Today I visited the Post Office.

Early this month when I discovered every Target in the city had sold out of it, I ordered the Transformers Arcee movie tie-in toy over the internet. The other day I received a package with my receipt and a toy. But instead of my little blue motorcycle (the Autobot Arcee) there was a green dinosaur (the Decepticon Undermine). I emailed the lady who sold me the toy about the mix up, she apologized, provided the address of the customer who bought Undermine and assured me that she was already told to forward Arcee to my address. It occurred to me on the way to the post office that I was one of three women in three different states involved in the buying and selling of Transformer toys. (It was especially interesting that I was only involved because toy companies wrote the female Transformer out of the movie, and under produced her toy.)
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I’ve been so long-winded since I started this. Now seems like a good time to give everyone a break from my writing and offer links to other people. Here’s what I’ve found in the past week:

Cheryl Lynn Eaton’s post on race and feminism in superhero fandom continues to make the rounds, and she’s the featured interview in this week’s Sequential Tart.

Jazz’s role in the Transformers movie leads Karen the Oddity Collector to interesting conclusions that apply to any media.

From the gaming world, Caucasian Adventures (Found via GWOG)

And finally, the motherload of race in genre fiction and fandom linkposts (with a section devoted to comics): The People of Color in SciFi and Fantasy Blog Carnival!

DC Comics reduced the size of Power Girl’s breasts on the cover of Justice League of America #10 in the time between the solicitation and the release of the actual comic book. (Loren of Suspension of Disbelief scanned the actual cover and overlayed it on the solicited cover to illustrate the difference.) They did this in the wake of an online controversy that described Michael Turner’s depiction of Power Girl as a vacant, lifeless and exploitative but as the change did not actually fix any of those complaints it was reasonable to believe it had nothing to do with the internet complaints.

This week, Devon of Seven Hells puts the solicited and released Justice Society of America #7 covers side by side to illustrate a difference. This was found in the wake of an online controversy that described Alex Ross’s depiction of Citizen Steel’s bulge as “creepy.”

Sexism, racism, homophobia and art that borders on the pornographic are not essential characteristics of the superhero genre.

Weird powers, funky costumes (fun colorful costumes, not painful ones), cheesy concepts like aliens and fairies and walking gods are essential to the genre. Identity confusion is essential to the genre. Conflict between good and evil and other shades on the moral scale (from the irredeemable villain to the misguided villain to the misguided hero to the hero of the high ground) is essential to the genre. The responsibility to use your natural abilities is essential to the genre. Right versus wrong is essential to the genre. The power to protect yourself, your friends and your family is essential to the genre. The power to change the world is essential to the genre (and is one aspect that would appeal to a feminist in particular). Escape from the everyday helplessness of life is essential to the genre.

No one who asks the publishers to put some damned clothes on Star Sapphire or to stop killing off all the female characters is asking to change anything that is essential to the genre.

This week, Manstream Comics posted some panels (please note that Manstream links can have icons or pictures which may be considered NSFW) from Fantastic Four #547

The complaint was not about the pencils and the posture (though there is a smaller debate on how she is drawn going on in the comments) but that Storm is upset that someone suggested her hair was not real. Many Manstream readers felt that it was a portrayal of a vain, frivolous woman and not the Storm they knew and loved.

Cheryl Lynn (of Digital Femme fame) had a different interpretation:

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By now we all should know just who is taking over Justice League of America and who the first addition to the team roster will be.

This is one of my favorite characters, and its been too long since I’ve done a post on him. Now, I’m going to take a detour here and fan identification is still very heavy in my mind, but trust me this one ties into the theme of this column.
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Early on this week, Misty Lee (notable as the significant other of one Paul Dini) made a comment in a podcast that caused some uproar. She, repeating a statement made by an unidentified source, strongly suggested that complaints about the way women are portrayed in superhero art “usually” stemmed from “ugly, fat girls” and that she wasn’t bothered by the way women were drawn because she wasn’t threatened by them and enjoyed looking at them.

This comment has spawned the posting of pictures, the mincing of words, and some stunning commentary on how a woman’s worth in our society is tied to her physical appearance. I don’t have much to say about the comment itself, but instead I want to get into the metaphorical meat of this strawman, the assumption at the root of the comment.

See, what kills me with that comment (and some different and more polite opinions that stem from the same basic misconception) is the automatic assumption that the female fans are in some sort of strange competition with the female superheroes. That complaints about hypersexualized and demeaning images somehow stem from the natural insecurity of a mortal woman who compares herself to a goddess or, in the case of Ms. Lee’s statement, a downright unattractive woman who compares herself to the ideal.

