Dance of the Puppets

Bugged about Big Finish

2009-01-04T17:45:00.002Z

I did a review a little while ago of one of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio productions. I've listened to a few of these, and even a couple more since the one I reviewed.

The trick is to avoid listening to the extras they put on at the end after the drama, in which various people involved with the production congratulate each other about how brilliant it was. I'm sure they've worked hard on it, and they are on a bit of a buzz after working through some fairly intensive recording sessions, but telling me it's fantastic when I've just listened to it and I know it is not fantastic just makes me more aware of its shortcomings.

So two pieces of advice to Big Finish productions:

1) Cut out all the extra bits that are just self-congratulatory lovey-stuff. Either give us something that is going to enhance our appreciation of the production or don't bother.

2) Get a script editor who understands that highly convoluted plotting does not equal clever storytelling.

So is Final Crisis over yet or what?

2009-01-04T17:14:00.002Z

Event overkill in the DC universe

Now I don't for one second think there's some big conspiracy at DC to undermine Final Crisis and make a fool of Grant Morrison; it's just a side effect of company greed out of control.

Final Crisis was presented to us as the big climax to the trilogy, following the awesome Crisis on Infinite Earths and the disposable Ultimate Crisis. The rot set in a year before it even started. Morrison had requested that the New Gods not be used in other comics in the lead up to FC, so that he could build up his reinterpretation of them. So Dan Didio rushed out and commissioned the dreadful Death of the New Gods mini-series, which was not only a bad, bad comic, but directly contravened events in Final Crisis, and gave Morrison a handicap before he'd even started.

So Final Crisis rolls around, and just as what's supposed to be the big event kicks off, DC elects to run several other big stories, each with their own spin-offs. There's Maelstrom, which ties into a bunch of Superman-related titles, there's Kingdom's Come A Bit Early in JSA and friends, there's the build up to next year's big event in all the Green Lantern books, and there's even Morrison's own Batman's dead no he isn't over in the Bat-family.

At first I assumed that at least some of these fitted together in some convoluted way with Final Crisis, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and consequently I can't keep track of what is a spin-off from which event. Especially the ones that are convoluted side-stories to Final Crisis.

The result is that I end up reading less comics, rather than more. And I have no idea whether Final Crisis is even finished yet.

Who even gives a

2008-11-12T21:37:00.005Z

Doctor Who: The Dark Husband
Big Finish audio adventures

I'm sure that the vast majority of people watching Doctor Who now have little interest in the previous incarnation of the show and are blissfully unaware that it is carrying on in the form of audio dramas produced by Big Finish featuring original cast from Doctors 5 to 8.

Don't be fooled by the professional look and the official BBC license; this is definitely a fan production. I've listened to a few and, although having their own continuity, are not generally obsessed by it (1) They are for the most part okay, with rare bouts of originality (2), but for the most part don't exactly push the envelope.

Which brings me to one I've been listening to today. It's called The Dark Husband, and features the 7th Doctor (3), Ace (4) and some other guy they seem to have picked up along the way. I should probably wait until I've finished it before commenting, but I'm not sure that's ever going to happen.

The first episode is so arch you could mistake it for the Colosseum. So many lampshades are hung about every Who cliché they are enacting that they must be the best lit studio on the planet. And yet the plot, such as it is, involves two factions of the same race who are in an eons long conflict for no very good reason, and have no distinguishing features other than one side is very hairy and have unsophisticated tastes while the other side is hairless and highly sophisticated. And then the Doctor and co. show up and each side assumes on the basis of no information at all that they are spies for the other and attempts to kill them without even a gesture toward interrogation before we reach the actual plot and we can get out of generic land before I fall asleep.

Honestly, it's so painfully Who by the numbers. After all the self-awareness in the opening scenes' dialogue you'd think the writer might be attempting to subvert the form, but I haven't spotted any sign of it so far. The conflict that the Doctor is here to resolve barely qualifies as two-dimensional. And the Doctor himself is so smug you want to kick his arse. He's deliberately and meanly dropped Ace into yet another adventure after promising her a vacation. And the conflict has been going on for centuries, with millions dead on each side, which leaves you wondering why the Doctor didn't turn up a bit sooner if he really wanted to help.

