The Problem with Minx
(Also known as reviews of Emiko Superstar, Janes in Love and The New York Four.)
I read Emiko Superstar and Janes in Love back-to-back on the train returning home from MoCCA (which tells you how long I’ve had them — they were giving them out for free). I more recently read The New York Four.
 Emiko Superstar Preorder from tfaw.com |
Emiko Superstar, written by Mariko Tamaki with art by Steve Rolston, follows Emi, a slightly overweight and awkward half-Asian teenager in Canada as she finds herself drawn into an underground group of performance artists. I like Emi – I liked her geekier tendencies and her introspective nature. I didn’t exactly buy the whole performance artist scene – I didn’t believe that a guy who looked a lot like The Dude from The Big Lebowski would truly be able to get a group of young people to perform in a warehouse space, nor did I find Emi’s object of admiration, Poppy Galore, to really have that much going on. Her tentative, possible romance with Henry has a sweetness about it.
I did like the way everything unraveled, though, and how Emi realized everyone has secrets and can be surprising, including herself. Rolston’s art has a curvy softness about it that compliments the cuteness of the story well. But ultimately, I found Emiko Superstar to be fairly forgettable.
 Janes In Love Buy from tfaw.com |
Janes in Love picks up where The Plain Janes left off, with the same creative team of novelists Cecil Castellucci and artist Jim Rugg. I think it’s basically pointless to read this if you haven’t read The Plain Janes first. To me, it was more of the same. The Janes are now dealing with the fallout after the bust-up of P.L.A.I.N. and find themselves drifting apart as boys enter the scene. The main Jane seeks a way to continue making public art while dealing with her mom’s reluctance to leave the house after a friend dies from an anthrax attack. I noticed a very subtle shift in Rugg’s art, emphasizing the various Janes’ ethnicities (I did a side-by-side comparison and the style isn’t that different, but it’s there). This one fell a little flat and felt a little unnecessary to me (I’ve read there will be a third one). Whereas the first book was about the girls’ self-discovery, they didn’t have enough to do in this one. The conclusion and reunification of the Janes came across as a little too neat for me.
And after I finished this one, I realized something about Minx: all the books have the same sorts of rhythm. They all emphasize some Big Important Life Lesson. They all share the same sort of pacing and the characters all have the same sort of epiphanies and self-discoveries. They all seem to learn that in the end, it’s best to be true to yourself.
I do think that’s an important message and one that teenage girls don’t hear enough, but the more I read of the Minx books, the more preachy they feel. Instead of being art or even entertainment first, they seem to be lessons in self-esteem. They seem to be more the sorts of books well-meaning adults and comic book bloggers (myself included) think teenagers should be reading. (I did a quick bit of research on some message boards where teenage girls hang out – I didn’t spend too long because I didn’t want to be creepy – and I didn’t find any mentions of any of the Minx books. I’m not sure if teenage girls are actually reading these.)
But I still keep picking them up. I keep giving them a chance.
 The New York Four Buy from tfaw.com |
I was surprised to see that The New York Four comes closest to what I think Minx can be capable of. Coming from Vertigo veterans Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, the story follows reclusive Riley as she reunites with her sister and tries to make friends during her first year of NYU. The New York setting feels like the real New York (I like Wood’s little asides in his NYC 101 lessons) and not just some “exotic” tacked on locale. This is the New York where people actually live. Riley is an interesting heroine and as it’s delightfulas she breaks out of her shell. The rest of the “New York Four” – Merissa, Lona and Ren – feel a little undeveloped but I get the feeling Wood and Kelly plan to continue this story. While I think Kelly draws the girls a little too sexy, with over-emphasized lips and prominent bustlines, his art has an attractive grittiness to it.
But while Riley has her share of disappointments and Big Life Lessons – and, of course, discovers it’s best to be herself – this book felt different. There was drama. There was anger and love. There was uncomfortable situations. There was, in other words, the sorts of things teenage girls encounter every day.
I know that Karen Berger said that Minx is “real stories about real girls in the real world,” but I can’t help but want it to be more like the manga series Nana. Granted, in its own way, Nana is about as far from reality as you can get, despite not being fantasy, but underneath its rock-star melodrama, it feels real. It’s heartfelt while still being escapist. I want to feel the same way after I’ve read a Minx title.
