We have to go to an all-day library gig tomorrow, all the way 'cross state. Our usual dogsitter was busy, and not wanting to use up our dogsitting karma with Paul's parents, we decided to kennel her. Unfortunately, since we have to leave at 6am and won't be home till after midnight, we had to drop her off tonight and pick her up on Thursday morning.
Oh, the guilt. Oh, the sad sad brown eyes, and the hopeless look of betrayal and abandonment. The kennel was darn near exactly like the one we rescued her out of just four months ago, and I really hope we don't recover a quivering wreck on Thursday. I feel so rotten.
Still, we brought her blankie and her food and her toys and paid for an extra round of exercise, and it's a good, well-run kennel with a vet clinic attached. And she's just a dog, and she's resilient. And.
But oh, damn. New meaning for the words "puppy dog eyes" after tonight. I can hardly believe how much that stupid yellow noodle has infiltrated my heart.
This stems from a conversation I had at dinner with my husband. I'm not issuing this challenge purely out of snark -- though I won't deny that's a significant part of it -- but also out of genuine curiosity.
The challenge has two parts:
1) Give the name (and era/designer, if necessary) of a mainstream super-heroine whose costume was designed for practicality as opposed to pure titillation. Disqualifiers: 1) Cannot be a version of a uniform worn by fellow teammates; costume must be exclusively designed for the female character. This excludes the original Sue Storm which would technically qualify otherwise -- however, the Jim Lee version of Jean Grey would probably count. 2) Costume cannot be worn by a minor; this disqualifies the female members of Power Pack, as well as the otherwise-well-designed Araña. This also leaves out the cast of Runaways.
2) Give the name (and era, if necessary) of a mainstream super-hero whose costume was designed for pure titillation as opposed to practicality. Disqualifiers: Same as above. Robin in his chainmail hotpants doesn't count.
The first one's pretty tough. I think the only ones we can wholeheartedly grant winning status to are Stelfreeze's Domino, the double-blue Excalibur-era Shadowcat, any version of Monica Rambeau and a few versions of Storm. Paul suggests that She-Hulk's new bathing suit counts, especially considering she's technically more fully-clothed than her male counterpart (and it's certainly a step up from the "Savage" version), but I'm a little dodgy on that one, as I am with another of his suggestions, Darwyn Cooke's Catwoman -- I'm sorry, that shiny leather may stop her from getting scraped up, but it's still totally fetishwear. Don't even give me Wonder Woman, especially if you look at Typolad's recent WWTT? entries.
The second one's trickier. Though he is the obvious choice, Namor doesn't count, because, technically, his scaly little speedo's utterly practical for his character. The only one Paul and I could come up with was the Grell-era Cosmic Boy.
So. Weigh in, faithful readers. Gimme your input.
I've mostly refrained from talking about comics (and the comics business) of late, because I'm just too damn busy to smack the flypaper that is internet comics douchebaggery. I have a book to finish. I just do. not. have. time. I am too busy lighting candles to spend any time cursing the darkness.
But you know, having just read Marvel's Civil War #7? I'm utterly astonished at how truly *bad* it is. Not the art, mind. I feel pretty bad for Steve Niven, who does beautiful work, even if he never passes up an opportunity to do torn-costume or ass-and-boobie shots. This script is inferior to his work.
The thing that really set me off was the horriffically mysogynistic last few pages -- between Reed's letter to Sue and Tony Stark's parting "har-de-har, little lady", I was physically enraged to the point of wanting to punch somebody, preferably a fictitious character, or an editor.
If you haven't read Civil War, don't fucking well bother. Instead, read Civil War In Thirty Seconds, which will take less time, cost less money, and will not leave you full of apoplexy. There were also some really awesome parodies kicking around Scans_Daily ("God DAMN it, Frank! Quit Dialoguing!") but I seriously can't be arsed to find them. That's how much I hated this series.
Criminy pete, what a horrendous year it's been for superhero comics, especially for new readers. Between Civil War and Identity Crisis, the only decent things worth reading have been Runaways, Nextwave, and (though it's been hit-or-miss lately) Astonishing X-Men. No-adjective X-Men is an incoherent (albeit pretty) mess; the Morrison-Quitely Superman has been very well-drawn and relatively well-written, but makes me all up with the crazy with their treatment of Lois; the Dodson Wonder Woman's been cancelled. Though Paul brings home a considerable number of single issues each week, hell if I care about most of them. They're worth reading while I'm on the throne, but not good for much else.
I've been thinking lately that corporate comics are an awful lot like corporate automakers. Bear with me here, the analogy's thin, but I'm sitting here in Michigan, and the comparison's getting more apt by the day, as each business' products fall further away from public demand.
See, each of these corporate monstrosities spends a ton of time wringing its collective hands and saying "Gosh, people just don't seem to be buying what we're selling. We're losing buyers all the time." So they make a big fuss and bother about asking people what they want. Talking about marketing to specific demographics. Attracting "soccer moms" or "NASCAR Dads" or asking "What do women want?" But in the end, they just turn around and keep delivering the same exact horseshit product they always have, with no real understanding of what the consumer market really wants, or needs, and exhibit no actual desire to learn. They make these little feints at satisfying their clients' requests, but in the long run, they have no intention whatsoever of making any critical change, and unfortunately they still have a large enough market of diehard brand-loyal consumers that they're not forced to make any radical choices. They want money more than they want actual progress, whether it's delivering yet another pre-cancelled, ass-and-boob filled book starring an off-target, weak-willed, half-realized reimagining of a "big-name" superheroine that's touted as "for the girls", or delivering the same damn huge, unsafe SUVs that that they've sold for the last ten years, which now offer an additional three miles to the gallon, and bear a fancy "green" emblem. Look at how revolutionary we are! We're forward thinkers! We're giving the consumer what they want!
