Vidders: History, Heroes Of Media Fandom & How To Be One Too

In what's one of the more novel uses of github I've seen in a while, lim, a fan artist whose work was recently shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery has released one of the definitive histories of early media fandom: Videlicet.. Like much of early media fandom in sci-fi and fantasy, its early pioneers were women. Not only does the zine look back at the past with profiles of prominent vidders, it also helps forward the future by presenting a DIY guide for your own fanvids.

Let's back up a bit. What is vidding? Vidding began in the mid-70s, after the original Star trek series went off the ait. Trekker Kandy Fong synced Star Trek stills sold to collectors, projected them on a slide projector, and synced the stills with music from a cassette player. This was the earliest version of fan-made music videos, called "vids", and vidding was often done live. For years, vids were only shown at fan conventions. While the VCR's widespread use made vidding more accessible, it still required extensive technical skill, often requiring daisy chaining VCRs together, splicing in footage and audio from many different source on-the-fly and as you needed it. Even with the rise of broadband connections and media sharing sites like YouTube, vidding still remains grounded in smaller communities, curated experiences, and smaller, more intimate exhibitions.

Videlicet covers a LOT of ground, so while I encourage a deep dive, I want to share two of my favorite parts of this zine:

• Sound and Story, an essay about sound work in vidding and in the popular Marvel fanvid 'Glitter and Gold'

It’s the soundwork that emphasizes their physicality of the characters, reminding us of the opening lyric of flesh and bone; we are cued not to think of these superheroes as 2-D comic book cutouts but as real three-dimensional bodies. The sounds of human effort are layered into the music with perfect synchronicity, so that we hear grunting, the crunch of bone, the crack of gunshots – things that mark the collision of people and things in a way that makes the fighting feel real; we can feel it in our teeth.

• Lyrical Interpretation, demonstrating lyric/clip connections through example:

Dissecting lyrical interpretation is making the brushstrokes visible. Picasso did not paint the world as he saw it. He painted it as he processed it in the same way that vidders do. Vidding is a lie that makes people see the truth. When working through a lyrical interpretation of a vidsong, aim to make choices that strengthens that truth you are trying to vid and let that drive the lyrical interpretations.

Readers, do you have any favorite fanvids? What was your favorite part of Videlicet? Have a fanvid you'd like to promote? Sound off in the comments!

Spider-Man YA Novel Swings Into Action Next Month

I just found out something really cool. The Disney-owned Hyperion imprint is publishing a new young adult novel about the newest (and I'd say the best) Spider-Man, Miles Morales. Even better, it's being written by Jason Reynolds, a talented Black author. Reynolds is no stranger to quality storytelling, either-- last year his book "As Brave As You" won the Kirkus Prize last year and he's a previous winner of the Coretta Scott-King Award.

Seriously. This is a book you want to read. Pre-order it at your local indie bookstore or at Amazon. Request it at your local library. Get it in the hands of a teen you know. I got an advance reader copy and was blown away.

Reynolds' Spider-Man novel deals head-on with issues of race and class in Brooklyn, being a young biracial kid on scholarship, and how these influences shape his life as he also struggles to be a superhero. Even more so than in the comics, Miles Morales' Puerto Rican and Black backgrounds are implicitly referenced in the text and made important. It examines not just what being Miles Morales means for Spider-Man, but what being Spider-Man means for Miles Morales. It's been getting rave review from everyone from Kirkus Book Reviews to the co-creator of Miles Morales himself, Brian Michael Bendis.

Marvel vs. Limits of Diverse Representation

I've written before on the numerous times Marvel comics has tried and failed to grasp just how diversity works. Seriously, just search the marvel tag. However,  the example that sticks out for writer Paige Allen isn't Marvel's continuing mishandling of Captain America. Nor is it Marvel's VP of Sales blaming attempts at diverse casts of superheroes for hurting sales. According to Allen, the most egregious example is the writing of Marvel's Invincible Iron Man. Penned by Brian Michael Bendis, Invincible  that introduced the world to a new Iron Man – a young black teen by the name of Riri Williams. Writing for Geeks of Color, Allen points out that "...some fans were skeptical of Bendis writing the experiences of a young black girl, especially since Marvel had no black women writers on its staff when the series was first announced."

