Talk Comics To Me

I’ve never been a hardcore comics fan, but I’ve admired the medium since my friend Justin very sensibly got me addicted to Sandman. (If you have any literary-snob type friends who sneer at comics but like a well-crafted SF novel, give them Sandman next time they start an anti-comics rant. That’ll shut ’em up.)

Cover of Sandman: The Dream Hunters
Cover of Sandman: The Dream Hunters

Alas, he became a husband and father and religious man, and I moved away, and thus my entertainment executive was lost. With no one feeding me comics on the regular, I’ve lost touch. That’s true of all fiction, mind – since I became a geoblogger, I haven’t often had time for recreational reading. The things I’ve missed! And I was a DC/Vertigo girl, so I know very little of Marvel. Continue reading “Talk Comics To Me”

Talk Comics To Me
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“This isn’t their problem, guys. It’s ours.”

Comic-Con, mecca for geeks, reflects geek culture – and that includes the harassment (h/t). This isn’t the only event that’s put geeks harassing women who are also geeks in the spotlight recently, but it’s one of the biggest. It’s also seen a cosplayer brutally attacked.

Sexual harassment and misogyny are huge problems in fandom, as evinced by the above. So now seems like a good time to share this bit I’ve been meaning to highlight from Andy Khouri’s Fake Geek Guys: A Message to Men About Sexual Harassment. Continue reading ““This isn’t their problem, guys. It’s ours.””

“This isn’t their problem, guys. It’s ours.”

Superheroes and the Law

Okay, all you geeks, here’s a little something a damned good friend at work turned me on to:

Law and the Multiverse. Read it. Love it. Image filched from their blog for promotional purposes.
Law and the Multiverse. Read it. Love it. Image filched from their blog for promotional purposes.

Seriously. Law and comic book worlds. Law as it pertains to superheroes, supervillains  and other comic denizens. This is awesome. I’m a huge advocate of using stories and story worlds to teach other things. I learned a lot of my science and developed a burning passion for it partly through people who wrote books discussing the science of Star Trek. I learned to appreciate philosophy by reading essays by philosophers exploring the philosophy of Middle Earth and Batman. So why not learn a little law by reading what lawyers have to say about how laws would work in comic book universes?

Click the banner if you’re with me on that.

This is bloody brilliant, and I hope they turn it in to a book.

Superheroes and the Law

Comic Book Secrets Revealed! Terrible News!

OMG, they’re killing Batman! However will I cope?

Apparently, in the comic books, Batman is…

dead.

Bruce Wayne — who by night is Batman — gets murdered by a man claiming to be the father he thought was dead.

In a highly controversial new comic book storyline, Bruce, who first appeared in 1939, is killed by Simon Hurt — the leader of the shady Black Glove organization.

Now, my first response to this was, “Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s been DONE.”

The Stranger, my wonderful hometown newspaper, expressed my sentiments much better:

Oh my God. This is terrible. How could they kill Batman. Oh my God. There has never been anything like this in comic book history. They’ve raped my childhood. I must buy multiple copies of that issue because it is sure to be a collector’s item. Etc. Etc.

Nailed it.

I love comics, and I usually love the DC universe, but for fuck’s sake, this is beyond lame. It just screams desperate execs trying to figure out a way to get gullible fans to freak out and buy more issues. The problem is, I don’t think there’s enough gullible fans left after that “Death of Superman” debacle. Seemed like everybody jumped on the “kill a major character” bandwagon after that, and it’s lost its novelty. Yet here they are, trying to make a tired old idea seem fresh and new, trying to hit people with a trainload of emotion rather than engaging them with truly creative and useful ideas…

Hey.

waitaminute.

I know where this is coming from. They’ve been talking to Andrew Breitbart, haven’t they?

Comic Book Secrets Revealed! Terrible News!

300

NP pointed out this evening that I’ve reached post 300. I’ve been so busy it almost escaped my notice. That would have been tragic, because I would’ve missed my chance to pay tribute to one of the best graphic novels and best films of all time.

I wouldn’t have had an excuse to paste enormous pictures of nearly naked men with dead-sexy abs all over my blog.

But that’s just a gimmick. Obvious. Of course I’d post something about 300 on my 300th post. Stands to reason, dunnit?

But I can’t rest an entire post on geeky hormone-driven paens to comic books and comic book films, no matter how good. This blog isn’t about that. It’s about politics, religion, science, and stuff. And don’t forget the stuff. What to do, what to do…

Paul from Cafe Philos comes to the rescue with a post that incorporates a little bit o’ everything. He caught a politial gaffe I missed! It has politics (McCain), religion (beer), science (beer), and stuff (beer controversy!).

Seriously. It’s even on CNN:

John McCain issued a promise Tuesday that may cause a bit of unrest with a broad swath of voters:

He’ll veto every single beer?
In a slip of the tongue while railing against excessive earmarks at the National Small Business Summit in Washington, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee inadvertently pledged to veto the popular alcoholic beverage.

We can’t let this one pass, my darlings. If George W. Bush was voted into office on the stength of being the kind of guy you could picture yourself having a beer with, what do you think it’ll do for McCain’s chances if blue-collar voters find out that the man’s not only an addlepated fuckwit, but a sworn enemy of beer? This could be our moment. This could decide the very future of America. We must spread the word:

“McCain vows to veto beer!”

It doesn’t matter if he simply misspoke. The Republicons beat Dems bloody with their every slip o’ the tongue – we shall pay them the same courtesy. Every beer-drinking Average Joe, every homebrewer, every frat boy and down-to-earth girl, needs to hear what their choices are in this election: beer-hating old coot, or beer-loving American. We shall spread the truthiness of this gaffe from sea to shining sea.

Paul has created a graphic we can use to create signs, shirts, steins, and buttons:

No. He will not. He shall not. He is the clear choice for this November. Remember what those 300 brave Spartans would have given their lives for:

Honor the 300. Fight against this beer-vetoing madman! Elect Obama, and let the beer flow like amber waves of grain!

300