Guest Post for Geek Girl Con

I reviewed Mike Madrid's forthcoming Vixens, Vamps & Vipers (coming this October) in a guest post for the Geek Girl Con blog. I was thrilled to do both. See it here: http://www.geekgirlcon.com/mike-madrid-vixens-vamps-vipers-3/

Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Book Review

Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics
©2013 by Mike Madrid
Forward by Maria Elena Buszek, Ph.D.
ISBN: 978-1-935259-23-7 (print)
978-1-935259-24-4 (ebook)
Exterminating Angel Press

Madrid's first book, The Supergirls (reviewed here) is a wonderful overview of the women of comics. This book takes a closer look at some of the heroines time has mostly forgotten from the Golden Age*, and includes complete black and white† reprinted stories from some of them.

In the introduction, Madrid confesses his own geeky and nostalgic love of Golden Age comics, and how reader response to The Supergirls made him feel like he'd inspired readers of his book the way some of the '70s nostalgia writers had inspired him as a kid. I know it inspired me to want to learn more about those lesser-known heroines! 

He also gives a brief history of Golden Age comics, but here's a bit that nearly jumped off the page for me:

In these very early days of comic books, there weren't as many established rules about how women characters should or shouldn't act. As a result, many of these Golden Age heroines feel bold and modern as we read them today. They are presented as fearless and unapologetic about their strength. 

(If that doesn't fill your heart with excitement about Golden Age heroines, I don't understand why you're even here, because this is the wrong blog for you...) When comics were young, the art and stories were simpler, but they weren't strictly for kids. This was inexpensive entertainment in a troubled world, and "a time when comics were fun."

• In the section Women at War, Madrid paints a vivid picture of how American comic book heroes and heroines entered WWII before Pearl Harbor; they backed the war effort before the U.S. entered the war! 
• In Mystery Women, he talks about the concept of the masked vigilante, something we're quite used to today, but cautions "these women are tough."
• Daring Dames introduces us a different kind of heroine, ones who didn't wear masks but fought bad guys just the same. 
• The section 20th Century Goddesses contains superheroines more like we're accustomed to now, super-powered humans who can do extraordinary things.
• The final section is Warriors & Queens, and according to Madrid, "[t]he heroes of comic book fantasy tales were often women." It's probably just as well this is the last section, because it's just getting depressing to consider all these awesome heroines that just... slipped away, vanishing into history.

I have encountered few people who write with the passion and enthusiasm for these characters as Mike Madrid does. His notes and commentary on the characters he's selected (some of them had 5 or fewer appearance in comics), the history, and the artists are pure gold. The brief biographies he provides for each of the heroines just whets the appetite for more, encouraging his readers once more to seek them out. Plus, of course you should buy this book for the amazing comics inside. But if you're expecting camp, you're in for a surprise. These Divas, Dames & Daredevils don't mess around!

This is more than just an homage to "lost heroines," it's a time capsule§. Crack it open and look inside at what heroines used to be like. Then go look at what they're doing today and tell me he's wrong when he says "how far comics of today still need to go."

I'm really excited and pleased to note that there's a companion book to this one due out very soon. Vixens, Vamps & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of the Golden Age is due out in October 2014! Since I love bad girls more than anything, I can't wait! Edited: I didn't have to; I received an ARC and reviewed it for the Geek Girl Con blog - find my review here.

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* The Golden Age is generally considered to have been from the late 1930s through the mid 1950s. The debut of Superman in Action Comic #1 is what most enthusiasts and historians see as the catalyst that started this "golden age" of comics.
† Yes, black and white, no whining. The book would have been at least twice the cost if it had been printed in full color. Seek out color Golden Age comics at the Digital Comics Museum.
§ A note on the comics themselves: they do contain some pretty bad ethnic stereotypes. The comics of the 1940s were not known for their kindness to Asian people especially, so keep that in mind while you’re reading. It was a different time and place. The world was at war, and xenophobia was rampant. (Not that it has entirely vanished today…)

Yes, Actually, My Gods DO Wear Spandex

Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes
©2007 by Christopher Knowles
Illustrated by Joseph Michael Linser
Published by Weiser Books (I think it's worth pointing out that Weiser Books is an established New Age/Occult book publisher, not your typical publisher for books about superheroes.)

