also have his good-natured selfless wife Magda.

Now, Magda is not established as being anything more than a baseline human, but her two children have radically different powers than their father and it wouldn't be too much for suspension of disbelief if an old lady speedster showed up some day. (Wanda's powers are established as having been fucked with by Cthon, so I'm figuring Pietro's the one displaying the natural X-gene.) Also, no stretch of the imagination to find reasons Magda might think her husband needs to be stopped or even killed for the good of planet, or at least her poor kids.

Beyond that, we have Rogue, who ends up fighting the old man a lot as part of her job description. She generally thinks nicely of him as a lover, even when she knows he's a bastard politically, but her major romantic interest talks like she's a piece of trash he found on the curb so it might be a comparison thing.

Dig even deeper to find Lorna's mother, who is human and dead but that's never stopped anyone in comics. She can show up like Carrie Fisher and launch rockets at him and it shouldn't cause too much confusion. People might not even wonder about the details until it's revealed she's Lorna's mom.



And don't get me wrong, I love Magneto, he is my favorite villain specifically because he can be portrayed so sympathetically, has moments with genuinely good intentions and will organically cross to the good side from time to time. It's just that given the qualities he has displayed as a friend, an ally, a leader, an enemy, and a father, I wouldn't be surprised if every woman he ever slept with ended up trying to kill him or at least severely inconvenience him. At the very least my Dream X-book is that three of these four women team up to attack Magneto.

With Bova as their Jarvis.

This can't be said enough.

Brian Clevinger (emphasis mine):

Power Girl, Emma Frost, Psylocke, Wonder Woman's bikini, every softcore porno cover, these are all messages saying, "This is not for you GO AWAY." They're active barriers keep women out of the club house.

Meanwhile the print industry tries to attract lady readers with all the grace of a seal solving a Rubik's Cube.

And when these half-hearted, ill-conceived projects invariably fail -- because they manage to say, "This is not for you GO AWAY," to both men ("too girly") and women ("what the gently caress is this bullshit?") -- publishers get to shrug and say, "BIFF! POW! Comics just aren't for girls I guess!" and they have an excuse to keep producing "mature" content instead of actually being mature about their content.

With Atomic Robo, we've made, quite literally, the barest minimal effort, i.e. "Hey, if there's no reason to draw this lady sexy, then how about we don't," and it's paying off like wild. Judging by our email, convention appearances, and Twitter, women make up about 20% of our readers. In this industry 5% would be pretty high, especially for a comic all about punching.

That's what's so sad about it. You don't have to try to get women readers. All you have to do is let your lady characters have some goddamn dignity. Cheesecake-y poses and panels designed to focus on them don't draw themselves. Someone makes the conscious decision to produce that specific image. Hours are spent on it. Lines are erased and re-drawn to get it "just right." You have to go out of your way to overly sexualize a character.

Or you could just, y'know, not.

Some publishers, editors, and artists will tell you they have to draw sexy ladies. Sex sells! It's what the fans want! No, it's what a sub-section of man-children the industry has spent decades culling from the mainstream has been trained to expect.

Here's the crazy thing: they can be trained to expect different things.

But no, "Boo hoo some creepy shut-ins might not buy Spider-Man" is the go-to defense of the industry. Yeah, that'd be a real shame.

Sorry if I posted a bunch of words that don't really add new ideas, I'm just continually astounded by the American mainstream print comic industry's Herculean resistance to increasing their sales.

(Via)

My History of Internet Haunts

So Magnetgirl's got a question:

The internet, it is vast and busy, and as I attempt to navigate it I wonder — how do YOU do it? I know I am not the only one out here in netspace with accounts every which where and I am curious: which do you really use, how do you use them and why do you use them that way?

Tony Stark isn’t available to explain social media to me. Can you?

