Tag Archives: comics

Asian Comic Book Fan Watches Thor: The Dark World Expecting Racial Representation, Deals with Crushing Disappointment by Writing Blog Post

I like a lot of things, guys and girls. I like comic books, as the title of this post attests to, but I also like Marvel, and movies, and mythology. Taking all of that into consideration there is absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t have liked the sequel to 2011’s Thor. I mean, that film took The Warriors Three, consisting of Hogun the Grim, Fandral the Dashing, and Volstagg the Voluminous [i.e. fat], and cast the Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano as the former.

I should hope that you know my feelings about racially diverse casting by now, but really the expressions below sum them up pretty nicely.

From left to right: Hogun, Fandral, and Volstagg.

Continue reading

The Importance of Ms. Marvel as Immigrant Literature

I can think of no better way to introduce this subject than with Stephen Colbert’s reaction to the news:

<this is where I would embed the video, if Comedy Central, Yahoo Video, and WordPress would just get along already>

Before I continue I want to point out that the original Captain Marvel was a Kree alien who actually went by the name “Mar-Vell”, and when taking that into account Darlene Rodriguez’s pronunciation actually has a fair amount of validity.

With that out of the way, let’s take a more in-depth look at the young Kamala Khan.

Easily one of the most fascinating aspects about this new character, at least from a writer’s perspective, is how she came into existence. It all began when Marvel editor Sana Amanat, who grew up as a Muslim, began recounting stories of her childhood with fellow editor Steve Wacker. The two moved forward from there, “[noting] the dearth of female superhero series and, even more so, of comics with cultural specificity.” Continue reading

Shame Day: Bob Kane

Let’s start things off with a question. Who here likes Batman? Oh, yes, Commissioner Gordon?

Thank you for that very thorough answer, James. But you know what else is important, and begs asking when we all like something? Where that something comes from. Y’know, who made it, that sort of thing. So, who made Batman?

Go ahead and pick up that Batman graphic novel lying next to you, don’t pretend you can’t see it. Tell me what it says inside there, somewhere between the front cover and the beginning of the actual comic. You can read it aloud, that’s fine.

“Batman created by Bob Kane” Continue reading

DC Is Terrible, But They’re Not Homophobes

Look, let’s be clear, I’m not a fan of DC. To be a little more specific, I am not a fan of DC’s business practices and editorial decisions. All of that being said, yesterday the internet perpetuated one of my least favourite of its trends: snap judgement from journalists fishing for hits.

Late Wednesday night W. Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III, the writer and artist of Batwoman, respectively, posted  a message on the former’s blog that they would be leaving the title. Here’s the section of that post that has received the most attention [emphasis added]:

Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series. We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end.

From what I can tell, the news was first broken by The Outhouse, and was soon followed by all the other major comic book news outlets. ComicsAlliance and Newsarama both likewise delivered the news straight, but elsewhere this wasn’t the case. Continue reading

It Is An Exciting Time To Be A Minority Canadian Comic Book Fan

As an Asian-Canadian who spends far more time on comic book news sites than actual news sites, this week has been all sorts of crazy. There’s been . . . a lot to take in.

Mighty Avengers

To begin with, next month heralds the first issue of Mighty Avengers. Take out the “gh” and add “nori” and you more or less have an understanding of what the book is all about.

I refuse to show any of the interior artwork, so this variant is all you’re going to get.

The fact that we have far too many titles featuring the word “Avengers” aside, this is a huge deal in that, of the nine heroes in the team, the majority are people of colour. Luke Cage, Falcon, Blue Marvel, and Monica Rambeau are African-American, White Tiger [Ava Alaya] is Hispanic, and Power Man [Victor Alvarez] is a mix of both. Rounding out the team are Spider-Man, She-Hulk, and a new Ronin whose identity is yet to be revealed.

With the very talented Al Ewing on writing, the only thing that would make this book perfect were if Ron Wimberly, who illustrated the variant cover on the left, were the actual artist on the book. Unfortunately, that job was given to Greg Land. I do not have anything civil to say about him. Just click the link. Continue reading

“Rape”: Storytelling Device

In 2011 I wrote about rape as a term not to be used casually out of context. In 2012 I wrote about rape as a subject for comedy. In 2013, and in light of a few recent events, I am writing about rape as a storytelling device.

Mark Millar is famous for books such as Superman: Red Son, and Jupiter’s
Legacy
, but probably most well-known to the non-comic-book-reading-public as the man responsible for Kick-Ass and its sequels. He is also a writer who has featured rape in a number of his works. I’m not going to go through the process of listing them all, but instead am going to present a quote he gave regarding his opinion on using rape in writing:

The ultimate [act] that would be the taboo, to show how bad some villain is, was to have somebody being raped, you know? I don’t really think it matters. It’s the same as, like, a decapitation. It’s just a horrible act to show that somebody’s a bad guy.

Now I could begin quoting a number of very smart people who responded to Millar’s words, but this isn’t that kind of post. If a list of that sort is what you’re into, I’d like to direct you to this article on the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex. A better compilation of tweets and quotes about this specific subject would be difficult to find. Continue reading