Helping women with Wonder Woman

Some of you may not know this but October 25th is Wonder Woman Day. CBR has an impressive rundown of the event by one of the founders here. This is a day to celebrate Wonder Woman, duh, but it's also for a great cause. Even if you're not going to be anywhere near Portland or New Jersey to meet famous comic book writers & artists, you can bid on awesome pieces of art done for the day online. Every piece of art bought goes to a very important charity - helping Shelters for Victims of Domestic Violence. I'm not terribly rich but I'm happy to donate time and attention to this wonderful day and wonderful cause. If you want to just stop reading here and click on over to thumb through the amazing gallery of Wonder Woman sketches for sale, I completely understand. Please donate even a little something, if you can.

Still here? Okay, time to get personal.

I know some people don't really "get" Wonder Woman and that's fine. Some people like chocolate, some people like rum raisin. What this day is, however, is a pure celebration of the spirit of the character as she's come to be known - the premier superheroine of the modern age. The character who little girls pretend to be when they play superhero, embracing the idea of the strong woman for the first time. Paradise Island, the Invisible Jet and the Golden Lariat are as part of the cultural landscape as Kryptonite and Alfred the Butler.

I know she's got her detractors but I love her. Yes, she's a deliriously complex character with so many facets that even great writers get a little lost getting a handle on her and too few even try. Still, that's part of why she's so fascinating. Batman, Superman, they can be summed up in a simple phrase or two. Wonder Woman - Diana of Themyscria - is a warrior and an ambassador of peace. Both an outsider and also the most trustworthy person in the DC Universe (even Superman doesn't have a rope brushing against his hip that renders him incapable of lying all the time). Complexity in comic book characters should always be celebrated and I love Wonder Woman as a character even when I don't care for her book.

To be honest, the last time I really enjoyed reading Wonder Woman was under Greg Rucka's pen (no slight to the fantastic Gail Simone but all the continual doses of tragedy and seriousness in her run leave me a bit cold). Greg Rucka wrote Wonder Woman as the one person in the DCU to have the strength to do what Batman and Superman could never, ever do (possibly should never, ever do, given their characters) and the heart to know what exactly what it would cost her. I know it put some people off but that? That's a hero I can both admire and understand. That's a soldier saving lives. That's a cop making a hard decision. That's a woman who makes hard choices. That's somebody I'd want a daughter to look up to as an example. Hell, I could make a long post about Rucka's Wonder Woman of it's very own but I won't, as it's already getting late.

In the end, I'm just thrilled Wonder Woman finally has a day to call her own. The fantastic cause it's supporting makes it even better.

Few even think to ask The Question

So, if you purchased the amazingly drawn and sharply written Detective Comics #854 - a.k.a. my second favorite book to come out last week* - you may have been too stunned by J. H. Williams III's stellar art and Greg Rucka's crisp storytelling to notice the equally engaging back-up feature, in which Renee Montoya returns as The Question. About a billion people have already talked about how great the first feature focusing on Batwoman is, so I'll try to focus on The Question instead. The two tales stand out in contrast to each other in several ways but neither seems greater than the other, in my opinion. It's a testament to Greg Rucka's talent that reading both tales by him is like getting an apple with your orange and making delicious fruit salad.**



Drawn in a hard-edged, realistic style by the deeply talented Cully Hamner, Rucka's second story is a very Equalizer-esque street-level tale of The Question trying to find a young man's missing sister whose current status is implied to be deeply, deeply vile. The more "real-world", noir tale of Montoya hunting down human traffickers stands out in contrast to the highly stylized, extremely "Gotham City"-esque story of Batwoman versus Alice, the colorful new Lewis Carroll-loving head of the Church of Crime.*** This isn't to say The Question back-up lacks fun or whimsy. There's still humor there, just more subdued (a Monty Python joke, no less, for us nerds in the audience - which is all of us because, c'mon, you're reading a blog about comic books).

Oh, and The Question totally teaches a vicious guard dog about personal boundaries with her knuckles, so there's that - assuming you like things that are totally bad-ass, that is.


