Author: Mindy Newell

Mindy Newell’s Mind Rumblings

Various and sundry thoughts from the mind of Mindy this week:

The USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the eighth U.S. Navy vessel to bear that name, was decommissioned this week after 50 years of service. The world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier made her maiden voyage on January 12, 1962 and her first mission was tracking and monitoring the first orbital flight of Project Mercury, with Lt. Col. John Glenn aboard the Friendship 7 capsule. In popular culture, the Enterprise was the home base of Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) in Top Gun, with the late director Tony Scott filming and incorporating flight deck operations into the film, and it was the flagship of the U.S. Navy fleet participating in The Hunt For Red October.

Then, of course, there is Star Trek – and did you know that Gene Roddenberry’s original starship name was the USS Yorktown? But the fame and status of the sea-going Enterprise led to starship being rechristened the USS Enterprise NC-1701. (Art Director Matt Jeffries – yes, for whom the Jeffries Tubes are named – used the USS Enterprise CVN-65 for scale when designing the original starship.) Star Trek and her fans – through a massive letter writing campaign and, I’m sure, encouraged by not a few NASA employees – returned the favor when NASA’s first Space Shuttle was named Enterprise. And in Star Trek: First Contact, we see that models of all the ships named Enterprise hanging in a showcase in Jean-Luc’s office. (“You broke your little ships,” says Lily Sloane, played by Alfre Woodward, after Picard goes “Ahab” in his desire vengeance against Borg throwing his phaser rifle through the glass walls of the showcase.)

Staying with Star Trek…I just rewatched J.J. Abram’s remake last night, and the more I see it, the more I love it. I continue to be especially impressed by Karl Urban’s Dr. Leonard McCoy – if I closed my eyes, I’d be hard-pressed not to say it was DeForest Kelley speaking.

Again, speaking of “all things Trek” – although I am generally not a fan of comic adaption of live-action TV shows and movies, I gotta say I’m loving IDW’s Star Trek, written by Mike Johnson with art by Claudia Balboni and Stephen Molnar. Johnson is following the original series story lines, with just the right twists of plot to adhere to the “new” Trek and doing an excellent job of capturing the personalities of Kirk/Pine, Spock/Quinto, Scotty/Pegg, Uhura/Saldana and the rest of the crew with his dialogue. Kudos to the entire team!

On the other hand…Dark Horse’s Spike mini-series sucks. I mean, Spike on the moon? Gimme a fucking break! In fact, generally speaking, their whole Buffy line sucks. Really disappointed. Oh, well, dropping it will save me money.

After almost 30 years, my local comics shop, Vector Books, has closed. Joe and Tina and Frank have been a part of my life for all those 30 years, and I wish them love and health and all the best in the future. But a new comics emporium has opened to take over from Vector (and with Vector’s blessing). It’s Manifest Comics And Cards, and I’ll be interviewing its young owner, Michael, in the future to find out how nuts (and brave) he is to open a shop at a time when so many are closing.

What fucking world do the Republicans live in? Who the fuck cares what Grover Norquist thinks? Attention John Boehmer!!!! Your job is to lead, not to follow the bug-fucked extremists and Tea Party wingnuts or to worry about losing your position as Speaker of the House! Get the deal done, for Christ’s sake! You can’t blame Obama this time! Like we said in the 60s, the whole world is watching!

How many of you had to Google labia majora and labia minora from my column last week? (Thanks to Mike Gold for this.)

Over at The League Of Woman Bloggers on Facebook, there is mucho discussion going on about the attack on girl geeks by boy geeks. Much geekiness is ensuing.

Okay, who here is a Homeland fan? Is Brody now a triple agent, again loyal to Nazir? What didn’t he tell Carrie, Saul, and Quinn in the debriefing? What did he make up? (I’m betting the being tied to a car battery part.) How long did it take before you realized that Virgil and Max were in Quinn’s apartment? (I thought they were in Roya’s.) Who is Dar Adal, the guy that Quinn met on the bus? (Yeah, yeah, I know he’s F. Murray Abraham…) Who is Quinn – FBI? Black-ops CIA? Mole? (I don’t think he is – too obvious.) Was the whole “terrorist attack on returning veterans” a MacGuffin, and the real attack is still coming? Is Estes as incompetent as he seems?  Why did he send Quinn out to kill Brody? Why did Saul go to Philadelphia, knowing that Quinn would find out? And why does Jessica keep calling her husband by his last name?

