super friends let it all hang out.

DO not click on this link unless you are ready for a very, very disturbing image with superheroic undertones, but no underwear at all.

Edit: The page is gone. If you saved the picture, let Heidi know. — MLC

According to the Taipei Times, Japan’s 24 hour manga/internet cafes are giving rise to a small population of refugees who live in them.

Internet cafes and “manga” comic cafes are omnipresent in urban Japan, offering couches, computers, soft drinks and comic books to stressed businessmen or commuters who missed their train.

But a government survey found that an estimated 5,400 people have virtually moved in to the 24-hour cafes.

It said some 80 percent of Japan’s “net cafe refugees” are men and that 52.7 percent said they decided to live in the lounges because they lost their jobs.

Controversy is growing over the above cartoon by Ed Gamble of the Florida Times Union. Gamble says his intent was to criticize the “no snitch” custom; and he knew the cartoon would be controversial:

“I find the word ‘ho’ very offensive and think it is tearing away the moral fabric in the Black society and degrading to the women who are the pillars in this society. Now the ‘No Snitch’ rule of law that is spreading is causing more harm. This is not an Imus racist thing. This is a cartoon showing that someone can murder and that no snitch is the ticket and that (rap music billboard) disrespect for the Black women is common among these thugs.

However, several groups. including the NAACP, think Gamble needs to apologize:

In a letter sent to all Jacksonville television stations as well as the newspaper, the Jacksonville Leadership Coalition called the cartoon “racist, culturally insensitive and degrading to African-American women.”
In addition to the apology, the group also called for the firing of cartoonist Ed Gamble, the hiring of a person of African-American descent for the newspaper’s editorial board and a meeting with black leaders to “resolve the issue.”

The letter quotes the Rev. Rudolph McKissick Jr., who described the cartoon as “insensitive to African American women, children and the community.”

Long thought an endangered species, Klingons have been spotted lately in Texas, giving hope that this rare and beautiful species may still make a comeback from the brink of extinction.

When the Klingons walk into the Krispy Kreme on Cooper Street in Arlington, the doughnut makers try not to gawk. The 10 or so officers of the Imperial Klingon Vessel, Melota, have long hair and ridged foreheads. They wear elaborate leather and metal armor.

Mark ‘Qel’ogh-wI’ Alcala, captain of the IKV Melota, got Pat Burke’s help getting ready for the recent Klingon Ball, which raised $600 for SafeHaven of Tarrant County. Everyone in the room is curious what the Star Trek characters are doing here. They are eating doughnuts and drinking milk.

Another newspaper, another favorable review of the Minx line (along with other comics):

The hip Minx series is consistently cranking out some of the sassiest, fun-to-read comics this year. The top-rate talents attached to it never talk down to the readership, and they address heady topics - death, Sept. 11, racism, partying - without being preachy.

Every month I receive a Minx title, I move it to the top of my comic books pile at home. After reading one, you’ll understand why.

The story is written by one “Randy Myers” which could theoretically be a female, but a little googling shows it’s a guy. Which is fine. The Minx line is a nice little line of books. We know from our link farms that it has touched the fancy of thirty-something male comics writers across the land. Our question is, do we know if any actual girls are reading these? The female blogosphere hasn’t been all that supportive of the line, but some have read that as sour grapes over the lack of female writers.

We’ve heard of a few bits of anecdotal but we’re still curious. Buehler?

As long as we’re picking on DC, Marc-Oliver Frisch looks into his crystal ball and what he sees is…clouded.:

At DC Comics, the future holds… well, more of the same, really. Which in itself isn’t a bad thing, unless you realize that 2007 so far hasn’t been going desperately well for them. So, more of the same? Well, not ideal. In Salvation Run, an upcoming seven-issue limited series by Bill Willingham and Sean Chen, mysterious forces are conspiring to ship the DC Universe’s villains off to some nasty prison planet for good, instead of going through the hassle of putting them on trial and such. In fairness, the concept seems workable enough and it’s a solid creative team. On the other hand, of course, Salvation Run is another Countdown spin-off title, and it’s apparently connected to everything else DC are putting out. So that’s two big strikes against it which might make it a bit of a hard sell, given the less than impressive sales Countdown itself has been generating so far.

