Reb at Adventures in Lame is hosting a great roundup of links, including groups of posts from cross-blog discussions about Supergirl, Batgirl and Spider-Man.

Bahlactus has a proposal for DC Comics:

When you take it all in, the character that is Static can surpass some of these other “heroes” and give us that next-level format we need from Comics today. Especially in this post-crisis era. If DC had their eyes on the prize, they’d look to resurrect Static and drop him into the mix for the long haul. Get a solid writer on it that understands the human element and the heroism that makes a Comics character real. If no one is willing to step up, then I’d emplore DC to let ME craft his new hustle. It’s an investment in Comics history — an atomic bomb waiting to go off in the DCU that makes it all worthwhile. Some say that you can’t approach these big houses with a new capes story and have any hope of them actually getting down with it. What about a character whose flavor has stamina with the potential energy to embody the iconic values that works so well for someone like Spider-Man?

In the comments, Jeff Munson explains the ownership issues between Milestone, DC and Dwayne McDuffie, but points out that the timing is perfect if they had the motivation to straighten out the legalities.

Perhaps DC simply needs to be convinced that the readership exists?

Jenn at Reappropriate caused a small cross-blog uproar over her All-New Atom #2 review. It attracted the attention of the internet-prowling writer of the comic, Gail Simone, who engaged the critic in conversation.

Yesterday, Jenn posted a follow-up to her review with a postscript that should give hope to all comics bloggers:

[Post-script: I did notice that Ms. Simone suggested that we write her some feedback on how she might improve the All-New Atom. I appreciate her willingness to hear our community and I intend on writing a post dedicated to a few ideas I’ve had over the past week. See? It’s not all about complaining; we just didn’t know that Ms. Simone would be care to hear our ideas. Most comic book writers (and writers in general) are so narcisstic that they refuse to consider any opinions that might differ from their own take on a character, so it’s refreshing to see that constructive dissenting opinion might be valued and respected as seriously as “yes”-men-type fantalk.]

That’s not to say that everyone’s holding hands and singing in the comments section of any posts linked above. Do take some time to read through the discussion. The interaction between Gail and James is worth it.

This week brings armed mice, the Sorcerer Supreme, another Civil War tie-in and a host of classic fairy tale characters to comic book stores so that they can be mutilated, dramatized, and humiliated for my entertainment and yours.

So what’s the Blog@ crew looking most forward to this week?
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Karen and Betty have put the schedule for the quarterly meeting together:

Feminist Comics Fan Agenda

Item 1: Minutes of last meeting.
Item 2: Correspondence.
Item 3: Force captive, weeping comics creators to make doctrinally pure stories; slaughter upon completion.

Morning Break.

Item 4: Panel discussion: “Power Girl or Rogue: Who is Awesomer?”
Item 5: World domination, mass emasculation, burning all pictures of ladies prettier than us, destroying comic book industry.

Lunch.

Item 7: Paper presentation: “Slash and the Superhero, or, How Gay Are Superman and Batman for Each Other?”
Item 8: So Gay.

Afternoon Break.

Item 9: Motion of support for other movements of diversity in comics.
Item 10: Panel discussion: “Green Lanterns’ Butts.”
Item 11: Ignore oppressed women everywhere, sip champagne from slippers.

From Chimaera Serials:

Even with the large range of stories being told, collectively, comics have always struggled to maintain their relevance in the media. While there are a lot of interesting characters, stories, and successful comic books, the comic medium in general just doesn’t rake in the benefits that other successful forms of entertainment do. Comic writers don’t become millionares, and comic artists don’t usually become world-reknown, even if their art is “museum” grade.

Yet interestingly enough, in recent years there has been a distinct surge in creators and emerging artists, inspite of the lack of fame and fortune. What is it about a field, that doesn’t promise a secure retirement, in fact it doesn’t even remotely suggest it, that lures aspiring artists and writers?

Arguably, the most prominent aspect can be explained in a single word: creativity.

This week in the US we had a federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. Normally this means a delay, but the Diamond Comic Distributors website makes no notes about this. As far anyone knows, the US readers will get their comics on time.

