Kieron Gillen’s SWORD #1 is out this week. I had been eagerly anticipating this series, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Why was I awaiting this comic? A few things. First, Abigail Brand is the lead character of an ensemble cast that includes Hank McCoy (Beast of the X-Men) and Lockheed the Dragon. So that makes this title the direct inheritor of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. In Astonishing we were introduced to S.W.O.R.D., the Sentient Worlds something something something — the organization devoted to defending Earth from aliens. In Astonishing we were introduced to Agent Brand. And in Astonishing we found out that Lockheed is a hyper-intelligent alien spy. So anything that picks up some of those loose ends — including my biggest loose-end pet-peeve of all, the fate of Kitty Pryde — is fine with me.

Second, Agent Brand is one of my current favorite underused characters in the Marvel U. I cackled with glee when Bendis used her in Spider-Woman: Agent of SHIELD. I’ve loved Brand’s appearances in the other X-titles, and I delight in her relationship with Hank. Their snarky chemistry is palpable. I have enjoyed watching them comes to grips with the balance between respect, trust, and care — I don’t think they’ve found that balance, and I look forward to a comic that will feature this relationship. Also, a sexual relationship between adults who are not ingenues is refreshing.

Third.

Third, this is Kieron Gillen. I don’t know how many of you have read his work. He’s done a lot of stuff, all over the place. Journalism, video game comics, webcomics — but the stuff that made me sit up and pay attention is Phonogram. Phonogram tells the story of phonomancers — those people who make magic out of music. The vision in the comics is unlike anything I’ve read elsewhere, and the execution feels like that precious moment when you no longer care if anyone is watching you, as long as you keep dancing. I highly recommend it.

But Gillen also wrote the Dazzler story in Manifest Destiny — and that was as fine a Dazzler story as I’ve ever read. Go check out his credits list — if you read Marvel, odds are you’ve read something of his in the last two years. His short works have been everywhere. You probably already like something of his and don’t know it.

I’m not going to spoil SWORD #1 here. Generally speaking, though, it has everything I wanted. Agent Brand is in fine form, Hank is quippish, loose-end-type plots are picked up, a villain is introduced, a secret villain is shown to the reader. The plot gets rolling with a bang — with explosions and kidnappings and interstellar diplomacy and unexpected blasts from the past. If you liked Joss’s run on Astonishing, if you like Agent Brand, or if you like Marvel in space, I highly recommend checking out SWORD #1.

Email: sigrid @ fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: sigridellis

Who or what is your favorite comic book alien, or alien race?

Anika

Well, Hawkgirl, but I’ve mentioned her before so I’ll bring up another favorite: Starfire, Princess Kori’andr of Tamaran. She really deserves her own post because at first glance, Starfire comes off as so over the top you are not certain she isn’t a parody. And I don’t just mean her figure and lack of clothing, or her overt sexuality — her plot lines over the years have been some of the most melodramatic stories out there and we’re talking comics here. But Kory is also one of the strongest and sweetest heroines there are and it is not even a contradiction. It’s just Kory.

And then there’s her animated counterpart. Teen Titans‘ Starfire is quite simply adorable. She’s everything great about the comic original without any of the more controversial bits. In my nearly favorite episode How Long is Forever?, Starfire is accidentally flung 20 years into her future. There she finds a much sadder and darker world and a team that has fallen apart. Most disturbingly, her Robin has grown up into the bitter and wholly emo Nightwing. All of it is because she disappeared, and having finally reappeared, she is the one able to return order. That is the magic of Starfire. She is the Titans’ sunshine and the glue that holds them together.

Caroline

It’s not exactly a secret that I love the Starjammers. This group of space pirates/freedom fighters, often featured in Uncanny X-Men, may not technically count as a group of aliens. They’ve traditionally been led by Terran emigres: Christopher “Corsair” Summers, later succeeded by his son Alex aka Havok. But it’s reasonable to assume that when he was fresh off of Earth, Chris Summers wouldn’t have known where to point a blaster if not for his fellow (and distinctly extraterrestrial) ‘Jammers: the wise-cracking lizard-like Ch’od, the Cyborg Raza, and of course the cat-skunk-lady Hepzibah, shown below in her night job as a booth babe working gun shows for furries.

A few things to add about Hepzibah: (1) Her name isn’t actually Hepzibah, but Chris Summers could not pronounce her name in her own tongue and, demonstrating the sensitivity for which his name is a byword, called her after the Summers family cat. (2) Before Corsair’s death Hepzibah was, for all intents and purposes, Cyclops and Havok’s stepmother. (3) Some people occasionally wonder why the Summers boys seem to have issues. (4) I really never wonder that.

