February 2012
105 posts
“I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military…. So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist…. I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him…. And he became very popular.”
—
Stan Lee, on Iron Man.
His intention, shared by many Iron Man writers over the years, is part of what makes this character for me. The best Iron Man stories put the character right on the edge of privileged despicability, and then make it all better somehow.
It’s when writers take Tony over that edge that he falls apart. He’s not self-important or theatrical enough to carry off pure villainy like Doom, or weird enough to be an Osborn. The interesting thing about Tony is his heroism.
January 2012
71 posts
jbacardi replied to your photo: “Sorry, wrong room.” Joker and Elle Driver. Can…
Jim Rugg.
Thank you!
genius billionaire playboy philanthropist: quipquipquip replied to your post: *But…Tony would NOT be that much... →
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quipquipquip replied to your post: *
But…Tony would NOT be that much better than Bruce…sorry guys :c
lmao THIS IS WHAT I AM SAYING
like I’m 90% sure if you asked Tony if he wanted to be someone’s dad, he’d say no. he might work up to it and I think he has the POTENTIAL but it’s…
I think if Tony was in a committed relationship and they worked up to the idea it would be fine. I also think that if he was a part time parent, it would still work out reasonably well. He’d have a freakout or two, but it wouldn’t be a hideously trauma-filled thing. Surprise kid though… I can’t see that going over well. That way lies boarding school, or creepy over-parenting. Perhaps both, in turns.
Women Write About Comics: WiR 13 Years Later (master post) →
womenwriteaboutcomics.com
All the posts in one post.
Women Write About Comics: Roundup five →
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In our fifth and final roundup for Women In Refrigerators: 13 Years Later, our contributors are looking at life after WiR.
What's your magical girl name? →
seventhsanctum.com
Witch Smasher Rea
what the fuck that’s AWESOME
Screaming Gate Witch Ruby
…accurate
Fair Battle Goddess Biscuit was a pretty awesome #1 result, but personally, I liked Star Smasher Biscuit.
Omen Policewoman Megan. I can dig it.
i know this is really nothing new but
it seems like the Oscars have just been BURSTING with white guilt these past few years - The Blind Side, Avatar, The Help (I’m sure the list is a hell of a lot longer - Blood Diamond?)
okay so hollywood is just bursting with white guilt. And racism! Simultaneously! I guess white guilt sort of depends on racism.
Good observation. Feeling guilty is probably the easiest, most do-nothing response to ~discovering racism. You’re like, totally concerned about these issues, man, but you like, don’t know what to do about them.
So you do nothing except experience all the feelings, all over the place. Everything is so horrible, so horrible… you need a break from the horrible, perhaps a heart warming animal story.
If you have a Women Write About Comics post, or know of one I haven't linked, please send it my way!
I’ve found a couple of untagged posts through reblog chains, so now I’m wondering if there are more eluding me.
Thanks in advance!
Women Write About Comics: Roundup four →
womenwriteaboutcomics.wordpress.com
Three more posts! \o/
Btw, don’t worry about the deadline, ladies. If you’ve got a post in progress and you can’t finish it this weekend, we will still link to you. So press on!
Women In Refrigerators 13 Years Later
Trigger Warning: discussion of sexual assault.
Sexual violence is so ubiquitous in superhero comics that it is a part of the language. It’s a trope, a shortcut, a means to an end. It’s use is fetishistic: it’s about the hero; it’s about the trope itself. The dead girlfriend, the tragic sex worker, the battered wife—these are not characters, they’re props. Their abuse has a mystical value within the story. It signals that our hero is going to go dark, and then he’s going to prove his worth, by coming through the other side. And just trotting it out has some kind of value. It says, or tries to say, “this ain’t no funny book; this shit is real.”
“We humans are a self-centered race. We see ourselves in everything. We assign identities and emotions where none exist. And we make the world over in our image.”
—Scott McCleod, Understanding Comics.
Women Write About Comics: Roundup three →
womenwriteaboutcomics.wordpress.com
A couple of posts for your lazy weekend delectation. The second part of Liz’s epic look at sexual violence against women in comics, and Erin’s call to arms for creative types.
Women Write About Comics: Roundup the second! →
womenwriteaboutcomics.wordpress.com
The carnival continues: more links for your reading pleasure.
Women Write About Comics: Our first roundup post →
womenwriteaboutcomics.wordpress.com
didyoueverstoptothink reflects on the difficulty of responding to this week’s theme, Women In Refrigerators 13 Years Later, Saranga looks at Lois Lane’s characterization and look over the years, and Claire argues that we’re past Women In Refrigerators.
Some food for thought here—check it out!
The 2012 GOP race has become my primary fandom. There is nothing that entertains me more. Oh, America.
ONE WEEK UNTIL THE CARNIVAL OPENS, OMG →
womenwriteaboutcomics.wordpress.com
The Carnival approaches!
Is your contribution ready? Have you… even started it? Never fear procrastinators, you still have a week!
Some reminders:
- You can post your essay/vid/comic/interpretive dance at any time during the week of January 22-28.
- If you don’t have your own internet space and want us to post your contribution directly to the blog, please try to get it to us by the 17th(ish).
