It's no secret that the comic book community has had a...shall we say, rocky relationship with the fairer sex. Whether it's the eyebrow-raising mythology of Golden Age Wonder Woman, the regrettable events of 1980's Avengers #200 (or as one writer called it, "The Rape of Ms. Marvel"), or, more recently, Milo Manara's variant cover to Spider-Woman #1, women and comics haven't always mixed well. However, recently, strides have been taken to rectify this situation. Female writers and artists like Gail Simone, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Fiona Staples, and Becky Cloonan have become more visible as the top the charts, and efforts have been made by all companies to publish books with female leads. One such effort is BOOM! Studios's Lumberjanes, written by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis and drawn by Brooke Allen, an all-ages adventure series that is charming, funny, and positively kick-ass.
The titular Lumberjanes are the members of Roanoke Cabin at Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquigul Thistle Crumpet's Camp for Hardcore Lady Types: April, Molly Mal, Jo, and Ripley. The girls's quiet summer of canoeing and nature hikes is interrupted when they begin investigating mysterious going-ons around their camp. Yetis, shape-shifters, and three-eyed foxes are haunting the woods, and the Lumberjanes are the only ones with the skills, smarts, and merit badges to figure out just what's going on...if they can escape from the watchful eye of their counselor Jen, that is.
If the series need be compared to another, it's its fellow BOOM! publication and mega-popular cartoon, Adventure Time: There's a sense of reckless excitement and optimism to the series. Yes, the challenges are great and the mystery seemingly unsolvable, but there's no doubt in the minds of our young heroines that they can succeed. The artwork matches the tone perfectly: fun and cartoony, with expressive characters and interesting designs. The girls themselves have unique designs, showing a good mix of ethnicities, body types, and fashion choices.
The Lumberjanes themselves are, naturally, what really makes the series. Each of them has a well-defined personality and skills to contribute to the adventure. None of them get pigeon-holed into one role and every one of them is fun and interesting to follow. My favorite is probably April, whose goofy sense of humor and cool-as-a-cucumber attitude make her surprisingly capable in a pinch. However, the more interesting ones are Mal and Molly, and their budding romance.
Lumberjanes does something I haven't seen often with a queer storyline: plays it straight and plays it plain. Four issues in and the girls have yet to question whether they're wrong or strange for feeling the way they do about each other, nor have they met any backlash for it (granted, the only people in on this are their extremely loyal friends, but still). Maybe that'll change somewhere down the road, but for now, it's nice to see a gay crush play out the same way as a straight one: awkward, strange, and kind of cute.
Lumberjanes is something I wasn't expecting to love as much as I do, but it's everything I want in a comic book: fun, enthusiastic, and brimming with great characters and artwork. If you're in the market for a good all-ages book, go to your local comic book provider or digital store and give it a look.
It's been a while since I've done a straight-up comic book review, hasn't it? Well, to be honest, nothing's quite excited me after just one issue than this here sum'bitch.
Roundabouts four or five years ago, I started reading a comic called Scalped, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by R.M. Guera. Scalped was a book with a relatively low concept: a crime drama set on an Indian reservation. What resulted was one of the best ongoing series I've ever read, with complex and compelling characters, brutal violence, lovely artwork, and a central theme of the complex relationship between an individual, his home, and his heritage.
Writer Jason Aaron recently returned to this genre and this theme, as he collaborated with artist Jason Latour to bring us the eloquently titled Southern Bastards, whose first issue was recently released from Image comics, and I'm already far more hooked than I care to admit.
Our story follows Earl Tubb, son of Craw County, Alabama's legendary Sheriff "Big" Bert Tubb, who returns to his home after a forty year absence to clean out his old house now that it's last resident, Earl's uncle Buhl, is moving to a nursing home. However, he soon runs afoul of men under the employ of Euless Boss, coach of the four-time state champions Runnin' Rebs high school football team, apparent owner of every major business in town, and apparently the local crime boss of this crime story. Coach Boss doesn't appear in the first issue, but his presence is felt throughout the book, and it's clear that Earl has stepped in something he won't be stepping out of anytime soon.
The Jasons have said on multiple occasions that Bastards comes from a very personal place for them. Both are southerners themselves (Aaron is from Jasper, AB; Latour from Charlotte, NC) and both talk about having a complicated relationship with their birthplaces. Aaron states this series will be about "a place you can love and hate and miss and fear all at the same time", while Latour is more fueled by righteous indignation. He writes at the end of the first issue:
"So this book is for THEM. The assholes you might think Southerners are. The ones we're afraid we might be. This book is designed to bury them sons of bitches. To spit on their graves. Because I fucking hate those bastards with every part of me.
Because I love The South with all I've got."
