Well, Tumblr and Nanowrimo are joint culprits, I think. I’m about 500 posts behind on my blog reading for the week, so no Friday links today!

Instead, I give you FESTIVE FRIDAY LINKS IN PICTURES!

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Any chance of catching up with all my blog reading this week was heartily delayed by my discovery of awesome Doctor Who rewatch blog The Wife in Space in which a diehard Doctor Who fan talks his wife into experiencing his favourite show in chronological order. Their conversations are funny and incisive, and I adore Sue’s take-no-prisoners attitude. She is tough but fair (scoring stories across the full range of 1-10), and watching her get sucked into a world of Billyfluffs, Base Under Siege and of course the dread reconstructions of lost episodes is horribly fascinating.

Sue (explaining the experiment to her flabbergasted brother-in-law): That was a walk in the park compared to something like The Toymaker or The Zarbi Planet. Some of the episodes don’t even exist and we still watch them!

I do especially like the fresh perspective of someone who doesn’t care about conventional fan wisdom, and takes every episode as they find it.

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As usual every other week, Galactic Suburbia has peeled out some of my best & crunchiest links. But that’s okay, still plenty to go around! You don’t mind the mostly frivolous, right? Well, not entirely frivolous.

The Bitch Magazine series looking at maternity issues in pop culture is continuing to produce some gems like this post about the myth of almost-certain-death-in-childbirth that we see in historical drama.

Sherwood Smith muses on the difference between metafiction and fanfiction.

Deb Biancotti wraps up her excellent On Burnout series of Blog Briefs.

An interview with Australian manga writer-artist Queenie Chan.

The question of why comics by women are becoming more, not less scarce, is tackled with the question of whether comics by women are bad for business?

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I was linked by @preciousthings on Twitter to this great article which introduced me to comicbookGRRRL.  Here, she blogs about the criticism that female bloggers receive when tackling issues to do with women on any geeky subject, and why blogging about comics is important to her.  From there I also found her massive “Women in New 52” review which I enjoyed because she had some refreshingly different opinions on some of the comics than I’ve read elsewhere. In particular, her discussion of the bits she liked about the new Catwoman comic (such as the way the expression of Selena’s personality through action, and especially her friend/fence Lola) and her later comparison between how sexuality is portrayed in Catwoman vs. how it is portrayed with Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws.  She also loved some comics I hated, was indifferent to some I really liked, and so on. Good stuff!

Which reminded me that I have forgotten to update reviews on the other #2s I have read in the last two weeks.  Ooops!

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It’s disappointing to hear that DC Comics, which released a rebooted Wonder Woman #1 to great acclaim only a few weeks again, have got it so wrong again, and so quickly. According to previews of issue #3, Diana is to discover that she has a long lost father, Zeus.

The reason so many Wonder Woman fans are up in arms about this, is because it directly contradicts her origin story, the one that creators have been working off for the last nearly-70 years or so, in which Diana was formed from clay by her mother, Hippolyta, and brought to life by the Greek goddesses. Taking a character with such a unique beginning, and changing her parentage, is a change akin to deciding Bruce Wayne’s parents didn’t die after all, or that Superman was actually conceived when Martha Kent cheated on Jonathan with Zor-El.

“When they relaunched their entire line of comics last month, DC Comics figured it was a good time to break the mold.

“In this case, making her a god actually makes her more human, more relatable,” DC co-publisher Jim Lee said.

“Everybody’s got a father,” [writer] Azzarello said. “Even if he’s not the nicest guy in the world.”

But no, actually. Not everyone has a father. And while there are very interesting stories to be told about superheroes and superheroines and their fathers, there are actually a bunch of those out there already. Batgirl and Batwoman spring to mind. The whole point of Wonder Woman is that she comes from an all-female society, and that she in fact DOES NOT have a father. Her relationship with her mother has been handled differently across the decades, and by different writers, and explored through all manner of permeutations. Hippolyta has been antagonist, rival, replacements, friend, confidante, hero, and of course, Diana’s queen and ruler as well as her mother. Their connection is one of the many interesting things about the mythology surrounding Diana, and the collison of ancient myths and traditions with the modern concerns of “man’s world” is indeed the point of Wonder Woman as a story.

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So the overall result of the DC New 52 Reboot is… yes, I’m getting back into comics. Damn it!

I read 21 of the 52, not quite half, and the hit rate was about 50% enjoyable. So yay?

Ah but the question is, which of them will I be sticking with past issue 2? Tune in and find out!

Comics that made me happy this month:
Batwoman
Batgirl
Blue Beetle
Superboy
Wonder Woman

Comics I thought were quite good and/or promising:
Catwoman
Hawk and Dove
Justice League Dark
Justice League International
Static Shock
Stormwatch

Comics that made me go meh:
Action Comics
The Flash
Justice League
Nightwing
Supergirl
Teen Titans

Comics I didn’t like due to my own (possibly unreasonable) personal hang ups:
Birds of Prey

Comics that made me SAD this month:
Detective Comics
Legion Lost
Red Hood and the Outlaws

And a bonus, comics that were awesome and in no way part of the DC Reboot:

Ultimate Spiderman #1 & #2

Thank you and goodnight!

Tor.com tells you why you should be watching Fringe in a very non-spoilery-for-the-last-three-seasons way. Alisa and I discussed Olivia and her FBI competence in the recent Galactic Suburbia episode.