I've been thinking about posting on that anyway, because my Internet habits have morphed a bit over the years. When I was a teenager, my first online outlet was ranting on message boards. I started because I'd read posts by people that made me think, and made me want to put things out there. I made a habit of it because I fit in fairly well, there was a group of people who encouraged me to post more, and it gave me a space to think through ideas, work them out with feedback, and come up with more and more ways to seem clever and have people tell me I'm clever.

After a few years meeting fans on message boards, I spent an evening searching the internet for comic character background for a series I was reading and stumbled across my first personal blogs. Just like with the message boards, I saw people who got me thinking and made me want to put those thoughts out there. I started up this blog and have been so happy with the format I always come back to it. This is a great place to just spit out my thoughts and refine them through followup posts, cross-blog interaction and the comment section.

A few years back I also kept a livejournal for non-comics thought and fandom interaction, but I found that the format was simply too safe for me. I had a false sense of security with the friends-lock, which made me think I could write anything and not expect it to go back to anyone. I found myself doing two bad things there: 1) ranting excessively about coworkers and family, and 2) complaining about other people on the internet in my cozy little spot where I could expect not to be challenged rather than confronting them directly. When the ads got to be too much and it changed hands and terms of service, a lot of my friendslist migrated to other journal services. I just deleted my journal and decided not to go with anything that locked again.

That's when I made Twitter my primary outlet on the internet. I picked the option to be entirely public, making it the exact opposite of my livejournal. Twitter back then had no delete button, and the ease and shortness of the format made me more likely to shoot my mouth off and have to immediately deal with the reaction. I like it because it is so very unsafe that way. It sharpens me in the way that livejournal dulled me.

Twitter is also good because I'm so naturally long-winded. The 140 character format forces me to shrink and streamline my thoughts. That improves my communication skills all around.

Lately I've found myself using Tumblr a lot. I started because it is simply easy to do, but it became my primary blogging method during my deployment because it loaded more easily than Twitter or Blogger on the base network. I keep with it now because it's easier.

I'm generally willing to try most social networking sites for at least a little bit and see if they offer me anything. There's a few services I keep coming back to:

Stumbleupon, which is just freaking brilliant. You load a toolbar onto your browser and pick topics you like. Then you press a button and it takes you to a random webpage you can rate or review. You can submit new websites to the pool, too. I leave this inactive for months at a time but I still come back. I love it for days when you just want to wander around the Internet aimlessly, and for just putting a website into the ether because I think people should read it.

LibraryThing: I have a lifetime membership and every book I own loaded into this. I sometimes check the boards, I sometimes review, but mostly I just use it to catalog my books.

Goodreads: I never thought I'd get into this, but it loaded well when I was deployed so I used it to keep track of my reading (previously I'd been tagging by year on LibraryThing) and put some of my thoughts on the page. My reviews still suck, but I've found it to be a useful service.

My latest playgound is GetGlue, which is a fairly unique site. It offers lists of books, authors, musicians, topics, movies and TV shows and you mark which ones you like. Then it gives you suggestions based on that, and you can like or dislike those. And more suggestions. And the option to stop on an item and write a review or just "check-in" with a thought about it. And there you interact with others. And you get little stickers as rewards. And you can become a "guru" and make suggestions and it is just so weirdly addicting.

As with all things, I can't tell how long I'll stay on it. It could be my new Twitter, or it could be like Newsvine which I loved for a few months and just got sick of.

Stuck on a moment

Girls Read Comics Too is putting together a Women of Marvel Memorable Moments poll (which is still accepting nominations until Sunday), and the list is pretty good. I want to make that clear before we go on. I like this list, I like this idea, I think you shoudl all go nominate stuff and vote.

But as with all fanlists, there's a couple in there that some fans loved but that make other fans cringe because everyone has different tastes. I'm pretty sure you all know which one I'm talking about:

NO MORE MUTANTS. Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch changed the lives of every person on the planet in House of M

What really got me was the sheer number of people suggesting it in the first post. I'm sure there's a number of Wanda-fans looking at that list and going "Oh HELL no, what's WRONG with people?"