And before I forget, let's talk about two people who deserve massive props but may get lost in the shuffle of everyone discussing Rucka and Williams III - Dave Stewart and Laura Martin, the colorists for the Batwoman and Question portions respectively. I have to take a moment to lavish obscene amounts of praise on both of these talented colorists for making their stories shine like diamonds. Dave Stewart, whom I first noticed on Joss Whedon's Fray series, is nothing short of a revelation on Batwoman. Let's face it, without the blood-red hair, chalk-white skin and every other stand-out color rendered in loving detail, I don't think the entire book would work nearly as well as it does. As for Laura Martin, well, I've been a fan of Laura Martin's brilliant shading and subdued work since reading Warren Ellis' "occasionally so gorgeous it makes your jaw drop" series Planetary. As a result, it comes as no shock that she makes Rucka's Question series a perfectly lit somber noir piece with primary shades of blue, brown and orange. I love being able to look at one panel and know exactly what time of day or night it is. She's just that good.

One last thing - a very clever hook of The Question back-up series is that, rather than patrol rooftops, she's put up a website all over cities as graffiti and responds in person to the most vital questions she receives from random, desperate people. Her website is cleverly called Ask The Question - and as if you couldn't tell from the html formatting color, it is now a "real" site.



Go ahead and ask The Question a question - I know I did.****


*The award for "My Favorite Book From Last Week" has to go to Adam Warren's brilliant, heartbreaking and tender Empowered, Vol. 5. Yes, the GN that comes in shrinkwrap with the "Mature Readers" label. FYI, doubters, there's just as many lesbians in the book as Detective Comics #854 but roughly ten times more heartbreak, comedy and pathos. Believe me, I've got a loooooooooong blogpost brewing about Empowered Vol, 5 coming up.

**Please understand that I am not making some lame reference to both of them being lesbians with the "fruit salad" line. I think we've all had more than enough terrible, cheesy and generally shoehorned comic book references/"jokes" about their sexuality. I just like fruit salad. And metaphors.

**And also, props must be given to Rucka for having the huevos to create another Lewis Carroll-themed villain in a town that has The Mad Hatter in it. I'm interested in finding out what makes Alice stand out in contrast to the mind-controlling doctor, other than only speaking in lines from Through The Looking Glass and not being a creepy pedophile (presumably).

***No, I won't tell you my question. Much like letters to Santa, I do not reveal my conversations with fictional people for fear they won't come true. :P And gracias to The Nerdy Bird for hipping me to the site's existence.

Peter David, Self-Identity and Hispanic Superheroes

So, there's a very lengthy interview with Peter David up at Comic Book Resources right now.* I am not terribly fond of Mr. David's current titles but that's more of a "personal taste" thing than a criticism (save his rather joyless She-Hulk run, but that's a blog post for another time). His stylistic tics kind of grate on me a bit but he's still a talented comic book veteran with plotting skills to spare.

More importantly, he is also the man who wrote the very first comic book I ever read - Spectacular Spider-Man #106:



I immediately identified with Peter Parker. We were both brown-haired, brown-eyed nerds who made bad jokes. I didn't understand a lot of the other stuff going on in the book (Starfox, for instance, puzzled the crap out of me) but I wanted to learn more about this cool guy with spider powers (which, of course, I was not and wanted to become). The funny thing was that one obvious difference between Peter Parker and I was never apparent to me until I got older.

Peter Parker was completely Caucasian while I was Mexican.

As a kid, I never thought about stuff like race. I was lucky enough to grow up with loving parents in Colorado, near Federal Boulevard, where Hispanic people often outnumbered non-Hispanics. It wasn't until I got much older and traveled in America, that I was even aware of encountering racism.

While I still generally don't make a big deal about it (stupid joke posts aside), I am Hispanic. Half-Mexican, a quarter Irish, a quarter English and just a touch Native American. The end result of my Mexican heritage being that I identify as such. While my skin tone waxes and wanes with the Sun, I'm generally light enough that most people can't place my heritage but still brown enough that I've gotten dirty looks in small towns and from small-minded people. I also later learned that, if I simplify my ethnicity to Irish-Mexican (as I often do, as that's how my Mother and Father identified, respectively), I even have my very own insulting ethnic joke, which I'm not going to repeat here.

Since nobody made a big deal about my race growing up, the lack of Hispanic superheroes didn't become an issue for me until I noticed people trying to give them to me. Richter from X-Force and the Living Lightning on West Coast Avengers appeared in my Marvel titles when I was just hitting my teen years.

Julio Esteban Richter was a mutant whose abilities allowed him to control seismic waves. He was a Mexican who watched his gunrunner father get killed at a young age. He usually ran around being angry and shouting things like "Madre De Dios!". He also tended to look like a back-up singer for Menudo.



