Category: Comics

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This week’s issue of The Flash featured brief introductions to all of the reformed Rogues. The inclusion of Magenta on that team got me to thinking: she’s the only woman on either of the two Rogue teams. She’s also one of only three who have ever been part of the Rogues Gallery. Of the other two, Golden Glider had an in—two, really: her brother and her lover were both members of the group—and Blacksmith actually had to form her own team.

Still, they’re not doing so bad in proportion. It turns out there just aren’t very many female villains in Keystone and Central City. I’ve got 72 villain profiles on my site right now, not counting teams, and just 7 solo women. (8 if you count the second version of Colonel Computron, but who can tell under all that?) By my reckoning 19 villains have been members of the Rogues proper. (That’s counting legacy villains, like the original and replacement Trickster, both times, and counting all of Blacksmith’s team.) 3/19 is roughly 16%, and even 8/72 is roughly 11%, so women are actually represented a bit more in the Rogues than in the general Flash villain population.

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Studio Foglio has been posting the last few pages of Issue #13 (which ended on a rather intriguing clifhanger) over the past few weeks, and on Monday, they posted the first brand-new page at GirlGeniusOnline.com, just three weeks after they announced that the comic would move to the web.

Girl Genius follows the steampunk adventures of “spark” Agatha Clay through a 19th-century Europe littered with the remains of a mad scientist war, dominated by Baron Wulfenbach, who rules his domain from an airship. It’s an adventure/comedy, and if you like Phil Foglio’s style, you’ve probably already read the story so far.

Speaking of the story so far, there are two ways you can catch up. (Well, three if you count hunting through back-issue bins and eBay.) Studio Foglio is selling the first three collected editions (both hardcover and TPB) on their website, and they’ve also begun Girl Genius 101—reposting the original comics online, one page at a time. And of course there’s cast info, a FAQ, summaries—everything you need to get up to speed.

Let me just say again, I can’t recommend this enough. It’s good, it’s funny, and now you can try it out for free! (And if you really like it, they plan to continue releasing the TPBs, so in a year or so you can get it on genuine flattened plant matter!)

Girl Genius Online

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Here’s some surprising news: Phil and Kaja Foglio’s excellent comic book Girl Genius is moving from print to the web: Girl Genius Online. They plan to have new pages up three times a week, and release graphic novels once a year.

I’m of mixed feelings here. On one hand, I like being able to hold the comics in my hand, and this was a series I’ve been collecting as individual issues. Hardcovers and TPBs are often harder to find. On the other hand, the series was only nominally quarterly, often managing only three issues a year (or fewer). If they actually manage 3 a week, that’s the equivalent of six 30-page issues over the course of the next year. And it will be easier to introduce new people to the series. I can just point them to the website instead of lending an issue or telling them to hunt through their local comic stores.

(via the Studio Foglio newsletter)

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[Cover]Also in comics news, the nine-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere begins in June.

The basic premise is this: In urban areas, we tend to tune out the homeless to the point where we don’t even see them. What if we really don’t see them? What if there’s another world, just slightly out of sync with this one, where the rules are all different. (JMS used a similar springboard for Midnight Nation, but took it in a completely different direction.) There’s poverty, and scavenging… but there’s also magic, and honor, and a society with its own strange codes. The story follows everyman Richard Mayhew as, through a simple act of kindness, he slips through the cracks from London Above to London Below. In order to get back, he has to help a mysterious girl named Door on her quest to find her family’s killers and honor their legacy…and escape the assassins tracking them both!

It’s hard to guess how well this will work. Neil Gaiman’s comics and prose are both fantastic (in every sense of the word). Comic book adaptations of his prose, though, haven’t been nearly as good. The writers have a tendency to preserve too much of the text, and it gets bogged down in narration. It happened with “Murder Mysteries,” with “Only the End of the World Again”, and with “The Price.”

Neverwhere has two advantages, though. It started life as a TV script (he only wrote the novel because he realized that budget limitations and producer interference would prevent them from doing the story “right”), and TV, like comics, is a visual medium. And with nine issues, there should be plenty of room to show, not tell, the story.

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[Cover]On the list of DC comics for June: The Return of Donna Troy #1. Along for the ride: New Teen Titans: Who is Donna Troy?, collecting the classic stories that explored the original Wonder Girl’s past. (And, I suspect, some of the newer stories that screwed it up. It doesn’t mention the Dark Angel storyline, but it does say “and much more,” and includes a bit from the Titans/Outsiders Secret Files that I know I read, but can barely remember.)

Let’s face it: like killing Superman, Troia’s death was never intended to stick. It was an admitted gimmick: what would shake up the Titans and Young Justice so badly that you could break up both teams and create new takes on the Teen Titans and Outsiders? Throw in the backstory with multiple lifetimes and the sequences in Graduation Day itself that showed her in another life, and you’ve got more than a back door to bring her back: she just lingered a bit longer than usual near the revolving door.

I’m of mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I think comics should take death a bit more seriously. If you can bring back Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and a dozen other heroes, why should any of the Titans have expected Donna’s death to be permanent? Why should anyone have expected Sue Dibny’s death in Identity Crisis to be permanent? Then add in the fact that I’d generally rather see comics follow through on changes (Wally replacing Barry as Flash, Kyle replacing Hal as GL, etc.) than reversing them.

On the other hand, Graduation Day was a lousy story. It was basically “How can we dismantle two teams in three issues?” And Donna’s death was clearly intended to be temporary. And unless you count Cassie, the new Wonder Girl, no one really replaced her, so bringing her back doesn’t push anyone else out of the spotlight.

Heck, it’s got George Perez and Phil Jimenez working together. How can I not read it?

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According to The Beat, a judge has thrown out about half the claims in Marvel’s lawsuit against City of Heroes.

Apparently several of the “infringing” works they cited were in fact made by Marvel, not by players. The judge also threw out claims that the game makers infringed trademarks directly and refused to issue a declaration that they are not a service provider (if they are considered a service provider, then they are shielded from liability under the DMCA as long as they take action quickly enough).

The post mostly reprints a press release from NCsoft, so it’s noticeably upbeat, but they do have precedent on their side—such as Sony vs. Betamax. Well, as long as none of the morons in Congress manage to force the Induce act through. That would basically declare that makers of pens and pencils are liable for any copyright or trademark infringement.

Follow-up post: The suit was settled in December.

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