See, House of M and Avengers: Disassembled are two of the absolute worst things to ever come out of Marvel for those of us who like Wanda. It's like Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour for Hal Jordan fans, two books that are fucking based around taking a hero we love and making her fucking crazy for no reason other than someone wants to change the franchise. Wanda Maximoff is the Parallax of the last decade (a comparison I've been on about in chat that I really must elaborate on in the future), and this is basically nominating Scarlet Twilight (No, we won't be going with Crimson or Ruby Twilight, it is going to be Scarlet Twilight) for an award while Scarlet Witch: Rebirth is experiencing shipping delays.

There is something distasteful just about seeing the storyline mentioned and driving home the point that everyone read her losing her mind, every book in the entire Marvel universe was affected, and every fan and writer has had "Womb Crazy Wanda" and the results shoved down their throats for the past six years.

And of course, the first defense of nominating this storyline is, like Zatanna in Identity Crisis (another nomination I complained endless about on Twitter) it was a major decision made by a woman that changed the world. It also underscored the sheer power the character contained, and the weight of their decisions. And in this case, perhaps because I favor the Scarlet Witch over Zatanna as a character, that might actually turn me a bit.

It is also the moment most fresh in fan minds about Wanda, being her last notable appearance prior to Children's Crusade (as an amnesiac guest star she is just a shadow of her true self, and flashback/AU appearances were far under the radar), so that has an effect.

But I don't think any of that is the real reason this sticks in our minds, the real reason it won't go away even after Children's Crusade brings her back and M-Day is undone. I think the real reason is the "I've had just about as much of this shit as I can stand" effect.

In the set of stories that would fall under the umbrella of "Scarlet Twilight" (West Coast Avengers: Darker than Scarlet, Avengers: Disassembled, House of M) Wanda has been fucked over severely from all sides. Her kids have been erased from existence, and she's been told by a demon, her fellow Avengers, and now her father and her "therapist" (Yeah, I'm sure Xavier has a degree but the bastard probably mind controlled his teachers into passing him) that not only were they not what they appeared, but they didn't exist. Her trusted Mentor Agatha Harkness has meddled with her memory. The Marvel Authority on Magic, Dr. Strange, contradicted all of his prior statements about Wanda and stated that she has no magic and it's been her freaky powers all along. The Avengers take him at his word, and do nothing to investigate whether or not her behavior was caused by an external force (such as that demon that took away her children). Captain America turns her over to a father who has a history of manipulating and using his children. Her father turns her over to the world's worst therapist. She's removed from her friends (Magneto's reaction to finding Pietro at her side implies he wasn't even allowed to visit), imprisoned, drugged and subjected to invasive telepathic therapy. The X-men, a team created to protect mutants from a society that feels they are too dangerous to live because of their powers, says that she is too dangerous to live because of her powers. Her friends in the Avengers have chosen to discuss this with them. Her father tells her brother that nothing can be done to stop it. (She was watching that.) And to top it off her sense of reality, her memory, and her powers--her very genes--are rebelling against her, tearing her in different directions and have caused her to kill several teammates--including her close friend Clint and her own husband.

Through all this, all she has left is her brother--who cannot obtain an ally to help save her life--who sacrifices his own independence (as well as his relationship to his wife and daughter--both of whom where absent in M-World) to hide her in a world. For this, for giving everything that their father could possibly want to him and finding a way to do this without destroying all their friends, her brother--bringing to life a nightmare she's had since they first met Magneto--becomes a victim of her father's violent temper.

I hate House of M and the effect it had, but I honestly can't make a case that it was Bendis hating on Wanda. She is the most sympathetic character in the story, the most put-upon woman in the universe. She has gone from having a full SUPERHERO family and friends to just having one person left in the universe who is willing to fight to save her life and sanity, and when she almost loses him... she loses it.

