Author: Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases: Listen!

Black Panther

Happy New Year! Or, if you were lucky enough to be invited to a wild New Year’s Eve party… happy Saturday!

We have 366 bright and shiny new days in which we can save the world, love our families, party with our friends, go to the movies and read comics. Time and space are great that way.

In the past year, despite Gamergate, there has been a trend towards including female characters and female perspectives in video games. In other words, the misogynist jerks who screamed about “journalistic integrity” made no difference at all in the gaming industry. In this case, I suspect the appropriate comment is, “Money talks / Bullshit walks.”

On the tale end of 2015, I read two things that really changed my worldview. The first was Between the World and Me by incoming Black Panther writer Ta-nehisi Coates. It’s a short book, but it took me a long time to get through it because it is painful to read. A letter to his son in the wake of Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, Cleveland (the list goes on and on and on), it is a window into the African-American experience that I had never seen.

In the middle, I read this essay on The New York Times website about, essentially, the same subject. The writer was trying to express the parts of black lives that white people don’t understand.

Naturally, he was trashed in the comments.

I don’t entirely understand this. In both of these examples, black men are writing about their personal experiences as Americans of color. They don’t say that they know every other African-American, nor do they claim to know every white person. They describe what happened to them, and what it felt like, and how it shapes their perceptions.

No one likes to be called a racist. No one likes to be called a bigot of any kind. And yet, we are all of us guilty of at least a few prejudices. There isn’t any way around it. We live in a society that was built on slavery, on sexism and homophobia and anti-Semitism and xenophobia. As a white person, I benefit from this, even though I never consciously made that choice.

A few decades ago I attended a weekend seminar on “Dismantling Racism.” I was surprised when the first day and a half was spent asking each of us to talk about ways we felt outside the norm. We might have been fat or non-white or non-Christian or disabled or foreign-born. Then, by Sunday afternoon, we were shown how to each use our differences to understand racism.

That’s a tremendous oversimplification. Nevertheless, it changed my life.

I often mention my Jewish upbringing. Being Jewish at an Episcopal boarding school was one of the defining experiences of my life. I was called names. I was required to sit through Sunday morning religious services during which they read passages from the New Testament that I knew had been used to justify the torture and murder of Jews through the centuries. When I would mention this, I would be told I was “too sensitive” and to get over it.

My experience is not the same as that of African-Americans. I can “pass” as Gentile, and I’m white. Still, my experience gives me a window through which to understand.

Black Panther is not a character I’ve ever followed. When Coates’ run starts, I’ll make sure to pick it up.

Let’s try to spend at least part of 2016 listening to each other.

Martha Thomases: A Yuletide Call To Action

PTO_072

Merry Christmas!

I don’t celebrate, of course. Well, I do, sort of. I volunteer at the hospital, helping Santa deliver gifts to the kids who are in-patient. My Santa is Jewish. His wife (and elf) is Jewish. So am I. We are the Shabbos goys of Christmas.

Just because it’s not my holiday doesn’t mean that I ignore the season of comfort and joy. Coming so close to the New Year, it makes me think of how to improve myself and the planet for the next twelve months.

It is possible for me to get discouraged when I think about these things. There are so many important problems to be solved – climate change, income inequality, terrorism, racism, sexism etc. etc. I don’t have any ideas that are big enough to solve these. I can’t do it all by myself.

(Aside: Thinking I have to do it all by myself is a form of grandiosity.)

So, the challenge, as I see it, is to find a finite problem and a community that might be able to solve it. I think I’ve found the problem, and I think we, as the comics community, are up to the task.

A while ago, I read this story about the growing and unmet demand for story-hours for children, especially pre-school children. Research shows that the single most important thing contributing to a person’s success is having access to books as a child.

We are comics-lovers. We love to read. We should find a way to connect with under-served communities and read to their kids.

Here are some of the challenges:

  1. We will need to find locations that are open to the public and safe for children under the age of five.
  2. We will need to find a stash of appropriate books.
  3. We will need to learn what laws cover activities like this, and take steps to be in compliance with them.

Here are some of my first thoughts, by number.

  1. Some of the bigger and better comic book stores have reading areas. Perhaps they would donate an hour or two each week for this purpose.
  2. There are excellent books for children in this age group in our medium. We might be able to raise money to purchase them, or contact the publishers for donations.
  3. Perhaps there are lawyers who are comic book fans who could advise us.

