Found via the V, the website Superheroines Demise which is totally, completely and utterly NOT SAFE FOR WORK.

We had downloaded a few photos with the intent to post with really bad parts blanked out, but they are all so yucky that we decided not to. Let’s just say that people who were incensed by the Playboy cover are going to completely Hulk out — if not die of an aneurysm right on the spot.

This site and its ilk have surely been discussed in the blogosphere before. It will come as a surprise to no one that there are websites that specialize in sexual fantasies involving superhero characters — in this case, specifically, superheroines being dominated, and beaten up, their clothes ripped off, etc etc. Or as one caption puts it:

– 36 intense photos of Golden Angel writhing in agony. This nasty terrorist zaps her to incapacitate her. Lying on the cement, bloodied and bruised, he removes part of her uniform! This story gets pretty wild. Enjoy.

We’ll set aside for a moment the question of whether seeing women “bloodied and bruised” is sick as fuck or not. No, what’s really interesting about this site is how similar so much of the imagery is to actual comic books.
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Above, Kanako Inuki’s PRESENTS

Dave Carter decided to count the number of female creators working at the Top Four publishers as listed in the latest Previews, and comes up with a list of 9. Two (Robin Furth and Jessica Ruffner) are writing various book-related adaptations at Marvel. One (Amy Wolfram) is a TV writer working on a comics based on the show she writes. One is Gail Simone. Artists: Adriana Melo, Nicola Scott, Sandra Hope, Jan Duursema and Laura Allred.

I’m pretty sure Allred is a colorist and not an artist, but at least her name was in the catalog.
Carter’s nut ‘graph:

So as far as creator gender representation in mainstream comics goes, things are no better than they were ten, twenty or thirty years ago–the days of Louise Simonson, Jo Duffy, Ann Nocenti, June Brigman, Marie Severin, Ramona Fradon, etc.

In fact, there are more female editors at the major companies than there are female creators. Over at Image, there’s no one, except the occasional Colleen Doran and contributors to anthologies like NYC Mech.

Which all sounds very depressing, but then you look back in the real world, and Marjane Satrapi, Gabrielle Bell and Nina Paley are all making movies; Posy Simmonds, Hope Larson, Jill Thompson, Carla Speed McNeill, Raina Telgemeier, Ellen Lindner, Jessica Abel and Sara Varon are all making books; and so are Svetlana Chmakova, Queenie Chan, Amy Hadley, Joanna Estep and Rivkah, not to mention Clamp and Hiromu Arakawa, Natsuki Takaya, Kanako Inuki and Maiocco Anno; and Danielle Corsetto, Dorothy Gambrell, Dylan Meconis, Julia Wertz, and Lauren Weinstein and probably one or two other people I’ve forgotten.

Isn’t this just a comment on how pinched and narrow the entire “comics mainstream” has become? Isn’t it sad?

A rather haltingly written wire service story once again proclaims that sisters are pow! bam! sock!ing it for themselves:

A program at an Upstate New York college has taken a look at the changing role of females in comic books, noting the transformation that characters such as Wonder Woman have undergone since their creation.

Drawn to Diversity, a program of Alfred University, examines cultural diversity and stereotypes in comic books, newspaper comic strips and advertising cartoons.

“We want people to be more cognizant of what they see,” said Mechele Romanchock, coordinator of the university’s diversity programs.

At first we were trying to be polite about the whole thing, but we’re increasingly baffled to see all these stories coming out that somehow posit that Wonder Woman is at the epicenter of the “women in comics” movement, whatever that is. Viz, Tokyopop, Marjane Satrapi, Alison Bechdel, Megan Kelso…THAT is where the change is coming from, not from a character that hasn’t been marketing towards girls in 30 years. Heck, even Archie comics are more germane than Wonder Woman.

Or maybe we’re all wrong and it’s this.

To cleanse the palette, we recommend this nice profile of Colleen Coover by Steve Duin.

Colleen and her sister, Janine, grew up reading coverless comics that her grandmother salvaged from her job at the neighborhood Five & Dime. Archie Andrews and Richie Rich taught her to read, and Dan DeCarlo and Harvey Comics’ artists like Warren Kremer, Ernie Colon and Sid Couchey introduced her to the wondrous effect of sharp, clean lines on the comic page.