"No More Mutants" was a horrible moment. It was sheer rage and misery. It nearly destroyed the Marvel Universe. But unlike the previous two stories (the first of which was just cruel and the second of which made NO sense and totally ignored the resolution of the first), it was a logical continuation of her story. It was born of grief, anger, pain, abandonment, disillusionment horribly out-of-character actions by the rest of the cast, and kneeling in the blood of her twin brother after her father had beaten the life out of him.

It was not a heroic moment, though you could argue that after her experience with her own powers she honestly thought everyone would be better off. It was more of a "Fuck you, I'm leaving" to her father, to the hypocritical X-men, to the New Avengers, to the world, and to whatever cruel deity had given her those awful powers. It was Wanda, after being jerked around by EVERYONE for two crossovers, finally putting her foot down.

It was not a heroic moment. It was not a positive moment. It was, however, a powerful moment.

And while we're all betting on the Phoenix as the final winner, I have to wonder what it means if it wins. Because this moment is the one that classifies the Scarlet Witch as her father's daughter. It is a very Magneto thing to react to being hurt and betrayed by taking it out on an entire species. It is a very Magneto thing to think you are doing good when you act that way. It is a very Magneto action, the sort of action that allows him to be a compelling villain that can be allied with heroes from time to time. But... it is not an action that you can attributed to someone and classify them as a hero. It's defining moment of villainy and in order to use the Scarlet Witch as a hero it will need to be undone somehow. The effects will need to be reversed, and it will likely be attributed to lingering mind control (though sadly not hair-graying mind control because that would have looked pretty cool).

At least, I sincerely hope it will be undone. I liked the X-books better with the expansive attitude of the Morrison era, and the optimism of the 90s or the Silver Age. I don't like this dying race angle. I don't like it all being Wanda's fault. I don't like Wanda as a villain, or in limbo. And honestly? I hope next time we do a poll like this it doesn't even pass the agency rule.

If you want a character back, there's really only one way to do it...

They've got a petition up on Tumblr, and I would sign but it's married to Facebook and I don't like to give profile rights to anything I suggest you sign now that it's not Facebook, but that you also send in a letter.

I don't really believe that a petition has an effect. Fan petitions are the bare minimum effort for fans online, and everyone knows it. I think the only thing that has effect when you DON'T have the option to vote with your dollars (such in the case where there character is not appearing regularly and the few places she does appear aren't advertised--and any loss of revenue to the current Batgirl probably wouldn't be attributed to the change without massive feedback to that effect) is the mail.

To this end, DC has given us an opportunity by opening the letter columns:

To submit a letter go to:

www.dcletterspage.com

Letters may be sent by regular mail to this address:
Letters to the Editor
DC Comics
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Please include your full name, and address, for confirmation purposes. Letters should be no longer than 500 words and should not include attachments.
Letters may be edited for length or clarity and may be published in any medium. Letters become the property of DC Comics.

Unpublished letters will not be returned or acknowledged. Published letters may identify the writer by first name, hometown, state or country.

Imagine how strong a message it would be if next month's columns were filled with requests to see Cass Cain?

Now I don't have the time, energy or money to organize a planned letter campaign like Girl-wonder.org did, but until we find someone who does the best thing to do is to flood them with Cass Cain letters. Come on, take a few minutes and write out why you like Cass Cain and would read a book starring her again. Send an email, send a postcard, send a short note, send a long note. Then read the lettercolumns next month... and answer back if the answer isn't "You will see her here."

Now, I wasn't going to mention it because I figured I implied we'd want to send publishable letters in, but there is a certain decorum needed. I understand not wanting to but we should keep it positive, y'know?

As annoying as it is, it's also worth noting that Gail Simone recently said that tone is important when sending letters about Cass.

I know we have every right to be snarky and rude at this point, but she said sending a bunch of "FUCK YOU. BRING BACK CASS!" messages is only going to make editors think that they'll get screamed at no matter what, and make it less likely for her to ever come out of limbo.

So stick with what you like about her and, more importantly, that you would pay to see her back.

Especially write in if you're not reading Batgirl, and let them know you're not really feeling this other book but you'd try one with Cass Cain.