On a more annoying note…

Screw Bill Willingham.  Apparently at a convention, he said, “I wanted to gun down those girls who kept asking about the memorial case.”

This is in reference to Project Girl Wonder, which is a fan request that Stephanie Brown, the one female Robin, get a memorial case in the Bat Cave, like all the male Robins have had, because that’s only fair, right?  However, apparently DC doesn’t think a female Robin deserves the same respect male Robins recieved.  Bill Willingham is the guy who killed Stephanie Brown off, in a fairly sexualized manner, so you know he’s a charmer to begin with. 

Girl-Wonder.org in general is a wonderful comics resource for female fans, and I can’t encourage you enough to go check it out.

Geek Girls Rule! #129 – Comics! No, really!! I picked some up!

So, a week or so ago I started clearing out my box at The Dreaming.  Yay! 

I picked up the first five issues of X-men Forever, X-men Origins: Nightcrawler, some PS 238 and Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers issues 1 and 2.  So, this Saturday, after very responsibly cleaning the house, picking up a new TV that a friend gave us, running a couple other errands, and making dinner for Tammy and I, I decided my reward for being a grown up was to sit on my bed and watch the Muppet Show while reading comics.

Because I am a grown up.

So I read the first five X-men Forever (yes, I know, I’m way behind), and I’m digging on it so far.  I really enjoy the storyline, I’m a little confused by the Ororo -v- Ro thing, but I’m sure that will sort itself out.  Although part of me is seriously considering digging out the appropirate comics from 1991 to get all the background (I have them, yes, I do).   I do admit to a little bit of “Cobra would never fight drug dealers with GI Joe”* going on in my head at the idea of Sabretooth working with the X-men, regardless of the reason.  But I do like the writing, the art is good and a style I enjoy.  The storyline with Nick Fury and SHIELD taking more and more control over the group has got a delightful creeping anxiety quality to it that is unsettling in a good way.  I don’t know about this whole “mutants burn themselves out young” thing that they’ve got going on, but we’ll see where they go with that.  I am more than willing to continue reading to see what they do with it.

I picked up 6 and 7 this weekend while dropping off another box of used gaming books and a couple of duplicate comics.  I’m really looking forward to reading them. 

X-men Origins:  Nightcrawler, I’m a little less enthused about.  I don’t hate it.  But I always liked that Nightcrawler got to have a happy childhood, the juxtaposition of the kid who looked like a demon having a happier childhood than most of his more conventional-looking team-mates just seemed right to me.  I don’t care for this new, “The Rom drove Margolis and her children out because she rescued Kurt, and they’ve been working for this awful, sadistic, child-abusing douchebag ever since” backstory. 

Granted, as no one has said thing one about the Devil being his father, I’m more ok with it than with past backstories.  *cough* Chuck Austen *cough*

But I’m just not thrilled.  I always liked Nightcrawler’s childhood, and this retcon makes me kind of sad.  His adult life has been tragic enough, do we have to give him a screwed up, tragic childhood as well?

Then I read Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers issues 1 and 2.  I very nearly gave up on it in the first three pages, because it starts out just nauseatingly twee.  I mean, so saccharine sweet you kind of want to barf, or inject insulin.  But it develops some real bite relatively soon after that.  Frog Thor (I love just typing that) has gone missing and the Pet Avengers are trying to track him down.  As a huge fan of the work of Diane Duane and other authors who have animals living lives parallel to the human world, I really enjoy the concept of all of this going on with the Pet Avengers, of which the humans/human-looking mutants are completely unaware.  As a literary critique nerd, this sort of thing echoes the hyper-awareness the underclass has to have regarding their “superiors.”  I.e. the servants know everything about the people they work for, but the employers don’t know a damn thing about their employees. 

Anyway, it is a conceit I enjoy greatly.  Plus the over-arching storyline of the myths returning to Earth (willingly or not) is one I have been madly in love with in so many incarnations over the years. 

Now that things are more settled, look for more comic columns again here. 

*This is something my father said while watching GI Joe with me in the early 1990s over Saturday morning breakfast.

Geek Girls Rule! #105 – Man, I have a lot of stuff.

Ok, I don’t know if it’s like this for all geeks, but damn we have a lot of crap.  A LOT of crap.  We’ve been going through boxes and closets, and trying to divest ourselves of a good chunk of it.  I don’t know if all geeks are packrats like this, but an awful lot of the geeks I hang with are.

Part of it, geeks are information hoarders.  And yes, while technology is somewhat more compact than it was, I know I’m not the only one out there with a 12 year old computer sitting in my closet because it’s the only system that will play an old favorite game (Blood Bowl) and there’s a bunch of stuff on there I would like to retrieve one day, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.

