Ryan at Comicsfodder rounds up all the things that Marvel and DC have done lately to show that they don’t take female readers very seriously, and points out something we’ve noted ourselves:

I’ve never really been certain why Marvel gets such a free ride on the misogyny front when watching DC’s every panel has become a particularly engrossing game of “Gotcha”. Perhaps its selective perception (although the “Heroes for Hire” henati-ish cover incident still lingers in recent memory).

They’ve never shied away from using their female characters for cheesecake on covers or elsewhere, design costumes just as questionable as any DC female hero or villain, and haven’t had sustained runs on as many female-centric books as DC. Of course, I also don’t follow Marvel the way I follow DC, so a lot of my opinion is formed from the casual dipping in and out I do of much of the Marvel Universe.

It really is true though — maybe Marvel commenters are a lot less eagle-eyed than DC ones…or DC readers are just more addicted to jumping on every single little thing that DC does and reading larger meaning into it. Not that it’s hard to find lunkheaded decisions from both companies that seem hellbent on dismissing a large chunk of potential new readers, but, that’s how it goes.

Unrelated, but earlier yesterday CB Cebulski was Twittering the following:

# Yes, I have found that more female artists are submitting artwork to Marvel these days, especially from Europe.

# Sara Pichelli came out of ChesterQuest and is kicking all kinds of ass at Marvel now. And also keep an eye out for CQ finalist Serena Ficca.

# One name I can also name is Rebekah Issacs, who we met & hired at NYCC. She makes her debut on Ms. Marvel 38: http://tinyurl.com/cdug2k

# Female writers? Marjorie Liu and Kathryn Immonen both made their Marvel debuts this past year and are moving on to bigger books.

Despite the title of this post, we actually TURNED OFF THE COMMENTS because we just aren’t in the mood for bingo today.

SECRET IDENTITIES, a new superhero anthology by Asian creators examining various aspects of Asian culture and stereotyping, has been putting out videos to promote the book…here’s the latest one.

The book hits stores next week.

Wired looks at the secrets of your friendly neighborhood comic shop clerks.

What is it about DC’s Batwoman character that headline writers just seem to adore? Take a single bare AP story about Kathy Kane taking over as the lead character in DETECTIVE COMICS for a bit — for some reason, copywriters just go nuts when they get a crack at writing about Batwoman.

• Batwoman will enjoy saving Gotham’s damsels in distress

• Did You Know Batwoman Is A Lesbian By Day?

• Lesbian Batwoman takes over Gotham

• Holy Lesbian, Batman! DC Comics names Dark Knight’s successor

• Stand by for lesbian Batwoman

• Holy Smoke, Batwoman’s gay

• Lesbian Batwoman to Take On the Bat-Mantle

• Gay-ped crusader

Apparently, news desk editors around the world really are entranced by redheads!

GIvane all the talk over stereotyped casting and racial images going on here at The Beat of late, we wanted to draw attention to two panels at NYCC this weekend, both concerning SECRET IDENTITES, an upcoming anthology of comics described as:

This groundbreaking anthology brings together top Asian American creators in the comics industry — including Gene Yang (American Born Chinese), Bernard Chang (Wonder Woman), Greg Pak (The Hulk), Sonny Liew (the upcoming Liquid City; Vertigo’s My Faith in Frankie), Greg LaRocque (The Flash), Christine Norrie (Black Canary Wedding Special), and Francis Tsai (Heroes for Hire) — as well as new and established creators from film, television, and literature, to craft original graphical short stories set in a compelling “shadow history” of our country: from the building of the railroads to the Japanese American internment, atomic bombings, the Vietnam airlifts, the murder of Vincent Chin, and the groundless incarceration of Dr. Wen Ho Lee.

There will be two panels on the topic:

* On Saturday’s 1:30PM “Asian Americans and Superheroes: Secret Identities” panel in Room 1A18, SI editor-in-chief Jeff Yang and editor-at-large Keith Chow will be joined by Greg Pak and Bernard Chang (creative team of “The Citizen”). The panel will be moderated by Anne Ishii and will also feature the world premiere of the first Secret Identities trailer. (Room 1A18)

* Sunday’s 11:15AM “The Multicultural Mask” panel, moderated by Jeff Yang, will feature Greg Pak, Jann Jones, Danielle O’Brien, Perry Moore, and Stuart Moore. (Room 1A17)

And here’s where you can find a few of the SI-affiliated creators in Artist Alley:

BERNARD CHANG (Artist Alley) A8
BILLY TAN (Artist Alley) B13
CLIFF CHIANG (Artist Alley) J18
DUSTIN NGUYEN (Artist Alley) K8
GREG LAROCQUE (Artist Alley) M5
(Greg LaRocque will also be at the Exiled Studio booth #2177.)

Finally, make sure you visit Art Director Jerry Ma (and buy a t-shirt or two) at the Epic Proportions booth #1908!

Over at 4th Letter, David Brothers is posting daily articles on Black History Month:

While there are often interconnecting themes, I try to keep each post to its own specific subject. Later in the month you’ll probably see some callbacks and references to earlier posts. I’m not lecturing here so much as I am talking– I’d like to conversate about these subjects with other people. Smart question and stupid questions

Sometimes the subjects are specific characters, or specific treatments of characters. Other times, they’re more abstract- “blacks in comics.” I’ve got a loose structure in mind for this month, with the first couple of weeks being largely about what comics are missing and the latter two about characters or story arcs. It’s not a hard and fast rule, of course, but trust me when I say that there is a plan behind all of this.