- Send us a link. Send us a link. Send us a link! We’ll be combing the internet to make sure that all your posts are included in our roundups, but sending us a link is the gold standard here.
- Don’t forget to include a header on your post, indicated that you’re participating in the carnival. This will ensure we link to the right post, (and help to promote the carnival and your fellow lady bloggers).
One week, ladies, one week!
“
Deep ecologists see this vague and undifferentiated humanity essentially as an ugly “anthropocentric” thing — presumably a malignant product of natural evolution — that is “overpopulating” the planet, “devouring” its resources, and destroying its wildlife and the biosphere — as though some vague domain of “nature” stands opposed to a constellation of nonnatural human beings, with their technology, minds, society, etc. Deep ecology, formulated largely by privileged male white academics, has managed to bring sincere naturalists like Paul Shepard into the same company as patently antihumanist and macho mountain men like David Foreman of Earth First! who preach a gospel that humanity is some kind of cancer in the world of life.
It was out of this kind of crude eco-brutalism that Hitler, in the name of “population control,” with a racial orientation, fashioned theories of blood and soil that led to the transport of millions of people to murder camps like Auschwitz. The same eco-brutalism now reappears a half-century later among self-professed deep ecologists who believe that Third World peoples should be permitted to starve to death and that desperate Indian immigrants from Latin America should be exclude by the border cops from the United States lest they burden “our” ecological resources.
” —Murray Bookchin (via servile-masses-arise)
Here’s the source: Social Ecology vs Deep Ecology: A Challenge for the Ecology Movement. Had to google this, because I’d never thought of Hitler as an environmentalist before.
As St-Denis defects to Liberals, first cracks emerge in NDP’s Quebec base
Daniel LeBlanc (Globe and Mail) writes:
The first cracks have appeared in the NDP’s massive Quebec base, fuelling the sense the leaderless party is losing momentum in the province that is key to its dreams of forming the next government.
Elected as part of last year’s “Orange Wave,” Lise St-Denis stunned her colleagues Tuesday as she crossed the floor to the federal Liberals, arguing the NDP has lost the drawing card that proved so popular with electors eight months ago.
“They voted for Jack Layton. Jack Layton is dead,” Ms. St-Denis said about the former leader of the NDP at a news conference.
Well, it’s hardly the first time an MP has crossed the floor. For reference:
The NDP’s position on party switching is that MPs shouldn’t be able to retain their seats, but should stand up in a by election. That St-Denis chose to cross the floor and join the Liberals, and that this was in part motivated by the NDP’s stance on the Senate (they want it gone), is a pretty clear indication that she was never a good fit. It’s interesting that this involved a refutation of two of the party’s more radically democratic principles. (ie. that floor crossing is basically spitting in the face of constituents who put their faith in not just you, but your party, and that the Senate is an anti-democratic sham).
technocracy explainer
Technocracy’s been in the news a lot lately. @illusclaire asked for an explainer. This is… a post on the subject, although not as efficiently explain-y as it could be.
As a form of government, technocracy is sort of a hypothetical, sort of not. It’s a hypothetical in that no government has been constituted as technocratic, but it’s not hypothetical in that technocratic principles have been key to so many modern political movements.
Technocracy refers to rule by experts, usually scientists, both soft and hard.* The idea is that highly skilled people make better, more informed and more efficient decisions, than can regular elected representatives, kings and queens, and (especially) the people themselves. Political culture debased and your legislative process deadlocked? Send in the experts to right the wrongs of those vote-currying politicians and irrational voters!
It is, therefore, a profoundly undemocratic mode.
The temptation of technocracy is obvious. The political process is almost always frustrating, slow, and too often ridiculous. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just cut through that red tape and find real, lasting solutions? The fantasy is that the experts: a) have the best interests of the people in mind; b) know who the people are and what their interests are; and c) are capable of implementing complex solutions without having any previous experience in public policy. The technocratic fantasy relies on the common sense view that politicians are incompetent, corrupt, or both. Insoluble social problems are actually the result of political stupidity—therefore, experts will be able to find solutions. They can make society better, faster, stronger.
Probably the closest we’ve seen to a baldly technocratic government, is the Soviet Union. We can also see technocratic thinking in the new philanthropy exemplified by Bill Gates, and its underlying assumption that international development can be fixed by the hard work of a gifted few. Think too, of the post-war push to build highways in the United States, and thereby, to transform the country. And of course currently, technocracy is enjoying a vogue in Europe. Debt crisis? Why, send in the economists and CEOs. They’ll sort everything out, and ensure that we’re back to business as usual in no time. CEOs, of course, recognize that it just takes the right (and right thinking) people in charge.
Technocracy is, at it’s base, the idea that experts can, through the application of logic, expert knowledge, and technological solutions, re-engineer society so that it runs better. It’s been around since we first started fetishizing technology and rational thought, and it’s unlikely to go away any time soon. The more we’re inundated with reams of information, the more a kind of political curation (o brave new world, that has such political initiatives in it) is going to appeal.
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* Some people argue that technocracy only refers to rule by HARD scientists and engineers. This is clearly not the case wrt the common usage. And considering most economists and finance people now start out in math, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to link economists with technocracy. A quant, for example, is no Adam Smith style economist.
Best of 2011: Hanna Soundtrack →
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By the Chemical Brothers.
