From The Guys Who Brought You Heroes For Hentai: Those Silly Girls Reading Semen Into Everything.

This just in from Funnybook Babylon, via Rich Johnston: apropos of nothing, Newsarama ‘journalist’ asks Marvel writer if a new female British Muslim character intends to engage in holy war.

Because you know what’s hilarious and not at all racist? Implying that all British Muslims are terrorists! No social consequences whatsoever could possibly follow from the use of mendacious stereotyping!
Newsarama apparently had the nous to realise that such a ridiculously awful question ought never have been asked nor published, and tried to retcon the whole mess by pulling it from the site. Sadly for them, this is the internet. Once your racist, sexist, religiously intolerant shit is out there, it’s out there forever.
This bizarre episode did have the salutary effect of bringing Faiza to my attention. A fast-talking British superhero fangirl teen whose Muslim faith is an everyday part of her life? Captain Britain and MI:13: I’m buying it.
Edit 13/5/08 : Newsarama (and WFA) blogger Lisa Fortuner/Ragnell conducts an interview with Matt Brady over the offending article. It’s a little spin-riffic in places, but it includes a) a full apology to those offended and b) Brady taking personal responsibility both for the initial gaffe and for its ham-handed removal.

You Had Me At ‘Free’.

Do not those of us lucky enough to have a good local comic book store just simply adore them? I know that I love mine Comics ‘R’ Us in Bourke St, Melbourne, Australia, above the bubble tea joint, hi guys! and not just for their correct use of the much-abused apostrophe.
This coming Saturday is a particularly fine time to visit your local store, because May 3rd is Free Comic Book Day!
And if you’re going anyway, why not do your bit for Girl-Wonder.org and our mission of making the comics world a better place for female characters, readers, and creators?
Speaketh mastermind Kate Fitzsimons, who you will know from our fabulous podcast Four Color Heroines:
The Plan
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to celebrate Free Comic Book Day by going to your local comic book store and spread the joyous word. Or post about Free Comic Book Day, your favorite female-positive comics for people to look for when they go, and possibly Girl-Wonder.org.
Post or distribute one of our flyers at your local store, or wear our brand new ‘Ask Me About Girl Wonder’ graphics on your shirt, bag or sticker or even tape it to your back! Maybe the next little girl who comes into the store will feel a little more welcome.
We’re Girl Wonder. You, me, every one of us. Let’s take it to the streets this Free Comic Book Day and spread the love!
Hell, yes.
Learn more at the Project page.
And don’t forget to share your ideas, adventures, and links to your posts in our new FCBD forum.

Honour and Reputation.