It amazes me that it never occurs to certain people that the problem is not one of jealousy or lack of attraction, but of identification with the character.
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Because I didn’t join the team until a while after they moved to this site, I don’t have any “Just Past the Horizon” from one year ago. However, last year about this time was a busy period for Melissa and I at When Fangirls Attack. I would say that last Spring was the time the “Feminist Comics Blogosphere” was fully realized as a community in its own right.
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Today we’re going to do something a bit different for this feature. I attended Wiscon last weekend and sat in on the panels about comic books. Wiscon is a science fiction convention for feminists, so its panels were perfectly applicable to this column.

I have two panel writeups for you (and I’d like to thank Rachel Edidin for help with both). One on sexism and superhero comics, which is in Part 1 of this week’s feature, and one on Fun Home, which is just beyond the jump.
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Today we’re going to do something a bit different for this feature. I attended Wiscon last weekend and sat in on the panels about comic books. Wiscon is a science fiction convention for feminists, so its panels were perfectly applicable to this column.

I have two panel writeups for you. One on Fun Home, which is in Part 2 of this week’s feature, and one on sexism and superhero comics, which is just beyond the jump.
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So it seems everyone and his brother wants to comment on how “overblown” and “out of proportion” the reaction to the Mary Jane Washerwoman statue is. I’ve been watching these blow-ups for a while now, and it stuck to the normal lifecycle of a major outrage. One or two people notice it at first, and are ignored until a well-known and widely-read person blogs about it and suddenly complaints are popping up all over the blogosphere. The outrage heats for a varying amount of time, depending not on the degree of the insult but on the popularity of the person who blogged about it combined with the popularity of the people who picked it up.

For the purposes of the Mary Jane as Washerwoman statue, Devil Doll has a few hundred people watching her blog. Apparently, a large number of them are interested in Mary Jane Watson-Parker (the Spiderman movie just opened, after all) and how she’s portrayed in a statue. Each of those friends have friends and are members of communities. Because of the friendslist that allows people to instantly read all of their friends’ livejournals in one place, word travels fast when it starts traveling on livejournal. When it has legs, it goes far.

This statue has legs.
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A Blog Carnival is an odd combination of e-zine and link collection. The blogosphere is large and expansive. A Carnival typically collects together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. Like a magazine it has submission deadlines, a publishing date and is posted in issues. And like a traveling carnival it moves and is hosted on individual journals and blogs.

The above is Willow’s definition of a Blog Carnival. Its notable to this column because she offers it in reference to her new project, the People of Colour SF Carnival, which will (as the Feminist SF/F Carnival does) be accepting superhero comics-related submissions in the first edition. It should be posted in mid-June.

Interestingly enough the Erase Racism Carnival fell to Angry Black Woman this month, and she has chosen to request posts on race in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. That should be up on May 20th (May 18th submission deadline.)

With this in mind, I checked around the blogosphere for views on racial issues in comic books.
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This cover has been the “Outrage of the Week” for three nonconsecutive weeks in the Comics Fan Feminist Blogosphere, and its making its way towards a fourth with this post. Alpha Girl backs up the arguments laid out by Greg Burgas earlier this week, points out that the entire argument is pointless, states her appreciation for the character and makes a noble defense of large-breasted women at the hands of wicked extremist Feminists.

There’s one big problem with her post. The argument was a strawman. The complaints about the cover are not the wicked extremist Feminist arguments described. Neither Burgas nor Alpha seems to have read the actual complaints about the cover, and both bring up several arguments (Comics are a guy’s fantasy anyway. Its just as bad in TV and movies. Women have better self-esteem. Men are more realistic than you think. Why don’t we focus our energy towards something more important?) that are thoroughly, skillfully and convincingly refuted elsewhere.

We won’t be discussing those.

Instead, we’ll be addressing the expressed idea that artwork has less of a bearing on characterization than writing and of course, Power Girl’s breasts.

With pictures!
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As a community and an industry, we are desperately trying to prove that “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” Whenever the mainstream media starts talking about a comic book, its usually how they lead the story. We tout famous books like Sandman and Watchmen (rather than Maus and The Neighborhood) to our non-comics-reading friends as proof of the versatility and maturity of the medium.

Its not just us trying to prove ourselves to outsiders. We’re trying to prove ourselves to each other. The superhero books we read, leftovers from decades clutching the apron strings of the CCA-Nanny, are struggling to grow up and lose the trappings of childhood. With the Nanny gone (or at least too old and senile to babysit effectively), the writers and artists have tools that they are using as shorthand for “maturity.” Violence and sexual situations and sexualized violence and strong language have been increasing steadily for decades.

Of course, if you’re reading this website, you already knew that. Better writers than me have decried this, and better writers than me are actively using these “mature” tropes to good and bad effect in their stories. Chances are if you’re reading this site, you’ve already taken a side in the great “Maturity, Censorship, and Decency in Comics” debate.

