flapjaxx

August 12, 2013 6:59 pm Yeah, I appreciate Marvel trying to think outside the box or whatever, and usually I love Irving . . . but I didn't like the first two of his three issues on this series so far, and those were helped by the Limbo setting. Whatever happens, though, even if it doesn't work, it'll certainly be interesting to take it all in. A few years ago, if someone said to be "Bendis + Uncanny X-Men + Frazer Irving", I'd have thought it was a really weird mash-up. And it is. Unsure if it means great comics, though. As for Bachalo . . . Hasn't he done more X-comic #1s than any other artist? He did Generation X #1, Wolverine & the X-Men #1, Uncanny X-Men (vol. 3) #1. And he's had lengthy stints on X-Men and Uncanny X-Men before. To me, he's the quintessential post-Jim Lee X-Men artist. I think he fits in fine here. He made all of these characters his a long time ago.

August 12, 2013 6:41 pm I know. I want to like this more than I've been able to. This is my last issue unless I see an improvement. I don't think it's horrible ... but for me it's really only running off of the fumes of Remender's series. If it didn't say "Uncanny X-Force" on the cover, I wouldn't've given it this long of a leash.

August 12, 2013 4:11 pm You guys do realize that comics don't appeal to 99% of white heterosexual males EITHER, right? Most of what is going on in the industry now leaves MOST of the supposed "target demo" cold. You couldn't get the vast majority of people to read comics even if you physically put great comics into their hands and said "Here! Free!" You couldn't get 99% of white heterosexual men to do that, even. We should have diverse characters and encourage as diverse a readership as possible, but to expect a sea-change in demographics is ridiculous. Comics in the English-speaking world are a hobby, not a medium; that distinction has relatively less to do with sexism but *everything* to do with the development of the medium itself, as a medium. The medium developed differently in Japan and in some places in Europe. But for whatever reason -- probably because OTHER "easier-to-use" media proliferated quicker in America 30+ years ago -- comics never got that foothold. Here, they're a hobby. I'd like for that to change, but changing it isn't so easy. Making My Little Pony or Batwoman comics (awesome as those titles are) has nothing to do with changing the niche status of the medium itself. You can change the content, but the greater concern is that "the medium is the message". The niche status has less to do with content and sex/sexuality than it has to do with the "infrastructure" of how media is consumed. As it is, comics in America are a hobby, not a mass medium that should appeal to anyone (whatever their race or sex). So compare them to other hobbies. I'm sure there are a lot of white heterosexual guys who like Barbies and knitting and beanie babies. I don't say that facetiously. There are guys out there who like those hobbies. And I wouldn't say that any of those hobbies are *inherently* "female". I'm not saying that; that would be a sexist statement, just like "comics are for boys". They're not. But different types of people TEND to naturally like different types of hobbies. I wouldn't expect or want those hobby industries to turn away "outsiders" any more than I would expect or want the comic industry to offend women. The comic industry SHOULD be called out whenever it does things like that -- and whenever it isn't friendly anyone, really. But I doubt the "Barbie fan" community is going crazy over the likely fact that basically 0% of them are heterosexual Muslim men. Do you think that quilting circles (which are awesome by the way; one of my friends is in one) often bemoan the fact that they know of few if any Asian men who want to take up knitting with them? In my local town there's a library reading group, which is composed of about a dozen white women, ages 60+. They're all nice ladies and I like them. But I doubt they flagellate themselves over the fact that no young white men have any representation in their circle. They read a lot of "Oprah's book club"-style selections, and romance novels. Because that's what they want to read. I doubt they're having any conversations about how maybe they should read more action-adventure novels in order to attract male teenagers to their book club. They could make selections like that, but it's obvious that no neighborhood kids would join the book club anyway. I'm NOT saying "Things are the way they are. There are no problems. Let's not try to change things." But I am saying that DIFFERENT PEOPLE LIKE DIFFERENT THINGS. The comic community can definitely be UNfriendly and offensive to non-whites and non-males. That stuff is unacceptable and should change. At the same time, however, we have to acknowledge what a niche our medium really is. You're not going to get 50% female representation, no matter what. It's just a fact. We should try to do better than the 1% representation that we have. Definitely. But our disparity here isn't SO MUCH due to "rampant sexism". It's due to the fact that comics are a hobby mired in fanboyism from decades and decades ago. Everyone WANTS to change this -- just as I'm sure that my town's local book club would love to have more members, male members, younger members -- but sometimes the world just doesn't work out that way. And it's no one's "fault" to the extent that we need to do a "two minutes hate" over it day after day after day. If you honestly think that millions of women and minorities are walking around the streets of America saying "If only the comic industry would cater to me, THEN my life would be so much more fulfilling!" -- that says a lot about your own self-centeredness. Not everyone has to like the same things we like. People are different and like different things.