Later.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Mindy Newell: Mirror Images

Throwing my $0.02 in on Martha Thomases’s column last week concerning big boobs, ‘roidal musculature, and body image…

Readers of this column know very well my love of Kara Zor-el, i.e. Supergirl, as she was portrayed during the Silver Age. Debuting in Action Comics #252 (May 1959), Kara’s look was designed by Al Plastino with her continuing adventures drawn by her quintessential artist, Jim Mooney for the next ten years. I was 5-going-on 6 in May of 1959, and Kara, depicted as a healthy young girl just entering adolescence, was athletic and slim, but not overly muscular, and especially not overly endowed in her chest area. It wasn’t just her powers or her ability to be Superman’s secret weapon that captured my imagination – I wanted to be like her when I grew up. Yes, I had dark hair and brown eyes and I was born in Brooklyn and not in Argo City, the last surviving city of the planet Krypton, but she was a role model for me in that I wanted to grow up to be athletic and slim and strong and capable.

In other words, Kara gave me a healthy sense of my body and what it could be.

A few years ago I was riding on the PATH train into New York City when an ad caught my eye, partly because I knew the doctor who was advertising on the placard and partly because of what he was advertising: a labioplasty. This is a plastic surgery procedure for altering shape of the labia majora and labia minora. Yes, as an operating room nurse, I have participated in these procedures, and I do remember one patient whose labia majora was “overly endowed” to the point that it was embarrassing to her when she wore a swimsuit.

I’m not talking about that type of legitimate need. But 99.9% of these women who underwent the procedure did it for purely “cosmetic” reasons. Of course I couldn’t say this out loud, but what I was thinking was “are you fucking kidding me?” (Honestly, girlfriends, have you ever fretted about the anatomy of your labia majora or labia minora?) Apparently these women believed there was something wrong with their natural formation – meaning that it wasn’t “perfect.” I always had a suspicion that these women caught their men looking at the Playmate of the Month or the Penthouse Pet of the Month and felt inadequate. But, although of course I couldn’t ask them, I also wondered if their men had complained. I doubt it. (Guys, do you fret about the shape of your woman’s labia majora or labia minora?) At least I’ve never had a man break up with me – so far as I know – because of that particular part of my anatomy.

But most girls don’t read comics, you’ll say, and if they do, it’s Betty and Veronica or manga comics. Well, first of all, I don’t believe that’s so true anymore. Like football, I think the fastest growing segment of the comics audience are girls and women. I’d like to think that most adult women are grown-up enough to understand that comics are fantasies, and that they are capable of ignoring the bubble breasts, wasp waists, and lengthy legs of female super-heroines (if the writing and story is good, of course) without going into hyperventilation and toxic shock about their own anatomy.

But young girls, even if they don’t read super-heroes, are exposed to it when they visit their local comic book emporium. And exposure is 9/10ths of the law when it comes to thoughts about body image and self-respect and self-actualization.

Martha is right about comics being a small part of the media culture’s obsession with how women should look. But some companies are doing it right – Dove ran a very successful campaign featuring women whose body types ranged from svelte to chunky. And More magazine ran a feature a few years ago on Jamie Leigh Curtis with pictures of Ms. Curtis au natural – no makeup, no Photoshopping, no special lighting, no Spanx or body tape to hide or pull up sagging body parts. And by the way, it was Ms. Curtis’ idea to photo shoot herself as she is in “real life.”

It was part of an issue whose entire focus was accepting yourself.

Accepting yourself. It sounds so easy.

But it’s so hard. After all, we can’t all look like Wonder Woman, unless your name happens to be Lynda Carter.

But it’s worth every minute of sweat and every tear that’s shed.

Damn it, I gained a pound.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Mindy Newell: Frakkin’ Ho-Ho-Ho!

Well, I haven’t heard Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song yet – the Festival of Lights starts at sunset on Saturday, December 8th – but I did hear a rant about the War on Christmas on the radio the other day.

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Hallmark Channel has preempted Little House On The Prairie for sickly sweet (and cheaply made) movies with a Christmas theme. Wal-Mart and Target are pushing black Friday – great name for a villain, by the way – and have introduced something called pre-black Friday. Christmas catalogs have been smushed into my mailbox, and the department store halls are beginning to be decked with boughs of holly, fa-la-la-la, la-la-la-la I’ve even caught some Christmas commercials on the TV (although the deluge is yet to come.)

So this year ye olde editor Mike Gold and Big Kahuna Glenn Hauman decided to get in on the act of Christmas before Thanksgiving and decreed that this week all of your ComicMix columnists offer their own catalogue of gifts – courtesy of that big Santa’s Workshop in the sky and on the web, Amazon – for the holidays. Which includes Chanukah, and don’t forget Kwanza!