These aren’t all the problems we would face, nor are my suggestions necessarily useful. It’s not a way to reach every child in need. If anything, the kids who need it most are the hardest to involve, since they are most likely to have parents who work several jobs, don’t speak English, or are just plain apathetic.

Still, it’s a start.

What do you think? Is this something we could do? Should we start in one space, and see if it works? Do you have other ideas?

Let me know in the comments. If you really want to get involved, send me an e-mail Martha@comicmix.com

Martha Thomases: The Star Wars Conspiracy!

2014 NBCUniversal TCA Winter Press Tour Portraits

So since Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens today, and since I’m not going to go see it until after this weekend at the earliest, I thought I would do a trip down memory lane combined with a little bit of pop culture history.

You know, a nostalgic story about the experience I had seeing the first one in a theater, then a reference to Jack Kirby, and a sideline into older types of mythologies that tell similar tales. By the end, we would have deduced that there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them, and we would have been entertained and elevated.

And then, I got lost on the Internet.

Apparently, Star Wars in general and J. J. Abrams in particular are all part of a plan by the Jews to eliminate the Aryan race.

I’m not going to put in a lot of links to substantiate my points. I don’t want to drive any more traffic to the sites. I feel soiled enough that I looked at them.

Look, I get that there are crazy people out there, people who get set off by things that, for the rest of us, are innocuous. So when John Boyega was cast as one of the leads in the new film, racists went nuts saying the film is anti-white propaganda. Because, clearly, all leading roles in movies are by Divine Right given to white men. If they aren’t, it’s because of some social justice warrior affirmative action social engineering. Or, something.

I liked the original Star Wars trilogy. I liked parts of the next three movies (I would watch Ewan McGregor do just about anything, including crawling through sewers). Even when I didn’t like something, I was interested in what Lucas wanted to do.

When he sold out to Disney (and then gave most of the money away), I was nervous about what would happen. As it turns out, I like J. J. Abrams more than many of my fellow nerds. I liked his Star Trek movies, despite my friends’ attempts to prove to me, empirically, that they’re bad. I liked a bunch of the television shows he produced. I like saying “Bad Robot” when the animated logo comes on.

So I want to see what he does with Star Wars.

It is interesting to me that so many who decry “political correctness” and “censorship” and “social justice warriors” demand exactly those things when the person speaking has another point of view. in this case, the person speaking is Abrams (with the implied consent of Lucas and Disney). If he chooses to make a film about a white woman, a black man and scores of characters of many species, that’s his right.

I mean, Kirk Cameron made Saving Christmas, a movie I have no desire to see, and I didn’t call for his death.

I certainly didn’t see it as part of a millennia long conspiracy to destroy my way of life, and therefore a call to rain down violence and destruction on those who chose to buy tickets. The people at the crazy websites who don’t like Boyega & Co. use Hitler as a good example to support their positions. Because J. J. Abrams is trying to “kike” things up. (Yes, they use that word.)

You know, there are always the crazies in the world, of all stripes. Usually, they have enough common sense and/or shame to try to disguise their craziness. No one in the United States, in my lifetime, has wanted to be seen as a Nazi. Maybe an extreme conservative, even a racist, but not someone in favor of death camps.

Until this election cycle.

If you don’t want to see John Boyega, if that’s an affront to your morality, don’t go. More seats for me.

Martha Thomases: Gender Bender

business_women1

The end of the year is often a time of renewal and reflection, an opportunity to look back at recent events and make plans for a better day ahead.

I’m happy to say that the entertainment industry is at least going through the motions, but in a way that makes me face-palm.

If you read the link above (please do), you’ll see that the major Hollywood studios (including folks who work for Warner Bros., owner of DC Entertainment, and Disney, owner of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios) recently had meetings to figure out how to hire more women.

Think about that. They had to bring in outside “experts” (that is, women already in the business) to find a way to commit to hiring a kind of person who represents more than half of the population. Everyone comes in contact with women every single day. Everyone has a mother. Many many people have sisters. Lots of people have wives.

Is it really so difficult to find employable women?

Apparently it is. Apparently, executives in the entertainment industry are so accustomed to thinking that writing, directing and producing films are jobs for men that they cannot imagine women doing them.

This makes me wonder about groups of people that are not necessarily part of white executives’ social circles. It is entirely possible for men of means to go through life without knowing any people of color, or out queer people. Gated communities (or gated estates with staff), exclusive country clubs, private jets and private schools for the kids don’t contribute to a diverse life experience. And the biases (conscious or not) that cause a person to seek such a lifestyle are the same biases that make them think that other white men are the only ones capable of getting the good jobs.

