Tagged: editorial

Dennis O’Neil: Puzzles

O'Neil Art 130110Show of hands: who here works the New York Times crossword puzzle? Okay, put ‘em down. Those of you who raised your hands, and you know who you are (though I don’t) might have a definition for the word “olio,” which has been known to appear in the puzzle now and again, and nowhere else that I’ve ever seen. The rest of you? Well, maybe I just shrugged. (How can you ever be sure?)

Anyway, today’s blatherthon will be a bit of an olio.

Which we’ll begin with an item about, yes, a crossword puzzle. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart enlisted the puzzle’s editor, Will Shortz, in helping him propose to the lady who’s now Mrs. Stewart. Together, they concocted a puzzle that contained the proposal and gave it to the object of Jon’s affections. You can guess the rest. And is this not one of the coolest proposals ever?

Had lunch Saturday with my old pal/colleague Carl Potts, who informed me that another one-time colleague, Bobbie Chase, has joined her old boss, Bob Harris, in the enchanted precincts of DC Comics editorial suite. I knew both Bob and Bobbie when I worked for Marvel Comics long ago. The comics biz thus continues to be a revolving door kind of enterprise with many creative and editorial serfs going from one company to the other and maybe back again. Yet both companies have managed to retain their identities. Curious, huh? Any business majors looking for a thesis topic? Or do you disagree? Could I be wrong? Did I just shudder? (How can you ever be sure?)

Notice the italicized word in the previous paragraph? If not, maybe it isn’t there and Crankus, the evil god of technology, has struck again! Italics were absent from a sentence in last week’s blatherthon, spirited away somewhere between this computer and your screen. Gone! Pfut! And does this mean that some did not get the joke the italic was supposed to serve, and did legions weep?

Notice the exclamation point in the previous paragraph? You did. Ah, Crankus is napping. But did you know that when I crept into the comics business 47 years ago, give or take, we writers were instructed to end (here comes another italic) every sentence with an exclaimer? Enough to make a (punctuation-loving) grammarian gag, isn’t it? Newly minted young snot English major that I was back then, I bristled, but so slightly that no one noticed and besides, the guys in suits (italics alert!) did have a reason for the rule. We were told that the printing was so crude that ordinary periods might not transfer onto the page.

About those guys in suits: that was pretty much everyone who had a desk job. First day, I got my orders: suit and tie, though maybe nice jacket and tie might have eked past muster. Bit of a problem for me because, though I was used to wearing ties, I didn’t have a suit. Roy Thomas took me to Macy’s and I dropped a fast thirty bucks or so on new haberdashery. At last, the big time…

RECOMMENDED LEARNING EXPERIENCE: The Spiritual Brain: Science and the Religious Experience. Lecture series presented by Dr. Andrew Newberg, from The Teaching Company/Great Courses.

Friday: Martha Thomases Gets Soapy

 

REVIEW: Cardboard

Cardboard
By Doug TenNapel
283 pages, Scholastic Graphix, $12.99

I find Doug TenNapel a maddeningly inconsistent storyteller. He goes from the wonderful Ghostopolis to the disappointing Bad Island while delivering inventive graphics aided with strong color. Now we have Cardboard, which starts off with such promise and right around the halfway mark things spiral entirely out of control and become way too over the top.

Mike is an independent carpenter who recently lost his wife and the sour economy means he’s inching towards bankruptcy. We open on his son Cam’s birthday as Mike, with a mere seventy-eight cents to his name, desperately seeks work to afford a present. Despondently he heads home until he encounters Gideon, a roadside huckster who sells him a cardboard box for exactly seventy-eight cents.  When Mike complains it’s empty, Gideon screams, “Empty? It’s full! Full of ideas…projects…adventure!” But of course, it comes with rules which will later drive the story.

The box is at first skeptically received until the two take tools to it and suddenly it is transformed into a boxer that magically comes to life. Bill the boxer comes complete with a rudimentary vocabulary and intelligence making his a step above an adorable puppy. He follows orders and is out mowing the grass before you know it, earning Cam the enmity of his spoiled goth-inspired friend Marcus, accompanied by his sidekick Pink Eye. A squirt of water soaks the cardboard man and brings him near death until Mike uses the scraps to build a device that emits fresh cardboard, which is then shaped to replacement parts and Bill lives.

But Marcus wants the device and his own cardboard man and from there we begin the slippery slope down to lunacy. Marcus of course gets the device and uses it without understanding the rules and just like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, one becomes many and all set to work. Given their intelligence, they decide to rule the world and the neighborhood is taken over by the growing numbers of cardboard simulacrums of people.

