I think I'm pretty open about taking changes in stride when it comes to the rebooted Power Pack. I enjoy the new stories for the most part, and I've been having fun with the latest Power Pack: Day One retelling / update of the origin. It seemed concise to have Julie naming the Snarks, for example, and I was even digging on the new, more sarcastic Smartship Friday introduced in the most recent issue. That said, I can't help but be disappointed Fred Van Lente decided that Power Pack's alien mentor Whitey (originally a fan of Earth literature whose intelligent ship, Friday, took its name from Robinson Crusoe) now learns English by watching old movies, and his ship's named after His Girl Friday.

I guess it just seems sad to me that even advanced alien races apparently no longer read. For that matter, if we're updating things, is a 1940s movie really any more relevant to a young audience than a classic novel that still shows up on school reading lists?

Tags: comics, commentary, power pack

So, I'm skimming the blurb at Creative Loafing about Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, and I was happy to discover two of the local shops seem to be taking the outreach part of this day to heart:

[Y]ou can also get your sequential art swag at Sarasota County's Fruitville Library (noon-3 p.m., sponsored by Pop Comics and Games) or the North County Library (10 a.m.-noon, sponsored by The Dark Side). North County will have local artist Kent Bonifield on hand to show young and old how it's done.

I think part of the problem with getting new comic book readers is getting new readers in general, so it's nice that the stores are just as willing to tempt folks to the local library as they are to their own shelves. Good on them.

Tags: comics, commentary

I was amused at the role-reversal of this Superman statue I came across on a recent shopping trip. After all those female super-heroes posed so that it looks like their breasts are the part they use to fly with, it's only fair Superman try something similar:



Though, sadly, he doesn't seem to have much there to provide the buoyancy.

Tags: anecdotes, comics

Am I the only one not understanding the logic in this statement (from this week's Lying in the Gutters comic gossip column)?:

Of course, any creator willing to rise up against a lack of royalties for digital download sales would also have to be the kind of person who'd never illegally downloaded a single piece of content in their lives - or look like a hypocrite.

I can understand hypocrisy when folks who illegally download complain about the money out of their own pockets from other illegal downloads. I'm missing somewhere, though, how wanting to be paid for electronic distribution rights--instead of being subjected to Magical Accounting that always shows no profit--from what should be a legitimate publisher has anything to do with one's download habits.

Oddly enough, isn't this the primary issue in the current WGA strike? Is there a widespread counterargument I've missed where WGA members who have BitTorrent have been derided as hypocrites? Or is it just comic book writers who are supposed to be paragons of virtue in order to be paid fairly?

Tags: comics, commentary, writing

This probably isn't an omission so much as it's due to the fact that I'm probably one of the only people reading the book, but with all the gay representation talk I'm reading on comics blogs of late, I haven't seen anyone note that C.B. Cebulski and Karl Moline's The Loners seems to be ready to out Julie Power as a lesbian.

Given that Julie roughly corresponded to Karolina in the first appearance of the group vs. the latter's Runaways, and since Karolina was the gay-in-residence there, it's an interesting choice to gay up Julie, as well.

And while I suppose you'd expect me to scream about a raped childhood, I have to say, most of Power Pack's appearances were while they were pre-pubescent. By and large, then, Alex was the only character who had any romantic entanglements*, so there's very little "proof" of any of the kids' potential sexuality. The past can stay pretty well intact without counteracting this new status quo.

At least, I hope Cebulski plans to out Julie before the mini-series finishes. The "hinting" is getting rather heavy-handed and tedious at this point, and I don't get the impression the mini-series is likely to get a follow-up.



*Julie had an apparent crush on a boy during Michael Higgins' tenure near the end of the book's original run, but most people (rightfully) discount those issues when considering significant continuity. And she has/had a boyfriend in the more recent "Power Pack + Guest Heroes" minis by Marc Sumerak, but those seem to take place in their own pocket continuity.

Tags: comics, commentary, lgbt, power pack

Skimming the recent Ron Marz interview at Newsarama I hit on this seemingly innocuous Marz comment:

Certainly the Wildstorm Universe is not a mirror image of the DC universe. As far as we know, there are no analogous versions of Midnighter or Apollo and we explored that a little bit with stuff like Captain Atom traveling to the Wildstorm Universe. [emphasis mine]

Really? Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it common knowledge that Apollo and Midnighter are meant to be Superman and Batman analogues? I swear I even saw a comment in an interview somewhere with Ellis or Millar saying one of the things they enjoyed about writing The Authority was that their Batman was topping their Superman (apologies, but my Google-fu isn't strong enough to find it).

