Pen-Elayne on the Web

Monday, December 16, 2002

The Island of Misfit Blogs

I was going to blog some more about the holiday season, inspired by Ampersand and Devra. And I was going to blog some more about cultural versus political feminism, inspired by Body & Soul and Blogsisters. And I was going to agree with Peter David and disagree with Mark Evanier re: Al Gore's appearance on SNL. And I was going to blog on Blogsisters about the "Boobi--" I mean, "Cleavage" show all but sponsored by Victoria's Secret that was on A&E last week. But my boss is overworking me and my upstairs neighbors have gotten worse (geez, move out already!) and Robin's been sick and still has no new assignments so I'm kind of in a money funk and so I'm just very, very tired lately. Thank you to all the wonderful writers in the blogosphere in general for continuing to give me all this great stuff to read daily, even though I'm unable at present to return the favor. Somewhere, I'm sure, there's a library filled with computers housing amazing blog entries never written, just like Lucien's library of never-written books in The Sandman. Just pretend I have three or four of those lost ones from this past week.

posted by Elayne at 5:15 PM | Permalink
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Thursday, December 12, 2002

The Shizzle Hits The Fan

Well, I may not have secured that WAV of the Japanese version of "When Children Rule the World" yet, but at least one burning Pen-Elayne question has finally been answered. Jenny Gonzalez informs me that "Fa (or Fo) Shizzle" is "hip hop slang, kind of like saying 'no doubt about it.' It's just fun to talk like that is all! :)" Well, in these perilous times one must take one's fun where one can get it, fo shizzle! (Hmm, it just doesn't sound right combining hip-hop slang with words like "perilous," does it?)

posted by Elayne at 8:46 AM | Permalink
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002

Chatzmich Sameach

So nu, the holidays are upon us, including what Nancy Walls referred to on last night's Daily Show as "National Jews Go To the Movies Day" on December 25. But what, wonders Ken Miller, would Christmas be like if it were a Jewish holiday, complete with the obligatory laws and even a Hagadah? Thus Hilchos Xmas, brought to my attention by Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light blog (link at left bar). Maybe the Hilchos could become indispensable for these oxymorons, who knows?

Labels: Holidaze, Ye Gods

posted by Elayne at 3:39 PM | Permalink
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Inhuman Rights

Well, I for one have a warm and fuzzy feeling that the Bush Administration waited until the day after International Human Rights Day to declare their strategy to “respond with overwhelming force,” including “all options,” to the use of biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapons on the nation, its troops or its allies. Of course, concepts like "allies" and "respond" being as mutable to our leaders as the definition of racism is to Trent Lott, this outbreak of machismo does nothing to endear the US to the rest of the world and everything to fuel the fires of anti-American hatred. I'm still puzzled as to why this administration's idiotic pronouncements seem to want to encourage more terrorism instead of preventing it.

Hope to contribute a piece to Blogsisters a bit later about last night's "Cleavage" show on A&E, which wasn't about cleavage at all but about boobies. Two hours of boobies, apparently brought to us by Victoria's Secret. One step forward, two jiggles back. As usual, blogging dependent on my workday, which looks to be a killer.

posted by Elayne at 9:57 AM | Permalink
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Sunday, December 08, 2002

Live Like Him

Jeanne d'Arc has a lovely remembrance of Father Phil Berrigan on her blog. And if you want to read Berrigan's self-epitaph, Natalie Davis (link at left bar) reproes it here.