And then the Doctor appears to know more or less about what's going on depending on the needs of the plot. On the one hand, it transpires that he has deliberately arrived at this time and place (5), and appears to know more than what is going on than just about anybody, including the inhabitants, who are doing the old "We no longer remember the reason for our war or the details of the rituals you have just invoked", and at other times is claiming that he's just working from some information that he picked up off a war memorial after they arrived (6), and has no idea where it's leading.

Halfway into episode two I'm wishing that the writer would make up their mind whether the Doctor knows more about what's happening than anyone else or that he's making it up as he goes along, and stop trying to do both. I don't really care about the aliens as they are so stupid that they've been killing each other for centuries without knowing why, and without any noticeable success, and have no culture other than is required for the plot anyway. Really, the only thing of interest is the business about how a marriage could stop such a conflict, and who the bride is. And that's only interesting because it's been made into such a mystery by having nobody present have any idea about what's going on.

Other than this hideously contrived mystery, it's so generic and yet at the same time so heavy on the meta-commentary that I may never get to the end of it. How it can be so smug about cliches it's perpetuating without doing anything original with them is so annoying that I may be forced to destroy the discs in a very creative way. But if I can keep the irritation down I might just keep going to the end in case they actually do throw an original twist into the story.

And if they don't, at least I get to go "see? I knew it."

Notes
1. except for the sequence involving the 8th Doctor starting with episode 50, but that seems to have been handily resolved now. I have no clue how.
2. like the one story that's on two CDs that can be listened to in any order.
3. sylvester Mc Coy
4. who has been stuck as a teenager for the last twenty years.
5. so much so that he deceived his companions into wanting to go there.
6. somehow, the inhabitants have entirely failed to notice this, despite it being on a mural on the side of the only landmark on the planet.

It Rhymes with Goth

2008-10-08T00:34:00.000+01:00

There's been a little chat lately in some corners of the blogospherahedron about the work of cartoonist Elena Steier, whose pictures contain elements some find racist and/or sexist [1].

But that's not what I want to talk about today. I think her work is simply not very funny [2]. I would have lost interest in her website real quick if it were not for one series of cartoons she does called The Goth Scouts. She's even given them their own website, despite them being neither funny, nor actually containing any gothic elements.

It's a typical, if considerably tamer than most, Wednesday Addams knockoff in the Evil Little Girl genre. Only without any of the usual visual attributes you might expect. There are four characters, but to all intents and purposes they are interchangeable and don't appear to have any individual character traits.

Even the name irritates me. Okay, I can see some mileage in doing a goth take on girl scouts, but if it were me, I wouldn't call it it something as unimaginative as Goth Scouts. I'd call them Crypt Scouts or Ghoul Scouts or something [3], and dress them in loligoth girl scout uniforms with extra bats and skulls, and a variety of horror-trope achievement badges. If you need to call them Goth Scouts in order for the reader to be aware that they are A) goth, and B) scouts, then you're doing something wrong.

Anyway, to get to the point, shortly after reading one of their typically unfunny cartoons I came across an episode of the syndicated Rhymes with Orange which did essentially the same joke, and I was intrigued by the comparison, so for your edification I thought I'd share.

The essence of the joke is a suggestion that the neighbours have been murdered. The Goth Scouts cartoon doesn't really process the notion much further than "Look, bones! Wouldn't it be funny if it was the neighbour?" [4]

This falls pretty flat, and undermines itself with unresolved aspects so you are left wondering why a murderer would have left the bones lying around in the garden, if the dog is a giant or it's just the perspective, and what the tiny girls and their giant dog are doing in the neighbour's garden in the first place. Perhaps I'm over-thinking this and the intention was just to suggest that the girls have morbidly over-active imaginations. Except that in other episodes they regularly interact with monsters and vampires, so that doesn't work.

The art on this strip is usually the best part of it, with some nice cartoon rendering, so this is unusually weak, with lots of irrelevant detail and the characters stiffly waving their arms at each other rather than supporting the joke in any way.