In fairness, it was the '90s.

Living Lightning, a.k.a. Miguel Santos, was another Hispanic character whose Dad was killed while doing something ethically unsound. He was from East L.A. instead of Mexico and looked like this. In researching what happened to his ne'er-do-well Dad, he accidentally got the power to turn into living electricity. He showed up in 1990 in The West Coast Avengers, a team based in California. He also occasionally shouted "Madre De Dios!" and the like. A lot of the time, you couldn't tell his race because he was flying around as bright, yellow lightning.

Finally, the other character I took notice of was Angelo Espinoza - Skin. Skin was a mutant in the teen mutant book Generation X. His origin - well, I'll just quote the good folks at the Marvel Database here:

"Angelo Espinoza was born in the barrio in South Central Los Angeles. He became a gang member. His powers triggered during a drive-by shooting."

Yeah. Moving on . . . he was noticeably not brown, but gray, due to his mutant power being an excess of gray, strechable skin that he could manipulate. It also made him look strange and slightly deformed. Not nearly as cool a power as making Earthquakes or Lightning. He was, however, like Living Lightning, Catholic - just like I was growing up.



He was, surprisingly, my favorite Hispanic character growing up.**

While he still occasionally lapsed into "Madre De Dios!" territory, he was smart, cagey and good at holding his ground with what he had. He was also occasionally a smart-ass and occasionally full of self-loathing. In many ways, he reminded young, teenage me of myself or the me I was, rather than the me I wished I could be. That guy came a little later.

Back to my childhood and early teens - I still didn't completely identify with any of these Hispanic characters, even Skin (who was so uncomfortable in his own skin). I wasn't quite old enough to understand what "tokenism" meant but they all seemed a little too forced. Too many "Madre De Dios!"es and not enough normal moments. With the Hispanic race card being brought up in so many comics, I began to think about it. There was no singularly Hispanic character in superhero comics I read that I identified with . . . but amazingly enough, there were two Irish-Mexican superheroes I identified with to a great extent.

One was, I found out much later, Kyle Rayner, DC's newest, greenest Green Lantern.



His heritage wasn't really mentioned until much later into his career (turned out his Dad was a shady, Hispanic CIA Agent) and I just ended up being pleasantly surprised to find I had something in common with him. You know, other than the fact he was goofy, always learning and a bit googly-eyed around beautiful women. I saw way too much of myself in him to begin with so the race thing was just a pleasant surprise.

The second Irish-Mexican hero I loved, on the other hand, was "out" and proud. His heritage was right there in his name - Miguel O'Hara. KICK. ASS.

Just as he had reached me back when I was a kid, Peter David created another hero I loved who climbed up and over walls - Spider-Man 2099.



Miguel O'Hara was not from East L. A. or Mexico. He was born in a future New York City. Miguel O'Hara was a brilliant geneticist, a smart-ass and a cynic. He became Spider-Man 2099 when his plan to escape his evil Corporate Giant-type employers got sabotaged. His mother was Mexican, like my Mother was Mexican and his Father was Irish, like my Father was Irish. He was smart and while he did know Spanish, that didn't mean he had to scream "Madre De Dios!" every five minutes (he did yell "Shock!" a lot but that's a complaint of a different color).

I loved the hell out of this character and praised God for Peter David. He got me into comics and kept me in them, giving me a character I could identify with on a very personal level (and let's not even get into my rabid love of his Star Trek novels. Seriously, let's not. I don't want to completely embarrass myself here). If it weren't for Peter David, I would have never followed his work into the DCU and found all the excellent stories to be had there. Say what you like about Mr. David but he got me into comics and kept me there when I started to waver.

But the best part had nothing to do with Peter David. As I grew older, I noticed Hispanic characters evolving and appearing more organically in superhero comic books, ones not written by Peter David. Officer Renee Montoya began as a background character on Batman: The Animated Series and now? Now, after a few years of different writers gradually integrating her into Gotham City in the comics and telling her story, she's being written by the always fantastic Greg Rucka as The Question. How cool is that?

Nowadays, I'm happy to say that Hispanic teens growing up have some pretty great superhero role models. Outside of The Question, we've also got at least two great Hispanic teen heroes.



