I noticed something interesting in Iron Man which is that, despite that movie’s shoddy use of women-as-sex-objects (which echoes, of course, Tony’s view of women-as-sex-objects, although I am internally divided as to whether the movie ultimately considers this one of the things that makes Tony a jerk, or one of the things that makes him a badass) is the backgrounded presence of women in scenes where they could easily have been overlooked.
In the military coms centre, for example there she is, uniform pressed and blonde hair in a neat bun. As the Stark Industries scientists wrestle with the task Obadiah gives them, there she is, a pale woman in a labcoat.
It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
I watched The Incredible Hulk with half an eye out for this representation, and sure enough, something similar happens there. However, I belatedly realised something else, which led to the following conversation with a friend who works in film. We’ll call him… Tom.
Tom: So I just went and see me some Hulking. It was explosive.
Karen: Right? Lotsa smashing!
Tom: So damn much smashing.
Karen: Here’s a question for ya.
Tom: Yes sir.
Karen: Where are the American women of colour in that movie?
Karen: I mean, there is like MORE THAN ONE WOMAN in the army! And one of them has a major role, which is fucking great.
Karen: And there is MORE THAN ONE WOMAN in the sciences! Which is also great!
Karen: But how come they’re all white? I know that’s not the only skin tone in the USA. I have been there. And even Iron Man did better on speaking roles for women of colour, by which I mean it had one. And she had a British accent.
Tom: Well, we in the straight white male arts tend to feel that if we have one of any given non-us group, nobody can call us out on avoiding them. This is why we give Cliff Curtis so many roles.
Karen: Oh, that Cliff Curtis*. He’s so dreamy.
This is not just gross; it’s frankly embarrassing. What goddamn century is it, anyway? Even if we haven’t sorted out the jet-packs and the teleportation windows, you’d think that we could handle getting some American women of colour in American-centric cinema, in speaking and non-speaking roles. When an actress as accomplished as Gabrielle Union says:
I still hear things like ‘Gabrielle, you gave the best read! If we decide to go black, you’re at the top of the list.’ I’ve actually been told, ‘Gabrielle, you’re absolutely perfect for the role, but the role is a girl who’s most popular in school.’ I’ve been to the point where I brought in my yearbook. ‘See how popular I was? It really can happen.’
well, then, I want to throw up.
TV tends to do better. I am cautiously optimistic about the new ABC series The Middleman. Not only is it cute, funny and drenched in comic book geekery, but the female lead is played by Latina Natalie Morales. In the show’s first two episodes, women of colour have speaking roles a variety of speaking roles! as temp agency managers, as police officers, as artists by day/brown-suited-destroyers-of-villainy by night. They are not there to be Latina or Black, but women of color, present in the world.
It’s not enough. But it’s a start.

• Comment on this column here
• Cliff Curtis, who is Maori, of Te Arawa and Ngati Hauiti, has played Shi’ite Iraqi, Spanish, Cuban, Mexican, African-American** and, occasionally, Maori characters. He is totally dreamy.
  ** Well, your reading may differ, but you know how all the Die Hard movies have at least one Black man (note: man. That is what I am talking about) who works with McClane? In 4.0, that guy’s position is occupied by Justin Long***, who is extremely white. When I noted this to another friend, she said ‘But the head of the FBU unit! He was the Black guy!’ This guy? Cliff Curtis.
  *** Also totally dreamy.

