Category: News

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Worm turns on Doonesbury

  • News
  • March 1, 2007

doonesbury-4485515Some wag said 9/11 marked the death of irony. Well, that was certainly ironic.

Gwynne Dyer, writing for the London Independent, pointed out recent Doonesbury strips have been parroting the official Bush / Cheney line that the people to blame for our defeat in Iraq are "those brutal, stupid Iraqis."

Whereas the strip has never voiced support for the war – and, in fact, has been quite supportive of how our troops have been mistreated by our government – some recent strips have portrayed performance as, according to Dyer, "lazy, cowardly Iraquis shun(ning) their duty… It is a shameful, childish lie."

Personally, I didn’t get quite the same drift, although I understand where Dyer is coming from. Garry Trudeau couldn’t be reached for comment, being too busy removing the shoe from the other foot.

John Ostrander: “We hold these truths to be self-evident”

  • News
  • March 1, 2007

ostrander100-2390850I just read where the Anglican church, now controlled by conservative African bishops, are threatening to lower the boom of the American branch — the Episcopalians — to the point of tossing them out over the issue of appointing an openly and actively gay bishop and the issue of offering blessings to same sex couples.    

Never mind that the bishop in question, V. Gene Robinson, happens to be in a very monogamous relationship, or that he is, by all accounts, a very good man and capable administrator. Never mind that he is being open about his sexuality and his relationship — there would be no problem if he just kept it a secret and lied about it. Never mind that the couples in question are seeking stability in one on one relationships in a loving situation and are looking to commit to one another. Never mind that the Anglican Church has a history of not being doctrinal, of open inquiry, of autonomy for each of the Churches within its communion. What matters is that once again the Christian Right(eous) have determined that their version of the truth is the only truth and will impose that view on everyone and it doesn’t matter what they destroy along the way.

The Crusades live. (more…)

Black Betty screams just for you

After Dark’s Black Betty speaks to ComicMix about To Die For!, the scoop on Superman’s changes, our update on teevee news, 

All this, Timeline, more news and serious thrills on ComicMix’s eighth exclusive Podcast — available right here:

 

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Ford memorial auction raises over $4000

  • News
  • March 1, 2007

Following up on our earlier post, auction coordinator Deb Geisler writes: "We’re delighted to tell you that the auction raised $4,030, which will be donated to the special fund set up by the Friends of the Minneapolis Library in Mike’s name. We had so many donations (more than 70!) that we divided the auction into a voice auction (the extravaganza portion) and a silent auction following that. NESFA will be sending the proceeds of the auction to the Friends of the Minneapolis Library shortly, and we hope it helps to engage people in the love of F&SF literature for many years to come."

To learn more about the John M. Ford Book Endowment, click here.

Marvel gets Fooled

  • News
  • February 28, 2007

For those who enjoyed yesterday’s brief look at Marvel’s financials and want to see and understand more, the Motley Fool has done some of the heavy lifting for you. What’s telling is that the entire piece is spent detailing the financing behind Marvel’s movie production and licensing (which, admittedly, has been the object of speculation and is somewhat complex) but not a whit on the comics themselves.

Enough to make you gag

  • News
  • February 28, 2007

cartoons01-8510605Hey New Yorkers!  Not doing anything tomorrow night, and frustrated because you can’t draw or sell gag cartoons?  Yeah, you know who you are.  Funny thing, Media Bistro at 494 Broadway has just the solution — a 3-hour intensive course (starting at 6:30 PM) on How to Draw and Sell Gag Cartoons, taught by John Donohue, whose cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, Barron’s, Thompson’s Medical Economics, and other spots. 

If for no other reason, you should go to find out how and why editors are still purchasing tired 1950s stereotypes of henpecked husbands pursued by purse-wielding wives .

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Ain’t It Cool comics awards

  • News
  • February 28, 2007

aie-1989654

The Ain’t It Cool News site has just come out with an  "AICN Comics" presentation of its third annual @$$ie Awards, featuring your host Crucifer (the @$$keeper?), above.  Categories include Best Single Moment/Single Issue, Best Cover Artist, Best Miniseries/Special/One-Shot, Best Comic Book Character, Best Artist/Art Team, Best Writer, Best Publisher, and Best Ongoing Comic Book Series.  Mercifully, only the intro is done in comic book form.

Future tech wishlists

  • News
  • February 28, 2007

Auntie Beeb covers the story of "a wide-ranging survey produced by the South Korean government to find out what consumers will want from future technologies." The survey also features long-range predictions gleaned from interviews carried out with about 3,500 of the country’s technology experts, including online smell-o-vision within a decade, a two-month duration for mobile phone batteries before they’ll need recharging, and routine robot surgery (that’s by robots, not on them) by 2018.

Heck with all that, where’s my personal jetpack?  I’ve been waiting since 1975!

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More Green Lantern geopolitics

  • News
  • February 28, 2007

bengurion-9615795We bring you this from Kung-Fu Monkey John Rogers: "In researching [Blue Beetle] #14, I discovered that the Guardians of the Universe, the dudes who run the Green Lanterns — their appearance is based on Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. That means, in the DCU, the Jews just don’t control the media, they control the UNIVERSE."

Oh, I can hear the keyboards clattering away as people start rewriting their own versions of the GL Theory of Geopolitics, claiming that the Israeli flag is blue just like the Guardians’ skin, and Israel stands only because of its willpower and… hmm.

This makes the Zamarons some shiksa goddesses, nu?

The female gaze

  • News
  • February 28, 2007

elayne200-4891347Tomorrow marks the start of Women’s History Month (with March 8 being International Women’s Day), so it’s probably a good time to mention that I’m one of those double-x chromosome types. That fact automatically puts me, along with the majority of the population, in the category of non-default, of Other.

Which always confused me; how can a majority not automatically be considered the default? Well, it’s a matter of historical societal power, isn’t it? Take South Africa under apartheid; the white rulers there were certainly the minority, outnumbered 4 to 1, yet they were the Default among South African citizens, and the blacks they oppressed were the Other. The accepted wisdom was that they needed to be Other, in order for the Default to remain in power. (The fact that the minority oppressors had weapons as well certainly helped reinforce that.) The Default controls the culture, most especially cultural thought.

A lot of people today have no notion of how revolutionary a step it was for feminism to succeed in getting gender neutrality language accepted in this culture a mere 30 or so years ago. Before that, you never heard “he or she” — the default was “he” and that was that, the majority population devalued to the point of invisibility in terms of anything of significance or importance. Heck, it’s been less than a century since we were first allowed to cast a vote in most of the United States!

But you’ll be getting enough of those historical factoids during the month to come. What I want to discuss is something else.

  (more…)

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