Sarah Rees Brennan follows up the #YesGayYA story with a discussion of the Circle of Suck that can happen with the portrayal of minority or diversity issues in fiction, and the various roadblocks to publication.

Paula Guran wrote a moving post about leaving Weird Tales, and posted a link to a fabulous article she wrote about Margaret Brundage, and how sexy artwork of women isn’t necessarily an unfeminist thing. I love Brundage’s pastel women, and really enjoyed the article.

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The new episode is ready to download here!

EPISODE 43

In which Alisa and Tansy look at crimes against superheroines in the DC Universe, the good and the bad of the companions’ journeys in Doctor Who, and why we love Olivia Dunham and her gun. We also plug our own books (yes really!), Tansy is still reading comics, and Alisa confesses that e-books have broken her brain.

No, seriously, she’s broken now.

News

The WSFA SP shortlist (Tehani wooo!)

Death of Sara Douglass

Catwoman & Starfire – this isn’t what empowerment looks like
i09 on a seven-year-old who loves Starfire and her reaction to the new version of the character: “She doesn’t do anything.”
A great webcomic response to the Starfire issue.
Tansy blogged about it too!

DC Comics, Bunker & the Current State of LGBTQ Superheroes
(Tansy would have commented on how Bunker is portrayed as a gay superhero in the Teen Titans but he wasn’t in the first issue!)

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Haven, Fringe S4, Doctor Who Season 4?, Ringer, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, A Taste of the Nightlife by Sarah Zettel and one of my new reading projects

Tansy: The Almighty Johnsons, New 52 (Batgirl, Batwoman, Wonder Woman, Superboy, Blue Beetle); Justice League Generation Lost (Part I), Power Girl: A New Beginning

Pet Subject: Indie and E-books
Twelfth Planet Press Website
Twelfth Planet Press E-Store
Wizard’s Tower Bookstore (yay Cheryl)
Tansy is Rocking the Romanpunk on her blog this week in celebration of the e-release of Love and Romanpunk.

Feedback:
Björn is embarking on a quest to read all women authors for a year – and he needs a catchy title to help this become an awesome internet meme. Can you help him? Send us your suggestions and we’ll think of some prizes for the best ones.

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Once again I find myself tackling the second half of my week’s comic haul with far less enthusiasm than the first half. Because, obviously, I read the ones I thought I would like first. This is a plan with drawbacks!

Mind you, if I’d read Red Hood and the Outlaws first I might have given up on comics altogether. Seriously. It’s that bad.

NIGHTWING
written by: Kyle Higgins
pencils by: Eddy Barrows

Nightwing first, which was… well, meh. Inoffensive and vaguely informative in that it tells us all the important things about Dick Grayson and where he is in his personal timeline. Plus the circus is back in town so we get a replay on that backstory too, for people who are completely new.

I really liked the idea that he didn’t like the circus being in Gotham City because the city finds a way to use everything he loves against him. I liked that Batman (for once) didn’t make an appearance, because frankly, he’s being way overused in the New 52. I liked the crack about how being a circus clown in Gotham was no fun at all. Dick himself isn’t too annoying, though I did find his judgemental inner thoughts about Bruce and his rich man privilege kind of annoying. Because, come on. Loft apartment does not give you indie cred.

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Blue Beetle #1
Written by: Tony Bedard
Pencils: Ig Guara

A very likeable re-introduction to Jaime Reyes, the modern Hispanic teenage Blue Beetle. I avoided him for a long time because of my grief and resentment about the death of Ted Kord (NOT SAYING I’M OVER IT) but thanks to Batman: Brave and the Bold I accidentally got introduced to Jaime and I like that his Blue Beetle is completely different to *mine* and that the version I saw in the cartoon was so respectful of the past.

It feels a bit odd having the origin story retold again so soon after Jaime’s Blue Beetle was introduced to the DC Universe, but given that I’ve never read his title before, I’m not complaining – this is a great comic, and we’ve been lacking in nice simple origin stories in the New 52. Not much Blue Beetle as such, but we get a lot of Jaime’s family and school life, and the culture he belongs to. I really like the way that we are getting common phrases of Spanish (is this the same as Hispanic? Help!) thrown into the dialogue so we can learn them, because it constantly reminds me that the story is not for the most part taking place in an Anglo US setting, and it’s great to see a comic marketed at teens which isn’t treating them like idiots. Is it wrong that I kept getting Veronica Mars vibes whenever the cool gang leader friend turned up? That’s probably a wrong thing. Though if that means Jaime gets to be Veronica, that’s pretty cool.

Also, having recently rewatched the Rise of the Blue Beetle and Fall of the Blue Beetle episodes of B:B&B with Raeli, in which Jaime questions whether he deserves to be a hero, having come into his powers by accident (and arguing with his mate about whether Hal Jordan’s origin story meant he was deserving or just plain lucky), it’s cool to see that the circumstances by which he acquires his magical scarab (cue Ted Kord from the grave complaining that no one ever gave him a magical scarab, in his day you had to build your own) are pretty heroic: sure, he lucks out, but he’s in that place because he did something stupidly brave.

Verdict: good stuff, I’m sticking around. And not just in the hopes of a dead Ted cameo. Not even. Maybe a little bit.

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