(Aside: Yes, there are some brilliant women and people of color making movies and television. I’m grateful they exist. However, they are the exceptions, not the rule. The rule continues to suck.)

Will the four-step plan put together by the committee make any difference? Or is it, instead, some puffery that allows the industry to act like they’re doing something while continuing business as usual? I can’t tell what kind of milestones are in the plan, if they have goals they mean to achieve by specific dates. They may exist. In the absence of such information, it’s up to us, the public, to demand results.

I would like to see something similar done for comics. Gender parity is an excellent goal, not because I want anyone (not even white men!) to lose their jobs, but because more trained talent means more good comics.

Martha Thomases: The Smartest Catharsis

Bugs Bunny Elmer Fudd

I don’t know about you guys, but catharsis is kind of my jam. I seek out entertainment that expresses my dark and violent emotions so that I won’t act on them in dark and violent ways.

And these past few weeks have been rough. The terrorism in Paris, the terrorism in Colorado, the police terrorism in Chicago, all arouse in me a feeling of despair and helplessness.

I need violent media.

Not more violence, just choreographed fights, fake blood, and the massive destruction of props. I like to watch stuff get blowed up real good. Imagining the destruction of my enemies, or even just the assholes who wear backpacks in crowded subways, makes me feel better.

All without hurting anyone.

In decades past, there were arguments that excessive exposure to violent media dulled the audience, making them indifferent to the pain caused by real-life violence. It’s entirely likely that those who are mentally ill would have such an unhealthy reaction. I mean, mentally ill people can have unhealthy reactions to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Adults, however, who are not mentally ill can use entertainment to engage their emotions in imaginary battles to the death against those who must upset us. Even the Bible will work, especially if you enjoy a deity who drowns everybody (including animals) for no good reason.

I think we should find a way for more people to enjoy imaginary violence, instead of the real thing. There is far too much of that in present-day America. If I might quote: “More than once a day on average this year, mass shootings have destroyed lives and families. President Obama on Saturday said this endless ritual of murder is “not normal,” but that is precisely the problem: In America, it has become all too normal.”

Wouldn’t it be great if the new normal was to simply go to the mall and see a movie? Isn’t that better than all of us getting a gun?

(Or at least, some of us.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, reading quotes from the GOP presidential candidates defending the Colorado terrorist is making me need to read Bitch Planet.

Martha Thomases: Trigger Warnings! Beware!

man-in-the-high-castle

Like the dweeb I am, I spent last weekend watching television on my computer. First (because I’d already seen the first two episodes), The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime, and then Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix. I suppose there might have been other things to do for two days, but all of them involved wearing pants.

This isn’t going to be a review, or even a comparison of the two shows. Instead, I want to talk about trigger warnings. Still, you might want to beware of spoilers.

A trigger warning is a note, usually on a book cover or syllabus or other preview piece, that informs the potential user that some material in the specific piece might be disturbing. If you watch the network news, you’ve probably heard some version of a trigger warning before the camera cuts to pictures of starving children or corpses of people shot down in the streets.

The term “trigger warning” has become a cause du jour because some people think it means a particular book (or movie or newscast) is banned when it comes so captioned. To those people, a trigger warning is just another way we are coddling kids today, with their crazy music and their hair, who don’t appreciate how good they have it and they should just get off my lawn already.

Anyway, some people think that there should have been a trigger warning on Marvel’s Jessica Jones. And, I confess, I hadn’t thought about that until I read the essay in the link.

Here’s what I think is the key quote: The point of a trigger warning is not to tell people “Don’t watch this.” Or “You’re too weak to handle this.” The point of a trigger warning is to empower all viewers by informing them of what they can expect so they can make the best decision for themselves, cognizant all the while that the viewer’s personal response is just that: personal.

Maybe I would have understood if I had read the comic book on which Jessica Jones is based. I did read the first issue, and I didn’t like it much. To my reading at the time, it seemed to me to be trying to hard to be shocking and gritty. I watched the series because I totally love David Tennant. Yes, I’m shallow. Don’t judge me.

If I’d read the series, maybe I would have known that Jessica Jones is the victim of the violent sexual and emotional abuse perpetuated by Kilgrave The Purple Man, the villain who uses his mind control powers exactly as you’d expect if you imagine David Tennant to be the embodiment of a houseful of frat-boys. Still, because I heart him so much, I found myself, after the first episode, wishing he would come to me in my dreams and lick my face, as he did to Jessica.

