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That's right, folks, it's that time of year! No, Not the Academy Awards, but the GLAAD Awards!!! This year marks the 20th anniversary of the GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Awards and the nominees are out! My favorite category, comics, will probably be a tight race between favorites Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Drew Goddard, Jeph Loeb, and Joss Whedon, and Secret Six, by Gail Simone and Nicola Scott. Other nominees include The Alcoholic by Johnathan Ames, Final Crisis: Revellations by Greg Rucka, and Young Avengers Presents by Ed Brubaker, Brian Reed, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Paul Cornell, Kevin Grevioux and Matt Fraction.

I must say, I'm not an Avengers or a Final Crisis fan. At all. I can't imagine how they got in the running for this award, but GLAAD generally has pretty good taste. I am particularly excited about the Buffy nod. There are times when it feels like Joss just really has a jones to see some lesbian action, but the follow through with the most recent story arc was great. More importantly, while Buffy's lesbian relationship certainly plays a role in the plot, it does not take center stage. The story still focuses on the Slayer's battle against "the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness" with relationships providing a backdrop and a third dimension for the character. So, while Buffy's rather sudden new relationship at first seemed like a frolick in Joss' fantasy world, it has ended up being drawn with affection, sensitivity, and even a shade of real world depiction...minus the superhero bit.

As for Secret Six, I keep meaning to pick it up but simply never have. I do not enjoy jumping into the middle of a story arc, so I have waited. Gail Simone is a fantastic story teller, evidenced by her current run on Wonder Woman, and I look forward to checking this story out.

The economic crunch has been tough on lots of us. I suppose that it simply never occurred to me that the comic industry was suffering as well. 

http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/?p=249

True, Birds of Prey was something I stopped reading a while ago (after Gail Simone), and Manhunter? Never really dug it. But Blue Beetle is one of my favorites! I can't really say more than Karen already has over at Girl-Wonder, but I do want to do a eulogy of my own. 

Blue Beetle is one of the the DC Universe's best comic books right now. The writing/artistic team, lately Matt Sturges and Rafael Albuquerque, have been phenomenal. Sturges writes with sharp wit blended with multi-dimensional characters and a captivating story-line, no small feat in an industry inundated with shock-value thrills, big boobs, and crappy dialogue. It is not often that a writer is able to balance the action and dialogue without something being sacrificed, but Sturges has done a fantastic job. Perhaps more impressive than this balancing act is his well thought out incorporation of current political tensions in the most recent story arch, which deals with the subject of immigration and immigrant labor. The excellent writing is well paired with beautiful art, which Albuquerque consistently churns out. 

 

The saddest part of this book's departure is that it signals a major loss to the mainstream comic industry's diversity. Blue Beetle is Jaime Reyes, a latino teenager. The core cast is almost entirely latino/a with a fairly even divide between men and women. Women in the series are not simply mothers and beautiful love interests, they are smart and willful subjects who drive the story through their actions rather than with incidents merely thrust upon them, as we see so much in pop culture and media. From the disabled Latin father, to the brainy female friend, to the powerful super-powered girlfriend, to the complex and badass woman crime boss (who is barely even a "villain"), the industry is losing some fantastic characters in Blue Beetle's termination. 

 

On the plus, as Karen also notes, there will be a lady Black Panther, a series first. Hopefully it's good and I can still have a well-stocked subscription box at my shop. 

http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/?p=223

I know that people here aren't necessarily into comics. I'm a special kind of nerd. I get that. A lot of comic critiques are kind of lost on people who don't really read comics, but this one is great. This is one of my favorite bloggers, Karen Healey, a girl-wonder associate. She does a very brief discussion of a new Marvel character, Lady Bullseye, and then launches into a script for an imagined board meeting between the character's author and Marvel execs as to how they came up with her character (who is a "crazy sexy ninja assassin"). 

While the script is hilarious, I think it also brings up a number of very salient points, namely that rape has somehow become a "subversive" story line in many recent comics (as well as other media). Authors and execs are giving female characters rape histories as a way to make them more interesting and "badass". Everyone seems to think they're doing something really original and creative, but no one actually explores rape itself, as an action, as a problem, as something with cause and effect beyond its ability to be a super motive for a fictional hot chick to become an assassin/badass. These writers and execs are, of course, primarily men (this is where you put on your surprised faces). 