The Rhymes with Orange cartoon handles the joke a lot better, with a nice little play on words and a veiled hint of menace suggesting that the character himself has murdered the neighbour. A much better development of the notion. But what's going on with the art? It's so irrelevant to the joke that you could replace the text with a whole different gag and nobody would know.

It's worse than a generic talking heads image because there's enough going on in the picture to make you think it should be relevant in some way, but it's not.

Notes.
1. I find both.
2. People will excuse an awful lot if the jokes are genuinely funny.
3. Preferably something more imaginitive, but you get my drift.
4. Not especially, no.

One Hulk, two Hulk, red Hulk, boo Hulk

2008-10-04T09:19:00.005+01:00

Hulksies are red, dilly dilly,
Hulksies are green,
Ed Mac draws lumpy people and
Jeph Loeb's still a hack.

Gentle reader, as you may know, I am not overfond of the writings of Jeph Loeb. It would not, perhaps, be going too far to say that, were it up to me, he would be first up against the wall when the revolution comes [1].

I was thus delighted when he signed up with Marvel, as it meant that he would no longer be interfering with characters I liked. His origin for Supergirl has been more (if you read this month's Action) or less (if you read this month's Brave and the Bold) retconned out of existence, along with her skeevy parental issues and nude adolescent spaceship-piloting, and most of his other additions and revisions are well on their way to being dismantled, ignored, reinterpreted. or set to fall down the next passing Crisis.

Thus it is that I now only read Loebwork for the thrill of the truly awful. The relaxing experience of knowing that I will not be disappointed by plot holes or lapses in structure, continuity, or basic physics. Indeed, I look forward to them with the gusto of one playing a drinking game wherein you take a shot every time Grant Morrison features a minor character unseen since 1966.

So I've been reading Hulk. AKA Red Hulk.

Is it in any continuity with other Marvel comics? I have a vague notion of dedicated fanboys working feverishly through the night to wedge all the cameos and guest stars into continuity, but I sincerely don't care [2].

Red Hulk is big and mean. Red Hulk is so strong he can beat up Classic™ Green Hulk and punch Thor into space. But sometimes he uses a gun.

Classic™ Hulk is very Silver Age retro and refers to himself in the third person. Classic™ Hulk is not a bag of hammers.

Each issue is composed of 95% Red Hulk beating up on this issue's guest star, 5% dropping hints and having people make inaccurate suspicions as to who Red Hulk might be.

I don't care who Red Hulk is.

There are also little one page gag strips by Audrey Loeb [3] at the end that feature Red Hulk, Green Hulk, and Blue Hulk. They are a delight.

In the latest issue, after five issues of Red Hulk beating the crap out of everyone, finally, Classic™ Hulk and Thor get together and beat Red Hulk. And then they go away, leaving Red Hulk to recover and go beat someone else next issue.

It has all the depth of a video game[4].

Notes

1. You can make guesses about who would fill the number two and three slots if you like. It's not difficult.
2. And how many SHIELD helicarriers are there, anyway? I don't think I've read a Marvel comic in the last year where they haven't crashed one.
3. She is either a relative, or it's very unfortunate coincidence.
4. Space Invaders, not Age of Empires.

Ten things the ultimate geek comic collection should have to be truely awesome

2008-10-03T04:09:00.003+01:00

There's one of those memes going around where people list all kinds of things they consider essential to any comic collection of any worth. I read a couple of them, found that I only had about a quarter of the things listed, and realised I didn't care.

So here's my short version of things to claim you have in your collection if you want to look cool (but you don't actually have to own them).

1. A current obscure title that nobody else has heard of, which goes to show how cool you are for being aware of it.

2. A title that everyone has heard of but doesn't think is that special, but for which you have a cunning argument for why it is cool.

3. A title that everyone already knows is cool, just to show that you have some common ground with the rest of comic fandom.

4. A golden age title that nobody else has heard of (you can make one up if you like as there are lots of short lived golden age comics that sank without trace).

