-Gavin provides a quickie bio for who he is and how he came to be. But… who ate his Rice Krispie Treats?
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music
-Oh. It was Esther. This probably means war.
-Do you know what sounds interesting? Listening to David and Esther page through a full run of Who’s Who in the DC Universe!
-Thrill! to the sound of pages being turned!
-Listen! to the audible disbelief and scorn!
-Wonder! about the background music that wafted over from my neighbor’s apartment while we were recording!
-Discover! our misplaced disdain for the past as we make fun of Yellow Peri for being a crappy version of “yellow peril!” Turns out she’s based on peris, fallen angels from Persian mythology. Sorry, dudes from the past who created Yellow Peri! She’s still basically a crappy version of I Dream of Jeanie!
-Ponder! why we make sitcom/TGIF jokes on every show.
-Accept! our apologies for accidentally biting MGK’s gimmick!
-Click! these links for some visual aides:

-Peace! We’ll be more coherent next week.

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More meat than last week. Also features Deadpool’s new black glove fingernails. hermanos pointed them out to me and I can’t not notice them throughout that issue. Why does Deadpool now have black glove fingernails? Why?

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #2
Greg Rucka, Nicola Scott and Eduardo Pansica

Deadpool Team-Up #897
Adam Glass and Chris Staggs

Read the rest of this entry �

Welcome back, my friends. This time we have a special guest panel from reader taters, who’s been reading The Mighty. Let’s give her a hand!

Blackest Night: The Flash #1
Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins

Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #1
Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott

Read the rest of this entry �

So, according to Gail Simone, Achilles is gay.  My reactions are as follows:

1.  But Zeus put him in charge of Amazon Island because he wanted the Amazons to lay down their weapons and become wives and mothers.  Is this one of those Greek irony deals, where the gods act like extreme bastards, but in an amusing way?  Telling the Amazons you want them knocked up, and then giving them a gay guy to get the job done, that’s just mean.

2.  And also damn.  I liked how he was in sympathy with the Amazons even as he tried to follow Zeus’s orders.  It would have been interesting if he had developed an actual relationship with one of the Amazons, instead of a marriage of state.

3.  But I suppose there aren’t that many gay guys in DC.

4.  There’s pretty much just him and Obsidian and Creo-

5.  Oh my god, there’s also Creote.

6.  Who is also a Simone creation.

7.  Oh please, Gail.  Give me Creote and Achilles as a couple for Christmas.  I’ve been so good all year long.

8.  For some definitions of good.

Okay, and this Chad fellow, too.  For those of you unwilling to scroll down two entries, I’ll re-post David’s entry in full:

Chad Nevett on New Avengers #58:

Yeah, here’s the thing: not killing bad guys doesn’t make you better than them, it makes you a fucking pussy. It makes you responsible for everything negative they do after that point. No grey areas, no moral questions, no debates about what’s heroic and what’s not. […] I hate superhero comics for pretending that letting villains live is somehow the morally superior thing to do, because it’s not.

If you listened to the Fourcast! this week, and you should have, you’d know that I agree with every word Chad says. I wanted to have a longer excerpt, but it’s a pretty short review. Go read it.

Chad and David both seem to agree that in comics heroes should be able to occasionally kill villains.  I agree, with specific exceptions, with this general idea.

Where we differ crucially is what ‘killing’ means.  To quote Chad:

Should they kill every mugger ala the Punisher? No. Should they kill Norman Osborn when the chance arises? Um, yeah.

‘Killing’ someone encompases a variety of different concepts, from pre-planned murder to accidental manslaughter to legitimate self-defense.  I think that, if the situation were to arise in which a hero had to kill a villain in order to save the life of that villain’s intended victim, they should, morally, kill the villain.  That’s killing someone.