Platinum teams with iTaggit, an online indexing system for collectors, and the result is a press release of even greater than normal vagueness.

iTaggit, the leading social collecting and personal asset management service, today announced its partnership with Platinum Studios (http://www.platinumstudios.com/), an entertainment media company that controls one of the world’s largest independent libraries of comic book characters. As a result of the unique relationship, iTaggit is making significant additions to their site in an effort to further support an increasing user group of comic book fans and collectors alike.

A specific Platinum Studios category on iTaggit contains information on Platinum-owned titles, pertinent comic book industry information, and links to Platinum Studios’ stores and sites. Comic users are also able to import information from a Platinum Studios catalog containing background on current and feature releases for quick item adding into their collections.

(more…)

A few lifetimes ago when we were finishing reading HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, as we walked home from Madison Square Park, we spotted an odd sight for a Saturday afternoon: a rather muscular, shirtless man with a mullet, wearing a dog collar and camouflage pants walking slowly, yet deliberately out of a coffee shop. He had both the mein and the attire of a Chippendales dancer who had gone home the previous night with someone sporting a wad of greenbacks and a personal limo and then had quite an adventure involving midgets and crocodiles, and was now setting off for home at 4:30 in the afternoon.

We confess to finding the whole thing so odd that we trailed him all the way to 3rd Avenue, when our paths diverged and seemliness required that we mind our own business.

Well, now it turns out that this same fellow has been dubbed “He-Man” and was spotted in the Union Square area for several days — there is even a website devoted to tracking his whereabouts: Find He-Man. The blog has some photos of him in his native garb. It seems every night involved midgets and crocodiles for this chap.

This is all so bizarre that the only person who could possibly have stated this blog is He-Man himself. Indeed there is something odd and fishy about all of this. Is He-Man the new Lonelygirl15? Is it a promotion for MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE? Or is life just THAT connected that every random street sihting must now become a web site? Does He-Man have a Twitter account?

[Spotted via Urbaniak, who quite rightly points out that He-Man looks even more like Brock Sampson than He-Man.]

Let’s face, when you hear the word “Thailand” you think of a swinging anything goes kind of place, where the rules that other people have are pretty much left by the wayside. So what would offend in such a place? What could bring shame? Well, it turns out that the one thing people fear is Hello Kitty:

Police chiefs in the Thai capital, Bangkok, have come up with a new way of punishing officers who break the rules - an eye-catching Hello Kitty armband.

The armband is large, bright pink and has a Hello Kitty motif with two hearts embroidered on it.

From today, officers who are late, park in the wrong place or commit other minor transgressions will have to wear it for several days.

The girly armband is designed to shame those who must bear it, officials say. Frankly, we think wearing an armband of The Turds or the Bratz would be more humiliating, but every society has its own mores. Who are we to judge?

[Thanks to Martha C. for the link.]

Immigration Official TELLS IT LIKE IT IS to Tony Lee:
There was one concern while I was in customs - when asked why I was there, I explained that I was going to the San Diego Comic Con, no, I mean superheroes, not comedians - and the customs officer goes ‘You know about solvent abuse?’

Now, what the hell am I supposed to say here? Did I look like some kind of deviant comic professional? Should I reply with ‘I’m from London, mate - we invented glue sniffing’?

I make a vague agreeing motion, wondeing what the hell I’ve brought into the country in my luggage - am I about to be deported back? But no. The customs guard wants to inform me that one of the current ‘trends’ in California is that when people who have severe solvent abuse addiction well, die - their possessions are put up for public auction, and many of them have boxes of comic books, usually sold off at a dollar a box. I tried to sound vaguely interested in this (as opposed to horrified) and escaped into the terminal where I had a burger. Of course, it’s now

CBR starts a comprehensive series by Emmett Furey:

Parts I and II will introduce the nine participants. Part I features Marc Andreyko, Lillian Diaz-Przbyl, Devin Grayson, Terrance Griep and Mark Millar, and part II introduces Allan Heinberg, Scott Lobdell, Alan Moore and Greg Rucka. In addition to biographical materials, each introductory segment will also include the participant’s musings on their own comics work that features GLBT characters and themes.