Jennifer

Dr. Puppykicker at The ISS once perceptively pointed out that “Uncanny X-Men is about black people and gays who are straight and white, but have superpowers.” That’s a sad fact that has frequently been true of supernatural characters — whatever alienation and discrimination the characters are made to face in an attempt to tap into the power of metaphor, they tend to be members of what in the real world is a privileged majority. Sci-fi characters can represent non-white, non-straight, and non-Christian people — as long as they aren’t actually any of those things.

Luckily, comic book diversity has improved a lot in recent years. And that’s why my two favorite Marvel aliens — I couldn’t choose! — are the Runaways’ Karolina Dean, a Majesdanian, and Young Avenger Teddy Altman, a Kree-Skrull hybrid. These two characters are both members of a multicultural teenage superhero team. They’re both aliens. And they’re also both gay. So when, upon discovering their alien heritage, they have to confront the realization that they’re not who they thought they were, and that they have to accept a truth about themselves that they’ve never been able to admit before, it’s not just a metaphor — it’s a reflection of the real-world issues these characters would also face. I really appreciate the effort at diversity inherent in their creation — and it helps that they’re both fantastic, well-rounded characters in their own right.

Sigrid

My favorite alien? Easy. Phoenix.

Whether it’s possessing Jean, Rachel, Emma, or someone new, the Phoenix is my favorite alien. It’s alien. Its goals and hungers are not on a human scale. Watching its human bearers struggle with its needs is always fascinating to me.

So what about you? Who or what is your favorite comic book alien, or alien race?

As I posted a few days ago, Sunday marked my Internet audio debut. In my persona as Mad Marvel Girl, I joined the Hour42 podcast, to chat with hosts El Secreto and Peter Pixie about all things Marvel (but especially Marvel’s women). If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can listen to this “Marvelous Hour” here.

We cover the week’s news in comics, then El Secreto and I geek out for a while about our love of Alias and the awesomeness of Bobbi Morse, while I advance my personal theory about why Jean Grey would not put up with this b***s***. Also, we discuss how Batman is like Professor Xavier, how Dan DiDio is like Willie Wonka and why — despite what you might think — Superman doesn’t actually punch people.

I’m very grateful to the guys for having me on their show, and also to everyone who’s let me know that they listened and enjoyed. Thanks!

Posted by Caroline Pruett
Email: Caroline@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: madmarvelgirl

This weekend, the Fantastic Fangirls’ own Caroline (aka MadMarvelGirl) will be joining the crew at the Hour42 Internet Radio show, to talk about the upcoming Marvel Women 2010 event, and other geek topics of the day.

The show will live-stream beginning at 10 PM Eastern on Sunday, November 8. If you miss the live broadcast, it will be available for online listening sometime shortly thereafter. I’ll post a link and a short debrief/discussion post once that’s available.

This is a fun new direction for Fantastic Fangirls, and we hope you’ll all tune in!

Caroline Pruett
Email: Caroline@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: madmarvelgirl

SPOILERS FOLLOW for Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s Stumptown #1.

The first thing I knew about Greg Rucka was that he’s Jen Van Meter’s husband. This was the piece of information I needed in order to get me to read Gotham Central. I’d read all of Van Meter’s Hopeless Savages and loved it. I loved the imagination and passion of the series, its central conceit of an oddball family that works. I loved the female characters, I loved the depictions of sexuality and relationships.

So when Caroline recommended Rucka’s stuff to me, saying he could write strong female characters well, I thought about Hopeless Savages. “Hmm,” I thought to myself. “If this Rucka guy is in a long-term relationship with Jen Van Meter, he might understand writing about kickass women.” And on that I gave his writing a shot.

I haven’t read all of Rucka’s work. I’ve missed his work on Wolverine, and Action Comics, and Wonder Woman. And I’ve never read Grendel or Hellboy. But I’ve read almost everything else. I’d be really hard-pressed to say which of his works is my favorite. (It might be A Fistful of Rain, the standalone novel about an alcoholic rock star and the trouble she’s in. But if that’s my favorite, it’s only by a squeak and a smidge.)

Anyway.

It’s safe to say the comic I was most looking forward to this week was Stumptown #1. I was not disappointed.

Oni Press is publishing this new creator-owned Rucka project. With art by Matthew Southworth and colors by Lee Loughridge, Stumptown features everything I love in comics. In it we have a rich supporting cast of individual characters who all stand distinct from each other, multicultural casting, and complex personal relationships. We have tough women of a variety of ages and abilities. We have a teenage girl in some sort of trouble, way over her head. And we have a smart, tough, self-sabotaging female P.I. lead with a dependent brother she loves and a set of addiction problems.

I swear, I think Rucka wrote this comic just for me. (See my above-named love of A Fistful of Rain, mmkay?)

