If I had written this article for a comic book centric website, then I would have said "Top Ten Gay Moments in SUPER HERO Comic Book History" But for a larger audience, "Comic Book" still means "Super Hero."
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This wasn't a list based on quality, otherwise the awful Rawhide Kid series or Alpha Flight's coming out issue wouldn't even be here. Those stories got headlines in the mainstream press. Stan Lee went on CNN to talk about their "gay cowboy" book. Rictor and Shatterstar were all over sites like Perez Hilton and similar ones.
Which is where he loses me. You could argue that the overtones between Batman and Robin caused a media frenzy when they were more prominent, but to argue that they're significant, or even mildly relevant to LGBT(QI) acceptance in comics simply can't be a honest statement. Doonesbury is a syndicated strip with an expansive readership, and exposed thousands of readers to heartfelt commentary in Andy's battle with AIDS, which, while we're discussing semantics, is much more of a "moment" than the haphazard pairings and character names that appear on the list. No one can blame Diaz for trying to expose his readers to these admittedly prominent, gay characters, but the article would've hugely benefited from additional, comprehensive research and more selective diction. What comics do you think would better fit the "Important Gay Moments" mantle?
Second alternate: Do Tea Parties Happen In Tea Rooms?
I keep trying to articulate the brain-freeze that sets in every time I consider the Tea Baggers' collective finger-waggling at, of all people, Captain America of late. If you follow comics blogs or, in some cases, non-comics political blogs, you've probably heard: Captain America and Falcon went to rural Idaho in issue #602 and found themselves in the middle of a "tax protest" which was transparently a Tea Party protest. Lots of Palinites got their collective knickers in a knot because in that issue Falcon notes that he - a black guy from Harlem - probably isn't going to fit in well with them. In response, Joe Quesada apologized on behalf of Marvel and promised that reprintings and trade paperback collections would have the most obvious hallmarks of Tea Party identity removed from those scenes.
I think apologizing is pointless and editing the imagery in future collections is caving in for no good reason, but I also think the Tea Party reaction to this has probably involved enough pearl-clutching for all of us, so I'll (mostly) spare you the soapboxing. Why bother, anyway, when Brendan McGuirk of Comics Alliance has so clearly laid out exactly why Captain America and Marvel shouldn't apologize to anyone. I had gone in hoping that he would mention Cap's anger over Watergate, which he does. What I don't see mentioned is that the whole Civil War story arc at Marvel was clearly in some ways a reflection of the controversies and questions surrounding the Patriot Act in specific and our society's post-9/11 atmosphere in general and that Captain America was the leader of what could be read as either the liberal faction, the anti-government insurrectionists, or both. Captain America is not a safe, predictable hero who blindly accepts orders or allegiances - what one might expect from one who uses a defensive item as his primary weapon - and the Tea Party reaction, that Captain America is somehow "theirs" or exists only to exemplify the parts of America that are obedient and approving, is an irony too great for me to capture in mere words. These are people who, in the real world, shout down elected representatives at town hall meetings, take guns to political rallies and wave signs about wanting to "water the tree of liberty," an allusion to and complete misapprehension of a quote from Thomas Jefferson that seems to praise violent revolution. Now they want to stop everything and demand an apology because the Falcon said something that hurt their feelings?
Hang on to your fanboy knickers, there's a rumor that's all of a sudden exploded on comics blogs:
First there was the story that DC Comics Publisher and President Paul Levitz had personally prevented any Watchmen 2 projects, because, despite their differences, he believed that as this would be against Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' wishes, it would cause bery bad feeling in the creative community and would be a creatively bankrupt move.
[...]
I understand now that this considered a pet project of Dan DiDio, SVP-Executive Editor. That he is determined to impress new bosses by building on DC's biggest selling comic book of all time with multiple prequel comic miniseries and spinoff ongoing projects.
So what do I think? Read on for a surprisingly detached reaction.
All over the intertubes this week there are people talking about Marvel's remarkable new offer to comics retailers, completely outside the normal publisher --> distributor --> storefront lines of communication and product movement: if a shop sends Marvel fifty torn-off covers of unsold Blackest Night tie-in comics - the ones that got people like me those lovely plastic baubles a couple of months ago - then Marvel will send them an "extreme rare Siege #3 Deadpool variant".
