Female Comic Book Superheroes

Poetry and Superheroes

2009-11-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

I really like it when my two geek worlds collide. Tonight on Heroes, two characers recited poems about the moon - coincidentally, on the night of a beautiful clear full "frost" moon.

Hiro recited the first poem by Japanese haiky poet Ryokan:

The thief left it behind
the moon
at my window

HRG recited the poem from Oberon to Titania from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night Dreams.

On an unrelated note, this whole season of Heroes has so far been so much better than the two previous seasons it is like another show. Poetic imagery with a hearing-impaired woman seeing colors, the tatto woman...I like the carnival-running Magneto-ripoff bad guy, too.

More Chuck - and possible WonderCon...

2009-10-09T17:03:00.000-07:00

Well, if you are a fan of shows about geeks (and I am!) then you will be happy to hear that there's a rumout that one of my fave shows, Chuck, will possibly be making its return in a few weeks instead of next year, because some other NBC shows have been sucking. So, yay, more Chuck!

Also, today I submitted a brief proposal to WonderCon in San Francisco. Wish me luck! It's about poetry and superheroes. Crossing my fingers!

Sorry for the long absence...

2009-09-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long absence, readers! I've been sick, injured, and just completed a move! Still, that's no excuse.
Well, as far as new science fiction/fantasy/female comic book superhero news...it's been a little quiet. The new fall shows haven't really grabbed me yet. Any you'd recommend?
I've been keeping up with the Buffy comics, which have continued apace in an almost True-Blood-ian universe in which slayers are the enemy and vampires have reality shows. Speaking of True Blood, I liked the second season a little less than the first, except for the episode in which Godric is introduced and goes to "meet the sun" which I thought was just really well-executed in terms of writing and pacing. Vampire Diaries seems like a Twilight ripoff, but is perhaps better in terms of writing and tension than the Twilight movie. Still, none of them have the wit, charm, and fight of Buffy. Sigh.

I missed ComicCon, but I did see Miyazaki in person!

2009-07-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I got to see Ponyo by the Sea/Ponyo on a Cliff (whatever they're calling it in English) a month early, and it's a beautiful but strange film. It seems a more eccentric, more upbeat version of Hans Christian Anderson's "A Little Mermaid" with an environmental twist. It had a lot more humor in it than most Miyazaki films; Tina Fey in the English dub plays the hilarious, feisty young mother who doesn't really resemble any character Miyazaki's done before. The drawing is purposefully childlike, different that the ethereal, elegant drawings in Howl's Moving Castle. The two main characters are five years old, so a lot of the movie is geared towards a very young person's aesthetic; the themes are similar to those in Princess Mononoke. I enjoyed watching it with children in the audience; their delighted laughter behind me reminded me that they were the real audience for this film.

Hayao Miyazaki, with a translator and in a conversation led by Roland Kelts (who wrote Japanamerica) gave a wonderful hour-and-a-half talk in which he discussed advice for young animators ("Draw what you see in life; then give a more experienced artist your drawing and ask for a tough critique") and his frequent roles for strong women ("There are so many strong women now, I might have to start making films about little boys!) as well as his views about apocalypse (generally, he's pro?)and how natural disasters can bring people together. He laughed a lot, expertly evaded questions like "which character in your films do you most resemble," and was generally really fun to watch.

Berkeley itself is a beautiful campus and the weather was lovely and cool.

New Happy Potter Movie, Comic Con, Miyazaki in Berkeley

2009-07-19T23:05:00.000-07:00

It's a banner week for geekiness!

Saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and besides leaving out (spoiler alert) Dumbledore's funeral - which would have been really easy to film - and the final fight between the kids and the death eaters - and some really important Voldemort flashbacks about his really sad family that would have revealed where and what the horcruxes were - I thought it was fairly competent.

Just getting excited to hear all the announcements and gossip from Comic Con, and excited for my trip next weekend to see Ponyo by the Sea and see Hayao Miyazaki give a lecture up in Berkeley.

Buffy Versus Edward

2009-06-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

You must immediately go read this post from Slate's XX, and watch the re-mix video of what happens when Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer met Edward from Twilight:

http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/when-buffy-met-edward

More excitement about Miyazaki

2009-06-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

I'm more excited than a grown woman should be: I just got tickets to see a screening on Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki's new movie, and then, the next night, two tickets to see Miyazaki himself give a lecture in Berkeley! I moved to California six months ago and just knew it would pay off! Yay!

The bad news is, Comic Con in San Diego looks to be sold out, so unless anyone has secret ways to get me in, it looks like I won't be going to that.

