Sociology

Former DC editor and current Comics Alliance editor-in-chief Joe Hughes kicks off Black History Month by baldly stating a shameful fact about the US comics industry::

The first ever Black Comic Book Festival was held on Saturday January 12, 2013 at The Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture, located in the heart of Harlem in New York City. The festival, which was presented by The Schomburg Junior Scholars and Dr. Jonathan Gayles, celebrates artists, writers, and fictional characters of African descent. Although I have passed by before, this event was my first introduction to the Schomburg Center which is a part of the New York Library. The show was free and open to anyone.

The 2013 GLAAD Award nominees recognizing media for outstanding images of the LGBT community have been unveiled and they are: OUTSTANDING COMIC BOOK Astonishing X-Men by Marjorie Liu (Marvel) Batwoman by W. Haden Blackman, J.H. Williams III...

Call her shoujo (girl comics) or call her josei (lady comics), the surprise winner of two Golden Globes last night, zeitgeist idol Lena Dunham has been called the voice of her generation—or at least...

We didn't watch last night's hilarious "Women go to a comics shop" episode of Big Bang Theory, but Scott Johnson did so we wouldn't have to and the results sound quite ghastly:

Over the weekend someone on Tumblr got the great idea of satirizing anatomically unlikely, and overtly sexualized comic book covers by replacing the women with Hawkeye. As far as we can make it out...

Finally, the long national nightmare is over as future Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has apologized on Facebook for his unwise, unfunny and offensive comments that he wrote on his blog two years ago:

While director James Gunn has remained silent on the shitstorm surrounding his two-year-old superhero sex list—probably because Disney won't let him speak out— he's fought back with a seething, hate filled tweet.

Yesterday there was a new source of gender battle outrage on the internets, as spelled out by The Mary Sue. It seems that director James Gunn, who has made the film Super and is slated to write and direct Guardians of the Galaxy has a very active website and online presence and nearly two years ago he ran a piece called 50 Superhero you want to have sex with that included all kinds of jokes about having sex and rape and gays.

A new Kickstarter just launched this morning for The Big Feminist But a comics anthology of stories about women, men, attitudes and the humor and drama of those attitudes. Contributors include Jeffrey Brown, Gabrielle Bell, Lauren Weinstein, Josh Neufeld, Sarah Oleksyk, Corrine Mucha and many more, including what may be the last published comic by the late, great Dylan Williams. The goal is $13,995 which will pay for printing and distribution and a page rate for contributors.

Johanna Draper Carlson finds a SF book from 24 years ago that predicted the kind of soul-stealing succubus that many fear wit a narrative involving a SF convention:

It was nice to finish up a busy and exhausting year of cons (11 or 12) with one of the strong local shows that has been a hallmark of current comics/nerd culture. The NC Comicon was put together by the guys behind Ultimate Comics, a popular shop in Durham, NC.