Lots of HerBlogs ("herblog" is also untaken at Blogspot, by the way) to sift through - and I've hardly begun what with not yet recovering from a work week that had to consist of around 50 hours for no overtime nor comp time - but from just the first few I've perused so far I suspect there's a lot to blogroll in the next week or so. And I was able to exercise my righteous indignation over at Blogsisters (link at left bar) regarding an issue near and dear to my heart, women who choose to get ahead in a chosen profession by acting and dressing all girly and flirtatious. Not having been soft and cute myself since, oh, age 9 or so, I've always looked at these Reindeer Games People Play from a distance as my nose glows (yes, Robin and I both have miserable colds). I found writing that little diatribe quite freeing, as Blogsisters is a female safe space and it's a lot easier to go off on a feminist rant there, amid other feminists and girlists and the like, than to do it on, for instance, comic book message boards, where even a stray gag about a goodgirl artist brings the defensive response from one male reader, "No offense, Elayne, but I'd rather read one of your long repetitive monologues on feminism than see you using a cheap joke like this." Boy, and they call feminists angry! :) (See, Jeanne, you aren't the only one getting silly comments.) Oh, and I've also officially joined Blogs by Women - see all the way down on the left bar. Thanks to Bonnie and Sara for helping me with the coding.

posted by Elayne at 1:35 PM | Permalink
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Friday, December 06, 2002

More on BlogGals

Thanks to Jeanne d'Arc at Body & Soul (link at left bar) both Ampersand (l.a.l.b.) and I have discovered the work of Mikhaela Reid, who will also go on my Women Doing Comics list at the next update, and who's now blogrolled at left along with Diane E., thanks to Skippy (l.a.l.b.), and Brooke Biggs, thanks to Diane. I had to laugh whilst reading Jeanne's great entry about having a file full of blogs that she wants to peruse prior to blogrolling, as I have the same "problem." Particularly now that I'm planning to participate on Blogsisters (l.a.l.b.), and considering I worked an almost 12-hour day again yesterday making computer reading tricky at best during a busy day and the last thing I want to do in the evenings. Between Jeanne's lists of female blogs to read and Skippy's e-mail to Ms. Musings (l.a.l.b.) listing more fembloggers, I feel like I have to play a mean game of catch-up now, maybe this weekend whilst the upstairs neighbors bang about (in preparation, the rumor mill again has it and if there's a God in heaven, for moving out). An embarrassment of riches, to be sure!

[Update: MadKane (l.a.l.b.) just blogged about how so many of us have been discussing the subject of female bloggers lately? Coincidence? Probably not, considering we all read each other's entries. :) I was going to take her "gender differences in the workplace" quiz but then I came to the question which started "When someone's secretary asks for beverage orders..." and decided to boycott on principle because I am "someone's secretary" (I work for the CEO and my answer to question 5 is "b" which I seem to do, oh, pretty much my every waking hour) and we secretaries do seem relegated to taken-for-granted invisibility anyway, apparently even in gender quizzes. :) ]

Labels: Feminism

posted by Elayne at 9:25 AM | Permalink
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41-derful

Artist Robin Riggs, who's inked a whole lot of cool folks in the dozen years he's been a comic industry professional, turns 41 years old today. Happy birthday to my beloved!

(Today is also the 36th birthday of JSA penciller Leonard Kirk, and the 66th birthday of Firesign Theatre member David Ossman. Oh, and Kath David gave birth to Caroline Helen yesterday; read all about it - and offer your congratulations - at Peter's blog, link at left bar.)

Labels: Family, Milestones

posted by Elayne at 8:51 AM | Permalink
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Thursday, December 05, 2002

Sushi and Vampires

Yesterday was our 4th wedding anniversary (and by the way, if you're in a romantic mood as I obviously am you owe it to yourself to check out this entry in Wil Wheaton's blog), so to celebrate I informed my boss (with few regrets considering I worked an 11½-hour day on my birthday Monday and a 9½-hour day on Tuesday) that I'd be leaving regular time (after "only" 9 straight hours) so Robin and I could go to dinner and a show. Because, after all, nothing says "anniversary" like raw fish and bloodsuckers.

Rob picked me up at work, resplendent in his long black levva coat ("levva" being, of course, the Scruffy-Boy-from-Souf-o'-London pronunciation of "leather"); I wore my blood-red velvety turtleneck. I'm pleased to report that the 46th Street location of Monster Sushi is every bit as good as the one in Chelsea, if not better because the place was fairly empty at 6 PM and we got really speedy service as a result (and got to sit across from the sushi bar so I could watch the magic). Afterwards we considered strolling up to Rockefeller Center for like a millisecond (it was tree-lighting time) but opted for the brief stroll to the Minskoff instead, to scope out the area a bit before the theatre opened for the 8 PM showing of Dance of the Vampires.