Today you get a guest column, courtesy of the fantastic Hannah Dame. You are probably already familiar with Hannah as the producer of Girl-Wonder.org’s podcast, Four Color Heroines. You can also learn more about Hannah from today’s Meet The Board interview, up here.
Avid comics readers know how to recognize a good book: it engrosses you and interests you, teasing you along and challenging you to figure out the answers it is hiding before it gives them away. And the end is still satisfying even if it wasn’t the outcome you’d have preferred.
Until you get the answers in the last way you expected, ruining any possible enjoyment you had previously gotten from the work.
Looking at this situation, it could be describing that one fight between Superman and Batman, wherein even prep time couldn’t save Batman from being hurled into the sun at Mach 3.
Or it could be describing the moment for any minority reader when they find out their paper mirrors may not be as durable or reflective as they thought.
In this case, I’ll be considering this moment from the perspective of a trans reader. This column breaks down into three sections: first, to set the stage, an examination of the two archetypes for presentation of gender transgressive characters; a consideration of the climax of the trans narrative and its problems, relative to the breakdown of the trans reader’s paper mirror; and an example of this problem in a comic, American Virgin.
In narrative, there are two types of gender transgressive characters, broken down by general characteristics: magical, or genitally gender transgressive, and realistic, or socially gender transgressive. Before going further, as with any other archetype, it’s important to note that neither of these constructions is true all the time for any given story involving genital change or gender transition; many of the best stories are ones that defy such simple breakdowns.
Magical genital change stories are by far the most common. In them, a character somehow magically finds their body with genitals and attendant secondary sex characteristics such as build and musculature which do not match their identified gender. The character is then forced to undergo the ‘trial’ of presenting as another gender. Throughout, they tend to react by superficially accepting the social connotations of their new genitals and present the gender they are ‘supposed to be’ in culturally stereotypical ways. And more often than not, hilarity ensues.
And that hilarity stems from the fact magical genital change stories tell the experience of a cisgendered person’s gender identity being forcibly violated. But it is a violation readers sympathize with, because the character does not (at least initially) want the change. Magical genital change excuses the character from the social realities of gender transition and thus excuses their gender transgression, often making it impossible for a trans reader to see themselves in the character. Realistic representations of a transperson’s emotional experience may appear as a character develops, but often by that point it is too late for the trans reader.
Magical genital change when the character identifies as trans places a trans reader, who would presumably identify with the trans character, in a difficult position. After all, said trans character is having their body match their mind without trauma, without pain, without realism. It is that lack of realism which makes a magically transitioned trans character nothing more than a mirror of impossibility for the trans reader.
Realistic trans stories, by contrast, provide not only a touchstone for a trans reader, but representations of their actual life. Realistic trans characters go through and are affected by the process of physical and mental transition, with all of its attendant pains, anxieties, and problems. Whereas a magically transformed character may find themselves a social and gender outcast not of their own will, realistic trans characters willfully socially transgress by presenting as a gender which they were not assigned at birth.
Realistic trans characters appear by and large in transition narratives. Like other similar minority-owned narratives (ex. the coming out story), the transition narrative is the only story structure wholly unique to trans individuals, and the only one wherein realistic trans characters can exist without the reader fearing they will turn evil, vanish into invisibility, or be killed off.
Compared to magical genital change, realistic trans characters often have less problematic elements because they are reflecting real-life. No representation is flawless, however. Realistic characters can sometimes run a fine line between the standards of gender presentation and performance of drag performance and transpeople, confusing and conflating the two.
Drag, at its best, creatively challenges, questions, or remakes established gender norms; at its worst, it is ‘drag clowning,’ turning trans people into foppish parodies for the amusement of the privileged. Also, drag performers are, well, performers. They often wish to be showy, noticeable. Passing as their presented gender is less important than publicly and openly challenging the existing gender norms.