So far, several thought provoking comments have been raised…including single moms in comics and why you can’t win writing black characters. Check back often.

We made an oblique reference to the controversy over the casting of the AVATAR; THE LAST AIRBENDER movie the other day, but noted cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim has a rather impassioned take on it and a call for action on his blog:New day in politics, same old racist world on the silver screen. The gist of it is that the M. Night Shyamalan adaptation of the popular cartoon has cast all cute little white kids in the roles of Asain characters in the cartoon. Shyamalan is, of course, himself of Indian heritage, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t business as usual in Hollywood, and reading stuff like Kirk’s remembrance is a powerful reminder of how much this stuff hurts:

When my brother and I were in high school, our favorite class was Drama. While we were rehearsing for the next day’s class or participating in a school play or dancing it up at the after party, I don’t think there was anything we liked more. During such times, it even surpassed our love of—dare I say it—comics. But we never even entertained the notion of actually pursuing it as a career. Not because we didn’t want to, but because we had too much pride to spend our entire lives pretending to be Long Duk Dong, or a Chinese food delivery boy with one line, or a Kato to some Green Hornet. Or even worse, having our hearts broken over and over going after roles that specifically call for Asian Americans like “Avatar, The Last Airbender” only to see them go to white actors. Back in my Drama days in high school, I used to dream of being white so I could pursue acting.

With discrimination like this “Avatar” casting continuing to happen uncontested in Hollywood, my future kids will nurse the same pitiful wish.

And it infuriates me.

If my future kids feel a passion for acting, I want them to be able to pursue it just like any other American. If they’re forced to give up that passion due to a genuine lack of talent or hard work, fine. But I don’t want their dreams to be clipped at the bud by some unassailable, universally accepted dismissal of their existence on the face this country.

Much more in the link, with a call for a letter writing campaign to Paramount and Kennedy/Marshall Productions.

The entire ban on Asian-American actors starring in American movies is especially bizarre when you think of how many of the world’s biggest movie stars are Asian, and the massive influence of Asian culture on so much that is successful out of Hollywood for the past 15 years or so. Is is just denial?

Thank God, a NEW controversy! Last week, Bill Willingham penned a piece for Big Hollywood, a newish website dedicated to presenting a more conservative view of the entertainment industry. The piece was entitled: Superheroes: Still Plenty of Super, But Losing Some of the Hero. While admitting his own part in superhero deconstruction back in the day with THE ELEMENTALS (remember Willingham’s fine art for that series?), he feels the right way to go is with a more heroic model of the superhero:

Borrowing some wisdom from the famous parable of the mote in one fellow’s eye, and the whole beam in another’s, it would be the height of hypocrisy for me to make any call for our industry to clean up its act, until I’ve first cleaned up my own. I’ve already made some progress down that road. In my run writing the Robin series (of Batman fame), I made sure both Batman and Robin were portrayed as good, steadfast heroes, with unshakable personal codes and a firm grasp of their mission. I even got to do a story where Robin parachuted into Afghanistan with a group of very patriotic military superheroes on a full-scale, C130 gunship-supported combat mission. And in my short run on the Shadowpact series I kept to the same standard (but with less success as several story details were editorially imposed).

But ’some’ progress isn’t enough. It’s time to make public a decision I’ve already made in private. I’m going to shamelessly steal a line from Rush Limbaugh, who said, concerning a different matter, “Go ahead and have your recession if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I choose not to participate.” And from now on that’s my position on superhero comics. Go ahead and have your Age of Superhero Decadence, if you insist, but you’ll have to pardon me if I no longer choose to participate.

The post brings about a pretty healthy response, but nothing like the comments section at Robot 6 which erupts into an all-out culture war that we hardly dared wade into, although Kurt Busiek seemed all too eager.

After reading the piece, we got the impression that Willingham, being one of the better “Big Two” comics writers out there, is still more interested in telling good stories than trying to serve some absolutist political viewpoint. Or maybe he’s just on the cutting edge, because “grim and gritty” is getting old. Apparently Willingham will be a regular at the site — can you say, boon to blog-kind?

Josh Tyler’s sexist, illogical, rambling, shrill screed over why we don’t need more female superheroes is getting all the disdain it deserves, but a little link blogging has revealed that this is the same guy who kind of went mental over any critic who didn’t think THE DARK KNIGHT was the greatest piece of art ever created by humankind:

Alarmed by what he deems insufficient obeisance to director Christopher Nolan’s movie in annual honors announced so far , Josh Tyler at CinemaBlend has been moved to issue movie critics an ultimatum: “Ignore ‘The Dark Knight’ at your peril.” Actually, he issues several ultimata, in various forms, including this one, vague but menacing: In any year, but especially in this, a particularly weak year, there’s nothing out there which compares to “The Dark Knight.” It must transcend your petty big box office biases since it has already changed the way we think about movies forever. It’s more than the best movie of the year, it’s one of the best movies ever made. Snub it and there will be consequences.

So, the guy clearly has…strongly felt opinions. He also thought WALL*E was stupid:

I liked WALL-E, but the movie gets more credit than it deserves. It’s almost overly simplistic, a lot of the stuff on the human ship didn’t do much for me, and it’s too preachy in a really clumsy way. It’s like science fiction for dummies.

Although Tyler is the editor-in-chief at Cinemablend, the movie-based site apparently doesn’t have such a great reputation:

I’ve had my problems with the hack site Cinema Blend for quite some time now. They use to be a website I would visit regularly but over the past 18 months, well, their actions have been despicable. I have never seen a website be so desperate for hits that it takes EVERY single rumor e-mail they receive as a legit bit of movie news. That’s even if they receive the e-mails they claim. Outrageous casting after outrageous casting they told us about over 2008, none of them ever came true.