After a few more episodes, I didn’t want that anymore. If anything, I felt kind of soiled for having wanted it at all.

I haven’t experienced the kind of comic-book violence Jessica Jones went through, nor have I experienced any more than the daily insults and bruises that any woman gets in this culture (and as a straight cis woman with gray hair, I get less than many of my sisters). The violence in the Netflix series seemed more harsh than what we see every day on network television, but I didn’t have to look away except for the parts about needles in the eye.

Still, there are millions of women who have experienced actual criminal violence, and they might have been disproportionately upset by the fight scenes on the show. (When I say “disproportionately” I don’t mean they are too sensitive, I mean that their reactions are not what the creative people intended.) If Netflix put some kind of warning or disclaimer in the descriptive materials (like cast information and plot summaries) they post before the user clicks to play, this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

There wasn’t a warning on Amazon Prime for The Man in the High Castle either, and I haven’t seen anyone ask for one. So I guess it’s just me.

If you haven’t read the Phillip K. Dick novel on which the show is based, you can still enjoy the show. I haven’t read it in decades. The premise imagines a world 20 years after the Axis won World War II. Germany controls the East Coast of the United States across to the Rockies. Japan controls the West Coast. There is a narrow neutral zone in between.

The world-building on this series is awesome. Everything, from the cars to the clothing to the outdoor advertising to the streetlights, reflects a world in which the American way has been perverted by fascism. It takes a while to notice some of the detail (like the lack of anyone but Aryans in Manhattan) but it’s chilling when it sinks in.

I didn’t experience concentration camps (I’m not that old), but I have been freaked out by the imagery for my entire life. I also have trouble looking at old footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs destroyed those cities. There’s a bunch of both of these things in this series. You have been warned.

Even if the shows had been labeled, I would have watched. Again, trigger warnings are not censorship. If anything, more people would probably enjoy them if they knew what they were getting into.

Now, if we could only lobby Marvel into that Dakota North series…

Martha Thomases: So This Is Thanksgiving

Bugs Bunny“When I’m worried and I can’t sleep

I count my blessings instead of sheep

And I fall asleep counting my blessings”

“Count Your Blessings” by Irving Berlin

Next week is Thanksgiving, and so I’m trying to remind myself that I have many reasons to be thankful. First, of course, I am grateful for my family and my friends (human and otherwise) who make my life so entertaining.

But you didn’t come here to read about how fabulous my life is. You want to read about comics. And so, I present to you, Constant Reader, those things about comics for which I am most grateful.

  • Image Comics. Back in the 1990s, I agreed with the founding principles of Image (creator ownership and control) but didn’t really like what they published, which to me looked like a lot of scratchy drawings of women with gigantic tits and tiny little ankles. Now, however, I find myself buying a few Image titles every week. Was I wrong in my original impression? Maybe. Are they publishing a more diverse list now? Definitely. In any case, they provide me with more joy.
  • Boom! Studios. I confess that I originally mostly picked up the Boom! titles when Mark Waid worked there, because I strive to be loyal. He is no longer editing their books, but they publish a lot of things I like. I told you how much I like Americatown. I started Last Sons of America and that looks promising, too. They publish lots of cool stuff, including Last Sons of America, Adventure Time, Lumberjanes, and Mouse Guard. You could do worse.
  • Forbidden Planet. I am fortunate enough to live in a place where there are many different comic book stores near my home, and a high percentage of them are excellent. However, for more than three decades, Forbidden Planet has been the one I go to most often. A lot of that is location (they are near the subway station that goes where I need to go on Wednesdays), but I also like the vibe. When I go, I’m greeted by name. The folks at the check-out know I want a paper bag, not plastic. They recommend books they think I’ll like. Some people have a favorite bar where everybody knows their names. I have Forbidden Planet. I hope you have a local comic shop that makes you feel just as special.
  • Kids. Every day, there are opportunities to turn kids on to the fun of comic books. After I get my stack on Wednesdays, I go to the hospital where I volunteer on the pediatric floor. I’m there to teach knitting, but there are some kids who don’t want to knit. If I have a Simpsons comic or another age-appropriate title with single-issue story, I’ll often give it away. Every child, even those without hair or with a port in his chest, lights up in beauty with a glorious smile at the sight of a new comic.
  • The revenge of the nerds. Sometimes I wonder if comics are really mainstream now, or if I simply live a life in which that can pass for truth. But, really, there is at least one television show based on a comic book on prime time just about every day. “Superhero” is now a movie genre, one taken (mostly) seriously by respected film critics. The New York Times Book Review publishes best-seller lists for graphic novels in hardcover, paperback and manga formats. Comics are now so respectable that parents try to make their kids read them.
  • Comics! Let’s not forget how great they are. Even when I’m irked by some current controversy and what it means about our sociopolitical climate, I still love the feeling of sitting down to a fresh stack of comics, with my cat purring next to me on the armrest.