Shows that get renewed, shows that don't

2009-05-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

Really crossing my fingers that Chuck gets renewed. Dollhouse I think was lucky to have a full half-season. Heroes will be back (hopefully with better writing!) and Reaper is cancelled. It's hard getting attached to these genre-type shows, knowing they could be cancelled at any minute.

Heroines and Their Shoes

2009-04-06T00:12:00.000-07:00

Felicity Shoulders has some very sensible comments on sensible shoes on action heroines on television. These also apply equally to female comic book superheroes, who are always fighting evil in a thong...
http://faerye.net/post/comfortable-shoes
This is a subject dear to my heart as I recently broke two bones in my foot. Practical footwear would have been a plus in my accident. But no - it was strappy sandals for me that day!

Heroes, Lost...Andy Richter

2009-03-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

So, Bryan Fuller is back at Heroes, and it shows. The newest episode, "Cold Snap," had his trademark whimsical visual details as well as above-average (at least for Heroes) dialogue. A terrific ending for a terrible character (Tracy, not Daphne.) Loved the bits with Angela!

Lost has gone downhill ever since Sawyer got together with Juliet. Blech and double-blech! And the show's depiction of Sayid was disappointing - I was really hoping they were moving him towards a redemptive end.

Andy Richter Controls the Universe is not, technically, a sci-fi show...but it does have technical writers! And likable managers of technical writers, much like me in a previous corporate career. At least I hope I was likable. And one of the guys who worked for me did look a lot like Andy Richter...
Anyway, it's out on DVD - do yourself a favor and buy it. No, they're not paying me to say this.

Dollhouse's "game-changing" episode was all right - but still left me feeling a little "meh." Plus, I could see all the "suprises" coming from a mile away. Notice though, I still haven't stopped watching...

Review of Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder

2009-02-25T12:59:00.000-08:00

I got ahold of Futurama's Into the Wild Green Yonder yesterday, and have to say I was fairly pleased with this outing of the series - in fact, I think it's the best of the four. Characters were written true to the essentials of each character, the Fry and Leela relationship was addressed satisfactorily, the inside jokes were there but not overly obvious or irritating.
Evolutionary factors were both the villain and hero of these four episodes - the evolutionary forces that caused less robust species to go extinct were labelled "dark ones" and the forces to preserve evolutionary diversity - somewhat mysterious - were the "encyclopods." A strange premise, making personifications of evolutionary theory good or evil.
The best extra was the "making of" documentary, in which...well, let's just say Lauren Tom features heavily, and it's pretty hilarious. You can also watch Matt Groening bounce around at zero G!
It never reached the greatness of the original four seasons, but at no time did I look away in disgust or get so bored I stopped watching (as happened with the three previous movies,) and the ending has some emotional resonance.
Billy West has said there is a possibility than Futurama might have new episodes on Fox, a la the resurrection of Family Guy.

Reasons to Watch Heroes

2009-02-23T11:45:00.000-08:00

An amusing and compelling list of reasons to start watching Heroes again on Television without Pity. My favorite reason was "They just generally suck less." Right on!

Second Ep of Dollhouse Review

2009-02-20T23:23:00.001-08:00

Joss Whedon's new show agains made me say Meh. This second episode - a re-hash of "The Most Dangerous Game" - with sex! - again made me feel too icky. And now I want to shower.

In other news, the likable show Chuck continues to suffer ratings problems. I'm agreeably interested in Lost once again. And I've fallen in love with the British-show-turned-American Life on Mars.

Would it kill the networks to have a likable, empowered woman on television again? Annie from Life on Mars is one of those, but she has so little screen time.

Vacant Expression Bot - Dollhouse Pilot Review

2009-02-15T18:07:00.000-08:00

TO: Joss Whedon
RE: Dollhouse

If I wanted to watch a vacant-expression-bot passively doing the will of men for money, I'd go rent a porno. Or watch "Confessions of a Shopaholic." (Isla Fisher is a talented actress, but in that movie is mostly in the passive-vacant-expression-bot mode.) And what's up with all those soft-core camera angles?

Joss said in interviews he wanted the audience to feel "icky" - well, count me ickified.

Also: For a similar plot, see "Futurama's episode "I Dated a Robot."
DON'T DATE ROBOTS!

New Heroes, Chuck in 3D

2009-02-04T10:50:00.000-08:00

So, what did you all think of the new episodes of Heroes and Chuck Monday night?

I think the reset on Heroes is pretty interesting (although I was disappointed that HRG was once again playing on team evil) and hope it continues in an interesting vein, albeit one completely stolen from the X-Men plotlines archive. It definitely looks like we're heading towards the alternate future that was first featured, where the Heroes are hunted criminals.