Please. Spare me the handwaving, the maudlin theatrical "self scrutiny", and the smoke-and-mirrors unless you're planning to deliver an actual, functional payoff. In the meantime, I'll be driving a VW and reading indie comics. Both are better built, more reliable, more enjoyable, and give me more bang for my buck.
It was ten years ago this month that Vogelein was created.
Yeah, it took me a while to wrap my head around that one, too.
Set the wayback machine to February of 1997: It's cold and gloomy, and my buddy Jeff and I were both in the post-collegiate pre-real-life doldrums. We decided to cheer ourselves up by making a recipe from the "Llittle Irish Cookbook" -- the kind displayed at the bookstore cash register, designed for impulse buyers. The recipe in question was "Dublin Lawyer" and its preparation is the stuff of legend: sharp knives, gore, and lobsters that refused to die, even after being split in half, and split in half again. We also lost our common sense somewhere along the way and, doubling the recipe, used a full cup of cheap irish whiskey for the sauce. Yeah, you can see where this is going.
So, heady with whiskey fumes and post-Valentine's Day angst, we sat around and brainstormed up our newest story: a clockwork faerie. The rest, as they say, is history.
I wish I could be like one of the cool kids and do a bunch of neat promo images, or a fan art contest with spiffy prizes, or even write something more philosophical and erudite, but the truth of the matter is, if I take my eyes off the finish line for even one minute between now and June, the new book will not come out on time. And I figure, the best thing I can do for my fans is to give them a new book as soon as possible. So I hope you'll forgive me the lack of fanfare and celebration and cool new images.
Still, it's a really big deal for me to know that I pushed two entire books through to completion in ten years. That's pretty awesome, and is one of those things I always hoped I'd be able to do. Hooray for stories, hooray for characters that make you want to write, hooray for good friends who set the ball rolling.
Ten years. Wow.
So -- I'm planning on putting a significant chunk of the new book up online, soon. This will happen as soon as I'm sure the interior of the book is done, so, like, within the next 2-3 months (and yes, Jen Contino will still get first release.) Although I lack one of those poll-thingies, what do readers want to see?
1) the whole thing
2) the first 40 pages, same as the small minicomic preview I sold last year
3) the first half (60pp)
4) don't care
At the moment, I'm leaning towards the 40-page idea. That way I can have a 30-page preview of the first book and a 40-page preview of the second book, both online for perusal.
Thoughts?
So Zoë has finally started to shed. I know this sounds weird, but when we got her, her fur was so coarse and thin that she didn't shed at all, and brushing produced almost no loose hair. We started her right away on Nutro food because it promised to improve skin and coat. While I can't vouch that the food has cured all her problems (I suspect that *any* nutrition program at that point would have improved her skin and coat), it's undeniable that her fur has improved. She's now got a thick, downy underlayer, and her coat's exactly the color of creme brulee: toasty brown on the top and creamy inside. I combed her today and got three big wads of underfur off.
However, this good news surely defines her earlier hardships more starkly: she had no undercoat whatsoever when we got her. This means that our best guess was probably right in that she did lose a litter right before we got her. A bitch usually "blows coat" right before whelping. Add that to the fact that her, um, external bits are looking a lot less external than they used to ... yeah.
More good news, though -- she's really starting to understand commands now. Not just that she needs to do them, but why she needs to do them, and that she'll get rewarded. Up until recently she was still pretty unsure of why we were yelling at her, and now I think she's finally deduced that if she leaves the cats alone, she's pretty much okay. This is a big step, especially since the cats are finally getting brazen enough to wander downstairs again.
We're also working heavily on her retrieving and recall, because come spring, we want to be able to take her to the park to play frisbee, and not have to worry about her not coming back.
Man. Sorry I've been a pretty boring journaler lately. Work's been crazy, work on the book has been crazy, and the weather's been complicating things. It's really, really cold here, like -10F at night with a windchill of -30. I know Layla's up in Fairbanks laughing her butt off and pointing at us poor wimpy southerners, but damn. That's some cold.
Let's see. there's been a lot going on, so I'll have to sum up:
At this same restaurant, there is also Stone Bowl Bi Bim Bop, and this actually makes me even happier than having sushi in Kalamazoo. See, I have this crazy thing for Stone Bowl Bi Bim Bop. It's one of my favorite things in the whole world. Having a good version of it suddenly within walking distance is like some gift from heaven. This wasn't the best Bop I've ever had, but it was, again, quite good; certainly above average. I'd give it about a B+, and the rating is that low only because it had no accompaniments -- we had to specify an order of kimchi.
Regardless, we cleaned our Stone Bowls down to the last grain of rice. Heaven!
Seeing Life Through Different Eyes
Powerful graphic novels like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Madison Clell's Cuckoo, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home use both words and pictures to explore controversial topics. Discussion for 16-year-olds through adults with comics creators Paul Sizer and Jane Irwin.
If you're interested, please get these books and read them -- even if you don't come to our discussion group, they're excellent, mind-opening, life-changing books, all of them. If you know anyone 16 and up who likes graphic novels, and lives in the Kalamazoo area, please encourage them to come along.
