season of the bitch

This post on girl power in comics, from Retconning My Brain, is a seriously awesome piece that made me want to read a lot of these books (Power Girl, Batgirl, etc.) more than I already did.

The original “Girl power,” a sugared-up, popified version of what Riot Grrl was, hit when I was in my last years of high school. The late 90s, which brought us post-communications deregulation prefab pop, but also at least sort of acknowledged that women wanted pop culture that was their own, and that there was more to it than fighting over a man on a soap opera. It brought us Xena and Buffy, too.

I’ve never been the type of feminist who is terribly bothered by the word “girl”–if prodded, I can even conjure up a defense of using it as a word that doesn’t contain the word “man,” although that’s really not any less useless to me than spelling woman with a y. At the ripe old age of almost-thirty, I still refer to myself as a girl and usually anyone else who is my age or younger. I’ve even been scolded for it by friends male and female. But I can’t really help it, and I wonder if the twin specters of Riot Grrl and Girl Power are to blame.

I was thinking about Girl Power, while I was writing my generally-happy reactions to the stories, and I remember learning about third wave feminism and discussing Girl Power in my class, and the positives and negatives. You had shows with strong (Xena) or complex (Ally McBeal) female leads, but they were wearing short short skirts (and some of them could have used a sandwich, ahem). You had the Spice Girls saying friends come first (in a way more empowering way than bros before hos, yo) but most of their popular songs were still about finding love or something. I think. I can’t actually admit in public to listening to the Spice Girls. You know.

So. Is the rash of “Girl” comics a revival of this kind of feminism-lite? There certainly has been a trend lately, especially with DC books, toward female leads. Batwoman, Batgirl, Gotham City Sirens (and yes, Marvel Divas) and many more that I’m probably missing because this just isn’t really my area of expertise. The pop universe doesn’t seem to be swinging that way in the dramatic fashion it did in the Spice Girls era, but we do have Twilight and other pop-culture phenomena that are aimed at girls bringing a new demographic to geek culture–check out Vaneta Rogers’ awesome piece on The Fangirl Invasion.

Either way, I have to agree with this statement, again from Retconning My Brain:

What it came down to for me this week was that it was nice to buy a bunch of comics that are led my female superheroes, who are super with or without their male counterparts, but don’t exist in a vacuum of femaleness or solely for the gaze of the male reader. They’re there to kick some ass and be super.

Amen to that.

It’s my holiday break, and I’m celebrating it by working at the bike shop. In between battles with chains and grease, and catching up with friends, I haven’t had too much time for blogging or for the news–I’ve missed Maddow for two weeks straight and am sad about it!

I have been keeping up with the Blog@Newsarama, because, well, it’s my job, kids. Yesterday I wrote a post about webcomics that prompted a bunch of responses, so I thought I’d repost here and see if any of my regular readers have a favorite webcomic.

So I’ve been thinking about doing a weekly webcomic column here, but it occurred to me that I’m not actually that up on the webcomic scene. That said, I’ve got a few thoughts on the whole concept, as well as a couple of favorites.

I wrote below that print is dying, and I’m sticking by that assertion. However, to clarify, I would like to note that newspapers will be the first to go, and that magazines and books will be sticking around far longer. It just isn’t pleasant to read long articles or books on a computer screen, and I’ve only met one person who owned a Kindle–and that guy also had three cell phones and two laptops just in his bag.

Comics, I think, will maintain a print following for quite a while. The art looks better on paper, and comics fans tend to be the type of people who like the tangible items to collect. We’re pack rats. We see nothing wrong with buying all the single issues of a book, the trades, and then the fancy reissues when those come out, too.

Still, the Web has a place in the comics community, and not just as a place for talking about comics.

Webcomics seem to come in a couple of varieties (bear in mind that, as I noted above, I’m not really up on the webcomics world, and I’d love your input). There’s the comic strip, which seems to be taking over for newspaper comic strips the way Web sites are taking over for newspapers. Most of you are probably familiar with them, and some of your favorite print comic creators do webcomic strips too–I happen to love Becky Cloonan’s Comic Attacks.

These are bite-size comics that don’t tie into a longer narrative, and can be consumed quickly, like an mp3 or a blog post. Many media critics, Warren Ellis among them, have noted that the Web is a place for short bits of information. Ellis called it “burst culture.” Webcomics like this fit perfectly into that picture. » Read the rest of this entry «

Got an essay up at Shotgun Reviews about Watchmen and aging. Check it out.

The Watchmen trailer is beautiful, a comic fan’s wet dream—it’s lush and dark and brooding and scary, and the world is perfect. It gives away a little too much, but that’s not my biggest complaint.

It rubbed me the wrong way only for one reason—the ages are all wrong.

Air, by G. Willow Wilson.

Female, Muslim, and Mutant: A Critique of Muslim Women in Comic Books at Racialicious.

I’m quite happy with this interview that just went up today on Newsarama. G. Willow Wilson is a journalist turned comic book writer, and her excellent new book Air just hit stands yesterday. My local shop was already sold out, so you might have to ask your shop to re-order, but check it out. It’s quite good.

And check out my interview, please. There’s a link to click to recommend it, and I’d appreciate if you did that too, but enjoy the story.

So I recently wrote an article on the 20th anniversary of the Sandman for Comic Foundry magazine. It will be in the next issue, so pick it up.

I made an excellent playlist to listen to while I was re-reading and staring at interview transcripts and writing, and though I can’t share my actual music with you, I thought I’d share my list, anyway. Isn’t there an option on iTunes somewhere that you can make a playlist and people can download things if they want them? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Anyway, list below the fold. Because it’s really long. But I put in some pictures, too. » Read the rest of this entry «

Yeah, I loved it. And blogged about it over at BUST, complete with lots of linky goodness and some pictures. Check it out.

This time with Highly Educated Anthropological Analysis. From Isabelle, whom I befriended at WWChicago, and got quoted heavily. (See if you can guess which one’s me. Like it ain’t obvious.)

We will now have a break from talk of feminism and whether or not I’m a sellout to the patriarchy. Why? Because I’m going to talk about a big summer action movie!

Which was amazing. Get on seeing it now. For those of you that haven’t, there be spoilers below, so click at your peril….

» Read the rest of this entry «