Chuck 3-D was too bad, since NBC didn't do enough to distribute the 3-D glasses, but a good-enough episode.

Along with Lost, I'm glad these shows are back. I've been down with a broken foot, and good television is very important for healing! In other good news, Reaper is coming back a little bit earlier, around the beginning of March!

I'm finally going to watch a little Battlestar Galactica on DVD, too, though I have flashbacks to the seventies version that I tried to avoid as a tiny tot...

No More Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies

2009-01-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

I just heard this sad news here:
http://lcrw.net/wordpress/?p=768
I am really sad about this because it was one of the few anthologies that actually included poetry. And I just found out about it three years ago. And now it's going away!
This economic climate makes it harder than ever for book publishers, editors, and writers. Please do what you can to support your favorite magazines, writers, and publishers. Keep buying books!

In other news, would anyone out there be interested in helping put together a talk for ComicCon on Comic Book Heroes (and Heroines) and Literature?

Girl Geek Must Reads

2008-12-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

So it's Christmas, end of 2008, time of lists and lists and more lists.

So what is on your girl-geek must-have reading list?

1. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
This book is not brand new, but I just discovered it, and can't stop talking about it. Love philosophy, cheesy movies, Japanese pop culture, love/hate the French? You'll love this book!

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 (Season 8)
The year in Buffy comics. Let's face it: in a Bella versus Buffy smackdown, Buffy is hotter, stronger, cooler, and just an all-around better role-model. So, forget buying your neice one of the Twilight books - get her Buffy comics instead!

3. Pretty Monsters: Stories
Loved Kelly Link but was afraid Stranger Things Happen had too much adult content for your sixteen-year-old little sister? This short-story collection is still disturbing and weird, but safe for all ages.

More to come...but if you're still shopping, here are some names of some of my favorite short-story writers: Haruki Murakami, Osamu Dazai (Blue Bamboo is his best), Catherynne M Valente, Neil Gaiman (still charming - and I love his "The Dream Hunters" comic - gorgeous and touching)

"Our Father" - Heroes Review

2008-12-09T08:49:00.000-08:00

I want to like Heroes. I really do. In last night's episode, I loved how Claire and Hiro interacted to each other and to the scene from their childhoods. I loved Claire's sunny impression of a babysitter for her parents, Hiro's touching scenes with his dying mother.
And then the writers completely spoiled those wonderful previous scenes by having Arthur Petrelli appear in the past (who, as far as we know, has never shown time or space travel capabilities - or the ability to know where mutants (sorry, Heroes) are in space and time.) What the hell? It was like - well, we have no reason to believe Daddy Petrelli can do any of the things he just did to get here, but why do we care? We're the writers! Uck. Then poor Hiro gets defeated a second time by Arthur, just when his character was finally allowed to have some gravity again. Where's the love for Hiro's character, I ask?
And what's with the stealing of Buffy Season 4's "Initiative" plot line? Lame.
And you just know Sylar and Peter didn't really kill that Arthur character. Sure, they burn Elle, but they just leave Arthur on the floor like he didn't come back from a coma just a month ago?
In other words, writers of Heroes, really? Really?

Superhero Antiheroes

2008-11-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

I watched and enjoyed Will Smith's Hancock, whose tales troubled production and mediocre reviews might make you expect a worse movie than you got. Now, the deleted scenes might help, too - the original movie felt very rushed, especially after the midway point. And some of the jokes seem geared towards the lowest common denominator. I loved Justin Bateman as a ethical PR guy trying to reform Smith's classic antihero, and I liked the explicit connection between the mythology of ancient worlds and today's superhero myths - something that I usually have to explain to classes when I'm explaining archetypes and the way that comic books reflect out culture in the same way that, say, Greek mythology reflected that culture at a certain point in time. I'm pretty sure the female superhero character was underdeveloped and underwritten - I wonder if trying to create the "twist" became more important than helping the audience connect to and understand her backstory?
Anyway, not the disaster I was expecting.

Video Games for Girls?

2008-11-19T23:56:00.000-08:00

Salon just did a new piece on a female video-game designer named Mary Flanagan:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2008/11/19/game_design/index.html
I've seen these kinds of articles before, and I'm interested: what do you think? Do women prefer different kinds of game-play - more social interaction, less puzzle-solving and shooting? Or is this a lie? There are a lot of you grrl gamers out there these days - what do you think?
My first experience with video games was my old Atari and the text game Zork. I also tried programming basic maze games and alien-or-asteroid zapping games in BASIC as a kid on my TRS-80. (Yes, I'm old enough to have had a TRS-80 as a kid!) Some of my favorite games currently are old-school Galaga, the first or second arcade version of Area 51 (the kind you can still find at pizza places and movie theaters,) some of the more advanced snowboarding games, or games that have an appealing storyline to me. I don't know if any of those preferences make me any different than my gaming little brother. I think maybe the gender thing gets overstated - I don't think girls or women need pink ponies or anything to pick up a game.
Do men like to play female video game characters purely for the voyeurism or because they are experimenting with gender-swapping?
That's an interesting question. Tell me guys - why do you play female characters?

