Wonder Woman News
I am giving a talk at Dartmouth Sat. morning on WW; maybe even as you read this.
Matthew Cheney gave me a really nice review on his blog.
Joan Hilty reviewed my book at the Wellesley Women’s Review of Books.
On HU
Featured Archive Post: James Romberger on Marie Severin.
Me on how the success of Louis Armstrong doesn’t disprove Jim Crow.
Should I do a kickstarter for my next book?
Ibrahim Ineke with a devotional reading of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight.
Aaron Kashtan on whether comics geekdom can become more inclusive.
Chris Gavaler on the Nepal earthquake and superhero Orientalism.
Roy T. Cook on the paradox of comics; reading pictures and drawing words.
Nix 66 on 8 minutes, sex workers, and getting truth from women’s bodies.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Guardian I wrote about how the Black Widow/Hulk romance sucked.
At the Atlantic I reviewed an excellent historical comic about the Civil War.
At Playboy:
—I talked about cell phone’s important but limited role in holding police accountable.
—I reviewed Maya Rodale’s Dangerous Books for Girls, about why people hate romance novels.
—I wrote about how Age of Ultron is a slave narrative and you should root for the robots.
—I wrote about how you can’t have feminist liberation without choice.
At Quartz I reviewed Sam Magg’s Fangirls Guide to the Galaxy.
At Splice Today I wrote about how My dog is dumber than my cat.
Other Links
Katherine Cross on choice feminism.
Tara Burns on how sex workers killed 8 minutes.
Juniper Fitzgerald on discrimination against sex workers in academia.
Paul Thomas on the disappointing black Captain America.
I’m glad you wrote about the new Avengers movie, I was wondering when that was gonna show up on HU…
Even more than the Hulk/Black Widow thing — which you could argue the movie subverts at the end when (SPOILER) — the movie just doesn’t work that well as a movie because there are too many in-jokes and plotlines only comics fans will appreciate… any thematic thread there might have been is buried under continuity and crossover porn, you know?
Like even character development, which is Whedon’s strength, is either borrowed (from the Hawkeye comic) or undermined when the new characters have to be the ones making all the sacrifices so the established characters can live…
And besides that, anything about the movie is undermined by the Infinity Gems plotline because there’s just way for stones-of-ultimate-power to NOT be ridiculous. (At least Guardians of the Galaxy had the advantage of being a comedy from the get-go.)
Anyway I’ve heard that Whedon is out of the next movie because he didn’t want to deal with all the ridiculous Civil War crossover stuff Marvel supposedly wants to put in… smart move, honestly.
The actual moral of Avengers: Age of Ultron is that one shouldn’t entrust the fate of humanity to a hastily-programmed AI created in a three-day coding binge building on previous work done by villains???
Anyway I think you’re right about the slave narrative, but I also don’t think we’re supposed to totally side with the Avengers. It’s not like Black Widow wasn’t (unconsciously?) manipulating Banner so he’d be a more effective fighter on the team; and it’s not like Ultron was wrong about the Avengers being blind defenders of the status quo. We just root for them because we *like* seeing the status quo upheld… especially if we are comics fans.
Yeah…I think there’s some space to read against the film.
I don’t think it’s any worse than the first one, honestly. I liked this one more even, because I had high hopes for the first and was disappointed, whereas for this one I thought it would be utter crap, and was pleasantly surprised that it was mediocre.
Cute dog!
I was actually very satisfied with Ultron, although the robot-smashing got monotonous.