Of course, a garden hose would have nipped this in the bud at the outset but Mike and Cam appear to have lost their logical thought processes by this point. And this sort of lack in internal logic, which doomed the previous outing, also comes to haunt this work which showed such lovely potential at the outset.

Mike is despondent over his dead wife, feeling like a failure in raising Cam and is totally oblivious to the mutual attraction he has with his next door neighbor, the single Tina.  We’re told how broke he is early on – not enough money to buy food let alone a present, but that thread is instantly dropped until the happy ending. The growing intelligence and development of Bill the Boxer as a character started off well but got shoved to side for the kinetic action that overwhelms the narrative. Mike, Cam and Bill are the most rounded characters while Marcus, hid Dad, and Tina are as two-dimensional as the cardboard that starts this off.

Just how did the cardboard become infused with magic? Gideon gives an incomplete answer first saying it is a result of alien or alien magicians that also can understand quantum particle physics. We never quite know or how Gideon obtained this wondrous object.  In the grand scheme of things, its largely inconsequential to the overblown action.

TenNapel’s artwork is quite good and he tells his stories well, aided with superb color from Der-Shing Helmer. He acknowledges the editorial contributions that he felt made the book work but frankly, it needed serious editorial guidance to retain the emotional core which was sacrificed for too much cardboard plotting.

Mike Gold: Vote, Damn It!

Ever since we resumed our sundry weekly columns I’ve asked our writers to keep their focus on our popular culture in general and, as often as possible, on comics in specific. I have no problem linking the events of the day to our culture; indeed, that usually brings a nice contemporary perspective to our cheap thrills. At worse, it makes for a fun rant.

I commend our ComicMix columnists for their faithful cooperation and effort. And so, now, I’m going to violate my own edict. I’ve done this little rant ever since those hallowed days of the real First Comics three decades ago. Somehow, I even managed to get away with it at DC Comics. So, true to my Ashkenazi roots, I am going to maintain this tradition.

Next Tuesday is election day. In telling you this, I’m assuming your teevee set is broken. We get to pick us all of our Congresspeople, a third of our senators, a petulance of governors, a shitload of local officials, and, oh yes, a President of the United States. All are important in that each winner will have his or her foot on our necks and his or her hands in our pockets. We are given the holy right to choose our oppressors.

“But Mike,” you might say (if you’re being polite), “if they’re just going to oppress us, why should we bother?”

Because somebody is going to win. Good, bad, and otherwise – and it will be good, bad, and otherwise – as of this writing either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is going to win. You might think they are both jerks. Maybe so, but one of those jerks will be sworn in as President this coming January 20th. That’s an absolute fact.

And odds are overwhelming that the winner will be choosing the next member of the Supreme Court. Maybe the next two.

You know the Supreme Court. The folks who are the last word on all of our laws and who, for years now, have decided a great many things by a one-vote margin? Yeah, those folks. They even decide elections. Whoever wins the election next week is likely to bring about a fundamental change in our nation’s laws and procedures, one that will have an effect for decades and decades to come.

Are you opposed to abortion? How about our medical care laws? Corporations-as-people? Super-PACs? Incarceration of marijuana users? Next Tuesday is your big chance to put your left foot in, your left foot out, your right foot in, and shake the nation all about.

I do not care whom you vote for. Well, that’s a total lie; of course I do. But that’s not the point here. No matter whether you’re smart enough to agree with my politics or you’re some kind of stalking Neanderthal, this Tuesday get off your ass and vote!

If you decide not to do so, you lose your moral right to bitch. And that, dear friends, is among the greatest of all pleasures.

Next week, back to life’s more important matters.

Mike Gold is ComicMix’s editor-in-chief, and this was a bone fide editorial.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Review: “Marvel Comics: The Untold Story” by Sean Howe

Marvel Comics: The Untold StoryDespite the massive mainstream success of comic-to-screen adaptations like Marvel’s [[[The Avengers]]] and DC’s [[[The Dark Knight Rises]]], there hasn’t been much serious scholarship or long-form journalism around the superhero comic book industry in the last few decades. Any time a newspaper or magazine takes a crack at it, the stories tend to be ego-inflating looks at how a chosen few grizzled visionaries (usually Stan Lee and only Stan Lee) created an entire industry out of whole cloth and had the time of their life doing it, while publisher-sponsored histories tend to focus on the characters, rather than the creators.