5. An indie comic that nobody else has heard of because only 5 copies were ever printed.

6. Some outrageous kitchy light-hearted silver age element that could only be reused today with heavy-handed symbolism or knowing self-reference.

7. A comic, or particular run of a comic that has been out of print for at least twenty years, which you can lobby for collected reprints of.

8. A title you think must be very cool because you completely fail to make any sense of it. If it's a manga, you can't even work out whether to read it left to right or right to left because it makes as little sense either way.

9. A hideously expensive deluxe collection of some title . I mean if people are going to pay hundreds of dollars for it then it must be good, right?

10. A comic so obscure that it was never actually published. Or even written.

Edit: Damnit, I just thought of another one. Okay, consider this a substitute for any of the other ones, or an additional feature of one of them.

Ω. A comic with which you have some kind of personal connection, even if it's only that you once stepped on the inker's toe at a con. Anything works providing you can spin it into an anecdote to bore friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers for the rest of time.

Triple Treat

2008-05-24T00:47:00.002+01:00

I always liked Triplicate Girl, even though she was useless. In a club where everyone has to have a super power, her power is to turn into three girls with no powers. And yet somehow nobody ever brings this up.

Of course her powers are actually tremendously useful. It's just she never gets a mission that would take proper advantage of them. Imagine how great she'd be in a covert operation: she can be in two or three places at once! She could be having a conversation with the evil overlord, while at the same time rifling through his panty drawer. And eating pizza.

There are great stretches of Legion stories I haven't read yet, so it may be that someone did get around to writing her well, but there's not much sign of it in the two Showcase volumes so far available.

And it gets worse. In volume two, one of her selves is killed! One third of her being is destroyed! And so we get a touching little scene in which she says "Oh, guess I'll need a new name, then." You can almost feel the entire lack of emotion. By complete coincidence, the day I read the story, I also saw the episode of the Legion cartoon where T-Girl #3 gets offed, and they at least gave her a couple of minutes to be upset about it before changing her name to Duo Damsel.

And then to cap it all, in a recent storyline (mostly Countdown) she loses her second self, and renames herself Una. She now has the super power of being able to be one girl. I'm not sure if this technically counts as a super power anymore.

Cause, but no effect

2008-05-15T15:22:00.001+01:00

One of the things I find endearing about characters in silver age Superman comics is their incredible naivety and lack of awareness of the world around them, not to mention their entirely disproportionate response to situations.

Jimmy Olsen tries to drum up publicity for the Daily Planet by pretending to be an alien from Mars, because he's seen the success the newspaper made out of old hoaxes. He's perhaps momentarily forgotten that these days Superman drops by to give them daily exclusives better than any dumb hoax.

And then in order to help a girl become more popular at college, does Lois give her a makeover? No, she gets Superman to pretend the girl is his secret girlfriend, thus making her the target of any criminal in the world who might want to get back at him. In just the way he uses as an excuse not to get serious with Lois.

And that's not even counting the occasion where Superman fights a villain with ice powers by moving the Sun closer to the Earth to make it too hot for him. Overreact much?

Everyblonde

2008-05-12T01:01:00.002+01:00

I was as surprised as everyone that the Iron Man movie didn't suck. So I'm taken in by the hype and pick up Invincible Iron Man #1 and what do I find? I had to go check the credits to make sure the artist wasn't Greg Land, because the comic seems to feature his popular Everyblonde.

Doesn't matter what comic Greg is drawing, what company it is, if there's a blonde in it, it's her. Black Canry, Sue Richards, Ms. Marvel, Pornface Girl; they are all played by the same girl as far as Greg's concerned.

So I'm left wondering, is this a subtle homage to the king of swipes, or does Salvador Larocca just read the same porn as Greg?

Brief Comic Review: Salvation Run

2008-02-17T03:12:00.003Z

I know I said Countdown: Arena was like Secret Wars, but Salvation Run is like Secret Wars too. Only with less plot.

Arena was lots of heroes fighting each other for some all-powerful overlord whose name I've already forgotten. It didn't make any sense, because his whole point was to build an army to fight someone else in a different comic, and keeping all of them would have been far more effective than having them fight to the death and take whoever was left, but that would have made for a much shorter story, and we wouldn't have had the excuse to see different versions of the same character kill each other.