Villains

2008-11-11T00:07:00.001-08:00

Heroes has started to cheer me up by being slightly less bad! Yay! I hear Brian Fuller (whose Pushing Daisies, I hear, is sadly on its way out - a charming, offbeat show) may be back on the writing staff at Heroes. And what about Joss Whedon? Can he come write the female characters?
Anyway, this week's episode, which actually added human dimension to characters rather than spinning them through mystifying plots in all directions (clones? alternate futures? dead Linderman?) felt satisfying, and most of all, I felt that there was something at stake during the episode. They made clear-cut bad guys (like HRG's former boss) ambiguously good, while HRG himself seemed ambiguously bad, creepy even. They tied random bad fire dude from level five back to the cheerleader's biological mother - they are brother and sister. ("Remember what Daddy told you? God gave you a big sister instead of a brain.") This is something they always say in writing classes - there's got to be something at stake in the poem or fiction piece, or else, who cares?

Anyway, not enough to get me out of my chair to cheer, but definitely a positive direction.

A Review of the new Futurama Movie, "Bender's Game"

2008-11-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

So, of course, after the election, we went out and purchased the new Futurama movie, "Bender's Game," for some non-election-related relaxation. How was it, you ask?
Better than the first two movies. Better, but still not great. If you squint, and run the air conditioning really loud, you can make believe you're watching the old Futurama of the television series.
The animation seemed more expensive, more sophisticated, and I could also swear they've upped the budget and gotten a full orchestra going again (something missing from the first two movies.)
My favorite bits? "Tea with Morvo" and a "Scary Door" episode in which in which the attacking aliens' weakness is exposed...
Strangely, there were no references in the movie to "Ender's Game," which seems like a lost opportunity, and a lot of references to D&D and Lord of the Rings, some of which were funny, some of which were "meh."
My least favorite thing: a bizarre misogynistic bit having to do with Leela and a shock-collar that seems very female-viewer unfriendly, and bad guys labelling Amy's "water-nympho" character a "slut," which again, seems female-viewer unfriendly. You hear what I'm saying, Futurama writers? Get a girl to go over your jokes with you, boys, before you release them into the world. A cool girl. Call me, for instance. Although, I guess Family Guy does all right and contains tons of misogyny.

New season of Heroes

2008-10-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

So, what do you think of the new season of Heroes? Better than season 2, but sort of a mashup-rewind of Season 1? What do you think of the new "Dark Willow" Claire-o-the-future? Bad ass cool, or just insane? Is Peter as annoying as ever? Did you not love Sylar's "You drink decaf, right Noah?" Hee! I think they must have finally hired a writer with a sense of humor over there, because I've laughed out loud during the last two episodes, and if I complained about anything during Heroes season 1, it was because it lacked humor.

So, what else are you watching this season? Doesn't the apocalyptic tone of Heroes seem a little too apropos these days? How about season 2 of Chuck?

Notes on samurais, vampires, and Miyazaki movies

2008-09-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

Of possible interest:

A mini-series on ABC Family of all places called "Samurai Girl" about a San Francisco teenager who must avenge her brother's murder by becoming a samurai! Has potential...
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38195

The new series on HBO called True Blood has vampires and synthetic blood and Anna Paquin!
http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/

For you Miyazaki fans, news about Ponyo, his newest movie:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/38173
and also an update on possible US distribution of The Tales of Earthsea movie from Ghibli...

Buffy Updates: Buffy Versus Fray, Animated Buffster

2008-08-16T22:18:00.000-07:00

So, I picked up the latest issue of the Buffy versus Fray "Season 8" comic, in which Dark Willow of the Future is revealed on the very last page (Whoops - is that a spoiler? But you totally know it's her all the way through the issue.) I'm enjoying this plotline - where Buffy learns that fairly sad state of slayerhood far in the future, and Fray's ongoing struggle with her evil twin.

And, via Television Without Pity, I learned about a YouTube version of the Buffy animated series pilot. It's good, not great, but still entertaining in that "I miss Buffy" sort of way.
Here's the story:
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/telefile/2008/08/buffy-summers-reanimated-corps.php#more
and the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnUvZP7-5LM