And it’s the creators who are key to the new book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, wherein author Sean Howe mercifully forgoes the breathless “Excelsiors” and “Face Fronts” of the officially-sanctioned or poorly-conceived histories of years past for an extremely thorough and immensely accessible look at the comic publishing titan’s history, from the early days of Timely and Atlas all the way through the company’s purchase by Disney in 2009.

What Howe demonstrates, knowingly or otherwise, is that much of the dialogue around superhero comics today is nothing we haven’t gone through before. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story characterizes the House of Ideas as being stuck in something of a loop: Creators wrest creative control from editorial one way or another, until Marvel’s skittish owner (from Martin Goodman to New World Pictures to Ike Perlmutter and others, depending on the year) pressures editorial to exert more control in an effort to protect the licensing viability of the company’s stable of intellectual property.

To that end, while Howe rightfully devotes plenty of the story to Jack Kirby, his chronic mistreatment and marginalization by Marvel editorial and corporate, his legal struggles against Marvel, and his increasingly strained relationship with Stan Lee and odd reconciliation later in life, he also spends plenty of time on Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber and his disillusioned self-imposed exile to independent comics. Howe’s reporting and narrative paints Gerber as the poster child for the creator’s rights movement, abused by a callous corporate comics publisher and denied the copyright to his own creation.

But to Howe’s credit, he did a staggering amount of research for this history, and the book reflects it: For every controversial event or personality, Howe presents the other side the story. While the legendary Todd McFarlane-led uprising of superstar Marvel artists against editorial that would lead to the formation of Image Comics is well-represented, Howe’s interviews with Fabian Nicieza and Tom DeFalco tend to paint the Image founders as spoiled, self-entitled children. It’s a fine line to walk between presenting these views and endorsing either of them, but Howe walks it admirably. The sole exception here may be Howe’s representation of creators like Jim Shooter and Steve Ditko, but neither of them sat down with Howe for this book, and if Howe couldn’t find anybody at Marvel past or present willing to say much in the way of kind words about them, that’s hardly the author’s fault – but the sections devoted to the two legends tend to come off as extremely uncharitable as a result.

And while on the subject of Howe’s research, it’s clear that he didn’t take half-measures, and it’s a testament to his skill as a biographer that his frequent digressions into anecdotes about former editor-in-chief Marc Gruenwald’s office pranks, the secret revealed after John Verpoorten’s untimely death, Morrie Kuramoto’s friendly rivalry with fellow proofreader Danny Crespi, and other Marvel staffers don’t break up the narrative.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Stan Lee much, and that’s for a very simple reason. Possibly one of the more subtle, but daring, choices Howe makes is to downplay Marvel’s founding editor, painting him as an often-absentee boss who gave up on comics early in the company’s history and tried to parlay his status as the public face of a medium into a career in Hollywood and beyond. He’s a constant presence in Howe’s telling of the Marvel story, but often only in the background, making more of an impact as a showman and mascot than he ever did as an editor or writer. He’s not unkind to Lee, exactly, but he comes off as almost dismissive, choosing instead to focus on the struggles between the Marvel creators and editors actually publishing the books, and the company’s ownership – a struggle Lee hardly figures in to after leaving Fantastic Four, the odd lawsuit aside.

Howe’s documentarian writing style can sometimes come off as a little dry, and he only discusses specific characters and storylines in the context of Marvel’s business at that point in time and what it meant for the company. The infamous “Heroes Reborn” event, for example, is cross-examined in terms of Marvel’s relationship with Image and its demoralizing force in the Marvel bullpen, rather than the issues themselves.

In short, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story is thought-provoking stuff that has a lot to teach comic book fans new and old. But it’s definitely more Ken Burns than Morgan Spurlock.

IDW PUBLISHING’S DECEMBER PULPS

  • News
  • October 8, 2012

IDW Publishing has released their pulp-related December 2012 Solicitations. Bookstores and Comic Shops order these books now for December in-store date. Make sure you let your store know what books you’re interested in seeing on the shelves.

X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan, Vol. 5
Archie Goodwin (w) • Al Williamson (a & c)
Al Williamson creates what is arguably his best artwork of the 1970s as he and Archie Goodwin wrap up their run of Secret Agent Corrigan. This final volume contains all strips from June 13, 1977–February 2, 1980.
HC • FC • $49.99 • 288 pages • 11” x 10” • ISBN 978-1-61377-542-4
Bullet points:
• Completes Al Williamson’s and Archie Goodwin’s run on X-9!