Victor Mancha, in Runaways is a half-Mexican, half-robot teen living in Malibu. He's more than a little nerdy, responsible and uptight but also calm and collected. Plus, wicked cool magnetic/electric powers. He also briefly dated Nico Minoru, the team's leader. And hey, sidebar - Nico is also a Japanese-American. She's dated Alex Wilder, an African-American, and Victor without anyone so much as saying "Boo" about it (at least to my knowledge). The fact that interracial dating is such a casual thing in this series is just one of the many, many reasons why I love Runaways and it's creator, Brian K. Vaughan. On a personal note, my first serious HS girlfriend was Korean, so I also find Victor's storylines accurate and encouraging for teens on a very personal level.

More notably, we have Jaime Reyes, the new Blue Beetle.



He is also a good, responsible young man but unlike Victor, he has a large, loving Mexican family (with a living, non-evil Father and everything) and lives in El Paso, Texas. Not only does he not lapse into Spanish for no reason, he actually got his own entire issue where he and his family spoke entirely in Spanish during their family reunion. Because they are all of Hispanic descent and living in Texas! Speaking as a guy who goes to his own Hispanic family's reunions, it tickled me to finally see Spanish being spoken in a comic in a way that was finally something other than a random signifier to say "Hey! I'm MEXICAN!". Incidentally, Jaime's best friends are of multiple ethnicities and he happens to be dating a teen sorceress named Traci 13 who happens to part-Asian. "Madre De Dios!" indeed.



Even if we still get to see him in Teen Titans and his own back-up series for him in Booster Gold, I miss his ongoing series like the dickens.

I don't often think about race in superhero comic books anymore, to be honest. I'm happy to say it fades into the background for me so long as it doesn't jar me out of the story by being offensive or off-key in some way. I had to stop and think about this topic to even realize that two of the characters in my favorite book currently on the stands, Secret Six, are Latin American (one Brazilian and the other from a fictional South American Island) - one of them being the team leader (and, incidentally, a lesbian).

I know there's still racism in comics, intentional or no, and I don't mean to diminish anyone who feels angry or nervous about how race is (or is not) progressing or being portrayed in today's superhero books. Still, I feel optimistic. Two African-American women are currently writing mainstream superhero comic books. Speaking purely for myself, I feel like we've come a long way in comic books and nobody is resting on their laurels. This progression feels natural, feels organic.

To quote an excerpt from an interview with John Rogers, the creator of the new Blue Beetle***:

"The job of a writer or artist is to reflect the world around you.
That's not an agenda," says Rogers, who gets frustrated by claims that
the comic exists only to fill some imagined quota. "Racism is
believing that other people of different backgrounds can't speak to you."

"My fondest wish," Rogers adds, "is that, 10, 15 years from now, a
Hispanic kid is going to take over writing 'Blue Beetle' -- or start
writing his own comics -- because he feels that the medium is
accessible to him."


I've read superhero comics all my adult life and I'm starting to really feel like we're getting beyond "tokenism" - this is just comic books reflecting real life. Multiculturalism is here and it's never going to go away. America is such a melting pot that even comic books can't hide their heads in the sand anymore if they want to reflect the real world.

And you know what?

Gracias a Dios por eso.




* There's also a much more humorous interview with Adam Warren to promote Empowered Vol. 5 up at CBR as well.

** Just as a brief aside - only two of these characters are still around.

Richter is now an occasionally suicidal and bisexual supporting player, coincidentally in Peter David's currently ongoing X-Factor series.

Living Lightning appeared briefly in the jokey Great Lakes Avengers mini-series to reveal he was gay and then scamper off. He currently has no current series of his own.

Skin? Skin got crucified on the X-Men's front lawn and died. His corpse was then used to illustrate that people were still so racist that they wouldn't bury mutants with humans. Jubilee and Husk got his corpse cremated and took it with them, which, um, yay?

Yeah. Blame Chuck Austen for that one.

Also, I remain unsure as to why so many modern-day Hispanic comic book characters are also gay. Go fig.


***And also the excellent TV series Leverage - great show, go take a look.

Solicitation Copy for Detective Comics #854

Written by Greg Rucka; Art by JH Williams and Cully Hamner; Cover by JH Williams : Variant Cover by JG Jones
Sup, Dawg, we heard you like Greg Rucka Comics, so we put a Greg Rucka Comic inside your Greg Rucka Comic, so you can read Greg Rucka Comics while you read your Greg Rucka Comics.

