ABC Podcast Episode #126, plus some other stuff

This episode of the Awesomed By Comics Podcast is brought to you by a very irritated Aaron, who became even more irritated after he edited the show and realized he wasn't actually as irritated as he thought he was, and that he interrupted the show during the editing process for no real reason. Also the dryer caught on fire yesterday and a cat clawed me in the leg and whatever X-FACTOR WAS GREAT AND SO WAS POWER MAN AND IRON FIST AND BATGIRL AND OMG THEY KILLED A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE THIS WEEK AND THE WHOLE HOUSE SMELLS LIKE BURNED OUT DRYER AND SOMEBODY SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE MEEEEEEE. Also, BOYS RULE GIRLS DROOL!

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, and feel free to suggest your own winners for our categories. Also if you've ever considered supporting the show, this would be the time to do so with a donation of your choosing over there at the top of the right sidebar.

Covers of the Week:

Aaron's co-pick - Batgirl 18 by Dustin Nguyen



Aaron's co-pick - Cinderella: Fables are Forever by Chrissie Zullo (AKA Dustin Nguyen)



Evie's pick - Justice League: Generation Lost 19 also by Dustin Nguyen

Bonus Lidsville :





Bonus Higgins Boys and Gruber:

Come out of the closet, ladies

A comics-reading friend asked me recently about the degree to which I'm willing to read comics in public. I told him that most of my public comics reading occurs on Wednesdays, because that's when they are between the store and my house, and it happens almost exclusively a) on the subway, or b) in a pedicure chair at the nail salon next to Forbidden Planet. While I certainly feel a twinge of embarrassment about it, it's not enough to keep me from doing it when I need to read something and I have comics in my purse. Also, I don't think that I really telegraph "stereotypical superhero comics reader" (for at least one obvious reason), so I actually take a little bit of pride in subtly being like "SHATTER YOUR BIASES, ONLOOKERS".

Anyway, with these themes in mind, Brian Heater has established Read Comics In Public Day, which is this Saturday, August 28 (Jack Kirby's birthday). And with Read Comics In Public Day in mind, the DC Women Kicking Ass blog has created a Tumblr called Women Read Comics in Public, which will post submitted pictures of women reading comics in public. So, ladies: please take pictures of yourself reading comics in public, and submit them! Or non-ladies, please take pictures of you and your female friends and loved ones and submit them! Or go out on Saturday and take pictures of female strangers reading comics in public and apologize and submit them!

The benefits of this public pride are kind of obvious, but the blogs linked above make the most compelling arguments, so I encourage reading them if you need convincing. And of course if you are not able to insert any ladies into the equation, still read a comic in public this Saturday and feel free to submit a pic to Brian's blog, because he's posting them too.

ABC Podcast, Episode #83 and visual aids

This episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by tonight's actual Oscars, which as you may know, our show is a little bit like, if it were quite a bit different. Boys and a Man show what they're made of, Underground wraps up on high, and ladies step up in Girl Comics. We also detail our pitch for Marvel Horses, and swoon over the newest incarnation of animated Bruce Wayne.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Cover(s) of the Week

Evie's pick, from Girl Comics #1, cover by Amanda Conner:


Aaron's pick, from Astro City, the Dark Ages: Book Four #2, cover by Alex Ross:

Panel(s) of the Week

Aaron's pick, from Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love #5, by Chris Roberson and Shawn McManus:


Evie's pick, from Invincible Iron Man #24, by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca:

ABC Podcast Episode #77, plus visual aids

This episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by a significant size clarification (it matters!) and a poor excuse for one of our hosts' bad behavior. Evie and Aaron give respect to all the amazing ladies this week (Power Girl, Anna Mercury, Black Widow, Amanda Conner, perhaps some horses?) and could Ronan/Crystal be the best relationship in comics? J'accuse! Hercules keeps going strong, and Mark Waid keeps writing great sequels. Also, we don't talk about this in the show, but the Saints just won, so now Aaron won't have to choose which of two of the most annoying people on the planet to root for in the Super Bowl.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum.

Co-Cover of the Week

Evie and Aaron's pick, from Batman, Streets of Gotham #8, cover by Dustin Nguyen: (click to biggify!)



Panel(s) of the Week

Aaron's pick, from Realm of Kings Inhumans #3, written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, art by Wellington Alves



Evie's pick, from Power Girl #8, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, art by Amanda Conner

ABC Podcast, Episode #67 and visual aids

This episode of Awesomed By Comics is brought to you by music, some of which is made by us or friends of ours and is good; some of which stole Evie away, and is bad. Very, very bad.