That passion for the subject matter shines through in the first issue. What few characters we meet are an interesting mix of weary, hateful, desperate, or just regular-seeming folk. The artwork is a revelation, making the grit of the environment shine and perfectly depicting the tone of every scene, whether it's a mangy mutt defecating beneath three different church signs or the grave seriousness of Dusty Tutwiler's bloodshot eyes as he warns Earl to get out of Craw while he still can.
Make no mistake, Southern Bastards will go on to become something great. With great character work, stunning art, and strong authenticity, it's already the best new series this year. Go pick it up and check it out for yourself.
This is gonna be a weird installment of My Opinion (as opposed to my regular ones) because it's more or less me venting about some minor crap that's bugged me over the past few days, and it's probably better I avail myself of my annoyance here, lest it boil into outrage and I start flipping tables and turning into a Hulk. Groovy? Alright, here we go.
So recently, I've been seeing stuff crop up about race and representation of people of color in the media. Or rather, I've been seeing some backlash to those things, which is kinda bugging the hell out of me. The first was yesterday, with reactions to a commercial for Coca-Cola that aired during the Super Bowl (Incidentally, WOO! SEAHAWKS!). Said advertisement (seen below) featured a compilation of singers doing a rendition of "America the Beautiful" in different languages. Apparently, this was a bad thing for reasons that are stupid.
See, apparently singing a song about a country built on the principle of taking in people from foreign countries being sung in languages from foreign countries is a bad thing. It'd be one thing if these were just some a-holes on Twitter who have a subconscious desire to be featured in Yes, You're Racist, but actual news organizations were reporting on the "controversy" and weighing in on the notion that a commercial for a soft drink offended their sensibilities.
I don't have to tell you why this is asinine, right? Right, you people are smarter than this. No, what I want to focus on here is a phrase I've heard before that's starting to get on my nerves: "Multiculturalism being shoved down our throats", or some variation thereof. This phrase also popped up way back when a Cheerios commercial featuring an interracial couple went viral, and frankly, it's mind-numbingly stupid. Despite whatever outrage may be behind it, the phrase really does boil down "I don't like it when I'm reminded that people who aren't white exist in America."
That's it. That's all it is. There's nothing more to it than that. So if you ever hear that phrase or some variation thereof (which you probably won't, since I doubt what few followers I have are in Fox News' demographic), just discount anything the person says. Their opinion has invalidated itself.
The other big thing that got at me that probably shouldn't was more in my purview than a drink commercial. Recently, the CW has ordered a pilot for a TV Series based on the iconic DC Comics character, the Flash. Now, since this is a spin-off from their still ongoing series Arrow, I was initially worried. Arrow hasn't made the best impression on me. However, the show has improved as of late, and since the Flash is an inherently goofier, more out-there character than Green Arrow, I have hope that the showrunners will have a better idea on how to handle the character.
Barry Allen, the Flash himself, has already been cast as Grant Gustin, who did a decent job when he showed up on Arrow and I think he'll be a compelling leading man. As the pilot has gotten nearer to production, we've received more casting news, including Barry's love interest Iris Allen (Candice Patton) and her father Detective West (Jesse L. Martin) (btw, why does every character's love interest have a dad who's a cop now? What's up with that?). What's notable is that the Wests (or at least Iris, since her dad was created for the show) have been traditionally depicted as white, but are now black in the adaptation.
I like this. I like it when people who work in media take extra steps to create more diverse casts. But I have heard a few complaints about race-swapping and changing races in adaptations. Not many, fortunately, and the fact that other people on message boards have argued against such assertions that media outlets are "too PC" is very nice to read, but the complaints still exist, and I feel I should respond to them, if only for my own sanity.
See, here's the thing about Western fictional characters, particularly the ones who have lasted a long time: these were characters who were created when white, straight, Christians were more than just the default, they were pretty much the only option for protagonists and love interests. When Barry Allen was created in 1956, I doubt Robert Kanigher, John Broome, and Carmine Infantino were setting out to create a great white hero. Race probably didn't figure into it. However, some later comic book characters who are minorities like Luke Cage, Black Panther, and Storm, were deliberate attempts by creators to shift the balance and demonstrate some diversity in comics that is true of the real world. So when people ask why it's okay for a black actor to play a white character but not the other way around, the answer is simple: Because there's a reason these characters are minorities. Because there's so, SO many white characters already, but comparatively, there are terribly few characters who are black, Asian, Latino, Arabic, First Nations, etc. Because representations of people of color matters.
I know this is obvious to everyone reading this, but I still want to say it. I still just want to vent about how stupid and backwards people can be, especially when confronted by something as innocuous as a foreign language or a POC. I think I'm more sensitive to this because of my background and my family, but that doesn't it's not still a problem, right?
Thanks for tolerating this. Next time: something more fun. Hope you enjoyed it, or learned something, or whatever, and I'll see you next time!
