Image Comics
Dancing With Bullets: Performing Masculinity in Image Comic’s “Dancer”
There are so many reasons I love Image Comic’s Dancer. I’m a sucker for international thrillers with spies and hitmen (throw in a little sci-fi action and we’re golden), I always wished I could be a ballerina despite my complete lack of coordination, and Nic Klein’s art is incredibly breath-taking and both inspires me as an artist and makes me feel incredibly inept (which is the highest compliment I can pay). So needless to say, I was hooked from the first page, but I honestly wasn’t entirely sure why. The story wasn’t exactly groundbreaking in originality, and the character types were all pretty familiar and straightforward. The script was thrilling, so maybe that was it?
Then I started thinking about Dancer in terms of its identity politics and what it’s actually saying about who we are, who we want to be, and more importantly, who we can be or become under the right circumstances. As The Fox says, “It’s time to stop thinking that you are what you are not, Alan.” As much as it’s about escaping near-certain death, it is about Alan’s struggle with his own identity as a hitman, facing down his own barbarism, brutality, strength, and tenacity…in the form of his clone. His younger self is a pitch-perfect stereotype of the hitman character: he’s strong, relentless, intelligent, and always seems to have the upper hand. The hitman/spy is a pretty standard trope of masculinity, where masculinity has typically been figured in terms of embodied violence and strength. It is monstrous and brutal, a technology of murder that is cold and calculated.
What Dancer manages to do is take two typically gendered binary constructs – ballet and being a gun for hire – and parallels them to reveal the performativity lurking behind said stereotypes.
3 Chicks Review Comics – Episode 053
Hey! It’s our 53rd Episode!
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN, DOWNLOAD, AND/OR SUBSCRIBE TO ITUNES NOW.
Inside this episode! Reviews of the final issue of Joe Keatinge and Ross Campbell’s groundbreaking Glory run from Image. A review of Polarity #1 – a new miniseries from Boom! by musician Max Bemis and Jorge Coelho. We talk about random comics news and Sue makes an impassioned plea for DC to pay attention to Lois Lane’s 75th Anniversary – since she is celebrating along with Superman this year. We also interview badass superhero costume designer, cover artist, animator (and more!) Kris Anka! We’ve also got an open call for both future Chick of the Weeks you’d like to see, as well as your votes for some of the best comic book costumes around – both those that have stood the test of time, and which desperately need an update?
Here are the breaks:
Review of Glory #34 – 00:51
Review of Polarity #1 – 12:32
Random Comics Talk! – 21:35
Interview with Kris Anka! – 35:01
More Comics Talk! – 1:33:29
3 Chicks Review Comics is a podcast featuring female comics lovers and bloggers Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass and Kelly Thompson from She Has No Head! Tune in to CSBG every other Monday at noon as we review comics and discuss hot topics of the week. In addition to the blogs
above, you can also follow us all on twitter as well: Kelly and Sue. Special thanks to Nik Furious for our awesome 3 Chicks theme song.
*As always beware of spoilers if you haven’t read the books in question! Advance reviews are always spoiler-free!
The Abandoned An’ Forsaked – So WHO Killed Spawn?
Every week, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically “overturned” by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An’ Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today we take a look at the downside of having a shared universe when the characters in the shared universe aren’t owned by the same people, as a departure by an Image Comics founder led to Todd McFarlane having to come up with a new killer of Al Simmons, the man who would return to Earth after death as the hellspawn known as, well, Spawn.
Committed: NOT MY BAG – Sina’s Scathing Fashion Comic Interview
Next week a new autobiographical comic book comes out from Sina Grace. Unlike so many of its predecessors, this one is about a man with a job. He might not like the job, nor even want it, but he throws himself into it with a totality that nearly undoes him, sucking him into a destructive, corporate, retail abyss and spitting him out the other side, ready to become the artist he was meant to be. Luckily for us, that man is Sina Grace and he shares every aspect of that journey in Not My Bag.
3 Chicks Review Comics – Episode 043
Hey! It’s our 43rd episode!
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN, DOWNLOAD, AND/OR SUBSCRIBE TO ITUNES NOW.
Inside this episode! We have an advance review of Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s Stumptown #1 and Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye #2. We then have an awesome interview with Greg Rucka talking about Stumptown, Lazarus, Punisher, his time at DC – including the scoop on what actually caused him to leave DC, the new Wonder Woman pilot, and everything else we can think of! Chick of The Week this week is a long overlooked lady who is having a hard time in recent months at DC – Lois Lane!
Here are the breaks:
Stumptown #1 – 01:00
Hawkeye #2 – 08:43
Greg Rucka Interview – 24:15
Chick of The Week (plus Wonder Woman talk and a few other goodies) – 108:48
3 Chicks Review Comics is a podcast featuring female comics lovers and bloggers Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass and Kelly Thompson from She Has No Head! Tune in to CSBG every other Monday at noon as we review comics and discuss hot topics of the week. In addition to the blogs above, you can also follow us all on twitter as well: Kelly and Sue. Special thanks to Nik Furious for our awesome 3 Chicks theme song.
*As always beware of spoilers if you haven’t read the books in question!