Parts III and IV will be the article proper, in which the participants address a wide range of topics. In part III, the participants discuss the Comics Code, the stigma of comics as a children’s medium, whether homosexuality is a lifestyle choice or a genetic predisposition, and the tendency for fictional GLBT characters to be defined by their sexuality. The topics for part IV include the “gay retcon,” the participants’ picks for well-informed portrayals of GLBT characters in comics, and the state of the union of homosexuality in comics.

Very interesting reading, both for the personal insights and the attitudes towards GBLT characters.

A new study backs up the idea that older folks just don’t think things are as funny as the whippersnappers:

It’s no laughing matter: a new study suggests older adults have a harder time getting jokes as they age. The research indicates that because older adults may have greater difficulty with cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and short-term memory, they also have greater difficulty with tests of humor comprehension.

Researchers at Washington University tested about 40 healthy adults over age 65 and 40 undergraduate students with exercises in which they had to complete jokes and stories. Participants also had to choose the correct punch line for verbal jokes and select the funny ending to series of cartoon panels.

Although the evidence sounds compelling, the cartoon exercise involved finding a funny ending to a Ferd’nand comic strip. Why didn’t they just make the old-timers rhyme “month” and “orange” while they were at it?

Happy Holiday, y’all. Hope you get to see some wizard fireworks!

(more…)

According to one survey, almost 1 in 4 Japanese men between 30-34 is a virgin:

“There are 11 percent of people who gave an invalid answer to the survey and I bet you the vast majority of them would be virgins. And though there is also 65 percent who said they have had sex, that also includes the guys whose only experience is a single session at the brothel and nothing since, so there are a lot of virtual virgins in amongst them, too,” Watanabe says.

The Japan Cherry Boy Association currently boasts of 517 members whose ages range from their teens to their 40s. Many join the association in the hopes that women will visit its website and try to pick them up. Some members, albeit only a few, actually succeed in “graduating” from the club by successfully experiencing sex.

Some have found comfort in works of fiction:

Conservative virgins argue that they’ve had enough of real women and would prefer two-dimensional types such as those found in manga and anime, who are also not going to lead them to the pain of rejection.

We’ve been poking around lately trying to figure out if things like NYMPHET are normal fun for the whole family or outlets for more dysfunctional aspects of Japanese society; answering such a question is far beyond the scope of one little blog. However we have heard repeated mentions of a Japanese “sex crisis” as in many young women and men not having any. We also are reminded that lots of shojo(girls) comics are actually read by young men. (And girls read shonen.) Anyway, we dont’ have any answers…just throwing that out there.

[Found via Simon at Icarus]

Old Disney Rejection Letter via Boing Boing.

UPDATE: to those who thought this was not a form letter — nope, it was SOP.

Damn if that name hadn’t already been taken for a blog we would so steal it! Anyhoo, our ongoing study of the state of Thunderbirds fandom was picked up by a site which asked When is a fandom dead? and the comments waxed philosophical.

I would personally define a fandom as being “dead” when one fan can no longer get on their computer and be able to find another fan to connect with and share their love for the work with. I’d say even if things are slow on all the sites, if there is any LJ community or message board where someone can get on and say “I was watching some old episodes and feeling nostalgic today…” and start some kind of discussion, then that fandom isn’t dead. I find the essence of fandom to be communication between fans of the same thing, not necessarily all the creating of fanfic and art and stuff that will usually die down once the canon is done.

Indeed! And the Thunderbirds fans aren’t dead. They exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Thunderbirds fans! It would be as dreary as if there were no Beat. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Speaking of “fans” some crazy wack job claims to have spoiled Harry Potter #7.

