Damn, Miss Kessler has stones! She could probably stand up to Amanda Waller.

Everyone is bemoaning the cancellation of Captain Britain and the MI13, so why not hire its creative team and see if they can spark some interest in the European part of the DCU? Give them the surviving JLI and JLE members to start and encourage them to create some new stuff. If the mini sells well, then roll out a new on-going.

This is just great stuff! Even with so many characters in play, everybody has something to do and is true to their nature. Bart Sears didn’t take too long to grow on me. The appeal of his female figures wasn’t lost on my 12-year-old eyes, but I never thought they looked ridiculous or impossible, and check out the faces on the women. They don’t look like girls, and tthey aren’t as glamorized as a lot of other work I’ve seen.

And I’ll totally second the nomination of that “moment” from the Starro story. That was so awesome!

-Citizen Scribbler

Lot’s of cool moments here, but the teacher reading the note was definately THE moment.

In fact, Sears drew every woman in this comic like a brick house. Hilariously sexist, but FUN. And nobody had to die in order for the book to sell.

This is a bit off topic, but I have arrived at the following rules of thumb about the graphic depiction of women in comics:
1. Is the figure drawing achievable by a real woman without surgery and/or a girdle?
2. Is the body type basically the same as the one the character had in either her first appearance, or the last time she turned up in a movie or TV?
3. If the character is a superhero, would the outfit depicted stay be functional during all the running, jumping and etc. that superheroes do?
4. Does the female character have a body type that is distinctly different than the body type of the other principal female characters?

If all three of those things are a “yes”, then I don’t think it is a sexist drawing. The teacher in the panels Sears drew is at worst cusp-y. Point #1 is debatable, but certainly not grossly exaggerated. On Point #2, it is a new character, so Sears is free to design her as he sees fit. Point #3 is not relevant. Point #4 is a “yes” for me, albeit barely.

I know you weren’t making a big point of it, but the tendency to describe harmless cheesecake images in comics as “sexist” bothers me. Modern superhero comics have a real problem with sexism. There is a lot of sexual (and sexualized) violence that seems designed to titillate the reader. Female characters are often have barely defined personalities beyond their attachments to male characters. These are actual problems.

Conversely, cheesecake is fun and essentially harmless. It attracts the attention of the (largely male) comic readership to the character. For example, if Power Girl wasn’t a 36 Double-D, then she would probably have never gotten her own title. It would be beyond stupid for her creators not to enjoy celebrate that, while drawing a convincing portrait of a three-dimensional human being.

As a reader, I wanted more Wally-PG scenes, more Wally-Ralph Dibny scenes and more scenes of the Dibnys bouncing off the rest of the JLE. For whatever reason, Giffen steered the title in other directions. Maybe they were afraid of turning it into a second-rate version of the “Bwahaha” League, but it got more serious (and conventional) in the second year. They lost me soon thereafter.

This is a great moment. It was before DeMatteis left the title, so maybe Giffen just felt more comfortable with the banter with his co-writer around. Sears could be a bit sloppy with his figure drawing and he never figured out how to draw a coherent superhero fight, but his facial expressions are really strong here. That was the magic of Giffen-era, the reader got to see the characters reactions to things.

I wouldn’t mind seeing more moments from this book. I can think of a very cool moment from the end of the Starro storyline involving transporter tubes and one of the most frequently underestimated members of the JLI that would definitely fit in this series of moments.

I wish I read more of this series. “I liked the old one better” is my favorite line.

A fearsome and formidable woman, that.