Bendis has also written also wrote about another black teen assuming the mantle of of Marvel franchise powerhouse-- Miles Morales as Spider-Man. Bendis has also talked about the research he's done as an author and the perspective that raising two of his adopted African-American children have given him. Allen points that while Bendis is able to write about the challenges and loss Riri Williams faces as a black girl, his knowledge is reflected in a very narrow focus of the Black experience:

Unfortunately, this knowledge is the overall problem Bendis has in his depiction of Riri Williams. He knows about black pain and the various micro- and macro- aggressions that black people face every day, especially during these particularly fraught times of racial hostility... Basically, Bendis is like your white classmate that took one Africana class and now believes himself to be the purveyor of all knowledge on black life. However, because he acquired his knowledge as an outsider to the culture, the only way he really knows how to depict blackness is through identifiable aspects of The Struggle – all the negative social realities of being black that you see reported on TV, lambasted on Twitter, and through quickly cruising through activist circles in search of easily transferable knowledge about racism without any nuanced understanding of how black people deal with it.

This came to a head when scans from a page of Invincible Iron Man #8 appeared online recently, where it shows Williams in class trying to actively seek out marginalization as a motivator.

Allen reflected:

Never in my wildest nightmares would I imagine a black child seeking out racism to fight against in the pursuit of their dreams. Racism isn’t a Sailor Moon villain that waits for us to level up before trying to kick our ass; we are always aware of it and are always affected by it, but one of the best traits that black people have is our ability to bypass that negativity and live our lives despite it, not to specifically spite it.

This isn't the first time Bendis' writing for a black character has been criticized. The Nerdist pointed out that Bendis and other white writers writing characters of color often come off as tone-deaf and run the risk of alienating the very fans they want to recruit.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the real key is to actually hire diverse creators to write diverse casts. Otherwise we're just slapping a Band-Aid on the issue:

Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why should worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.

Fanart Friday #2: Ramon Villalobos

Ramon Villalobos is probably best know for his work for Marvel Comics, but he's also a DC fan.Inspired by the huge success of the Wonder Woman live action movie, artist Ramon Villalobos shared some of his own takes of Wonder Woman-- his "favorite Chicano warrior princess" as he likes "drawing her real strong".

He also did one of my favorite takes on Kitty Pride and Lockheed.

You can follow him on instagram, twitter and tumblr.

Writer Who Made Captain America Nazi Has IRL Bigoted Past, Politics

Description: A panel from a Captain America story from
the 1970s, As superhero Falcon looks on,Captain America
walks off dejectedly. Caption reads: "This man is now
crushed inside. Like other Americans, each in his own way
he has seen his trust mocked. And this man is Captain
America."

I previously wrote about the asinine retcon that Marvel writer Nick Spencer came up with after his plot twist that Captain America was made into a secret double agent for Hydra, the super powered occult Nazi group he fought in World War II. as it suddenly turns out, that's because in the Marvel Universe, the Nazis had actually won World War II. Captain America was never, ever a good guy. The Allied Powers used the Cosmic Cube to rewrite reality and make it so the Nazis lost, Captain America was a good guy (but somehow the Holocaust still happened) and Hydra never had a secret agent. So Captain America becoming an ally to super-powered Nazis was actually "restoring" him to his true self.

What he hasn't been shy about has been his contempt for critics and his denial about another Nazi Captain American twist: it was revealed that Hydra Captain America was deemed worthy to wield the hammer of Thor. Not only does this have gross implications in-universe... "...that you must be good and worthy person to wield it, Mjolnir has been a moral compass of sorts — and Spencer is already crossing many, many lines with what he clearly thinks is some kind of edgy, potentially iconic imagery. But this isn’t just some subreddit level attempt at being cool. At this point Spencer is literally putting hate symbols into the pages of Marvel’s comics," Rosie Knight says, and explains how Thor's Hammer has been used in recent decades as a symbol of neo-Nazi groups and white pride in the US.

Nick Spencer has taken to twitter over and over over the past year to defensively dig in his heels. He insists that there is nothing political in his writing, that critics of his writing are somehow threatening him, his livelihood and comics as an art form. He says that just because he's defended a real life neo-Nazi who got punched in the face, or that he wrote college-age "social justice warrior" caricatures as bad guys so awful that the Black superhero Falcon later apologizes for ever sounding like them doesn't mean he's a conservative, and that his personal views and history don't inform his writing.