Harassment at SDCC, and how to fix it
I’ve met both John and Bully and they’re both good people (well, one’s more of a good stuffed little bull, but you get my point). But this would be important anyway. He recounts a few instances of harassment at San Diego Comic-Con and was shocked to discover there’s no policy in dealing with such instances:
So, according to published con policy, there is no tolerance for smoking, drawn weapons, personal pages or selling bootleg videos on the floor, and these rules are written down in black and white in the con booklet. There is not a word in the written rules about harassment or the like. I would like to see something like “Comic-Con has zero tolerance for harassment or violence against any of our attendees or exhibitors. Please report instances to a security guard or the Con Office in room XXX.”
I think it goes without saying that people need to not behave this way to begin with. But since there’s always going to be a few that do, it is the responsibility of a con like this to provide some sort of disciplinary action against them. Without it, it does come across as being a “boys’ club.”
Don’t the girls who were there for Stephanie Meyers and Twilight deserve the same respect as the boys who were there for, say, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (although I dare say there were some girls there for that, too)?
I like how John finishes up his piece:
Comics oughta be fun. Comic book conventions ought to, as well. But as long as harassment goes on and there is no clear-cut official written rules on convention behavior and what to do in circumstances or physical or mental assault, our hobby runs the risk of alienating and endangering those within it.
Comics should be for everybody. Let’s start acting like they are.
Hero Machine 2.5
I’m not sure how long UGO’s Hero Machine 2.5 has been around, but friends were passing it around. Much fun. I was having trouble getting my creations to save so I could reload them, but that’s not a big deal. Yes, it’s not much different than those “doll creators” that teenage girls like (which is probably why I enjoy it). It’s the online version of playing dress-up.
Go waste some time.
What I hope is the last SDCC roundup
Chris Conaton at PopMatters wonders Comic-Con 2008: Bigger Than Ever, But Does That Mean Better? He writes quite a bit about the panels constantly being too full but also that he had a lot of fun.
And then there’s the bit about Adam Savage talking about how he dressed up in his Hellboy costume out on the floor. Why has no one talked about this before? (Supposedly, this is him. Which I guess means this is him, too. If anyone has confirmation, I’d be happy to hear it).
“The comics industry is not comics.”
Over at Newsarama, creator Kelly Sue DeConnick writes about comics, women and mythology. And she’s pretty much right about all of them.
The Sandman: In conclusion
I started reading The Sandman the day after my 14th birthday. I turned 28 a few weeks ago. If you do that very easy math, you find out that The Sandman has been in my life for half of it.
What has changed in these 14 years? Well, for one thing, I can tell you there was no young adult novel that featured a young female Neil Gaiman fan as one of the major characters 14 years ago.
It’s impossible to know quite how The Sandman changed comics. Yes, the title gave rise to the Vertigo imprint and showed there was interest in adult stories (even if most of those take the sex-and-violence bit of “adult” too much to heart). It gave creators permission to make titles that were finite from the beginning. It opened a door for titles like Hellboy, with their mishmash of history, literature and mythology. It put comics in the hands of people who never picked up a superhero title, who in turn, put comics into the hands of other people who’d never read comics either.
And it was – and is — read by a lot of girls and women. This is undeniably important.
The comic book industry is still trying to figure out what women and girls want. They give us things like the Minx imprint, which is, at most, well-intentioned. They try out titles like Mary Jane Loves Spider-Man. They create manga-style comics. They do all the gimmicks they can think of. They never stop to think girls and women may just want something that doesn’t set out to appeal to them. They just want something that’s good.
Women read The Sandman because it’s good. Yeah, it’s a cliché that boys recommend it to their girlfriends (a few weeks ago, a man at the bar was overheard doing so to his date). And I’d gladly recommend it to women. Not in a general “you’re a woman so you’ll like this” kind of way, but to a woman I’d think would like it? Yes, there’s no question there. (Of course, I’d also gladly recommend it to men who I think would like it.)
Personally, it opened up a new world to explore. It was a world of literature and myth, of music and art. It was one I fit into. It’s one I could see myself being a part of. It’s maybe a little dramatic, but feeling trapped in the halls of high school, it was important to me to know that there was more out there. I’m not trying to give it too much credit, but I think The Sandman showed me who I could be, if I wanted. (I was 14 when I first read The Doll’s House. Rose Walker was 21. That seemed impossibly distant to me. It’s funny for me to think that I’m as far from that age now as I was then.)
I’m glad that Neil Gaiman is currently associating himself with Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls. This will only mean that a new generation of teenage girls (of certain sensibilities, of course) will want to know who this “Neil Gaiman” is and pick up The Sandman. No bad can come of this.