For the trans individual, passing as their preferred gender is not an act of challenge but a part of daily life, regardless of whether they are open about their birth gender. Their presentation in and response to any given situation is an act of personal choice, not an essential characteristic of their persona.
Key to both archetypes is the ‘moment of genital reveal,’ more colloquially (and facetiously) known as the ‘oh my god, it’s a tranny!’ moment. In magical change stories it comes early, often soon after the change has occurred. For the first time, the character is forced to experience a violation of self in front of others. Whether or not nakedness is involved in this violation will vary from story to story; sometimes, just the existence of breasts underneath clothing on a former penis owner is enough.
It is far more complex in the realistic trans character’s story. It’s the moment of accepted deception, wherein the trans person reveals that they have been ‘deceiving’ the audience all along as to their ‘true’ nature. Unfortunately, it seems in most stories that a slip of the tongue and using a ‘wrong’ gender name or pronoun just doesn’t have the same impact as full-on, naked genitalia.
The nakedness is an essential element, since the transperson is ‘hiding’ something underneath their clothing. In stripping off the transperson’s clothing, one strips off their chosen gender and reduces them to their biology. And in violating the trans character, the trans reader is themselves violated. If the reader cannot find an image of transpeople in media that does not even a little bit reinforce the ultimate supremacy of physical biology over mental well-being, how can they expect to ever fully achieve their own well-being?
Now, to move beyond the archetypal to an example of ‘transpeople: ur doin it wrong.’ In Steven Seagle and Becky Cloonan’s American Virgin, Mel is an Australian mercenary who helps the main character, Adam, seek revenge on his girlfriend’s killers. He gradually gets more involved with Adam’s family, eventually dating Adam’s sister Cyndi.
The reader only gets a single hint to Mel’s transness, a throwaway line from a past lover. Until the time to get intimate comes, and the reveal clumsily lumbers across the page: big naked boobs bound with bandages, one nipple hanging out awkwardly.
Mel’s moment of reveal was, for a trans reader like me, a slap in the face. I’m supposed to believe this is a realistic transman who passes for both characters and readers while binding his breasts in such a sloppy, unsafe, and unrealistic manner? And given Mel’s constant, conspicuous stubble, one can safely assume he’s been on testosterone for a fairly notable amount of time, but I, the reader, am also to believe he has not yet even had a partial mastectomy?
After so much refreshing, unsensationalized realism, the reader of American Virgin gets a poorly done moment of shock value that retreads the single greatest problem with the depiction of trans characters, if I may make such an assertion, with clueless abandon.
Insult added to injury, Mel is one of the few major transmen in comics, which have by and large tended to prominently feature transwomen. Before the big boob flash, Mel was an admirable portrayal, which eschewed emphasizing the genital self over the preferred gender identity in action and art. One could even argue Seagle included references only someone familiar with the process of transition would get (In example: Mel also makes a joke about ‘Thailand? Best damn week of my life was in Thailand.’ (#17, p. 7) Though this appears on the surface a casual joke, many trans individuals must go abroad, often to Thailand, for surgery).
I won’t say all the good of Mel is erased by the reveal; Mel is still overall a good, non-stereotypical portrayal of a transperson. But I haven’t been able to find a copy of the final volume of American Virgin locally to purchase, and I’m not sure it’s worth it. About three-fourths of the way through reading the series, I mentioned to a friend that I was working on American Virgin and asked if he had read the series. Though he said he’d read parts of the first seven issues, he’d never picked the series up because (paraphrased), ‘I know people who talk like [Adam]. I don’t need to read the story of my life.’ (Adam is given to thoughtlessly passing judgment on the sexuality and sexual practices of other cultures from a position of privilege and can condescend to non-Christians.)
As a trans person who also grew up and lives among ‘people who talk like [Adam],’ I know all about the resistance to acceptance, the negativity, and assumption of deception Mel faced. And I live the life of a transperson who consumes media, wherein transpeople are reduced to their barest elements.
And that is, by far, the biggest hurdle for transpeople in comics and all media: moving characters and plotlines beyond the easy archetypal cues writers and artists are comfortable with. It’s about getting beyond the boob on the page and reaching the core of the boob owner, be they male or female. It’s not about the genitals but the person.