Offered Again!
X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan, Vol. 1 • FC • $49.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60010-697-2
X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan, Vol. 2 • FC • $49.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60010-871-6
X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan, Vol. 3 • FC • $49.99 • ISBN: 978-1-61377-092-4
X-9: Secret Agent Corrigan, Vol. 4 • FC • $49.99 • ISBN: 978-1-61377-236-2

Joe Palooka # 1 (of 6)
Mike Bullock & Matt Triano (w) • Fernando Peniche (a) • Jace McTier (c)
The legendary Joe Palooka name returns in this all-new version, as Joe fights for his freedom and for his life around the world. Set in the violent and dangerous world of top- tier mixed martial arts, this series will get you in its grip and not let go until you tap out.
Accused of a murder he didn’t commit, Nick Davis flees a police manhunt, picks up the name Joe Palooka in a Tijuana tough-man contest and then travels the world seeking to clear his name while making a name for himself at the same time.
FC • 32 pages • $3.99
*Variant Cover:
Marat Mychaels variant cover!
Bullet points:
• Top UFC superstars are on board and the first full-length MMA comic book ever has MMA and UFC fans BUZZING in anticipation of Joe Palooka’s release.

Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer Artist’s Edition New Printing
Dave Stevens (w & a & c)
Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer: Artist’s Edition was the first Artist’s Edition and it was a runaway hit, selling out in near-record time. Now, due to incredible demand from both fans and retailers, IDW is bringing this Eisner Award-winning book back with a snazzy new edition! This Artist’s Edition collects both Rocketeer graphic novels in their entirety. Nearly every page has been scanned from Dave Stevens’ beautiful original art!
HC • BW • $75.00 net discount item • 140 Pages • 12” x 17” • ISBN: 978-1-61377-572-1
Bullet points
• What is an Artist’s Edition?
• AN ARTIST’S EDITION PRESENTS COMPLETE STORIES WITH EACH PAGE SCANNED FROM THE ACTUAL ORIGINAL ART.
• While appearing to be in black & white, each page has been scanned in COLOR to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—for example, you are able to clearly see paste-overs, blue pencils in the art, editorial notes, art corrections. Each page is printed the same size as drawn, and the paper selected is as close as possible to the original art board.
• See these classic tales as they first appeared: On Dave Stevens’ drawing board!

Michael WM. Kaluta: Sketchbook Series, Vol. 3
N/A (w) • Michael WM. Kaluta (a & c)
The third volume of the Michael Wm. Kaluta Sketchbook series continues to showcase the acclaimed artists lovely drawings, doodles, preliminaries and illustrations. All scanned by the artist from his personal sketchbooks, and nearly all has never seen the light of day before now. This book, and the entire series, are a treasure trove of gorgeous Kaluta art!
TPB • B&W • $9.99 • 48 pages • 8.5” x 11” • ISBN 978-1-61377-536-3

You can learn more about IDW and their books at www.idwpublishing.com.

willie-joe-back-home-by-bill-mauldin-1058592

REVIEW: “Willie & Joe: Back Home” by Bill Mauldin

willie-joe-back-home-by-bill-mauldin-1058592This book — collecting the cartoons Mauldin created for syndication from July of 1945 through the end of 1946 — cannot be fully appreciated by just reading those cartoons. Luckily, Willie & Joe: Back Home also includes a long, in-depth introduction by Mauldin’s biographer Todd DePastino (Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front, which I reviewed in a round-up of comics-creator bios), which explains exactly how, in those cartoons, Mauldin was systematically dismantling all of his good will and success from the war years by doing the one thing an editorial cartoonist must: fearlessly telling the truth as he sees it, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.

Post-war America didn’t want to hear what Mauldin had to say; it was ready to turn back to isolationism, crony capitalism, racism, and a casual disdain for most of the rest of the world. But Mauldin had America’s ear after his hugely popular and fearlessly honest Up Front war cartoons, and he was going to keep saying what he had to say as long as he had that ear, no matter what. It didn’t last that long, and it ruined the career he had at the time — Mauldin could have made a fortune, and settled into a long and very comfortable life as a mildly left-wing all-American cartoonist, if he’d bent with the wind — but it’s a glorious thing to see with the proper background.

The worst thing, for a modern eye, is how obvious and uncontroversial many of Mauldin’s points seem now: yes, the FBI really should have worried more about lynchings, and war profiteers were bad, and education is a good thing. So Back Home would not be nearly so impressive without DePastino’s introduction — you need to see what Mauldin was fighting against to realize how hard he was fighting.