And, as always, I’m thankful for you and your indulgent attention. Happy holidays, folks.

Martha Thomases: Insane, Edgy, Horrific, Great!

set_american_horror_story_clown640

What do you do when something you love goes off the deep end?

If that something is person, you support him to the best of your ability and try to get him the help he needs. A person who goes off the deep end is suffering, and you, as a human, should do your best to make that person better.

What about when that something is fiction? Is it okay to enjoy watching?

I ask this because this season of American Horror Story: Hotel is completely nutso. Whatever narrative drive there might be is completely sabotaged by the sex and blood and beauty.

It’s really fun.

AHS is one of a new kind of television show, like Fargo and True Detective, which tell a complete story each season but then start over from scratch, with a new cast, new characters, and a new premise. Unlike those other two shows, AHS keeps many (but not all) of the same actors, like a repertory company or a neighborhood theater group. Some actors, like Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson have been on every season. Others, like Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett showed up a few seasons in and have stayed around.

Jessica Lange was on the first four seasons, but didn’t come back this year. Would she have kept the story on the rails? Would we want her to?

Each season, producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk take a horror story trope and play with its conventions. In the the first season, American Horror Story: Murder House, for example, a normal family bought a haunted house. I thought it was good, but it didn’t knock me out. I liked the way the story meandered, with guest stars appearing long enough to get killed, but I wasn’t entirely hooked.

It wasn’t until the second season, American Horror Story: Asylum that the craziness revealed itself in all its glory. Set in a Catholic insane asylum in 1964, the show had nuns with secret pasts, demonic possession, Nazi scientists, alien visitors, serial killers and more. I realized that the producers were going for more than a simple scare in the episode titled “The Name Game”, in which Jessica Lange burst into song in the middle of the day room.

She sang again, on other seasons, but it was never quite so bonkers. Neither was the premise.

For the third season, American Horror Story: Coven, the setting was a school for witches in New Orleans. It was humid and full of voodoo (and great characters), but not up to the second. And last season’s American Horror Story: Freak Show had a two-headed woman and Jessica Lange singing David Bowie’s “Golden Years,” but still nothing as wonky as the Nazi doctor being stalked by Anne Frank, which we had in Season Two.

This season, the premise is that the Hotel Cortez, a Los Angeles Art Deco jewel well past its prime, is run by a vampire, played by Lady Gaga. As if it were run by Black Flag pesticides, guests check in but they don’t check out. A detective with a tragic past is investigating a series of murders. Denis O’Hare plays the greatest bartender in the world.

I could go on, but there really isn’t any point. Each episode contains enough blood to fill a swimming pool, and plenty of sex, among every kind of combination of consenting adults you might imagine. Often, all of these things are in the same frame.

The clothes are beautiful. The men are beautiful (special shout out to Wes Bentley, Matt Bomer, Finn Wittrock and Cheyenne Jackson). The sets are beautiful.

All this beauty doesn’t make characters, however. I couldn’t tell you who the protagonist is. I can’t tell you what the menace is.

And yet, I would watch it every day if that was a choice.

Murphy and Falchuk are capable of making emotionally moving television. In addition to Glee and Nip/Tuck, they were behind HBO’s production of The Normal Heart, which had me crying buckets (and also featured Bomer, Wittrock and O’Hare).

Have there been comics that are as much fun to watch and make so little sense? I can’t think of any. Maybe S. Clay Wilson’s Checkered Demon, except that didn’t have as many cute guys in it.

There’s going to be a sixth season. I don’t know anything about it, but I’m setting my DVR.

Martha Thomases: Every Picture Tells A Story

APBI have opinions about superhero comics that have no basis in anything other than my observations. There are no studies, no data, no proof whatsoever. But I have these opinions, and, quite often, reality supports them. Then again, quite often reality disproves them, but this column isn’t about that.

One of my core beliefs is that superheroes comics appeal to our inner two-year-old. That’s about the age when we realize that we have physical and mental limits, and we can’t shape the world to our whims. It’s natural that power fantasies attract our imaginations, because if we could fly and beat up any enemy and never get hurt, we could live the life to which we feel entitled.