Everyone hang on a second while my inner editor adds an -ly to the end of "extreme" in that quote. Again.
I'm reading a lot of hand-wringing and vitriol about this, ranging from amused disbelief to inscrutable anger. Some people are saying it's a joke. Some are saying it's an affront to shoppers who might still want a tie-in issue but haven't bought it yet. One of the most interesting takes I've read is from the GeekToMe blog at Chicago NOW:
If a retailer bought these books at a 50% discount, that comes out to around $100 invested in those books. And Marvel is offering ONE COMIC BOOK IN EXCHANGE. That means that if the comic shop owner wants to make a profit, that comic book will need to sell for IN EXCESS OF $100! In today's economy, do you know anyone willing to shell out a couple hundred bucks for a comic book? A comic that you'll be able to buy for four bucks with it's 'regular' cover is gonna go for over a hundred just because it has a 'variant' cover!?
As P.T. Barnum once said: "There's a sucker born every minute."
Marvel has taken the low road on this one folks. Instead of focusing on their own product and making better books, they continue to flood the market with overpriced and UNWANTED books like DARK REIGN and now THE SIEGE. And now they're trying to manipulate comic shops to literally get rid of their competition.
Whoah, Nelly! While you click past the jump, I'll be putting on my debunking boots.
Every now and then the wide net I cast with my Google Reader feeds turns up a genuine surprise. Yesterday it was this:
A southern California megachurch pastor has teamed up with popular comic book artist Rob Liefeld to create a graphic novel series on the end times.
Phil Hotsenpiller, teaching pastor of Yorba Linda Friends Church, describes the biblically-inspired series as "24 meets The Da Vinci Code meets Left Behind."
Reading a little further, I found it interesting that the series was described in two seemingly opposed ways:
It's not intended to be a theological book though Hotsenpiller has eschatological knowledge. Rather, it serves as entertainment both for Christians and non-believers.
vs.
With a professional artist like Liefeld and a story like the Bible, the megachurch pastor views Armageddon Now as a powerful tool for God's Kingdom and a "cultural key."
A few weeks ago I posted about two library employees in Nicholasville, KY, who have been fired for preventing an eleven year old from checking out a graphic novel. I was quite pleased to see some opposing viewpoints in comments, particularly the folks who pointed out that were the book in question The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier that they could understand not wanting to lend it to a child.
Because these things are never simple, there are two updates that have come out since then:
First, the book in question was Black Dossier.
Second, they didn't just prevent the child in question from getting it, they allegedly checked it out for a year and didn't let anyone read it.
So, yes, it was the worst possible book from that series, but it was a blanket ban that they seem to have applied to every patron of the library, young and old alike.
Read on for more stirring the hornet's nest editorial thoughts!
Apparently two library employees - it seems to be unclear whether they were assistants or professional librarians - in Nicholasville, Kentucky have been fired for denying a child access to material the pair considered pornographic.
That material? Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Personally, I don't remember any porn in that book, which suggests three possibilities: my aged mind can no longer remember what I've read, there was a distinct lack of explicit sexual content or it wasn't very good. I'd guess that would do for ranking them in descending order by likelihood, too, come to think of it.
I do enjoy that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century: 1910 featured the shamelessly gender-twisting Orlando as a supporting character, and I expect that would probably be upsetting to the sort of person who thinks The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is more smut than art, but I just can't think of anything that qualifies as porn in the original comic.
Does that mean there's zero content which acknowledges sex or romance, though? Actually, there is one romantic relationship that develops over the course of the book but I recall it all happening more or less off-camera. No, I suspect the problem here is that comics non-readers have one concept of comics - say, Archie, which is not to say there is anything wrong with Archie - and then they look at a modern graphic novel and that concept either goes out the window or they decide that what they're holding is not a comic book.