I remember at the height of the JUSTICE LEAGUE fan frenzy, they would continue to post on a daily basis another piece of bullshit news. All to generate traffic. That site has absolutely no credibility with me, I have stopped visiting it for a long time now. I hate sites that post anything (the recent Batman rumors) just to capitalise on what is popular to bring more clicks to their page.

Clearly, Tyler’s pigtail-tugging piece piece (and his slapstick attempts to back up his views in the comments section) is just another traffic boosting ploy. It has drawn much interesting response, like this from Kate Willaert:Cootie-Free Zone, No Girls Allowed:

But what really is hilarious is the comments section, how he keeps continually moving the bar anytime a female commenter tries to argue that he’s wrong. He’s only talking about general movie audiences, female comic fans don’t count. Buffy doesn’t count because it wasn’t hugely successful (how many shows starring *male* action heroes can you name that lasted as long as seven seasons?), and because she’s not really a superhero anyways (because she doesn’t wear a costume?). Similarly, Sarah Connor and Kim Possible don’t count because he was talking about superheroes, not action heroes (nevermind that he *was* saying that only boys fantasize being action heroes).

Sure, women went to Spider-Man and The Dark Knight, but did you notice only one in five people were women at the midnight showing? Wait, you mean it ended up being more 50/50 on days after the midnight showing? Er, well…I don’t think TDK was really a superhero movie anyways, just a great movie. And women only went to Spider-man because it had romance. So there.

Willaert makes a good point, in that a lot of people engaging in this debate need to read up on the meaning of “socialization” and to back up her point, she links to this truly mind-boggling piece on historical sex-assigned colors:

“There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” [Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918] http://histclo.hispeed.com/gender/color.html - “Gender Specific Colors”

Which begs the question….what if EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVE IS WRONG?????????

Well, well, the debate over Josh Tyler’s mild statement We Don’t Need More Female Superheroes is getting a few ladies riled up. Dodai at Jezebel’s hackles are raised right up.:

First: I’m a woman who hates Julia Roberts. I hated that hooker with the heart of gold movie, found it to be condescending and nauseating, and I am not looking forward to seeing anything she does in 2009. By the by: Selling yourself on a street corner while waiting for Prince Charming? Not cute.

Second: I loved Wonder Woman when I was a kid. I had Wonder Woman underoos! A Wonder Woman swimsuit, which I wore with roller skates! I wanted to spin around and have my outfit change, I wanted to chase bad guys and kick ass, and I still do. I love Coffy, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Fifth Element, Resident Evil, Underworld and all kinds of stories in which a female — possibly wearing tight leather pants — is powerful, gorgeous and super-human in her strength and ability to drop-kick a fool.

Third: There’s nothing sexist about wanting a female superhero; there is something sexist in assuming that all women only want to see Sex And The City-type movies, that women are a monolithic block who all act the same way and want the same things. Women are multifaceted with varied interests. I never played with dolls as a child and I know I am not the only one. Why can’t the next generation look up to Wonder Woman, Catwoman or She-Ra the way my sister and I did? Why is Carrie Bradshaw the only acceptable alternative? And since when is it a man’s place to tell women what they do and do not need? Dude. Give me my goddamned Christopher Nolan-directed Catwoman and shut the fuck up. Is anyone with me?

Mariah Huehner, for one.

::deep sigh:: Yeah, we’ve all heard the one about how women like romance and “love” stories and guys like exploding things with cars that go Zoom!. ::yaaaawn:: What an amazing bit of trite, obvious, stereotypical, gender categorizing. Can’t someone PLEASE come up with something new? Because women are not a hive vagina. And while I may like a story about love or relationships, I ALSO LIKE STORIES ABOUT THINGS THAT GO BOOM! These things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Nor does my uterus decide what stories I like. This constant need to label women a certain way (and men, too, though due to the male perspective being dominant and default “neutral” it has a different result)just works my last nerve. Also, the guy quoted in that article is WAY not up on his comic book history. Apparently he hasn’t read any of Trina Robbins work on the subject, but Wonder Woman’s audience has often been comprised of women. I’m not sure where he got “never” from. I also don’t know who the “most women” are that he thinks we should poll about what movies they’re looking forward to in 2009 because the “odds are that it will be something starring Julia Roberts.” I’m looking forward to a lot of movies that do not star Ms. Roberts in any way. While I may be more interested in a project due to my respect of the actor/director/writer involved, the story has to grab me. Otherwise I don’t really care who’s in it. And Ms. Roberts hasn’t been in anything I looked forward to since Mystic Pizza. This is what happens when you base arguments on sweeping generalizations made about an entire gender. They are crappy and bad and full of holes.

In short, to generalize…generalizations suck.

I’ve had a lot of private correspondence over my recent post on my dearth of women creators and decision-making execs, many from folks who work for indies who pointed out the number of women working in those fields. Which is true. I was commenting more on mainstream, i.e. Marvel and DC Comics, where the number of people out in front of the camera who are distaff is far fewer and not growing much. Heck, Jenette Kahn, once the most powerful woman in comics by a mile, is making movies now.

Several people took me to task for not mentioning someone who is easily one of the most powerful people in comics, Fae Desmond, Executive Director of the San Diego Comic-Con. I plead a huge mea culpa for that, although as I joked to one correspondent, Fae is so busy that I’ve literally seen more of Samuel L. Jackson than her in recent years at the show.