August 12, 2013 1:48 pm Gah, typos. I meant "it seems incredibly difficult to expand the female demographic, NO matter what you offer them" and "WE have Batwoman".

August 12, 2013 1:46 pm Yeah, this article is all over the place. About the "women in refrigerators" thing, I'm tempted to start citing examples about things that have happened to Damian Wayne, The Joker, Jason Todd, Wolverine, Hal Jordan, and dozens of other male characters who, mostly in recent years, have had oodles of awfully violent things done to them for shock-value purposes... But I won't do that. My thinking regarding all of these arguments, on all sides of the issues, is that basically THIS IS THE HELL WE DESERVE. McFarlane's passivity and cynicism is annoying. But try as we might (and the Big Two HAVE tried) it seems incredibly difficult to expand the female demographic, so matter what you offer them. I would even see an argument where someone would say "This is the ladies' own faults. Why are WOMEN so PREJUDICED against comics, when we DO offer plenty of non-male/non-superhero stuff that should be up their alley?" But the whole thing is just a depressing, messy industry. I have Batwoman, but for all the marketing push behind it -- from spotlights on CNN, to forwards written by Rachel Maddow, to GLAAD awards -- none of it translates into sales. It just doesn't. I wish it did. I champion Kate Kane, and what Simone has done with Barbara Gordon. But it seems like there's something intrinsic about the American superhero industry that just doesn't appeals to women no matter what. That DEFINITELY doesn't mean that the Big Two should stop representing female characters. No, they should keep doing it, even more, because I think it is just a nice, reasonable, good thing to do. But if you're going to keep looking at things and never be happy unless every quadrant of society has perfect 50/50 representation, you're sort of damning yourself to endless agony and frustration.

August 12, 2013 11:18 am Considering how July was the second-best month for those old "obsolete" things called print comics in over 15 years, I think your assumptions might be somewhat flawed: http://blog.comichron.com/2013/08/july-2013-second-best-month-for-comics.html But, yeah, I guess Trillium does try to make use of the physical medium in a way that's somewhat of a novelty. Print itself, though, is a sensible technology, not a gimmick. I've seen far more digital "gimmicks" over the last few years (motion comics, etc.).

August 5, 2013 4:01 pm Yeah... wow. I empathize with Jim to an extent here, but I see all of this stuff in terms of a much larger trend. So trying to play language policeman and stop one little term -- that doesn't really take into account why people are using the term "porn" this way in the first place. I think all of this says a lot about the sexualization of everything, period. Even when something isn't overtly sexual, our society has gotten so bizarre that people are using sexual terms to describe certain aspects of it. And, for what it's worth, they're doing so proudly. We've gotten to the point where "porn" can be a non-sexual term that people are fine with ascribing to things they enjoy publicly... and yet "fetish" is still mostly negative, I guess. Relatedly, what really rankles me is how people use "sexy" in non-sexual contexts. Like they'll say "That's a sexy idea!" in response to things like school curriculum proposals, budget software, or new features in a car they want to buy. Things totally unrelated to human bodies are being described as "sexy", and it's juts effing bizarre. And I'd like to say, "STOP IT", but there isn't really any point. I'm not being defeatist; I'm just recognizing how huge the cultural trend is, and there's just no stopping it. Things are just getting so weird in this wonderful "liberated" society of ours. It definitely isn't all "bad" -- I don't necessarily think that "shelf porn" or the motivations behind it are "bad" -- but one thing we should all agree on is that it's pretty damn bizarre and weird, just the fact that any of these practices and their non-sexual sexual descriptors have arisen in the first place. It's not really a choice of "Well, do you want to go back to the 1950s?" because that's impossible. And it's not really a CHOICE at all. These bizarre trends ARE happening and people don't really have the ability to stop their culture from getting increasingly abstract, childish, pseudo-sexual, and insane.

July 29, 2013 7:34 pm Okay, that cover is just . . . wow. I like Betsy Braddock.

July 29, 2013 7:29 pm Yeah, I always liked him on this book and wish he would have stayed aboard longer! (Interesting that he's doing this Annual, because I heard the reason he left was because he didn't want to draw Animal Man anymore...)

July 29, 2013 7:28 pm I heard he's been demoted to "consultant".