I hadn't been in the Times Square area at night in a few years (I usually catch the subway at 40th Street on days when I go to Midtown Comics) so it came as a bit of a surprise to me how bright it's gotten. Okay, there's always been neon in the area, but not in such intense concentration so as to make it feel almost like daylight. Eerie, but pretty. The Minskoff itself is quite lovely, cozy (less than 1700 seats, just a tad uncomfortable on the hips but not that bad) but well-appointed, and the alleyway between the theatre entrance and the stage door (which straddles 44th and 45th Streets) was covered so it cut down nicely on the cold wind. The theatre is now apparently brought to all by Mercedes-Benz. Did you know that it takes about 2-3 weeks to ship the cars from Germany to Mercedes' Vehicle Processing Center in Baltimore, after which-- oops, sorry, in "work mode" again. [This is the sort of thing that floats around in my head nowadays, leaving no room for memories of fictional plots and the like.]

But that's not what you care about. The play's the thing, eh? Now bear in mind they're still officially in "previews," as the director has had to care for his ailing mum (who passed away last Sunday), so things are always being tweaked here and there. For instance, Peter and Kath David went to an showing in October and it's entirely possible they saw lots of different stuff than we did, and vice versa. We know for a fact that many details in the final scene were added just two weeks ago, for instance. (How we know this will be explained shortly.) Also bear in mind that the main reason we got tickets for this baby was that we're big fans of Jim Steinman, who did the music and lyrics for all the songs in addition to co-writing the book. So we knew what to expect, and we got it, and overall we were pretty darn happy with it. It was quite funny and winning and Wagnerian (and even Gilbert & Sullivanish in one song) and, well, Steinmanesque, and I only winced once, during "When Love Is Inside You" - a song that, for me, never managed to rise above the level of embarrassing gay-themed double entendres. I expect better of Steinman than a clunky line about a banana peeling. But Michael Crawford was the presence you'd expect him to be, and considering that it was his second show of the day (and that Steinman's music is hella demanding on just about anyone) his voice was remarkably strong during Act I, particularly --SLIGHT SPOILER-- when he holds a note for about three minutes at the end of "Come With Me," the last song in that act. And the cast, especially the energetic ensemble, was in fine form; it exhausted me just looking at them bound around! Although I must confess, I really don't like the current trend of everyone being electronically mic'ed. Why, in my day, son, performers were expected to project their voices (uphill both ways!) without aid of microphones, and I think hearing the sounds coming from their mouths rather than from speakers added to the essential theatre experience of direct communication between performer and audience.

But I'm old, and tonight (well, last night) is what it meant to be young. Yes, auto-cannibalization out the wazoo, not a surprise considering Steinman threw the songs together for the original Vienna production in something like a month and a half. I thought most of the reprises worked, but Robin felt the earlier MP3 snippets we've heard worked better than some of Steinman's rewrites, particularly on "Total Eclipse of the Heart." It's tough, that's such a well-known song (confirmed by the nervous jaded-by-Moulin Rouge audience titters signifying, "hey wait, why are they using this pop tune in this musical?" - um, because Steinman wrote that pop tune?) that the "real" lyrics tend to stick in your mind when listening to the redo, but I didn't really have a problem with it. The funniest moment for me was the last scene. --BIG OL' SPOILER-- It took place in present day, and the ensemble all wore--yes--long black levva coats.