At any rate, Stephen Totilo, the MTV video games expert who I singled out had his own response to my post, which I’ll let speak for itself. Notably, Lance Fensterman, who runs new York Comic-Con, BEA and New York Anime Fest, responded directly on his blog:

I read Heidi McDonald’s post at The Beat on the standing of female creators in our industry and took it as a wakeup call of sorts. In the post (read it here) Heidi uses the guest list from New York Comic Con as an example of how little play female creators in the comic industry get. I took her use of the NYCC guest list as an example and not so much a criticism, but the reality is either way she’d be correct – we have very few female creators on our guest list.

Obviously this is not deliberate, but it was also not deliberately avoided by actively seeking out worthy female creators. So what’s a con to do? Same as we always do, we ask the fans and pros (our customers) for advice. We ask you for your ideas and recommendations, that’s what.

You can go on over to Lance’s blog and make some suggestions of your own.

And then there’s this,which fills me with sorrow and agita. The idea that by singling women out I’m continuing to ghettoize them is a distressing one to me, and I do feel that I am in a damned if you do, damned if you don’t, situation. In my own defense, I do know that I spotlight the work of many, many women in comics here without ANY reference to their gender, posting artwork and new project announcements and so on. That is my end goal in my own work, and one of the reasons I don’t have any “Women in Comics” categories on this blog.

That said, Drawn and Quarterly Associate Publisher (a promotion I wasn’t aware of, so congrats) Peggy Burns sent me a lengthy and worthy response reprinted below. Peggy is one of the smartest and most dedicated PEOPLE I know in the comics business, and one of the biggest behind-the-scenes movers and shakers. We’d be far, far poorer without her. I’ll have more to say on this topic soonish, but I think letting her have the last word is a great way to end the year’s discussion on this topic.

Dear Heidi,

As a former employee of DC Comics and current Associate Publisher of Drawn & Quarterly, I read your recent editorial on women in comics with great interest and couldn’t agree more. But to examine the question of why there aren’t more women working in comics, we have to find new answers. And there are new answers, and there are old answers that have been there all along, but for some reason just have never been properly recognized.

I agree that it’s important to note that NYCC has few female special guests, but it’s hardly surprising. Until the organizers develop a deeper understanding of the medium (meaning NOT having a “Women Who kick Ass” panel with Jenna Jameson), and not just see the show as a revenue stream among their many trade shows, NYCC will always be inferior to the one show that everyone keeps pontificating that NYCC may overcome in numbers and influence–Comic-con International. And I think it should be noted, or perhaps more likely spelled out in fireworks in the sky, a few of the talented people who are behind Comic-con International: Fae Desmond, Jackie Estrada, Sue Lord, Janet Goggins, and those are just some of the people I deal with directly. I would go so far as to say that Fae Desmond is the one of the most powerful people in comics, a “noted industry figure” if you will. And yet, no mention of her ever comes up. She’s been with CCI since 1985.

What’s wrong in the year 2008 is to state that one can only be a noted industry figure if they work for Vertigo or Dark Horse and the titles that Shelly, Karen, and Diana edit are “mainstream” and the comics that Francoise edits are “not mainstream” especially in age when Persepolis is the bestselling original graphic novel of the decade. If the debate is whittled down to superhero comics or the big two then the argument of few women in comics makes more sense. Yes, there are shamefully few women writers and/or artists for DC Comics and Marvel, BUT there are far more than the one new “noted industry figure” you cited from the past five or ten years. If I may, editorially: Anjali Singh, Deanne Urmy, Shawna Ervin-Gore, business-wise Judith Hansen, Michelle Ollie, Jennifer de Guzman and those are the names that are on my radar (I’m sure there are plenty more in the genres I don’t follow as closely, especially in manga and superhero) or retailers like Mimi Cruz of Nightflight, Chloe Eudaly of Reading Frenzy and Mary Gibbons of Rocketship or journalists like yourself, Nisha Gopalan, and Hillary Chute.

Perhaps it is because the process in single-authored comics is more organic is why no one ever mentions cartoonists (of single authored comics) and their publishers, it’s too obvious. But for the week ending 12/14/08, Lynda Barry was holding her own on the Bookscan hardcover graphic novel bestseller list at #9 (# 42 on the overall hardcover and paperback list), behind Alan Moore and Tim Sale and ahead of Neil Gaiman and Stephen King, six months after her book came out. If we’re going to discuss women in comics, let’s do the research and be inclusive not exclusive. Let’s change the debate with facts.

The comics medium has changed a lot in the past decade thankfully, and, for the few segments of the industry that have not caught up on the issue of women in comics or doing comics, there are others who are quickly changing this, and therefore the definition of mainstream. I understood you were trying to say there are not many women doing comics at the big two companies, but in an industry that can a bit narrow-minded, we need our pundits to be think a little broader, so that everyone can learn.

Best,
Peggy Burns
Drawn & Quarterly
Associate Publisher

J. Caleb Mozzocco at Blog@ had a good post yesterday about women in comics. Again? Yes, again. Mozzocco tries to put a positive spin on things — pointing out that writers G. Willow Wilson, Amy Woolfram, Ivory Madison, Grace Randolph and Marjorie Liu all debuted this year or last year. And Amanda Conner, Amy Reeder Hadley and Nicola Scott are drawing mainstream comics, while a few folks like Colleen Coover and Kathryn Immonen have been working on slightly more offbeat fare.