* Batman
* 32pg.
* Color
* $3.99 US

On Sale June 24, 2009

Ripples and Aftershocks from New York City ComicCon

So, a few of my fellow comics bloggers were lucky enough to attend New York City ComicCon this weekend. Indeed, they got to enjoy a gala full of nerdy celebrities, living legends and many more, along with folks just chockfulla spoilerly joy. Sadly, both of these otherwise fine Bloggers have missed the most important, earth-shattering news items to slide down the Avalanche of Comic Book Awesome. Luckily, The LookOut is here from his birds-eye perch in Colorado to catch you up on all the Items they were too dazzled by stardust to catch! For instance . . .

ITEM! Holy crap guys, it's Speedball's cat Niels!


LOCKJAW AND THE SUPER PETS!

Yes, this is real.

Yes, they are coming. COMING FOR YOU.

No, they don't include Kirby the Coyote, Old Lace the dinosaur, Cosmo the telepathic Russian space dog or Tippy-Toe the Squirrel. YET. Nerds.

Yes, they could totally kick the Super-Pets asses. That Frog has Thor's Hammer, son, and we all know that Kryptonian horses, monkeys, cats and dogs are weak against magic. Yes, I'm clearly a self-loathing hypocrite.

ITEM! Greg Rucka writing two new comic books for DC!



Yeah, that's pretty much the whole news Item! right there. There's a return to Detective Comics featuring Batwoman and Action Comics featuring Nightwing and Flamebird. It's nice that DC's taken all that press and attention Batwoman got two years ago and used it wisely by starting a series after all the buzz has completely vanished. Way to go, DC. Still, say what you will about the dismissal of Oracle, the Birds of Prey and Cassandra Cain to make room for the new Batlady on the block, I'm still totally there. And I don't even freakin' read any Superman comics, so this "Nightwing/Flamebird" thing is going to be a bit of headache. Oh, well.

I may be Greg Rucka's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.


ITEM! The fate of Agent 24!



Additionally, there's some animated show or another that's going to feature the voices of Seth Green and Kevin Conroy next season. Y'know, if you're into that whole "watching awesome cartoons" scene.

ITEM! People enjoying a digest story other than Scott Pilgrim!


Yes, folks, some extremely obscure manga series about a green-haired girl has gotten a new owner and will therefore have a Brand New 6th volume released in September. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm really looking forward to Happy Happy Tiny Super Child She-Hulk Adventure Time.

That's all for now, faithful readers. The LookOut will continue to keep you all informed on the latest comic book news later - From The Outside!

Saving Superman's Home

I know I've been embracing Blogging Silence for the most part lately and I'm sorry about that. It's been a busy, busy month with the DNC being in town. Luckily, I've just come across something that puts a big smile on my face.

Over at his blog, the always excellent Greg Rucka has done two things in one awesome post. He's offered up a touching defense of Superman as a concept and pointed out a massive celebrity auction to help benefit the preservation of Jerry Siegel's childhood home.

Even if you don't find the cause worthy (because you have no souls), the amazing amounts of talent lining up at this auction should grab your attention. If I had the cash, I'd be totally ponying up for a wide variety of these auction prizes. I'd especially want a role in Rucka's new PI series, Stumptown, or for a Jim Lee pin-up with me and Superman (I'd totally have Lee draw Supes as about to kick my ass, just because I find the concept hilarious). Oh, and VIP tickets to The Colbert Report? Wouldn't suck.

Go and read. Hell, donate for free if you've got the spare cash. It's well worth your time.

More Links than a Hyrule-Themed Smash Bros. Brawl

My Limerick Reviews will be delayed until tomorrow evening due to unavoidable Real Life Stuff but I thought I'd leave you all a boatload of interesting links to peruse in the meanwhile -



- With all the Two-Faced politicians out there lately, it's nice to have someone running for office that I can trust. Somebody who doesn't use a bunch of double talk and doesn't bow down to special interest coin. I am, of course, talking about Harvey Dent. This fine fellow is coming to my state this weekend. As I am totally in support of this upstanding D.A., I hope to get some snaps of me stumping for him and a crime-free Gotham City in the coming days.

- Always intelligent and intriguing, The Comics Journal also has an exhaustively comprehensive linkblog that goes by Journalista. The folks behind Journalista were kind enough to link to my recent discussion of Empowered. Thank you kindly, Journalista!
(Remember - if you don't see my link, you can just look for the post that begins with “I say: more penis on DC’s covers! More penis!”.)