Salvation Run is a bit like that except that nobody is making anyone kill anyone else; they are doing it because they don't like each other.

It's more than halfway through now, and the entire plot up to this point has been: villains get dumped on a strange planet. Villains fight each other.

It has some nice art, though.

Yellow Peril

2008-02-12T18:24:00.000Z

One of the things you have to understand about yellow is that it is a colour. Colour is not a quality possessed by things you cannot see. In fact one might say that an invisible object could be defined by it's complete lack of colour.

Not so for Green Lantern, where I've encountered at least three occasions in GL Showcase volume #2 where our dumb hero is laid low by things that are both invisible and yet at the same time also yellow.

It's a neat trick if you can pull it off.

A Dictionary for Dan

2008-02-11T05:49:00.000Z

Interviewed about one of the upcoming projects from DC, Dan Didio was asked if it would be new-reader friendly compared to something like Final Crisis.

His response? "It’s certainly new reader friendly, whatever that means,"

Dan, if you don't know what it means, I don't think you can claim it applies.

Of course the fact that you don't understand the term probably explains a lot about the state of the company you are in charge of.

The Legion of Bland

2008-02-09T18:33:00.000Z

I've been reading the second volume of Green Lantern Showcase, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first. John Broome seems to have picked up some of the nuttiness of his colleagues, and the stories are a lot more entertaining for it.

They are also full of howlingly dumb moments, which are often funny for all the wrong reasons, but at least they're not boring. The stories written by Gardner Fox are still dull, though. And when he adds a level of the fantastic, he then goes and spoils it by spending way too much time on leaden explanation that doesn't actually work anyway.

At some point I'd like to get on to the peculiar qualities of the colour yellow, as defined in this volume, but I'm about half way through now and I just reached Green Lantern #32, which introduces a group of heroes so generic that it stopped me in my tracks.

While Jack Kirby might imbue a character with a distinctive look and hint at a fascinating backstory, even when they are only intended to appear for two pages, like Gnorda, normal size queen of the giants, Broome gives us a super group composed of Energiman, Golden Blade, Strong Girl, and Magicko.

Nothing tells you how how important a character is than giving them a name like Strong Girl.

The budget for this issue must have been very low, as they don't even get to do a team up, spending the entire story imprisoned for GL to save them. So we never do get to find out what powers Strong Girl and Magicko might have. The assault on the villain's fortress also occurs off-panel to the extent that we have GL shooting off rays in one panel, and in the next it's so destroyed that there isn't even any rubble. A rare example of Gil Kane phoning it in.

On the plus side (depending on what you consider a plus) this story does include GL fighting a giant sentient oxygen atom with electrons that look and behave a lot like basketballs.

And how much of a dick is Hal Jordan at the end of the story, telling the released heroes he'll have the Guardians assign a Green Lantern to this sector, since they obviously can't handle it on their own?

Have these guys ever turned up again?

A metric f*ckload of deck chairs

2008-02-05T20:12:00.000Z

In Detective Comics #673 Batman imagines a case for Stephanie's costume in the Batcave. It may not even be real, but it does suggest that deep down Bats thinks she deserves one, and in a wider context acknowledges the same fact, despite Dan Didio's rather poor editorial joke about her not getting one: this presumably being a hint about the current rash of appearances by Spoiler in several Bat-titles.

This was an entirely arbitary goal set by girl-wonder when it was first formed. Only an idiot would assume that this means the battle is over. But it gives the guys at g-w a reason to celebrate.

One more yawn

2007-12-30T09:25:00.000Z

Joey Q has been talking about doing it for at least a year.

The publicity was hinting at it for months.

Every fan has been assuming it for the last six months.

Every blogger has been complaining about what a bad idea it is.

And so the biggest twist in the Spider-Man story One More Day is... that it's exactly what everyone has been expecting all along.

After a year when the level of misdirection at the big two has reached the point where creators lie in interviews and publishers put out misleading solicitations for comics that will never be published, I am a little baffled to find the biggest Spider-Man story of the year to telegraph its big conclusion months before the first issue was even published.

