While I was out of the country, there was apparently a media kerfuffle about the introduction of a transgender character in the pages of Gail Simone’s Batgirl. There were stories in the LGBT press, in USA Today, and on comics sites (here) (and here too).

A lot of these stories said that this was the first transgender character to appear in a mainstream comic, and I don’t think that’s true. There was a transgendered character in Mike Barr and Brian Bolland’s Camelot 3000, published by DC. The lead in Milestone’s Deathwish from the 1990s was transgendered, and that book was distributed by DC, which to my mind makes it mainstream. It was also quite a beautiful mini-series, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough. There were also several transgender characters in various Vertigo series.

However, I’ll accept that these were seen by fewer people than a Batbook.

The reaction by the audience for these books has, for the most part, been better than I predicted. Relatively few people are calling it a “publicity stunt,” and those who do seem to not understand what a publicity stunt actually is. For example, I seriously doubt that DC’s publicist went to Gail Simone and asked her to introduce a transgendered character.

When I was DC’s publicist, I would have been fired for trying to influence a storyline. The closest I came was suggesting to Neil Gaiman that he might enjoy the chance to do a public service comic about HIV. And even then, there were lots and lots of corporate hoops through which I had to jump, not because of any political controversy but because of a corporate culture that respected the separation of editorial and marketing.

And then there are the people who get defensive. For example, in the second article to which I linked above, there is this in the comments thread:

• I think all DC characters should become lesbians,gay and transgendered.

• Why?

• Because the majority of DC’s audience is.

• Mainstream America stopped reading DC comic books a long time ago. Respectfully, “The Amazing Stam,” Make Mine Marvel!

There are so many things wrong with this. For one thing, I don’t think Marvel’s audience is significantly larger than DC’s, and, in fact, I suspect there is a tremendous amount of overlap. For another, there are transgender characters on television shows like Glee, which have a larger audience than DC and Marvel combined. And, finally, it is disturbing that in 2013, this moron still thinks it is an insult to suggest that DC’s audience is queer.

Whenever a character is introduced who is not a straight, white Christian male, there is inevitably someone who complains that this is done because the creative team is being “PC.” It is impossible for these critics to imagine that creators could find diversity interesting in and of itself, or want to reflect the world in which they live. Perhaps the creators want to challenge themselves to imagine different ways of being human. I never hear anyone complain that someone who writes stories about straight, white Christian people is pushing a political agenda.

Because I’m still jet-lagged, I haven’t read Batgirl #19 yet, as I write this. I plan to get it this week, when I go to Forbidden Planet for my regular fix.

I hope it’s not sold out.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

Robert Morales, the comic book writer best known for 2002’s Truth: Red, White and Black which introduced Isaiah Bradley, the black Captain America, has died at the age of 54.

Morales also had a run on the main Captain America title in 2004, and contributed text pieces to Heavy Metal.

This was completely unexpected, we’re all in a bit of shock here at the moment. We will update with more details as they become available.

Buck Rogers season 2

On this episode, the ESO podcast crew wake up to find themselves in the 25th century! Mike Faber, Mike Gordon, the award-winning New Pulp Author Bobby Nash, and special guest Joe Crowe (RevolutionSF.com) discuss the pulpy futuristic world of Buck Rogers. Joe also is this week’s victim in The Geek Seat and cries for Col. Wilma Deering to save him! All this, plus the usual Rants, Raves, Khan Report, and Shout Outs!

Bobby also gives a shout out to the winners of the 2013 Pulp Factory Awards and The Scribe Award nominees.

Join us for yet another episode of The Earth Station One Podcast we like to call: Exploring the 25th Century with Buck Rogers at www.esopodcast.com
Direct link: http://erthstationone.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/earth-station-one-episode-159-exploring-the-25th-century-with-buck-rogers/

Next on Earth Station One…

Pulp Factory Awards

The Earth Station One crew continues their director spotlight series with a look at the career of writer, director, producer, the Award-Winning Stanley Kubrick.

ESO wants to hear from you. What are your favorite Stanley Kubrick movies and why? Let us know at www.esopodcast.com, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. We just might read yours on the show.