The Open Source Boob Project, as I’m sure many GRC readers have learned, was a private-to-public experiment held at Penguicon (not under the aegis of the convention), wherein a number of women (some wearing badges indicating their willingness/antipathy, and some not) were approached by people asking if they could touch their breasts.
In April, which is, not incidentally, Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Livejournal’s the Ferrett, an early adopter of this… oh, let’s say, ‘astonishing’ endeavour, wrote a rapturous post about how great it was that he ‘touched at least fifteen sets of boobs at Penguicon’ in the spirit of totally non-tawdry empowerment of women .
For some bizarre reason, not everyone responding embraced the notion that empowering women to mystically heal the wounds of men with their breasts heralded an exciting movement towards a feminist utopia.
The aftermath has included some excellent discussions on the vectors of power and privilege that make a reverse-gender campaign unworkable, some extraordinary satire, plenty of anecdotal real-life examples of why such an experiment is utterly untenable, and many, many passionate and discerning responses on why, whether participants were enjoying themselves or not, representing women as ‘available’ or ‘unavailable’ for touch is not just a way to erase the memories of one’s high school rejection, or a worshipful celebration of the female body, but a reification of the cultural gender binary where women’s bodies are always rendered as either ‘available’ or ‘unavailable’, and never as a body actually belonging to the woman in question.
It has also included numerous fascinating examples of that amusing phenomena I like to call ‘Look! A monkey!’ wherein someone will defend something they or someone else has said, not on the grounds that the thing itself is defensible, but because this person has done or said other things that were laudable. Or has acted in support of the group that they have now pissed off. Or in the most egregious examples, have a girlfriend/black friend/gay brother/transgender roommate/Jewish teacher, so it is totally unfair to call them out on the misogynistic/racist/heterosexist/transphobic/anti-Semitic thing that they have just said.
This is a good person and you are hurting their feelings! Stop taking this out of context of the rest of their lives! Can’t you concentrate on the positive? LOOK: A MONKEY.
So it is for the Ferrett, who has had stalwart defenders pointing out that he is a good guy, that he has written a comic strip that poses more than a few feminist responses to adverse situations, that his intentions were good and, of course, that he is married.
The problem is that no matter how many monkeys are thrown into the background to provide eyecatching stunts of simian prowess, the person who has said the stupid thing has still said the stupid thing. The problem is that whether the injured party is diverted by monkey spectacle or not, the person who has said the stupid thing has still said the stupid thing. The problem is that when the earth burns up in a supernova flare and the monkeys that have taken over the world in ages past disassemble into atoms, the person who has said the stupid thing will still have said the stupid thing, although, admittedly, at that point it will mean significantly less to the injured party.
The Ferrett wrote this, which works from the assumption that women’s self-worth and body image is dependent on male approval:
We went around the con, asking those who we thought might be amenable – you didn’t just ask anyone, but rather the ones who’d dressed to impress – and generally, people responded. They understood how this worked instinctively, and it worked.
By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. ‘My breasts,’ they asked shyly, having heard about the project. ‘Are they… are they good enough to be touched?’ And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry.
With feminist co-author Roni*, he also wrote the script for this comic, which neatly and viciously dissects a particularly irritating trend of poor stories for female characters.
The two are not irreconcilable.
It is entirely possible to do both bad shit and good shit in one’s life. The hard part is recognizing, first, which is which, and second, that one has to own all of one’s crap. Among a flood of ifs, buts and protestations that it wasn’t like that and he didn’t mean it that way, the Ferett has acknowledged that he did indeed screw up tremendously. And that is to his credit. Few people like to think that the words coming from their mouth are tainted with the stench of refuse, but sometimes it is time to recognize that one has indeed spoken with one’s ass. And, also, it is time to abandon this metaphor.
No matter what good deeds you have done, and will continue to do, you will almost certainly say something hurtful, offensive and wrong at some point in your life. You can probably name about half a dozen off the top of your head – I certainly can, starting from the truly fucked-up number of times I called my autistic little brother a retard.
Calling my brother a retard did not make me a bad person forever and ever world without end amen. It made me a person who said something horrible, many times. But just as the wrong things I have done do not cancel out all the good things I have accomplished for myself and others, the good things I have done do not absolve me of saying something truly reprehensible.
I will always have called my brother a retard. I can never not have done it. Don’t look at the monkey: I did it, and I will regret it until I die.
Don’t look at the monkey: Joe Quesada’s love for his daughter doesn’t mean that his theories on why women don’t enter the industry aren’t inaccurate and insulting. Brian Michael Bendis’ devotion to his mother and female friends doesn’t mean his responses to those objecting to the Tigra beatdown sequence were not dismissive and rude. Gail Simone’s entirely laudable contributions to exposing the plight of women in comics do not excuse her from a feminist critique of a no-no-no-okay, yes story.
Those of us protesting misogyny in comics are used to exhortations to look at the monkey. You ought to concentrate on the positive, we’re told. And we do know the monkey is there; we may well watch it later.
Truth be told, it’s no fun to deal with sexism. Taking the time to inspect it is sometimes painful, distressing, and humiliating for all concerned. But nothing will ever change until we can look, undistracted, and see what’s wrong.

It’s Not That I’m Lost For Words…

… it’s just that they’re all obscenities.
Check out the cover of JLA #22(full-sized image linked):
smallcover.jpg
I generally shy away from pronouncements like, ‘Is DC trying to enrage me?’ because 1) DC is not an individual with will, but a conglomerate, 2) Most of that conglomerate is ignorant of the fact that I live and breathe, and 3) I would imagine those conglomerate members who are aware of my existence have better goals than coming up with covers that so perfectly infuriate me.
So I’m willing to believe it’s nothing personal. It is, nevertheless, distinctly annoying to suddenly have the speech centres of my brain degrade into outraged howling.
However, my inarticulation is your gain! While my response is presently reduced to inelegant keyboard smashings, I thought I would hold a competition.
Present a scathing indictment of this cover, either in the comments to this column, or in your own blog, to which you may link me. The best* denunciation of the piece’s myriad sins against good representation and reason will be rewarded with the first issue and the first special of Alitha E. Martinez‘ sensational young superhero series Yume and Ever.
I know, we all thought it was impossible, but Alitha actually makes use of color when portraying characters of colour, and her gorgeous and non-objectifying fan-service is equal-opportunity!