The protagonist is great. Rucka does that thing which writers are hounded to do — and with which writers of comics have a particular burden to bear — he shows us who the protagonist is. He shows us her life, her motivations. We see why she makes her decisions and how those play out. We’re not told. In fact, we’re not told much of anything — we follow along with the lead as the flashback story plays out. (You might be wondering why I don’t name her. That’s because her name isn’t given until the last page of the book. Rucka clearly put a hell of a lot of thought into this name, and he kept it on the last page of the book deliberately. There’s a couple of spots where her name would have easily fit into the dialogue, namely the phone conversation with Charlotte and the brief exchange with the bartender at Ringside Steakhouse. After all that effort, I’m not going to spoil it here.)

In addition to the story and the characters, the setting and look of Stumptown are both great. There’s a note in the back from Southworth about his efforts to maintain the richness of detail and realism in the settings. The comic is set in Portland, Oregon. Southworth and Rucka are working hard to make their Portland match the real Portland. I haven’t seen love-of-place like this since Brian Wood’s Local. (Or, before that, since Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks, a novel which has a spot in my heart because I live in its setting.)

Southworth also does a solid job with making all the characters distinct. I never got confused as to whether I’d seen a character before. Believe me, once you get out of the superhero costumes, this can be a real problem for some artists. (And it’s a problem for some artists even in the superhero titles. Greg Land, I am naming you.) I also want to particularly commend Southworth for his character design on Sue-Lynne and Ansel.

On the technical matters, this comic is well done. Solid lettering, excellent layouts and panel design. The coloring is atmospheric rather than realistic. Scenes have a color palette conveying time of day, or place, or emotions. I thought it worked well, especially in the more heavily-inked panels.

But honestly, I wasn’t looking at the lettering or the colors the first time through. I was reading this as fast as I could. How much trouble is our P.I. in? How come everybody knows her brother? Is she one of Sue-Lynne’s grandchildren, too? What happened to her and Ansel’s parents? What trouble is Charlotte in? Who are the flannel guys? What does Marenco want, really? Omg, what is UP with Marenco’s DAUGHTER?? Are these cops on the level?

And what, what is the significance of our lead’s name?

I highly recommend you check out the preview of Stumptown #1 at CBR. And I highly, highly recommend getting a copy for yourself. This isn’t a wait-for-trade kind of story. This first issue paid off immediately, and left me clamoring for more.

Thank you, again, Mr. Rucka, for another great comic and another great female lead. And thank you, Ms. Van Meter, for being a kickass enough writer that I bothered to try your husband’s work.

Email: sigrid @ fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: sigridellis

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot… But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world.

I love comic books. I love comic book movies. And I love comic book fandom. This should all be obvious, right? I expect you, dear reader, understand my affection, or why would you be reading? This is a blog by and for comic book readers and lovers. You are not reading so you might learn how to change the world. Our mission statement has nothing to do with changing the world and that’s okay. It’s just a comic book blog.

Well, today I’m going to talk about changing the world. I’ll start with a story. When I was seven I went to the movies with my aunt, my cousin and my baby brother. I remember it very clearly, the theater we were in and the long line to get popcorn — and on screen the long line of stormtroopers and the flash of lightsabers. We saw The Return of the Jedi and I have been in love with Darth Vader ever since. Vader’s choice to put his son before everything he’d spent his life believing defined love for me. To this day I believe the following things because of that movie: (1) everyone is capable of love, (2) everyone is capable of change, and (3) though I wouldn’t put it in these words when I was seven, toppling an empire takes thirty years of hard work and hope — and one right choice to reverse all the wrong ones.

Let me put it a different way. A conversation between two old friends:

- …some of us hold onto guilt and shame far too long. There’s a strange security in misery, it’s almost comfortable. Taking the risk of moving on, that’s terrifying. For Erik it’s always been about family. Building a home–a world–where he can be safe, where he need never again feel afraid. It always gets twisted because the child in him can’t escape those nightmares, and wants revenge.

- The hell of it is, the force that drives them is love. From that love, for that love…they yearn–they strive–for an ideal. What could be more primal? More profound? Combine their power with such passion…anything is possible. Even redemption.

That’s Charles Xavier and Stephen Strange regarding Magneto and his daughter, from Excalibur 14 (the prelude to House of M).

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore tells us, along with Harry, It is not our abilities that show what we truly are… It is our choices. To put it another way, It’s not who I am underneath…but what I do that defines me. (Batman Begins). Or another conversation, Shayera Hol and Alfred Pennyworth in Justice League:

- They’ve been in there a long time.

- Yes miss, they have. If I may be so bold… I’m neither a superhero nor a soldier, so I’m hardly qualified to judge your actions by those standards. But I do know this: without the great sacrifices you’ve made, we wouldn’t be here to share this nice pot of tea. Whatever they decide in that room, in my eyes, you’ll always be a hero.

