-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-A little ditty courtesy of one of the subjects of our show opens this one!
-Four Girlcasts in a row! Eat your heart out, Gloria Steinem!
-This is theoretically a Continuity Off about everyone’s favorite Dynamic Duo, the Femmes Fatale, those Titans of Terror, Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy.
-Really, we’re just reminiscing and talking about how great those two are.
-(Or at least how great Harley is, and how being near Harley makes Ivy also great.)
-I said I’d upload some youtubes, but who knew that Warners would scrub most of Batman TAS off the face of Youtube? I’ll put a couple I found after the jump, anyway.
-If you want legit ones, watch online here or start with Batman – The Animated Series, Volume One.
–Harley Quinn: Preludes and Knock-Knock Jokes is 13 bucks new on Amazon, or 10 bucks from third-party types. I’d suggest it– it’s really very good.
-See you, space cowgirl!

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I’d like to start by thanking everyone for their responses to my post last week about how sexiness is used in the comics industry.

Believe it or not, that post was going to be longer.  I was going to add an extraneous bit about how Batman or the Joker would never be shown in the poses that Harley Quinn or Catwoman were in on the covers of those books, and how that was an example of sexism.

Now I can’t decide whether it is or not.  Not because I think that Batman would be posed the way that Oracle was on any of the covers of her comic, but because the artists, when drawing female characters one way and male characters another, are simply following the rules of society in general.

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“When I speak, respond with the first word you think of. One.”
“Two.”
“Life.”
“Two.”
“Death.”
“Two.”
“Murder.”
“Happens.”
— Dr. Bruce Wayne and Two-Face from Elseworlds: The Batman of Arkham

For the past month, graphic novels have been doing quite well at the Barnes and Noble where I work. Sure, the Iron Man, Hulk and Hellboy stuff were doing fairly well over the course of the summer, but once Dark Knight arrived, everything flew off the shelves. I was put in charge of ordering in just about anything Batman-related that would sell. I mainly went with anything Joker and/or Two-Face themed. Surprisingly, Dark Knight Returns sold out early to the point that all of the warehouses were out of it. Great foresight there, guys.

Joker stuff sells like crazy, especially Killing Joke. Even the hastily scrapped-together biography we got on Heath Ledger has been taking off. Two-Face stuff, on the other hand, has been eating it. Nobody cares about Harvey, sad to say.

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Let me go ahead and get this out of the way. Gail Simone on Wonder Woman got the same reaction from me that J. Torres doing a fill-in on WW did. None.

I haven’t liked her last year and a half of work or so. Villains United was okay, but I didn’t even finish Secret Six. BoP started off great (that first year or two was stellar), too, but even that feels like it fell off. Gen13 and All-New Atom? No thanks. I don’t know, I think that my tastes are changing or something, but her work just doesn’t click with me like it used to. No slight to her, or at least I hope not, it just ain’t my thing.

It got me thinking, though. Who could get me to read Wonder Woman? I came up with two names who I think would be pretty dope on the book, and both of them are even female-type people!

Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti.

C’mon, don’t even say you wouldn’t read that.

Weezie deserves it. X-Factor, New Mutants, Man of Steel… Steel. She’s paid her dues ten times over. I shouldn’t even need to explain this one. She’s apparently written a WW novel, but I haven’t read it. I think she’d be pretty awesome on the book.

Ann Nocenti wrote some of my favorite Daredevil stories, did a Batman/Poison Ivy book a few years back with John Paul Leon (I think, it may have been John van Fleet?) that was pretty solid. I will love her forever for creating Typhoid Mary, the best she-villain that isn’t named Harley Quinn. (I really, really like Typhoid Mary and Harley.) I think that Nocenti could do a pretty bomb off-kilter WW book and deliver a book that would defy more than a few expectations. Dante’s Inferno ala Diana Prince. Or even something real world and political, she’s good at both kinds.

I may not be excited for Gail on WW, but either of these two would make me jump for joy. Shoot, Weezie is the reason why I’m going to be reading Marvel’s Mystic Arcana when I don’t even really like two of the four characters involved (Scarlet Witch and Black Knight. Magik is generally better as a kid, and Sister Grimm has a dumb codename but is pretty cool.).

Anyway, yeah. Give me Weezie and Ann. I think that they’d be worth it.

Also, c’mon Marvel, reprint this thing already.

BLADE

Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973)

“They call me… Blade! Blade the Black Agent X!”

Times change, don’t they? The story that introduces Blade doesn’t so much go into his background, other than his hobby of offing vampires. He takes care of some of Dracula’s henchmen early on and then fights the big bad on a cruise ship. When Dracula has things won, one of his mind-controlled lady victims comes to jump his bones. This distracts Dracula enough that Blade can get back up. Dracula makes the decision to leave, though the boat will explode in moments. Blade tosses everyone off the boat and makes it to safety himself, knowing that he and Dracula will fight again one day.

BLINK

Uncanny X-Men #317 (1994)

Before Blink was well-known for her role in Age of Apocalypse and Exiles, she showed up in regular 616 continuity as part of the Phalanx Covenant. Along with members of Generation X, she finds herself captured by the Phalanx.

When attacked by a being named Harvest, Blink uses her power to teleport him away while tearing him apart. Other than that, she follows the others as they attempt to escape, knowing that the Phalanx was unable to find a way to dampen their powers.

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