O hai, I'm a million years old

A very happy 21st birthday to Cannonball, and also to me. Except that when he was born I was old enough to have a bowling party, and get the "Straight Up" cassingle.

Oh bloody hell

Since interviewing Greg Rucka, I've been catching up on his work that I hadn't read yet, both comics and prose--and in case you want to accuse me of not thoroughly preparing beforehand, well, he's written a fucking lot, so I'd still done pretty well. Anyway, because of what I'd already read and the order that I found stuff, I've been kind of doing it back-asswards, thereby spoiling things for myself in both the Queen & Country timeline and the Atticus Kodiak novels. And now Rucka has posted the first three chapters of the forthcoming Kodiak novel, Walking Dead, on his blog--and like a total fucking idiot I started to read it, and within a paragraph, I've already spoiled an important outcome (to me anyway) of the most recent book Patriot Acts, which I was going to buy when it comes out in paperback next month.

Anyway, I'm still damn sick so don't know what the point of this is except to say that if you haven't read his books and are considering it, don't read those preview chapters. Do read the books though, IN ORDER, because they are some of the best in breath-holding suspense.

Oliver Clark for Secretary of Blood and Thunder

You may have noticed that I have an ongoing dilemma regarding whether to double-post some non-comics-related tidbits on both this blog and the one they belong on. So as to be not quite so neurotic, I'll just go ahead and link over there instead of totally reposting. So here, ok, happy We can has more Dows? Armageddon Day.

There are several superheroes who could help in this situation

iwasgoingtoposttodaybutitissofreezinginmyofficethatmyfingertipshave
nofeelingandithurtstotype.shiftandspacebarmostespecially.

Mother frakker

Ok, I've read exactly one and a half comics this week, and I don't even remember what happened in that half, and we're going to Rhode Island for the weekend, and reading in the car makes me barfy. So the outlook for all your favorite ABC content (including the podcast) is in the lame zone. If all goes as planned, I'll use my penultimate summer Friday (3pm release) to read like a crazy person and be inspired accordingly. I hope they've put out the fire on the train that snookered my commute this morning. Blah blah blah. Can you tell I don't like leaving the blog blank? Twit.

TCBY do I even try

So I had this great idea to do a Weekly Yogurt Review (or somesuch) for which I would do my Wednesday route from physical therapy to Forbidden Planet to Red Mango, read one comic book while eating a delicious, adorably Japanese cup of green tea froyo with strawberries and mochi, and then come home and write a kick-ass review. Sweet, right? Who doesn't like a frozen-treat-inspired piece of graphic lit crit? No one! So last week was Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam #1, and I was all stoked about it, and then I really just up and totally forgot to do the frickin review. This week there were no comics on Wednesday due to the holiday, and I don't have physical therapy on Thursdays, so I won't be able to get out early to do the yogurt thing (also because I have a haircut). Next week is the last week that my insurance has approved PT, so I pretty much only have one Wednesday to embark on this super precious theoretically ongoing feature. Kind of takes the air out.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you all a little peek into my typical process following the best-laid plans. It's a talent to be so consistently inert, and I just want credit where it's due.

I have a problem

Actually I have a couple of problems. The first is that whenever I think of something to write about comics, I think "oo, I should save that for the podcast." Hence a string of content-free posts about the podcast. Podcast, podcast, podcast. This is the Jan Brady of blogs, and I need to have a Very Special Post in which I explain that sometimes mommy and daddy need to have a discussion about comic books that is recorded with audio equipment, but that doesn't mean we don't love it very very much.

The second is that Aaron and I are having preposterous amounts of fun doing the show, and I really really want people to hear it. And some people are hearing it, and being very nice about it, but I want more. More more more. It's hard out here in the online comics community for a pimp. So if you have any ideas for zany promotional initiatives, please share. I want people to say "have you listened to that podcast with that funny dude and his crazy bitch wife? It's OUT OF ITS MIND."

Anyway, these are my current conundra (Blogger spell check wants me to write "conundrums," but I say go to hell red-dotted line). Maybe tomorrow I'll annotate Hellcat or something.

Ok, um...

...Not only did Runaways #30 tie up every loose end, have some true surprises and give Molly multiple winner lines, it made me tear fucking up. This story arc has been so drawn out that I had forgotten what we were even waiting for, but Whedon managed to make it all come back and make sense, and give Chase one of the tenderest comic book moments in recent memory. Despite my spaz-out yesterday, I must remind myself that I did name this blog and the podcast after a piece of dialog that Joss Whedon wrote for this very series, and that he did have the characters pretty well nailed. Which I think made the delays and clumsiness of the set-up that much more disappointing. Anyway, there's really no doubt that this issue will be my First or Last of the Week for the next podcast, so I won't go into it all here, but suffice it to say I am relieved and now almost sad to see Whedon go. Stupid comics fans, you can't win with those bastards!