Sacrifice. Choice. Action.

Going back to V, A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself, is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world. Or said another way, in song on the Disney Channel:

So come on and raise your voice
Speak your mind, make some noise
You can’t just sit back and watch the world change
It matters what you’ve got to say
There’s no one else who can stand in your place

Hey, if you don’t think Hannah Montana can change people’s minds you haven’t been paying much attention over the last two years. Or as School of Rock’s Dewey Finn says, One great rock show can change the world.

I’m not a super hero or a wizard or a rock star. I am a thirty three year old working mother from Connecticut. I have a husband, three brothers, two daughters, and a cat from Bali. I work at a university. On Tuesday I cast my vote for Mayor of my little town. It didn’t make MSNBC or The Daily Show the way the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia did, but local politics count more than people realize. We have same sex marriage in Connecticut and just like I said when Proposition 8 passed in California — the couples screwed over in Maine should come here. I’ll plan your wedding.

Midway through V for Vendetta, Evey finds and reads the diary of Valerie, a young woman imprisoned and finally killed for being a homosexual. Valerie writes of coming out to her parents, My father wouldn’t look at me. He told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. But I’d only told them the truth. Was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free. And her story ends:

It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie.

It recalls another quote: I ask this… If there should be an assassination, I would hope that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out — If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door… And that’s all. I ask for the movement to continue. Because it’s not about personal gain, not about ego, not about power… it’s about the “us’s” out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s. Without hope, the us’s give up – I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you… You gotta give em’ hope… you gotta give em’ hope. (Milk)

In town there is an arboretum named after my mother. She wasn’t a super hero or a wizard or a rock star either. But a long row of trees stands only because she became a loud voice in local politics. She wanted those trees to outlive her and they did because she fought for them. Under her name on the sign it says: “She spoke for the trees”, referencing Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. I was raised to believe one person speaking the truth, no matter who she is or what her truth is, is enough to inspire change. I witnessed it.

Or put another way: I’ve witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I’ve seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them… but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it… ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love… And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man… A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget.

I’m not convinced comic books can’t change the world. Just like any other story, they are ideas.

Posted by Anika
email: anika@fantasticfangirls.org
twitter: magnetgirl

This week, in honor of National Novel Writing Month, we have a special question: What book by a comic book character would you really like to read?

Anika

I’ve mentioned in an earlier Q&A, Carol Danvers is a published author. First, she wrote an angry tell all of her mistreatment by N.A.S.A. She was put in charge of “handling” the alien Mar-Vell and took it to mean befriend, romance and …accidentally absorb all his powers when he exploded. Hey, if Tony Stark did it he’d probably get a medal but Carol was transferred to the Midwest (what rockets fly out of Indiana again?) and finally forced to resign. So, she got even with a book. At a friend’s suggestion I’ve titled it Spaced Out.

So then Carol spun her newfound fame into a magazine editorial career, most notably as editor of WOMAN Magazine, a subsidiary of The Daily Bugle, where she did quite well until J. Jonah Jameson’s sexism went just that bit too far and she punched him (Hey, look! Canon back-up for the Spider-date!). So that didn’t work out either — but after Rogue and the X-Men (who are a lot like Wolverine and the X-Men, only cooler) made her life a living Hell she escaped to space and turned pirate with the Starjammers (who are not, unfortunately, Freddy Mercury’s other glam rock band but actual space pirates…well, you know). She ran with the Jammers for a while under the name Binary. And years later, when she was down and out in Seattle, post-rehab with nothing to do, she wrote a series of novels about those times. I’ve named these, too: 1: Tabula Rasa, 2: Binary, 3: The Movement of the Stars (these three together, the “first trilogy” are the most popular); 4: Find a Way or Make One (but this one is Carol’s favorite), 5: Arcana Imperil, 6: Supernova.

Yes, I’ve titled and plotted Carol Danvers’ semi-autobiographical science fiction novels instead of writing my own. But I promise, if space pirates ever kidnap me, writing about it is the first thing I’ll do when I return to Earth.

Caroline

It’s possible I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time (and really, what would constitute a healthy amount of time?) thinking about what the Times Book Review would look like in the Marvel Universe. Just for example, I’m fairly certain that the Marvelverse versions of Philip Roth and the late John Updike both wrote first-person novels ‘imagining’ the life of Magneto. Both were short-listed for the National Book Award (in different years) and a couple of the X-Men even read them: Warren Worthington because he’s the kind of person who reads serious fiction short-listed for the National Book Awards, Rogue because she’s intensely curious about Magneto, and Professor X for the sexy bits.