This is also why teenagers like superheroes. However powerless you feel as a toddler, that feeling is dwarfed in comparison to how you feel when puberty hits. Now your body is not only able to do what you want it to do, but it’s actively working against you.

If you’re lucky – and you read good superhero comics, and you read other forms of literature and you have a good community for support – you will, while enjoying your power fantasies, begin to understand other points of view. I vividly remember stories from my childhood in which Lex Luthor found a world where he could be a hero. Through him, though looking at his face when he was finally cheered by people who loved him, I understood that each of us wants to be a good guy. We might disagree about what that means, but we are each the protagonist in our own stories.

This is a really long and roundabout way to say that comics are an excellent way to learn empathy and discuss lots of opinions. The most moving recent example I’ve found is APB: Artists against Police Brutality, an anthology about the state of police violence and race relations.

The contents are brief essays and comics about police brutality. Some are to my taste and some are not. (Hint: Clear lettering might not be moody and atmospheric, but it’s legible and that makes a huge difference if you want me to read what you wrote. Rant over.) Some of the essays are a bit didactic and some are so personal and painful that I could barely get through them. Every one came from a place I’ve never been. Every one (even the ones I didn’t like) made me see the world in a new way.

I’m a parent, and, as a parent, my heart skips a beat every time the phone rings when my kid is away from home. When he was first starting to go out by himself, without my hand to hold when he crossed the street, I would make him call me when he got to his destination because otherwise I would worry that he was dead in a ditch somewhere. When he went to college, he almost went out to a ditch just so he could call me from there.

My worries are about drunk drivers or falling pianos or random lightning strikes. I’m not particularly worried about cops. As a white person, that’s not how I was raised. I expect the police to respect me and to watch out for me, my family, and my property. I understand, intellectually, that this is not everyone’s experience.

APB made me understand this difference viscerally. I could see how the police looked from the eyes of someone who is terrified, who is about to be beaten. I could feel the puzzlement and pain a person feels when a loved one goes out to run chores and doesn’t come back, ever. I could feel the shame and heartbreak of a woman whose brother grows up to be a cop who kills an unarmed African-American kid.

The book ends with a list of 881 people killed by police between December 15, 2014, and the date the book went to press on September 11, 2015. I can’t tell the race of each person, nor can I tell the reason he or she was killed.

I do know that each and every one had a story.

Martha Thomases: Thanks For The Mammories

Woody Allen

The doctor was over an hour late for my mammogram appointment this morning. The only magazines in the office were about decorating and polo, and my phone was being wonky, so I had a lot of time to think.

As you might expect, I thought about breasts. A lot.

Too much.

Specifically, I wondered why, despite our culture’s obsession with breasts, especially among the adolescent man-children who make so many of our commercially artistic decisions, no one (to my knowledge) had ever considered what a super-powered breast might be like.

Even without fictional help, breasts have a lot of power. As mammals, we use them to feed our young. Our patriarchal culture judges a woman’s value (in part) by the firmness, size and perkiness of her tits. While some people (including a fair number of women) think this gives women power, I have never perceived it this way. Instead, in my experience, men think the mere fact that I have them means they can remark on how much they do or do not like them.

I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t had a stranger say something about her breasts. While there may be some women who make similarly unrequested comments to men, I’ve never heard about any and must suppose it to be a much less common phenomenon. Telling me what he thinks about my body parts is one way that a man can tell me that he thinks I exist for his appraisal and approval.

What if my breasts could actually be a source of physical or metaphysical power? What if the more than 30-years exposure to radiation charged them up to affect me the same way that radioactive spider affected Peter Parker?

Would they shoot out webbing like Spider-Man does from his hands, but from the nipples instead? Would the webbing be edible, like Twizzlers?

Or would they shoot out death-rays?

Perhaps they would be malleable like Mr. Fantastic’s body, able to change shape and size to rope in criminals, or cushion a fall.

They might turn rock hard, like The Thing, and make my rib-cage impenetrable, so that no one can shoot me in the heart.

Or perhaps they could jiggle at super-speed, creating veritable earthquakes to knock my antagonists off their feet or allowing me to vibrate through walls.

Or they might grow massively in size and strength, like the Hulk, when I get angry, allowing me to use them to smash any cat-caller who gets in my face.

Alas, none of this happened to me.

I did get a clean bill of health, which is a good thing. I urge you to do the same.

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