- And let's not forget The Precocious Curmudgeon, whose kind words in response to mine sparked Journalista's interest in the first place. I'd also like to thank David P. Morgan for pointing everyone toward this fascinating link on the making of Adam Warren's Livewires from an editor's P.O.V. You know, Livewires? - a. k. a. one of the best Marvel mini-series you've never heard of? *sigh* Y'all should really try it out - it's only 8 bucks and there's a scene where Hydra tries to kill Nick Fury with beer.



Poor Livewires.




- If you're as big a fan of Greg Rucka as I am, I think you'll also enjoy this excerpt of an interview TCJ did with Rucka and Steve Lieber about their "Noir in Antarctica" tale, Whiteout. This is soon to be adapted into a movie with the young lady from Underworld. Good Lord, Rucka's a frighteningly large fellow.

I'm enough of a dork to remember when this was supposed to star Reese Witherspoon. Is it perverse of me that I'm still curious what she would have been like in the main role?

- Also, I have now found the location of the Coolest Movie Theatre on Earth. I may have to make the day-long drive to visit The Alamo Drafthouse just for the food alone, especially that 20 Beer Chili. Hell, any theater that serves Fat Tire is already given a thumbs up by yours truly.

- Evan Dorkin's blog reveals that he and his lovely family are writing an episode of the cheerfully surreal kids' show Yo Gabba Gabba! And if you haven't read the hilarious coming-of-age novel he illustrated the make-you-fall-down-laughing page breaks and cover for, I Love You, Beth Cooper - you, my friend? Are missing out.



And since we're all kids at heart, here's some videos from and relating to Yo Gabba Gabba! to brighten your day and/or quietly terrify you:

Biz Markie's Beat of the Day!
(HE! HE'S got what you NEED! But you SAY he's JUST A FRIEND! But you SAY he's JUST A FRIEND!)



Nathaniel Likes to Dance. He is The Best Dancer Ever.



Is Elijah Wood scarier here, teaching children how to become puppets, or as a cannibalistic Charlie Brown in Sin City?
You Decide!

A Knight Out East and One Bad Knight

ANIME BATMAN!

Here's a sneak peek of the upcoming anime film Batman: Gotham Knight that creates a bridge between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.



The writing cast alone - which includes Greg Rucka, Brian Azzarello, and David Goyer himself - would be impressive enough to get me interested but add to that Satoshi "Paprika" Kon being involved? Oh, yeah. I'm beyond THERE. I'm particularly fond of anime-style Scarecrow and damned intrigued by every single aspect of this.

How about y'all?

CRAPPY FANFIC BATMAN!

And if that wasn't enough Batman for you, may I direct you to this dramatic tale of Batman eating eggs. If you're as moved by this touching tale as I was, I think you'll enjoy this phonetically accurate dramatic read-along of Mr. Chimaera's opus. Or, if you're not much of a reader, you can just skip to the animated version:

14 Comic Book Couples I Love - Part 10

Admittedly, I'm kind of cheating with these two. They did have a brief love affair in the comics but it only lasted the length of a Greg Rucka mini-series and didn't end well. In the animated series where they appeared together, however, their love was charmingly bizarre, snarky and cheerfully insular. So it is with a slight twinge of guilt at bending my own rules that I admit my fondness for . . .

10. Huntress and The Question



There are other couples with extensive histories and backstories I could have chosen but very few that make me grin quite like these two. In the DC Comics, The Question was a gentleman with a uniquely Zen and philosophical perspective. In the excellent mini by Greg Rucka, Huntress: A Cry For Blood, he came across the passionate, ill-tempered Huntress. They were both equally stubborn and equally determined to get justice done in their own way.



Naturally, opposites attracted and he tried to help her find inner peace during a short while while she was on the run from an excellent frame job for murders she didn't commit. The whole ordeal made for a very tenuous, hesitant courtship - one under way too much pressure to last. In the comics, he didn't help her find peace and neither one of them walked away happy (still a fantastic read, mind you).



In the Justice League Unlimited animated series, however, their love life goes rather differently . . .