Valerie finds a demographic survey from a publicly-traded company:

The portrait that it painted of the average mainstream comic book reader is as follows:

Male, 20-25, video-game player, disposable income, “techie,” single.

What is the breakdown of male versus female readership?

More than 90% of the readers of mainstream superhero comics are male.

See, I feel that as president of Friends of Lulu I am betraying my own gender by sharing this information. But it is better that we know and move on from there.

Although the methodology is unknown, and one would hope for some improvement, it doesn’t really come as much of a surprise: every comics reader demographic survey we’re EVER seen has 5-10% female readership. Although things have clearly changed, maybe the methodology hasn’t?

Indefatigable Cheryl Lynn has launchedTorchbearers, am LJ blog given over to…well, we’ll take the liberty of quoting Cheryl’s introductory post in its entirety:

Welcome to Torchbearers! This community is in some ways an extension of the Ormes Society. Posts will generally be divided into three sections.

Torchbearers: This section will serve to spotlight black female characters in comics/manga. A post will usually contain a brief description of the character, a few scans from the series the character appears in, and information on where the series may be obtained.

Race Around The Net: A collection of links focusing on the topic of race and how it influences the world of comics/manga.

Ormes Society: News on events involving Ormes Society members.

Basically, I wanted a little corner of the net where I could place all of the information I found interesting! If you find this kind of stuff interesting too, then feel free to stick around and chime in!

Add to feeds imediately. Cheryl has been blogging up a storm.

Harvey Pekar Talks Politics at Billion Dollar President. Click on link for complete comic.

Last weekend’s New York Anime Festival was an interesting experience to say the least. It was only the second anime show I’ve ever attended (I went to Otakon in Baltimore a few years ago) so the hypotheses I drew from the experience can hardly be called conclusions. I welcome corrections or deeper observations. But the one thing I can say with some certainty is that I wish there had been more people from Marvel and DC there. (There were a few people from Marvel and I spotted DC’s new SVP of sales and Marketing Steve Rotterdam taking in a few panels, but that was about it.) It was a real eye opener and no mistake.

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Yikes! Never saw that one coming.
Presidential candidate Ron Paul picks his super-hero favorite at ComicMix:

“My favorite comic book superhero is Baruch Wane, otherwise known as Batman, in The Batman Chronicles. “The Berlin Batman,” #11 in the series by Paul Pope, details Batman’s attempts to rescue the confiscated works of persecuted Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, from Nazi Party hands. “

Speaking of the NY Times, there were several women-in-comics related posting that went around over the last week or so that we thought worthy of their very own round-up. First, Gail Simone was profile in the New York Times, a prestigious achievement for anyone. However the phrase “She is the first woman to serve as “ongoing writer” (to use the industry’s term) in the character’s 66-year history.” did seem to be fudging it a bit, as Johanna pointed out: Both Trina Robbins and Mindy Newell wrote WW in the past.

For what it’s worth, the article istelf seems to read “…the first woman to serve as ‘ongoing writer’ (to use the industry’s term) in the character’s 66-year history.)”

Since the writer is a known comics fan, I like to think he put that parenthetical in there to perhaps acknowledge that there may be some dubiousness to the claim.

That said, if the claim is that Simone is the character’s first “ongoing” writer, that would explain why Trina Robbins isn’t being counted since her Wonder Woman contributions were a mini-series and an original graphic novel, not part of the ongoing series. So excluding Robbins makes sense on a technical, semantic point-of-view.

Less clear is why Mindy Newell should be overlooked. Perhaps it’s because her contributions were collaborative (at least on the post-Crisis Perez-era Wonder Woman; I’m not sure if she was the only writer credited on the pre-and-during-Crisis issues she wrote.) Which is still a bit unfair, but there you go.

Steven Rowe in The Beat’s own comment section, makes a case for two previous writers:

Of course both Joye Murchison (1945-1947), and Dann Thomas (1983) were ongoing Wonder Woman writers even before this. You could argue that Thomas was the less famous of a writing team, but Murchison’s stories were solo…..

