Wonder Woman News
Liz Baudler reviewed my book at New City.
On HU
Featured Archive Post: Michael Arthur on Magical girl anime.
Linke on Valerie D’Orazio and Goodbye to Comics.
Me on Insidious and why you need sin in your horror films.
Chris Gavaler on superheroines old and new.
Me on Orphan Black, Pam Rosenthal’s The Edge of Impropriety and how the closet shapes genre fiction.
Matt Healey on Green Fairy and searching for great furry genre fiction.
Patrick Carland on Steven Universe and narrative arcs in animated series.
Shonté Daniels on the mediocrity of Mario Party 10.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the New Republic I wrote about how indie music defines itself through whiteness.
At the Atlantic I wrote about Trevor Noah and the petty etiquette of discrimination.
At Urbanfaith.com I wrote about Anthony Heilbut’s wonderful history of Gospel The Gospel Sound, still great some 40+ years later.
At Ravishly I wrote about:
—adolescent brain science and its limited applicability to policy
—Lena Dunham and how anti-Semitism has been abolished in America.
—the terrible new A&E show about saving sex workers.
—Azealia Banks’ whiteface video and appropriation
—CBR’s list of the greatest female comics creators and the surprising ways its different than their overall list of greatest comics creators.
At Splice Today I wrote about:
—Scott Walker, better a liar than a warmonger
—Lena Dunham, Stephin Merritt and weeping on the corpse of meritocracy.
Other Links
Katy Lee on Japan and blackface.
Robert Jones Jr. on DC’s Cyborg and racism.
Ijeoma Oluo on how your fave is problematic.
The Sun Times on efforts to move forward with torture reparations in Chicago.
You’re right, of course, that CSBG’s women list is more diverse in genre. But that’s only, perversely, because Marvel and DC are not diverse enough in the demographics of their hiring. If they published more female high-profile competent mediocrities, the lists would have been 25 Gail Simones and 25 Amanda Conners (or perhaps I should say 25 female Kurt Busieks and 25 female Alex Rosses).
Well, that’s true to some degree. I think that it still matters, though? That is, yes, superhero comics have been particularly focused on male readers and particularly bad about hiring anyone who isn’t a man. But — I also think that if there were a vast influx of women creators, superhero comics would be different. Like, among other things, the fandom might well be more interested in other kinds of comics too (like manga, for example.) The point of the piece is in part that changing gender balance has other effects; it’s not just a one to one substitution.
Also, I suspect that the women’s list poll actually pulled in different voters. I bet CBR’s general readership tilts significantly more male than the people who voted in this poll.
Yeah, I agree with that, especially the second para.