November 2007 Archives

So, Gail Simone's Wonder Woman has come out, and as always, her writing is good. Terry and Rachel Dodson are doing the art now, though, and I am disappointed. Remember all those muscles in the last issue? Totally gone. We are back to a softer, non-threatening Wonder Woman. Boohiss. However, next to this month's Killing Girl, Wonder Woman is a beacon of true feminism!

Killing Girl is a 5-issue miniseries written by Glen Brunswick and drawn by Toby Cypress. The last three issues have been pretty darn good. The artwork is very different, but it is not at all sexualized. Sarah, the main character, is a young woman who was kidnapped as a child, forced into prostitution, and then trained as an assassin. Now she has found her family, accidentally killed her sister, and is trying to make everything right, mostly by going after her old boss who was responsible for it all. Through it all, Sarah has remained fully clothed and not sexualized! Well, at least up through issue 3.

Issue 4 came out last week and, well...I threw up a little in my mouth. I have always really looked forward to Killing Girl's issue releases as I have been enjoying the series. This issue, though, was terrible. I knew it right from Frank Espinoza's cover, but I told myself that maybe it would still be ok.

A lot of times, comic book covers are of a sexual nature to sell copies, but have little or nothing to do with the book's content. Oh, how I wish that were true this time! So not the case. The guy on the cover is Agent Baker, Sarah's dead sister's fiance who is kinda helping Sarah but also really wants revenge for his fiance's death, revenge on Sarah. So, when he pulls a gun on her in a hotel room (where they seek refuge after a big throwdown with her old employer's goonies), Baker wants to bring her into the police so she can serve time for what she's done. Sarah, of course, does not want to go, so what does she do? SHE STRIPS NAKED AND OFFERS HERSELF TO HIM! The dialogue actually reads "Way I see it, you've got two choices. You can kill me...or you can fuck me" as she slowly unzips her usually full-coverage suit. She then gets fully naked and crawls towards him on all fours!!! ARE YOU F*&%^ING KIDDING ME?!?! He then, of course, beats the naked woman, straddles her with a gun to her head, and respectfully declines.

*very very long sigh* Such a good series that I was always so proud of for not sexualizing the female lead. And then this. Not to mention the three panels featuring talking breasts. Why focus on a talking face when you can just zoom in on scantily clad breasts and just throw in some dialogue bubbles off to the side?

So we have gone from a strong female lead that kicks ass and still has time for family issues to a sexually submissive woman who uses sex as a weapon and a bargaining tool. To make sure that it's not too much, though, Brunswick makes sure that we find out in this issue that Sarah also has developed a crush on Baker, her dead sister's fiance, in like a week, so she really does want to sleep with him, not just get out of going to jail. Great.

Well, there is only one issue of it left. Despite my outrage and horror, I have to see how it ends. I'll let you know if it gets better or worse, though the whole series is tainted for me now.

So now we're getting to the good stuff...Wonder Woman. I love her. I really do. Last month, Wonder Woman #13 came out, but I have only just gotten my hands on it. I was anticipating Gail Simone's (of Birds of Prey) arrival to the title as the new writer, but that got pushed back to November (next week!). A little disappointing, but early on I forgot about that because I love that Lopez actually gives Wonder Woman muscles. I mean, look at those arms!

Unfortunately, a number of superheroines are depicted as being these super strong badasses, but their bodies are so completely removed from reality. They are slim, fine (except for the malnourished looking ones--not fine), but what is even more aggrevating is that they are drawn with almost no muscle definition. Their bodies are kept soft and non-threatening, in stark contrast with their male counterparts whose muscles look like they are going to rip through their clothes and take on a life of their own.

Wonder Woman, for all the faults of the title and characterizations, has been doing a pretty good job lately of showing Wonder Woman as a really powerful character, with muscles showing as proof. Her body is slender, but not often impossibly so (though this was certainly not always the case). Despite the proof of that shown in the image below, however, a couple of pages after the pumped-up Wonder illustration, there is a full page spread of Diana Prince transforming into Wonder Woman, and it is pretty bad. The muscles disappear as she rips off her clothes in the most sexualized manner possible. She then, and I couldn't really believe it for a few seconds, took her hair down from a bun with an overly dramatic head-shake, complete with a few frame by frames to give it that slow-motion feel. I felt like I was watching the comic book version of part of an old Baywatch episode. Do we see the male superheroes transforming in this way? Does Clark put on an aggressive strip-show in the phone booth to become Superman? No. But apparently Diana does (in a broom closet). Yes, Wonder Woman is incredibly attractive, we get it. But she's hot because she's a fucking Amazon! Come on! *long sigh* Very disappointing.

After I got over that shock, however, I was able to move on and enjoy the rest of the issue, with good writing and significantly less objectifying artwork. Thankfully, that page was very out of place with the rest of Lopez's art in this issue, but I was pretty scared for a little bit there.

And now I have Gail Simone to look forward to next week. Very exciting.

So, this is really off-topic for what I want to be writing about here, but I think it is important. Very few people know about Celiacs disease, which is a genetic auto-immune disease and a severe form of gluten-intolerance. What is gluten? Yeah, I get that a lot. It is a type of elastic protein found in cereal grains. Why does it make my small intenstine crystallize and die? I have no idea. I've done some research, but most of the time it is really overwhelming and highly jargonated. I've done even more research the last couple of days because I've been really sick.

I found out that I have Celiacs last September. Now, I'm a long-term vegetarian who has a passion for bread and homemade pasta cultivated by years of indoctrination into Southern Italian culture and lifestyle. Gluten-free bread and rice pasta? Not so much with the tastiness. And thick, chewy, Tuscan style crust? Only in my dreams. I've gotten pretty used to looking at labels and being careful of contamination (even shared surfaces, LAME). I have also gotten used to the inevitable slip-ups that result in what feels like horrible indigestion, sometimes accompanied by sharp, stabbing gut pains. I am also used to sometimes getting a cold or flu after that (that's the auto-immune part). Now, I have heard about people getting really bad auto-immune reactions, where the body really starts going to town on itself, but have never really experienced it (since I was diagnosed and knew what was going on). Well, that happened this week.

Sometimes, if the reaction is bad enough and your body is just week enough, a tiny amount of gluten can set off a painful, painful illness. The body's attack on itself can result in swollen organs, serious infectious illness, and other various pleasantries (I recite these things to myself when I catch myself gazing at artisan breads, while inhaling very, very deeply).

So yeah, I figured that stuff out for myself. But so many others haven't, especially in America. The  diagnosis is so difficult to make, and something like 86% of people with Celiacs don't know it (how they come up with that statistic, I will never know). In other countries, it's a pretty common-knowledge thing. In Italy, for example, you go to a restaurant and say "Io sono celiaco" and they shrug like it's no big thing and bring you some gluten free bread or crackers and a separate menu (or just make suggestions). Same thing in France and Germany. In America, at least in my experience, you ask if something is gluten-free and people sort of stare for a couple of minutes and then go "huh?"

So here's my point: people don't know much about this stuff. It's sad. A lot of people need help and don't know where to go to get it. A lot of people are just constantly sick, some even die, and no one knows why. On the off-chance someone gets diagnosed (here, at least), it's hard to figure out where to go from there. So yeah, if anyone is interested, or more importantly, if anyone needs great recipes and a quasi-support group, check out the blogs on my blogroll. They took me way too long to find, but I'm glad I have them now. It's always good to know you're not a total freak. More importantly, it's great to know how to make a delicious gluten-free holiday meal (and look at pictures of it!).