So in no particular order, here we go:

1. Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan. Robin Maxwell. 2012 marks the centennial anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s greatest creation, and Ms. Maxwell, an award-winning historical fiction novelist, has done him proud. Written with the approbation of the Burroughs estate, this is the book for every woman who ever played at being Jane Porter and for every man who ever wanted to be the Tarzan with whom Jane falls in deep, instinctual, forever-and-a-day love. Maxwell’s Jane is no wallflower Edwardian ingénue. A medical student at Cambridge University and an amateur paleoanthropologist, Jane and her father join an expedition into West Africa, and…well, you’ll just have to read it. The novel has garnered praise from such notaries as Jane Goodall and Margaret George, and was featured in the Washington Post and the Huffington Post. Find it here.

2. Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series (Blu-Ray And DVD). Starring Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Michael Hogan, James Callis, Katie Sackoff, Tricia Helfer, Jamie Bamber, Grace Parks, and more. Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore. This ain’t your father’s Battlestar Galactica! Critically hailed, beloved by fans of science fiction and fans of great drama alike, Moore and his cast (Edward James Olmos as Commander/Admiral William Adama, Mary McDonnell as President Laura Roslin, Michael Hogan as Colonel Saul Tigh, Katie Sackoff as Lt. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, Jamie Bamber as Captain Lee “Apollo” Adama, James Callis as Dr. Gaius Baltar, Grace Parks as Lt. Sharon “Boomer” Valerii/Sharon “Athena” Agathorn/Cylon Number 8, Aaron Douglas as Chief Galen Tyrol, Tahmoh Penikett as Lt. Karl “Helo” Agathorn, and Tricia Helfer as the enigmatic Cylon Number Six) weaved a truly epic saga of humanity struggling to survive after devastation. It’s political. It’s sociological. It’s personal and intimate, cosmic and theological. Love, hate, friendship, enmity, jealousy, revenge, forgiveness, life, death. It’s all there. So Say We All! Find it on Amazon.

3. Percy Jackson And The Olympians Hardcover Boxed Set. Rick Riordan. This recommendation comes from Isabel Newell, 12 years old, cellist, equestrienne, singer, and avid reader. Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he’s always getting into trouble…like once there was a snake in his bed and he had strangle it with his own hands! And then he was attacked at school by the Furies! Can he help that he always end up getting expelled from school? (And there have been a lot of schools!) Turns out Percy just happens to be the son of Poseidon, God of the Seas! Which just happens to make Percy not only a demi-god, but a child mentioned in the Great Prophecy! This amazing series gives Harry Potter a run for the money, and is for everybody of all ages who loves mythology and wonder and adventure! Find it on Amazon.

4. Casablanca. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Raines, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt, and Dooley Wilson. Produced by Hal B. Wallis, Directed by Michael Curtiz, Screenplay by Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch, with music by Max Steiner. Julie Schwartz once told me that there is only one story: Boy Meets Girl. Boy Loses Girl. Boy Gets Girl. This is the essence of what is probably the greatest movie every made by hook or by crook – did you know that pages were constantly rewritten even as filming went on, and that no one knew how it was going to end? Okay, Rick loses Ilsa, but he does get Louis. See, Julie was right! Find it here. Oh, and check out John Ostrander’s wonderful series of columns on Casablanca, right here at ComicMix.

Okay, time to toot my own horn. Mike asked us to recommend something we had written. Hmmmm….

I want to recommend Wonder Woman #86, Chalk Drawings by the great George Pérez, me, and the wondrous Ms. Jill Thompson. It is the story of the aftermath of Lucy Spear’s suicide; there are no easy answers to suicide and it was my decision to reflect that. I’m immensely proud of it and the work that we three did together, and I’ve always been sorry that it did not get the attention it deserved. Find it here.

Oh, and one more thing. Give a gift that really counts for something and truly reflects what the season is all about: donate to the Red Cross, or the Salvation Army, or any of the great charities helping people to recover from Sandy.

That’ll be your gift to me.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Mindy Newell: Powerless?

We first meet Sandy on the television. She’s down in the Caribbean wreaking havoc on Jamaica and the other islands. We are warned that she might come to the East Coast. Most people shrug. A panicked populace does not yet raid the supermarkets.

By Sunday the East Coast governors are declaring states of emergency. There is a run on staples like water, milk, and bread at stores. Home Depot and Lowe’s do a banner business selling generators and gasoline cans. Batteries are sold out in five minutes. Coastal areas are being evacuated. Alix and Jeff come to stay with me.

The bitch Sandy, a swirling 800 miles-wide apocalyptic force of nature’s vengeance, comes, sees, and conquers the megalopolis of New Jersey and New York, and covers West Virginia with a blizzard. Millions are without power. I lose power on Monday afternoon. It is like Little House On The Prairie, I say. What would Laura Ingalls Wilder do? Alix, Jeff, and I light candles, drink prosecco and play Uno. Alix and Jeff sleep in the hallway, away from the shuddering windows. I bury myself under a quilt and read by flashlight, as if I’m a child again hiding from the boogeyman.