It’s a nice piece, although praising a book by saying “it hasn’t been cancelled yet!” sort of speaks for itself. More to the point, will we EVER get to the day when there is more than one woman allowed to write comics? I’m encouraged to see Wilson, Wolfram, Randolph and Madison come on the scene, but when it comes to women writers in comics, Gail Simone has sort of cornered the market, through no fault of her own. 

For some reason, for women to break into writing “mainstream” comics has been ever harder than women drawing mainstream comics, perhaps becuase artists are generally more in demand than writers. It actually strikes me as odd, since writing — in journalism and novels, at least, two fields where women readers are a given — women writers have near parity with men. Off the top of my head, I would say that three of the all-time greatest comics writers have been women: Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel and Posy Simmonds. All are cartoonists who write and draw, of course, but even reading a few panels of their work shows a mastery of language and dialogue that anyone would envy.

Maybe I’m just cranky at the end of the year, but any idea that women in comics in the mainstream have progressed over the last few years is wrong. A colleague and I were trying to come up with the name of a noted female industry figure other than Karen Berger, and the list was shockingly short. Try it yourself. Diana Schutz and Jann Jones. Shelly Bond. I sincerely hope I’m forgetting someone, because that’s just one more than there was five or 10 years ago. (Yes I know Francoise Mouly, but we’re sticking to the “mainstream” for now.)

While indie and manga scenes have given rise to dozens of notable women creators on all levels, there are still only a tiny handful of mainstream female “superstars.” For instance, the New York Comic-Con has announced dozens of featured guests – including the tech writer for Newsweek, the marketing director for Bandai, and the guy who covers video games for MTV News  — and only two women, Barbara Canepa and Colleen Doran. Now, Canepa co-ccreated one of the most successful properties worldwide over the last 10 years — W.I.T.C.H. — and Colleen is Amerca’s Sweetheart, and I think both of them have given a little bit more to the industry than the guy who covers video games for MTV News. No offense. In fact I can think of a dozen women who have done more for comics than the guy who covers video games for MTV news.

Looking at the guest list thus far,  I do wonder, what do you have to do to get recognzied in this industry anyway? If you are a man, draw an issue or two of CAPTAIN AMERICA. If you are a women, you must slave away your whole life, and hope that some day, some guy somewhere deigns to put you into a history book.

Am I overstating the case? Maybe a little. But only a teeny, tiny bit. I’ve been in this game for a long time, and looking around, women aren’t in any better position than they were 10 years ago. There are many reasons for that, among them, yes, sexism of some kind, but also women who don’t want to compete at being as loud and attention-getting as men are expected to be. It’s a complex issue.

To end this on a high note, one area seems to have made major progress in the last decade — and it’s not where you think! DC now has 9 or 10 female editors at all levels, including, by my count, four or five in the DCU. That’s a sizable percentage, and I can only imagine what kind of influence it will have down the road. Let’s hope that these young women have long, distinguished careers and don’t become “symbols” of anything other than their own tastes and abilities. That would be true equality.

…cooter?

This is the gift that keeps on giving!

A comic strip by African-American cartoonist Keith Knight that used the N-word has caused an apology at Montclair State University. The episode of Knight’s syndicated weekly comic, The K Chronicles, adapted a real-life incident that used the racial epithet in relation to Barack Obama. The appearance of the strip in the school paper upset readers.

Angry students have complained to the university’s dean of students, other campus officials and the editors since the strip ran Thursday in The Montclarion, which has a circulation of about 4,000.

“My heart just dropped when I read it,” said Tamar VanDerVeer, 21, a senior who serves as secretary of the Organization of Students for African Unity, a campus group. “I’m trying to find something positive in the situation, but being a senior at Montclair State, a very diverse school, the ignorance is really uncalled for. They really hurt us.”

Knight issued a statement about the incident at his blog, which reads in part:

Is it offensive? Yes. Is it sad? Sure. But that’s the reality of the United States and this very unique election.

We have the first African-American candidate for president who could actually win. And folks of all colors are coming face-to-face with bias and race issues they didn’t know about, have ignored or pretended didn’t exist. Neighbors, co-workers, and family members are learning a little more about the society we live in.

The comic is pointing out one aspect of it. Straight-up racists are prepared to pull the lever for a black man. While some folks out there, who never thought they were prejudiced, aren’t going to vote for him because of his skin color.

Should we ignore stuff like this? I don’t think so.

Should it be in a comic strip. Yes!!

Nevertheless, Bobby Melok, the editor of the paper, issued an apology, explaining that since the strip came through a cartoon syndicate, it hadn’t been checked for content.

“Many of you have voiced your displeasure with this cartoon, as is your right,” Melok wrote. “It is never The Montclarion’s intention to offend its readership, and we sincerely apologize to all who were upset with this comic.”

Read the strip for yourself in the first link.

Once you start digging a bit into Japanese culture, you often come across reports that there are a lot of single people in Japan. According to one survey, 1 in 4 Japanese men between 30-34 is a virgin. The situation isn’t much better for the girls, where 1 in 4 has not had sex for a year, according to another survey. It comes as little surprise, then, that one manga fan is seeking to legalize marriage between humans and cartoon characters. And he’s got support.

Taichi Takashita launched an online petition aiming for one million signatures to present to the government to establish a law on marriages with cartoon characters.

Within a week he has gathered more than 1000 signatures through.

“I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” he wrote.