The mystery surrounding the end to fictional boy wizard Harry Potter’s saga deepened on Wednesday with a computer hacker posting what he said were key plot details and a publisher warned the details could be fake.

The hacker, who goes by the name “Gabriel,” claims to have taken a digital copy of author J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” by breaking into a computer at London-based Bloomsbury Publishing.

Computer experts say the hack is unlikely but we say .. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND DON’T READ THESE SPOILERS! We are keeping a wide berth from ANYTHING that might possibly ruin our enjoyment of DEATHLY HALLOWS on the day it arrives, and not a day sooner. That’s how we roll, and we like it that way.

Wait here’s one more: Unhappy ‘Transformer’ Fans Threatened Michael Bay’s Life:

Movie mogul Michael Bay received death threats from Transformers fans when he was announced as the film’s director. The blockbuster movie maker was not a popular choice to take charge of the first Transformers film and fans of the toys and animated TV series made sure he knew how they felt.

Bay says, “I did get a lot of flak from fans on the internet. They’d be like, ‘Michael Bay wrecked my childhood. Michael Bay, you suck. We’re gonna protest this at your office.’ Some did - they protested at my old office, apparently. But it was the death threats that really freaked me out.”

Come on now, kids, they’re only toys!

A few days ago we were fretting that THUNDERBIRD fandom might be dying out/. The evidence? An excessive number of Geocities pages and dead links in out quest for some vintage stills. Predictably, we got many emails of “We’re going strong!” and managed to flush out quite a few fans. It seems that THUNDERBIRDS is still quite popular in the UK where is it repeated every once in a while to this day. (Try Google.uk for links, it was suggested.) The comment thread to the above post has also become a lively nest of Thunderbirds fans, and based on the number of women posting, our Shaker joke was quite ill informed.

Which isn’t to say that this little byway of fandom doesn’t have its own oddities. It seems that the 2004 movie, starring Bill Paxton as Jeff Tracy and several strapping lads as his sons, led to The Great Schism of Thunderbirds Fandom after which enthusiasts divided into Sunni and Shiite like factions. We’ll let Daria explain it:

Following TechTV’s captioned version of the series in 2002 and the “Thunderbirds” film’s release, the fandom actually grew but took on a whole new factionalism, with most of the fans of the original series left furious about the mistreatment of their favorite heroes by Working Title Films and, surprisingly, the addition of thousands of female fans worldwide who had fallen in love with those rather dishy young actors who portrayed the Tracy brothers. While the “classic” version websites began to fade, Thunderbirds fan fiction sites have taken off like mad.

Fan fiction, eh? Hm, didn’t see that one coming. Tikatu has more:

I’ll second both Daria and middier’s comments. We’re out here, alive and kicking. And y’know, we defy the “geek” stereotype as well. A lot of us are women, well over the age of 20, raising families, working at fulfilling jobs, definitely internet and computer savvy, and still in love with the show. We write fanfiction, create fanvids (did you look at YouTube?), draw fanart, argue on messageboards about the minutia surrounding the show, buy memorabilia on eBay… the list of fannish activities goes on and on.

And Daria again sums it up:

These wonderful ladies represent thousands upon thousands of Thunderbirds fans in the States and the many millions around the world. I often receive letters addressed to the various members of the Tracy family from places as far away as Australia and New Zealand, The Netherlands, Chile, Japan and various parts of the US and Canada, from fans as young as 4 and as old as 65 or more. They all have their favorite characters and episodes (with scripts they know by heart) and, what’s even better, they really believe in International Rescue and the dangerous but life-saving work which those characters perform. Many of the kids that I hear from want to grow up and be like the Tracy family: they want to do good deeds and help people who are in dire need. How many other fandoms can you name which inspire the best in the human spirit and cause fans to want to become rescue workers or designers of high-tech rescue and/or aeronautics equipment?

Millions of Thunderbirds fans? That might be stretching it. But they are not dying out — that’s for sure. It just goes to show that you never know what way a fandom is going to go, and even the Beat can be surprised now and then.