Tuesday we huddle in the living room, listening to the radio. Sandy is still outside, vicious, refusing to leave. Hundreds of thousands are without homes. My apartment building shakes, and it is frightening, but I tell myself I am like the third Little Pig who lives in a house made of brick. Others are not so lucky. Sandy’s winds and surging tides destroy hundreds of thousand of homes. Beaches no longer exist. Boats come to rest on city streets. Raging fires break out in Queens and coastal New Jersey Fire departments cannot reach them because of the raging waters. Lives are thrown into turmoil.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie praises and works with President Barack Obama, who has stopped campaigning to lead the country through this disaster. Both are tireless. President Obama’s opponent, Governor Mitt Romney, who has made millions outsourcing jobs and thus rendering millions jobless, reaches into his pocket and donates $5,000, one-half the amount he offered to bet Governor Rick Perry during the Republican primary. He also tells people to donate a can of soup. Oh, and Governor Christie (finally!) gets the chance to meet and hug Bruce Springsteen.

Still, the Presidential election goes on. I call Mike Gold three times during the evening, freaking out that Obama was going to lose. He tells me that John Ostrander also called him doing the same freaking out. Mike is also incredibly calm – I accuse him of bordering on a Romney smirk – as he keeps assuring me that Obama will win.

I keep switching the channel to Everybody Loves Raymond because I can’t take the suspense. North Carolina goes with Romney. Then – the other battleground states start reporting results. Virginia for Obama. Colorado for Obama. New Hampshire for Obama. Iowa for Obama. Pennyslvania for Obama. Nevada for Obama. Wisconsin for Obama. And around 11:00 P.M. EST, all the networks, including Fox, call Ohio, and the election, for Obama!!

Megan Kelly takes the cameras to the polling room at Fox and demands to know if the statisticians are standing by their call. Karl Rove goes apoplectic and argues with Chris Wallace, who is anchoring. Romney’s campaign is saying they will not concede Ohio. At around 12:00 midnight Romney makes a – yes, it was short, sweet, and gracious – concession speech. Obama has won 304 Electoral College votes, Romney 206. Obama has also won the popular vote. We are still waiting on Florida. Donald Trump tweets, calling for revolution.

Wednesday. Sandy has left, though outside the skies are dark with clouds and there is no feeling that the storm is over. Alix and Jeff have gone home – they are lucky; although they have no power, their house is dry and safe. I get to work about 9:00 a.m. In the staff lounge I watch TV, and see for the first time what Sandy has wrought. It is as if a war has been fought over the last two days. Some houses are not even there; all that is left are grey concrete foundations. The PATH trains are flooded; the New York subway system is at a standstill. The Holland, Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and Midtown Tunnels are impassable, also flooded. The Stock Exchange is dark. The mighty New York City megalopolis, the city that never sleeps, the center of the financial world, is closed to business.

Though President Obama has won re-election, Florida is still undecided. We learn that Mitt Romney never wrote a concession speech. We learn that when he was told he had lost Romney was in a state of shock. We learn that the Secret Service booked immediately upon hearing the result, and his son Tag drove that Mr. Romney home. We learn that Romney’s campaign workers were told to pack their bags and go home, and oh, by the way, here’s the hotel and food bill. Colorado and Washington State vote to legalize marijuana. Maine, Maryland, and Washington State vote in favor of same-sex marriage.

Wednesday night Sandy’s cousin, Nelly Nor’easter hits New Jersey, New York and Connecticut with wind gusts up to 50 mph and up to 12 inches of snow. Also on Wednesday: Karl accuses the Democrats of stealing the election through voter suppression.

Thursday we learn that Obama won Florida. Thursday we learn the final Electoral College tally: Obama 332, Romney 206. The pundits are blaming Chris Christie for working with Barack Obama. The pundits are blaming Sandy. Bill Maher tweets, “Magic underwear, my ass!” Texas Republicans are advising the public to buy guns and are recommending secession. It is an ironic bit of synchronicity that Spielberg’s new film, Lincoln, is opening tomorrow.

Thursday afternoon the sun has come out; snow is already melting. Alix and Jeff’s power has come back. The trains are still out but they are both able to work from home, and so don’t have to face the hours of commuting into the city. My usual route to work is blocked by fallen trees and telephone poles; I must drive though unknown winding roads. I am glad I never took off my snow tires.