smallcover.jpg

[Interview] Robyn Fleming And Me

You know, I don’t really have an excuse for my recent absence. I’m not sick, lacking for material, or busily engaged in the things I should be doing. I’m just undergoing my biannual change of seasons malaise, with the added bonus of a heatwave. It’s left me disinclined to spend my free time doing anything but lounge on my bed and read, occasionally rousing sufficient energy to pop open another can of Diet Coke.
To make up for my negligence while I was fully occupied mainlining the works of Jenny Crusie and Octavia Butler, I have prepared a special treat. I give unto you two recently conducted audio interviews with Robyn Fleming, the editor of Cerise, the gaming magazine for women. We discuss whither GRC and whence Cerise, before descending to the really important questions, like the subclauses applicable to the Three Second Rule and the importance of imaginary boyfriends.
You should be aware; we’re total dorks.
They’re both about 13 minutes long, and in mp3 format – listen here or download.
Robyn Interviews Karen.
Karen Interviews Robyn.

[Review] Lower Regions

Lower Regions
Alex Robinson
Top Shelf
Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax is dead. Like everyone who’s ever run around a fantasy world hitting bears with an ax, or found a fiendish use for Mage Hand, or attacked a gazebo, I owe him a great deal for his impact on my imagination.
I choose to mark this sad occasion, then, by reviewing a comic that lovingly explores and celebrates Gygax’s perhaps most honoured gift to the world of games the dungeon crawl.
Lower Regions is funny, gruesome, and the hero is a woman with an axe, so you know I’m there already.
The black and white art is great, with exceptional facial expressions and body language carrying the story, and the inventiveness that went into the monster roster is fantastic, but the real appeal of this book to me is its star.
The barbarian protagonist is fantastically good at hacking and slashing her way through the many monsters of this tightly plotted story as she hunts for her stolen boy, and for horrible revenge on his kidnapper. Assisted by her adorable and useless halfling companion, she’s mentally creative when physically outmatched (in the best tradition of rules-lawyering) and gorgeous in her blood-spattered fury and determination.
I think I’m a little in love.
A heroine as competent and intelligent as this puts a lot of credit in the ‘good depiction of gender’ column, but unfortunately, there’s an entry on the other side of the ledger as well. The only other visibly female character (and the monsters are mostly naked, so the sex of the humanoid ones is fairly obvious) is a female bat-demon, and both her attack and her bloody death are extremely sexualised.
As ever, a straight depiction of sexualised violence is almost guaranteed to throw me out of the story where an old-fashioned decapitation or disemboweling is not, and it’s annoying to find a repetition of the good woman versus sexy sexy danger trope in an otherwise thoroughly entertaining comic.
This aside if you can put it aside Alex Robinson rolled an 18 on Charisma for Lower Regions. If you’re up for some bloody black and white fun, I can highly recommend it.

Misfit Reads Your Mail (And Black Alice Totally Doesn’t).

