- Wonder Woman: Who Needs A Father Figure?
The issue goes to the very heart of Wonder Woman’s character and the nature of her message. Diana has been presented as an Amazon, beholden to no man from birth and therefore unbound from the question of patriarchal control. Though she has often worked for (with?) the gods in the stories — even joined them temporarily as the goddess of truth — Wonder Woman is presented as a woman of her own identity independent of boyfriend, husband, or father figure. Despite years of the old ’will she/won’t she’ with male characters like Steve Trevor, Superman, Nemesis and even Batman, Wonder Woman has remained a woman devoid of close male ties outside of friendship. She has provided readers with a portrayal of a woman outside of the boundaries of the patriarchy that she speaks out against. By including a male parent with as powerful a hand and presence as Zeus — not to mention with such a history of philandering — the story has shifted to add a new familial dynamic and a new, powerful patriarch to Diana’s life.
I don’t have any great familiarity with the character, although I read (and was a little confused by) the first issue of the new reboot. But I’m not sure boiling everything down to daddy issues is really the best way to go. It seems like they’re grafting Clash of the Titans onto the mythos, and that’s not good for anybody.
- More on fixing comics’ “women problem”: Female Super-Hero Characters and Sex: Creators Explain How Comics Can Do Better. I think Kieron Gillen says it well:
If you treat your characters as objects instead of characters you are, by definition, objectifying them, and if you constantly objectify your female characters you come across as sexist. [via]
- Global warming was all fun and games, but now it’s affecting peanut butter and chocolate, and it’s serious. [via]
- Starbucks concerned world coffee supply is threatened by climate change. It’s possible the world’s ecological problems will only be solved when it’s in industry’s best interests to do so. [via]
- And finally, The Electronic Publishing Bingo Card
comics
Monday various
- Wow, Marvel sounds like a lousy place to work:
It gets downright messy. Marvel’s new offices have only one restroom for each gender. In a company of hundreds of people. The post-lunch hour piddle line is said to be especially long and people actually stagger their lunches so as not to wait in it. There’s a human resources staff of one for the whole company. Review copies? You’ve got to be kidding. Editors have to purchase copies of the books they worked on. The precious archives of assets have dwindled over the years due to not spending any money to save them.
- Mark Bittman on why the demise (well, okay, just bankruptcy for now) of Friendly’s might not be such a bad thing. I have some fond memories of the chain, more for the ice cream than the food — and certainly not the ambiance or service — but I’m also not going to pretend like this is necessarily bad news.
- Emma to Charles Darwin. He nickname for him is…um…
- Noel Murray defends the Matrix sequels. I’m not sure I’m completely convinced, but he makes a very persuasive argument.
- And finally, how many books on Amazon.com are written by robots? More than you might think. [via]
Thursday various
- Painless Protein Scaffold Lets Cavity-Ridden Teeth Re-Grow From the Inside Out [via]
- The Complete Harry Potter Story In One Comic [via]
- Dolce & Gabbana in dock over ‘killer jeans’. What William Gibson calls “The life-threatening labor required to ma[k]e the jeans of people who don’t do physical labor look somewhat as if they did.”
- Can you tell the difference between these Letterman and Leno monologue jokes? I sure couldn’t. [via]
- And finally, Betty has an odd, random thought:
…namely that if a zombie apocalypse were to suddenly erupt, whatever clothes I’m wearing right now could very well be what I’m shambling around biting people in forever, or at least until someone gets a clear head shot. This idea especially tends to occur when I’m wearing a t-shirt that would be just a little too apt in the circumstances. Like my Farscape “Irreversibly Contaminated” shirt. Or the one that says, “Life Is Short. Read Fast.” Or my Monty Python and the Holy Grail pajama pants. (“It’s only a flesh wound!”) In this fashion, I manage to simultaneously amuse myself and kinda creep myself out.
Wednesday various
- Obama’s Kickstarter Campaign to Solve the Debt [via]
- On a more serious note, an interesting look inside Kickstarter itself.
- Moore’s Law may soon be broken. Whither the Singularity? [via]
- If Male Superheroes Posed Like Wonder Woman. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but…well, that there is part of the problem, isn’t it? [via]
- And finally, Matthew Cheney revisits the movie Stand By Me:
When I was ten, Stand By Me felt like the apex of realism because I’d never encountered a character who seemed so much like me as Gordie did. Twenty-five years later, it feels real for opposite reasons: for its naked artificiality. It gets right the way we shore up our fading memories by turning them into stories, by setting a soundtrack to them, by finding just the right words for every conversation and just the right lessons for every walk down the railroad tracks.
Tuesday various
- Silicon Valley billionaire reveals plan to launch floating ‘start up country’ off San Francisco. Yeah, that’s gonna end well. [via]
When I first saw that, I asked, “Are there any words scarier than ‘inspired by Atlas Shrugged‘?” To which DoctorHu rightly responded, “Are there any funnier or more appropriate than ‘We want looser building codes in our floating city?'”
- But what do they care? Apparently, the very rich have less empathy. [via]
- Speaking of the divide between rich and poor, if you’re like me and were wondering how Blackberry’s became the organizing tool of rioters and looters recently in England, here’s an interesting article on their shift from executives to the urban poor. [via]
- Marvel Bribes Retailers to Destroy DC Comics.
- And finally, Bert and Ernie are not gay. So sayeth Sesame Workshop, and you know, I’m with Mark Evanier on this. It was just ridiculous from the get-go:
One could also argue, as I would if I could stand to devote five more minutes to this whole ridiculous matter, that there’s a nice lesson in Bert and Ernie not being retrofitted as gay lovers. It is possible for two men or two women to be close friends and live together and sleep in adjoining beds without their sexuality being an issue or someone saying, “They must be gay!” I don’t think same-sex wedlock threatens so-called “traditional” marriages in any way. I don’t think the idea that two males might just be really close friends (and nothing more) threatens gay marriages.