So, moving on, before the guilt of not doing the work I'm supposed to be doing takes over--as the few of you who know me personally know ten times over, I have a back issue for which I had surgery in December, and the surgery apparently didn't work so now I have the same problem in addition to residual crap from being cut open. Yeah, wah wah wah. Anyway, I have physical therapy in the late afternoon on Mondays and Wednesdays, so depending on how my work day plays out, I'm sometimes able to go straight home afterwards instead of back to the office. I was having kind of a shitty day pain-wise, so I was feeling frowny-faced and being kind of babyish with my therapist and in a general state of orneriness. The weather was unbelievably beautiful when I went outside, so instead of going back to work or getting on the train, I decided my mood could use a comic book and a frozen treat. So I detoured to Forbidden Planet on Broadway and 13th (where, incidentally, way too many dudes think it's ok to read all of their books right there in the too-skinny aisle), brought Final Crisis #2 to Red Mango on 14th and 6th, and decided pretty rapidly that I will be doing this every Wednesday this summer. Seriously, it was a substantially pleasant half hour (I don't race the clock when Morrison is involved), and lifted my spirits several notches.

I don't care who's bitching about what, Final Crisis was great--well paced, cinematic and very nearly terrifying in the right ways. I'm pretty much in the camp that thinks Morrison has been a tad of a dick in the press lately, but it's gotta be said that his storytelling is several levels above the norm. Like, startlingly so. I'm still trying to spelunk my way through Seven Soldiers of Victory with erratic success, but that's my own stupid, and I'm quite willing to read it multiple times to fully appreciate it. And Final Crisis is clearly building from SSoV quite nicely, so I am patient enough to wait for the slow, thinky unravel.

Anyway, if you happen to live in New York and wander into Red Mango on a Wednesday at around 5:00, and see a girl eating a medium yogurt with strawberries and Cinnamon Toast Crunch and reading a Secret Invasion tie-in, say hi. Or ask me how my back is doing, I love to tell people about it.

Good words

Oh, one more thing today--I'm pleased as punch to see how many people are checking out the podcast, and we've gotten some great feedback. If you are in fact someone who listened and enjoyed to any extent, I would be extremely grateful if you'd drop a quick review on the iTunes page. You can also do it if you hated it, but if you hated it I'm guessing you wouldn't waste your time coming back here or bothering to review it. Unless you really really detested it, in which case, go crazy! People like to read that stuff, too.

Check's in the mail

Girl Friday K has posted an entirely too generous review of our first podcast episode, which is awesome in that it is very kind, and horrific in that we now have to deliver these things she says. So I guess we have to think of some things to say for Episode #2 this weekend. And drum up some more "sponsors".

I also have a cave, it's just not as cool. Or cave-like in any physical way.

Ok, so, I haven't read a comic book in a week, because it's apparently a rule that if you're going on a relaxing Caribbean honeymoon, you have to have as much hair-pulling work crammed in right before you leave as possible. But tomorrow I'm going to stack up for Thursday's plane ride, and then oh, you will be sorry. Not really though, since when I get back, I will have not worked for a week, and then we just come full circle. But I can aspire.

Anyway, I know who the Skrulls are so far, I think, so that's good. And I'm terrified to start Batman RIP. Because the chances of it enmaddening me or making me cry are high, no matter what happens. I don't want to cry at Batman. That is not something that one should do. Oh and hey, what was up with that jihad thing, huh? That was weird.

DUDE.

If you want to know the specific kind of ninny I am, it's the kind that happens to be wearing a Flash t-shirt when she turns up for an interview and finds no one in the room but her subject, a photographer, and Stan Lee. Excelsioops! Ha! Omg I'm tired.

Humble (/insecure) request

I recently started this blog to write about something I love, but also to connect with other comics fans. I know that people are starting to wander over here via reciprocal links or my comments on other sites, so I'm asking with Krypto-the-Superdog eyes if you will please leave a quick hello and introduce yourself in the comments*. Please tell us:

1) Where you live (or general region/hemisphere if you don't like to share that info with strangers)
2) Who your favorite character is, if you have one
3) Lemon cookie?

Thank you!

*Even if you think I'm a too-easily appeased feminist for liking Darwyn Cooke's Wonder Woman so much.

A.Q.s

Below are some questions that may at some point occur to someone to ask about me and/or this site, but it would be presumptuous to characterize them as "frequently."

It's great you started this site because there aren't enough blogs about comics. Ha! But really, who are you and what do you think you're doing?