Committed: My Giant, Dorky, Wonderful 2012 Comic-Con
This was a banner year for me at Comic-Con International, a lot of really mellow, random meetings with all these nice people and great comic book creators, a large pile of nifty comic books I picked up, and so many fantastic things to see. Continue Reading »
She Has No Head! – 25 Great Superheroine Covers of the Past Year
Rogue by Kaare Andrews
I originally intended to pair this column with my “25 Great Superheroine Moments In Comics” post from two weeks ago in honor of Women’s History Month, but then Wonder Woman #7 happened and I felt compelled to write about that. So here we are with the unofficial “part two” in April. So it goes!
Those of you familiar with my blogging over on 1979 Semi-Finalist know I’m a big cover fanatic. I do a monthly post called “Drunk Cover Solicits In Three Sentences Or Less” where I…you guessed it…get drunk and talk about the newest Marvel and DC Cover Solicits. It’s supposed to be a chance to talk about some gorgeous art and also to make good-natured fun of some of the silliness…of course some rage occasionally seeps out (shocker). I also do a “52 Best Covers of the Year” in honor of SDCC every year. But I realized recently that I’d never focused on covers that feature women and thought what better way to celebrate than to do that here.
My criteria was looking at covers from between March of 2011 and March of 2012* and only at saddle-stapled monthly comics that feature a woman as a minimum of 50% of the cover focus. These are entirely North American as that’s primarily what I have access to. I didn’t include trades or graphic novels either. I’m not going to write much about each, just a few lines about what I love about them. Enjoy!
She Has No Head! – Support The Good
So, many of you saw that I broke the internet two weeks ago with my post about the visual representations of men and women in superhero comics and the apparently still radical idea that “No, it’s not equal”. So how does one follow up THAT column? Do you try to break the internet even harder? Or do you go the completely opposite route? Well, for starters, if you missed it, read this piece I did for my new gig at Lit Reactor, which is chock full of fantastic books that don’t commit any of the “No, It’s not equal” sins.
Committed: Image Expo
This weekend will see the first Image Expo, a comic book convention supported by local Bay Area publishers Image Comics. Famous for their creator-owned comic books, Image Expo promises to be a very different sort of convention. With the move of Wonder Con to Southern California this year, this leaves the field wide open for something new and Image seem ready to meet the challenge. I spoke to Image Comics Publisher; Eric Stephenson about the convention and asked him some questions about what we could expect to find there.
Committed: Webcomics and Art Links
This week, while I ought to have been writing you a column, I was wasting time on the internet and making things. Here are the webcomics and art that distracted me so effectively. Enjoy! Continue Reading »
Taking no chances: Mainstream superhero comics need a kick in the butt
I spend a lot of time coming up with provocative titles for my posts, you know! How’s that one?
Continue Reading »
Committed: WonderCon Weekend Dominates
This past weekend was the insanity that is the San Francisco comic book convention; WonderCon. Maybe it is because this is such a tiny little city, but unlike other comic book conventions that I’ve been to, the convention exists smack in the middle of everything. Since I live here that means I don’t always drop everything the way I do for other conventions, the proximity makes everything a lot more convenient and real life becomes a lot harder to ignore.
She Has No Head! – Ladies Comics Project: Phase II, Part Two
Welcome to Part Two of The Ladies Comics Project: Phase II in which a handful of my colleagues, family, and friends – both new and old – and women both familiar with comics and not – read and reviewed a graphic novel or trade from my personal library and told me what they thought about it. For more details about this project and more ladies reviews and feedback, go here to read Part One. You can also read about the original Ladies Comics Project here, here, and here.
A week later and with emails now totaling 654 plus a handful of gchats, texts, and phone later, here were are: The Ladies Comics Project, Phase II: Part Two…
Illustration For Ladies Comics Project Phase II by Tara Abbamondi
She Has No Head! – Ladies Comics Project, Part 1
Did any of you read a hilarious post by Laura Hudson on her Myriad Issues blog like three years ago where she had her mom read comics? If not, head over and read it now, because it’s fantastic, and half of the inspiration for this column as it’s a post I’ve never forgotten (how can you forget spitting most of your diet soda all over your keyboard as someone’s mom makes awesome accurate hilarious observations on the internet about independent comics?). The other half of the inspiration for this three part column belongs to our own Greg Burgas who did a great What I Bought this summer in which his friends read and reviewed his weekly pull list for him.
Especially because She Has No Head! is about women and comics, and I have a fascination with why women do and don’t read comics and what they do and don’t respond to as readers, I decided to do my own little comics reading experiment. I called it “The Ladies Comics Project” (crazy creative, right?). The premise was simple – pull together some great ladies from as many age groups and walks of life as I could manage, women both familiar and not with comics, and let them pick a comic to read from the month of September and then make them tell me what they think.
A gorgeous piece I had commissioned for the Ladies Comics Project by up and coming artist Tara O'Connor.
HOLY CRAP, THERE’S A KING CITY COMIC BOOK COMING OUT TOMORROW!??!!?
This is one of the few times not reading Previews comes back to bite me.* I loved the first volume of Brandon Graham’s digest sized black and white comic. Now it’s a single issue series from Image. A re-order may be in order.
*Reasons I don’t generally read Previews are included in AC’s list of new comics. They include the fact that Kevin Smith’s writing another Batman comic and the Red She-Hulk variant cover. I kinda wish I’d never known those existed.
EDITED BY BRIAN TO ADD: Don MacPherson has a great piece on King City’s upcoming release from Image Comics here.