Thanks to David Gabriel from the NYC Comic Book Museum, we got to meet cast member David Benoit afterwards, who showed us around backstage. It was pretty amazing, this was the first time either of us had ever been on a Broadway stage and in the wings & such, and we got to walk around where they'd just been singing and dancing moments before, see all the cool techie stuff involving the elaborate sets, etc. David also gave us details on what had just been added, such as the finishing touches in the last scene, and of course we got our requisite Steinman gossip. Seems he's really nice but "eccentric." Reminded me of what Glinda told Dorothy about the Wizard: "Very good, but very mysterious." For instance, he's worn the exact same outfit to every single rehearsal/performance (the bit I remembered most was David detailing the "Converse sneakers held together by gaffer tape"), so David figured he probably had a closet full of identical outfits, kinda like a superhero has dozens of copies of the same costume. Heh, I live for this stuff. :)

Home at midnight, and I'm exhausted and bleary-eyed and berated by boss & wife again this morning, but at least they can't take last night away from me.

Labels: Milestones

posted by Elayne at 11:45 AM | Permalink
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Tuesday, December 03, 2002

Blogchicks, Part Deux

Lots of us blog-gals (apparently "bloggal" isn't taken either at Blogspot; what a great word, I hope someone grabs it!) have taken note of Ms.' new blog - link now (as opposed to NOW) at left bar, along with links to blogs by Lisa English and Natalie Davis. In looking for my last post on this subject (responding to Jeanne d'Arc's entry about Tapped having apparent trouble linking to femblogs - yes, there is a "femblog" at Blogspot but it seems inactive), I noticed an interesting comment from Beavis Christ, who I hope doesn't mind if I pass his/her words along: "What a crock today's NY Times delivers: A story that tries to trot out page 476 from the journalism cliche book and relate it to blogs: Are blogs male-dominated? That kind of quotathink does not work here for two simple reasons: (1) Anyone of any gender who wants to start a blog can. Nobody will stop them. So you can't argue that some bigger power structure -- blog executives, the old blog boys club -- is stopping them. The only thing stopping nonbloggers from not blogging is themselves. That, after all, is the whole point of this new medium: It's anybody's. It's everybody's. (2) There are many, many great women bloggers. I don't need to start listing them. You know them. Even the writer has to admit that there is no frigging point to her story: 'But women are, in fact, blogging in big numbers.' So why write it? Why print it? Just because it fits?" I more or less agree here, blogs are pretty much self-starters. However, even if there are lots of women bloggers their relative (that's the key word when you're comparing one population sector to another) invisibility as compared to male bloggers may be worth exploring insofar as it relates to women's relative comfort level with technology, for instance. As I said before, I think blogging is all still too new to come to any sort of definitive conclusions that don't begin with versions of "I suspect...", but I think it might be a nice idea for LiveJournal or Blogger or somesuch to try to amass a gender survey among their users (and perhaps track this over time) so we can move from talking about this in purely anecdotal and subjective terms towards something approaching actual numbers. It still wouldn't necessarily address root questions like relative gender invisibility, but neither do other surveys concerning women in the newsroom, women in the comics industry, women gamers, etc., and the lack of a concrete catch-all solution shouldn't stop us from amassing the info and asking the questions.

posted by Elayne at 3:29 PM | Permalink
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Monday, December 02, 2002

I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus

Well, I know of one bozo, at least. Story here, and here. It's one thing to get "creative" when trying to avoid NYC traffic, a lot of bus drivers do that, but geez, don't get stupidly snippy with the yuppie passengers, y'know?

posted by Elayne at 10:33 PM | Permalink
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A Pair of 45s Made Me Open My Eyes

Today is my 45th birthday, and contrary to the Hollies lyric used in the header I'm not planning on either shooting up the place or getting breast surgery, depending on one's interpretation of the song. Although the way the day started out here at the office, I was debating whether I should rethink the former route. I don't think it's me; as I've mentioned before, I like celebrating birthdays. I suspect this place just makes people irritable. Despite a lovely and unexpected present of perfume-I-will-never-use from the coworker in the next cubicle, I tensed up within the first half hour of arrival - terrific way to come back from a 4-day holiday. My boss is in, and has already assured me I will not be receiving my annual review as a birthday present (I've been waiting since my work anniversary back in August, and with Robin between assignments I could really use the presumed retroactive raise, even if it is just 1% or something). But little pretty things are popping up here and there, like the last stubborn birds who haven't yet migrated south. I spent the first work hour interpreting messages from callers (many of whom haven't even basic phone skills) to pass on to our telemarketers, and my second unexpected birthday present came from our receptionist, who took it upon herself to transcribe at least half the messages by hand after she'd passed on the others to me (thus proving that I'm far from the only worker capable of performing this not-to-be-done-when-my-boss-is-in task but never mind, let it go). I got flowers from one of our uber-brokers. And we had pizza for lunch. [I'd asked for sushi but was pretty sure I wouldn't get it, and I was right.] All in all, and as expected, just another day. But I'm still pleased as punch that I've made it this far, considering the alternative. (Posted at about 1:00 PM despite what the log says.)