• Commenting on GRC Guest Columns: A Guide.
  1) Please assume good faith on the part of the guest. I invited these writers because I am familiar with their work and I think it’s good. I don’t edit their columns, and I may not agree with them 100% on every subject, but I think they say smart and thoughtful things. You are free to disagree with them, but please consider them my honoured guests in this space that I host, and be polite in your disagreement, as per general forum rules. The columnist, if they respond, is naturally bound by those same rules.
  2) If you have questions for the columnist, address them to the columnist (who may or may not respond). If you have ideas related to the topic, discuss them the same way you would discuss them had I written the column.
  3) Guest columnists may write in styles and discuss topics I don’t or haven’t. That difference is almost certainly one of the reasons I invited them here. If you have objections to the guest’s style or choice of topic, you may voice them politely but you may like to consider whether you are actually adding anything to the discussion, or performing the equivalent of saying ‘Karen, your column would be great if it wasn’t written from the point of view of a girl reading comics and getting pissed.’
  With all that in mind, you may well like to discuss this column here!

I’m not going to even pretend to journalistic objectivity here: I think Kate Beaton’s work is fantastic. She has gained internet renown relatively recently, and you are most likely have seen her fantastic webcomics at her website, or her livejournal. She’s probably best known for her history comics, where humanity’s ridiculous, wonderful past is neatly skewered in six panels, but there is so much more to her work. Enjoy!

So, did someone honestly send an email saying you were pretty funny for a girl?
KB: Not in those words exactly. I used to get some emails saying that it was unusual for humor to come from a girl, or implied that. They really did mean it as a compliment, I just don’t think they knew what they were sounding like.
What is it like to be suddenly internet famous?
KB: I’m not really sure! I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone. I am the person who sees the most of the attention directed at me, because of emails and comments, so it’s hard to know what anyone else has taken note of. I don’t have a traffic counter or anything on my website and I think I’d prefer it that way.
That being said, I understand that I have become relatively well known as a webcomic artist in a short amount of time. I’m not certain what to attribute this to.
Awesomeness?
KB: Dang, I wish it was that. I’m not sure! But it is welcome in any case. I had no idea anything I made would be so well received, and for the most part, people who read and write to me are so delightful. I’m bad at answering letters though!

The thing is, I would have been doing this anyway. Maybe not so much on a large scale but I would be making comics; I have been for a long time
You’re probably best known for your history comics. What’s your favourite period of history?
KB: Good question! When I took my major, most people specialized Canadian history, British, Asian what have you. This was probably a good idea. I didn’t do it. I was interested in all of it so I took a lot of courses that were all over the place, and had an Anthropology major besides, which was similarly non-specific.
So I don’t know if I have a favorite time period. Although if you look through the comics, and some people have noticed this, there are a lot of scenes in and around the Regency period. They are pretty fun to draw.
Did you watch Blackadder the Third as a kid?
KB: No! I have seen one episode of Blackadder a few years ago.
Damnit, here I was thinking I had hit the perfect influence.
KB: Hah! Nope. People list my influences for me a lot. I get a lot of ‘this looks like Quentin Blake’. I get a lot of comparisons to other webcartoonists like John Allison or KC Green It’s all pretty flattering, but I can’t even tell you what my influences are. There is so much talent out there.
History, especially the history of the Western world, is largely perceived to be the domain of white men. Do you feel any responsibility to correct this bias in your work?
KB: Not responsibility. Most of the history comics so far are topics that I didn’t choose. I asked readers on two separate occasions to submit topics and I took the first 20 each time. It’s a bit of a challenge, but I also enjoy the topics they choose! They are a sharp lot.
But then, when I am making comics on my own, I tend to go for a lot of obscure figures who I personally think are interesting and deserve a bit of attention. History now is increasingly being written for the people who were once left out of it, which is excellent. I’m glad when I can bring something to light for one of those people.
When you are talking about comics that include figures that everyone is going to ‘get’ though, you are talking about a lot of old white dudes. That’s okay too because they are easier to poke fun at.
I am realizing in making comics the lack of knowledge I have of very many things. I say that I took courses all over the place in university, but it was a tiny university, so really I was still rather restricted, and I gravitate towards countries and figures I know a lot about, so you see a lot of British and Canadian figures.
As it happens, I live in Melbourne, and there are Monash buildings all over the place, but I had no idea who this Monash guy was until you did that comic.
KB: He was such a neat guy. Really impressive.
If anything I like very much that doing history comics is driving me to learn again, since I have been out of school for a while. It’s easy to fall in a rut of not reading, which is something I would normally like to be doing all the time. And I’d say the greatest pleasure is when people tell me that something I have made inspired them to look into it and read about it themselves. Sometimes you have to do that to get the joke but still.
You’ve said that your history comics take days of thought, followed by a quick production process. Is that true of your nonsense comics?
KB: Oh! Sometimes the history ones take days of thought. A lot of times they don’t. It is different for every one. And by days of thought I mean I think of something and let it sit back there until something hits.
The comics in the nonsense section take about a half a minute. I have to say, if there is one thing I am very pleased to be able to do it is writing and drawing something that will make people laugh.
What are your plans for the future of Kate Beaton comics? Merchandise? A Jane Austen biocomic? Finding a name for the site?
KB: Probably finding a name for the site. When I began, it didn’t matter that the website I built wasn’t very good as nobody knew who I was. Things happened fast: I had a website and then I had a lot of people reading it. What are you supposed to do with that?
It all happened just after I moved to Alberta to finish off my student loan payments. During this time I have had very little time to myself, so I haven’t really sat down and made a plan. But I will do that in the coming months, as I am moving to Toronto at the end of the summer.
As for what will happen, your guess is as good as mine. I guess the regular route for webcomics is to sell things and to fix an update schedule and hope for the best. I don’t think I would perform well with a forced update, though I won’t stop making comics.
Herodotus vs Thucydides. Naked oily wrestling cage match. Who walks out?
KB: For some reason I imagine Thucydides being the angrier one so my money is on him. He slammed Herodotus in writing. He’d probably want a piece.