(just FYI - the following is 9 minutes of PURE AWESOME, so go and get a soda or something first. Do not watch if prone to seizures or frightened of the voice of Jeffrey Combs)


Once again, I love the smart-asses who love one another. They're both very much in their own way outsiders (no, not like that - okay, yes, technically Huntress for like five minutes but I digress) who found out they didn't have to be alone. If that doesn't make you at least a little smushy inside, then I say "Bah!" to you. Bah!

Of course, the fact that it's a love affair between Jeffrey "Re-Animator" Combs and Amy "Fred/Illyria from Angel" Acker may also explain why I'm so smitten with it. I mean, two staples of horror and sci-fi drama as superheroes in love? The casting was almost as inspired as when they used Nathan Fillion for the voice of Vigilante, the superhero cowboy and-

. . . Good Lord, I'm a nerd.

Anyways, here's to The Huntress and The Question - may their love live forever on DVD.

Haiku Reviews for 1/16/08

To make up for my rambling reviews of last week, I now present Haiku Reviews! Let's get these out of the way before I buy yet more comics today, shall we?

SPOILERS Exist Here
None in great detail mind you
Because it's haiku

Marvel Comics Presents #5 - various - B

Blade nukes Korea
Rucka's Widow appears too
And there's dinosaurs!

Fell #9 - Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith - B+

Evocative art
Belies a brief but tense tale
Put this out more please

New Warriors #8 - Kevin Grevioux & Jon Malin - C-

Look, it's Ms. Marvel
With poorly drawn Hitler youth
Subtlety? What's that?

CheckMate #22 - Greg Rucka & Eric Trautman & Chris Samnee - A

C'est bon assassin
This Mademoiselle Marie
Au revoir Miss Chace

Booster Gold #6 - Geoff Johns & Jeff Katz & Dan Jurgens - A

Look, TED'S back! HOORAY!
I don't care why or how long
Just let me bask please.

Angel: After The Fall #3 - Joss Whedon & Brian Lynch & Franco Urru - A+

I'm not ruining
The last page of this comic
HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

The 3 Biggest Rules of Comics Blogging

DEEP PRETENTIOUS POST FOLLOWS:

I was thinking today and I realized that my OMD song post might have come off as snide and dismissive towards fandom in general. Given that I'm writing a comics blog, I think that's sort of unforgivable in terms of hypocrisy. I'm a huge, unapologetic fan of comics. I wrote my Senior Thesis on "The Growing Acceptance of Comic Books/Graphic Novels as an Art Form". If it weren't for comic books, I wouldn't be here and, dorky as it may sound, I mean that in every sense of the word.

So, the blogging? My major criticism of online blogging about comics isn't about the devotion of the fans, which can be beautiful and is always sincere in it's passion. It's about the basic realizations most people who blog about comics for any reason seem to miss.

A lot.

I thought I'd lay out what I think are essential rules of comics blogging, if only to help people understand where I'm coming from.




1. The comic book you're seeing previews of online that has you furious or sad is always a part of a larger story - one that's already in progress.

The problem is twofold.

First, you're not reading the whole issue, which may or may not explain the part that's upsetting you in a reasonable manner. Which, let's face it, rarely happens - Batman & The Outsiders anyone? - but still.

Second, by the time you've seen the preview pages for "Aunt May Vs. Ted Kord's Corpse Special - Final Intercrossover Crisis Day #1 (of 7)", the comic book writers and artists have already written #2 and probably most, if not all, of parts 3 and 4 - while having plotted out the whole thing beforehand.

This isn't Jason Todd in the 80's. Your Internet complaints about the story can't really change that much of the story or direction. Unless the internet presents a unified hiss of loathing or a really concise, intelligent argument, the writers will not change the ending they've been building to with a serial narrative.

Does this mean you shouldn't complain? No, but it means you should complain constructively and be realistic about the chances of your complaints changing the story. The only writer/artist I've ever seen apologize and change a scene that offended his readers was Adam Warren. When somebody wrote a post entitled "Actually, Empowered Sucks Now"*, crossposted it to Scans Daily and sent a letter to him. Warren responded in this way, saying in part - "In any event, in the second printing of EMPOWERED vol. 2, I’m going to redraw those three panels."

Now, Adam Warren isn't writing strictly mainstream stuff - in fact, it's naughty stuff that's likely to offend some people (you can read a typical 8-page short for free somewhere on Dark Horse's Torturous Myspace Page). I love his work, personally, but I can see how many might misinterpret it and how he has more freedom than say, J. Michael Straczynski. The thing is, even if you like Warren's work or not, you should respect him for doing this.