Killing Norman Osborn, or the Joker, or whoever else, when ‘the chance arises’ is not just killing someone.  That’s an execution.  There is a very distinct meaning to that, and there are very different consequences for it. Read the rest of this entry �

The character responsible for Kyle disgusted lip-curl is Bueno Excellente, Garth Ennis’s Section 8character.  Bueno overcomes evil with the power of perversion.  Seriously.  A drugged sexual encounter between Kyle and Bueno is implied (although it is possible that Bueno managed to save Kyle), in the above panels.  Some people have said that, whichever scenario is implied, the above panels are a rape joke, and would have an effect of Kyle’s character.  Other people say that it was just a joke and not part of continuity.

(There’s also a ‘just a joke’ argument versus an ‘offensive’ argument.  Since that always comes up, I’ll briefly summarize my thoughts on the matter.  Phrasing something humorously doesn’t mean the central concept isn’t offensive, and if someone is tough enough to make jokes about sensitive subjects, they should be tough enough to take criticism.)

I haven’t seen Bueno in action, so I don’t know if the moment is out of character for him, but I imagine that this was just meant as a funny shout-out to another comic book, and not an important part of either character’s history.  (Unless Grant Morrison gets hold of it in 30 years.  Then it will be the basis for several whodunnit-type story-arcs.)  There are other moments scattered through comics that do the same thing.

Much was made of the Tamora Pierce (Edit: Jodi Picoult was the actual writer.  Thank you David Uzumeri.) Wonder Womanissue in which Wondy dropped an injured man she was carrying when he made a lascivious remark about her.  It was supposed to be a humorous beat, but many readers pointed out that it was an out-of-character move for Wonder Woman that could have had serious consequences.

Savant and Creote were introduced in Birds of Prey.  Savant was a computer genius who had no ability to judge time; he wouldn’t know if he had done something yesterday or a decade ago.  Creote was a Russian ultra-thug who, it was revealed, was gay and in love with Savant.  They were bad guys who were semi-redeemed over about forty issues, and then left the story.  About ten issues later, when the Birds need someone they can trust to take car of a young girl, Creote turned up in an apron with a feather duster under one arm, oven mitts on both hands and balancing what looked like a casserole dish.  The panel was a funny image, but Creote was established as a glowering tough guy who was indifferent to his surroundings; indifferent, in fact, to everything that wasn’t Savant.

Obviously, the skill, timing, and context of these moments influence how people take them, but so does personal taste.  Some people don’t mind a little out-of-character wackiness if it’s in service of an overall humorous tone.  Others don’t think its funny if it doesn’t feel right for the character.

I was thinking today about Diana and Stephanie, the two female characters whose comics I buy.  Diana, Wonder Woman, is perfect.  The embodiment of compassion, strength, honor, bravery, and beauty, she’s a princess and a warrior and an ambassador.  Despite her iconic status, and the fact that she’s had an ongoing comic for the better part of a century, female fan interest in her has only recently heated up – due to Gail Simone’s decision to write her comic.

Stephanie, Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl/Who’sNext?, is decidedly not perfect.  A perpetual screw-up, she’s earned both my and general female fandom’s accolades by picking herself up, dusting herself off, and starting all over again.  It’s possible that her moment of greatest popularity was after her death.

While it’s normal for fans of any gender to decry a comics character’s death while pretty much ignoring their life, I wonder if something extra is at work, here, especially when I think of other media.  Most TV shows and movies about female characters are about the adorable main character trying to get her life together.  She’s clumsy, and awkward, but tries so hard.

And she’s at war, usually, with the ultra-perfect glamazon who is after her job/man/scholarship/position in society/what’s next?  I hate that dynamic because it has always been, in my experience, false.   What’s more, it embraces the values it supposedly abhors.  Whether it favors the popular girl or the outsider (And who are we kidding?  Like any show, book or movie in the last fifty years hasn’t sung the praises of the noble outsider), it still villifies one segment of the population for, basically, having different values, tastes or interests.  Still, I wonder if, no matter how I resist it, it’s at work in me, or at work in many women.