So there I was, standing in…no, make that sitting in for Jules Feiffer at MoCCA, a two-day long expo-type event sponsored by the Museum of Comic Art and held at the big armory on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Talk about your bait-and-switch…folks come expecting to see and hear one of our era’s defining and multifaceted talents, a man who has done exemplary work in cartoons, playwriting, screen writing – an innovator and astute observer of manners and morals, a social commentator…This is the giant they anticipated and instead they got…me. Sitting, not standing, on a platform with Peter Kuper, Gabrielle Bell and Paul Levitz. talking about comics and the counterculture.

It’s a big and pretty complex topic and Jules Feiffer – the real Jules Feiffer – might have done it justice. Me – not so much.

Though the kind of comics I’ve been professionally involved in were a far stretch from the innovative, angry, and occasionally profane “undergrounds” that emerged from the turmoil of the Sixties, I guess the superhero stuff I did qualifies as at least marginally countercultural because, after the witch-hunting Fifties, comics of any ilk were not respectable. (Didn’t the Catholic Digest say they were trash? Weren’t there public comic book burnings? Didn’t that some senator or other hold hearings about them?) But, though we did hiccup out a bit of social satire/commentary here and there, we were never in the business of putting it to the man, making granny blush, calling for revolution.

Okay, maybe Feiffer didn’t work those sides of the street, either. Not exactly. But the kind of humor he practiced in his eponymous feature, first in The Village Voice and later in syndication, helped create the societal climate in which authority could be questioned – even mocked! – and the nooks and crannies of our national psyche theretofore ignored by our purveyors of comedy could be acknowledged and explored.

Now, some 55 years later, we can watch Louis CK push in the same direction.

Feiffer’s been on my radar since the aforementioned Fifties and I don’t know who put him there. Somehow, in St. Louis, attending a Jesuit university, I came into possession of Sick Sick Sick, a paperback collection of Feiffer’s early Voice pieces and…well, it wasn’t the brain-wrencher that Kerouac’s On The Road was to be, or, in a very different way, Salinger’s short stories were. But I thought it was funny and it was differently funny and that difference hinted at something out there, beyond the limits of school and parish and neighborhood, something past the boundary of the Mississippi, something that would be good for me to know.  Something that would nourish me.

Something that eventually put me onstage with Bell, Kuper, and Levitz, filling a seat meant for Jules Feiffer and grateful for the opportunity.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

Mayim Bialik (Blossom, The Big Bang Theory) has been cast to voice the Inspector’s time traveling ship the BOOTH in Travis Richey’s second web-adventure of Inspector Spacetime Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time.

Mayim’s first major role (if you don’t count Pumpkinhead, and believe me I debated that) was in the Bette Midler film Beaches, playing the 11-year-old version of The Divine One, an uncanny similarity only surpassed by Bette’s actual daughter Sophie.  Her TV fame came with the series Blossom, which ran for five years. After a number of voice roles in cartoons and video games, she pulled back from Hollywood to (now get this) get her bachelors, and eventually her PhD in neuroscience.  AND raise two kids.  She’s now appearing on The Big Band Theory as Amy Farah Fowler.  And clearly, she is awesome.

Travis Richey first appeared as The Inspector on NBC’s Community in a 30-second parody of Doctor Who.  The Internet took the thirty seconds to its bosom and cultivated it into a full continuity seemingly overnight.  The past Inspectors, the villains, and Jeffrey, who everyone hates.  Actor (and officially the 11th Inspector) Travis saw the potential of the character and submitted a script for an Inspector adventure, a project which was met with resounding apathy by the producers.  When Travis chose to self-produce a web series, NBC and Sony suddenly… exhibited reticence.  He plowed ahead with a cannily de-branded version, raising the funds via Kickstarter.

The second series is beginning production now, including Bialik as the voice of BOOTH, which is smaller on the inside, but is able to reconfigure its interior dimensions so “there’s always room for one more”.

From Travis’ press release:

Travis and Mayim reconnected by chance after being seated next to each other on a flight from Milwaukee to LA in November 2011, and the conversation included talk of Inspector Spacetime and looking for opportunities to work together.  “I am thrilled to be part of the Inspector Spacetime world,” said Mayim.  “As a Doctor Who fan, Inspector Spacetime satisfies all of my theatrical and nerdy desires. Putting on an admittedly poor fake British accent and working with the awesome and talented Travis Richey made me feel like a bonafide nerd-girl.”

More details about the series, including upcoming new like plans for toys and a comic book, are available at the website, TheInspector.TV.