People — specifically John Jakala — continue to wonder why this doesn’t bother me. While I can see the “line muddying” issue that some people have with it, quite frankly, I don’t think “zombie horror” and “YA” are completely mutually exclusive. Teens like horror. Everyone likes zombies. Or as I put it in Jakala’s comments,

I guess given all the other controversy, this is a questionable approach, but the covers are BASED on shock value and the upending of iconic images. By that token it’s actually a COMPLIMENT to Mary Jane to elevate her to iconic status.

This is also part of what I call the “Rumble in the Bronx effect.” Bear with me.

When RUMBLE IN THE BRONX came to America it was the first one of Jackie Chan’s HK films to get a wide American release. There was a scene in the original where the late, GREAT Anita Mui got beat up by a (male) gang that was cut out of the American version, I guess on the basis of it wasn’t right to beat up a girl. What the censors didn’t get was that in a later scene, Mui came back and BEAT UP HER TORMENTORS. The scene in the original was okay because the filmmakers knew that Mui’s character was JUST AS DANGEROUS as her opponents - - she had just had a bad outing. You knew she would make her big comeback — she’s a HERO goddamit, not a wimpy girl. (HK movies are filled with heroic women the likes of which American movies have never even come close to.) It’s why in SUPERCOP Michelle Yeoh’s character does all kinds of dumb shit — just like Jackie does. We all KNOW she’s the greatest - like Jackie — and a little humor at her expense doesn’t detract from that. It just makes her human.

The Marvel Zombie book is based, I understand — I haven’t read it — on the shock value of seeing the entire Marvel U turned into FLESH EATING ZOMBIES. Why should MJ, as an iconic character, be spared that? Does it dilute Spider-man’s brand to see him turned into a flesh eating zombie? Maybe a little. But it’s a deliberate satire, based on the power of the original characters. People say the cover is “sexy”…maybe a little, but I don’t get the feeling that it’s the intent of the cover — it’s more of a by-product. It’s the very reversal of expected order that is the hook here.

How does this differ from the MJ statue? Well, as I said above, flesh eating zombies are fun for everyone of all ages. The Sideshow statue appealed to a VERY specific, VERY exclusive demographic. There was no concurrent Peter Parker statue of him in his underwear being given a cavity search by a motorcycle cop.

Now this is not to say that there might not be some kind of political agenda behind that Zombie MJ cover. Jakala even has a very interesting theory:

(If I were conspiracy-minded, I might suggest that Marvel decided to zombify that image because Heidi featured it in her post. But I don’t think Marvel is that organized. Then again, I’m really at a loss for why they picked that cover, since it features a version of the character different from the one in the Zombie-verse and it’s not at all a classic cover, so maybe Marvel did crank this out because they thought it would be funny.)

While I wouldn’t day this is out of the question, I should wish Marvel honchos read this blog that closely! In fact, I know some people there do, but come on. In fact, couldn’t we give Marvel a teensy tinesy bit of CREDIT once in a while? In a now-vanished comment, editor Nicole Boose said she had hired artist Clio Chiang based on seeing her work here on The Beat. Now I give Marvel shit when I think they deserve it, but I wish a few more people had picked up on this. CLIO CHIANG AT MARVEL. And not on a “Wedding” or “Romance” or girl book either…just in a “fun” one shot. I know everyone hates “fun” but…that’s still cool!

Marvel does some incredibly boneheaded things, like the MJ statue and the Heroes for Hentai cover. But as I believe I said in a previous post, they are actually doing and trying a lot of things that don’t get nearly as much attention. I mean, I like controversy as much as the next person, and I like Chris Butcher, but this is just internet outrage at its least productive, in my humble opinion. (Not even Lea was that outraged by the cover, and she’s got a hair trigger outrage!) Pick a stronger battle and stick with it, my sisters. Don’t dilute the attack.