Labels: Milestones

posted by Elayne at 9:49 AM | Permalink
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Friday, November 29, 2002

I'm Not Buying It

So the local news channel, she says, "Shoppers Welcome 'Black Friday'." And I'm thinking, wait a minute. This website about days says "'Black Friday' has been regularly used to label days of significance within the British culture. This was the name given to December 6 1745 in the British Isles. This was the day that information reached London (UK) that the Young Pretender had reached Derby (UK). The threatened General Strike was cancelled on 15 April 1921 affecting the stance of the British Labour Movement (UK). The Government (USA) flooded the open market with gold to bring down prices on 24 September 1869 ruining the livelihoods of many speculators in USA...Friday is believed to be a day of misfortune too for Buddhists and Brahmins." And wasn't Black Friday known to many as Valentine's Day? Or that horrid quake in India last year? Or a Steely Dan song? Or a Boris Karloff movie? Or a synonym for Friday the 13th? Help me, Dictionary.com! Ah, here it is: "Attended with disaster; calamitous: a black day; the stock market crash on Black Friday." Well, what about HyperDictionary.com? Says there as well, '(of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin; 'the stock market crashed on Black Friday...'" Most interestingly to me at least, according to this website, in the '80s "when squatters in the south German city of Freiburg were mass arrested, rallies and demonstrations supporting them and condemning the police state's eviction policy took place in every major city in Germany. In Berlin on that day, later dubbed 'Black Friday,' upwards of 15,000 to 20,000 people took to the streets and destroyed an upper class shopping area."

But no, this article insists that "The day after Thanksgiving, commonly called 'Black Friday,' is among the busiest shopping days of the year." Commonly called? Just which commoners are we talking about here? Could it possibly be those oh-so-common folk at the National Retail Federation, graciously making their spokespeople available throughout this weekend to spread the doctrine of the new meaning of Black Friday (which, internally, means the day retailers tally up their accounts to see if they've made it into the black for the year - thank you BBC!)?

Okay, a lot of good people work in retail, and far be it for me to castigate something that tries to put a positive spin on a phrase that's had a negative meaning for hundreds of years, but I'm sorry. This isn't Pollyanna, it's business looking out for business, and I don't buy it. In fact, if enough of us adhere to the idea of Buy Nothing Day, perhaps Black Friday will again be relegated to the honored position it's enjoyed lo these many centuries - as a harbinger of doom.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend. I'm off to have my dinner of bubble & squeak now.

posted by Elayne at 6:12 PM | Permalink
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Tuesday, November 26, 2002

The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Me

I'm shocked, do you hear me shocked, to read that there may actually be a Saudi connection to the events of 9-11! As Tom Tomorrow (link at left bar) says, "You know, the country that gave us fifteen of the nineteen hijackers." Anyway, the only thing kinda shocking now is that it's actually being investigated, finally. I must state for the record, however, that Robin and I have absolutely no familial connection to the Riggs Bank mentioned in the article. Darn it all, anyway; we could sure use the money...

posted by Elayne at 1:18 PM | Permalink
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I'm Sure Feeling More Secure!

