Comicsgirl

Archive for the ‘general’ Category

• 07:55 And I’m off! #
• 13:15 This is ridiculous. #
• 14:04 This never ends. #
• 14:17 I have yet to spend money. #
• 14:31 OK – first purchase was an Aranzi Aronzo mug. #
• 16:04 First comic purchase is "I Saw You" edited by Julia Wertz. #

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(I’ve been dealing with awesomely fun dental issues this week, which is why this is a little delayed.)

The people at Toon Books were kind enough to send me review copies of this spring’s upcoming two releases, Benny and Penny in The Big No-No by Geoffrey Hayes and Luke on the Loose by Harry Bliss. Both are, as expected, wonderful. Like before, the fact they’re “comics” seems pretty secondary to that they’re just great books for young readers.

I haven’t read the first Benny and Penny book, but the title characters of Benny and Penny in The Big No-No are an adorable pair of brother and sister mice. The dynamic of big brother/little sister is clear from the beginning as the two sneak into the neighbor’s yard to steal back Benny’s pail. Or at least what they believe to be Benny’s pail. Instead, they make an enemy — but then a friend — of their new neighbor, a little girl possum named Melina. The playground conflict of judging someone before you know them is sweetly and simply presented. Hayes’ soft, colored-pencil artwork recalls a lot of the children’s books I read as a kid — Beatrix Potter and Mercer Mayer are obvious ones, but there is some of the wholesome nostalgia of Tasha Tudor. This will become many children’s favorite book.

Bliss’ Luke on the Loose, however, is much more wacky fun in comparison to the quiet innocence of Benny and Penny. Luke is a 4-year-old who decides chasing pigeons is much more interesting that his father’s boring adult conversations. This is one part Peanuts strip and one part classic Sesame Street. Bliss’ New York is lovingly idealized and safe — the kind of world that city kids grow up in — and he fills the book with plenty of joyful visual gags. I loved the sequence on pages 18-19 as pigeons — then Luke — go flying past a man trying to propose to his girlfriend at a sidewalk restaurant. The faces of the couple, the waiter and a fellow diner are wonderfully expressive. The book is a comedic delight and one that adults will love as much as the children they’re reading it to.

Both books are set for release on April 15. Buy these for the children in your life. Or just buy them for yourself. They are both remarkably lovely.

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.

Lemondrop has posted a list of The Top Ten Coolest Cartoon Characters, which despite the name, is pretty heavy on comic book characters. As these lists go, this is one of the more interesting and diverse ones, even when I don’t agree — it features characters such as Nasser Ali Khan from Marjane Satrapi’s “Chicken with Plums” and John Arbuckle from Garfield — but other than Daria and Maggie and Hopey from Love and Rockets, it was sadly lacking in women. (I do get the feeling, though, it was originally intended to be a list of comic book and cartoon crushes and was later changed to “coolest.”)

If you’re going to make a list of the coolest cartoon characters, how is Sailor Moon (or any of the other Sailor Scouts/Soldiers) not on this list? Why no Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop? If we want to branch out to comics without resorting to the typical faves like Hellboy and such, why not Fone Bone and Thorn from Bone? Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise? I think I’d even happily campaign for Skywise from Elfquest, but I understand that’s my issue.

I’m glad that Emily Brochin included Daria, though. I’m surprised at how polarizing Daria is — you talk to women of a certain age, and we all cite Daria as something we related to and is quite the reference point for us. You talk to men of a similar age — even otherwise thoughtful, awesome men — and they just talk about how annoying the show was. I just think that’s funny.

Image taken from screenshot of Lemondrop

There has been a lot of chatter about this article around the Internet, or at least the bit of it that I read. And yeah, I think with all the superboys out there, we could see a few more supergirls.