The controversy over NYMPHET, the planned American version of Kaoru Watashiya’s KODOMO NO JIKAN ust keeps going. Now Watashiya-san has addressed the controversy in her diary. As this translation shows, however, there is still some confusion:

There are differences in the border [between what’s acceptable and not] for representations of young girls in each place, time, and culture, so if the people there have decided that it’s unacceptable then that’s that. To those commendable Americans who wanted to read it, I’ll say “There’s always the original.”

I especially felt the difference between cultures in regards to the comment [by Seven Seas president Jason DeAngelis] that the 2nd volume and beyond were problematic. I wondered what was in the second volume that would cause a problem that wasn’t in the first, so I used a web translator to look at the BBSs over there and “incest” was pointed out, so that’s probably about Reiji [Aki’s cousin, currently taking care of Rin] and Aki [Rin’s mother].

However, it wasn’t the second, but the THIRD volume that was the problem, as Seven Seas’ Jason DeAngelis explains in his brand new blog:

Their opinion may be due to some inaccurately translated scanlations out there. Or, if you’re just looking at the pictures and can’t read Japanese, you might miss the gist of what is really happening in this scene. But for me, this was the scene that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, changed my mind about the appropriateness of this title. See, my whole defense before was based on the idea that Nymphet was not so bad because it was about a girl who tries to sexually entrap her teacher but fails because he in no way reciprocates. But in this scene in the third volume, it shows him getting literally, physically aroused by her (the original Japanese text unmistakably and unequivocally backs this up.) This is what completely crossed the line for me, and showed me that I could no longer defend releasing this title. Yes, there are other questionable scenes as well, but it isn’t my job to go through a graphic play-by-play of all the objectionable material. Suffice it to say that this one scene crossed the point of no return. I don’t see how anyone can possibly defend this scene. ‘Nuff said.

These scenes have been shown on a blog somewhere, but I managed to lose the link. If someone has it, please send and I’ll put it in so everyone can judge for themselves.

This cultural divide thing is fascinating stuff, and as we hinted earlier, we’ve heard many theories about why showing a grown man becoming sexually aroused in Japan just doesn’t offend (or alarm) the way it does here.

We did have one of our correspondent’s point out something that we’ve heard many times over the years: that a lot of the so-called “shojo manga” is actually read by middle-aged salari-men. Yes, can you believe it? Middle aged men getting off on the adventures of teen-aged girls. That’s not to say that stuff like NANA or the work of the Forty-Niners doesn’t have a loyal female readership. You could probably write several books on the issues of voyeurism and repression all of this brings up. Maybe someday when we have time.

It seems that a copy of HOW TO MAKE MONEY LIKE A PORN STAR, the controversial graphic novel by Neil Strass and Bernard Chang, has caused some problems in Singapore when it was found racked with some kids books at a book fair:

A comic book, imported from the US and laden with adult content, was sold at the World Book Fair held at the Suntec Convention Centre last weekend.

Displayed among other children’s books at the fair, the comics caught the attention of teenagers and grown-ups.

Rachel Chan said: “I was really shocked. There are suggestively drawn frontal nudity graphics, showing women’s breasts and men’s private parts. The book shows how kids could make money by producing their own porn.”

A news video included in th elink, shows the book lying under a stack of Simpsons graphic novels, a kid magnet waiting to happen.

The book is also sold in other stores, but shrink wrapped. In Singapore, strict government-sponsored censorship or sexual, violent or racially insensitive material is the norm.

[Via Tom]cards about creditscroe credit 5151971 laws creditcredit carbon 3c company1sttech credit uniionloans graduate abbycredit bad advance cash28 credits later movie weeks Map

Our esteemed comics journo compatriot Douglas Wolk has two new pieces up:
Over at Salon he interviews cartoonist Berke Beathed, whose “Opus” just started running on Salon: (You must watch a short film to view content.)

What do you think is the job of a satirist at a political moment like this one?

Cartoonists — any satirists — are mere blowhards at the fringes of the mob, screaming at the crowd to throw the gasoline bombs at the storm troopers. Nobody pays attention to us, really, but we look amusing with our veins popping out. I think it builds confidence for the stragglers in the back.