With that out of the way, let’s see what the Blog@ team is waiting on: (more…)

Loren Javier, after reading a lament by Blog@Newsarama’s own Carla Hewitt, has started a campaign to get Sean McKeever (Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane) assigned as the Maid of Might’s regular writer. Those of you interested in flooding DC’s Editorial Offices with letters can find details at One Diverse Comic Book Nation.

Beau Smith weighs in on the arguments about homosexuality, politics, sex, and violence in superhero comics:

One side seems to be repulsed that there is overt sex, politics, and religion in some mainstream comics and their characters. The other side is just as outraged that others want to sweep real life sex, politics and religion under a four-color carpet. “Kids don’t need to see this stuff”. “Kids do need to see this stuff, you can’t shelter them from life”. Pick a quote. You see them both all the time. The thing that both sides are missing is that THERE ARE NO YOUNG KIDS READING MAINSTREAM COMICS. There won’t be unless things are changed and expanded.

Okay, I take that back…there might be a couple, but closer to none than a lot, and by mainstream comics I mean the superhero ones.

There is, of course, a lot more to his position in the column.

For those of you who are new to this, a blog carnival is when a group of blog posts that about the same basic subject are periodically gathered together in a single post. The subject is when Feminism applies in the outer limits of the imagination. The post is up at Girl-Wonder.org’s League of Substitute Heroes, and it links you to Chickpunk, Wikichix, nerd dating, and more!

Cheryl Lynn at Digital Femme, after encountering this manga image:

The racist image that I included in my original post? I plucked that image from volume seven of the manga Eyeshield 21. Eyeshield 21 is published in English for English-speaking countries by VIZ Media. The image I posted is from the English language version of the manga that is easily obtainable here in the United States. Volume seven of the series had a publishing date of April 4, 2006.

How many people were aware that this book contained a racist image that is humiliating to black people and still allowed this book to arrive upon American shores unedited? How many people saw that image, shrugged their shoulders, and thought that the feelings of black people were not worth the time and effort it would take to edit or remove the panel?

Bahlactus has some words to say about the naming of heroes, specifically an old Marvel hero who inherited the unfortunate name of “Bucky” when he joined up with Captain America. Unfortunate because the character was black and there were racist connotations to the name:

I’m pretty confident the political correctness movement was in full swing by the late 80’s when this new sidekick appeared on the Comics scene. It’s likely that movement is what caused Marvel to acknowledge a campaign to change the name of this character due to it’s racial connotations. The bigger question meltin’ my noodle is why wasn’t Marvel clued about this beforehand??? Surely this type of lazyness gets no play in this millenium! There are going to be a lot of people out there reading who are asking what’s the big deal? My rebuttal would be, why wouldn’t this be a big deal???

Brian K. Vaughn offers some advice for aspiring writers on his MySpace:

WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS.

That’s it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.

(And this isn’t just some tired cliche, I believe that’s a provable mathematical equation. I started writing five pages a day, every single day, when I began my senior year of high school. That means I hit 10,001 roughly a year after I graduated NYU, which was exactly when I pitched Y: THE LAST MAN to Vertigo. It took a lot of lousy writing to get there, but I’m glad I stuck with it. And don’t worry, if you were busy actually having a life in high school and college, it’s never too late to begin your march towards 10,001. Most writers don’t do their best work until they’re in their thirties and forties, anyway. Still, the clock is ticking, so maybe you old-timers should consider writing seven pages a day?)

More at the link, including bonus secondhand advice from Neil Gaiman.

Sequential Tart‘s January issue went up on New Year’s Day, and while we’re on the subject, take a moment to congratulate Katherine Keller on her selection as Editrix in Chief of Sequential Tart.

Gamasutra features an interview with writer Gerard Jones on violence in geek culture.

GS: If we’re a culture with few outlets for boys’, we’re a culture with zero outlets for girls.

GJ: There are people who are arguing that the greater verbal and social nastiness of girls in elementary school and middle school may be partly a product of that, that they still have the aggression, they still have the frustration, but they have fewer ways to process that in fantasy. Boys may slam into each other, but girls are more likely to do the excluding and gossiping. Then another aspect of that is that girls tend to be more interested in social systems, relationships, subtle cues between people.