Top Cow are running Pilot Season 2008, where eight new comics get a chance to attract reader votes. The most popular two become on-going series. The rest, presumably, go to a farm in the country. A nice farm, where they can play all day!
One of the comics in this year’s line-up is Genius #1, written by Adam Freeman and Marc Bernadin, with art by Afua Richardson. It charts an explosive introduction to the world’s newest and greatest military genius a 17-year-old female LA gangbanger who unites her neighbourhood against the LAPD.
It’s often hard to tell if something’s solid from a single issue, but Genius shows a lot of promise. It has a killer premise, an intriguing cast, and addresses some really interesting points of race/class/gender dynamics in its few pages. And Richardson pulls out all the stops her art is gorgeous. Oh man, the colours.
Anyway! I was hence eager to take up the opportunity to interview co-writer Adam Freeman.
Genius is your entry in the Top Cow Pilot Season, where success depends on audience appeal. What audience do you envisage exists for Genius?
AF: Hopefully, the audience that is always so vocal about wanting different kinds of stories told. I love super heroes but the genre can only wield so much. In the 1950′s the Western was the most popular movie genre and some amazing films came out of that, but like anything it reaches maximum saturation. Genius is definitely not your average comic story. If readers have an open mind like they claim to I think they will enjoy the ride.
The eponymous genius, Destiny Ajaye, isn’t your standard comics superscientist, but a charismatic military genius, capable of farsighted tactics and strategy. What kind of research did it take to create such a character?
AF: We did research but oddly enough, a lot of it didn’t find its way into the first issue. Being a Pilot Season book it has to serve several masters not only set up the story and give you a satisfying 22 page read, but also tease what the series will deliver if you vote for more. Before finding a home as part of Pilot Season is was originally designed as more of a slow burn intercutting the seemingly random violence of an LA gang with this lone police analyst trying to piece it all together. Once the story telling was condensed a lot of the research specific battles Destiny unknowingly recreates, gang hierarchy etc. was shifted into future issues which hopefully we will get to write. This story has an unbelievable arc that I promise NO ONE will see coming. I hope we get to tell the story so vote!

