It’s a sad statement of how screwy comics can be that a Batwoman design featuring sensible shoes is being hailed as a breakthrough big deal.
Or maybe it’s just the timing.
Dunc reads: Books from March
Sorry to be so late, but I assure you, these are indeed all the books I read last month. If this has taught me nothing else, it’s that I read a lot less books than I thought I did… Continue reading “Dunc reads: Books from March”
Marvel misses the point yet again
Did Marvel took that one guy’s rant on woman and comics– Remember, the one that unleashed a furious response from the female comicsphere – a little too much to heart? Check out an upcoming mini-series, Marvel Divas, as announced by Dude-in-Chief Joe Quesada:
“The idea behind the series was to have some sudsy fun and lift the curtain a bit and take a peep at some of our most fabulous super heroines. In the series, they’re an unlikely foursome of friends–Black Cat, Hell Cat, Firestar, and Photon–with TWO things in common: They’re all leading double-lives and they’re all having romantic trouble. The pitch started as “Sex and the City” in the Marvel Universe, and there’s definitely that “naughty” element to it, but I also think the series is doing to a deeper place, asking question about what it means…truly means…to be a woman in an industry dominated by testosterone and guns. (And I mean both the super hero industry and the comic book industry.) But mostly it’s just a lot of hot fun.
There’s some hope that the execution could turn out better than it sounds – the writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, is on the staff of HBO’s Big Love, a show that has sympathetic portrayals of women in a society that pays even less lip-service to equality than comics. But with an introduction that uses words like ‘naughty’ and ‘hot fun,’ the backlash is likely to be very loud.
Edward, may I treat you to a stake dinner?
This was actually all over the internets a few months ago, but Paula helpfully reminded me of it today. Sure to be a huge hit at this year’s Dragon*Con and other places where people who get the joke will congregate, the shirt is available for both men and women. Wear it hoping that the Twilighters actually have a sense of humor offline.
Marvel tries for ‘female product,’ kinda fails
This would actually be kind of hilarious if it wasn’t rather sad… Marvel has apparently decided that the trick to getting girls to buy their merchandise are… Chibis and cosmetics. And yes, they actually use the term ‘female product.’ Seriously!
“Since our core customer has always been guys, we need to be very careful when we introduce female product so that we don’t alienate our core,” said Paul Gitter, president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc. “What we have found through testing is that we haven’t alienated them, which gives us the OK to move forward with female product.”
Yes, god forbid they alienate the menfolk.
Points for trying, I guess, but isn’t there some kind of middle road here? Do they really have to go over to the hearts-and-pink-things side – or define ‘female’ as ‘preteen’ – to get women to buy merchandise? (Via Maggiesox, who has her rant on.)
You still can’t sell your fanfic: Twilight edition
I hate to make two Twilight posts in a week, but now it seems the fandom has their own Lori Jareo wannabe in the form of LadySybill, who’s written Russet Noon, a post-Breaking Dawn story about Bella’s other love interest, Jacob Black. Nothing surprising about that as a fanfic: But she’s calling it a “tribute novel” and was directing readers to… eBay? And it seems she thinks she can get away with it because… Stephenie Meyer didn’t draw pictures of her characters:
The characters in SM’s novels were not copyrighted because she never drew them or hired an artist to draw them. Today she shares her character copyrights with Summit. And, no, Russet Noon does not have direct permission from SM to publish this sequel, which is why the article says that it is a “Tribute” or “Unauthorized” Sequel.
And here’s what her ‘publisher’ has to say:
When fictional characters become such an intricate part of the popular psyche, as is the case with the Twilight Saga, legal boundaries become blurred, and copyright laws become increasingly difficult to define.
Yeah, that would totally hold up in court. Get the rest of the story and boggle at length at Sparklefield and Fandom Wank.
UPDATE: Has LadySybill seen the light?
Wacky merchandise of the day: Let the Twilight candy hearts dazzle you!
Yes, these Twilight conversation hearts are for real: I actually saw them in Borders today. Some of them have glitter and one says “Dazzle.” IT’S LIKE THEY’RE SPOOFING THEMSELVES.
Of course, the Twilight folks are breaking no records here: The infamous Jar Jar lollipop beats this by miles and miles. But it gave me a good laugh this morning.
Video: Lex Luthor asks for federal bailout
Mad Men’s Jon Hamm plays comic’s biggest industrialist in this touching video of corporate need. Snicker.
Dunc reads: Books from January and February ’09
I started doing capsule reviews of the books I had read a back in January on my own, but it occurred to me this might be a feature you guys would enjoy. I’m honestly not much of a reviewer (or, if you’ve known me long enough, I’m way out of practice) but what the hell.
Territory by Emma Bull
I read this in bits and pieces over both months, and I’d probably need a dedicated reread before I could review it fairly. My first impression: It was okay, but it never really grabbed me. (Though to be fair, since I was reading in spurts it might not have gotten the chance to.) Maybe someone with more of an interest in the Old West (I have about zilch.) would get more out of it. [Amazon]
Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli
Anelli is best-known in fandom as webmistress of The Leaky Cauldron, one of the biggest Harry Potter fan sites, and her book traces both the rise of the books in popular culture and the fandom surrounding them. I like HP, but I was never obsessed with it, and while I know some about the fandom, it was only in general terms and what made it on Fandom Wank. So I was rather surprised to find this book absolutely fascinating. It’s about three-quarters exploration of the fandom (covering such things as wizard rock, religious protesters and that one oh-so-controversial Rowling interview) and one-quarter memoir, and, if nothing else, a great primer on how fandom in general works. I suspect it might not be half as interesting to those who actually had front-row seats to things like the shipping wars, but for those of us on the periphery… Recommended. [Amazon]
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
I’m going to be honest: I mainly bought this because the cover art of this particular edition is gorgeous. And of course, as a child of the 80’s, I adored the movie. (Please don’t remake it, Hollywood.) Alas, I found the book much less fascinating. Of course, the movie only adapts half the story here… And maybe that’s why I was bored through the second half. I don’t know. Was it worth it? I’m not sorry, just a little sad that it didn’t live up to my childhood love. At least the cover is still pretty. [Amazon]
Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle
Like any good geekling, I read the bulk of L’Engle’s Murry-O’Keefe books (A Wrinkle in Time, A Swiftly Tilting Planet) back in grade school. But I never tried her other, more earthbound series, featuring the Austin family. This is the first of them, and while I can’t say it’s going to knock Planet out of my top spot it was a nice quick read. I really need to remember to pick up the next two… [Amazon]
An Alphabetical Life by Wendy Werris
Werris has worked as a bookseller and publisher sales rep, and this book is a memoir of her life in the business. It was a nice peek into how things worked back before the chains took over, but I can’t say I was fascinated. [Amazon]
Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin
(I actually read this book late last year. Consider it a bonus.) The title character is a pivotal yet all-but-unexplored character in Virgil’s The Aeneid, the daughter of the Latin king that Aeneas marries. LeGuin tells the tale from her perspective, giving her a voice in the story of the founding of Rome. There’s far more to it than that, but I should probably defer to the professionals on this one. Recommended. [Amazon, but you may want to wait for the paperback in April]
MGK’s final frontier of book cover mocking
MightyGodKing photoshops again… This time, only Star Trek novels! I think I finally understand why the Thrawn trilogy covers are so awful… Someone was looking at all those Next Generation books as a model.