None of which is a knock against Gail, who is easily one of the most successful comics writers this decade. But it does tend to point out the “There can be only one!” attitude towards female scripters in the superhero biz, as well as how easily previous milestones can be forgotten.

§ Johanna is back with a look at the first year of the Minx line .

Is the line a success? I don’t pay attention to sales figures much, so I don’t know how well the books are selling either in the direct market or in the bigger bookstore field. That they’re doing a second year says to me that they still are optimistic about the idea. I’m guessing the books are most popular among schools and libraries, since they’re classically styled stories (teenage girl learns life lesson) that are easy to justify for purchase. I have yet to hear anyone really excited about them, though, in any market.

(The comment section reveals some Minx Year Two news, as well.)
David Welsh also looks back, and examines the sales patterns between direct market and bookstore sales.

This prompts another response from Johanna:

DC, as a company, may not want Minx to be too successful, anyway, because it would put the lie to many of the pieces of received wisdom that they’ve been comforting themselves with all these years. And their strong relationship with the direct market makes it difficult to be successful in the bookstore market, because it’s seen as disloyalty to their “core customers”.

As for our own viewpoint, the Minx line would have to be called at most a modest success at this point, but one that DC clearly does have belief in for another year. We’d still like to see more actual feedback from the target audience, however.

The official WATCHMEN blog posts pictures of the film’s backlot.

This ain’t no green screen.

According to director Zack Snyder:

Here are a few interesting facts about the backlot:

• 5,800 feet of neon requiring 24,000 watts of power
• 100 unique and custom-designed graphics created for the various storefronts
• 5,000 square feet of custom posters
• Street had to work for 1938, 1945, 1953, 1957, 1964, 1974, 1975, 1977, and 1985
• 1,040 feet of 1:1 scale New York streets
• 98,400 square feet of exterior scenery
• 12,500 square feet of interior scenery
• Building heights range from 23′9″ to 42′6″
• 10,325 16-foot 2×4s
• 3,600 sheets of OSB (plywood-like construction material)
• 384,000 square feet of foam brick
• 200,000 nails
• 3,500 tubes of construction adhesive
• 160,000 lbs. of steel I-beams support the facades
• 300 cubic meters of concrete
• 6,000 square feet of glass
• 4,800 square feet of plexiglass
• 20,000 donuts were consumed by the construction crew
• 20,000 gallons of water and 3,000 gallons of Gatorade was drunk by the crew

This ’80s view of New York is so grungy that it inspires an entire thread at New York real estate site Curbed about how New York USED to be:

God I miss that. Just looking at it gets me misty-eyed. Yep, good times, cheap apt’s, real people, restaurants that served real food, not some microscopic angolian seabass with a champagne reduction. Sure we had upscale restaurants, but even a place like Le Caravelle ( RIP ) served honest haute cuisine. Just for the record for all you pussies out there that keep whining about how it was sooooooo dangerous- that’s freaking bullshit. Now run along and snatch-up your tall, skim, mocha, chocolate chip, vanilla sprinkled latte and move on.

This Wall Street Journal profile of Dark Horse VP Anita Nelson does not get off to a promising start:

Anita Nelson is one of only two female executives at a comic-book publisher in the last 10 years. Yet she says the only times in her career when she experienced gender bias was while she was working in telecommunications and cable TV, two industries where more women are present.

Huh? DC alone has half a dozen women on the masthead, with Jenette Kahn (now departed for her own production company) and Terri Cuningham springing to mind. So that’s, like, at least THREE. Granted there aren’t a ton, but there’s more than two.

Then, the next few paragraphs are the kind of odious “Wow! She carries a handbag! And yet she is allowed in the workplace!” that shouldn’t even be an issue in this day and age to a professional newspaper or organization.

At Dark Horse Comics, in Milwaukie, Ore., where she is vice president of sales, marketing and licensing, her gender has never been an issue, Ms. Nelson says.

While working alongside seven male executives and supervising about 20 workers — most of them male — she’s never felt like she’s any less valuable than her male colleagues or less advantaged in any way. The culture there is equally welcome to men and women, she says, and it’s one of the reasons she considers herself lucky.