Which makes his personal and political past stand out more. As blogger Kim O'Connor lays out, just a little over a decade ago, Nick Spencer made two failed bids for public office in Ohio as a Republican. He had a website for both campaigns, got some press (local and national), and in 2005 ran on a platform of eliminating all human services in Cincinnati, building more jails and arresting homeless people as "quality of life" issues.  He even wanted the city government to buy up the buildings that housed homeless shelters and get rid of them;

Per Cincinnati CityBeat, Spencer's 2005 campaign blog called on the mayor of Cincinnati to use eminent domain against Mary Magdalene House (a homeless shelter) and the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. 

Here's Spencer: "It's time to stop playing around and get tough here. ... The city must use all of its powers to protect the civic and financial investments that have been made in the area. The glut of social services that encourage panhandling in the district must be addressed." 

You read that correctly. Nick Spencer described organizations dedicated to helping homeless people as a "glut of social services that encourage panhandling."

He also worked for John McCain's campaign. Some may argue that Spencer is just running on a platform similar to many Republicans, so it's not so unusual, right? He's just echoing an official party platform! You might be able to say that about his policy ideas... but not so much about his racist blogging about black people as thugs, drug dealers, and at one point comparing black folks to being worse than stray dogs! As Cincinatti Black Blog covered at the time of Spencer's campaign, he wrote on his blog stuff after a highway shooting like this, emphasis mine:

Lots of blame to throw around here. Let's try this one: Ross Love. To hell with that guy. He owns the WIZ [a local radio station], then tries to walk around town like he's such an upstanding citizen... maybe you should look into that shit you've got on heavy rotation over at your station. You know, like "Ridin' Dirty" a song about drug dealers trying not to get caught by the cops while they've got crack in the car...
And let's give it up one more time for The Ritz ownership [a local club with mostly black clientele]...
I love going to IHOP after we close up the bar, and the place has a big post-Ritz crowd there around the same time... I see stray dogs act with more survival instinct than some of the Ritz clientele.

What Spencer didn't mention was that Ross Love had sold the radio station 5 years earlier, that "Ridin' Dirty" was about police brutality, that "Ridin' Dirty" also aired on a Clear Channel radio station affiliate run by a white owner that Spencer never called out, and The Ritz was a club that directly competed with a bar that Spencer owned at the time. Oh, and the song was never connected to the shooting in any way by authorities. He was also growing increasingly paranoid, convinced that "thugs and prostitutes" were waiting to shoot at him and hiding guns in trash cans.

On his campaign blog, Spencer also talked about how the possibility of The Ritz's owners or clientele moving into his neighborhood meant that either he'd mobilize against it, or he'd pull up stakes and leave:

Bad news... Jump Cafe' space on Main may be leased out to the owners of The Ritz in Roselawn. I'm not kidding-- just when you thought thing couldn't get any worse. The neighborhood is going to have to mobilize in a big way to prevent this from happening... I don't have any hesitation in saying this: if they move in, we go. 

Writer Kieran Shiach, who also did a great recap of Hydra Cap and related issues earlier this year, sums up my feelings on this:

Nick Spencer has been uncharacteristically silent about this on twitter.

Marvel Retcons All of World War II, Capt America Always Evil

Cover to Secret Empire #0. Art by Mark Brooks.

The latest ridiculous twist in the saga of Captain America penned by Nick Spencer has outdone all of Spencer's other "shocking" twists in both the breadth of its foolishness and its lack of respect for an iconic character's legacy.

First, a quick recap.

Last summer, comics fandom and the wider media fandom at large was shocked when Captain America, Marvel's staunch defender of liberty uttered the line "Hail Hydra", revealing himself as having been allied with the evil Hydra organization all along-- a group that in the Marvel universe originated with Nazi Germany, the very foes Captain America was supposed to have fought against! It seemed like a crass twist and super inconsistent with the character's real-world origins and legacy. Captain America was created by two Jewish creators, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. Captain America was born s wish fulfillment, to have an all-American hero punch Hitler and fight Nazis even before the US was involved in World War 2. Nick Spencer, the writer for that arc as well as the ongoing Sam Falcon, Captain America title promised all would be revealed in due time.