While Evie is AWOL, Aaron is aroused and impressed by Chrissie Zullo's hot babe cover of Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love #1, while being repulsed and insulted by David Finch's hot babe cover of Psylocke #1. Aaron also is incredibly enthralled with the intricate worlds quickly created by Mark Waid and Christos Gage in The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh #2 and Absolution #3 respectively. Aaron was also shocked by the motivation reveal in The Mighty #10 and enjoyed the start of the Assault on New Olympus storyline, despite a last-page appearance by a certain 'snikt'-er who just has to get his greasy little sporks into every event, doesn't he.

Download/subscribe to the show here or in the right sidebar, and leave an iTunes review! (And while you're leaving an iTunes review, why not buy Aaron's band's album, And by The Ampersands?) Tell us what you think in the comments, or visit our show forum except don't do that yet because I haven't posted anything there.

Cover of the week

Aaron's pick, from Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love #1, cover by Chrissie Zullo


Panel of the Week:

Aaron's Pick, from Batman Confidential #36 by Royal McGraw and Macros Marz



And as always, feel free to leave your picks (or your answer to this week's Oscar question!!) in the comments.

OH COME ON

This is PREPOSTEROUS. And three times? This is the laziest porn ever, Billy Tan.

File Under: THINGS THAT NEED TO HAPPEN

One of my all-time favorite sort-of-guilty-pleasure cult films is Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S., specifically the 2004 full-length remake of the short she made a year earlier. From a sheer plot standpoint it's so stupid it's brilliant--a group of female super spies recruited via secret questions on the S.A.T., who fight crime in school girl uniforms--but the real satisfaction of the movie lies in the fact that it is a fun, tender lesbian romance that is revolutionary specifically for its lack of political weightiness around the subject.

ANYWAY, Robinson hasn't been able to get anyone to produce a sequel, so inspired by Buffy, she wants to make a comic series. YES, PLEASE. The premise of D.E.B.S. could not be more perfect for comics, and it has the kind of characters that we really need more of. DO IT DO IT DO IT.

Like Catwoman, but more uptight

So this is rather interesting news, that there will be a new Black Panther, and that she will be a lady. It's especially interesting because a new Black Panther cartoon is starting on BET next year, presumably starring T'Challa, and Reginald Hudlin doesn't seem to be concerned about the crossover mismatch. It's especially especially interesting because DC has just canceled Manhunter and the Minx line, and Marvel is actually replacing a popular male superhero with a female, at least for as long as it holds. This isn't the same as the girl Kraven or Lady Bullseye that just showed up, because a) they're villains, and b) they're not really replacing their male counterparts as much as being probably short-lived vehicles for something or other. But the Black Panther identity is sort of divinely hereditary by design, so all signs point to the unidentified female successor as being much more than a copy cat (uh, no pun and all that).

The Black Panther series lately has been pretty decent, and Jason Aaron's Secret Invasion crossover run was lovely (unlike, you know, Secret Invasion). But I certainly won't be joining in any choruses of protest against this move, because Storm has recently returned to the X-Men in Astonishing, and I'm cool with that, and maybe this means she'll stay and T'Challa will, like, come be their spiritual adviser or something. Also, duh, lady Black Panther. Rawr.

Aquafresh.

Hey, does everyone remember this Final Crisis cover, where it appeared as though our 17 year-old friend Supergirl was perhaps signaling that she might like something special put right there because this big bad awful final crisis was just so darn scary?


But WHAT?!

What could she have possibly been telling horny fanboys all across this great nation that she would like put right there? What do young, innocent, impossibly sexy girls want to put right there, right where Supergirl is pointing?

You'll be happy to know that Marv Wolfman and Phil Winslade have your answer in this week's Brave and the Bold.





Why, it's toothpaste of course! White, gooey, sticky, runny, not-at-all-suggestive toothpaste! I'll bet you're all embarassed now, you dirtyheaded gutterminds.

This is the Funvee

I'm on a listserv of mostly women music and arts journalists, and we've been talking quite a bit about "Iron Man" and the problems it perpetuates in the context of the dearth of strong female characters and leads in the summer blockbuster line-up. And I agree with all of it, and am disappointed that Selma Blair as supporting hero Liz Sherman is essentially going to carry our gender in this department for the foreseeable future and I don't even read Hellboy.

However, on the suspension-of-feminist-criticism visceral level of movie-going sheepie, OMGDUDEIRONMANWASSORAD.

As 7,368,902 people have mentioned, Robert Downey, Jr. was sublime, the writing was actually good and the effects were smokin. And even though the science was ludicrously implausible, the screenplay had Stark doing enough work and calculation and calibration that it became not quite out of the question. I have some criticisms of details, but you don't care what I thought about the Vanity Fair chick thing or the insta-sober thing or whatever. The point is, I left the theater like all "Sabbath RAWKS!" and stuff, and that's not a bad feeling to have every once in a while.