So I'm now left wondering what they are going to do when the next movie rolls around and it features Spidey and Mary Jane as an item, given that last time Marvel bent over backwards so far to identify with it that they put him into his black costume for several issues for no good reason other than it was in the movie.

I'm less wondering how they are going to integrate the new status quo into the overall Marvel continuity that is so tightly clenched that if Thor sneezes in one comic, Daredevil hears it in another, because it's that obsessively tight continuity that puts me off reading any of the individual titles I might be interested in if they weren't going to be suborned into some huge uberstory every other issue.

I hope Joey Q is happy. Because I'm not sure anyone else is.

Now it all makes sense

2007-12-14T19:06:00.001Z

I think Gail Simone might be on to something.

Maybe the reason big Joey Q is so obsessed with breaking up Spider-Man's marriage is because he has a secret agenda to out Spidey as Marvel's premier gay icon.

It all makes sense when you think about it. All those hints over the years. All the subtext. It's not hard to see when you are looking for it. I can only hope this leads to an even greater diversity in the Marvel stable, as Tony Stark is revealed as a transvestite, and Johnny Storm comes to terms with his gender dysphoria.

One more thing

2007-12-12T09:33:00.000Z

Having seen several reviews of Ultimates 3 #1, I'd just like to say this:

I hated Jeff Loeb before it was cool, too.

One big bluff?

2007-12-12T09:07:00.000Z

I'm beginning to wonder if this One More Day stuff is all a big fakeout.

Short recap if you don't know the story: Spider-Man is faced with the choice of letting Aunt May die (again) or having his relationship with his wife, Mary-Jane erased.

Now big boss of Marvel, Joe Quesada has been saying how he wants to undo Spidey's marriage for a couple of years now. J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote the story, has expressed how unhappy he was with writing it. Everyone, but everyone in comics fandom is aware of this, even if they, like me, haven't read a Spider-Man comic in ages.

So I'm just thinking this has to be the least unexpected twist in the history of comics, coming at a time when the publishers are so desperate to misdirect readers about significant plot developments that they will lie in interviews and even post fake solicitations for comics that will never be published. There's also the matter of the proposed change being universally condemned by fans, and the fact that there are plenty of flavours of Spider-Man already available in unmarried form.

Oh yes, and don't forget that this would also be taking the core titles away from the movie version in a year when Spidey suddenly started wearing his black costume for no reason that makes sense other than to strengthen the ties to the movie franchise.

I cannot see anything positive in cancelling the marriage at this point, and a lot of negatives. Which doesn't mean they won't go ahead with it; both Marvel and DC have made some amazingly boneheaded choices lately. Of course if they do pull the big twist on us, they might gain some kudos for not doing the thing nobody wanted them to do, but they'll have also made it impossible to trust their word about anything, and you'll get some fans assuming that they changed the ending at the last minute due to fan pressure, so to a degree it's a no win situation.

OEL is an oxymoron

2007-12-11T08:49:00.000Z

This is one I've been intending to rant about for a while, but a recent snippet of news I've seen sent me over the edge.

Marvel have decided to produce an X-Men manga. None of the people associated with it are Japanese. Now I think Raina Telgemeier is a very talented writer, and may well produce an excellent comic, but it still won't be japanese, and it probably won't read much like a comic produced by Japanese creators for a Japanese audience, so calling it "manga" seems a bit of a cheat to me.

Original English Language manga is to me a contradiction in terms. If it's created by English speaking people for an English speaking audience in a western style for a western publishing format, then it doesn't matter how big the eyes are or how many speedlines you include, it's not manga. It's no more manga than strawberry flavoured candy is in any way related to actual strawberries. It might be very nice strawberry flavoured candy, but it can only compare favourably with other strawberry flavour candy. When compared with actual strawberries, you cannot help but notice that it is not a fruit.

