Song of the Week
On HU
Featured Archive Post: Me on the first episode of Agents of Shield, which is really racist.
Chris Gavaler on Jane Austen’s Clark Kent.
Robert Stanley Martin looks at on sale dates for comics in early 1943: Walt Kelly, Carl Barks and more.
Our Joss Whedon Roundtable continues!
Christopher Melkus on the Dollhouse and Philip K. Dick.
Megan Purdy on Firefly as whitewashed Western.
Darryl Ayo on humor and friendship in the Avengers.
Ana Cabral Martins on Whedon’s logistical talents on display in the Avengers films.
And a pause in the Whedon roundtable: Kim O’Connor writes about Charleston and Charlie Hebdo.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Guardian I wrote about strong female characters, farting horse, and Kate Beaton’s new children’s book.
At Playboy I wrote about
—writing about feminism for Playboy. (this article was up last week, then taken down, but is now up again for good.)
—Blade and superhero nostalgia.
At Splice Today I wrote about:
—music releases from Africa: Songhoy Blues, Mbongwana Star, and Nozinja.
Other Links
Jamil Smith on why Clarence Thomas’ anti-gay marriage argument is bad.
Andrew Sullivan on marriage equality.
Chelsea Summers on Caged Heat and Orange Is the New Black.
Ah, Piggie and Gerald has been one of the pleasant surprises of trawling the library for picture books that don’t suck. Bonus pleasant surprise that Piggie is a girl, without any overt cartoony signifiers of femininity. It’s depressing how 95% of picture book characters are boys — honestly, do all the anthropomorphic dogs/cars/haemorrhoid creams/whatever really need to be male? I just gender-reassign most of the time, so it was nice to discover that I didn’t have to with Piggie…
I love Mo Willems. He’s so great.
That Blade article is boss as hell. I love the first Blade movie, and you explained it better than I ever could.
Aw, thanks! Glad you liked it.
Absolute nonsense that Blade kicked off the superhero fad. That honor belongs to The Crow, a movie which Blade borrowed its goth/industrial tone and design from.
Blade’s usually credited with kicking off Marvel’s film division.