It’s Different for Girls …
Via the Occasional Superheroine website, we find this survey:
Poll Results for Worst Gender Related Comic Incident of 2007
Amazons Attack 35%
Batgirl’s Entire Personality Change 12%
BC/GA Wedding 12%
Starfire’s treatment in Countdown to Adventure 12%
Black Canary Wedding Planner 6%
MJ Statue of Evil 6 %
Donna’s weakness in Countdown 3%
Wonder Woman relaunch 6%
Cassie continuing to play Juliet to Kon 3%
It disturbs me that so much of this is DC — when I worked there, we seemed to be the more progressive publisher of the Big Two. The Editor-in-Chief was a woman, and there were several women editors who had some authority.
While I’d quibble with some of the selections here, that’s really not the point. The point is that the publishers of the largest-selling American comics would appear to go out of their way to alienate half the population. And that half of the population seems quite happy to buy manga, in bookstores, where they find themselves appreciated as valued customers.
It’s the first business day of 2008 and, as I noted a few weeks ago, time for many pop-culture mavens to present their Best of 2007 lists. Alas, I will not be one of those. I can’t remember most of what I read in 2007, a blur of a year for me at the best of times due to the losses I suffered. But this isn’t new for me; I can barely remember the fiction I read or watch more than a half hour or so afterwards. It’s just the way my mind works. The only time I was able to do yearly wrap-ups and "Best Of"s was when I was regularly reviewing about a dozen comics every week, because I could refer to my previous work, but even then it was tough because I didn’t grade the stuff, I just talked about it.
New Year’s morning. Cold, wet, bleak.
Hitting shelves around the country is Star Trek: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido, the first novel in the Star Trek universe after the status quo was shaken up in the just-complete Star Trek: Destiny trilogy by David Mack. When we 