So that’s the kind of thing I think about, but it doesn’t count for this answer because (a) John Updike and Philip Roth are not technically comic book characters and (b) if those books existed I wouldn’t really want to read them (especially not the sexy bits). On the other hand, I would like to read The Chronicle by Irene Merryweather. Irene, as I discussed in an earlier Q&A is the civilian character whose function in the Marvel Universe is to follow Cable around and write down everything he does. Irene hasn’t been seen in the current Cable series, which is set in the future, but one of her descendants did show up, with the Chronicle in hand. It’s encouraging to think that Irene finished her book, and wasn’t daunted by the protagonist disappearing halfway through. It’s the kind of thing that happens when you work with Cable. And honestly, the reason I would want to read Irene’s Chronicle is not so much that I want to know everything about Cable (he’s genuinely one of my favorite characters, but even his Wikipedia entry makes me cry). It’s more that I expect it would gradually devolve from a serious attempt to record the life of a cybernetic Messiah-warrior from the future, into sarcastic footnotes about what it’s like to work for a cybernetic Messiah-warrior from the future.

Hey, I think I just got an idea for NaNoWriMo.

Jennifer

I want to read the Tommy Taylor books.

For anyone who isn’t reading Mike Carey’s new Vertigo series The Unwritten — and in which case, you need to run out and pick it up right now — Tommy Taylor is the Harry Potter analogue in the Unwritten universe. Written by Wilson Taylor, the protagonist’s father who vanished before the series began, the bestselling series is about a very special boy wizard — who may or may not be the fictional embodiment of said protagonist, Wilson’s son Tom Taylor. (As you might imagine, hijinks — and murder, mystery, magic, and meditations on the power of literature — ensue.)

The concept of the Tommy Taylor books, obviously, isn’t especially original. But Mike Carey’s prose (one of J.K. Rowling’s acknowledged weaknesses) is so fantastic that he makes me want to read these books side-by-side with the real Harry Potter books. Just check out this page — the first page of the series — and tell me you wouldn’t read the book it pretends to be.

Sigrid

I want to read whatever sort of books Rose Walker ends up writing. I suspect her children’s stories will be full of resonant truth that frightens parents, but that children love. I believe her Young Adult fiction will be rite-of-passage tales, full of loss and death that highlights the essential value and importance of every character. I believe her novels for adults will be short, tightly-written stories that leave readers weeping while they resolve to pursue life even harder. Rose Walker is perfectly poised to be a good novelist — she’s experienced things that defy easy explanation and measure, things with which she would grapple in fiction the rest of her life. She’s already a writer, a diarist and record-keeper. Perhaps after the birth of her first child she’ll take up writing again.

So what about you? What book by a comic book character would you really like to read?

I was excited about Baltimore Comic-Con’s first annual costume contest, held just a few weeks ago. My younger brother is an anime cosplayer, and he’s been telling me for years about the fun that can be had at convention costume contests. But before Baltimore, I’d never gotten the opportunity to watch one. This time, I was determined to see the contest – and my determination was only strengthened by the knowledge that my fellow Fantastic Fangirl, Anika, would be competing.

The contest should have been fantastic. The costumes, across the board, were fabulous. The adult competitors were exuberant, their weeks of preparation and their enthusiasm for their characters equally obvious. The child contestants were universally adorable. George Perez was a judge. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out, a lot. The contest was a disorganized mess. It was held in one of the open-air “rooms” in a corner of the convention floor with no roof and only flimsy temporary walls separating the competition from the rest of the convention, which meant that it was hard to hear anything, including the calls for contestants to line up. (This was a problem that had plagued all of the panels that had occupied that space throughout the con, and is probably the most widely-acknowledged flaw of the convention). The organizers, meanwhile, seemed to have no idea how to separate the contestants into categories – some Star Wars cosplayers, for instance, were placed in the “established superhero” category while others were placed in the “potpourri” category for non-superhero/villain characters. And on top of all of that, the competition was held at the very end of the convention, which meant that the Baltimore Convention Center staff began dismantling the rest of the con floor halfway through the contest, turning off most of the lights and making an even bigger ruckus than the con itself had.

Now, all of that I can forgive. As the first costume contest at that venue, it was bound to suffer from beginner’s mistakes. With any luck, the organizers will learn from these mistakes and improve next year. But what I can’t forgive – and what I hope against hope they’ll fix next year, even if none of those other problems are solved – is the rampant, rage-inducing sexism of the judges’ comments and behavior.