Bush has given us a gift: far from not taking himself seriously, he’s become the only human being on the planet that thinks he’s not just uniquely competent … but brilliant in his strategic, heavenly inspired prescience as to how the world works. This hilarious — also arguably homicidal — self-deception is what makes him a comical figure. Literally, it’s as if — I mean this with the utmost respect for both the office and the man — my 5-year-old boy Milo was running the free world. Milo believes himself equally as shrewd in spotting who the bad guys are in any movie and declaring the complex strategy to deal with them: “Blast ‘em all!”

Wolk completes the double-header with a piece at The Huffington Post looking at an all-too-familiar subject:

The American superhero comics industry — once supported at least as much by girls as by boys — has been desperately trying to figure out how to bring back women readers for decades. It’s very simple. All it has to do is not hang out a gigantic sign announcing GIRLS: WE HATE YOU AND WE HAVE NO INTEREST IN YOUR BUSINESS. Unfortunately, that’s effectively what it’s doing right now.

Compete looks at what people are searching for in Wikipedia, and the results may surprise you:

Anime (26%)
There is a tremendous amount of interest in learning about Pokemon and Naruto. Perhaps these are parents who want to know what their kids are going crazy over. My Mom didn’t know what “He-Man” was until I was a grown man reflecting on how silly Castle Grayskull was. My mom could have used Wikipedia in the 80’s.

Sex (16%)
What’s interesting about the top sex related terms on Wikipedia is that they do not appear to have gratuitous intent. The top terms include very straightforward inquiries on human reproductive ‘parts’ and basic concepts of what sex is and how it is performed. It appears many people are learning about what sex is and how to have it by referencing Wikipedia.

Speaking of Newsarama, in last week’s Joe Fridays, there’s yet more about the Heroes for Hentai cover:

NRAMA: Ahem…

So to quickly follow-up on last week’s pot-stirring topic…

Despite your (Marvel’s) intentions or lack thereof in regards to the now infamous Heroes for Hire #13 cover, which last week you made clear was not or intended to suggest “tentacle rape” [groan], when something like this is created that some people can and obviously have interrupted it as suggesting or too close for comfort to something like that, do you ever consider making a change in acknowledgement of those who are upset by it, even if it wasn’t your intention?

Is that too slippery a slope to go down, to give in to public protest even when it wasn’t intended to be what they’re protesting?

JQ: That’s a great question. With regards to it becoming a slippery slope, well, the answer is simply yes it can become a slippery slope if you allow it to. But before I get into that, let me reiterate what I said last week and try to clarify it. While I understand how some can see what they see and while I do acknowledge the validity of what they’re seeing based on this Hentai stuff, in no way was this our intent or the artist’s. I certainly wasn’t aware of any small sub genre of Manga porn, but obviously there are folks much more verse in Manga than I’ll ever be and I can certainly see why they would see what they see, so to them I apologize if it struck a chord that it was completely unintended to strike.

You’ve got to admire both Matt Brady and Joe Quesada’s dedication to their new moonlighting careers in gravedigging here, whether it’s Brady’s performance as Ed McMahon or Quesada’s “While I understand how some can see what they see and while I do acknowledge the validity of what they’re seeing based on this Hentai stuff, in no way was this our intent or the artist’s.” While one can understand Quesada not being aware of the complete works of all of the artists working for Marvel, one look at Sana Takeda’s website shows that she’s very much aware of all KINDS of Japanese art traditions, and DRAIN shows she’s not afraid to be sexy, and anyone who thinks she wasn’t cognitively working within what she knew was a well-established genre is deluded.

Anyway you can read the whole thing for yourself — Quesada quickly spins off into the whole “All heroes are jeopardized!” thing which was never the point. IF ALL HEROES ARE JEOPARDIZED, why didn’t Takeda show more of Shang Chi than his arm? Maybe everyone really is just too busy editing giant crossovers to pay attention to the world of comics outside their doors. We ran into a few Marvel types on the street the other day, and they seemed to genuinely think that the cover wasn’t intended to be hentai. Maybe a lack of awareness is the answer.