Brian Michael Bendis took a lot of heat recently for a sequence in New Avengers, in which Tigra is viciously attacked in her own bedroom and offers minimal defense. He didn't respond with a promise to rewrite the entire scene in future trade form and an apology. Instead, he responded with the thinking that violence against Tigra was just as acceptable as violence against Namor the Sub-Mariner, in a "Fish Man" allegory that rankled some people. Now, would it take away the original, unintentional insult to fans of Tigra and many comic book reading feminists? No, but it would show a degree of class and appreciation of the opinions of fandom, rabid as they often are, that would impress me. But there's a reason this doesn't tend to happen, which leads me to Rule 2 . . .

*Side note - even though I got her to agree that the ending of Empowered, Vol. 2 actually moved her to the point of tears, she refused to believe the work had any merit or, heavens forbid, that she might be overreacting. *facepalm*



2. You do NOT own your favorite Superhero. The writers and artists you hate rarely, if ever, own their favorite Superhero. A Superhero character is almost always a money-making property owned by an evil corporation.

We don't own them but we love them. We can influence their directions only minimally unless we somehow become their writer and even then, they're still owned by a giant corporation who sees them just as a brand name. It's a frustrating quandary for any fan.

My friend Kay, a former exotic dancer, points out that believing that Marvel or DC is writing just for you, the fan, is like thinking the stripper really loves you. I prefer her other metaphor that reading superhero comics is like marrying a junkie who has no plans to go clean. You have wonderful times, you have faith things are going well and suddenly he's vanished with your TV Set and left your Uncle stabbed in the stomach on the floor. You can never, ever fully trust them to do right by you.

Listen - if novelist Greg Rucka can't even write a back-up story where he jokingly implies Batman is gay for DC Comics while he's employed as the writer of Detective Comics because the editors say no, who were in turn told by the corporation who owns Batman to say no . . . your blog demands that So-And-So stop writing Captain Awesome out of character or that Superb Girl's new costume gets changed aren't gonna hold a lot of water.

The trick to acceptance is this - comics are a fluid medium and superhero comics even more so. The writer and/or artist you hate and all their story arcs can be replaced with one you love at any time or vice versa. This is the rule that is hardest for me to remember and accept because it seems like this is the rule we can violate the most.

If we stop buying the comic when a certain writer starts ruining the character *COUGH*JodiPICOULT!*cough*, the megacorporation that owns the character will notice the loss and fire that person. Such universal revilement is rare, however, in the world of fandom and people will often chug along until the writer, editor or artist feel that they've reached a natural stopping point. Controversy sells a book - always remember that - so sometimes a debate gives the megacorporation more excitement and more press, which means more money.

The junkie knows we still love them and will always come back to them. DC and Marvel keep taking our televisions and selling them for smack every time we hope it's going to get better instead of locking them out. We can prove them wrong but I don't see it happen very often.

Me? I just leave my junkie girlfriend comics until they look like they've cleaned up and gotten into rehab, if only for a little while. I'm still waiting on you Exiles, darlin'.



3. Blog smarter, not louder.

I never fully understood the phrase "'Tis better to light a candle instead of curse the darkness." until I read Internet Message Boards.

Think about this: if the sheer volume of fanpeople who bitched about a random comic book problem donated just one nickel a piece towards taking out an ad in Variety or a billboard in NY, could you imagine the impact that would make? Can you imagine all the money people would get raised?

Alas, that doesn't happen often, if at all. It's just a lot of sound and fury most of the time with very little logical critique or positive suggestions. A lot of fans just assume internet criticisms will translate into bad sales as if by magic. Sad to say, it's rarely so. The sheer volume can - and has - made positive impact on a few people but it's still noise.

(BTW - "Write your own book" is not a positive suggestion. If you asked me to help you solve a math problem and I told you "Write your own math test instead.", I wouldn't be helping you. I'd be an asshole. You see how that works now?)

So, please, blog constructively. Think before you post. Realize that the characters you love are both yours and not yours at the same time. And lastly, try to think of a way to convince people who've never even read a comic before why this particular bit of story/art or decision is a bad idea, based on basic story principles.

Anyways, that's just my two cents. Hope this helps any people I may have alienated with my tongue-in-cheek bitter loathing of all fandom (including my own dorky self).