O_O;; Are ppl rly that anxious to see Lois get spanked?!?

I found one of the letters at Superdickery today, and then found the other two while trying to verify if the first one was real :O

I still dunno if they're real :O The L.L. initials for one of the letters makes me suspicious o_o;;

But if they are real, what's with all the people clamouring for Lois Lane to get a spanking!? :O

Here comes a new challenger! :D

I am happy to announce that my friend JD has started his own comics blog! :D

This makes me happy cuz he's my friend :3

Average Comic Nerd

Here it is :D He's much more ranty than me :O

And less cute XD

Or maybe more cute? :O

How come "Comics Nerd" isn't an option!? XD

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Gamer/Computer Nerd   You enjoy the visual stimulants of a video game, chatting on AIM, or reading online comics. Most of these types of nerds are considered dirty who lack hygeine, of course they always end up being the ones who make a crapload of money. And don't worry, that's just a stereotype; I'm not calling you dirty. ^_~
Literature Nerd
Anime Nerd
Musician
Social Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Or fashion nerd for that matter... >.>;;

Why is it that you can be the same type of obsessive over fashion or like.. sports... but you're not a "nerd"? I'm a fashion nerd!!!!!

Ultimate DC according to Wizard

Here's the link to the pitches that Wizard made for Ultimate DC for those that were curious :O

An article in the Toronto Star about diversity in comics :o

This is an interesting article in the Toronto Star today about diversity in superhero comics :O

However, like a lot of articles in mainstream news publications, it seems to simplify the issue, and maybe it's cuz of the restrictions of the medium (length, content, etc), but it also doesn't offer much insight outside of "there's not enuf black characters in comics."

:\

Which is my other problem with it. The article is about "diversity", but it focusses almost solely on the lack of African American heroes and why we need them. But it doesn't talk much about nething else or other minorities :\

It only brushes on women representation, and I find it almost criminal that it completely ignores Ryan Choi, the new Atom. >:| It doesn't even talk about him at the very end when they do a quick rundown about heroes in the DCU. >.<;;

And like a lot of mainstream news articles, Marvel is almost the sole focus. :O

I also dun think I consider Steel a bad example of diversity in comics :O They act like he was just some 2-bit character thrown in. :O He was one of the FOUR SUPERMEN who showed up after Superman died!!! I've actually been reading my copy of "The Return of Superman" and Steel was the one who embodied the goodness of Superman. :) He's intelligent, he's strong, he's kind. :O

It's also explained why he was living where he was. He was ashamed of what he had done, changed his name and lived an austere life hoping to get away from his past. :O It's a story a lot of heroes have >.>

"The stories were insulting. [Here's] this guy that's supposed to be highly intelligent and makes weapons for the military, and he's fighting people in the ghetto. It just made no sense."

I'm not black, so maybe it is insulting? :o But it's explained in story why he's doing that. The weapons on the street were his design, he feels responsible. :\

The same argument could be made about Batman. He's highly intelligent, he's rich, and he's fighting two-bit thugs, and other low-life criminals in alleyways. >.>

If heroes dun fight crime, what should they be doing? o_O

There ARE lots of examples of racism in comics for sure :| I just dun think Steel is one of them, esp recently :O No mention of him OR Natasha in 52.

I guess that's my biggest problem with the article. It ignores a lot of the stuff going on now, both the progressive moves and the regressive ones. There's lots of controversy right now about representations of race, sexuality, gender, etc in comics, and the article ignores just about all of it :\

However, the last sentence is right. That we do need to be able to look in the mirror and see an idealized version of ourselves :)

It just is a little frustrating b/c the front page of the Star pushed this article as being about "diversity in comics", and it's not rly about that. :O It's about the representation of African Americans in comics, which is good too, I just think that if the article is supposed to be about diversity, it should talk more about other minorities and how they're represented :o

Neways, I just thought the article was interesting to point out b/c I was like O_O;;; when I saw it in my paper XD

And I'm also not saying that it's a bad article, just that it's kinda.. dissapointing? I think that it simplifies what's going on, and also that it misses a chance to highlight other issues involving diversity in comics. :|

I think Steel is a positive hero and role model tho. :o He def was my favourite of the 4 Supermen. o_o;;;

I can see how he might be offensive to some tho, b/c it seems like whenever there's a black hero he's tied to either Africa or a ghetto.. :o But I just dun consider Steel to be an offensive character :o

Maybe I'm wrong? :\ I dunno... what do ppl think about Steel? :)