Yes, and the womenfolk are even allowed to eat at the same table as the men, too! We’re very progressive in the US of A.

Yech. Is this part of the new Murdochified WSJ or just busines as usual?women movies xxx hothuge movie cockmasala movies indianlong movies free spankingmature movies ladiescock monster moviedoor girl movie next thegallary movie Map

Elayne Riggs reports on the Women of Color panel at MoCCA the other night at ComicMix, with a PICTURE.

The event was so well-attended that MoCCA volunteers were putting out extra rows of chairs to accommodate the crowd. This seemed to speak to comics fans’ need to see and support images represented in their favorite hobby, both on the page and behind the drawing board, that aren’t always the white male default. Even so, the very talented women seemed to want to keep an arm’s distance from the mainstream comics scene. Lewis has a nice portfolio of work for Marvel Comics but felt constrained by corporate dictates, and is following her muse by painting and working on her upcoming manga title Yume and Ever. Gonzalez takes her inspiration from Mad Magazine, underground and even horror comics to continue in the alternative world with Too Negative and her other dark humor works. And Lewis has expanded her Sand Storm series into a downloadable game soon to be available for mobile devices, and is intrigued by the world of animation in general.

Also: Rich Watson reports at PopCultureShock.

Speaking of Disneyland, the famed Small World ride will be closed for a while while it’s upgraded. One of the reasons? The boats that take riders on a wonderful voyage through colorful stereotypes of the world are running aground due to payloads of bigger, fatter Americans.

Heavier-than-anticipated loads have been causing the boats to come to a standstill in two different spots, allowing for an extra-long gander at the Canadian Mounties and the Scandinavian geese, said Al Lutz, whose website MiceAge first reported the refurbishment plans.

“If these boats get stuck . . . they have to send someone back in there to lighten the load on the boat,” said Lutz, who has been on the ride when a guest or two was asked to disembark.

“They’ve even built a platform next to that [Mounties] curve because they’ve had so many problems.”

Disneyland plans to add an inch of depth to the water channel and design more-buoyant boats, Lutz said.

According to the article, Disney is also enlarging the costumes of the Cast Members who run the rides due to rising American girth, We’ll give a hell yeah to that. Back in the 90s when we worked at Disney, we were at Disneyland all the time, and the Cast Members tended to be typical youngsters — the biggest appearance problem was acne. When we went back this past summer, we noted many, many larger pirates, mission control specialists and whatever it is that the people who run “Mr. Toad’s Wild RIde” are supposed to be.

But why should that be any surprise, when the US government heartily discourages farmers who grow healthy fruits and vegetables?

The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

The Times Online (UK) looks at Hataraki Man, a controversial manga by Moyoco Anno that examines gender roles:

For decades the Japanese comic industry has done a roaring trade in cartoons that chronicle the miseries and triumphs of the salaryman. Anno’s comic is a deliberate role reversal. The mould-breaking comic, Hataraki Man (Working Man), tracks the agonising day-to-day trials of a woman trying to balance the modern desire for a career with the dead weight of traditional Japanese social values. It has become so popular that it has been made into an animated cartoon for girls and a prime-time television drama for women.

Hiroko’s adventures have also become the basis of a bestselling lifestyle guide for the modern working woman, teaching the art of remaining feminine during the fight for equality and showing how to cope with truculent bosses, difficult coworkers and unsupportive partners.

Speaking of Japanese society, Simon over at Icarus quoted a rather interesting stat the other day:

I can’t quite remember how I came about this link, but condom maker Durex has released the results of its global survey on how frequently people are having sex. 87% of respondents in Greece say they have sex at least once a week, making them the busiest country in the survey. The least active country? Japan, at 34%.

The left-leaning American Prospect takes on The Revolt of the Comic Books:

A superhero killed the president this summer. Moments later, a shocked White House press corps watched as John Horus, his gleaming white-and-gold costume still soaked in blood, explained why. Because “the war in Iraq is illegal and predicated on lies,” because “our people and theirs are dying for corporate gain,” because of the “use of torture by our elected authorities,” and because the president “stole the last two elections,” the most powerful member of the Seven Guns could no longer “stand by while this administration commits crimes.” In response, a terrified government imposed martial law, launching a nationwide manhunt for Horus’ estranged teammates, whose reactions to the act ranged from horror to sympathy.