I'm a journalist and an editor at a national magazine that has nothing to do with comic books. During the day I read and write about the music industry, but when I get home I read comics and watch Batman cartoons--and as a writer, I couldn't leave well enough alone and just enjoy my hobby. This eventually evolved beyond this blog, and I now write about comics and the industry on occasion for Publishers Weekly and Comic Foundry. More to the point, though, I'm a (currently) 34 year-old girl who read her first comic book at 28, and went from zero interest to reading a dozen titles a week in an embarrassingly short time. And before you assume that a guy must have gotten me into comics, let me just tell you... that yeah, a guy got me into comics. I started reading Sean McKeever's Sentinel to humor my then-boyfriend now-husband, who said it was a good starter comic that balanced giant robots with teen angst. That led to Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways, which legitimately blew my mind and started a slippery slope into the rest of the Marvel Universe and later DC. I do read some indies, and the number grows steadily, but once you pick up the project of keeping up with the Big Two, it gets harder to branch out. I'm hoping this site will be a good resource for new or exploring comics readers, especially women, who aren't marketed to by mainstream comics publishers in any meaningful way. I will also try to connect comics to life and be outsidery enough that readers (like my mom) who don't read comics can still get something out of it [These last bits of the mission are not so strong at the moment, but maybe eventually--Ed. note 7/08]. In June of 2008, when my husband Aaron and I started the Awesomed By Comics Podcast, he jumped on as a very welcome contributor to the blog.

What is the Awesomed By Comics Podcast?

Aaron is in the radio biz, as well as a huge comics fan, and you don't let those kinds of attributes just sit around and take up space. So we started a weekly podcast to talk about the week's comics in a quasi-awards show format, in that we have categories and symphonic sound effects and we talk longer about each winner and/or contenders for longer than the allotted time. It's great fun and perfect background noise for your commute, dishwashing or car trips to Dairy Queen. I'll always post new episodes in the blog and the right sidebar, and you can subscribe to the feed here.

What does "Awesomed" by Comics mean? That's not a word.

After way too much brainstorming about site titles based on some stupid "Blank-Girl"-type superhero name, I turned to one of the greatest throw-away lines written in modern comics, uttered by 11 year-old mutant Molly Hayes in Runaways (and written by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, who took over for Vaughan in 2007). The youngest of the book's orphaned teenage superheroes, Molly is by turns coddled and ignored by her teammates, despite the fact that she could take any of them down with one arm tied behind her back. After a particularly dramatic rooftop battle with some baddies, Molly asserts a highly improbable theory about the sequence of events that turns out to be true. When the others fail to acknowledge this, Molly screams at them, "Why aren't you awesomed by me?!" It's a perfect line in every way--it captures Molly's slightly immature but vivacious personality; cuts through the bullshit of the other Runaways' hormone-driven, overthinky analysis of every little moment of their tension-filled lives; and, not to mention, summarizes the frustrations of every superheroine not taken seriously by her male counterparts. Molly just wants to kick bad-guy butt--she does it, has a particular valuable insight, and then, incidentally, turns around and punches the Punisher in the gut. She's a superbly developed character--in fact, the picture on the top of this site is a drawing of Molly in her homemade "Princess Powerful" costume, slightly modified to more closely resemble my hair color.

Where do you come down on the "Brian Michael Bendis is a god/is a self-indulgent asshole" debate?

Yes.

So does that mean you're going to focus on the portrayal of females in mainstream comics?

No... and sometimes yes. Comic book publishers and some creators aren't usually worrying about the feminist viewpoint in what is, let's face it, a highly sexualized medium--so as a feminist who reads comics, I'm going to react (I finally, about a month ago, arrived at a state of acceptance in regards to Starfire). That will include giving kudos where due to creators like Gail Simone and Greg Rucka who are deeply mindful about gender issues in their comics, or at least have a naturally egalitarian mindset and little interest in catering to the stereotypes. It's safe to say, however, that just as many posts will be more along the lines of "how dreamy is Batman?" and "Reed Richards must put those powers to good use, because there's no other explanation for Sue staying with that annoying twit."

Who are your favorite comic book characters?

In no particular order, with list constantly subject to modification: Barbara Gordon (as Batgirl but especially Oracle), Renee Montoya (as herself and the Question), the original Question, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Ultimate Sue Storm, Molly Hayes, Karolina Dean, Batman, Nightwing, Wally West, Nova, John Stewart, Spiderman (probably Ultimate more than regular, but I have only just started Ultimate), Snow White (in Fables), Beast. Also, as a junkie for the animated DCU, I totally heart Terry McGuinness in Batman Beyond and pretty much everyone in Justice League Unlimited. Wally West in that series and Barbara Gordon in The Batman are particularly fave versions.

More Qs and As to come when I think of them/someone asks me...