Mauldin’s art was as strong as his writing here, too: the early cartoons here especially have a loose, flowing line and lots of ominous, slashing blacks. But it’s the subject of the cartoons — and what that implies about the world in which those things had to be asserted loudly — that has the most impact here. Back Home is a fine book by one of the 20th century’s best cartoonists, and an important historical document — as much as, if not more than, his more famous wartime cartoons.

Related articles
Join the CBLDF Website Team!

Join the CBLDF Website Team!

  • News
  • August 15, 2012

Just last week, the CBLDF website was recognized by Tom Spurgeon with The Comics Reporter for our “content explosion,” and we want to do more! CBLDF is looking for contributors to add to our already spectacular roster of bloggers. Whether you’re a journalism student looking for experience, a passionate fan of comics and Free Speech, or an educator and librarian who wants to share your experiences, CBLDF is looking for your voice!

Each member of our website team will be asked to identify and/or generate content about relevant Free Speech issues for www.cbldf.org on a weekly or semiweekly basis under editorial guidance from the Web Editor. The Web Editor may assign specific articles for coverage, but contributors will otherwise have flexibility in choosing what they write about. Our current contributors cover stories and generate original posts that run the gamut from the history of comics censorship to the international suppression of cartooning voices.

The blogging positions are voluntary. Articles will be seen by visitors to www.cbldf.org and cross-posted on CBLDF’s Facebook page, Twitter feed, and weekly newsletter, ensuring that several thousand people will see the articles. Contributors will be able to work from anywhere, set their own schedules, build writing and blogging experience, and boost their resumes. In doing so, contributors will support the important First Amendment work of CBLDF.

If you are enthusiastic about the First Amendment, a good writer, and able to take editorial direction, you’re a perfect candidate — apply today!

To apply, please send your resume and a writing sample to betsy.gomez@cbldf.org.

ABOUT THE COMIC BOOK LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment rights of the comics artform and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers. The CBLDF provides legal referrals, representation, advice, assistance, and education in furtherance of these goals.

Related articles
Archie Comics hires Jim Sokolowski; promotes Alex Segura, Harold Buchholz, Paul Kaminski

Archie Comics hires Jim Sokolowski; promotes Alex Segura, Harold Buchholz, Paul Kaminski

  • News
  • June 26, 2012

Jim Sokolowski, formerly of Marvel and DC Comics, joins Archie Comics as Senior Vice President – Sales and Business Development. “Ski” will oversee the company’s sales efforts in the direct, bookstore, digital and newsstand markets and guide plans to expand the reach of the company’s iconic characters and storylines. “Ski” brings a wealth of experience to the company, having previously served as Chief Operating Officer at Marvel and Executive Director of Publishing Operations at DC Comics.

In addition to the new faces, Archie Comics is proud to announce the promotion of a few key staff members to executive positions.

• Harold Buchholz has been promoted from Executive Director of Publishing and Operations to Senior Vice President – Publishing and Operations. Buchholz will continue to oversee the company’s distribution, printing and packaging in order to maximize sales through various channels. Thanks to Buchholz’s diligent efforts, Archie has seen a significant spike in graphic novel output, profitability and visibility – reaching a previously untapped number of new and returning fans. Prior to Archie, Buchholz worked with Jimmy Gownley and Renaissance Press on the popular Amelia Rules! line of graphic novels and was president of Acredale Media, an all-ages comic book print brokerage and consulting service. In addition to his work at Archie, Buchholz is also a cartoonist and writer, and has taught animation and entrepreneurship on the college level.

• Paul Kaminski, editor of SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, SONIC UNIVERSE, MEGA MAN, STAN LEE AND THE MIGHTY SEVEN and NEW CRUSADERS, has been promoted to Executive Director of Editorial. In his new role, Paul will oversee the editorial side of Archie’s graphic novel and comic book output and coordinate the editorial side of Archie’s entire line of titles and imprints. Kaminski saw Archie’s licensed titles, including SONIC and MEGA MAN, rise to new heights of success during his tenure as editor, and will bring his keen editorial insight and managerial style to the company as a whole. A BFA graduate of the School of Visual Arts, Kaminski brings a lifelong love of comics, music and pop culture to his work.

