Molly Jackson: The Good, the Bad(?), and the Interesting

Ashley A. Woods

The past few days of comic news has been a wowza of roller coaster articles and announcements. I spent hours trying to decide what topic to tackle. Which sucked. A lot. It was way too difficult to settle for one tidbit to chat about. Then I realized, “My column, my format!” I also realized that I’m adult enough to have chocolate ice cream for dinner. So here’s my personal favorites of the week.

In my good slot, we have the exciting announcement of Ashley A. Woods joining Marvel as an artist. I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Woods. Once I checked out her work, I’m just so eager to see what she can do with the Marvel characters. Her upcoming book Niobe is abso-freaking-lutely gorgeous.

That isn’t the only reason that this is big news. It is exciting to see a woman joining the Marvel team and even more exciting that this is a woman of color. If the word on the web is correct, this is the first African-American woman to be a creator at Marvel. That’s pretty big @#^%!* news. And, I’m sure that Woods could teach the guys over there a few things about female proportions.

In my bad(?) slot, I’ve got DC rumors that the head honchos have told everyone to “stop batgirling” or being creative. The reason I went with the question mark on the end of that bad is because this could be a bad thing or an ok thing. It really depends on how they do it.

Truth is, if they don’t do a complete 180 on everything they have done creatively, it could just trickle through their other books rather than tidal wave. Large universes tend to get muddled and crazy pretty quickly. Perhaps this could be a way to keep this world easy for new readers to follow. I just hope they don’t destroy all the innovative progress they have made.

And for interesting, I recently read about the Middle East’s rising interest in comics. Comic cons have been popping up all over the place and new comic creators are developing new characters and stories. Some comics are used to as a veiled way to fight sexism or explore Muslim traditions.

Comics are a great way to embrace the best and worst parts of your world, in an engaging and descriptive way.  Since comics are such a mainstay in the US, we rarely talk about other countries comic industries. While it may have been an American influence at first, it sounds like other cultures in the Middle East are using it to do their own thing.

So those are the three things I couldn’t decide between. I’m betting that there is at least one thing you hadn’t heard about. One thing is sure though. Comics, they are a-changin’.