mightymegarod.jpg

H EM GEE, you guys, OH EM GEE. Right now Oracle is so very! I can’t EVEN! Usually I wait for Karen to reach a sticking point in her lit review and resort to hard liquour, or run around her room and skid on a tossed pamphlet and fall down or, like, leave the house, because otherwise she’s all ‘Misfit, did you move my book piles/eat my last packet of chips/drink all my Diet Coke and leave the empty cans in the fridge with the tabs carefully popped back up so I’d think pixies came and drank it by magic?’. And then I feel bad.
But she was working and wouldn’t stop, and I totally needed a break, so in the end I just bounced in and knocked her out a little bit. She’ll be fine. It’s not like I BROKE HER ANKLE or anything.
So! Mailbag!
Dear GRC,
I have been deaf since childhood, a disability which is important when it comes to the ways I communicate, but central to my abilities as a crimefighter. I have absolute visual kinetic recall, which allows me to copy exactly any move an opponent makes, which, in addition to my own well-honed skills, is of some use in my sometimes bloody career. Of course, there are disadvantages, too I’m unable to work as effectively in the dark, and I encounter all the ordinary difficulties of the deaf, like people assuming I’m stupid, or failing to face me directly when they speak so that I might read their lips.
However, recent events have been confusing. On an assignment for my new team, I managed to masquerade in Tokyo as a (hearing) airbrained heiress. Also, although my co-workers sometimes remind each other to look directly at me when they speak, they regularly hold conversations with me while half-turned, or with their backs to me entirely, or speaking through masks that cover their mouths. And yet, I seem able to understand! It’s almost as if, during these periods, both they and I forget that I am actually deaf.
Can you explain this?
Echo.
Dear Echo,
Oh, I’m totally sorry, but I have no idea! Oh wait! Maybe you’re totally a Skrull! I hear that, like, everyone over your way is a Skrull.
And if your teammates aren’t talking to you properly and haven’t even noticed that you understand, (and everyone knows that COMMUNICATION is probably the most important part of teamwork, and anyway it’s definitely not making people wash dishes or telling them they’re too young to be a Bird of Prey or hiring other girls who are ALSO teenagers if you haven’t NOTICED) then they are either 1) big old disrespectful jerks or 2) also Skrulls!
So that works out, because if they’re disrespectful jerks and you’re a Skrull then you’re not on the same side anyway!
Smack them good! Jerks.
Love from
Misfit!
Dear GRC,*
I’m a Japanese woman who has taken up the title Judomaster. During my first adventure with superhero team Birds of Prey, I managed to not only understand and take part in English conversations, but participated in a number of linguistically demanding jokes. I was proud of this facility with the language.
mightymegarod.jpg
I have since joined the Justice Society of America and have mysteriously and tragically lost all competence in English. Now I am not only incapable of my previous humour, but understand only a few words of the conversations happening around me. I suspect some of this dialogue constitutes jokes about me that I cannot understand, which I find extremely discourteous.
Why have my English language skills deserted me? I feel as if I am being forced into the stereotype of the inscrutable and silent Japanese woman, and entirely resent this change.
Yours,
Judomaster.
Dear Judomaster
So THAT’S where you got to! Man, I was so worried. Because when teammates don’t turn up after their family business they were taking care of you’re supposed to worry about them and I am all about teamwork!
It really sucks that you’ve lost your ability with English, because I bet you worked really hard! I’m trying to learn Spanish, because have you seen Blue Beetle? Under the carapace he is totally cute in a scruffy way! Although his file says he has a girlfriend. But maybe not forever, who knows, right?
Anyways, my point is that learning other languages can be really hard and for someone to just steal all that effort from you and make you silent and unable to comprehend jokes about you is just gross. Also, what are your teammates doing, making jokes about you that you can’t understand?
My advice is that you come back and join the Birds of Prey and maybe that will fix your English problem! You can have Black Alice’s room.
Love from
Misfit!
Okay, this one is kind of not an actual letter, but like a conglomerate of letters:
Dear GRC:
I have big spherical breasts and they stick out instead of obeying the laws of biology and gravity even when I’m clearly not wearing a bra and sometimes when I’m upside down and they look inhuman and weird and I’ve never had plastic surgery, please help me, have I been experimented on by aliens?
I enclose two of about maybe ten thousand pictures demonstrating my totes icky situation.
donnamorescaryboobs.jpg
scarywandaboobs.jpg
Thanks bunches,
Everyheroine.
Dear Everyheroine,
These letters stuff the mailbag fuller than Black Alice’s bra. Oh yes, I DID say it! My socks with the purple kittens on the cuffs are missing and I don’t think that’s COINCIDENCE!
But that couldn’t be the reason for this many letters all about impossible stick-out boobs, because I don’t have that many socks. So I’m going to say, yeah, aliens? Invisible aliens with a gross-tesque interest in bizarrely altering women’s bodies?
The only thing I can say that might make you feel better is that I know sometimes it goes away. Cos I used to look like this (which isn’t totally awful or anything, but still, like, no wonder I managed to get into clubs six years underage):
misfitbigboobs.jpg
And now I look like this:
misfitweeboobs.jpg
See! There’s hope!
Love and totally boundless sympathy,
Misfit
PS) WASH THEM AND GIVE THEM BACK.
Uh-oh. Karen’s groaning. Guess I better bounce back to Mopesville and totally ignore Ms I Dress In Black And Am So Much Cooler Than You some more.
Catch you next time, guys! Don’t forget, I’m the one and only MISFIT!

Karen vs. Karen

Dear Interwebs,
It has recently come to my attention that some of you have confused Karen Healey (that would be me) with Karen Ellis (that would be the creator of Planet Karen). Some people seem to believe we are actually the same person, which is either inaccurate, or a really nefarious plot for world domination that requires one person with two bodies on opposite sides of the globe.
And it is certainly not the second! That’s crazy talk, which only miscontents and ne’er-do-wells would even contemplate believing for a single foolish second!
So it has to be the first, which is not only far more likely than that scurrilous rumour about cloning in a secret laboratory, but is also an understandable mistake with two young white women publishing online under the umbrella of the same organization with identical first names and similar surnames, it’s no wonder that people mix us up.
To assist you in your confusion, which owes absolutely nothing to those mysterious tales of a black-hearted mage, I have prepared a helpful chart.
Karen Ellis Karen Healey
Karen El’Lives in Bristol, England. Lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Publishes a daily comic, Planet Karen. Publishes a weekly-ish column, Girls Read Comics (And They’re Pissed).
Has black hair. Has red hair.
Occasionally channels unibrowed Russian giant Octobriana. Occasionally channels hyperactive American superhero Misfit.
Is a talented artist. Once drew a stick figure with both legs the same length.
Is diabetic, and restricts her sugar intake. Is licking cream cheese icing off a spoon right now.
Dresses Goth. Is wearing pink pyjamas.
Is not at all a doppelganger from the frightening world of Mirror. Isn’t either!
So there you have it! Not at all the same person. Try to keep this in mind: when our demonic armies roll inexorably over the screaming earth, there may well be a test.

