The Washington Post’s Wonkblog then crunched the numbers against the approval ratings of upcoming presidential candidates and other politicians, and it’s not particularly flattering reading. Barack Obama can take heart from the fact that at least he’s not as unpopular as Jar Jar Binks, but is outdone by Emperor Palpatine, a man determined to let the forces of evil govern entire galaxies. Hillary Clinton will be similarly disappointed to learn than her 19% approval rating puts her on a par with amoral bounty hunter Boba Fett – but then again she doesn’t have a cool jetpack.
Out of all respondents, 59 percent said they felt sexual harassment was a problem in comics and 25 percent said they had been sexually harassed in the industry. The harassment varied: while in the workplace or at work events, respondents were more likely to suffer disparaging comments about their gender, sexual orientation, or race. At conventions, respondents were more likely to be photographed against their wishes. Thirteen percent reported having unwanted comments of a sexual nature made about them at conventions—and eight percent of people of all genders reported they had been groped, assaulted, or raped at a comic convention.
To put these percentages into perspective, if 13 percent of San Diego Comic-Con attendees have unwanted comments of a sexual nature made about them this week, that would be around 17,000 people. And if eight percent of SDCC attendees are groped, assaulted, or raped, that’s over 10,000 attendees suffering harassment.
For FF‘s Sake: Graeme Jumps Over Onto The Companion Fraction Fantastic Title
For FF‘s Sake: Graeme Jumps Over Onto The Companion Fraction Fantastic Title
In which I follow-up on my look at the Fraction/Bagley/Kesel/Inaco Fantastic Four last week with a look at its companion title, which – as many people said in the comments to the first piece – is much better.
For those who aren’t following WaitWhatPodcast.com, hey! Jeff and I do written reviews every week on there in addition to the every-two-weeks podcast. Go and enjoy. And then support the Patreon because why not.
Do you think comics publishers would ever commission series regular artists who missed issues and needed fill-ins to go back and re-do the missing monthly issues for trade consistency etc? I realize it would change the nature of the trade as a document-of-preservation but could make some multipart story-lines a lot less jarring and appear as originally intended. I also realize people are buying them “as is” but don’t singular artist trades sell better than random grab bag ones?
We’ve gotten part of the way there, with DC commissioning new pages for collected editions in the past (Final Crisis and We3 being the ones that immediately spring to mind, but I’m sure it’s happened with other collections) – they also had George Perez re-do pages from the Infinite Crisis series for collection, and Cameron Stewart re-drew Ashley Wood’s pages from The Invisibles for the final collection.
I’m sure it’ll happen eventually, if it’s not already been the case, but if/when it does, there’ll inevitably be those who’ll complain that either (a) they’re being punished for buying the single issues, or (b) the collection is somehow being unfaithful to the original incarnation of the story and demanding that the original version is also included in there somehow.
What are your go-to movies, in the comfort food sense? Those films you can just turn on at any time and feel at home.
Do you still have dogs?
By creating quality comics of powerful female superheroes, the comic book world is opening up to a new audience of women and girls as well as giving already hooked fans more of the powerful women they’ve come to know and love.
DC Comics, another major player in comics, has also joined the trend of bringing female characters to the forefront. It has “Wonder Woman” flying solo in a self-titled series, as well as “Supergirl” and even Batman characters like “Batgirl,” “Catwoman” and “Harley Quinn.”
The above (from the Huffington Post) is a sign of why good PR is important, and why DC really, really needs to step up on the issue of diversity in superhero comics.
In a story using the new Thor as a hook, DC merits a “has also joined the trend of bringing female characters to the forefront,” instead of the more accurate “DC led the trend, with seven ongoing titles out of its 2011 relaunch featuring female solo leads at a time when Marvel only had two ongoing female solo leads,” with DC’s number not dropping below seven since then while Marvel managed to reach a point later that year where it has zero ongoing series featuring female leads.
The HuffPo piece (and this Daily Beast piece from the weekend) point out not just how well the Marvel Hype Machine works these days in framing the narrative but almost more importantly just how badly DC does the same thing (It also points out how eagerly journalists for major news outlets eat up talking points instead of going out and researching things sometimes, but that’s neither here nor there).
In all of the news about the replacement Captain America, it’s surprising that no-one – myself included – brought up that DC has had a black Superman for the last few months in Earth-2 (or longer, if you want to look at Grant Morrison’s continued use of the Superman from Earth-23). With all the push about diversity in Marvel, no-one pointed out that the publisher doesn’t have a solo gay lead, whereas DC’s been putting Batwoman out there for the last three years (Not to mention Green Lantern in Earth-2 or Constantine, who’s bi, I think? He was in Hellblazer, but who can tell in the New 52?).
These are all alternate talking points that DC could (should?) be pushing out there in order to point out that, really, it’s not got a “crisis” or playing catch-up; it’s been there for some time, but not making the same kind of look at us look at us we have friends who aren’t white straight males noises as Marvel whenever it makes these decisions. But, instead, they just sit back and… I don’t know. Hope that someone notices?
(All of which shouldn’t be taken as a “Marvel, you are terrible,” or whatever – it’s not, and its PR machine is very good at what it does – but as a “DC, at this point, you’re practically causing your own bad press.”)
Ramble, ramble…