• Alex Segura has been promoted from Executive Director of Publicity and Marketing to Vice President – Publicity and Marketing, and will continue to oversee the company’s external messaging to the press, social media and marketing outlets. Since his arrival at Archie, the company has seen an unprecedented spike in attention and critical praise, including regular and focused news, feature and review attention in the mainstream, book trade and pop culture press, including THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, CBS NEWS, THE DAILY MAIL and more. Before coming to Archie, Segura worked at DC Comics. In addition to his publicity and marketing work for the company, Segura was also the writer of the best-selling ARCHIE MEETS KISS storyline among other stories.

Martha Thomases: Chicks ‘n’ Pixs

This week’s column is about two things:

1) Video games, about which I know almost nothing, and

2) Sexism in pop culture, about which I know far too much.

My son, the genius, recently sent me a link to a Kickstarter project he supports, Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, which will create a series of videos discussing the way women are portrayed in video games. Always delighted to encourage research and intelligent discussion on a subject dear to my heart, I was pleased to contribute (and also, extremely proud of myself for raising such a mensch). The project had already greatly exceeded its initial fundraising goals, but I wanted to be there in solidarity.

If you click the link, you’ll notice that the woman behind the project, Anita Sarkeesian, is articulate, well-informed, and calm. She talks reasonably about her goals, her opinions, and her research. If she rages hysterically in private (and I know I certainly do), you can’t tell from her public face.

She certainly sounds more calm that Val and I did in our somewhat similar critique on women in comics here.

And yet, she inspires a veritable tsunami of rage in people who disagree with her. On YouTube and online forums, men don’t just object to her point of view, but to her very existence. A group even hacked her Wikipedia page in an attempt to dehumanize her.

I’m not talking about the men who say, “But men aren’t portrayed accurately either in video games!” I disagree (men are presented as stereotypes, true, but in much more varied stereotypes), but that is a reasonable level of discourse. I’m talking about the men who say she’s ugly, or she just needs to get laid, or that she is nothing but a stupid female body part.

It’s ridiculous and it’s revealing of the poverty of our discourse. Nobody is forcing any gamer to watch these videos. Nobody is threatening to take away their precious sexist video games. Someone is simply responding to these games with honesty and intelligence. If you don’t like it, don’t listen.

When I was in high school I wrote an editorial about what was then a newly resurgent feminist movement. I took the radical position that calling women “chicks” or “tomatoes” made as much sense as calling men “cocks” or “zucchinis.” In response, I received more than 200 anonymous notes calling me a lesbian, a girl who, in what I’m sure they thought was a clever turn of phrase, “just wanted to be on top.” I didn’t even know what lesbians were, and after someone told me, I still couldn’t figure out what they did (I was a very naïve 16 year old). They didn’t want to refute my argument – they wanted to shut me up.

You can see how well that worked.

“But Martha,” you say. “It’s just video games. It’s just comics. It’s just movies. What difference does it make?” The difference is that the way we talk about women in our society is terrible, and it isn’t limited to popular culture. It affects our political landscape and that limits what we can do for each other. If we describe women as only those-who-are-different-from-men and not as individual humans, we miss out on a lot of talent.

We don’t have talent to spare.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman Fires Back!

 

Join the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as a Website Contributor!

Join the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as a Website Contributor!

Are you a journalism student looking for blogging experience? Or a fan of comics and manga with great writing skills and something to say about Free Speech? Are you an educator or librarian who’s a dedicated supporter of the First Amendment? CBLDF would like to include your voice on our website!

CBLDF is looking for contributors to add to our roster of bloggers. Each member of our website team will be asked to identify and/or generate content about relevant Free Speech issues for www.cbldf.org on a weekly or semiweekly basis under editorial guidance from the Web Editor. The Web Editor may assign specific articles for coverage, but contributors will otherwise have flexibility in choosing what they write about.

The blogging positions are voluntary. Articles will be seen by visitors to www.cbldf.org and cross-posted on CBLDF’s Facebook page, Twitter feed, and weekly newsletter, ensuring that several thousand people will see the articles. Contributors will be able to work from anywhere, set their own schedules, build writing and blogging experience, and boost their resumes. In doing so, contributors will support the important First Amendment work of CBLDF.

If you are enthusiastic about the First Amendment, a good writer, and able to take editorial direction, you’re a perfect candidate — apply today!

To apply, please send your resume and a writing sample to betsy.gomez@cbldf.org.

ABOUT THE COMIC BOOK LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment rights of the comics artform and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers. The CBLDF provides legal referrals, representation, advice, assistance, and education in furtherance of these goals.

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