April’s Sequential Tart is up, with a review of Action Philosophers, an op-ed in defense of Brubaker’s current Captain America storyline, and an open letter to DC Editorial.

Webcomic collective Girlamatic celebrates its fourth anniversary next week.

Arionhunter of Livejournal offers an interesting thematic theory of the Selected Works of Frank Miller:

Martha Washington is in an interesting place as Miller’s first/only explicit political satire. The satire itself reads as dated, decrying Reagan, the growth of corporations that suppress creativity, nationalized health care, and has an uncomfortable relationship with environmentalism. The government itself is either oppressive or incompetent. Yet everyone who challenges the government is a parody of a cause. The Calvinists, militant feminists, the “gay white racists Nazis.” All of these groups have forgotten “the ideas of America,” themselves embodied by the Captain America figure.

Now, there’s really no way to continue without addressing what seems to be Miller’s evolving politics. What Miller is proposing a kind of ethical moralistic Nationalism. Miller is an authoritarian whose authority comes from one’s strongly held morals, which should always align with those of one’s nation. When the nation deviates from what you hold as the nation’s morals, then you must hold to your morals first. This follows into Miller’s hero, who almost always fights some form of decadent deviance.

I say this because DKR/DKSA leaves no other option. Superman is the figure blindly following the nation in DKR, and in DKSA he is trying to negotiate. At the end he becomes an embodiment of the Nietzscheian idea, using his moral authority to become part of the oligarchy. And I think that’s evident of the evolution aspect. Martha Washington has no “gods and heroes” oligarchy. The God is the nation’s ideals. This is bolstered by the “Captain America” figure; this is the only time you see such a figure pre-9/11. However, by DKSA we (collectively) gone so far that we must have Gods (IE Superheroes). And over time, stronger and stronger “moral” authority figures are required by Miller. 300 is Miller’s love letter to his ideal society, where everyone is willing to give themselves over to the state.

Much more at the link about those three series.

Observations from the Legion of Doom:

Of the two, I liked Williams’ Aquaman effort much less. It went far too cutesy for me. Maybe Williams didn’t know what fans had come to enjoy about the renovated title. A part of that was an abundance of “clever” little visual gags, many of which were repeated and lost what little impact they initially had. Wonder Woman #6 shared that fault. Picoult included ten or more references to Wonder Woman not being as popular anymore (i.e. the Wonder Woman milk shake now being the Black Canary Milk Shake). I caught the first one, so each additional gag came across like the creative team shouting, “Hey, you stupid reader! You’re so dumb we have to kick this dead horse until its guts explode!” I know that’s not their intent, but part of writing comics is having a thorough understanding of how your writing looks when it’s conveyed with art, not words.

That plays into the other main problem, which is that both authors don’t seem to understand their audiences very well. Now, I don’t know the census figures on average DC readers, but I’m probably not far from the norm. The books, though, are aimed at either a far younger audience (I’ve compared Aquaman to a remake of The Little Mermaid) or people with little familiarity to comics. We’re a demanding bunch to write for, I know, but the bar is set. If a big-time talent comes on, I expect them to clear it, or at least come close.

Cheryl Lynn on the comics industry:

The problem is that selling to the same old sheltered set of readers isn’t working. That audience is dwindling rapidly. They’re growing older. And the children they’ve sired? They think of a black man when someone says Green Lantern. Why? Because entertainment genres like television, video games and movies have taken the content produced in comics and altered it to make it palatable for an audience for which diversity and equality is demanded. I can turn on my television and occasionally see a cartoon where a black man is a powerful entity in his own right and can lead a team to victory or complete a difficult mission. However, when I open the pages of a comic, that same black man is merely a supporting character to a white hero.

Why is that so? Because the comics industry caters for the most part to an audience that is lost in time. This audience does not mind new characters and might even enjoy seeing a few different faces, but those characters must never be more powerful than the white heroes they know and love and must never rob those characters of the spotlight.

Read the whole thing.

In the spirit of last month’s Draw Supergirl and last year’s Draw Batgirl, Superleezard hopes to once again inspire Livejournal to artistic ecstasy with a Draw Captain America art meme.