I still love the comic. Maybe I love it more now than I did, but it’s in a different way. I see the craft (or sometimes, the lack thereof) of it, I see the beauty and the storytelling. It’s far from perfect, but I can’t think of anything else that covers so much history, encompasses so many characters. Like I said, The Sandman just has so much stuff in it. Maybe “24 Hours” freaked you out but “Ramadan” made you cry. Maybe you wanted to smack Dream sometimes and then other times you just felt sorry for him. The Sandman feels like it set out from the beginning to be huge and ambitious. Maybe it didn’t always make it to where it should’ve gone, but it’s a fabulous, lovely series.
It deserves its reputation. I’m proud to own it. I think if I learned anything by rereading it, I learned that. Or, at the very least, just had it re-affirmed.
(And also, it was a lot of fun rereading it. I recommend it!)
Final Sandman wrap-up coming soon
I know I said this week, but it’s not going to be done today and I’ll be gone this weekend. This week just sort of slipped through my fingers.
I’m aiming for Monday. It may be a two-part deal, depending on how it goes and how much I decided I have to say.
I’m only sharing because I know there was all of two of you who were waiting for it.
(Everyone seems to be taking a break post San Diego, even people who weren’t there. I think it’s just that time of year.)
Wonder Women of America
I was looking for something else and came across AMOS’s Wonder Women of America, a compilation of photos of women who dressed up in costumes at San Diego Comic-Con last year.
Typically, books like this can go one of two ways — the bad way is that these women get fetishized for wearing costumes, and the good way is that it becomes a celebration of women finding their power through a character they identify with. This book, from glancing at the photos (there are more here) seems to be going the “good” way. I see a pretty big diversity of ages and body shapes (although, sadly, not much of a racial diversity, but I hope that’s only the sample photos).
STRANGEco still lists it as “coming soon” but I’m assuming they’re resettling after SDCC. I look forward to checking this book out.
Superhero TV memories
Last night at a bar, Nick Fury: Agent of Shield starring David Hasselhoff came up in conversation, because these are the sorts of things we talk about in bars.
I’ve been reading comics long enough to remember the version of The Punisher starring Dolph Lundgren and the Captain America starring no one who’s particularly notable to me. Not that I really sat through these — I just remember they’re out there, despite Marvel’s best attempts to erase everyone’s memory of them.
But oddly, while Hasselhoff-as-Nick-Fury was being discussed, I suddenly remember that Fox made a Generation X movie from 1996.
I liked the Generation X comic quite a bit. Yes, it had a stupid title, but it had a bunch of characters I liked. It had Scott Lobdell and Chris Bachalo as the creative team. It’s a title I would love to see collected in full.
But the Generation X movie? It was bad. It didn’t need to be as bad as it was, even with the budget it had.
For those of you who didn’t watch it (which was basically everyone), here’s a clip:
Yeah. I actually don’t know if I managed to get through the whole thing when it first aired. And I really wanted to like it. I would’ve watched the series. You know, if it hadn’t been so terrible.
Which also brings me to the Birds of Prey series. We’ll go with the official clip from Warner Bros.:
I know I taped the first few episodes of Birds of Prey, but we didn’t have the WB at the time. Instead, our NBC affiliate would show the WB programs really late on Sundays or Saturdays or … basically whenever they felt like it. If some sort of sporting event ran late or they needed more time for infomercials, oh well. So keeping track of Birds of Prey was next to impossible.
I do remember wishing it was a little bit better than it was. But I still kind of liked it. So I was pretty delighted to see it’s newly out on DVD
I imagine there is more superhero TV that has long been forgotten about. I had fun looking up both of these on YouTube (and learning Generation X didn’t get better with age).
Because apparently we need one?
Esteban I.V. Galindo of The Capistrano Dispatch offers A Ladies’ Guide to Comic Book Heroes. And for proclaiming to be a guide, it’s really not that informative. I think most “ladies” would be able to figure these things out on their own.
So Galindo’s wife isn’t interested in superhero movies or the comic books they were based on. There is nothing wrong with that. But she’s not representative of all women. Neither am I. I think that’s the ultimate flaw with pieces like this — just because one man knows one woman who may be more interested in Sex in the City than she is in comics doesn’t mean that all women are. I certainly don’t think all men like comic books or football.
While I did feel myself getting more and more stupid watching G4’s coverage of San Diego Comic-Con (and the commercials! How many do they really need?), I was delighted by Blair Butler. Sure, she’s a lovely girl and it’s obvious that she appeals to G4’s target demographic, but her excitement and enthusiasm for being there, getting to talk about comics was unmistakable. I doubt she needs a “ladies’ guide to comic book heroes” either.