You must be a subscriber to read the rest of the piece. Dagnabbit.

Walmart unleashes a report on what’s hot for hHalloween, and superheroes are holding their own.

In the countdown to fright night, a peek into the Wal-Mart costume closet reveals America’s changing Halloween habits for 2007. In fact, with Halloween spending up 10 percent from 2006, the nation’s largest retailer serves as the best barometer on everything boo-ful: from the preferred garb of once-a-year ghosts and goblins to the continued popularity of pumpkins to the Fifi’s favorite frightful frock.

– The comic book costume craze continues as thousands of children across
the country have responded, “Spider-Man!” when asked what they’d like
to be this Halloween. Scream, Super Man, and Jack Sparrow also top the
list of most popular children’s costumes so far this year.
– Pumpkins are still the holiday’s hallowed icon, and sales at Wal-Mart
stores nationwide, show five states stand out as those where jack-o-
lanterns, pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pies are fall faves. This year,
customers in Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and
Massachusetts have purchased the most pumpkins consecutively (as of
October 19, 2007).
– Costume contests for pets? Maybe. Wal-Mart’s 2007 costume sales
indicate that dog owners who will parade with their pets this Halloween
prefer princesses, witches and rather than fangs, four-legged Dracula.

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Following the bombshell of Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts headmaster, coming out of his magical slocet, perhaps no group is so stunned as Christians who had taken the Harry Potter series’s religious theme to their bosom. Travis Prinzi writes a very smart blog looking at Potter from the Christian perspective, and the reaction has been explosive in his comment section:

The problem I’m having with my Christian brothers and sisters is the way in which so many are sitting up nice and high, evaluating and judging Rowling’s version of Christianity, which she freely admits she struggles with, and condemning her for it. Rowling is not a preacher. She is not an ordained minister. She is not writing theological treatises. She is a writer, struggling with her faith, and giving us a story that tells that struggle. She never claimed to be an evangelist, and she’s been quite clear in saying that she was not setting out to do what Lewis did with Narnia.

Prinzi’s sensible advice: nowhere in the books does Dumbledore state his fondness for Judy Garland, so you are still free to view him as the Albus of your own imagination.

More: Colleen Doran, Carla Speed McNeil and Fancois Peneaud (among others) discuss Dumbledore.

We’re terribly relieved to know that there have been no threats issued against Brian Michael Bendis in the wake of his “non-rapey” scripting of Marvel superheroine Tigra getting severely beaten by The Hood. A beating which is totally subtext free, thank God. God knows that comic book commentators and bloggists are actually the most violent radicals on the pop culture scene, and it’s time their reign of terror ended.

Our sentiments as to the actual story echo Cheryl Lynn’s. Actually we are kind of shocked by how bad the art by Lenil Yu looks.

Variety’s Anne Thompson follows up on the recent report that studio head Jeff Robinov had ordered producers to not even bother turning in projects with female leads. Unsurprisingly, Warners has denied the story rather vigorously, and along the way even claims they still have a WONDER WOMAN movie in development:

Female superheroes are prominent in two upcoming Warners comicbook actioners. Wonder Woman joins the male ensemble in DC’s “The Justice League” and Silk Spectre leads Alan Moore’s “Watchmen.” Female co-stars figure in both “Speed Racer” and “Get Smart.” And Robinov is still seeking the right script and star for a “Wonder Woman” feature, which has been in development for a decade.

Poor execution and bad timing at the end of the most recent horror cycle were part of the poor reception for the horrorific “The Reaping” and “The Invasion,” which both Kidman and co-star Daniel Craig refused to promote. As for Neil Jordan’s brainy twist on the vigilante genre, “The Brave One,” Robinov said he is “proud of the movie,” which Foster continues to support around the world. “It’s tricky,” he said. “It may have been too rough for women, and we didn’t get the reviews we had expected.”

A snarkster might note that neither WATCHMEN nor JLA will feature a female lead, but seemingly sidekicks and love interests will always be allowable, or at least we hope so.