Stupid Wizard >.>;; You're banned from the Ami-Verse! >:P

I was looking for alternate designs of DC heroes, to see if nebody had decided to draw their idea of an "Ultimate DCU", when I came across the drawings from Wizard when they apparently proposed an "Ultimate DCU". :O

I've alrdy seen the Superman one before, but they also had others apparently :O

From Superman and Batman, I thought that they looked rly good and very "Ultimate" in that they were modern and practical takes on costumes. I was rly excited to see what they did for Wonder Woman. :o

I should have remembered this was Wizard >.>;;

I'll just link to all of them and give my comments :)

Superman

I kinda like this, tho the S seems too dark for my tastes. :\ Ultimate doesn't HAVE to mean dark does it? :o Superman stands for hope, and this Superman doesn't seem very inspiring :(

However, the costume is very sleek :D

Batman

He looks like Midnighter XD I hope that's a grapple gun and not a real gun he has on his side :O It's hard rly to make the Batman costume look much better than it currently looks. It's odd that they'd go with the bright insignia when they seem to be avoiding bright colours tho :O

The Flash

He looks rly odd! :O The full mask might be practical I guess if he's running rly fast, but it doesn't look very good :O He looks more like a villain than a hero! o_o

Green Lantern

He looks basically like the regular John Stewart Green Lantern >.>;;

The JLA

This picture gave me some hope since you can't rly see what's going on. :O Turning J'onn into a tiny green imp is silly tho >.>;; I dun think that works :\

Wonder Woman

Okay this is where I start getting annoyed :\ How is it that the other heroes get more modern, sleeker and more practical costumes, and Wonder Woman's costume becomes even MORE revealing? :O I get that they want to make her more "warrior princess" I guess? But surely she can be wearing armour in that case? :o At the very least her top can be something that doesn't look like it'll burst open when she swings that axe. >.>;;

The JLA in action

Apparently there's a female Atom here. :O She doesn't seem to have her own picture tho. >.> There's J'onn in the foreground. Apparently he doesn't fight :\ I find Wonder Woman's costume very uncomfortable to look at. :\ It's like, at any second it's just gonna fly apart D:

I also dun rly like the axe. :\ Heroes shouldn't use weapons that are lethal on impact. :(

The Teen Titans

This is the image that RLY bugs me. >.<;; This is SO male gaze. :\ The guys are cool, fully covered and have heroic stances. The women are even less covered than their pre-Ultimate days, and Donna seems to be magazine model now. >.>

It's funny that when you compare it to the old Titans, you notice that the guys went from showing a lot of skin to covering almost all of it up, and the girls suddenly wear a lot less. :O

Apparently Raven is supposed to be this gothy girl here, but is the hooker wear rly necessary? :O

And why did Green Arrow and Aquaman get bumped down to the Titans? :O

Neways... yah... this is kinda a microcosm for what seems to go thru some ppl's minds when they design (or redesign) heroes. :o

For guys the priorities are:

- look cool
- be practical
- look tough or "dark"

For us girls, the priorities are:

- look sexy
- skin, skin skin
- look sexy

It's not even smexy, which is my word for "cute sexy" if nebody ever wondered what it meant when I used it. >.>

It's just... gahhhhhh

The fact that the Atom didn't appear to get her own portrait and was the only gender switch hero leads me to believe that Wizard felt they needed a minority female on the team. :o I'm gonna be nice and not assume also that Wizard chose the Atom to be female b/c of the Atom's "passive" powers (like the convention of giving women heroes invisiblity or mind powers, etc) :\

But a female Robin, or Green Lantern or Aquaman? :o Nope >.>;;;

It's also worth noting that the male characters have short or at least, average, lengthed legs, which makes them look a little stubby, while Donna is almost all leg >.<;;

*flails*

Grrrr.....

>:|

Neways... that was just my rant about this. :|

I'm shocked there's no Starfire btw. :O Or was Ultimate Starfire unfit for print b/c she wore even less clothing? XD

In defence of Frank Miller... >.>;;;

:O

I never thought I'd be writing something DEFENDING Frank >.>;; I'm definitely not his biggest fan xD I think he was a great writer but he bought his own press, and is now just wrapped up in his own fame and anger, and he doesn't even rly bother to edit himself in his work nemore, rather just believing that everything he does is brilliant. :|

That's just how I feel about his recent stuff XD

However, something I've been reading a lot of lately is that Frank's NEVER written a strong female character before, and that they're all sexpots and stuff...