The main judge of the event was local Baltimore radio DJ Ed Norris, who, from all appearances, knew next to nothing about comics. He was constantly deferring to his fellow judges (con organizers and pros whose names I never caught due to the poor sound quality, and George Perez) to identify the costumes being modeled, and that should have been my first hint that things were going to go downhill. But other than a few groan-worthy jokes of the standard Top 40 morning show sort, Norris didn’t set off any warning bells during the children’s categories – that is, until he loudly and droolingly commented, on a young girl’s Kingdom Come Wonder Woman costume, “I’d love to see the adult version of that costume.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the creepiest thing he’d say that afternoon. Because soon it was time for the adult female categories, and a deluge of comments ranging from the patronizing to the outright sexually harassing. Did you know that Poison Ivy “makes things grow, heh heh”? Because those judges were more than happy to tell us – both times a Poison Ivy cosplayer came up. Invitations back to the judges’ hotel rooms were implied, and when a Batgirl and “sexy Robin” in store-bought costumes appeared, they were identified as “the Batman and Robin we all dream of.” Perhaps even more notably, when a contestant came up whose costume wasn’t conventionally sexy – or if the contestant wasn’t a size zero – the DJ and his cohorts had absolutely nothing to say, and the woman was quickly hustled along.

But all’s fair in love and war, right? Surely these judges would treat the male contestants with comments equally patronizing and innuendo-laden. I waited, clutching my hands into fists, to see what would happen as the category was announced as “the one we’d all been waiting for.” The men lined up, walked down the aisle to the judges’ table, and… were praised for their ingenuity. “How did you make that costume? How long did it take you?” the judges asked, awestruck. The men remained at the front of the room, in some cases, for several minutes as the judges peppered them with questions, and they all walked away with their heads held high.

Not a single woman had been asked about the construction of her costume, despite the fact that some – Anika’s included – had obviously taken a lot of effort to put together. No woman had been asked to stay at the front for longer than thirty seconds. And I was enraged.

I don’t want to make a generalization about all of the judges. I mention George Perez separately from the others because he was the only one who never participated in the offensive commentary, and even corrected the others when they identified Anika’s costume as Hawkgirl – “Hawkwoman,” he said. As for the other judges, they were all varying degrees of responsive to Ed Norris – but Norris deserves the lion’s share of the blame for instigating it all. Someone, it seemed, had failed to tell him that this was a costume contest, and not a beauty pageant – or a parade staged to solely benefit his libido.

But beyond Norris’ specific faults, the stomach-turning sexism of the contest points to larger problems in superhero comics and culture. As I said earlier, I love the idea of cosplaying and costume contests, though I don’t have the courage to participate myself. I was excited for Anika, and while I was disappointed that she didn’t win her category, the very exuberant, in-character Harley Quinn who did win was plenty deserving. I believe that women should be able to dress up as their favorite characters to revel in their power, just as men do. I also believe that women can, if they choose, dress up as those characters solely because they’re sexy and liable to attract attention.

But it’s a problem – a huge problem – that women who choose to dress up for the first reason are assumed to be dressing up for the second. That because superheroine costumes are, by and large, skimpy affairs, all women who dress up as those heroines must merely be seeking lascivious attention from men. That women in costume contests are only there for the benefit of the male spectators, and that those who aren’t conventionally sexy are worthless.

There was one cosplayer who was portraying Emma Frost. Emma, as comic readers know, is a character who has no qualms about wearing revealing clothing, and the cosplayer’s costume fully displayed those proclivities. But while the woman, when she wasn’t in character, was chatting with friends and simply being herself, when she was posing for pictures, or competing in the contest, she was Emma incarnate, shoulders thrust back, disdainful look in place, full of confidence. It was clear that this woman was cosplaying Emma because she loved the character. But all the judges saw was a woman in a flesh-baring shirt posing for their pleasure.

What does this say about attitudes toward superheroines? What does it say about attitudes toward female comic fans? And how, in the face of these attitudes, can those superheroines, or those female comics fans, possibly win? Anika already touched on this problem in her post about retail Halloween costumes, but my experience at the costume contest made it even clearer.

“We’ll have to do the adult female superhero category last next year. Everyone left after that one!” one of the judges remarked, halfway through the male superhero competition. His point, of course, was that people would have stuck around longer if they’d had to wait to ogle the sexy ladies. But to tell you the truth, if Anika hadn’t been a contestant, I would have left myself after that horrific display – not in disappointment that the sexy show was over, but in disgust that it had happened in the first place. And if the Baltimore Comic-Con costume contest doesn’t clean up its act next year, I don’t think I’ll be attending at all.

By Jennifer Smith
E-mail: Jennifer@fantasticfangirls.org
Twitter: throughthebrush

What comic book character really scares you?

Anika

Well, to be completely honest, no one in a comic book really scares me. I don’t mean to sound like a snob, it’s not that I don’t think comics can be scary. The fantastic doesn’t personally scare me. I don’t like straight horror films, not because they are too frightening or gory, but because they are boring. I don’t find something created to scare me to be particularly frightening. The Harry Potter series is full of characters who are dark and menacing and evil, but I am not afraid of Voldemort. I am afraid of Hermione Granger. Remember what she does to her parents? To protect them? “I’ve also modified my parents’ memories so that they’re convinced they’re really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and that their life’s ambition is to move to Australia, which they have now done.” (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapter 6) If she ever went bad, the world would be in trouble.