"Captain America wasn't brainwashed," Nick Spencer said. He also said that the Cap that declared "Hail Hydra" wasn't an alien body double or a robot duplicate. It was the actual Steve Rogers, the real Captain America had done this. But be patient, Spencer urged. It would all make sense. Recently it was revealed that the pieces of the Cosmic Cube- an artifact powerful enough to rewrite reality itself- had somehow taken the form of Kobi, a small naive child unaware of the reality-altering powers she had within her. Kobi, in turn, influenced by the super-villian Red Skull-- Captain America's longtime Nazi arch-nemesis since World War II. It was the Red Skull who influenced Kobi to give Captain America the memories of being a Hydra sleeper agent. So, see, it wasn't technically brainwashing, right?

That's not the most foolish part. See, as asinine as that revelation was, that gives you the hope that Captain America still had some good in him, right? That even though at this point Captain America has sold out the Earth to invading aliens, allied himself with super powered Nazis and was setting himself up to become dictator for life of the United States, that there was maybe still some good in him somewhere. The Marvel Universe had a glimmer of hope.

With the release of Secret Empire #0 two days ago, Nick Spencer reveals his biggest, most asinine twist yet: The Allies actually lost World War II and used the Cosmic Cube to re-write reality so that the Nazis were defeated and Captain America was the world-saving good guy. In the Marvel Universe, Germany was actually the winner, and always was. Steve Rogers really was an agent for Hydra all along, and those memories added by Red Skull were actually restoring Captain America to his "true self", Spencer ret-conned actual world history to take a symbol of the US created by two Jewish men during World War II and said nope, Captain America was supposed to really be an evil bad guy and it was only a reality-rewrite that made him good.

This is especially egregious tone-deafness because two days ago-- April 19th-- was the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the largest Jewish revolt during World War II, and also has the distinction of being the first urban uprising against the Nazis that happened in Nazi-occupied Europe.The Nazis attempted to completely wipe out the Jews living in Warsaw on the eve of Passover. Instead, the Jews held out against occupied forces for nearly a month, using whatever they had on hand to fight back. Their bravery inspired Jews across Europe, including those already in the camps, to organize and revolt.

In fact, that's another odd thing about the whole "Allies used the Cosmic Cube to re-write history so the Nazis would lose instead of win like they were supposed to"-- why didn't the Allies cosmically re-write it so that the Holocaust never happened?

Marvel is doubling down on the doubling down, too, rebranding its websites with Hydra iconography, and even asking brick and mortar comic book shops to have employees wear Hydra t-shirts this month.

We've also been asked to change our store logos to Hydra symbols. My staff are LGBTQ, Jewish, or both. We are no longer hand-selling Marvel. https://t.co/gQnBfBZC8L

— Glamour Toad 🌈🐸🌈 (@NickiColey) April 20, 2017

Nick Spencer took to twitter with all the class you'd expect:

Haters upon seeing the advance reviews for SECRET EMPIRE 0 pic.twitter.com/lFU0RStBd6

— Nick Spencer (@nickspencer) March 23, 2017

Then again, for a dude making his living writing super heroes, Nick Spencer doesn't seem to have the greatest grasp of them. Like when he rushed to twitter to give his hot take on Nazis getting punched in public:

@nickspencer Nick....you just described what a superhero is.

— ANTHONY OLIVEIRA (@meakoopa) April 17, 2017

Last week, I talked about how Marvel's VP of Sales tried to blame "diversity" for poor comic book sales, and how that assertion is utter bullshit. itch.io user spacetwinks was pretty pissed off about that assertion too, and put together a thorough and damning analysis and response, as described thus:

This did not sit well with others, the idea that retailers and Marvel would blame these books for low sales - and it didn't sit well with me, either. So I've hunkered down and put in the hours researching sales data reaching back over a decade in Marvel, and looked for what could possibly be the true culprit in their sales problems.
"Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel" is a nearly 30k long essay, a spiritual sequel to The Problems With Comics, a deep dive into the true issues with Marvel's economics and business - and how an obsession with short term profit, the constant renumbering and relaunches and events, all compounded by a complete inability to understand basic marketing techniques or outside audiences, has absolutely destroyed the sales stability of many of their former best selling books, all as they condescend to those who criticize them on their stories, or on how they try to sell comics.

It's offered as a pay what you want download, and is a very insightful read. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Update: Wow, this post is starting to blow up! My hosting is getting slammed! So if you liked this article and want to see more, you can help support it by pledging a buck or more to my Patreon or by tossing some spare change in the virtual tip jar to the right. Thanks!