It will take months, if not years, for the great megalopolis to recover. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York warns that Sandy was just a warning, and that if we do not plan and prepare and stop global warming, the next storm will be worse. It is suggested in the New York Times that “the city and coastal areas build “waterbreaks – like firewalls – to help prevent future massive flooding.” FEMA has come; there is an office here in my city, operating out of the city’s historical museum. Chris Christie continues to work; his stamina is amazing. EMTs and firemen and policemen haven’t been home in days, have risked their lives, and still risking their lives; utility companies from as far away as New Mexico have sent their own to aid their brothers and sisters in rebuilding the broken infrastructure that powers this vast metropolis.

There is a promise in Friday’s sunrise. I look up to the sky as I walk to the car. The crescent moon is ablaze with silvery light, and Venus sits just off its lower horn, shining with the light of tomorrow. Tonight Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Christine Aguilera, Brian Williams, Jon Stewart, and others will hold a benefit concert.

And I know that there are heroes. They may not fly. They may not have super-strength, or X-ray vision. They don’t come from far away planets. They’re not born with mutated genes.

Their power comes from the heart.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis

 

Mindy Newell: Sandy’s Back In Jersey, Without Springsteen

Ms. Newell lives, works and writes from New Jersey. Sadly, as of this typing she’s only living in New Jersey, and she’s doing so without power. Ergo, no computer. Ergo, no column.

It looks like Mindy wins the race. Gold, Hauman, and Ostrander got their power back fairly early; Thomases got hers back Saturday morning. We haven’t heard from O’Neil or Whitten, but we’re assuming they’re electrically viable. Fishman didn’t lose power but he did get 20 foot waves off of Lake Michigan, which, actually, is amazing. Davis didn’t lose power but he doesn’t know that right now.

Hope you’re doing swell. And the creek don’t rise.

Mindy Newell: Not Superman’s Girlfriend!

Last week I wrote about Lois Lane (here) for the first time since 1986 and my mini-series “When It Rains, God Is Crying,” which was edited by ComicMix’s own Robert Greenberger. It got me to thinking about Lois.

First, a little history on the mini-series, which was published in 1986.

1986 was the year that John Byrne took over Superman. As the final ink was drying on the (secret) contract, I approached Dick Giordano about writing a Lois Lane mini-series. Or maybe it was Dick who called me into his office and asked if I wanted to write a “final” Lois Lane story as part of the “Superman Silver Age Farewell Tour, which included Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ For The Man Who Has Everything and Alan Moore, Curt Swan, and George Perez’s Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? I’m pretty sure it was the former, though I could be wrong, thanks to my menopausal memory.

There are two reasons I believe it was the former: (1) I didn’t know Byrne was being given carte blanche to reboot the entire Superman mythos and family, and that, as part of the deal, no one would be allowed to touch any of the characters without John’s permission; and (2) I distinctly remember saying to Dick that, if the first series was successful, I wanted to continue to write stories about Lois as her own person, as a reporter covering stories – not as Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane. Of course Dick was non-committal, but I thought it was because he – naturally – didn’t want to put the horse before the cart, not because of the Byrne deal that was about to be announced to the press and public.

At any rate, and to my delight, Dick green-lit the project, which would feature Lois as a reporter doing a story on missing and abused children, and in which Superman would not appear – although Clark Kent would. And Lana Lang, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and even Lois’s sister, Lucy. The story would be character-driven, and it would be about Lois. Robert Greenberger, then working as an editor at DC – and with whom I had worked on the V comic – was given the assignment, and he brought in the remarkable Gray Morrow, known for his realistic and individualistic portrayal of women characters. We were all immensely enthusiastic about the project, and the series came together incredibly easy because of that enthusiasm. It remains something Robert and I are immensely proud to have created. (Gray Morrow, who always expressed his love of the series to me, passed away in 2001.)

The best part of the project, for me, was having the chance to write Lois as an individual.

I grew up on the Silver Age Lois in comics, she of the 1950s white veiled cloche and matching gloves, a lady-like suite, nylons, and pumps. I didn’t like that she was always mooning over Superman and that her main raison d’être was to prove that Superman was Clark Kent. I didn’t like that Superman always managed to pull the wool over her eyes. It made her foolish. It was insulting. It was dumb. I liked Lana Lang; she was spunky, she was Insect Queen, she was a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, and she just seemed smarter and not so constantly obsessed with Superman’s secret identity.

I couldn’t stand Noel Neill as Lois Lane, either. She was too – I don’t know, what’s the word? – genteel to be a star reporter on a “great metropolitan newspaper.” Too much like the Lois Lane of the comics.

But Phyllis Coates! Now she was a tough broad. You could imagine her Lois working her way up the glass ladder – and even breaking though that glass ceiling – in a time when “ladies” stayed home and emulated Betty Crocker. Coates’ Lois could not only replace Perry White as the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Planet, but she would keep a bottle of Scotch in her bottom drawer just as Lou Grant did on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Phyllis Coates’s Lois was the chick that Sinatra sang about in The Lady Is A Tramp. Phyllis Coates’s Lois was Katherine Graham of the Washington Post.