So in that vein, my answer is Professor Charles Xavier, the most powerful telepath on the planet. I am pretty certain he could use Cerebro to take control of every single mutant in the world. But ignoring that, just his Jedi Mind Trick power is good enough to sway absolute power his way. Plus, he’s proved to be patient. He’d do it so we would never know it was happening. Just one day we’d wake up on X-World and we wouldn’t know the difference.

Caroline

It’s been a while since I read Sandman, but the Corinthian is pretty much every bad dream I ever had:

“A nightmare created to be the darkness, and the fear of darkness in every human heart. A black mirror, made to reflect everything about itself that humanity will not confront.”

Also, teeth where they shouldn’t be teeth. Yeesh.

Jennifer

I was reading Warren Ellis’ Thunderbolts run that I came to a firm conclusion: Bullseye scares the crap out of me.

I remember telling this to Caroline, and she seemed surprised. “Bullseye? Not Venom? He EATS people.” And I just shook my head. Sure, Venom is scary — and if he really existed, I’d be a little worried about being devoured. But Venom is an alien symbiote, and I don’t anticipate encountering one of those any time soon. But a sociopath? A guy with no morals, no patterns, no real goals beyond enjoying himself, who is also really damn good at killing people? That terrifies me. It terrifies me because those people exist, and there is absolutely nothing I could do to stop them from hurting me. I can’t avoid them, I can’t reason with them, I can’t give them something they want more than my death. I can only walk through my life, unprotected, until the day I happen to be in front of Bullseye at the supermarket checkout line and he decides to slice my head off with the packaging from Hostess snack cakes. And that’s absolutely horrifying.

Sigrid

That depends.

I mean, realistically, I should be scared of Galactus or something. Something implacable that will end everything. And I am scared of that, of him, of the world ending as there is no respite, no help, and I just have long enough to try to explain to my kids that nothing can stop me from loving them. But, realistically, I only worry about that scenario about once a month in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. (I call this “worrying about the zombie apocalypse,” and it encompasses worrying about the walking dead, nuclear war, meteors hitting the earth, Galactus, alien invasion, dimensional gateways, the Dies the Fire series by S. M. Stirling, and environmental catastrophe.)

In an existential-fear sense, I worry about the Joker and his ilk. This is why I can’t watch the Saw movies, because the trailers remind me of the Joker. The Joker is the embodiment of everything I fight. He is chaos and unreason, disorder and whim. In my job, in my parenting, and in my life I work against entropy. I work to establish patterns, to encourage rationality and reason. I work on the side of those who want cause and effect to be predictable. I follow rules, I explain my actions. I believe that the world is comprehensible and can be mastered through knowledge. The Joker violates all of that.

In a very immediate-fear sort of way, though, I am scared of whatever thing or person in a comic is threatening a kid in a scene. Whatever the comic is, whatever the scenario, if there is a portrayal of a scared little kid and a terrified parent, in that moment THAT is what I’m afraid of. I used to be afraid of things like The Corinthian, or Proteus. I have to tell you, a guy with teeth for eyeballs are a walk in the park compared to the things that scare me now.

So what about you? What comic book character really scares you?

I’ve mentioned before that Halloween is a big deal in my household. My husband makes costumes as his career so my girls’ costume choice is not limited by what is available for sale. Which is good because a lot of what is available is overpriced and inappropriate. And not what they want. This year my thirteen year old is going as Alex Russo of Wizards of Waverly Place. There are a couple Alex costumes out there but the one Kiki wants is from the movie (Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie), specifically the scene where Alex puts aside her attitude, digs down deep within herself, and saves her future and her family. Despite it being the closest Alex has to a uniform, nobody has made that one. My four year old is going as a Tyrannasaurus Rex. She is entirely enamored of dinosaurs and “Rexy” in particular. Ever since her sister explained that the dinosaurs all died many millions of years ago, it has been her stated goal to find all of Rexy’s bones and bring him back to life. This means both my girls want to be scientists when they grow up (her sister has long expressed an interest in meteorology, storm-chasing to be precise) so I’m as happy as can be, but the dinosaur costumes that exist are all in the Boys section of the store. Little girls are not supposed to like dinosaurs, just no one told mine.

My husband is making both these costumes, so my girls are set, but our love of the Halloween season does not extend only to the costumes we wear, but to all the costumes around. Last Saturday we went to four different stores just to browse.

Cady (Lindsay Lohan, but it is Amanda Seyfried’s Karen in the picture) says in Mean Girls, “Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.”