How did we skip from rape being an unspoken incident to an edgy, dramatic fad for fictional characters? How did we go from being totally silent on the issue to being fascinated by it only to the extent that it makes a great backstory to flush a flat character out into something more 3-D? And how, with rape suddenly being so "out there", so completely okay to sensationalize, are real (and fictional) women still so effectively silenced?

So I realize that I have been incredibly absent here lately. Last quarter of your senior year of college does that to some people. Like me.

But I'm back with a bang. This evening, on Channel Surfing the Apocalypse, I bring you comic society news that doesn't reflect very well on my (pop) cultural group, but provides some great social commentary. At the very end of April, Newsarama, a prominent comic industry news website, ran an interview with Paul Cornell, writer of Captain Britain and MI:13 about a new Marvel character named Faiza. Faiza is a Muslim British teen, described as "a fast-talking British superhero fangirl teen whose Muslim faith is an everyday part of her life" by Girls Read Comics' Karen Healey.

Part of the interview, and all comment posts relating to it, were pulled without explanation by Newsarama admins, admitedly to try to sneak it out before anyone noticed it. Here's why:

NRAMA: With the current worldview on Muslims and terrorism, what was her life like prior to the Skrull invasion?

PC: Pretty normal, really. I'm trying to paint the life of an everyday British Muslim person. They'd be touched every now and then by stereotype and racism, obviously, but it's not their life, or even the major part of it. The relationship between minorities and mainstream culture in Britain is a little different to how it is in the States, so I'm hoping to show that. Faiza hasn't got a radical brother who'll spit on Captain Britain's costume. (See, I note the cliches in advance, so I won't do them, hopefully.) She just sees herself as British, in the way that the person she's named after, England cricket Captain Nasser Hussain, probably does. I'm hoping Faiza will be loved for who she is: a boggled, talking nineteen to the dozen, fan of British superheroes, reader way in character. I also wanted to present an offhandedly, everyday, religious character, for whom faith is not their whole existence, and will only be mentioned when it would be. She's not here to fulfill a quota or represent an entire culture, though she won't be letting anyone down. She's a young hero. She's our Kitty Pryde.

NRAMA: Did she join this team with motives of her ow? Is she on a jihad mission, going on an all-out holy war against...what?

PC: You *what*?! I typed something much ruder in answer to that originally. What the hell?

NRAMA: Oh, blimey! We're all doomed!

Holy crap. Seriously. Really inexcusable racist bull. How do you even come up with a question like that? More importantly, how did this guy have the guts to ask it? I really like Cornell's response, though. And, as Karen Healey said, the whole thing was despicable, but it has turned me on to Faiza, who I'm definitely going to have to check out because she sounds pretty awesome.

Being a fan of Pride of Baghdad and Runaways, I get that Brian K. Vaughan has a flair for the dramatic. And so I expected a bit of a melodrama going into Logan, but this was too much. The opening says it all: “I’ve made a hell of a lot of enemies over the decades, but I don’t lose sleep over ‘em. No, it’s the women that keep me up at night, the handful of girls I was dumb enough to fall for over the last century or so. See, I can recover from just about anything…Anything but getting my heart ripped out.” I hate to say it, because I really like Vaughan, but Logan looks like it’s shaping up to be a bad emo song, with Logan haunted by lost love.

The storyline could be fairly interesting: Logan wakes up in a Japanese POW camp during World War II, fights his way out with an American soldier, and meets a Japanese woman named Atsuko. Logan turns hero as he prevents the American from killing Atsuko, at which point she takes him home to hide and feed him. The story is refreshingly different from your standard “Wolverine as ultimate badass” story, and reveals a new side of everyone’s favorite X-Man. Unfortunately, it is also surprisingly offensive. The romance between Logan and Atsuko reads like a throwback to the World War II era narrative of the Western man (soldier) who rescues the timid Japanese woman who then falls wildly in love with him and needs him in her bed. In real life, this fantasy scenario often led to rape, so it’s surprising to see the usually conscientious Vaughan employ such a shoddy trick.