I believe that Coates’ portrayal of Lois was based on how she first appeared in Action Comics #1. That Lois was snarky, resourceful, sarcastic, brave, contemptuous of Clark Kent, and didn’t moon over Superman; it is said that Siegel and Shuster based her personality and character on Rosalind Russell in His Gal Friday. She smelled a story and went after it. Yeah, Superman saved her – but she was thankful, not all googly-eyed and mushy because of it. (This was the Lois who also appeared in the Fleisher animated shorts, which can easily be found on the web.)

Bottom line, Lois is the most underappreciated, and in my humble opinion, most badly written character in comics. Currently she is a producer on a television news-entertainment show; sorry, no way, José. Lois is Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, or Christine Amanpour on CNN. Lois is Candy Crowley at the Presidential debate, fact-checking Romney’s statements about Obama. Lois is Helen Thomas in her prime, with her own seat in the front row at Presidential news conferences. Lois is Diane Sawyer, or Andrea Mitchell, or Soledad O’Brian.

Damn, if I could get my hands on her…

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten Talks Arrow, Talks Halloween

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis?

 

Mindy Newell: Trust Me, This Is About Comics. Really.

There’s a lot of hogwash being said by Republicans these days concerning women. Legitimate rape. (What the hell is that?) A woman has the ability to shut down her ovaries if she doesn’t want to get pregnant. (Gee, I wish I had known that.) Contraception should not be covered by health insurance. (But Viagra and other anti-erectile dysfunction drugs are.) A mother’s life is no longer at risk when pregnant, so an abortion to save her life is not necessary. (Placental abruption, preeclampsia, eclampsia, peripartum cardiomyopathy and other cardiac problems, thromboembolytic disease, diabetes, seizures, bleeding disorder, genetic disorders.) A woman has no right to equal pay for equal work. (She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Invisible Woman, have you checked your paychecks lately?) Women in binders. (Nobody puts Baby in a binder.)

I personally cannot understand any woman voting the Republican ticket right now. Which got me to wondering…

What side of the aisle do some of the women of comics sit on?

Lois Lane: Journalistic integrity is her middle name. I imagine Lois being a frequent guest on MSNBC, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, as well as having guest-hosted SNL more than once. She’s also friends with Joan Walsh of Salon.com, Maureen Down and Gail Collins of the New York Times, Candy Crowley and Christine Amanpour of CNN, not to mention Andrea Mitchell, Katie Couric, and Rachel Maddow. Voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008, proud of Hillary’s work as Secretary of State, and a strong supporter of Barak Obama. Decision: Registered Democrat.

Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel): Hmm, this is a tough one. Given her Air Force brat upbringing and her own service in the United States Air Force, the natural inclination is that Carol is a staunch Republican, as the Republicans have long been believed to be the stronger party on defense. However, Carol’s heroes are Amelia Earheart, Jacqueline Cochrane, Geraldlyn Cobb, Sally Ride and now Colonel Jeannie Flynn Leavitt, the first female fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and I can’t see her being behind the Republicans these days because of their stance on women and women’s rights when it comes to equal pay for equal work. And I’m positive she doesn’t want anyone sticking an ultrasound probe up her vagina if it’s not medically necessary. Still, I’m sure she’s voted Republican in the past. But I think she also admires Obama’s tough stance on terrorism and his ability to quietly and efficiently green-light the hunt for Bin Laden, which resulted in his (good riddance!) death; and although I think she’s confused about what happened in Libya (just like the rest of us), she knows that fuck-ups happen. Decision: Independent.

Susan Storm Richards (Invisible Woman): I’m sure Susan, along with her husband, is heavily invested in technology in the market, and I’m betting the Richards (not to mention the entire Fantastic Four team) lost mucho dineros in 2008 when the market crashed. Still, I bet her hubby sits on the boards of some of the major defense contractor industries, such as General Electric, JPL, and Boeing. Still, while her husband may be strongly pro-Wall Street and a staunch Republican, I’m thinking they have a marriage like James Carville and Mary Matalin, only in reverse, with Susan, with her strong feelings about women’s rights, especially equal pay for equal work and pro-choice advocacy, working behind the scenes for Obama, throwing fundraisers and donating money. Decision: Democrat.

Wonder Woman: This one is easy for me, since I believe Wonder Woman is firmly against abortion. Not that she can vote, since she’s only got a green card (I presume.) Decision: Republican.

Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk): Jennifer is a lawyer. She’s probably met Elena Kagan and Sandra Day O’Conner, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows Gloria Allred, Judge Judy, and Nancy Grace. I’m thinking she believes in the idea of the Constitution as a living document, able to mature and grow, so she’s s definitely not a fan of Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, or Robert Bork. Chief Justice Roberts’s decision on the Affordable Health Care Act as constitutional probably surprised her as well as everybody else, knowing his legal record. I’m thinking that she believes Roe vs. Wade is now the de facto law of the land, so she would never work for a client who wants to overturn it, though I’m not sure if she’s pro-choice. I think she hates the way the Tea Party, which has been absorbed into the Republican Party, quotes the intents of the Founding Fathers as if they were there. She thinks Sarah Palin is a joke and feels sorry for John McCain, who ruined his long and honorable career by picking her as a running mate. (She would have voted for him otherwise.) Has voted Republican in the past, but leans Democrat these days. Decision: Registered Independent.

In closing, there’s terrific video over at Jezebel.com that I recommend every woman reading this to watch – and pull up a chair for the man (or men) in your life. It’ll make you laugh…

And think.

Oh, and for the record, I’m a registered Democrat.

As if you couldn’t guess.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten Watches Green Arrow

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis… We hope.

 

Mindy Newell: The Right Stuff

There is a wonderful thing happening for me and other girls and women who read comics.

A new hero has appeared.

As frequent readers of this column should remember, Kara Zor-el, Supergirl, was the character and hero that rocked my pre-adolescent world. She was smart, brave, and not only did she have the same powers as Superman but she was his secret weapon, which is a powerful message to little girls. And yes, she was pretty, which I don’t think is a sexist thing to say. Everybody wants to be “pretty” when they grow up. Okay, little boys generally don’t want to be pretty when they grow up, but I don’t think they want to look like Quasimodo either.

Not that little girls and women have been without heroes since Kara first popped out of her rocket in Action Comics #252 in May, 1959. Wonder Woman, Princess Diana of Themiscrya, has been with us since All-Star Comics in December 1941.   Jean Grey debuted as Marvel Girl in X-Men #1 in September 1963, and Storm – Ororo Munro – was created in Giant Size X-Men #1 in May 1975. Kitty Pryde – she of the 1,001 names–joined the Uncanny X-Men as Sprite in January 1980. The introduction of the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics #242 in April 1958, included Saturn Girl, a.k.a. Imra Ardeen.

And then there was Carol Danvers.

Major Carol Danvers of the United States Air Force first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 in March 1968. In 1977, Carol was empowered by the fusion of her body with Kree genes, and became Ms. Marvel, appearing in the eponymously titled Ms. Marvel #1 in January 1977. She has also been known as Binary and Warbird.

And then, in July 2012, Carol Danvers accepted the mantle of Captain Marvel

Kelly Sue DeConnick, as writer of the series, has taken the ball and run with it. In fighter jock parlance, DeConnick – and through her, Carol Danvers – is pushing the envelope of what it means to be a woman and a hero. To quote DeConnick from her interview with Corrina Lawson in Lawson’s Geek Mom column for Wired magazine, “My pitch was Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager.”

As the daughter of P-51 fighter jock, I get it. Completely.

Carol’s not looking for medals. She’s not looking for accolades. Yeah, she’s chasing those demons that live beyond the sound barrier. Yeah, she’s out there every day pushing the envelope, punching holes in the sky. But she’s just doing what she’s gotta do. Doing it ‘cause, well…’cause she’s doing it.

Knocking out Absorbing Man by smothering his air supply with impermeable sash.

Comparing the hurt she’s gonna feel knocking out a gi-normous alien eyeball to the pain of a mascara wand in her own eyeball.

Girls and women get that.

We’re out there every day, not looking for accolades, not looking for medals. Just doing our jobs. Juggling family and work and relationships and life and just doing it.

‘Cause that’s what we do.

‘Cause that’s what Carol Danvers does. And if we said to her, “Man, Carol, you surely are our hero.”?

I think she’d just shrug her shrug her shoulders and say, “Whatever.”

‘Cause that’s what a hero does.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten Survives New York

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis Survives Paris

 

Mindy Newell: Fly Girls

Kelly Sue DeConnick rocks!

Women had made their mark as pilots well before World War II. Amelia Earhart, Jacqueline Cochran, Nancy Harkness Love, Bessie Coleman, and Harriet Quimby were some of the women holding records in aviation.

When war broke out in Europe, Cochran, Harkness and other women went to England to volunteer to fly in the Air Transport Auxiliary, which had been using female pilots as ferriers since 1940. These women were the first American women to fly military aircraft – Spitfires, Typhoons, Hudsons, Mitchells, Bienhams, Oxfords, Walruses, and Sea Otters under combat conditions.