Following tons of international controversy, PW reports that Little, Brown has canceled the US version of Tintin in the Congo:

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, which had been planning to publish Tintin in the Congo, a book criticized for its racist, Colonial-era depictions of Africans, has quietly pulled the title from its fall list, PW has learned. The publisher also said it will not include the book in a forthcoming box set of all 24 books in the Tintin series.

Publicist Melanie Chang did not give a reason for the standalone book’s cancellation, but of its omission from the box set she said, “Given the controversy surrounding the Congo title, we felt including it in the box set would eclipse the true intention of the collection, which is to showcase Hergé’s extraordinary art and his remarkable contribution to the graphic arts.”

Although Belgian-born Herge later repudiated the views of this early work, it has long been criticized for its racist and colonialist views — repugnant today but common for the time.

Similar problems have long scotched even the concept of an English version of Tezuka’s KIMBA, THE WHITE LION, as PWCW recently reported:

PWCW: Any interest from Vertical in licensing Kimba the Lion [a classic manga and anime work by Tezuka ]?

IM: We’re interested, but the depiction of black people in Kimba is problematic. If everyone can for a moment put their sensitivity aside then we can do it. Otherwise people may be offended by the stereotypical drawing of Africans. A disclaimer might not be enough. And the author no longer being alive, it can’t be redrawn. If people promise to be understanding, we will publish it.

Of course, we would first have to talk to Tezuka Productions, too. They might have their reservations. I know for a fact that they are very careful about Kimba. They got into trouble in Japan in the early 1990s when certain groups said that it should be taken off the shelves—and it was. So they added a disclaimer and now you can buy it, but you don’t see it that much in bookstores.

Our thoughts? While all of these contemporary treatments are promlematic — like Eisner’s Ebony in THE SPIRIT — pretending they never existed doesn’t seem to be very useful, either.

The real, true director’s cut of this seminal and prophetic film is coming:

This current “Final Cut” version, Scott said, comes closest to what the film could have been and, in his mind, should have been.

“It’s quite a thing to come back to this film now, after all this time, after a quarter of a century,” said Scott, whose résumé includes “Thelma & Louise,” “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down.”

“This is a film that, in many ways, has echoed throughout popular culture in a very special way.”

The film also seems to have been a career landmark for just about everyone involved.

“I was never on another movie set quite like that one,” said Daryl Hannah, who portrayed the sexualized android called Pris. “I was very young, and every day it felt the way you fantasize that making a movie would be — like you’re stepping into another world.”

NPR’s On The Media looks at the cultural impact of manga:

Manga is Japan’s ubiquitous art form; a kind of comic book equivalent that illustrates everything from tax preparation to hard-core fantasy. But it is its growing success outside Japan that’s highlighted its new utility, what Japanese politicians are calling ‘manga diplomacy.’ Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica, explains why politicians are recognizing the form as a powerful cultural export.

[Thanks to Kevin for the link.]

Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica, has thoughts on manga as a feminist issue, in comparing the number of “strong female characters” in anime and manga with real life gender roles:

Indeed, a foreign fan of manga and anime might be forgiven for assuming that Japan, creative nerve center for the artwork itself, is a global leader in gender equity.

Yet just last month, The New York Times ran a damning indictment of Japan’s actual treatment of women in the workplace, noting that in 2005, women held a mere 10.1 percent of all management jobs in Japanese companies and government. (The U.S. figure is 42.5 percent.) In the United Nations index of gender empowerment, a survey of 75 countries, Japan ranks 42nd, far below Asian neighbors such as Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. The article predicts dire consequences for a nation with an anemic birthrate and looming labor shortages.

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Pretty much everything of interest in the Nate Fisher/Eightball case has been said, until Fisher himself speaks, perhaps, but a few late comments are worth noting. We found these through our own trackbacks (Our story got Boing Boinged yesterday, sending our hits and trackbacks through the roof.) but if anyone knows of any other USEFUL commentary, send us a link.
First, Eric Reynolds has his final say on the matter. We encourage everyone to read it for themselves, as its quite thoughtful. Nut kernal:

I appreciate any parent wanting to protect their children, but in this case, would the child be any less protected if a solution that didn’t include a police investigation and/or immediate resignation had been pursued? To me, that’s the fundamental question.