I grew up playing with a good mix of “girl” toys and “boy” toys. I had all kinds of My Little Ponies and I loved Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake. I even liked Barbies. But I loved Legos (which I think are unisex, anyway, but I loved the simple smiley faces they used to have because you could put on “girl” hair to anyone and look, you have a woman!) and I loved playing with my brother and his Justice League action figures during the ’80s (or whatever they were — the DC Comics characters). I think Wonder Woman was the only woman of the batch, but it didn’t matter to me. Hawkman was also cool.

I didn’t see why I couldn’t be a princess and also go on adventures. Maybe I didn’t quite think of it like that, but I while I was happy being a girl, I didn’t see that as a limitation.

I know it’s different growing up as a boy — because while girls can easily cross over to the other side and pick up “boy” toys, boys have a much harder time doing the same. But it seems that a lot of the discussion about superheroines on screen seems to revolve around “women should get to see movies with strong women” and “men don’t want to see movies with strong women.”

And yeah, I do think Hollywood has a problem presenting female-driven movies that aren’t, you know, Bride Wars, but I also know that there’s a good portion of women that want to see movies like that. (I also know there’s a bunch of us who don’t.) I think women deserve to see a better picture of themselves onscreen. But I also think men do, too.

I cannot speak for all men, but I know plenty of awesome men who like strong female characters. Maybe they don’t seek them out necessarily, but they’re happy to relate to a woman who’s strong and awesome. They like Wonder Woman and Batman (just as examples). Or at least, they like good stories, regardless of who they are about.

And isn’t that really the ultimate point — good stories can be told about superwomen, just as bad stories can be. (And there are also a lot of bad “superhero” movies out there — sure, it was just a made-for-TV deal, but I do need to point out Nick Fury: Agent of Shield starring David Hasselhoff.)

So I think we need good superheroine movies more than anything, even just to prove to the doubters it can be done. I don’t think there’s any better time for it.

Promotional image from the Birds of Prey TV series from 2002

Creator Tim Broderick writes about taking his daughters into the comic book store and having them not see much that appealed to them, even comics like Wolverine: First Class, which are supposedly intended for them.

I’ve been in some good comic book stores — even when I was a young teenager, I remember going into one of our local stores with my brother and the staff was always nice to me and let me feel like I belonged there. I like the casual coolness of the area’s Big Planet stores and I certainly adore the boutique vibe of Isotope Comics in San Francisco. And yes, I’ve been in some bad comic book stores — ones where I’ve been ignored because I was neither a boy (of any age) nor a mother so I didn’t register. I’ve been in your stereotypically dusty, dimly lit stores.

But this isn’t so much about comic book stores. This is about what’s in them.

I don’t tend to think of teenage girls as of one mind — I was watching The X-Files and not Dawson’s Creek as a teenage girl. Yes, maybe I would’ve been inclined to pick up Wolverine: First Class because I liked both Kitty Pryde and Wolverine. But that was me. That’s the kind of teenage girl I was. I would not say I was typical.

Quite possibly, it’s an excellent title for teenage girls (although Broderick said his daughters didn’t care for it) but as he pointed out:

Even “First Class,” supposedly written for girls and targeted to that audience, featured an aggressively-posed Wolverine – claws out with a grimace on his face – while Kitty Pryde, supposedly the narrator and main character, was secondary.

He then compares it to the cover of the book Twilight (oh, our favorite easy example of Twilight) as well as the movie cover. Both are romantic and a little mysterious. Put side by side with the cover of Wolverine: First Class, I think the choice for most teenage girls is pretty clear.

There are wonderful comics for girls out there. But if they’re not presented in an appealing way, how are teenage girls going to pick them up? (Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane seems like it did a little bit better in terms of appealing to girls. I don’t know how many girls read it, though). And this is even if you get them into the comic book store in the first place (but that’s something of another matter).

Rob at Talkin Bout Comics writes about the unfortunate reaction to the Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in Eighth Grade preview over at Newsarama. A lot of the comments at Newsrama (although, to be fair, not all) tend to read like “She needs longer hair. She doesn’t look like a girl.”