Another form which information takes is books, and we have… many.  We have applied a second layer of insulation, in the form of bookshelves on every flat wall, to our living space.  Now, some of them I’m not ever giving up:  my copy of “Unicorn Variations” signed by Zelazny, my collected works of Manly Wade Wellman, the hardcover Little House on the Prairie books my grandmother bought me when I was little, the complete L. Frank Baum Wizard of Oz, and I could keep going.  We have gotten better in recent years about culling the collection every so often and selling them off or donating them to a library.  But still, after about six months of the Geek Husband What Rules picking me up at a Barnes and Noble after work, yeah, those shelves fill right back up real quick.

In addition to information, we also have music.  The Geek Husband What Rules is a Music Nerd of the first water.  He used to DJ at a college radio station and occasionally at the club where we both worked.  As a result, we have a couple thousand CDs, most of which we got for free.  We have a HUGE Reggae and Dancehall collection, as well as Industrial, Heavy Metal, Nu Wave, Punk, Ska, my chick rock, Rockabilly and the classics like the Beatles, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Sr. and Patsy Cline.

After that come the comics and comics-related collectibles.  I have the wall of Nightcrawler, which is not quite complete, but getting there.  We have a Man-Eating Cow action figure, lots of Spawn, the Hansen Brothers from Slapshot and lots of other random things that catch our fancies.

I also collect fountain pens, hedgehog figures and Devil Duckies.

THEN we have the gaming shelves.  Traditional, Indie, weird, all sorts of RPGs populate the collection.  Early White Wolf, two editions of GURPS, two editions of Warhammer FRPG, ASL, dozens of copies of White Dwarf and Dragon magazine all grace those shelves.

We really do have an insane amount of just crap, but we’re getting better.  In fact I spent this evening going through a bunch of my writing from jr. high and high school and tossing out old notebooks.  I have not yet decided whether to throw a dramatic reading or a bonfire.

G.I. Joe fanfic with a serious Mary Sue, anyone?

Geek Girls Rule! #102 – Really, Marvel?

Oh for the love of little green apples… 

I first heard about this from Hoyden about Town.  Essentially, villian Chameleon impersonates Peter Parker and sleeps with Peter’s room-mate.  When people start to point out to the writer that this constitutes rape, his response is:

“My understanding of the definition of rape is that it requires force or the threat of force, so no. Using deception to trick someone into granting consent isn’t quite the same thing.
“Which is not to say it isn’t a horrible, evil, reprehensible thing that Chameleon did. He is a bad man.
“He insults parapelegics[sic] and dips people in acid too.”

Faith in humanity sinking… 

So, according to Fred Van Lente, someone being blackmailed into sex, isn’t rape.  Someone having the choice of losing their job or putting out, isn’t rape.  Someone drugged unconscious or passed out being penetrated (you need violence for rape, remember?), isn’t rape.  Someone thinking they’re with one person when it’s really another isn’t rape.

Actually, according to  courts in the US (you’ll want to check your specific state laws) and Canada, if you impersonate someone else  to gain sexual access to someone, it is indeed sexual assault.  If someone has not consented to sex with YOU, it is rape.  Period.  It doesn’t mean you can’t pretend to be a fighter pilot to impress a chick at a bar, although trust me, we aren’t ever fooled.  It does mean you can’t bang your twin brother’s girlfriend without her knowing which twin you are.

Fortunately, several folks over at i09 have been calling this guy on his bullshit.  Not all of them.  There are still a fair number of idiots who don’t get it, but at least some people are speaking out on this. 

The second offensive part of this is the fact that after sleeping with “Peter” once, the character in question immediately turns into the controlling girlfriend from Hell.  Really?  You think women do that?  Seriously?  Have you met one? 

Honestly, the most likely result of a tumble on the kitchen floor with a previously platonic room-mate would be some awkward silence, a lot of “um”-ing and “So, uh, where do we stand after this afternoon?”*  Shit, I can draw the panel in my head.  But I guess a hot Latina in Spiderman’s t-shirt is way more interesting than showing her fully clothed, rubbing the back of her neck and awkwardly not meeting Peter’s eyes. 

So, to paraphrase Keith Olbermann, “Mr. Fred Van Lente, today’s Worst Person in the World!!!”  Ok, not the world.  Just my small part of it.

*Yes, I speak from experience here.  Sigh.  My libido has ever been my Achilles’ heel, and hot geeky boys my kryptonite.