Altho it's true that he's written a lot of those types of women, and that definitely, he doesn't seem to like women a lot, ppl seem to forget about Carrie Kelley and Ellen Yindel. :O

Those were 2 strong female characters in The Dark Knight Returns, and both showed their strength playing off of the ultimate male hero, Batman :O

It can be argued that Yindel ultimately yielded to Batman and Carrie was subordinate to him, but then again, Batman beat up Superman in the book, and it's all about how Batman is awesome and right and stuff XD

Also Yindel wasn't shown as being incompetent or nething. She was capable, and altho she went after Batman, she also did the right thing (listening to Batman and saving the Governor instead of pursuing him). :)

Carrie proves that a girl becoming Robin on her own accord and not listening to Batman's orders does NOT mean that she's not "rly Robin" or that she's lost Batman's respect :O

Not only did she just become Robin without Batman even knowing who she was, but she disobeyed Batman's orders and reprogrammed his helicopter to save him :O When she asked if she was fired, he said she wasn't :)

I guess this is the Frank Miller that I wonder what happened to :|

Nowadays, Dark Knight Returns gets all the credit for bringing in the dark and gritty Batman, to bringing in the jerk Batman, for bringing darkness to comics, etc...

But I LOVE DKR, and I read it all the time, and it's not cuz it's dark and brooding and angry. :| It IS angry, but it's not TOTALLY angry, it's not this unfiltered insane angry that Frank seems to have now and that came out in The Dark Knight Strikes Again where he seems to be lashing out for the sake of lashing out. o_o

What rly resonates with me is that Batman is actually portrayed as a compassionate, good individual who inspires people. :O

Altho he was merciless with thugs, he wouldn't kill them. He had faith in Harvey Dent to reform, and even until the very end when he apprehended Harvey, he wanted to believe that it wasn't him, that he hadn't become Two-Face again. :)

My favourite part of the book is shortly after Batman made his return and the media reports about "copy cat" attacks and ppl who wear Batman costumes and shoot ppl. :|

And then at the bottom of the page is a few panels showing this regular guy, a storekeeper who doesn't like what he reads in the paper about Batman, but when he sees a woman being robbed, instead of running, he stops the crook. :O But as Frank Miller's narration notes, it doesn't make the news b/c nobody was injured.

But I rly liked the message about unsung heroes, and that Batman inspires ppl to be heroes, even if they dun agree with his methods, they agree with his message, that only people can help other people. :)

I liked how much he cared about Robin and how important she was to him. :) I liked how he was willing to give the Mutants and Sons of Batman a chance to help the city. I liked how he refused to use guns. :D

These are the things I never hear about DKR, and these are the things that Frank Miller seems to forget in All-Star Batman and Robin, like all he reads is the reviews of how great DKR is b/c it's angry and dark, and he forgets the nuance he put in the book :\

He's almost becoming a parody of himself :( And sometimes that happens to ppl when they get rly famous, they start believing their own press and they start just focussing on the stuff they're famous for, forgetting that when they first started out, they didn't have an audience to cater to, they just wrote. :|

Also, since I have the TPB of DKR, it includes the "original script" for the last chapter :\ And originally it has Batman being a real jerk and doing underhanded things to fight Superman and using guns and the people under his charge were rly violent and killing people :(

And it makes me wonder if Frank was better off when he wasn't super famous and editors actually reined him back when he got too angry or too crazy. :O

I dunno...

I know this got kind of off track... I guess, I just wanted to point out that once upon a time, Frank could write strong female characters, and that altho he hasn't written many, he wrote at least 2 in DKR. :)

Also, it gave me a chance to say what I liked about DKR :) To me, it's a story about hope and about how there is good in humanity and sometimes we just need somebody to remind us that it's in ourselves :D

Women in refrigerators, children under conveyor belts

Hmm... this post is triggered by the IGN review of the Battlestar Galactica episode "Dirty Hands" which aired last week. :O

In it, Tyrol leads the working class in the fleet on a general strike to protest the bad working conditions. :) The turning point that leads to his support of the cause is when a young boy that was just introduced a couple of scenes ago to be sent to work there, goes under the conveyor belt to get loose a clog in the machinary and ends up getting his arm punctured. O_O;;

Actually, I expected he'd lose his hand (and was rdy to turn my head when it happened) but I guess they decided to avoid it. XD

I'll let IGN's review explain my thoughts:

One area where Battlestar is not as strong in as others is in the failure to cultivate almost any ongoing non-military characters. The result is that it often feels a bit clunky when episodes such as this one suddenly throw several civilians at us, when we have no personal connection with them. The scene in which a teenage boy is sent to work in the refinery, only to suffer a horrible injury, was a bit too telegraphed, because his entire existence was as a plot device.