The timer on our TV went off at 7 AM, and my bullshit detector rang about 15 minutes later, as Katie Couric interviewed Stephen Flynn about the Department of Fatherla-- I mean, of Homeland Security, the new megabureaucracy brought to us by the We Hate Big Government folks. "You're going to look him up on the 'net now, aren't you?" inquired a sleepy Robin. Well, um, yeah. I mean, the Council on Foreign Relations (where Flynn is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies) may be characterized as "centrist" by FAIR, but I admit to being a tad more skeptical. Flynn seems to be one of the nation's leading fearmongers; at least that's how I read this darling little speech he made before the US Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs a month after the September 11 tragedy. Back in August he released a paper under the aegis of a group called The Century Foundation "analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the National Strategy for Homeland Security," basically suggesting the Bush Administration throw more money at it, streamline it (oh yeah, a Cabinet-level department's sure gonna do that!) and suggests that the strategy "must also place special emphasis on forging partnerships between the public and private sectors, internationally." What's good for business, after all, is good for the continued erosion of our hard-earned liberties, or something like that.

posted by Elayne at 7:29 AM | Permalink
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Sunday, November 24, 2002

Does Whatever a Kikko Can

When both Mark Evanier and Tom Tomorrow (links at left bar) post links to the Kikkoman collection (not, we are told, affiliated with the actual company that makes the soy sauce), I have to figure something wacky has caught the zeitgeist. Will this be as big a phenom as All Your Base Are Belong To Us? Time will tell, I suppose. I love the music, but the ASCII art hurts my eyes.

posted by Elayne at 6:32 PM | Permalink
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Women Doing Web Comics

Chapter 2 of Justine Shaw's wonderful Nowhere Girl has just debuted. Justine warns, "There are various changes; for instance, you will notice that Greedo now shoots at Jamie first. Also, all hand-guns have been digitally replaced with young people in dark clothing holding walkie-talkies, and we have created an all-CGI Jamie to replace the original actor (believe me, we would have done this originally, but the technology was nascent at the time)." Forewarned is four-armed! And thanks to Scott McCloud who passed it on to Neil Gaiman (link at left bar) I've just discovered Dicebox and blogrolled Jenn Manley Lee at the left bar.

posted by Elayne at 12:10 PM | Permalink
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Saturday, November 23, 2002

Blogchicks!

A big and possibly wet & sloppy *mwa* to fellow female (can one be called a "fellow female?") blogger "Jeanne d'Arc" for wondering, in her Body & Soul journal (link at left bar), why The American Prospect only links to one female-done blog out of 27. I have a theory about this, of course. Even though historically (well, for as long as we've been permitted to learn reading and writing) diaries - which, come on, is what blogs are, diaries with hyperlinks - seem to have been more the province of women (if they were men I guess they were called autobiographies, on the "women were cooks but men were chefs" principle I suppose), I think the Internet itself is still pretty darn male-centric. Particularly the bits of it, like blogging, that are relatively new. (It's weird to talk about "newness" in netspeak, isn't it? Between my last job and my present one we've seen the explosion of the Web, message boards relegating Usenet to even further obscurity, Fark, the Onion, pop-ups... geez, just about everything except AOL being proprietary, it was always that. And I'm only talking like five years or so. It bloggles the mind, apparently.) I believe women my age and older tend to be a bit more reluctant to jump into new 'net stuff than their curmudgeonly male counterparts. So, although I'd be curious to see if any surveys have been taken yet, my instincts tell me that the ratio of female to male bloggers is probably around the same as female to male comics readers (a whopping 5%, last time anyone checked) or female to male gamers. In a way this is a good thing because not only does it leave room for mucho growth but it means that those relative few of us who are blogging will get all sorts of undue attention, and maybe candy and flowers for our birthdays in a week and a half-- oops, sorry, did I say that? Anyway, the down side is, of course, the paucity of female blog voices in relation to how many women are in the overall population, and the tendency of readers to expect women bloggers to speak with one monolithic voice, which naturally we don't do any more than any one male blogger speaks for all male bloggers. In any case, my-point-and-I-did-have-one was to thank Jeanne for not only plugging me in her rant (I'm the link embedded in the word "have" in the last sentence) and blogrolling me, but giving me a whole lot of gal-writing to check out now, as if my to-be-read stack wasn't high enough. :) And by the way folks, both Blogchick and Bloggles The Mind are available as journal names on Blogspot. You're welcome!