The disappointing writing is at least well contrasted by Eduardo Risso’s artwork. His renderings of Logan humanize the character in a way that few artists have. The work is dark and powerful and adds the subtlety to the characters that the writing lacks. The attention to detail coupled with Dean White’s coloring makes for truly beautiful pages. Perhaps what I appreciate most about Risso is the really unusual portrayal of the sex scene: no real nudity. Atsuko strips herself for Logan, an occasion during which most artists would relish in drawing the lines and details of her body. Instead, Risso is able to show what is happening while keeping Atsuko’s body almost completely shadowed. Vaughan’s writing objectifies Atsuko far more than the artwork.

Overall, Logan #1 proved disappointing, but Risso and White’s artwork may be worth giving the mini-series a chance.

Now that Endangered Species and Messiah Complex (the last two crossover story arcs of X-men) have completed their back-to-back runs, the different X-Men titles have finally resumed their individual storylines. X-Factor's return to it's more contained storyline at the end of February was truly impressive, not only because of great writing and art by Peter David and Pablo Raimondi, respectively, but because of that rarest of scenes: an actual conversation about abortion.

The conversation is between X-(Wo)Men Monet and Theresa. Theresa has just revealed that she is pregnant with Madrox's baby. It goes something like this:

Monet: "My God, Theresa, are you sure...?"

Theresa: "The doctor confirmed what the test already told me. I'm six weeks along, and before you ask, yes, Jamie's the father."

Monet: "So...look, Theresa. Do you want me to come along? To hold your hand?"

Theresa: "What are you talking about?"

Monet: "Well, when you go for the...YOU know..."

Theresa: "Wait...M! You don't seriously think I'd...CRIPES! We're talking about a LIFE!"

Monet: "What about your life, huh? You don't need it saddled with...I mean, come on! You're too young..."

Theresa: "I'm the same age my mother was, Monet."

Monet: "And I'm sure HER best friend told her what I'M telling you, except maybe you'll be smart enough to listen."

Theresa: "M, Haven't you realized how important EVERY life is if our race is to survive?"*

Monet: "Oh, so you're going to take one for the team. Wonderful. And Madrox? A father? PLEASE. Your EMBRYO is more mature."

*The mutant species, the X-Men are dying out. The Scarlet Witch unleashed a virus that made many mutants lose their powers and only one mutant baby has been born since (the subject of Messiah Complex).

The conversation is short and not the most in depth thing in the world, but IT'S THERE! These conversations just do not occur in pop culture. Generally speaking, movies, tv shows, comics, and the like gloss over the issue of abortion. Even when young characters become unexpectedly pregnant and the storyline seems to require some sort of discussion about abortion, the option manages to get left out.

And so I find it incredibly refreshing to have an honest discussion and evaluation of alternative options to single motherhood in X-Factor, which is a major title from the Marvel imprint, meaning that it is fairly mainstream. This discussion, then, is reaching a considerable and large audience. Well done, David, well done.

It's that time of the year. Award time. Well, a couple of days ago I posted on GLAAD's release of their comics nominations for the year. Today, I bring you yesterday's press release from Prism, a non-profit group that focuses their efforts on promoting LGBTQ comics, creators, artists, and readers. Every year (for the past 3 years), they have been giving out a grant for one artist or creator to help them with nationwide distribution. Yesterday's press release revealed two grant winners for this year, one of which I am pretty excited about.

For fairness' sake, the winners are Justin Hall and Tommy Roddy. Hall has some interesting plans for releasing a trade book of his comic "Glamazon: The Uncanny Super Tranny", but I'm excited for Roddy, who is going for nationwide distribution of his comic "Pride High".

"Pride High" takes a pretty simple and rather over-used premise: a high school of superhero kids. The most widely known example (so, so very sadly) is probably that horrible movie of a few years ago "Sky High". More noteable (and awesome) is the Xavier Institute for mutants from X-Men. "Pride High" takes such a setting but focuses on a group of openly gay teenagers and their allies.