“However, that seems impossible with present-day technology. Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorise marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

Takashita is not available for comment, leading some to believe he may be kidding around. If he is pulling a prank, he’s also breaking the hearts of some lonely people. “For a long time I have only been able to fall in love with two-dimensional people and currently I have someone I really love,” one person wrote. on the petition. “Even if she is fictional, it is still loving someone.”

The above link mentions another reader who may have taken manga fandom a bit too far: a woman who posted online that she wanted her parents killed for making her throw away her three-room manga collection.

(Above: Googled with amazing ease via Love Hina.)

Today’s “It Kids” of snark and anti-establishmentarianism, Tucker and Nina Stone, are interviewed by Chris Mautner at Blog@Newsarama. Depending on your point of view, you will find them to be ultra-haters or honest proponents of an outsider viewpoint. Nina, who is new to comics, comments on the rollout of her exposure. Sometimes it pays off:

NS: OK. I saw that some of [the site comments] directed toward me were saying things like “this is like jumping into chapter seventy in a seventy-five chapter book and you really shouldn’t expect to understand.” And, you know, I learned from my American Splendor experience. I didn’t like the comic – and my opinion was based solely on that comic, at that time. People “commented” that I should really read his older stuff to get a better picture of what he’s really all about. So, I read a bit of his older stuff and watched the movie…and now I totally adore Harvey Pekar. And his wife. And I get it. I get what the comic was about, how it came to be, why it was successful, etc.

Sometimes it doesn’t:

So, after reading Final Crisis and all those comments, I decided to go to DCcomics.com, and spend a little time around there. Maybe there is some little primer there? Well, there actually IS some section that says “New to comics?” — so I clicked on it and it’s basically — I found it really funny because it has a FAQs page with minimal links and the questions are: “What are comics?” “Where can I buy comics?” “Where can I learn about comics and the comic fan community?” “And How does DC Comics, WildStorm, and Vertigo fit into all of this?” None of those FAQs really helped. So I clicked on Heroes and Villains and basically it tells me that to get caught up I need to read — 52, was that it?

Tucker argues from a more informed viewpoint, and once again, depending on which side you’re on, he’s either a connoisseur or an elitist:

It’s the same standard—that if it’s good, then it’s art, and if it’s not good, well it’s comics and you should shut up–over and over and it shouldn’t be because comics are in the same exact some marketplace as everything else. They’re not fighting for the comics dollar. There isn’t a comics dollar. They’re fighting for the entertainment dollar, It’s not just that manga sells more. Comics are up against TV, movies, video games, playing outside with a rope—run of the mill super-hero comics are fighting for the same free time that everything else is fighting for. It’s not enough that a comic is entertaining—it’s got to be more entertaining then it would be to watch a cat do something cute on YouTube, because that’s what it’s competing with for my time.

Stone also deals directly with the problem so many critics have: Contact between author and subject is all too possible and taints the whole barrel:

I made the mistake of responding directly to a creator who didn’t like the way I treated his shitty comic book. Back and forth, debating it like we respected each other’s opinion when in the end, I didn’t feel any different, he didn’t like me, and it wasn’t like he was going to break down and admit the thing was trash, and it wasn’t like I was going to lie and pretend I was kidding. At the end I felt dirty. I shouldn’t have done that. That’s me though, I had to learn. Now, I think I would just not get into it with them.

In a way,Tucker Stone is saying the most obvious thing possible: We should raise the bar to separate what is considered good from the vast sea of mediocrity masquerading as the majority of comics. And yet so many people spend so much time talking about that mediocrity. Dick Hyacinth picks up on the theme:

Comics readers seem to love the mediocre. I don’t think the problem with comics criticism (in a broad, broad, very inclusive sense) isn’t that it rewards terrible, bottom-of-the-barrell work; it’s that it rewards second-rate work. Any stab at respectability, no matter how modest, is too-often greeted with hosannas. I’ve seen people laud Kingdom Come because it used foreshadowing–which I’m sure we all remember is an actual, honest-to-god literary technique! I guess that’s a step up from those who think crying superheroes holding the charred remains of less-famous superheroes connotes respectability.

The way the comicnets obsess over mediocre comics, it’s as if movie blogs kept arguing the deep meaning and value of Beverly Hills Chihuahua and College all the time.

In all candor, The Beat is as guilty of this as anyone. Confronted with a sincere press release on something of, shall we say, “limited appeal,” we run it anyway, just in hopes that improvement is in the offing.

Look, did you see? We did it again. “Limited appeal.”

We meant to say “mediocre comics.”

We truly believe that this is a golden age for the graphic storytelling medium. Our recent trip to SPX proved that; it was the comics equivalent of a Christmas stocking, full of goodies and treasure. There are more and better trained cartoonists around us than at perhaps any time since the Golden Age of illustration.

Yet, every week we get stacks of comics from major publishers, and just sorting them out is a tedious chore, one to be fobbed off on interns, who, in turn, hate doing it. These comics have become so inbred, so tortured in their self-reflexive appeal to an an ever shrinking base that the brain automatically shifts away. Don’t get us wrong; there will be some new readers who will take the Nina Stone challenge and like it; in an Internet-driven world where mastery of inane factoids is currency, the draconian choice between total immersion or total rejection makes some kind of sense. So creating products for the cult makes economic sense. It’s the dearth of NON-cult products for new audiences that seems total nonsense. And despite what you may have heard, good comics(FUN HOME, WATCHMEN) win over more new readers than crappy comics do.

At the same time, having worked in the comics industry, I know that the monthly or weekly grind lowers one’s resistance to crap. The joy of just getting a book out every month soon drowns out the tastebuds, and it’s only long afterwards that, stepping back, you can see the poverty of imagination.