Part of it has to do with definitions. This word violence is rather old, but the way we use it now to mean physical damage to someone’s body is pretty recent. I think that a good verbal drama has its own psychological violence. And of course, we’re talking generalities. There are women who love violence. My next-door neighbor plays Halo; that’s just how she unwinds. But with girls there’s the tendency to take aggression to a verbal level, where with boys there’s this fascination with bodies flying around.

Pretty early kids are getting this message that there’s a boy way to be and a girl way to be, and one of the positions we adopt is that girls are squeamish about blood and boys like blood. When we’re talking about defining maleness, part of that is saying, I love gore, and therefore loving these games. What’s interesting though is how many adolescent girls like horror movies.

(Via Heroine Sheik)

Women’s Work, a brand-new website for women who work in and around the visual and literary industries, is open for business. Leigh Dragoon, Shaenon Garrity, Rachel Hartman, Lea Hernandez, Lisa Jonté, Karen Krajenbrink, Layla Lawlor, Karen Luk, Carla Speed McNeil, Rachel Nabors, Leia Weathington, and Stevie Wilson are all members of the collective.

Bahlactus wishes DC would try a “What if?” line like Marvel, and he has an idea for the first issue:

If Comics are a reflection of the time they are created, what would the mode be for a dark skinned Kryptonian crash-landed on the third rock from the sun? Would he still stand for truth, justice and the American Way? Would he fight for the rights of others while striving to integrate himself into the human race? Would the challenges faced by Blacks during that era force his strengths and will down another path? What would Superman do?

Tamora Pierce tackled two major peeves in a recent livejournal post that’s making the rounds in the blogosphere right now.

First, she offers some thoughts about all of the individual attention she’s getting as the writer of White Tiger:

Tim and I are clearly listed as co-writers on the cover of the White Tiger books, and in the credits, but nine times out of ten, when the books are discussed, I’m named as sole writer. This really burns my bacon. We did all the interviews together; we’ve talked about the book in blog posts as co-writers, and yet people seem determined to forget there’s two of us in this. It gets really interesting in the slams. It’s almost as if people want to forget there’s a guy in this, too, so they can heap extra scorn on the girl. On the praise side, they want to give me all the credit, never mind that Tim writes the whole first draft (after we bash out the outline together)–a pretty serious contribution.
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Ray at Super Underwear Perverts had glowing words of praise for Justice Society of America #1, and only one complaint. Naturally, the complaint is what caught my attention:

Considering this issue was all about the old guard finding and recruiting relatives of the JSA founders for training and support Obsidian really should have gotten much more respect and play in this story. He’s the only surviving child of Green Lantern after all. But I’m afraid Johns is going to go for the same old tired characterization of the shadow-powered hero being all innefective, dark and angsty.

Dull-dull-deadly-dull. Obisdian has already been through that all before. Marc Andreyko showed us something novel in superhero comics: a gay man who had grown comfortable in his own skin and had come into-his-own as a hero. Geoff Johns had better acknowledge that character development in this series. And I hope Todd gets to be more than just the night-watchman of the JSA’s headquarters; that’s just embarassing.

LISTEN UP DC: Gay men don’t have to hide in the shadows any more!

Related: Dear Obsidian…

Fresh from the more informative side of the comics blogging community, we have Munson’s Milestone Mondays, where blogger Jeff Munson has undertaken the daunting task of summarizing every comic ever published by Milestone Comics, a now defunct DC Comics imprint that featured minority superheroes. In two weeks he’s chronicled Hardware #1-2, Icon #1, and Static #1, but he promises to catalogue 264 issues in all. In some parts of the country, Milestone Comics are extremely hard to find, so I hope he keeps it up for at least until he covers the missing issues of my Icon collection.

Mr. Munson is being hosted by Always Bet on Bahlactus, which just put up the sixth post towards the even more ambitious goal of chronicling every appearance of Galactus ever published.