In 1942, now in the war, the United States was in desperate straits for combat pilots. After much political maneuvering and bickering, it was decided to train women as ferry pilots, with Jackie Cochran enlisted to direct the program. 25,000 women applied; only 1,830 were accepted; of these, 1,074 passed the training and became Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPS. The WASPS flew over 60 million miles, piloting everything from trainers to fighters like the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustangs and the heavy bombers: B-17s, B-26s, and B-29s. They ferried new planes long distances from factories to military bases and departure points across the country. They tested newly overhauled planes. And they towed targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting  – with live ammunition.

In 1959, an independent researcher named William Randolph Lovelace, who was part of the team developing the tests for NASA’s first male astronauts (who became known as the Mercury 7 – see or read The Right Stuff) became interested in finding how women would stand up to the same conditions; in 1960, he invited accomplished pilot Geraldlyn “Jerrie” Cobb to submit herself to this challenge.

The tests ranged from general physicals and X-rays to weird things like swallowing a rubber tube to test stomach acids, undergoing electrical shocks to test the ulnar nerve (found in the forearm), having ice water shot into their ears to test vertigo and reaction time, and dozens of other weird oddities. (See or read The Right Stuff to get an idea of the regimen.)

She became the first American woman to undergo and pass all three phases of the testing.

19 more women were invited into Lovelace’s program, which was funded by WASP director Jacqueline Cochran.

13 passed.

They became known as the Mercury 13.

I bring this up because writer Kelly Sue DeConnick is doing something remarkable in the new Captain Marvel series. Without publicity or blowing of trumpets, DeConnick is rewriting the possibilities – no, the actualities – of “women in comics.”  Using the proud history of women in aviation, including the WASPs and the Mercury 13, DeConnick and her team, which includes artist Dexter Soy and editor Stephen Wacker, are presenting women who are just as smart, just as stupid, just as capable, just as frightened, just as full of bravado, just as confused, just as sure-minded, and just as fucked-up as any of their male counterparts.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth


And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;


Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth


of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things


You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung


High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,


I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air….



High Flight

John Gillepsie Magee, Jr.

By the way, Captain Marvel rocks!

Fly, girl, fly!!

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten, Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon

TUESDAY EVENING: Michael Davis In France

 

Mindy Newell: See Ya, Hub

“I hate endings!” said the Doctor to Amy (in last night’s episode of Doctor Who, “The Angels Take Manhattan”) as he ripped out the last page of the novel he was reading. The Doctor always rips out the final page of a book, he tells Amy, because he doesn’t want the story to end. The Doctor wants the story to go on. He wants to forget his near-immortal life, he wants to forget that in the end his companions always leave him because they never have enough time and he will always have too much. He wants to forget that he is the last of the Time Lords, the end of the line.

But we are not Time Lords. We know endings come. We know our ending is coming, one way or another, sooner or later. (Hopefully much, much later!) And I think that one of the ways we come to grips with our final denouement is by telling and reading stories because stories end.  And our lives are stories, aren’t they? And don’t we always want to know how the story ends?

Endings can be the reasons we keep turning the pages of the book, even if it’s 2 A.M. and we have to get up to go to work in three hours, or why we watch a movie for the hundred-and-first time.

Endings can enlighten. They can surprise, they can awe, they can make us cry. Endings can make us angry, and they can drive us crazy.

Endings can be poignant and bittersweet. Endings can really suck the big one. Or they can be both at the same time.

In no particular order, here are a few of my favorite endings:

The Gift (Joss Whedon, Buffy The Vampire Slayer): “She saved the world a lot.”

The Death Of Supergirl (Marv Wolfman And George Perez, Crisis On Infinite Earths #7): Farewell, Kara Zor-el, the avatar of my childhood dreams.

The Nine Billion Names Of God (Arthur C. Clarke): “Overhead, without an fuss, the stars were going out.”

Nightfall (Isaac Asimov): The stars come out.

Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? (Alan Moore, Curt Swan, & George Perez, Superman #423 And Action #583): The end of an era.

The Lottery (Shirley Jackson): “’It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.”

An Officer And A Gentleman: Hey, what girl doesn’t want to be swept up in the arms of a gorgeous Naval officer and taken away from her drudgery-filled life?

A Guy Named Joe (Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne): “That’s my girl. And that’s my boy.”

Saving Private Ryan: (Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, with a cameo by Ted Danson): “P-51’s, sir. Tank Busters.”

The Way We Were (Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford): “See ya, Hub.”

Endings.

We are not Time Lords. We want to know the end of the story. Last night, in “The Angels Take Manhattan,” the adventures of Amelia Pond and Rory Williams as they travelled through time and space with the Gallifreyan came to well, an end.

But their lives went on.

All our lives are stories, aren’t they?

See ya, Hub.

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis, more or less

 

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