It's an issue that the comics industry has been grappling with for years now, and most fans would agree that there is simply no clear solution in sight. Shakespeare's made the transition to the Kindle rather snugly, but neither of the major comic powerhouses have come up with a satisfactory digital analogue, and the smaller publishers falter with their own applications which haven't captured a fraction of the print audience. Maybe comic fans are too stubborn or adapt, or maybe DC and Marvel are too reluctant to shake things up in an unstable economy. But the simple fact is that digital distribution will surely, in due time, become the preferred media vector. Preferably not the sole vector, but at the least more prominent than we find it today. So who's taking the initiative to get us there? Turns out it's probably Apple, though not necessarily as you'd expect it to.
Comic fans from the Bay area know that the one comic book event to look forward to is WonderCon, sister convention to San Diego's Comic Con. Each year, the bay area is bombarded with Comic fans of all ages and types for one of the best gatherings of Comics, Sci-Fi and gaming in all California.
For three days, fans of all things comics, sci-fi, and gaming gather at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to attend panels, seek out missing comics to complete their collections, talk to some of their favorite stars and hear what's coming up, and tons of other things that make a comic fan's heart go pitter-patter. WonderCon 2009 was certainly no exception.
Attendance to WonderCon was significantly higher this year than in the last couple of years, which is honestly a little surprising considering the economic times we live in. I suppose it just goes to show you that nothing will keep a comic fan from getting their geek on.
Never let it be said that those of us here at Pink Kryptonite are antisocial, basement-feeding comic book nerds. Okay, the comic book nerds may be true ... and some of us may live in a basement - but we're not antisocial.
Not anymore.
I invite you all to check out the official Pink KryptoniteMySpace page!
It's not completely jazzed up yet as we're still fine-tuning just how best to utilize the page, but we'll be adding new content to the site whenever we can. You can also use it to stay up to date on the goings-on of the main blog here and all of its writers and fellow fans!
As many of you know, Marvel Comics have liscensed the series of Ender's Game novels written by Orson Scott Card. What many of you may not know, Orson Scott Card is a well-documented opponent to not only homosexual marriage but gay rights in general. As adaptations of Orson Scott Card's work, the Ender's Game comic series leaves the reader in a bind, especially when the adaptation is being handled by writers of Marvel's mainstream titles like X-Force and X-Men: Legacy.
In this article, I will provide you with information on Orson Scott Card that you may or may not know and will leave you to decide for yourself if purchasing a comic like the Ender's Game adaptations is a good idea or not.
Last week was a blitz of emotions all over America as Barack Obama became the first minority president of America. Well, technically he's still the president-elect until January when he's officially instated. All over the country, cries of elation and hope were exclaimed as the majority of America declared that they were ready for change.
However, closer to home for Californians and the LGBTQ community, another election decision took gay rights a huge step back with the passing of Proposition 8, a proposition that added an amendment to the state constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman only. Emotions have been running high as protests and other reactions to this decision have broken out. Now that I've had a couple of days to distance myself from the way I feel, I can't help but wonder, if this had taken place in comic books and Proposition 8 had been about defining marriage as being between two homo sapiens only, in other words, two normal humans, how would the X-Men and their mentor, Professor Xavier react.
Northstar's Boyfriend Coming In January!
You guys may recall I was a bit cranky about Northstar and his lack of lovin' about a year and a half ago. In fact, at the time, I issued a challenge to Marvel to get him a kiss by June 2009 or I would declare him not really gay. I have not forgotten about this. However, when the X-men moved to San Francisco this year, we were teased with the existence of what looked to be Northstar's boyfriend (and manager), so I delayed judgment until we could see more. Since then, Northstar hasn't had a lot of major appearances, as there have been about a thousand major crossover events in the Marvel universe in the last six months, and each one tends to disrupt the normal storyline for most books, including the many X-books. So I waited. Our patience seems to have been rewarded! Artist Tim Fish revealed on his blog that his upcoming story in Nation X #2 (which comes out in Jan.) is a story about Northstar, and will feature Kyle, his boyfriend in an 8-page story. I'm not sure if an actual kiss is in it, but it's implied that there is some lovin' going on. Check out some sketches of Northstar, Kyle, and Aurora below, and we'll keep you up to date when we get closer to Jan. NATION X #2 1/6/10 [TimFishWorks]...