If there are any talented artists reading who wish to show off their artwork, apply at the link. The rest of us can spend the afternoon enjoying the fanart at all three lists.

The 11th Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans is up at But Can She Spin? An excellent selection of February’s Feminist fan writing for an afternoon’s reading.

The March issue of Sequential Tart is up. Articles include an interview with Phil Hester, a list of gender-bending comics and a look at the character evolution of Supergirl.

Marv Wolfman blogs his master plan for Dick Grayson:

The trick to Nightwing is giving him purpose and drive. Because the murder of his parents was resolved quickly he never developed the rigid obsession that has motivated Batman. His motivation comes from the pursuit of justice. But maybe something happened between the last days of the first run of Teen Titans when he disbanded that group for reasons we will learn, and the first issue of the New Teen Titans where he returned to the fold more grown up and less a kid sidekick than he ever had been before. Coincidentally, it’s also a year where he wasn’t with Batman 7/27. Something changed him then, and now that something has returned. And as I say, if what happens in our second Bride & Groom story lights the fuse, our third storyline is where everything in Dick’s life is going to explode.

There’s been some cross-blog discussion recently of the Friends of Lulu Empowerment Fund, and a lot of misunderstanding exchanged in that discussion. FoL Boardmember Leigh Dragoon is offering a place to clear up the confusion:

Friends of Lulu Empowerment Fund – The Straight Dope
A lot of ire has been raised over the past couple of weeks in the Blog-o-Sphere concerning Friends of Lulu’s now defunct Empowerment Fund, a project which was spear-headed by former Friends of Lulu board member, Ronee Bourgeois. As a Friends of Lulu board member, I, like the other current board members, take the integrity of FOL very seriously. I have decided to attempt to address the issues which continue to be raised regarding the Empowerment Fund and the status of the contributions to that Fund. I have outlined the salient facts below:

1. Ronee announced the Empowerment Fund to the public without the agreement of the rest of the board.

2. Ronee is no longer in any way associated with Friends of Lulu.

3. The Empowerment Fund is a defunct concept which Friends of Lulu will no longer be pursuing.

4. I have examined the PayPal statements. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Ronee misappropriated any funds. In fact, she donated funds.

5. We offered Fund contributors a refund period.

6. Money was spent ONLY on the Fund’s intended purpose: namely, to defray court costs for Taki Soma.

I will try my best to answer any questions left in the comments section of this post.

If there are any interested parties reading, she’s taking questions and answering them in her own livejournal.

Under the heading of “unusual blog posts” we find this comparative review of Jane Eyre and X-Men 3: The Last Stand. Enjoy!

The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, which compares the Green Lantern Corps to US foreign policy, has been making the rounds in the past few months and has finally found its way to the inbox of former Green Lantern/Green Arrow writer Dennis O’Neil.

He disagrees with the hypothesis.

It’s hard to quarrel with Mr. Yglesias’s parallels between a patchwork, ersatz fictional universe and the patchwork, ersatz foreign policy of the Bush administration, so I won’t. The difference, of course, is that despite how seriously some fans take their hobby, comics are mostly intended to be merely amusing, and the presumption of their creators is that no one will believe the narrative in them is from real life. There was no real cataclysm when Green Lantern’s home town was destroyed, no real child was harmed when Batman’s young pal was killed, no civilization was destroyed when Krypton exploded because there never was a Krypton.

When the Bushies deploy troops, the ensuing horror is genuine.

Sorry if I just disillusioned anyone.

But, in a way, there is a kind of truth in the Green Lantern saga. It’s the same truth that’s in our mythology, our religion, and much of our popular fiction in general. These things, our make-believe, our fun-makers, often contain representations of our values — what we really feel, not what we think we ought to feel. And, that being the case, there’s always been a problem with superheroes — not only our superheroes, but all superheroes, from Gilgamesh on. They’re warriors. Which means they’re violent, and they solve problems by bashing someone. Implicit in their narratives is the notion that right makes might, and might, as manifested by physical force, is the tool of choice for problem-solving. I don’t think that’s ever been true and maybe you don’t, either. In times when nuclear, environmental, and biological holocausts are real possibilities, it’s deeply scary.