Excessive police violence is a realistic concern for communities of color, and LA in particular has a terrible and well-publicised history in this regard. Did this play a part in the creation of the story?
AF: The story was born out of two concepts. First, a documentary about these middle America militias that are training for the inevitable race war they see coming. In their minds the inner city ‘animals’ as they poetically like to refer to these minorities are going to break out of the zoo and it will be up to these homemade militias to save us from them. Second, the idea that child prodigies can be born anywhere and have no choosing as to what form their savant-like gifts will come in. We combined these two ideas into the premise: ‘What if the greatest military mind of our generation was born to a female gang banger from South Central L.A.?’
It is also important to point out that, ironically enough, we don’t consider Genius a political book. It does not take sides, it does not pass judgements. In our minds we created this event or conflict and are documenting it through the eyes of characters on both sides of the fence.
Those aware that there’s a military genius on the streets, but unaware of Destiny’s identity, continually refer to her as ‘he’. Do we get to see more of this ironic approach to standard gender portrayal?
AF: Definitely. This whole book plays off of stereotypes. Who says a military genius has to go to West Point? Who says it has to be a ‘he?’ Who says economic status determines raw intelligence? Destiny defies the preconceived idea every character in this book has as to the identity of ‘Suspect Zero.’
To get non-specific for a moment; your comics are co-written. How does that process play out for you and Marc?
AF: Marc and I have known each other since 5th grade. We quickly realized that our interests in comics, movies, books etc. went beyond the fan boy stage. Our friends would see a movie and talk about how awesome the action sequences were. We would huddle and try to figure out HOW they did it. Point is, we always looked at these things with a creator mindset, always knowing one day we wanted to be making these things. All those decades of conversations developed into a creative short hand we share. I now live in L.A. and Marc is back east and our working relationship has never been more productive because of that shorthand.
An idea usually starts as a one liner from of us, ‘What if…’ and then we both run with it from there. We work over the phone, IM, e-mail etc and it is like we are in the same room minus the distractions. Our work sessions become all about the work incredibly focused and impervious to the video game gods that want nothing more to suck us into GTA. We do outlines together, then I will write 5 pages and send it to Marc who makes tweaks, adds five pages, sends it back etc. In the end we have a creation that is 100% both of ours down to each line as opposed to ‘Frankensteining’ things together like other teams work.
One of the military geniuses referenced in Genius is Hannibal. Is this a hint? Are you promising us elephants?
AF: No, but we will have fava beans and chianti. Actually elephants marching down Fairfax is pretty fucking cool.

Remember the cover that rendered me speechless? Oh, sure you do! This one:

Bereft of all words, I ran a competition in this thread, asking for reader response, and offering the gorgeous work of Alitha E. Martinez as a prize. I expect wonderful things from my readers, but the results were surpassingly excellent.
A couple of highlights, before I announce the winner.
Captain Oblivious provided a fantastic commentary on the events that led to the bizarre tableau:
J: Oh my god! This is an unprecedented occurrence at the Apokolips Games Tornado is hulaing so fast that his primary hoops have created a vortex that is sucking Hawkgirl in feet first! Look at her clawing at the ground trying to save herself!
P: Vixen’s gone white from shock! Somebody do something!
Inebriated went for fancy-pancy versifiying:
There is a woman,
In objectivity she shines,
To fulfil geek lust.
An artist draws for,
Corporate statistics say,
Good for business.
Company has lost soul,
Or has it ever really been,
About the stories told.
And an honourable mention of AWESOME goes to CEOIII, for that memorable moment when he, unfamiliar with the heroes in question, identified Vixen (who is a black African woman) as:
a white female superheroine I don’t recognize(some sort of jungle-themed heroine, going by the costume…….because, you know, drop a non-survival trained white person in the jungle and they’ll be ‘king’ in a few weeks……look at Tarzan….headdesk…
Oh yes. Oh yes. Someone who didn’t know who she was took one look at Vixen and went ‘That? Is a white woman.’
Possibly there is something to be learned from this.
But the winner hit me right out of the gate. Tanuki‘s full entry is here, but I started panting for air in the very first paragraph:
I, too, am nearly speechless with awe at how accurately and wonderfully the art conveys the content of the book. Well, I assume. I don’t actually read comic books, but even I can tell just what I would have seen in the comic if I had read it. And really, it makes me happy that Justice League of America is a successful mainstream comic book proudly displayed in bookstores and comic shops worldwide even though its plot revolves around massive superhero orgies.
Congratulations, Tanuki! I have for you two gorgeously illustrated comics that are sadly devoid of four-colour orgies. In consolation, I can offer only my sincerest admiration.

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.

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.

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 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!

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.