Comicsgirl

My boyfriend was going through his collection of zines and pulled out two issues of Sarah Dyer‘s Mad Planet. He didn’t like when I said “These are mine now.”

Mostly, it’s full of interviews with obscure ’90s bands, but the spirit is awesome. And while it’s not the focus, there are comics. There are Action Girl paper dolls (it’s sad that I no longer work in the office at a time when no one is around because I’d totally make copies of these and cut them out), some comics by Evan Dorkin (of course!) and some of the only Adrian Tomine comics I’ve read that I actually liked (why he can’t do stuff like that now, I don’t know).

The whole thing is really cute and I’m happy that I came across these. (And I’m going to say that unless you had a friend who liked zines and comics in the ’90s, you probably won’t.)

Sarah Dyer went on, of course, to do Action Girl (which needs to be collected right now) and she’s written for the cartoons Superman Adventures, Batman Beyond and Space Ghost Coast to Coast (usually along with Dorkin). The children’s TV show Yo Gabba Gabba! features a character called Super Martian Robot Girl that was created by Dyer and Dorkin (Here’s a clip of it on Jezebel). And if you read her blog, you can see she’s quite busy.

I’d love for Dyer to make comics again and I hope one day she will. Until then, I’ll just enjoy these two issues of Mad Planet and everything else she’s done.

/Film reports that Angela Robinson is looking into continuing D.E.B.S. in comic-book form.

I’m not exactly sure if I made it through the entirety of D.E.B.S., which is kind of sad, because a movie based around the concept of “lesbians spies in school girl outfits” should be a winner. It’s not a terrible movie but I think the ideas are more fun than the execution of them. I’m going to guess the short-film version of it is better.

But I think it would actually work well as a comic series. The inherent campiness of the plot would work well in the medium and I think some of the problems with the movie (uneven performances, for instance) won’t be present in the series. I’d like to see this happen — I can just imagine the fun manga-inspired art that this title would have.

(The all-knowing Wikipedia informs me that director Angela Robinson drew D.E.B.S. comics while in college, which doesn’t surprise me. It just seems like a natural fit.)

The /film article also mentions a possible Veronica Mars comic series. I really like this medium-jumping. I think comics and TV series have a lot in common — they’re both serial and can tell larger, longer stories, but also need to be entertaining on their own.

It’s a short but good interview.

I liked Skim quite a bit and I’m happy to recommend it to people.

Todd Ciolek of Topless Robot lists the The 10 Most Unfairly Toyless Women. It’s definitely an ’80s-centric list, with some obscure cartoons I haven’t heard of.

But sadly, this still goes on today. There were no five-inch figures of Raven or Starfire in the line of Teen Titan animated series toys. And despite the fact that there were three very important, major female characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender, there were no toys of any of them (a joke about which was in the Avatar Puppet Pals clip made for New York Comic-Con last year).

Obviously, like I said, boys do have a harder time playing with what are perceived to be “girl” toys than girls do playing with “boy” toys, but a lot of these female character were important to the cartoons/properties they were apart of. Who’s to say that boys wouldn’t want to play with them too, given the chance? And I know there are girls out there who like these shows (I liked shows like that as a kid). Shouldn’t they get to play with action figures too?

It hasn’t been updated in nearly 10 years, but the supremely awesome Sarah Dyer used to maintain Action Girl’s Guide to Female Figures. It’s still a fun site with a few reviews and it was, at the time, an impressively-researched list.

Image of the Coraline Bendy Fashion Doll Assortment as seen and for sale on Entertainment Earth. I used it mostly because I want these now.

Eric San Juan is re-reading the series, volume by volume over at Weird Tales.

I certainly didn’t think my idea was unique and I have no clue if Eric San Juan knows of it. But it’s a lot of fun to see someone else’s take on the series. I loved re-reading it and discovering new things in the process. It delights me that someone else is doing the same thing and recording his thoughts on it. Obviously, I don’t agree with everything he’s said, but I’m also surprised at some of the conclusions we both came to, like that Dream Country is where Neil Gaiman finds his voice in the series. I’m also surprised at where we differ — he likes Season of Mists much more than I did this time around.

I also admire his ability to write about each volume every week day — I could barely manage one per week.