Marvel Comics Exec Says "Diversity" Is Why Sales Are Down

David Gabriel, Marvel Comics' Vice President of Sales spoke at a recent retailer summit and said that "...people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there," and that "Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up [at]."

This contrasts with the experience of one retailer who spoke with ICv2 on the first day of the retailer summit who said a more diverse cast of characters were helping bring new customers to his store. The latest iteration of Ms. Marvel, which has Muslima teenager Khamala Khan taking up the title role, was nominated for a Hugo Award this year. In a detailed post on CBR.com that did some serious number crunching of Marvel Comics' sales for the past year, Charles Paul Hoffman wrote:

Just to be clear, “diversity” has very little to do with the drop in sales in Marvel’s top 10 books. Only three (“The Mighty Thor,” “Invincible Iron Man” and “Black Panther”) can be considered “diverse,” in that they star a lead character who is a woman or a person of color. The rest are series starring white male heroes or teams made up predominantly of white male heroes. These are Marvel’s traditional A-list heroes, being written and drawn by A-list writers and artists (almost all of whom are themselves white men), and yet they are floundering... 

While Marvel has admittedly had some misses among its “diverse” titles, it has also had some genuine hits. “The Mighty Thor” remains Marvel’s No. 2=selling ongoing superhero series. “Black Panther” has been a solid hit as well, selling enough single issues to be in Marvel’s top 10, and enough trades to make the bestseller lists. “Invincible Iron Man” (starring Riri Williams) is also in the top 10, showing very little attrition from writer Brian Micahel Bendis’ pre-“Civil War II” series. “Spider-Man” is close behind, selling about 5,000 more copies than Miles Morales’ pre-“Secret Wars” series.”Spider-Gwen” and “All-New Wolverine” are also both doing well, with more than 29,000 copies sold in February for both titles. And then there’s “Ms. Marvel” and “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl,” two series whose trades have also made the bestsellers lists. 

Having dug into the data, it’s become clear that diversity is not hurting Marvel. The truth is, Marvel’s “diverse” titles actually sell decently. 

So if Marvel's more diverse offerings are actually selling decently, bringing in newer clintele and winning awards... then what's up with declining sales? Professionals and fans on twitter have a few ideas:

An idiotic conclusion, @Marvel. I stopped buying your books because of the high price & event fatigue not diversity. https://t.co/uysUOwOBkh

— Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) March 31, 2017

Marvel thinks diversity is ruining their sales? Idk, MAYBE turning Captain America, a worldwide symbol, into a nazi has something to do

— ㅤmanu (@gecrgeblagden) April 2, 2017

Other industry analyses have pointed out stumbling blocks that Marvel has seemed to put in its own way, like trying to make its Inhumans line-up replace the X-Men series while X-Men hemorrhages sales and the Inhumans branding repeats many of the same mistakes of the X-Men before them. The Nerdist has an excellent take-down of how diverse casts written by the same ol' roster of white men leads to a lot of tone-deaf bullcrap that can end up alienating readers old AND new:

When Brian Michael Bendis writes Miles Morales as being upset with a fan who mentions his black heritage, or when Nick Spencer has Sam Wilson apologize to Steve Rogers for any activism-fueled anger he may have displayed in the past, it comes off as tone-deaf and leaves readers understandably less than thrilled. The same comic features multi-ethnic villains who are parodies of the “Social Justice Warrior” stereotype, who shout phrases like “You should be an ally, not helping to defend oppression culture!” and “Consider this your trigger warning!” as they throw grenades at Sam... 
Let’s also remember SHIELD #8 (2015), written by Mark Waid, where a black woman viewing her young son’s corpse remarks, “He was no angel“—the same phrase used to vindicate Michael Brown’s murder.

G. Williow Wilson, the lead behind the currently Hugo-nominated Ms. Marvel points out a few things about authenticity, new audiences, changing markets and industry expectations:

What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this... Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is the world... 

Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away. 

The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.

That last point is something important to remember as far as sales. The relaunched Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (which I covered here back in 2015) only sells a few thousand issues a month... but its trade paperbacks and graphic novel collections sells like hotcakes to little kids via Scholastic Book Fairs. The market is changing, how comics are sold are changing, and the audience is changing. As Alex Brown puts it on Tor.com:

Blaming readers for not buying diverse comics despite the clamor for more is a false narrative. Many of the fans attracted to “diverse” titles are newbies and engage in comics very differently from longtime fans. For a variety of reasons, they tend to wait for the trades or buy digital issues rather than print. The latter is especially true for young adults who generally share digital (and yes, often pirated) issues. Yet the comics industry derives all of its value from how many print issues Diamond Distributors shipped to stores, not from how many issues, trades, or digital copies were actually purchased by readers. Every comics publisher is struggling to walk that customer-centric tightrope, but only Marvel is dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot, then blame the rope for their fall.

Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why so worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.

Devil Dinosaur Returns With New Friend, Series

Description: Illustration of a young black girl leaning forward to kiss the
snout of a red dinosaur several times larger than she is, the dino's sharp teeth
prominently visible in frame.

In the late 1970s, legendary comic artist Jack Kirby created a short-lived comic series for Marvel- Moon Boy and Devil Dinosaur. Decades later, Devil Dinosaur returns in a new series: Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. While the original series took place in an alternate Earth where Neanderthal-like cave people lived side by side with dinosaurs, Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur places the titular dino in modern-day New York City, where he befriends Lunelle Lafayette, aka Moon Girl.

So what was the inspiration to revive a decades-old, somewhat obscure Marvel comic book series? Why bring a dinosaur to NYC? As Assistant Editor Emily Shaw explains in an interview with Entertainment Weekly's Andrea Towers, there was something she and the series writer noticed when looking at Marvel's current line-up:

“Mark and I were talking about how whenever people come in with young kids, or even just for Mark’s own kids, we don’t have that many publications that we can give to people that have that broad reach,” Shaw explained to EW. “Generally, we’re skewing a little bit older with a lot of our titles and we wanted to create something that adults and kids could really love, like a Pixar feel. That’s where the tone jumped off for us.”

And the artist Natcha Busto adds that she sees the introduction of Lunelle Lafayette as someone that she wished she could have seen growing up as an artist and comic fan herself:

“For decades now, we have seen more independent publishers taking a gamble on diversification, but always within the underground scene,” she explained. “It’s really important that the mainstream throws up new references like these and it’s an honor to be a part of that change that Marvel is bringing to the comic book creative landscape. A greater number of readers are looking for characters they can identify with, and above all, with the aim that any reader, whatever their background or lifestyle, is capable of transcending their own identities to see themselves in a mirror of entertainment for 20 or 30 minutes without any difference.”

With a talented roster, an interesting concept, and plenty of excitement surrounding the title, this is one comic series I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out for.

Dad Takes On Comic Companies' Lack of Girl Superhero Costumes

Description: A caucasian girl with blond hair
poses in her home made Ms. Marvel costume- a blue
tunic emblazoned with a lightning bolt over a red shirt &
cape.

The tumblr user Captain Milkshake has a daughter who loved to read comic books and have them read to her.So when she was invited to a superhero-themed birthday party she wanted to attend dressed as her favorite super hero: Ms. Marvel. Unfortunately, there weren't any official Ms. Marvel costumes available for purchase. While he happily made an awesome looking home made costume (pictured at right), Mssr. Milkshake also realized this was part of a larger problem in the comics industry-- a distinct lack of female inclusive merchandise.

He also posted an open letter to Marvel Comics that doesn't just go into how he made the costume but also WHY, and uses that reason to make the case for having more female-inclusive superhero-related merchandise. It's more than just a company leaving piles of money being left on the table. As he outlines in his open letter, it goes a bit deeper than that (although it's an issue as well):

My daughter was recently invited to a Superhero themed birthday party for Thor Odinson. Naturally she leaped at the opportunity. As I’m currently reading Marvel comics with my daughter at bedtime, I thought it to be perfectly fitting that she goes as the one and only Ms. Marvel. I searched my local Forbidden Planet and to no surprise I found nothing there. ‘No biggie’, it was a long shot, but I’m sure Amazon.co.uk would have something. I was even more disappointed to find the results for girl super hero fans under the search ‘ms.marvel girls outfit’. It started off ok, the first search result being a Spider Girl outfit, closely followed by Captain America girl’s outfit, but that’s where the options stop for 6 year olds. Second page of results give a Spider Girl outfit again but this time in pink (really?) and page three, Sexy Batgirl and Sexy Red Riding Hood, which I don’t need to go into detail over. 