But I’m not ranting against it. I suspect our admiration for what’s euphemistically called “action” is buried inside our genome, the remnants of a survival trait. It’s City Hall, folks, and we can’t fight it.

Kevin Church:

It’s OK to walk away from books you’re not enjoying. Nobody will get their feelings hurt and by freeing up the money, maybe you can invest in a title you do enjoy. So what if you’ve been reading Uncanny X-Men since 1986 – if you’re not enjoying it, then stop paying for it. Your dollar is the most powerful voting tool you have for editorial change at Marvel and DC. You wonder why things never change while spending your money on the same crap week after week, month after month, year after year. If you don’t like something, you don’t have to – and you shouldn’t – buy it. I encourage you to think about what you spend your money on and value your time more than your collection. If you’re thinking too many comics are being written for the trade paperback, then wait for the trade. Don’t buy monthly issues that don’t give you enough content – I’m pretty sure that Ultimate Spider-Man is going to get published without your $2.99 and it’ll be much better when you get to read it in a large chunk.

He goes on to challenge everyone to look over their pull-list on Wednesday, and cross off whatever they are not enjoying.

The Ormes Society:

The Ormes Society, named after the legendary pioneering cartoonist of color Jackie Ormes, is an organization dedicated to supporting black female comic creators and promoting the inclusion of black women in the comics industry as creators, characters and consumers.

Linked site has a forum, a blog, and profile pages.

A few weeks ago, Cheryl Lynn put up a proposal:

The Ormes Society would be a bit of a stepping stone or gateway. It’d be a place where black female comic creators and fans could (1) find each other (2) share our creations (3) talk about topics that are important to us and (4) gain the courage needed to bring those thoughts and creations to the larger comic reading/creating audience. It would also be a place for editors, fans and fellow creators to find us and share their thoughts about our work and about topics that pertain to black women in comics (both in the pages and behind the scenes).

There’s no generation of older black women in comics still living to dole out advice and help us along the path to success. But with a little work we could at least have each other as company on the journey.

She’s decided to implement it, and is requesting information:

If you are a black woman currently creating or editing comics, please e-mail me the following information:

1) Your full name
2) Your web address
3) Your e-mail address
4) A list of the work you’ve done that has been published in print or online (with publications dates, if possible)

PS – If you do not have your own personal website, a link to your ComicSpace or deviantArt site is fine. If you currently do not have any work online or in print, please give me some information on your current project or the type of work that you are interested in doing.

Emily Crow of Comixpedia has some advice:

1. Write the character first, then add secondary characteristics. Many experiences and beliefs are common to the human experience overall. Give your characters a personality and purpose first and a gender and ethnicity second.
2. Keep it simple. If you aren’t familiar with a character’s culture, don’t try to write an immersive story. It will sound forced and fake. The book adaptation of the movie Hackers is a great example of this; the writer knew all the lingo, but couldn’t speak from the voice of authority he was trying to project. He didn’t sound like a hacker; he sounded like a wanna-be. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include diverse characters. It just means that when writing them, write from the commonality of human experience that you do understand.
3. Do your homework. If you want to add specific cultural aspects that you’re unfamiliar with, whether it’s being a Mennonite or being from Greenland, do your research. Half an hour with Google could have told the Disney team who did Mulan that the Chinese doctor’s tent should not have the Japanese Rising Sun flag on it.
4. Visual representation equals visual identification. It’s not enough to draw a character who looks white and make his last name Shen; that’s inclusion, but it’s not visual representation. The reader has to be able to look at a picture and see people who don’t all look white. The cast of Multiplex (http://www.multiplexcomic.com/cast.php) is a great example of this in action. (For a great photo reference on visual multiracial diversity, check out Kip Fulbeck’s book Part Asian, 100% Hapa (http://www.amazon.com/Part-Asian-100%25-Hapa-Fulbeck/dp/0811849597).)
5. The 40% rule: To make a crowd scene or group picture look naturally diverse, aim for about 40% of the people to be visually identifiable as non-race of majority. This rule isn’t written down in stone anywhere; it’s a personal rule I’ve come to after much trial-and-error working on activist publications that strove for diversity in representation. Something about this ratio feels natural to the eye when you look at the scene.
6. Cultural appropriation does not equal visual representation. Firefly may be the awesomest show on the planet, but it’s also an amazingly galling example of cultural theft. Here you have a setting where the United States and China have become one fused government called the Alliance, where Chinese culture has become tremendously visible to the point where everyone swears in Mandarin. The only place you don’t see the Chinese influence? In the cast. With one or two crowd-scene exceptions, even the extras aren’t Asian. That’s cultural appropriation, and it’s sloppy and lame.
7. Keep trying. Do the best you can, and learn from your mistakes. But you knew that already.

