4thletter! » Excerpts

Undeclared

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:15:55 +0000

Gina Torres talked to Wired Magazine about the excellent Crisis on Two Earths. Here’s the quote that went rocketing around the blogosphere.

There aren’t really any skinny bitches in the world of comic books…they’ve got muscle. . . . What I love about superheroes, and Superwoman in particular, is that in that comics world they’re all curvaceous. They’re strong.

I grew up in what must have been the most friendly high school in the world. I look at Glee, Mean Girls, and Can’t Hardly Wait, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gossip Girl, and almost every other portrayal of high school and it might as well be some kind of costume drama.

Who grows up in schools like this? In lives like this? I know there are always a few vocal idiots, but I haven’t noticed a war being declared between ’skinny’ and ‘curvy’ women, ‘popular’ and ‘unpopular’ women, or really any other kind of women. At most, the groups are pretty indifferent to each other. More often, they get along just fine.

And yet every quote, every TV show, every comic, and every movie seems to imply that this war is going on.

Where are they getting this from? Is there some secret battleground of which I am unaware?

Sometimes I think that the only reason anyone says stuff like this is they’re trying to sell this fantasy of conflict. It might make a decent trope in fiction, but in real life, it doesn’t make sense.

Batgirl Flashback: No Wire Hangers

david brothers — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:18:02 +0000

An oldie but a goodie. In honor of our Batgirl-centric fourcast and Esther’s latest Batgirl play-by-play, I wanted to post one of my favorite sequences from Batgirl: Death Wish.

A bit of context: one year ago, Batgirl lost the use of her pattern-recognition skills due to some ill-timed telepathic mental adjustment. To repair this flaw, she sought out and fought Lady Shiva. In exchange for fixing her, Shiva demanded one thing: a fight to the death one year in the future. Batgirl, when faced with a choice of being mediocre for a lifetime or the greatest for a year, took her challenge, was healed, and threw herself into her Bat-persona. She stopped crimes, ignored her social life, and rose to Olympian heights. And now, one year after her rebirth, she must face Lady Shiva and die.

Words by Kelley Puckett, art by Daimon Scott. Pages 7, 8, and 11 are my favorite. Great storytelling, choreo, and layout.

“Despair is fine.”

david brothers — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:31:46 +0000

Remember when JLA was a good comic book? Me too. Exhibit A:

words by grant morrison, art by howard porter

“Don’t be forgettin’ the Free French.”

david brothers — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:41:24 +0000

Blogging’s going to be light today since work and other things have occupied my time lately, but I did want to share this sequence from (the as-yet uncollected) The Boys #34. Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra came up with a pretty good (and brutal) way to use World War II in a superhero book. I usually like my World War II pure, but this? This is clever. I snipped a few pages out, but this is still followable. And if you can’t tell by the cover, you probably shouldn’t be clicking this at work.

Dynamite needs to drop this trade asap.

City of Dreams (New York, New York)

david brothers — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:44:54 +0000

I’ve yakked about Ann Nocenti’s run on Daredevil before, but honestly, it was really great and underrated comics. The message that violence is not the answer, that heroes cannot use violence as the end-all/be-all problem solving tool, all of that stuff? It’s what Daredevil could use a little more of these days, instead of increasingly tortured melodrama and depression. I like my Daredevil to be a little more like Nocenti’s and a little less like Blankets, you know?

Anyway, context: Matt Murdock has forsaken the love of his life for Mary, the good half of Typhoid Mary. At the same time, Daredevil has fallen under the spell of Typhoid Mary, who betrays him, has him beaten, and then finishes him off by dropping him off a bridge. When DD wakes up, New York City has gone to Hell, literally. It’s infested with demons, the skies have gone red, and monsters roam the streets.

Daredevil, ashamed of himself and his actions, has gone quiet. He’s moving on auto-pilot, never speaking, just brutalizing demons. It isn’t even properly protecting people. The demons provide a convenient excuse for Daredevil to work out his frustrations. Not much of a hero, is he?

Best part’s the smile at the end.

Words by Ann Nocenti, art by John Romita, Jr.

4thletter! » Excerpts

Undeclared

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Batgirl Flashback: No Wire Hangers

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