While media that sings the praises of the powerful man (The Sopranos, The Tudors, Kings, etc.), the brilliant man (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, CSI Miami, House, Monk), or simply the eccenric or egotistical man (Dexter, House again, Nip/Tuck) do well, women are always given a heroine they can relate to not one that they feel they have to compete with, and certainly not one they feel they’d lose out to.

Even in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the heroine is usual beset with troubles and struggling, instead of blowing everyone away with her strength and brilliance.  Buffy, the mystical chosen one, is always one step away from getting kicked out of school.  House, the doctor who can’t be assed to restrain his own bad behavior, finds out that his supervisor has budgeted in lawsuit money for the various patients who sue him because he is just that good.

Is this about what’s offered to women?  Is it about what’s taught?  (Tina Fey’s movie, Mean Girls, was hailed as an insightful satire about teenage girls.  It had a group called ‘The Plastics’.  We never had groups like that in my school, but how many movies can you watch before you develop an attitude of ‘it’s us versus them’.)  Is it just my lopsided view of pop-culture?

In the end, girls and women are given many examples of heroines about winning out when odds are against them (just as men are) but relatively few examples of just plain winners.

Wonder Woman #36 came out on Wednesday, and things are happening in the Wonderverse.  The Amazons are in a state of bubbling, barely-restrained rebellion against Achilles, their new king.  Wonder Woman and Nemesis seem to have ended their courtship, and Diana is ordered by the daughter of Kane Milohai, the volcano god, to ‘remember her vow’ which means openly standing against Achilles.  In other words, things are looking very, very grim for our heroine.  Again.  I swear that woman has Peter Parker’s luck.  Everytime she does anything, she ends up the worse for it.

I’m pleased and impressed by the characters in Wonder Woman.  Nemesis is convinced that he’s not on Diana’s level (the one weakness in his characterization is the fact that we never see him do anything which would lead to this conclusion) but that’s not what ends their relationship.  Neither is Diana’s ‘lie’.  It is only when he realizes that Diana wants marriage and kids, a normal life, that he pragmatically states that that can never happen after the life he has led, and breaks up with her.

Achilles is a surprisingly likeable character, despite his deep flaws.  We see him trying, again and again, to do what is right while obeying orders that are wrong.  He’s not a bloodthirsty zealot, only someone too mentally subjugated to follow his conscience.

Diana continues her quest to find out who she is, which is a legitimate quest.  The problem, though, is I don’t know who she is.  She’s supposed to be honest, but all that her honesty has shown me is that she loves her family and she’s compassionate.  What does she enjoy?  What particularly drives her?  What feels personal to her?  What about the world she lives in does she identify with?  What gets under her skin?  What foolish faults does she have?  I can fill in all these blanks for Green Arrow, Batman, Superman, Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, Dick Grayson, Scandal Savage and dozens of other characters.  Wonder Woman remains a fog of admirable virtues, and not much else.

(yeah, i don’t even know. we talk about girls and women and things in an extra-special almost-hour long show this time around. save me from myself by subscribing on itunes or straight up RSS.

apologies to jack kirby.)

Fine, I know, spelling fail, too.  Still.

In comics there are a lot of situations in which characters of wildly different sizes fight.  Lilliputian characters will go up against regular-sized people, or normal people will fight fee-fie-foe-fum-style giants.  Sometimes, not always, but sometimes these fights will contain knock-out punches delivered by the smaller character.

Imagine a fist smashing into your face, hard enough to knock you out.

Now imagine a something the size of a pen cap smash into your face at the same speed as a punch.  Now imagine a pen-tip.  A needle tip.

Yes, it would depend on the thickness of the relative giant’s skin, and the amount of momentum behind the punch.  But if you see Wonder Woman punch Giganta, Giganta shouldn’t fall down, she should be stabbed through the cheek.

I would think this would appeal to some of the gore-loving creators.  Think of a super-speed-powered character punching a giant foe again and again, ripping holes into the skin, the hero’s arms dripping with capillary fragments and subcutaneous fat, until the giant character was just one walking blood-fountain.  Very Ennis, no?  Or do I mean Ellis?

Well, I imagine they’d both like it.