As that debate is going on, both sides are killing the concurrent debate on social issues in comics.
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When I first started blogging, I started on a personal blog with some random thoughts and weekly reviews. There was no real direction, just a few ideas I’d never been able to get anyone to listen to and some ideas I picked up from my surrounding blogs. I managed to make my way onto a few blogrolls when I started posting regularly about women in comics. At the same time, quite a few other people started blogging about women as well. There was enough to start a separate blog just to keep the links on. This was nearly a year and a half ago, and I’ve been following posts about social issues of all kinds in comics very closely. I’ve been blogging them, particularly the gender ones, regularly on my personal blog.

I’ve recently noticed that I’ve been dropped from some of the first sites that linked me.
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Aspiring female artists looking for exposure? Pink Raygun has an offer for you:

We are looking for six female created webcomics to run on a weekly basis. To be considered, submit a minimum of three episodes of your webcomic to submissions@pinkraygun.com by May 2nd. Your submission should be no wider than 600 pixels and no taller than 200 pixels. We’ll announce the official selections on May 4th.

Ziggurat Con, a gaming convention put on by and for soldiers in Iraq, needs your help:

The largest problem with running a Con in Iraq, of course, is that there are no local stores or game publishers, and few game books on the post. Even dice are in short supply, with many soldiers breaking the unwritten taboo held by many gamers and (gasp!) sharing dice. Thankfully, many game publishers have also lent their support, and have agreed to supply game products to help the Con along. aethereal FORGE, Sovereign Press, Final Redoubt Press, Goodman Games, Paizo Publishing and Steve Jackson Games are among those that have thrown in their support for the convention. But Amberson indicated that the soldiers could definitely use more.

“This convention is currently in drastic need of prizes and giveaways for the troops,” he said. “Everything donated will go directly to the troops, or to MWR to use as loaner books for the soldiers.”

For more information, contact SPC David Amberson at the following address: david.amberson (at) iraq.centcom.mil

(Hattip to Chris)

If you’ve been paying attention the ongoing feminism in superhero comics debate over the past few years, you’ve probably seen the same responses over and over again since Women in Refrigerators. After a while, it can get terribly boring. Well, Karen Healey and Elizabeth McDonald have solved that problem with a version of Bingo that you can play while following along.

Here’s the game card. Here’s a place to start playing.

Enjoy!

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and in honor of that Rachel Edidin has dedicated a series of articles to the issue of sexual assault as a plot device in comic books. The most recent installment offers some advice on creators considering a storyline in that direction:

2. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you’re considering including a sexual assault in a story:

-Why do I want to write a story involving sexual assault? If it’s because you think it’ll raise ratings, make your story more “mature,” or identify you as sensitive to women’s issues, think again. If you are an assault survivor writing to exorcize inner demons, seriously consider whether this particular story is the best context in which to work out your issues. I don’t say this to discourage any survivors from telling their stories–something I think is vitally important–but I do want to stress that a fiction story may not be the most appropriate context for doing so, particularly if it involves other people’s characters or plotlines (as in a shared-universe superhero comic).

Some of the worst stories out there come from genuinely concerned individuals who want to raise readers’ awareness of sexual assault issues. Remember that something that you care passionately about or that has affected you deeply and personally may not be the best subject for a fictional story, since it’ll be very hard to separate yourself from your work enough to get a decent perspective.

-How will it affect the development of my characters? Even though sexual assault is a big deal, it’s rarely the single defining experience of a survivor’s life. Using it as a shortcut to character development is a cheap and ultimately ineffective trick, and it’ll come back to haunt you later.

-How will it affect continuity? Will it matter? Why, or why not? “Because rape is a big deal” is not a good enough reason.

-How much do you actually know about sexual assault? Are you a sexual assault survivor? Do you have close friends who are? Have you ever sat in on a rape trial? Have you ever spoken with a perpetrator? If not, odds are pretty good that you have a flawed understanding of the factors surrounding sexual assault, and you’re going to need to do some serious research to write about it without falling into stereotypes.

More tips at the link, as well as previous installments.

Bahlactus finds much of the artistic depiction of black characters in mainstream comics lacking:

Many Black characters in Comics artistically have no flavor or presence; it’s the 90’s all over again. Aside from John Paul Leon masterfully laying down lead to paper on Static, the prominent Blacks in Comics had no solid artists breathing life into them. Why isn’t the A-list talent getting tasked with providing the necessary artistic hustle for the big-house Black characters? Do Marvel and DC hate Black people so much they have to assign us the Z-list brand artist?

With cats like Leinil Yu, and JR JR, there is hope. I recognize myself in their Black faces. That’s a crucial element to any story. When I look at a Black character, I need to be able to recognize myself to some degree. I can’t get down and appreciate a Michael Turner spin on John Stewart, when he looks like Bruce Wayne in Blackface. On the flipside, I can subscribe to an interpretation of Firestorm by Khary Randolph, or Steel if Jock was pencilling. I’m not on board with Jamal Igle — all his characters lack presence, and often feel short.