There are lot of barely readable or unreadable comics out there, and yet they are being argued over as if they were a novel by Dostoyevsky. And you know what? They aren’t.

And people gradually wake up to that fact. Every once in a while, a comic comes along that hastens the awakening. This week, it’s NIGHTWING #149. Greg Burgas tales up the call.

Over at Every Day Is Like Wednesday, I came across a description of Nightwing #149: “[I]t is incredibly, spectacularly awful.” Caleb goes far more into it, and I just thought, “I must buy this. I must read it.” And so I bought it. And I read it. Boy howdy, he’s right. He celebrates its awfulness, however, believing that nothing can come “anywhere near the terrible glory” that is Nightwing #149. I can’t be quite so blasé about it, however. This is a bad comic. More than that, it’s a depressing comic. In a DC Universe that has recently been all about cruelty, this stands out. If you didn’t buy it, I thought I’d break it down for you.

Everyone grows up sometime. You just can’t keep arguing over this stuff and thinking about it without a little bit of your soul dying. Thus it pleases us to see a bright, perceptive person like Laura Hudson beginning to emerge into the light:

Coming directly off of my weekend at SPX, as well as recently reading a string of excellent, engrossing non-superhero graphic novels like Skim, Swallow Me Whole, and Alan’s War, picking up a comic book like Nightwing #149 feels a lot like shutting my hand in a car door. And I’m thinking — I’m thinking I should stop doing that.

We all need to raise the bar a little. I do; you do. We all do. It’s not that potboiling pieces of mediocre pap (or worse) won’t still come out. It’s just that we need to stop pretending they matter in any way, shape, or form.

Steve Bunche got a bunch of old comics collections from a neighbor and found some gems, including several Pogo books and a copy of BACKSTAGE FROM THE STRIPS. Unbelievably, the above strip is from 1970. Bunche explains.

But the main reason why I’m happy to have received BACKSTAGE AT THE STRIPS is that it contains a strip I never forgot since I first saw it in there three decades ago, namely the following unbelievable DENNIS THE MENACE daily from 1970, and not 1917.

Yes, this actually ran nationwide in 1970, which beggars the question of just how out of touch creator Hank Ketcham was. Were the 1960’s something that didn’t happen for him? Whatever the case, the Cleveland Press printed this apology the day after the strip ran, printing it in place of what would have been that day’s DENNIS THE MENACE installment:

Yesterday’s DENNIS THE MENACE cartoon offended a number of Press readers. The Press apologizes for the affront caused by the cartoonist. It assures subscribers that such a thing will not happen again.

What truly amazes me about it is that I don’t think Ketcham actually meant any harm and just didn’t know any better. DENNIS THE MENACE always kind of existed in a 1950’s-style, suburbia-that-never-was OZZIE AND HARRIET universe of bland (though very well drawn) blandness that was informed by generations of outdated humor, and the depiction of the kid as a Sambo stereotype was just a part of the once-accepted visual language. Too bad Ketcham apparently hadn’t payed attention to social advances and depictions of us “race” types since the mid-1940’s.

Reuters reports that people are now more interested in potentially hooking up with someone over the internet than in watching impersonal films of people hooking up:

Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.
Bill Tancer, a self-described “data geek,” has analyzed information for over 10 million web users to conclude that we are, in fact, what we click, with Internet searches giving an up-to-date view of how society and people are changing.

Some of his findings are great trivia, such as the fact that elbows, belly button lint and ceiling fans are on the list of people’s top fears alongside social intimacy and rejection.

Others give an indication of people’s interests or emotions, with an annual spike in searches for anti-depression drugs around Thanksgiving time in the United States.

It seems that just as one must own various kinds of casual or formal shoes, one must have a variety of websites to capture various moods. So here’s our guide.

Deep thoughts — you got it right here, pardner!

Chatty stories about air conditioners one would share with friends — LJ.

Just added, a Tumblr blog, Secrets & Mysteries, for random clippings, mostly to do with politics or sociological issues.

Ephemeral thoughts, mostly involving temporary physical needs, that are so important that you must share them with all your friends and the rest of the world IMMEDIATELY!!!!, Twitter.

Information dump for potential stalkers: Facebook. Please note, I don’t befriend people I don’t know on Facebook I guess I’ll set up a Beat Facebook page one of these days. Until then, don’t be offended if I don’t befriend you. I have spent some time recently contemplating whether Facebook is evil, demonic, or truly Satanic, and it’s probably the latter, since it seems to be set up as a way to share your phone list/diary with your friends. That said, I’ve become addicted to my friendlist status updates — one can endlessly speculate about who’s doing what, and it has completely obviated the need to actually communicate with friends any more, ftw!

Computer culture division. The New York Times discovers web trolls.

§ Want to start trolling? here’s where to begin:

These abbreviations are fun ways to add personal flavor to your email and online discussion postings. What’s really amazing is the depth of Internet vocabulary that has been built up over the years. Take a look at this Internet Abbreviations Glossary, and see for yourself…

There’s are not any “Women in Comics” panels in San Diego, but there are a few women-focused panels of various sorts; there’s also this:

11:00-12:00 LEGO and BrickJournal: Brave New World— See what grown-ups and “big kids” are doing with LEGO today and what fuels them to never put the brick down! With notable guests including Joe Meno, editor and creator of BrickJournal, the magazine for adult fans of LEGO; expert builders Bryce McGlone and Brandon Griffith; and female builder Jessi Pastor. This panel showcases amazing examples of how they put their LEGO building talents to use! Dust off those old bricks in your basement and join the brave new world of LEGO builders! Room 4

Ya hear that? Expert builders AND a female builder! Nice. Below the cut, other females.