It's cultural appropriation at its worst. Japanese culture tells stories in a different way, with different emphasis and pacing, and with different references. Attitudes to the medium of comics are different in Japan, which leads to a different publishing structure. It's not just difficult for an American production to properly emulate a Japanese comic, it's almost impossible. And most of the time, they don't even try. They simply pick up a few superficial stylistic tips, and think that's enough to hitch a ride on the manga bandwagon.

And one other thing: if you are a westerner, creating a comic to be published in America to be read by Americans, constructing it so it reads right to left is a ludicrous affectation and I will mock your foolishness and cast aspersions on your character.

You have been warned.

The breast thing again

2007-12-08T19:09:00.000Z

There was an excellent competition over at Project Rooftop to design a new costume for Wonder Woman. There is some amazing creativity there, and it's worth a look if you haven't seen it. But that's not exactly what I want to talk about.

One of the entries included an image of Wonder Woman with one breast removed, and one of the judges, Joel Priddy opined

"You know, with the dozens of Wonder Woman avatars running around out there (Power Princess, War Woman, Winger Victory, etc.), I can’t recall anyone making use of the Amazonian mastectomy before. Go figure."

I commented that perhaps it hasn't been used because it had been disproved a long time ago.

I happened to check back today and found that I had received a couple of responses that surprised me, and rather than sidetrack that thread on a detail, I'm going to address them here.

Dean Trippe said:

you’ll note we refered to the mastectomy AS a myth.

However, I’d say the exclusion of the breast-removal in popular representations has more to do with squeamishness and male boob-fixation than lack of research.

That's an interesting opinion, and there may even be some truth in it.

The Amazons in Y The Last Man have it, but they could be seen as a cult, using this as part of the indoctrination. The Amazons in Xena don't do it, but quite apart from considerations such as the cheesecake aspect or whether self-mutilation of this kind would be permitted on prime time TV, there's the problem of actually creating the effect with real actors. I'm not sure there are enough actresses with mastectomies to fill the ranks, but I suppose it might be achieved by hiring a lot of flat-chested women and giving them one large prosthetic boob, either way I don't see the idea getting that far.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any other popular representations of Amazons, apart from Wonder Woman herself, and she's been dual-breasted since 1941, so it seems a bit late to change that now. I suppose they could dig up another lost tribe of Amazons who did it, but why would they, unless they wanted to show how stupid the group were, since it is of no practical value?

Sonny said:

The Amazons were mythical warriors, Marionette, and if you’ll recheck the review,

Whether it was a part of the original myth or added later, the whole point of mythology is what it says about the creators (or those who adapt the creations) and the reactions of those witnessing them. Marionette’s strong reaction to it should make Jess proud. Getting such strong reactions from art (either positive or negative) is quite an accomplishment.

Whoever originally added the mastectomy idea to Amazonian myth obviously had a similar spirit to the creator of this website.

Yes, Sonny. The Amazons were mythical warriors. And the people who first wrote about them, created art about them, built statues and frescos depicting them all showed them with an even number of breasts. Quite clearly, in some cases. The fact that the word used to describe them was mistranslated to suggest that they were single-breasted does not make it an enhancement or variation on the myth, it makes it an inaccurate understanding of the source material.

If I choose to describe unicorns as having three legs, does that make it a valid adaptation of the myth of the unicorn? No. Does it enhance the myth in any way to add a lot of baggage suggesting that women mutilated themselves in order to give themselves a bit more bow-room, when all you have to do is go google women's archery to see that modern women manage quite adequately without this disfigurement? No.

And while you're right, it is an achievement to get an emotional response to a piece of art, A) I wasn't responding to the art, I was responding to Joel's comment, and B) I don't think that gaining the emotional response of annoyance at seeing an old inaccuracy perpetuated is an achievement of which to be especially proud.

A brief comic review

2007-12-07T09:30:00.001Z

Countdown: Arena #1.

It's like Secret Wars, but with extra death.

Or, I don't know, maybe one of those tedious threads that crops up on every comics message board before long where people debate who would win in a fight between hero X and hero Y, and you know it doesn't matter how carefully they analyse the relative powers and skills, it all comes down to what story the writer wants to tell.

Or it could be a videogame. One of those dull fight games where the plot is just a thin excuse for the fighting. It's like watching someone else play one of those.