Based on Halloween costume selection, this is entirely true. There are few, if any, costumes for women that are not the (Sexy) version. The (Sexy) Nurse, the (Sexy) Witch, the (Sexy) Nun (seriously? the sexy nun?), the (Sexy) Red Riding Hood. Why is Red Riding Hood sexy? Isn’t she supposed to be nine or ten? But then all the little girls costumes at least border on (Sexy), too.

Last year, I really, really wanted to be (Sexy) Marie Antoinette. As far as skimpy goes, it wasn’t very. Marie Antoinette was known for wearing a lot of clothes, after all. It was a really cool costume and I wanted it. But it was eighty dollars for an outfit that would be worn not-even-once because who dresses up as (Sexy) Marie Antoinette to take their kids trick-or-treating? I didn’t get it and this year, it is not even available. As I said, it just wasn’t that skimpy.

Now, if you are a woman (or teen girl, let’s be honest, most of the adult sized female costumes are aimed at teens) who wants to be a super hero you don’t have that many choices on the standard Halloween Outlet costume wall. For DC fans, there’s Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Batgirl. And then there’s Robin, and well, Stephanie Brown was Robin so, okay. (Sexy) Flash, on the other hand, has no basis in canon and is — well, let’s call it over-the-top.

As for Marvel, well, you can be Spider-Girl, Black Costume Spider-Girl or American Dream. Both of these characters are from an alternate future version of the Marvelverse. I love the Spider-Girl comics, May is a spunky heroine and Mary Jane is great as a mom you shouldn’t mess with. But May wears her father’s suit, not the teensy, flirty, mini-skirted (Sexy) version on sale. And the Black Costume version comes off as the (Sexy) Bad Girl side of Spider-Girl.

And then there’s “American Dream, the Daughter of Captain America”. When I saw this in the store I immediately snapped a picture and texted it to the other Fantastic Fangirls and a few friends. The comments I got back were varying degrees of “Cool, but…wait…” And the one that sums it up best was Sam’s: “Dude, Steve would never allow his daughter to wear that!” (Not that American Dream is actually related to Captain America as the costume box states, but that is just icing on the cake of what is wrong with this costume). Like with Spider-Girl, in the comics American Dream’s costume is basically Captain America’s only with more room for her curves. But that is just not sexy (Sexy)! enough for Halloween.

Never mind that female superheroes by and large wear sexy costumes anyway. Why are there only Marvel heroines from an obscure alternate future (I imagine most people assume the characters were made up for the costume)? Where is Spider-Woman who is in the Avengers titles and her own comic? Where is Black Widow? Where are any of the fifty billion female X-Men? Where is my Ms. Marvel?! Seriously, the brand name is in her title, talk about wasted marketing opportunities.

But at least they aren’t pink. Back to DC, the littler girls’ costumes for Batgirl, Supergirl and Wonder Woman all come in pink. Because, obviously, little girls only want to wear pink. Now, I’m not saying that’s not valid but …that’s not valid. Something does not have to be pink for a young girl to like it. Supergirl is almost reasonable. She is, at times, girly. Pink Batgirl is simply ridiculous. 1. Bats are not pink. 2. Wearing fluorescent pink makes someone stand out in the dark, gritty streets of Gotham (yes, Robin’s outfit doesn’t really make sense in that way but hey, he grew up in the circus. I mean, look at Hawkeye!) and 3. Please name the Batgirl who would wear pink.

Right.

And Wonder Woman. There is just no excuse for a pink Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman has one of the skimpiest, sexiest superheroine outfits ever, and it is also the most iconic. It is star-spangled and gold and it is not pink.

I just don’t understand. My four year old gets it. “That’s not what Wonder Woman wears.”

I am wearing my Hawkgirl costume from the convention this Halloween. There were no costumes in any of the stores we went to that came even close to being as cool. In fact, there were no costumes in any of the stores we went to I even wanted. I already own (Sexy) Alice in Wonderland and (Sexy) Marie Antoinette wasn’t available. But looking at the wide display of stockings I did decide on who I would be if I didn’t already have the costume.

Black Canary.

Why? She is sexy and scrappy. Just as likely to hit you as kiss you (aside: these costumes don’t really invoke “kissing” fantasies but let’s keep it PG shall we?) (I don’t mean Power Girl!). She’s the perfect choice. (I still don’t mean Power Girl!) Black Canary pulls off (Sexy) — even Cady’s slutty — and is still true to the character and the characterization (Dinah likes being sexy, it’s okay!). And, unlike Ms. Marvel (the other obvious choice for me), her costume is pretty easy to throw together with a trip to Hot Topic.

But that’s for me, an adult (don’t dress your daughter up as Black Canary. At least skip the fishnets). My daughters are lucky they have my husband because if we had to rely on what’s available…well. Maybe next year.

Posted by Anika
email: anika@fantasticfangirls.org
twitter: magnetgirl