(more…)

§ Chris Butcher reports that the owner of the Manchester Grand Hyatt — a fellow name of Doug Manchester, believe it or not — has made political contributions that supporters of gay marriage will find odious:

A $125,000 donation in support of an anti-gay marriage initiative by a San Diego hotelier has drawn the ire of gay and lesbian activists and local labor unions who are now calling for a boycott.

Organizers held a news conference in front of the Manchester Grand Hyatt, near Seaport Village, on Thursday. A coalition of LGBT community leaders and the labor movement spoke out against Doug Manchester, who contributed a donation in support of Proposition 8, which would allow only men and women to marry in the state of California. The group opposes the ballot measure because it threatens the recent state Supreme Court decision that allows marriage between men and women.

Butcher suggests a hotel boycott is impossible because of the time factor, but that not paying for drinks should be an option. The Beat supports this, and suggests that, in fact, the Hyatt bar is so crowded and the bartenders so slow that getting more than one drink in any one evening is pretty much impossible, that the simple expedient of buying liquor at Ralph’s and secreting it in either a) a flask or b)a Arrowhead spring water bottle be used and EVERYONE will be happy.

Yesterday we trekked out to the Brooklyn Art Museum to see the Takashi Murakami show on its very last day, and so did a lot of other people. Old people, young people, white people, brown people, tan people. Obvious androgynous anime/otaku type folks with thrift store clothes made from a symphony of zippers and an old lady who wondered aloud whether seeing the show was worth the price of a couple of bottles of cheap wine.

When I read the first few captions for the show, it sounded kinda dire — like how Murakami mixed branding and 16th century scolls to license himself and blah blah. I must be so jaded by the commercial art world that I forget that in the fine art world, it isn’t polite to “brand” yourself, even though folks seem to have been doing it since Praxiletes. Anyway, despite the ominous commentary, by the end of the show I was a complete convert. Not that I wasn’t into Murakami before — the show at the Japan Society which he curated, “Little Boy,” (named after one of the atom bombs which we dropped on Japan during World War II) was revelatory and visionary and began to alter my thinking about how Japanese and American cultures could never truly understand each other.

That got me thinking once again about the Manga Moment. Murakami is definitely an art world superstar and for good reason — he’s fantastic. His monstrously large “Gero-Tan Bo Puking” is hypnotic…you could spend an entire day staring at its horrific magnificence and still have more to learn. The Murakami show — also a huge hit in LA — drew such a large and enthusiastic audience of all kinds of people because it is is both timeless and shockingly of the moment. In our special effects world, a naked girl who transforms into a jet fighter with female genitalia on its prow represents more than can easily be taken in in a short span of time.

I was also reminded that while we here in the comics world spend a lot of time analyzing this or that manga trend, we are really missing the forest for the trees here. As I’ve alluded to on this blog before, the otaku “look” and “lifestyle” is just a cool thing for kids now. It has joined the ranks of “punk,” “goth” and “rocker” as a fashion/music/lifestyle category. All this worrying about whether manga readers will grow up to read Tatsumi is beside the point that kids are turning to the otaku life as a refuge from hurt and a regimen for dealing with confusion. It isn’t all about reading. It’s all about appearances.

In our jaded culture, the alienness of Japanese culture still owns the power to shock. At the Murakami show, several paintings had “kid level” captions that explained things very very simply: “This syle is called Superflat because the characters are facing you. Does the mushroom look happy? Sad?” and so on. While one would laud the responsible parent who attempts to inject some culture into a child’s life, the kiddie captions suddenly stopped when confronted with a statue of a naked guy whose giant penis is ejecting a lasso of semen into the air. Does the cowboy look happy? Sad? Confused? Be prepared to defend your answer.

Above: Murakami’s “The Last Cowboy” with shorts which we’ve added in the spirit of Daniele da Volterra, aka “II Braghettone” — the breeches maker.

MEANWHILE, here’s an interesting photo set from Dulce Pinzón which shows real life Mexican immigrant workers in superhero garb:

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive. The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

[Via Val]

Mexican artist Adalisa Zárate gives some context to Memin Pinguin:

Now, Memin was created back in 1940, and it hasn’t changed since then. Should he get a revamped version, that draws less from the old design? Maybe, if they were paying Mr. Sixto Valencia, the artist (Mrs. Duche died a while ago) for redrawing his old work. As things stands now, what Editorial Vid is doing (And had been doing for a while even before the stamps controversy three years ago) is just reprint the old material, exactly in the same way as it had been published back then. There is no modernization, no attempt to make the material more current (And trust me, there’s more than just Memin’s appearance that reads dated when you start reading the whole story, for instance, the much critiziced corporal punishment against Memin by his mom. In 1940, mothers were expected to do that. Or have we forgotten all those Superman covers where Superman is spanking someone, or getting spanked?) and I don’t think there’s any interest for it to be. While Memin is a very loved character, and his comic has been reprinted at least 5 times if my memory serves, mexican comic books aren’t treated with much importance by Mexican business, mostly because they ‘don’t sell’ and thus, a modernization of Memin is probably seen as a useless risk. Reprinting makes money with very little cost for them, so it’s seen as risk free.

Zárate also explains the story that goes along with the above cover, and its a doozy.

The Beat says: Seriously, people, you’d have to be blind not to see the historical racist imagery inherent in this character.

[Via Journalista!]