Plus DC get to kill off a whole bunch of Elseworlds characters that were minding their own business.

The Paris Hilton of the superhero set

2007-11-28T21:28:00.000Z

No, not Supergirl. The other one; Stormy Knight AKA Phantom Lady. When I was first introduced to the current Phantom Lady I was intrigued to find that beyond the cliché hot bod, at age 22 she also had a degree in quantum physics. I've been waiting for the last year for Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Grey to develop the physics nerd side of her, but they seem to have forgotten that whole aspect in favour of making her a drunk, embarrassing, airheaded party girl, drowning in cliché.

Add to that Renato Arlem's lazy art, and I am fast losing all interest in Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. It's bad enough when you see cut and paste in webcomics; to see it in a DC comic is simply wrong. I had been intending to do a quick count of how many panels in the latest issue reused elements from previous panels, but when it became apparent that there were several examples on almost every page, I gave up in disgust.

This comic has too many characters, which means you get very little depth to any of them, and the story is trying so hard to be "torn from the headlines" that it just comes across as tabloid cliché conspiracy theory with extra superheroes. It manages to be extremely wordy without saying much of interest, and the whole thing is a big disappointment.

Oh, and if you want to get an emotive image of someone slashing their wrists, you need to a) make them sympathetic beforehand, and b) use an artist who is not going to get it so totally wrong. Anyone care to guess what's wrong with this picture (other than the dodgy perspective)?

Statuesque

2007-11-25T01:21:00.000Z

After recent commotion about representations of female characters in miniature form, I'd like to take a moment to show appreciation for when they get it right.

Here's a manga-fied Wonder Woman.

She's holding a sword and shield, in a pose that suggests she's ready to use them. There's some stylish detail work (click on the image to see it larger) and the costume actually covers more skin than the regular version, though it may look more skimpy due to the optical illusion of her having considerably more leg than usually depicted.

And here's Wonder Girl. I'm not quite sure what she's supposed to be doing, but it looks like she's about to cheerfully tie someone up.

See, toy sculptors? you can get it right when you try.

Scott Kurtz cracks me up

2007-11-25T00:52:00.000Z

See, it's funny because even though Brent is technically an adult and in a relationship, the mere sight of a fully clothed woman with large breasts makes him unable to function or think about anything other than boobies.

And when I say "woman" here, I mean cardboard cutout of a woman traced from someone else's comic, since it's the same image cut'n'pasted into every panel but with slight change of expression.

Surprisingly, this was not written and drawn by a 15 year old.

Win some, lose some

2007-11-23T15:12:00.000Z

Remember Public Enemies #1, 2, and 3? Grant Morrison does, and as part of his ongoing plan to reintroduce the entire silver age back into continuity, Batman #670 polishes up Silken Spider, Tiger Moth, and Dragonfly for a new age, in an issue that also featured our old friend I Ching. Back in Batman #181 they were rivals, and if they had any super abilities, we were never shown.

I like them as a team, and now they have powers. Sort of.

On the minus side, the former most wanted are here merely served up as an entrée for Batman. They go down so easy that you can practically see Bats yawning. And they aren't all that impressive anyway.

Dragonfly has the ability to summon some white misty stuff from her arm. What this does, we never find out because Bats takes her out in two panels. And it's only that long because he pauses to give them a quick "sux 2 B U" speech.

Tiger Moth appears to have the power to shoot people.

With a gun.

This leaves only Silken Spider, who gets a nice visual, but then it turns out all she can do is some variation on the pheromone shtick that Poison Ivy worked to death years ago.

I'm left wondering quite what the point was. Why dust off an obscure concept from 1966 and give it a makeover, only to throw it away in seven pages?

Will we see them again? And if we do, will they ever be anything more than cannon fodder?

Update: Yes. We see them again in Nightwing #138. They are once again defeated as soon as they appear. Congratulations, girls. You've become a running gag.

The odd thing here is that they are referred to as has-beens, even though they've never been seen before in current continuity. This suggests that they were at least competent once. Shame we don't get to see any hint of that.