posted by Elayne at 8:59 PM | Permalink
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My Fabulous Evening

On Thursday night, while much of America was presumably watching the 90-minute Will & Grace, I was spending quality time with some why-aren't-they-ready-for-prime-time? real-life gays, lesbians and supporters at the LBGT Community Center attending OffCenter's presentation of a "Drawing Closer: Queer Representations and the Comics" panel. This was sort of the follow-up to the Denise Sudell-moderated "Gays in Comics: Crossfire" panel at the San Diego Con this year, which was kinda-sorta-but-not-really inspired (okay, depending on whom you talk to) by my "Writing the Other" panel at Heroes Con last year. Writer/artist Phil Jimenez, who sat on both panels, was on this as well, along with DC Comics editor and cartoonist Joan Hilty (the premier speaker at Friends of Lulu-New York's "Women and Comics" series this year), writer Ivan Velez Jr., cartoonist Jennifer Camper (who I dearly hope does a FoL-NY "WaC" discussion in '03!), Sequential Tart columnist Denise Sudell, and writer/artist Howard Cruse.

Joan deftly moderated the panel, starting off by recommending the work of Ariel Schrag, who'd been scheduled to attend but couldn't make it. All the panelists got to recommend their own work as well, but didn't have the benefit of hypertext like I do. So, going 'round the table, Joan's doing Bitter Girl over at Planet Q; Ivan's stories can be found in Tales of the Closet; Howard's latest graphic novel is Wendell All Together and he'll also be doing Barefootz Online at Serializer.net; Jennifer had copies of Rude Girls and Dangerous Women and subGURLZ with her; Phil mentioned that, after two years on Wonder Woman at DC he's moving on to New X-Men at Marvel as well as a fascinating-sounding book for Vertigo (to probably debut in '94) called OtherWorld; and Denise talked a bit about her Tart culture columns, including "Queer Characters: Hook 'Em Up, Then Shoot 'Em Down" and "Queer Characters, Revisited: Hook 'Em Up, Then Cancel Their Book." Joan mentioned she was pleased with the gender balance of the panel, as well as the fact that panelists covered the mainstream/indie spectrum, and regretted that Ariel couldn't make it to contribute a more youthful perspective.

Speaking of which, Joan's first round-table question was "How did comics influence your identity growing up and coming out?" Jennifer mentioned a crush she'd harbored on the women in the Li'l Abner comic strip - "The brunettes, not the blondes!" - while Phil told a touching story about how he'd wished he could be the only little boy on Paradise Island ("Wonder Woman's little brother") because of the qualities he'd admired in Diana and her Amazonian sisters, and Ivan blushed a bit as he recalled his reaction as a 3-year-old to Hercules movies. "In what ways," Joan asked everyone, "do you approach your current work through a 'queer filter'?" Howard noted, "I think it gives an artist more power when they draw on themselves." The discussion drifted towards how the Big Two mainstream (i.e., primarily superhero) comic book companies, Marvel and DC, deal with gay characters in their books, and a panelist observed that as a rule today's fans-cum-editors seemed to have a distinct lack of interest in rocking any social boats: "I don't think they care about what's going on in the world outside their editorial collective." Joan analogized the mainstream vs. independent treatment to "Will & Grace versus Queer as Folk" (I didn't have a chance to ask if she meant the British version or the American one). She noted that in comics, just as in most forms of mass entertainment "there's always subtext, both in the way you take it in and how you draw it," which led to amusing remarks about the gay subtext in the '60s Batman TV show, Wertham be damned (although personally I've always found Bewitched to be the gay-not-so-subtext TV show of that era). Also touched on briefly was the disturbing trend of censorship coming from within the gay corporate press as it's become more homo-genized (Denise's word, my dash) and seeks to almost desexualize its comic strip contributions; according to Jennifer, even established cartoonists like Alison Bechdel have been subjected to snippage.