I don't really know much about the book because, well, it's really small and independent. Hopefully the grant will enable enough nationwide distribution for me to get my hands on a copy up here in our rainy little corner of the country.

So The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation posted their nomination lists for their annual media awards, including five comic titles. And the nominees:

American Virgin by Steven T. Seagle (Vertigo/DC Comics)
The Boys by Garth Ennis (Dynamite Entertainment)
Midnighter by Garth Ennis, Brian K. Vaughan, Christos Gage, Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, and Keith Giffin (Wildstorm/DC Comics)
The Outsiders by Judd Winick, Greg Rucka, and Tony Bedard (DC Comics)
Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore (Abstract Studio)

First off, let me reassure you: Steven T. Seagle is NOT Steven Seagal, the obnoxious, terrible, made for tv movie kinda fat white ninja actor. The first time I saw the book American Virgin, I thought it was that horrible man as well. Especially since the cover was one teenage-ish looking guy surrounded by nude, seductively posed women. While I realized the writer was not the dreaded actor, I still have never been able to bring myself to read the title because the cover is so darn repulsive. If it's nominated for a GLAAD award though...maybe I'll revisit it and get back to you.

To be honest, there really aren't many titles at I'll I have read on this list. Garth Ennis' The Boys just hasn't looked compelling enough to pick up. I love Garth Ennis, but sometimes there's only so much gratuitous violence I can take. The Boys is a reflection of Garth Ennis' disdain for superheroes, as it features five superpowered secret government ops who moniter superhero activities. The often gather dirt on heroes to use agains them later, usually to keep them "on a leash". The team also features a woman, named "The Female (of the Species)". She looks pretty hardcore, but again, I haven't read it, so that is pure conjecture. The art is Darick Robertson, though, who is really good at creating gritty characters. He and Ennis have also worked together a lot, like on Preacher, the series that first got me into Ennis.

Garth Ennis hit this nomination list twice, with the next nod going to Midnighter, I series I certainly have read. It tends to go up and down as writers change, but it has Midnighter, a staple character from The Authority, of the Wildstorm Universe, that I LOVE. He is in a long term relationship with fellow superhero Apollo, and they have an adopted daughter! A superhero book where a gay superhero not only kicks some SERIOUS ass (Garth Ennis' penchant for violence), but then comes home to makeout with another male superhero, on the page, in a sweet, sentimental way? HELL YEAH! Midnighter hasn't been as awesome in recent months, but seriously. Yeah. Whoo. Midnighter. Yeah.

Midnighter's nomination might make some people wonder why the Authority relaunch didn't get any recognition. Well, I'm here to answer that. I was really excited about the relaunch because the original Authority was amazing. The new one is drawn by Darick Robertson, yes the one we were just talking about, and written by Christos Gage. Talk about disappointment. Even Robertson's work is shotty. At least it's better than the forced writing though. The new series falls totally flat and, so far, has dealt barely at all with Apollo and Midnighter's relationship. I am almost thankful for this because I think Gage would ruin it with forced cheesy dialogue.

The next nomination is for The Outsiders, by Winick, Rucka, and Bedard. Another title that I have not read. The book deals with superheroes who don't meet the norm. In this universe, that means they don't fit into the Justice League. They are currently led by Batman, who plans to use the team as a "black ops Justice League". Honestly, I'm pretty intrigued. I might be picking this title up and getting back to you.

Finally, Strangers in Paradise, by Terry Moore. Read it. Readitreaditreadit. Terry Moore has always been excellent at portraying non-normative characters in a refreshing light. I haven't read all of Strangers, cuz it's huge, but it's alwasy up there on the top shelf of the trade shelves at the comic shop, taunting me to empty my savings account and take them all home. Even if you don't like comics, give Strangers a shot. It's funny and engaging. The basic story is a group of friends, a love triangle, with a few thriller elements stemming from a shadowy corporation. But the art is great, the writing is great, the idea is great. Yeah. This one should definately win. It wrapped up last year with issue 90. Sad day for all.

