Tagged: ComicMix

Maybe Cap was lucky

One of the more interesting comments on Captain America’s passing was this from blogger Ari Emanuel on the Huffington Post:

"It’s hard to be a star-spangled Super Soldier these days. Given the lip-service-only support this administration gives our troops, the patriotic hero would have to fight evil with a substandard red, white, and blue shield, and be stop-lossed into an endless tour of duty.

"The only upside to the good Captain’s death? If he had survived his wounds, he might have been sent to Walter Reed."

But more to the point, this follows what we saw at the end of Civil War. Cap’s side was winning everything but the argument – and that was more demoralizing to him than anything else, that the people didn’t understand his point of view, and were happy to knuckle down to authority.

Cap’s death is relevant because now we get to have a real debate as to who we want as the symbol of our country. Who picks up the mask? Who gets handed the shield? Who will speak for America – and who should?

Expect a big debate on this, here on ComicMix and in the rest of the world at large.

 

All the news that’s fit to hear

Mega media news, including the JLA #7 jam cover with about 40 million characters and the seven-and-one-half minute Spider-Man 3 trailer. Wendy Pini gives us the lowdown on her newest project and her brand-new webcast comics, Timeline visits 1974, and once again we dip into our ComicMix mailbag.

All this courtesy of ComicMix’s very own Podcast Master Mike Raub, available by pressing this magic button:

Friends of friends

olympus-digital-camera-13The more years we all spend involved in comics, the less able we are to escape our past, especially in the Web 2.0 age.  And that’s actually A Good Thing.  For instance, check out cartoonist Howard Cruse’s blog post where he effusively and rightly pays tribute to ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases, whose family he and his partner Ed Sedarbaum have known for a good long time.  I’m a sucker for "then and now" photos.  Of course, Howard’s not above posting possibly incriminating photos of himself, as you can see by the lovely Esther-and-Vashti ensembles which he and Ed chose to don for their local Purimspiel.

Speaking of past Friends, Leigh Dragoon reports that there will be a forthcoming press release from Friends of Lulu (an organization with which Martha and I both spent many years) regarding their ill-fated Empowerment Fund.  From what she writes, it seems the organization is intent upon correcting past wrongs, which bodes well for its future.  Considering the long journey women in comics still have to undergo before the industry’s playing field is truly level, the continued vitality of organizations dedicated toward that goal is more important than ever.

ComicMix linky love

Another week older and deeper in debt — to you, our readers!  Here again is your one-stop shopping post linking to this past week’s regular columns: 

Meanwhile, Mellifluous Mike Raub is making history thrice weekly with his podcasts:

If you’ve only been reading ComicMix and not listening as well, you’ve been missing out on a lot!  And of course, there’s much more to come…

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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The female gaze

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.

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GL political followup

Those of us who frequent the liberal end of the political blogosphere got a real kick out of A-list blogger and comics fan Matt Yglesias’ post The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics on the group blog TPM Café.

Of course, Denny O’Neil responded in his column last week here on ComicMix, and now Matt has since followed up on his own blog (of particular amusement is that post’s comment section).  Will this be the last word on the subject?  Check out Denny’s next column, available mid-day Tuesday, right here.

ComicMix catchup

We at ComicMix are dedicated to bringing you as much stuff as we can, but we also know that means sometimes you miss things.  We know you want tagging and site feed and comments and that’s all coming down the pike real soon, but in the meantime here’s your handy-dandy guide to the second round of entries by our regular columnists. 

Look for Mike every Monday (in fact, his latest should be right below), Denny on Tuesday, me on Wednesday, John on Thursday, and Michael on Friday, and guest features on the weekend.  For those of you who, like me, grew up with the Marvel superhero cartoons in the ’60s, that means Mike = Captain America, Denny = the Hulk, me = Iron Man, John = Thor, and Michael = Namor.  (Hey, don’t knock it, that’s how I first discovered that Thursday was named after Thor!)

We also gave you a special "mother and child reunion" pair of featured columns this past weekend:

And our latest podcasts, hosted by Mellifluous Mike Raub, continue:

Happy reading and listening!

 

Kyle Baker goes bananas

From Cartoon Network’s Class of 3000, here’s some Kyle Baker work.

Did we mention Kyle will have a booth at the New York Comicon? Did we mention he’s doing caricatures? Did we mention the pretty women who will be at the booth? Go forth and find him and buy many copies of his books. Tell him ComicMix sent you.

Elayne Riggs: Beyond Fifteen Minutes

elayne200-4801695At my age (insert obligatory “hey you kids, get out of my store!, what do you think this is, a reading room?” here) the blasts from the past seem to blow with ever increasing frequency and velocity. I’m used to various elements of my past circling back on me, as my forays into pop culture hobbies always seem to result in intersecting circles of friends and acquaintances. A number of the same people who used to write for a zine I self-published twenty years ago probably (like me) have their own weblogs now, in an era where self-expression means you no longer have to spend a single cent to get your writing out to potentially millions of readers every day.

And yet, the more things around us seem to update and lurch into fast-forward, the more familiar they seem to me. No substantial difference, really, between passing around handwritten story pages to classmates or cranking out apazines or posting on message boards or blogging. It’s all one-to-many conversation, it’s all storytelling and essay-writing, it just comes down to a matter of scale and audience. The big difference is that nowadays, thanks to online archives and search engines, our stories are no longer so easily lost. (more…)