I don’t think a lot of these commenters actually know what young teenage girls look like.

I personally feel like the short hair suits this version of Supergirl. It’s a little tomboyish, sure, but it’s practical for fighting crime (do you really want to be worrying about your hair getting in your face when battling the bad guy?). She’s 13 — why does she need eyelashes to make her prettier or more girly? I think she’s cute and looks appropriate for her age.

Which is kind of my other point — these people complaining about how this Supergirl looks don’t seem to realize that maybe it’s not for them. I’m a big fan of a lot children’s entertainment, sure, but I can’t stand most of Nickelodeon’s TEENick shows or Disney Channel’s live action programming. But I understand they’re not trying to get me to watch. I understand that kids want to see other kids that kind of look like them (except maybe with better clothes). Kids — and yes, girls — should get their own comics. If I like them as an adult, that’s cool. But they weren’t made for me. I have no problem with that.

I think Rob (or rather, his daughter) says this more clearly than I ever could:

“I showed my nine year old daughter the pictures of Supergirl from the preview and asked her if she knew who the character was. She did. I asked her if she thought the character looked like a girl or a boy, and she said that she looked a little bit like a boy. The reason she cited was how messy her hair seems to be. She then pointed out something that should seem pretty obvious to most people, and that is that the character’s name is SuperGIRL… She’s a girl. I don’t think her sensibilities were offended by the character design at all, and she had no difficulty identifying the character or the character’s gender. She thinks the comic looks cool.”

I saw this post over at the Creative Loafing blog and I understood the point, but kind of wish it took the metaphor farther.

But reading about the “death” of Batman (and unless you’re living under a rock, that’s not really a spoiler) makes me think the comic-books-as-soap-operas thing is a little big closer than most people want to admit.

Because no one stays dead in either.

I was never exactly a regular soap-opera watcher. I kept up with All My Children growing up, mostly because my mom watched it (and when I’d come home for breaks during college or whatever, it was always easy to catch up). Cars would crash; planes would crash; people would fall off cliffs or lapse into comas. Even if there was a funeral, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities that someone would appear later, with or without amnesia, claiming it was an evil twin/body double/etc. and they weren’t actually dead.

I understand that there are only so many stories writers can tell so many times before both they and the watchers start getting bored, but even in the better class of soap operas (and yes, they do exist), the stereotypes are mostly true.

How many superheroes have died, only to come back later? I don’t believe for a minute Bruce Wayne/Batman is dead. It may certainly make for an entertaining comic and a good read, but it’s not as dramatic knowing that it’s unlikely that’s the final outcome.

(I don’t read Batman, so you can gladly tell me I have no idea what I’m talking about and that Batman is dead forever. But I have read comics. And watched soap operas. Past experience tells me how these things usually turn out.)

I have little comment on the Blog@Newsarama crew departing for what I hope are bigger and better things for all of them. But I do personally find the entire sequence of events leading up to this more than a little depressing and I’m sorry they were put in this position. I certainly wish them the best of luck. (The Beat has more, including comments from JK Parkin.)

• 13:42 I did build in extra money to my SPX budget. Which is good because I need it. #
• 15:20 Miss Maryland Teen USA just signed up for the SPX mailing list. #
• 16:38 Headed home. Good weekend. #
• 20:55 I am totally sad I missed @jamessime of Isotope Comics at SPX. I don’t know how I managed that. I was there all weekend! #

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• 07:09 I will be at table F3. When I am not running around, of course. #
• 08:29 Misadventures: Grabbed the wrong USB cable and got on the wrong train. Maybe I needed more sleep. #
• 13:09 Still have yet to buy anything, but Pete Stathis gave me a copy of Evenfall II #
• 13:22 Tim is doing really well here. I am suprised and delighted. #
• 14:39 At least they keep the air conditioning cranked in here. #
• 14:57 This is becoming a matter of endurance. I need a nap. #

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