Over at Making Light, a political post on cultural attitudes about prison abuse yields a discussion about superhero fantasies.

I think the idea that “society requires extra-legal violence in order to hold together” is pretty much fundamental to the conservative outlook. Even more important, and useful as a tool of social control, is the idea that all wised-up people know and accept this. That’s the real message behind all those hectoring commands to smarten up, toughen up, get with the program, understand that “9/11 changed everything,” and so forth.

Both ideas are also deeply ingrained in science fiction and fantasy, including some of the genre’s most intelligent work; indeed, much of the genre works by appealing to our wish that the world’s extra-legal violence be under the control of the kind of smart people we admire. The Second Foundation and the X-Men—and, for that matter, the Scooby Gang and the Laundry—are all, to some extent, basically the Ku Klux Klan, except that the extrajudicial violence they carry out is (we’re assured) merited and just.

The comment thread goes more deeply into the Klan comparison, debates Spider-man’s philosophy, and discusses Batman as an urban vigilante compared to Superman as a dragon-slayer.

Two posts, one a list of black female creators and one a list of black male creators, were posted at Digital Femme this weekend. A third post explains why:

Now read comments on the SDCC 2006 Black Panel from the following blogs and forums:

Glyphs
And We Shall March (2)
Damaged Goods
Dwayne McDuffie Forum

Now visit the New York Comic Con website and take a look at the information given on panels dedicated to black creators and female creators.

Discuss.

Cheryl Lynn requests industry information:

In honor of Black History Month, I thought I’d make a list of all of the fabulous Black women writers, artists and editors I know of who are kicking ass and taking names at Marvel, MAX, DC, MINX, CMX, Vertigo, Wildstorm, Image, Dark Horse, Oni Press, Fantagraphics, First Second, Avatar, SLG, Devil’s Due, Drawn & Quarterly, Tokyopop, VIZ and Del Rey.

MARGUERITE ABOUET
(Writer, Drawn & Quarterly)

TANYA McKINNON
(Editor, First Second)

Please, please e-mail me if there’s someone you know of who is missing from this list!

Mariah Heuhner discusses professionalism at Sequential Tart:

The Critique Monster usually manifests in one of three ways. The first is The Defensive Demon. Generally this means that the moment The Defensive Demon hears anything other than “your work is the best I have ever seen, here is a hat made of money, please draw/write this book” it starts to argue with the person giving the critique. It gets angry. It says things like “You don’t understand what I am trying to do”, or “I know, but …” or the ever popular “It’s my style …” The Demon has stopped listening and is busy trying to convince the critic that they are a soul-crushing jerk intent on ruining lives and shattering dreams.

The second manifestation of the Critique Monster is the Glazed Ghost. In this case the above scenario unfolds but the Glazed Ghost mumbles in a way that might or might not be words, slumps into a defeated/defensive posture, and with blank eyes proceeds to ignore absolutely every comment made. It is no longer in the room with the nasty critic who is telling it what it doesn’t want to hear; it is in a happy place where everything it does is perfect and chocolate cake rains from the sky. It thinks the critic hasn’t noticed, but the critic has. This is when the critic gives up, says something like “it’s interesting,” and the Glazed Ghost has missed out on anything helpful they were trying to impart.

The third manifestations, and possibly most insidious, are the ones who don’t look like any kind of monster. I call them The Smile and Nod Demons. They give the overall impression of truly listening, of taking every comment in stride. Inside, however, they are fuming and promptly filing away all critiques into a folder named “Ignore.” They probably go home and scream “motherfucker” as loud as they can and badmouth said critic whenever possible. It’s hard to guess who might fall into this category, and most reviewers hope it isn’t too many.

More at the link about “rock star” behavior in the comics industry and the consequences.