When I saw this at Half Price Books, I was pretty excited. I was taking the Gender Through Comic Books MOOC and this seemed like just another way of looking at comics. The problem is, this book just doesn't hit the mark.

This is my full Amazon review (2 stars):
I wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, it reads like it was excerpted from Wikipedia articles, and I never felt the author had any real expertise or serious knowledge of the subject. The work is superficial at best, and in some cases wrong-headed. (For example, he lists Batman as being a Golem archetype. I have no idea where he's getting that crazed idea, even after reading it. The Thing, the Hulk maybe, but BATMAN?? No.) The brief section on female superheroes focuses a great deal on two things: 1) Marston (who created Wonder Woman) was into bondage and a polygamist, and 2) girls don't really read comics. Even though he quotes from The Great Women Superheroes (Trina Robbins -- a must-read), I'm not sure HE read it with any real comprehension.

The connection to the mystic/religious is spare. He spends so much time discussing Madame Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley (and others) as well as various secret societies like the OTO, but never draws strong relationships from those mystic orders to the majority of the heroes he mentions. Superman is a Messiah figure. Hawkman comes from Egyptian mythology. But these assertions are not explored, examples are not given. I've had more in-depth conversations about these same characters in message boards.

Save your money and strike up a conversation with the folks at your local comic book shop.

It took me months to finish this book; it was just not at all engaging. Seriously, the "Amazons" chapter is a measly ten pages, and two of those are full-page illustrations. He wants to show our gods wearing spandex? He barely touches on Wonder Woman's close ties to the Greek pantheon before going back to bondage references. This paragraph beautifully illustrates why I don't like this book:

Whatever Wonder Woman's feminist virtues, the fact remains that she is a scantily-clad beauty taking part in stories engineered to appeal to bondage fetishists. To read Marston and Peter's Wonder Woman adventures is to confront stories that are absolutely drenched in transgressive sexuality and rendered in a style that betrays a distinctly decadent influence. And Wonder Woman's favorite exclamation is "Suffering Sappho," a reference to the poet laureate* of Lesbos. (p. 163)

He completely ignores so much of her history and creation to focus on Marston's personal life. And if he has so much bias and misinformation in discussing Wonder Woman, where else has Knowles glazed over history with his own beliefs? When I told my husband that he'd labeled Batman a Golem, he told me that he could see where Knowles came to that conclusion but that was really stretching it. Perhaps he's worked in the comics industry for 20 years, but he's no scholar, and his research and analysis are unimpressive.

The only thing I'll give Knowles a pass on is for not mentioning that Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent† was debunked by Carol Tilley at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He gets a break only because Tilley hadn't yet published her paper, "Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics" (Information & Culture, Nov/Dec 2012, vol. 47, no. 4).


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* Sappho was never a poet laureate of anywhere, as far as I know. Contemporary poets of her time were known to revile her.

† Seduction of the Innocent was the book that claimed comics were destroying youths, published in 1954, and was also responsible for the creation of the Comics Code Authority.

Marvel Heroines - A Novel Approach

The She-Hulk Diaries by Marta Acosta and Rogue Touch by Christine Woodward are novels published by Hyperion. Novels, not graphic novels, regular black-and-white-words-on-a-page novels. This press release from Marvel set the tone: 

The announcement was made by Hyperion’s Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Dyssegaard. Of the deal, Dyssegaard says, “Marvel has had tremendous success with recent hit movies and we think it’s a great time to explore what happens to super heroines when they are dropped into traditional women’s novels.”

“It’s exciting to see Hyperion bring two of our most beloved female super heroes, Rogue and She-Hulk, to life in ways you’ve never seen before,” said Ruwan Jayatilleke, Associate Publishers/SVP, Marvel Entertainment.  “Whether you’re a long time fan of Marvel or new to our super heroes, these novels deliver exciting stories that will capture your imagination.”

Traditional women's novels... When I first heard about this, I was horrified. Chick-lit. Bleh. These are superheroines, not romance heroines. I was prepared to read them, and then shout to the rooftops how much they sucked. I had already made up my mind that they would suck, completely without merit or evidence. Then I read an interview with Acosta at Reel Girl -- and felt like a jerk. Felt bad enough to send an apology to the author, even though I hadn't written anything yet, just for having that unfounded, unfair knee-jerk reaction.

