Yes, you read that right. Gawker, the website that spends an inordinate amount of time picking on the famous, the near famous, the near to the famous, and the need to be famous, has actually defended science fiction convention goers:

The show takes a lazy jab at nerds in Boba Fett, Storm Trooper, and
Star Trek costumes, making theories ranging from reasonable hypothesis,
to outside the box ingenuity, to television inspired, to the completely
ridiculous.

Please. The whole segment is just an excuse to make fun of nerds.

I think we have to redo the Geek Hierarchy chart now.

One of the great symbols of Japan to a Western audience – equal to pagodas, kimonos, and that exaggerated white makeup – is the katana. (Well, any vaguely Japanese sword, to be honest – it doesn’t have to be precisely a katana as long as the profile is right and it’s declared to be incredibly sharp.) I suspect it’s the same for the Japanese themselves – that their traditional swords are one of their internal cultural markers, and part of the standard mental furniture that makes up “Japanese-ness” – since there’s a blizzard of the things in their comics stories. For example…

Crimson-Shell
By Jun Mochizuki
Yen Press, November 2009, $10.99

Surprisingly, this is a single-volume story, not the first volume of anything longer. But it’s paced like the first volume of a longer work, and the ending certainly leaves lots of room for a continuation. (I actually went back to the cover and copyright page after finishing the book, to make sure that it wasn’t “volume one.”) I would not be at all surprised if this was meant as a try-out for something longer, though I have no idea if any more will ever appear.

But, in this book, there’s a young woman, Claudia (also called the Rose Witch), who is the mascot/powerhouse of the secret organization Red Rose – she’s part of its Crimson-Shell division, which I gather is the field operation. The usual mad scientist discovered something called a black rose, which has infected lots of people to different effect: some turn into thorn-tentacled monsters almost immediately, while others keep their intelligence and human appearance for much longer, the better to infiltrate and destroy organizations like the Red Rose – which, as you might have guessed, has a mission to stop the Black Roses at all costs. Claudia is the requisite one person infected with the Black Rose who didn’t turn infected and evil; she instead has unspecified and varying powers over Black Roses.

The guy with the sword is her mentor/friend/savior, Xeno, who is the usual laconic master of violence (with artfully disarranged duster, long hair, and facial scruff to signpost that’s what he is), and he’s accused of being a Black Rose early on in the book. There is also a bewildering array of other characters, many of whom either are or are accused of being Black Rose agents, and that adds to the confusion (as well as the feeling that this is only the beginning of a longer story).

Claudia muddles through the plot without doing much – she’s one of those standard teenage-girl manga heroines, who can’t be too assertive without seeming unfeminine to the audience – and then there’s an ending that leaves a number of major questions. Crimson-Shell would have been an intriguing, if confusing, first volume of a longer series – the reader could assume that all of the unclear details would be explained further along – but it doesn’t work well at all as a single volume. (more…)

Sweet Christmas. Daaaamn.

A few thoughts:

• Archie, you already can’t choose between Betty and Veronica.
• The first person to say anything about Archie chasing strange pussy gets punched in the neck.
• I don’t envy Archie Comics the amount of bigoted hate mail they’re going to get from a certain segment of the populace. And I applaud them for doing it. There are some people that deserve to be pissed off.
• On the other hand, maybe they’re hoping to increase sales because they’ll be bought for bonfires.
• This could be a very interesting story. Not to be confused with Stories, the 70’s one hit wonder best know for the song “Brother Louie”, which applies very well here. In fact, all you have to do is change Louie to Archie and see how little things have changed in 35 years:

She was black as the night

Archie was whiter than white

Danger, danger when you taste brown sugar

Archie fell in love overnight



Nothing bad, it was good

Archie had the best girl he could

When he took her home

To meet his mama and papa

Archie knew just where he stood



Archie Archie Archie, Archie
Archie Archie Archie, Arch-I
Archie Archie Archie, Archie
Archie Archie you’re gonna cry



There he stood in the night

Knowing what’s wrong from what’s right

He took her home to meet his mama and papa

Man, he had a terrible fright



Archie nearly caused a scene

Wishin’ it was a dream

Ain’t no diff’rence if you’re black or white

Brothers, you know what I mean


Archie Archie Archie, Archie
Archie Archie Archie, Arch-I
Archie Archie Archie, Archie

Archie Archie you’re gonna cry

PR after the jump.

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