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have dug a nice, lesson-teaching tangle with She-Hulk.

Things I learned from my first few hours at NY Comic Con

1) Geoff Johns may have gotten the most audience questions and ass kissing at the DC Nation panel (deserved, he's rad), but Gail Simone got the most introductory applause, including a standing ovation by a handful of dudes. Who were mostly gay, but it's a start.

2) Geoff Johns is the hottest guy in comics. Which in theory isn't saying anything at all, but in his case it is. He obviously, like, works out and stuff. Even my fiance commented on his fineness over our post-Con cupcakes.

3) Geoff Johns doesn't really understand why everyone always calls him "Geoff Johns" to his face instead of "Geoff." But seriously, how can you not? It's like my friend Judy Wu, why on earth would you ever not say that whole name together.

4) Ok apparently I have a mini-crush on Geoff Johns.

5) Gail Simone is all the awesome I knew she was, and I'm really looking forward to interviewing her, which I am actually going to get away with doing for work.

6) There are some fanboys who think it's a real snooze that people keep bringing up how great Jaime Reyes is because he's the only really authentic, positive Latino superhero. God, how annoying and boring, they should just be happy that they get to have jobs and read comic books and stuff. It's almost as bad as those girls and gay guys who are always going on about how awesome Gail Simone is. SNORE.

7) The coworker I ran into at the convention center "never would have guessed in a million years" that I was a comic book fan. I will confess that more than 50 percent of me is taking that as a compliment.

8) Young women in comics get kind of uncomfortable when older women in comics start talking about feminism, because they've "never really had to think about it." Based on the young women's stated ages, I think there was some kind of bizarre reboot of socio-political continuity between my birth and my fourth birthday.

9) DC is going to launch a series about Supergirl in eighth grade. Despite any number of reasons for concern, I've tentatively decided that this rules.

10) There aren't many things cuter than little boys accompanied by their dads stepping up to a microphone and asking Joe Quesada if there's any chance that the Sentry could be a Skrull. Ok, if I meet a little girl who's being kept up at night by that question, that might be a little cuter.

Super Lawyer Aqua Conference

That's the real punchline to the joke "What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?," according to my friend the brilliant comedian Andres du Bouchet.

And I'm pretty sure that if they had such a thing, Mallory Book would be a perennial keynoter.

Mallory's spectacular showing in She-Hulk #27 reminded me why, love her or hate her, she's such an exceptional character in mainstream comics--a regular, non-powered human woman who routinely rescues or undermines superheroes and villains through sheer will and brains. Not only that, she does it within the context of her profession as an attorney, all within a set of laws that she shrewdly navigates and exploits. She's no vigilante, rogue bandit or maverick of the night who "lives by her own rules"--she doesn’t win battles by doing any old crazy thing her imagination cooks up to manipulate people. Yeah, she gets creative with the system's technicalities, takes on morally reprehensible clients and flattens others' will like a freight train, but she does it without tech-armor or eye-beams or telekinesis.

And yes, Mallory's character is problematic. She's the stereotype of the smart, ambitious woman who got where she is by being unrelentingly assertive (although that’s probably not the phrase most people would use). She's the reason certain people hate Hillary Clinton, who unwittingly represents every snippy know-it-all girl in chemistry class who had to raise her hand twice as fast and be twice as smug in order to be acknowledged as the smart one. She resents the hell out of people who get fame and recognition that she feels they didn't earn--people like Jennifer Walters, whom Mallory thinks gets way too much credit as a lawyer because she also happens to be a massively strong and popular superhero. Mallory Book is that ice queen who supposedly confirms that incredibly successful women must be miserable.

But she is also the woman that sweet, tragic Awesome Andy was deeply in love with--so much that he refused to keep her under the spell that was causing her to return his affections. She was horrible to him when she came to, of course, because Mallory Book is not ok with not being in control--but her pride isn't so spiny that she couldn't swallow it soon after for a paralysis-overcoming declaration of love for the Two Gun Kid (I've never quite figured that one out, by the way, because come on, the Two Gun Kid? I’ll admit I don't even know his history beyond the recent She-Hulk appearances, but that name is about as sexy as Mr. Fantastic).