OK, time to rack up the dad points here. There’s only one way Ms. Marvel is going to celebrate Thor’s 6th birthday and that means I’ve got to make one. A flustered trip round Croydon resulted with a blue dress (reduced from £60 to £10), the yellow fabric from a pillow (£3), a glittery blue mask (£2) and some cheap red polyester (£2, per foot). A further expense being getting the dress taken in (£18) and the tights and top we already had. I exercised my sewing machine skills and the result, you see above. £32 worth of work pad off in my view. Providing one goes down this route in the future I wish you all success in buying a blue dress in the first place, let alone one in the right size. 

When it finally came together, my little one fell in love with it. With hindsight, I’m glad I made it over buying one already put together, but I write this not as a rant but as a plea to make merch more girl inclusive. Ms. Marvel is an incredible concept who empowers a multi-cultural demographic and to be honest, this needs to be pushed harder!!! 

I love the avengers as much as the next guy and it’s great that we get to buy cool toys that allow us to shoot silly string webbing from our wrists, or smash things with over sized green fists, but maybe Ms. Marvel Embiggend Fists is what we need to see on the shelves AS WELL AS her angry green counterparts. But should the merch for all of Marvel toys be so male-centric? It may be a shame that this is the truth, but I believe this post could be the start of something good, if even it gets the wheels turning a few degrees.
Yours in hope
Captain Milkshake

What do you think, readers? Sound off in the comments below?

Stupid Sexy Loki: The Problem With LGBT Villains

So when Loki: Agent of Asgard was announced, hot on the heels of the first Avengers movie taking heaters by storm, Andrew Wheeler noted something about how it could all go down, at least within the Marvel comics universe:

Good news; Marvel is launching a new ongoing series with an LGBT lead character. Loki: Agent of Asgard debuts in February from the creative team of writer Al Ewing and artist Lee Garbett, and Ewing confirmed via Tumblr that the lead character will not only be portrayed as bisexual –but be able to change gender. Bad news; Loki is not exactly a good guy. He’s a trickster, a manipulator, a supervillain. He’s also the second bisexual male to get his own ongoing book at Marvel, and here’s the problem; the other one was Daken, son of Wolverine, and he was also a trickster, a manipulator and a supervillain.

So why was that a big deal? As Wheeler, points out, it's a well-worn storytelling trope with some unfortunate implications in what it draws upon in the name of creating dramatic tension or offering what it attempts to frame as some sort of ambiguity:

That’s the role that the queer villain plays; a threat to the “correct” order, intrinsically maladjusted to the way the world works. It’s a fear that manifests in the real world in dangerous ways. Being gay, bi or trans has too often been presented as a threat; to children, to marriage, to public health, to everything sacred, up to and including God and democracy... Otherness is also one reason why queer kids struggle so much with their identity. Not only does the perception that their existence is a challenge to the status quo make them a target, but being gay, bi or trans often means they feel cut off from the ways of life they’ve been raised to cherish as normal. Works of fiction that draw a parallel between queerness and wickedness can perpetuates that alienation. 

So does that meant that queer characters can't be villians? Wheeler says no, but...

The very qualities that can make an LGBT character seem dangerous and transgressive can also make them glamorous and seductive. Yes, queer identities have established cultural value as signifiers of deviancy, but they also have value as signifiers of radical reinvention, of rock and roll. That’s really the same quality through a different lens. 

Now that that the series has come (and some would say, gone as the lead-in to the new Secret Wars), though, have these worries borne fruit? I caught issue one and two when they first came out and was very impressed.

NPR Tackles Diversity In Comics

Miles Morales, the current Marvel Ultimates' Spider-Man. Image courtesy of Marvel Comics Group.

NPR's Daisy Rosario has a great series runinng in Latino USA on NPR called "Diversity In Geekdom". This installment covers comic books and the comic book fandom. From the podcast description:

There’s a really interesting conversation happening about comic books and diversity. And it’s largely happening online. Producer Daisy Rosario takes us to Special Edition NYC, a comic book convention, to talk to fans and creators and bring you an overview of just how the conversation is shaping up. People who already follow comics are likely very aware, but for the people who maybe see the movies and don’t know much else, this is a chance to hear it right out of the mouths of the people who are living this. As is true in other art forms, such as film and music, there are a lot of diverse creators making their work independently and with smaller companies. But we are focusing on well-known superhero comics, the type that have a greater reach, for the purposes of this story. First we meet some fans. Then we talk to David Marquez, the artist who draws Miles Morales aka Ultimate Spider-Man. Later we meet Rachel Edidin, former comic book editor for Dark Horse Comics. She is also a writer, podcaster and pop culture journalist who has covered comics, as well as other topics for Wired magazine and more. 