Another interesting perspective is from a blog called Minivan Diaries, which the sidebar tells us, is written by a mother of four who once planned to be a children’s advocate:

However, at what cost and to what extremes do we go to protect our children? Isn’t it also our job to be good role models for our kids, especially when they are teenagers and they judge our behavior so scrupulously? By rushing to the police, and notifying school officials, she denied the teacher any opportunity to explain himself. He was guilty way before he even had a chance to prove his innocence, or at least his poor judgement. This was a perfect opportunity for a Parental Teaching moment — to demonstrate how adults work out differences by gathering facts, communicating, trying to understand both sides of an issue, and in this case, realizing that people, even teachers are human and they make mistakes.

After reading all of the hullabaloo, it’s pretty clear that mistakes were made on every side. I don’t think anyone would question the right or duty of parents to protect their kids. Hopefully the next time something like this happens, more private discussion will occur before the media decides to have its own field day.

The New Haven Register weighs in with actual news story about the story of a Connecticut teacher who resigned after parents complained about him giving a 13-year-old a mature reader comic to read. The story confirms that it was, indeed EIGHTBALL #22 which is the book in question. The book shows a topless women and a man putting his hand up a woman’s skirt. Of course, there is much more to the story — it seems the student has been hazed in person and on Facebook*** because the teacher was very popular with other students.

The parents of a freshman student whose teacher resigned after he gave her a sexually explicit illustrated book said Wednesday their daughter has been the target of harassment from fellow students, and they want the school district to do more to clarify the issue with other parents.

The girl’s father, who asked that his family remain anonymous because it has already been the target of criticism, described the graphic novel that English teacher Nate Fisher gave the student as “borderline pornography.”

The book, one of a series of comic book novels by Daniel Clowes, is called “Eightball #22.” It includes references to rape, various sex acts and murder, as well as images of a naked woman, and a peeping tom watching a woman in the shower.

“It’s not even like a gray area,” the father said. “It’s clearly over the line.”

CBLDF head Chalres Brownstein is quoted throughout the story. Reading between thelines, all we can say is that we’re glad that dad wasn’t our dad. That said, it is up to parents to choose what their kids read. While we may think that the Clowesian brand of “rape and…murder” is fine, it may not be fine for all kids.

As for whether the teacher in question can be prosecuted…well, Clowes’ new comic strip running in the NY Times and general reputation as a respected literary figure would certainly make any legal action very interesting. In fact, EIGHTBALL #22 was eventually collected by Random House as the grahpic novel ICE HAVEN, making prosecution seem crazy mad. But sadly, worse things have happened in these United States. If nothing else, this small town tale of a very protective father, a well liked teacher, and a girl harassed by her schoolmates could be something out of…A DANIEL CLOWES COMIC!

If you watch the various news reports up on the internet, it’s clear that the media is making a meal out of this, with the sensational aspects played up. We’ve predicted this before, but we’ll predict it again: once someone who wants ratings actually reads a yaoi manga, we’re in for it.

***Facebook is the devil’s work by the way.

PR on a new issue of UVC magazine spotlighting a little seen group in comics:

Since its debut in February 2007, UVC: The Urban Voice in Comics has provided news, information and opinions about black comics and creators for all readers. This fall, UVC takes a closer look at a small but significant segment of the comics industry - black women.

Among the features in the November/December 2007 issue include the following:

· feature articles on black women creators and industry figures, including Barbara Brandon-Croft, Spike, and The Ormes Society founder Cheryl Lynn Eaton
· a listing and analysis of the major black women characters at both Marvel and DC Comics
· selective listings of significant black women characters in other comics, past and present, real and fictitious

In addition, this special issue will also include articles about black women in science-fiction film and television, in animation, and as science-fiction/fantasy novelists.

It is the goal of the staff at UVC to provide a greater awareness of the contributions black women have made to not only comics, but pop culture at large, as well as to encourage black women elsewhere to take an interest in comics, whether as a fan or as a creator.

UVC is available through Diamond Comic Distributors and the November/December 2007 issue can be found on page 386 of the September 2007 Previews catalogue.