In She-Hulk #27, Mallory swoops in to undo the arrest of a man who was tragically unlucky enough to get caught in the middle of one of She-Hulk’s conflicts. She saves Jen’s ass—that being the ass of the strongest woman in pretty much the universe—by coming up with a story that gets the case dismissed in about ten seconds. When Jen thanks her for the unexpected favor, Mallory says it was no favor, that “I came to see you squirm, watching me do what you can’t anymore.” Of course Mallory probably didn’t have entirely vindictive motives, but she’s not about to let Jen know that—all she wants Jen to focus on is that Mallory can do this and Jen can’t, now that she’s disbarred. Big strong green goliath, can't even file a little motion, can't save the day. Jen has a lot of self-esteem issues, and while becoming She-Hulk helped her deal with a lot of them, her successes as a lawyer, even a small, mousy one, had a hell of a lot to do with her overall confidence. And that’s why Mallory Book in all her sour, litigating glory can be stronger than the strongest woman (and most men) in the world.

Let's just hope she doesn't get caught in the path of a cosmic ray or dumped in a vat of radioactive waste, because yikes.

Raving topless Wonder Woman is my hero

Part of what has made for this blog's slow start is that I don't want it to be a chore--I want it to be a place where I just run with things that hit me from the week's comic reading. And frankly, while I'm enjoying a number of stories right now, there hasn't been much in the "omg ha!" department lately. But then Wonder Woman and Black Canary infiltrated a Playboy club circa 1962 in Darwyn Cooke's Justice League: New Frontier Special, and I kind of can't stop doing whatever it is that's part-giggle, part-secret handshake, part-Celine Dion chest thump.

If you don't know, JL:NFS is a set of stories following up on the recent release of the Justice League: New Frontier animated film, which in turn is based on Cooke's 2003-2004 graphic novel DC: The New Frontier. It's an alternate take on the formation of the Justice League, set primarily in the 1950s. I'll confess to still having the original graphic novel in my to-read pile, but the new movie is HOT. Seriously, goosebump city. Anyway, the first (maybe only?) issue of the new series(?) came out last week and compiles several mini-stories about the New Frontier versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and a few others.

So in this one story, Wonder Woman, who of course was raised on an all-lady paradise island of warriors, finally has it up to here with male-dominated society and its objectification of women. She expresses her rage to Black Canary, who kind of laughs it off with a "here we go again" response. Now at this point, I'm a little annoyed because is seems like Diana's rant is sort of a lunatic feminist caricature, whom even Black Canary can't take seriously. But then I'm thinking well, hold on, someone with WW's background would be livid about 1962 gender imbalance, and would be full-on second-wave and then some (but in 2008 she'd be totally cool with everything, right?). Anyway, set off by a copy of Playboy and the growing popularity of Hefner's gentlemen's clubs, she convinces Black Canary to join her on a little field trip to persuade club patrons in Gotham of their wrongdoing using the lessons of Amazonian love. And if that doesn't work, by beating them "until they cry for their sainted mothers."

I don't want to give a panel-by-panel recap, but I will mention that after an angry dude tries to chase her away with a blow torch, Diana rips off her smoldering breast plate and clobbers him with it. And incidentally, she's having a blast. I adore Gail Simone's current Wonder Woman series, but even her purposeful, compelling Diana isn't exacting social justice with her burning bra in a gleeful, topless fury. Cooke has her doing things like leaping from the stage into the crowd of men screaming "Hola, dogs!" I love this Wonder Woman, I want her to babysit my future children.

It's the final panel, however, that earns Darwyn Cooke a good solid hundred, hundred and fifty points in the struggle to satisfy feminist comic book readers. As the heroines are leaving and the bunnies stand there dumbstruck next to a pile of pulpified men, Black Canary laments that no one will know what happened because Diana beat up any reporters that might have been in the room. Then one of the girls says "Whatcha doin, Gloria?" to the bunny next to her--a bespectacled redhead who is scribbling in a notebook and winking at the reader. OMG, HA!

Now here's what I think is the best part about that, in a comic book industry where females are often ambivalent about their fandom. If I had to wager, I'd say that a statistically significant percentage of people who read this book don't know that Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny in the 1960s for a seminal article about the enterprise's treatment of women. Or if their sainted mother told them once, they forget the details. I could be wrong, but I've seen the Newsarama message boards, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility. What's impressive is that Darwyn Cooke's kicker for this story--in a mainstream DC superhero comic--was a wink-nudge, unexplained cultural reference where women are the insiders who would most appreciate it. Sure, the whole story is all girl-powery, and that's great, but boys who read comic books are happy to see the hot ladies kick some ass in any context, really. The Steinem thing, however, takes the earlier burning bra metaphor and makes it more than a humorous Wonder-Woman's-boobies plot device. And of course there are many men, like my own, who got the joke completely. But I don't think they got the shiver of appreciation that I did. Giggle handshake chest thump.