So, pardon me if this comes across as an overreaction, but am I the only one who reads the above quote and interprets it as a refusal to consider even implying there might be a gay Batman or Superman?

Communist Superman? Good to go. Vampire, Graverobber, or demon Batman? Sounds great. Batman kissing Superman? What, are you insane???

Tags: comics, commentary, lgbt

So, there was an episode of SuperFriends back in the day, where our heroes were all turned into mini-troll versions of themselves. Squat SuperFriends with high-pitched voices.

I can't be the only person who thinks this is secretly the inspiration to DC's new Uni-Formz toys, can I?

Tags: anecdotes, comics, commentary, toys

I probably don't have much new to add to the discussion of Chuck Dixon's views on homosexuality and comics, nor his assignment to the Grifter and Midnighter comic mini-series, but for some reason I really can't pass on Dixon's latest:

So Clark and Lois can be seen kissing and being affectionate and there's no need to explain it. The sexual aspect of their relationship doesn't have to be explored. But if Wonder Woman and Supergirl are seen kissing then that does call for an explanation. The sexual aspect of a relationship like that will call forth questions from the kiddies.(emphasis mine)

I don't think I can adequately express how tired I am of the willful ignorance in this kind of argument. It puts forth the notion that kissing is more sexual depending on the participants of the kiss. As if, somehow, Clark and Lois can kiss without having ever seen each other more than fully clothed, but Wonder Woman and Supergirl would only ever kiss if they'd just spent the last year regularly performing cunnilingus on one another.

Actually, I should give Dixon a point: Wonder Woman and Supergirl kissing would be more sexual than a Lois and Clark moment. This has nothing to do with same-sex kissing being innately hyper-sexual, however, and everything to do with the fetishized female form in contemporary super-hero comics. Wonder Woman wears panties and a gold bustier, Supergirl wears a short skirt and bears her midriff, and both of them wear thigh-high red leather boots and have a charming tendency to arch their backs when in profile: by and large, Wonder Woman and Supergirl standing ten feet apart in a room is more sexual than Lois and Clark.

Seriously, assuming they're kissing the same way (I obviously concede that sticking your tongue down a person's throat is more sexual than giving them a simple peck on the cheek), a man and a woman kissing is exactly as sexual as two men kissing or two women kissing; that it turns on different groups of people doesn't change the sexual tensions between the participants.

Even better, Dixon seems to think that seeing pregnant heterosexuals is less likely to require a talk about sex than seeing a man-on-man kiss. Now that's the kind of deep, heartfelt commitment to ignorance that requires a special ovation.

Tags: comics, commentary, culture

I'm generally ambivalent about Warren Ellis' work, and that isn't really changed by the announcement of his New Universe revamp, newuniversal (not least of all because e.e. cummings kind of makes everyone else who doesn't capitalize proper nouns look like a poseur).

What does have my attention is the fact that, as part of the promotional push, Marvel's finally collecting the originals. I'll be quite happy to let Ellis muck around with the concept if it means I can get trades of D.P.7 and the Nicieza run on Psi-Force.

But, really, if they can collect that, surely it's no longer unrealistic for me to ask for an Essential Power Pack, is it?

Tags: comics, commentary, hype

I've given into some of the hype. Picked up both New Excalibur and New X-Men as impulse buys. I don't have much to say on the Excalibur book; it was a bit uneven, but the good bits were good enough that I'll probably try the next issue.

New X-Men, though, was an odd read. Some minor spoilers, so a cut tag and a warning:

( Where's Waldo Cast Edition )

So, while frustrated by some lacking context, I'm interested to follow up on Wither, and to see who it is that's dating Wallflower. I want to know what's going on with the blonde telepath cult. And then there's the final page and the fate of the character on it. Plenty of things to draw me in next month.

Only, as I understand it, the characters on the cover are meant to be the core players in the series from here on out. Given that, I kind of scratched my head at the fact that five out of seven of them only get a panel apiece this issue (actually, two of those five share their panel). If it weren't for the cover, I'd have no idea these kids weren't just a handful more of the litany of "Name. Codename. Power." captions throughout.

In the end, the issue was interesting enough that I'll likely be back to check it out next month. But I'm still a little confused as to why the issue gets me interested in a whole bunch of characters whom, as I understand it, are either on the way out or meant to be supporting players. The people I'm supposed to be following are for reasons unknown camouflaged into the masses. Odd choice, that.

Tags: comics, reviews