Why I’m Not Reading JLA Right Now.

I simply cannot handle the art. I suffered through Ed Benes’ bizarre butt focus in Birds of Prey for the sake of a) His facial expressions, which were rather lovely characterisation and b) Gail Simone’s writing. I was enjoying JLA, and I like Dwayne McDuffie’s writing as a rule, but I cannot read the series when I know I will be greeted with images like this:
notwhitemari.jpg
1) I think it is safe, at this stage, to say that Ed Benes really likes drawing women’s butts. This is more than I am personally comfortable knowing about a complete stranger, but outside of my personal preferences and more to the point, it is utterly inappropriate to regularly position or twist every female character so that when she’s, for instance, supposed to be staring down an enemy, she’s actually presenting her impressive and lovingly detailed ass to the reader. Unless the story somehow calls for it, the focus of almost any given scene ought not be a female behind.
2) Mari Jiwi McCabe is not a white woman. Benes managed to portray Vixen as a (somewhat sharp-nosed) immigrant from made-up-but-not-at-all-white African country M’Changa in Birds of Prey, so I assume he has forgotten that her facial features and skin colour ought not to look Caucasian. Clearly, he needs a reminder of this salient fact. So does the colourist.
This page is sexist, racist, and atrocious storytelling. It handily destroys the suspension of disbelief necessary to maintain a fantasy narrative. I’m left so painfully aware of the fourth wall plastered to the female characters’ backsides, and wondering why Mari woke up white, that the story Benes is presumably meant to be telling with this art comes in a distant and limping third.

notwhitemari.jpg

‘Frank Miller sounds familiar. Unsub?’

I was sitting in the otherwise empty house at night watching a show about serial killers when I decided, curiously enough, that I’d much rather write about a show about serial killers.

The show in question is Criminal Minds, which follows the gruesome adventures of the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit as they profile and hunt monstrous persons, picking up a fair bit of trauma and PTSD as they heroically but humanly make the world a slightly better place. I like it extremely, not least because it plays with gender-role stereotypes a lot and has, in the main cast of seven, three distinct female characters who talk to each other about things other than men.

I bring to your special attention the tenth episode of the third season, True Night, written and directed by Ed Bernero. Spoilers herein!
The episode is not only very obviously The Crow via Sin City, but features quite a bit of comics industry fun, including a guest star playing a comics writer, quotes from Frank Miller, and a signing at a store with some cutely dialoguing geeks.

It’s at that scene that my hackles went up in anticipation. One of my pet peeves is the way female fans and creators are so often made invisible by the industry, the academy, and mainstream media. Every time someone runs a story with the same wide-eyed, astonished headline ‘Look! Girls read/write comics!’ I growl. Yes! Amazing! It’s not like they’ve been doing it for decades!
I’m not arguing against bringing attention to women in the industry, but I’m annoyed by how often it’s presented as something new and astonishing, because it’s only shocking that it’s taking so long for people to notice. It really doesn’t help when the stereotype of the male comic book fan is constantly reiterated in the mainstream (usually as the butt of the joke) and the female fans scarcely get a look in.

So in the Criminal Minds comics store signing scene, I was at first encouraged by the episode’s inclusion of female fans lined up waiting for their idol. At the very least, it was a start. But the scene ended, and every comics insider with a speaking role fans, store owner, writer and agent was male.

‘Oh, show!’ I complained, and moved on.

But this story has a happy ending, because later it’s revealed that there is indeed a comics fan among the women featuring in that episode. She’s one of the main characters.

In fact, Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) is the team’s self-proclaimed ‘Oracle of Quantico’; a brilliant hacker who used to work outside the law and now works with it*. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a fan of this guy,’ one of her colleagues tells. ‘Oh my God, yes! He’s a genius!’ she returns, utterly unembarrassed. Later, she instructs the same colleague in the ways of Miller. She’s female, she’s a comics geek, and it’s not a big deal.

Oh, show!