Hell of a lineup, and a great listen besides. The first part of the podcast series is available here, and also features some bonus segments with David Brothers of Image Comics.

Hooked On A Feeling: Guardians of the Galaxy Hits Some Sour Notes

Guardians of the Galaxy is the first big-release movie in a few years I've actually managed to see on opening night (and don't worry, it was at a theater that knew the difference between Guardians of the Galaxy and Rise of the Guardians), and last weekend, hundreds of thousands of people saw GotG too. It pulled in over $94 million last weekend. I really enjoyed it-- it has a fun, spry tone throughout the entire movie and reminded me of one of my favorite movie series when I was a kid-- the Indiana Jones series. It was a movie that had a sweeping scope and lots of action sequences, but it didn't attempt to take itself overly seriously. One of the best examples of it skewering an action series trope that's been done to death, The Overly Dramatic Slow-Motion Group Walk... by showing one character stretching and yawning and another character adjusting his jumpsuit.

And like most Marvel movies of the past few years, it passes the Bechdel test, so it seems like a problem-free win, right? Not exactly. As Gavia Baker-Whitelaw points out in an article for The Daily Dot entitled "'Guardians of the Galaxy' passes the Bechdel Test—but it fails women":

...[W]e have Rocket Raccoon suggesting that Gamora seduce someone to get them all out of space jail. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because she already has a way more useful skillset—plus, everyone in the prison is terrified of her or wants her dead. Then toward the end, Drax just straight-up calls her a “whore.” This makes even less sense because Drax’s gimmick is that he takes everything very literally, indicating that he actually means every word he says. The coup de grace is when the final battle scene ends with Peter calling Ronan a “bitch.”

Drax out and out calling Gamora "that green whore" threw me for a loop, but before I could think about it too much, there were more confrontations and explosions. Later on, I found myself a little puzzled-- hadn't Nicole Perlman written the GotG script? Again, not exactly. As Baker-Whitelaw points out:

Guardians of the Galaxy is the first Marvel movie with a woman as one of the credited writers. Nicole Perlman drafted the original screenplay while on a two-year writer’s contract at Marvel Studios, before handing her work over to James Gunn for rewrites in 2012. After that she had little to no influence on the outcome of the film, and my theory is that among various other edits, Gunn’s additions included that handful of weird and jarring attempts at sexist humor.

I agree. I enjoyed the hell out of GotG, but the weird bits of misogynistic humor were like hearing a talented orchestra delivering a stirring performance... with a few noticeable notes played way out of tune every so often. It took me out of the perfomance unfolding before me for a few moments each time.

Now, fellow fans, please keep this in mind-- it's okay to like things with problematic elements. Critques on a movie aren't an attack on the movie, or an attack on you for enjoying it. To engage with media and stories, it's also important to know why they have problems. It's also important that you do not dismiss someone’s feelings, or get ticked off that someone pointing out a problem in media you like could ruin your enjoyment. Your wanting to enjoy a thing is not more important than someone discussing how it affects them.

Historic 6th Reprint of New Ms. Marvel Is Great News For Diversity In Comics

Kamala Khan is a daring and cheerful 16 year old Pakistani-American girl. She's also the secret identity of the super-heroine Ms. Marvel, stepping into the boots of a legacy hero in her own solo title in February of this year to critical acclaim. In addition to fighting crime and taking on super-powered super villains, the comic also explores how she deals with a new ability to shapeshift, and how it's not just a strong power to have as a superhero, but also as a way to confront battling what it means to be a Muslim teen growing up in New Jersey.

It turns out that the Ms. Marvel run has also been a runaway commercial success as well, in a way that few other titles have. MS. Marvel is getting a sixth printing. The Daily Dot puts that in perspective:

Sixth printings are major milestones in the world of comics. Spider-Man Issue #583, the one with President Obama on the cover, only made it to a fifth printing despite making international headlines. Kamala now joins an elite lineup of bestselling comics that have performed beyond all expectations. Many of these titles are genre classics and major issues in their respective franchises, including a number of prestigious Marvel titles ...That Ms Marvel is getting a sixth printing speaks to the increasing diversity of comics fandom as well as the growing number of women and supporters of multi-cultural storylines who are entering the fold.