Frankly, we’re more concerned by Matt Brady here. We don’t generally read any of the weekly interviews on Newsarama because we’re not that interested in Countdown or Civil War and so on. But Brady’s tone in this interview goes well beyond friendly questioning to near-syncophantic enabling. As someone who set the standard for comics journalism for a decade or so, it’s sad to see Brady sailing down his very own slippery slope.

Gah! Why do more interesting things keep coming in on that gender thing??? Damn you. Ike this story in THR about the difficulty in launching female action pics and how Robert Rodirguez is taking a flyer with his just announced BARBARELLA remake.

Rodriguez is dipping his laser gun into a subgenre where Hollywood has been traditionally gun-shy. Recent history has left a graveyard of tombstones reading such names as “Elektra,” “Catwoman” and “Aeon Flux,” while mausoleums house “Tank Girl” and “Barb Wire.” There are exceptions, of course, such as the “Tomb Raider” and “Underworld” movies, but their sequels failed to capitalize on any goodwill created by the first movies.

One manager says it doesn’t take X-ray vision to see studio sexism as part of the trouble. Female-oriented action movies, he reasons, take a hit when one fails, whereas a male-oriented action movie that misfires bounces off a studio’s back like a bullet off Superman.

“The studio translates those failures into, ‘It doesn’t matter if those were bad movies, female-led superhero movies don’t work,” says one manager, who has clients wanting to write those movies but says “studios won’t touch them with a 10-foot pole.”

But television is another story.

And while I don’t have the heart to write anything today, the 14th Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans pretty much rounds everything up.

Oh and while it isn’t really woman related, the Icarus blog rounds up some disturbing manga-related news and runs a Nymphet post-mortem, which has officially been cancelled.

We don’t have time today to do justice to this Nymphet controversy. Suffice to say that Seven Seas has been forced to postpone publication of NYMPHET, a popular Japanese comic about a grade schooler who has a crush on her teacher. And by crush, we mean she throws her panties at him and begs him to have sex with her. For more info, check out Journalista, Tintin and Manstream. While Seven Seas’s head Jason DeAngelis defends his right to publish NYMPHET in an apparently now-removed letter reproduced on Dirk’s blog, if you read the caption in the lower left hand corner above, you may get some idea of why publishing this book here may not be the best idea.

In Japan, young girls on the “cusp” of adolescence begging for grown up and explicit sexual acts may be fine and dandy and utterly hilarious but here in the good old US of A, it is frowned on. If Dale Earnhardt were still with us, he would frown on it, that’s for sure. Elvis too, at least in public. They would frown and then beg for good, old fashioned, squeaky clean tentacle rape.

Man, we are trying to get away from all the Gender Wars, but all the good links seem to circle back around, like Michaela Reid’s write up on the “Having Our Say: Black Women Discuss Imagery” panel at the ECBACC a few weekends back.

4. What would an ideal state look like?

* RL: “There should be a gazillion small companies putting out what needs to be said, however they need to get the truth out. When you tell your own truth, people follow.”
* LAB: In an ideal world “every major publishing house would be giving Anne Rice dollars to people writing speculative fiction.” She said that 60% of all paperback sales are romance novels, and that publishers tend to put all the money and promotions and good distribution deals into a few big authors. “They’re all putting Danielle Steele in her Rolls Royce. There’s a huge pay disparity.”
* CLE: “Utopia? I’m so used to just fighting for the most minute recognition. Just to walk into a comic book store and see a diverse range.”
* RL: Talked about how there is often a defensive backlash against comic book creators of color: “When you do start bringing things to the light, people get upset.” She said she had gotten a lot of negative reactions to making the main characters in her Sand Storm comic books, which are set in ancient Egypt, black instead of fititng into the “Elizabeth Taylor” white Cleopatra that so many people are comfortable with.

Reid has more coverage of the show here.