Points were raised that mainstream comics has yet to establish a leading superhero gay character, with the exception of Wildstorm's team book The Authority (where the relationship of Apollo and Midnighter has varied in its portrayal from touching to mocking depending on the creative team), and when supporting gay characters take the spotlight and their sexual orientation isn't the focus of the book, often the words "gay" or "lesbian" aren't even mentioned (as in the miniseries Metropolis SCU, which featured an otherwise comprehensive look at Maggie Sawyer's life). It seemed that two opposing desires were in play simultaneously - clearly gay-identified protagonists but at the same time plots that weren't structured around those characters' gayness, or didn't treat them as stereotypes. Reminded me of a lot of discussions I've had about female characters in comics. :) Thing is, just as there are women in real life who are top-heavy or dress provocatively (i.e., who use sex as power), there are gays in real life who embody what many consider stereotypes. After the talk, Phil told me about how a gay couple who appeared in Wonder Woman were based on actual acquaintances of his, just as I'm sure Jack in Will & Grace must be based on actual men who, as Stan the Man might say, flount their fabulous flamboyance.

So it seems to me that, rather than just decry the overabundance of stereotypes (which does need to be discussed, as too much of any one thing - be it genre or a type of characterization - leads to an imbalance and the narrowing of storytelling possibilities), what's called for is more. More of everything. More experimentation, more reaching out to writers and artists who bring different life experiences to the table, more editors with different experiences (Joan noted that the Green Lantern gay-bashing storyline that's received much press of late was helmed in large measure by editor Bob Schreck, who identifies as bisexual), more people telling their stories (and being able to make a living doing so!). Joan asked about the future of comics, how it can appeal to young gay readers. Jennifer's response was that "People have to think there's a possibility for them to tell their stories," and Howard noted that "The industry as it exists is vastly underrating the appeal of the medium." Between mainstream and indie comics, and thanks to the relative cheapness of printing and particularly of self-publishing via the Internet, I think there's more variety out there than there has ever been. So I think everyone came away with a very positive view of things to come.

Undoubtedly the full transcript of this panel will appear sooner or later at Sequential Tart; I noticed both Denise and Phil brought tape recorders. I wouldn't be surprised if a review appears in Rich Watson's "A View from the Cheap Seats" column either, as Rich was in the audience, as was NYC Comic Book Museum director David Gabriel (NYC-area folks might like to take in the NYCCBM's free "Comic Books Fight AIDS" event on World AIDS Awareness Day), the vivacious Martha Thomases, former PR director at DC Comics, who introduced me to Howard's boyfriend Ed Sedarbaum (featured in "I Have To Live With This Guy!"), and Ed Douglas and Marc Wilkofsky from the Friends of Lulu National Board. It was enough to inspire me to plan my next storytelling panel at Heroes Con '03, which I'm hoping to co-moderate with Denise (with Phil as a panelist), so maybe we can have FoL and the Gay League co-sponsor. My tentative idea and title, pending approval from Shelton Drumm and of course Denise and Phil, is "From The Inside, Out: Characterization and Constraints." I'm open to suggestions on questions fitting within this purposely-broadly-named topic, and I'd also love to hear from industry pros who'd like to be on the panel (again, pending permission, yadda yadda). And if someone can tell me how they fixed it so Harry Connick, who presumably has a career, won't be a regular as Grace's new hubby (since Rob only saw the first hour of W&G), I'd greatly appreciate it.

Labels: Comics

posted by Elayne at 8:23 PM | Permalink
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Thursday, November 21, 2002

Non-Hiatus

As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." I honestly had planned on contributing to this blog regularly, but life's been happening this past week or so, mostly in the form of (over)work at the office, leaving me too busy to blog at work and too tired to do more typing when I get home or on weekends. Conspiracy theorists should feel free, if they wish, to interpret this situation as yet another governmental-led plot to keep citizens all too exhausted and stressed out to engage in effective political discourse, even in the form of blogwhining. Back soon.

posted by Elayne at 10:15 AM | Permalink
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