So last quarter I got really excited about being able to write a paper on ANYTHING I wanted. Of course, I went to comics. I did an examination of the way women are drawn in mainstream comics. What I found was really stuff I already knew: women are drawn as sexualized and disciplined bodies, especially women superheroes, to keep them subordinate to their male counterparts. It has illustrations and everything! I think it's pretty interesting, but that's me. Now if I can just figure out how to post it or, more reasonably, put a link where you can download it to read...

http://www.mediafire.com/?3hlxdmyqtf2

So the end has come to Marvel's six-issue mini-series "The Loners", written by C.B. Cebulski and drawn by Karl Moline. This series was pretty cool for a while. It's about a group of young superheroes that start a kind of Heroes Anonymous, vowing to keep out of their costumes and not use their powers. In the group is the Green Goblin (Phil Ulrich), Lightspeed (Julie Powers), Turbo (Mickey Musashi), Ricochet (Johnny Gallo), Spider-Woman (Mattie Franklin), and Darkhawk (Chris Powell) (YAY, Darkhawk!). Of course, the series is about these retired heroes being forced to put on their costumes again, first a couple in secret, then this final issue (released last week) with all of them suited up for a final throw-down. The story was pretty interesting and the art wasn't bad, either. In fact, sometimes it was pretty good. For most of the series, such interesting things were happening that I forgot to notice Cebulski's writing, which, as always, is way over the top and often completely annoying. His writing did overwhelmed me in the last issue, though. Not in a good way. The dialogue is SOOOO over the top and so melodramatic. He tries to be witty like a lot of the other hero comic writers are, throwing in a bonmot at the most intense moments to create comedic relief. The problem is that they aren't funny. Or original. Or clever in any way. Sometimes they are just plain stupid. For example, in the final issue, betrayals are revealed by the villain to tear the group apart as he, the villain, lays on the ground defeated. The end of the scene is Spiderwoman, outraged at the betrayal of their team leader (and H.A. founder), Turbo, say dramatically to the group "Count me out from now on. You've been trying so hard to stay out of costume, to put your pasts behind you...Some of you seem to have forgotten what it means to be a hero in the first place. And I can't believe I actually slept with you, Johnny!" ...uh, where did that come from?! The scene, of course, then dramatically ends and cuts to "one week later". Gag me. Luckily I only had to endure another couple of pages before the series ended, at least "for now", according to Cebulski.

The only interesting thing from the series was the revelation in the final battle sequence that one of their comrades is actually an advanced cyborg, to the surprise of everyone, including the cyborg herself. Shock! Intrigue! Boundary-crossing! How do we tell the difference between human and machine? This was a really interesting throw-in, it's just too bad everyone else has already done it. And the the only thing to come out of said revellation is this dialogue: Namie (the cyborg): "What?" Lightspeed: "You mean..." Spider-Woman: "...She's a..." Ricochet: "...Robot?!" Green Goblin "I believe they prefer to be called cyborgs these days." And then it's over. No more discussion, no more examination. Not even a hint of how and if things change, how she's affected, how their relationship with her is affected. Nothing interesting at all. So close...

The only other news is that Shekhar Kapur's "Snake Woman" is coming to a close. I am sad. While the series has gone downhill, I am still really involved in the story. It's about Jessica Peterson, a completely average young woman who finds out she is the reincarnation of a Naga snake-god. The series is a revamping of ancient Indian legends about snake gods being reincarnated in to human form. In this series, Jessica is out for revenge on a group of people (68 people, to be exact) who stole from her and her mate's temple centuries ago and slaughtered the Nagini tribe, who worship the Naga. Jessica is a pretty awesome anti-hero who struggles with her human conscience and her reptilian instincts. I'm a sucker for Indian folklore, but the art has always been really refreshing, too. Jessica is always drawn as a very realistic, average woman.

The main artist has been Michael Gaydos, who has my gratitude for this great artwork. More recently, Vivek Shinde has taken over and done a great job at keeping up with Gaydos' style and vision for Jessica. Though Shekhar Kapur created the story and character, the script has been written by Zeb Wells. He's not the most amazing writer in the business or anything, but he does a really good job at keeping Jessica as a smart, strong character. I have really been enjoying this series so I'll be disappointed when it ends, but it was a solid run.

Now I'm off to stare menacingly at the snow and curse it, probably rather explicitly.