Yub yub. :\ When he was introduced, I alrdy knew what was gonna happen to him. And it made me think of women in refrigerators, and rly, this is the problem we have with that plot device.

It's not that we think no women should be victims in comic books, or that women are being abused b/c the writers are misogynists. >.>;;

It's b/c they're being used as plot devices. As IGN pointed out we have "no personal connection" with these characters. >.>;; The boy was used as a victim b/c child victims resonate more when it comes to poor working conditions. And since we dunno nething about this character to care about them, the writers can only make us care in a superficial manner, and that's by choosing a victim who's superficial traits (being a child) make him sympathetic. :\

The same is for the usage of women as victims in comic books. :\ B/c violence against women and especially rape against women, is a HUGE thing in our society, something that everybody (esp men) is against, and stirs up feelings of chilvary in men, it makes for a quick and dirty plot device to get sympathy for the characters. :|

That's also why (as pointed out in another blog that I'm too lazy to find right now) when there's a male hero, a female he knows gets abused/raped, to further the plot and give the hero character development, and when it's a female hero, SHE gets abused/raped to further her own character. :|

Abuse of women is just something you can do, without any context, without any real character development, and readers will go "OMG THAT'S HORRIBLE" and it gives you an excuse to just have something happen that ppl will never question. There's no way to rape to feed your family or rape out of self defence. It's wrong, and it avoids moral ambiguity. >.>

It's also lazy when it's used as a plot device over and over again.

But maybe this is a problem with the medium itself? :o Maybe it's a symptom of having writers moved around from book to book, and having arcs last 2-4 issues. There's no time to develop civilian characters so that we actually care about them. There's no time to get into morality when you need to show at least SOME fights. >.>;;

And maybe it's also giving the audience (young men) what they want. :o

In highschool, a lot of my friends were guys. >.>;; And they rly were very casual about violence. They'd fight for no reason, etc... and if you told them a male friend had been hurt, then they'd get all angry about it. If you told them just some guy that you knew had been attacked, they wouldn't care. It'd be like "yah whatever, maybe he asked for it."

If you told them that a girl had been attacked, REGARDLESS of if it was their friend or not (and given that they had very few female friends, it was likely that it wasn't! XD), they'd go berserk about it and it'd be time to protect and avenge her! :O

That's what I mean. Even if it was Jimmy Olson being tortured and beaten, it wouldn't resonate as much with them as if it was Karen Smith (random name) who was introduced an issue ago, and we know nothing about. :\

Then suddenly it's "omg, Superman BEAT HIS FACE IN!!!"

If it's a female friend, it resonates EVEN MORE. Which is why female heroes also get the WiR treatment instead of a civilian male character. >.>;;

Just like how the boy was used as a plot device b/c his youth makes him a perfect character to get viewers to care and understand why Tyrol would risk mutiny, women are used in the same way. :|

When Flash gets a new cute female neighbour, or Nightwing does, etc, we know she's being introduced as a plot device and not as an actual character, and will be captured to force a confrontation between the hero and villain. :o They're not characters, they're just plot devices. :(

Maybe it's a symptom of the comic industry and how cheap plot devices are rly the only way to keep churning out the stories, or maybe it's a symptom of our culture and it's good intentions that turn to a subtle sexism when it comes to how men see violence, or maybe it's just lazy or uncreative writers.

I dun rly know. :\

But watching that episode rly made me think about why WiR happens and why women and children are usually victims to motivate the main characters. :\

Personally, I think the solution isn't to care less about women (and children) as victims, but to care more about adult men as victims too. :) And in general, better writing and less reliance of cheap gimmicks to elicit sympathy in the readers would help a lot :D

Dresses. Boys. Oh my!!! XDDD

Somethingawful.com's Photoshop Phriday is one of my guilty pleasures XD I can just get so much enjoyment out of looking thru them :D

I esp like their comic related ones.

However, I was looking thru one of the ones I've seen alrdy and I saw this cover that I forgot ALL about XDD

I dun approve of the swearing, but sadly it's SOOO true about the comic industry and their attempts to get women readers XD



XDDDD