The She-Hulk Diaries

I bought SHD last week, but didn't pick it up to read until this week. You see, as long as I didn't read it, it didn't suck (a Shröedinger's Cat approach to books), and I really didn't want it to suck. I love She-Hulk, and a treatment of her as an angsty, empty-headed heroine would have broken my heart. But you know what? The characterization works; Acosta did a fine job writing Jennifer Walters.

Contains some spoilers:
The book is written, as the title suggests, in a sort of diary format, from Walters' perspective. When we join her, she really is having some issues: she's lost her job, she needs to find a new apartment, her love life stinks, and she has to see a therapist as part of a settlement with the Avengers for anger issues. She treats She-Hulk more like an obnoxious roommate who is the source of most of her problems, than a part of her. Shulkie is the one who gets party invitations (and then is embarrassingly featured all over the internet. Shulkie is the one that guys fall all over. Shulkie is the one who's made her lose jobs and apartments. And her irritation with She-Hulk makes sense. The issues that she's having in her life, things she's trying to fix with a set of Valentine's Day resolutions, make total sense. It never feels weird or contrived. It's believable that Jennifer Walters has these problems, and those reactions to them. These are the things we don't seen in comics, because, well... they're not action-y enough. This is the mundane side of being a metahuman, and it's definitely readable.

I like the twists in the plot, I like the love interest, I like the little side plots that get tied up fairly neatly. I like that she and Shulkie grow as people, and that she moves toward an integrated self. There are still unresolved issues, the book doesn't end with everything all tidily solved, but I don't know that it's necessarily because a sequel is in the offing. Even though there are places that the pacing is a little slow, I recommend SHD unreservedly. This isn't an adventure-filled romp through NYC with the Jade Goddess; it's a wry and thoughtful look at what it's like to be Jen Walters, who is sometimes She-Hulk.

I do have one complaint, but that's not Acosta's fault: I hate the cover. Green lipstick on a purple background... yes, please, let's make sure most men wouldn't be caught dead reading it in public. Thank goodness for e-readers...

For book nerds*: the Library of Congress info lists the book as 1. Women heroes -- Fiction. 2. Superheroes -- Fiction.  

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Rogue Touch

I had to order RT because my comic book shop only got in one each of it and SHD. They didn't know if the books would sell, so they were conservative with their order. Since SHD did not suck as I'd feared, I dove right into RT, and was not disappointed with Woodward's take on a 19-year-old Rogue.

Contains some spoilers:
The pace of RT is considerably faster than SHD, but that's part of the plot. This isn't the same sort of ordinary day-in-the-life story; Anne Marie is on the run, and she's on the run with someone else who is also running for his life. We see her really struggling with things that have happened because of her, particularly the fateful kiss with Cody that put him in a coma. In spite of the fact that Rogue's first comic appearance was back in 1981, this telling feels quite fresh and current, complete with a very contemporary distrust/loathing of financial institutions. (OK, that's been a problem throughout banking history, but still...) Frankly, the story is a bit of a crime spree as she and "James" try to stay a step ahead of the people who are after them. She struggles with the things she's doing, but tries to justify it in ways that are age appropriate.

Rogue's vulnerability and naïveté combined with a defiance and brashness make her a fully fleshed-out character. The worst thing that can ever happen to a character in a story is for the reader to look at them with apathy; you won't do that with Rogue. There's plenty of twisty bits, and suggestions of things yet to come, but really, this is a fast-paced and entertaining read. It took me less than a day to finish, where SHD took a bit longer. Different stories, different authors, different paces -- both are well worth reading.

The cover is much better for RT, and she appears to be wearing the leather coat described in the beginning. It's a poignant and yet dynamic portrait of her, and a much more active cover than that stagnant tube of green lipstick. Interesting, when you consider they were designed by the same company.

For book nerds: the Library of Congress info lists the book as 1. Young women -- Fiction. 2. Outcasts -- Fiction. 3. Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction. 

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You can read excerpts from both books here. Please consider supporting your local comic shop and having them order you copies (if they don't have them on the shelf) before you get them online.

* I know I am not the only person who reads this stuff at the front of a book, who is not also a librarian. You know who you are... ;)