§ Alex Dueben catches up with Richard Thompsonas “The Complete Cul de Sac” is published:

What was it like seeing the exhibit at OSU?

I don’t think I saw the whole exhibit; there were too many people that I wanted to spend time with. What I saw of it was great but mostly I remember the crowd of familiar faces. My daughters booth told me their favorite parts of the exhibit. For my older daughter, it was seeing a bunch of people who where laughing at a cartoon on the wall. For my younger daughter, it was an original by Jack Kirby in the adjoining room.

§ The great insult wars between Marvel and DC have largely cooled off, but Joe Quesada got offsome awesome concern trolling by pointing out some flaws with Man Of Steel…like thinking Zod was the hero, as he told Kevin Smith in his podcast:

“He wanted to save his race, and Superman didn’t let him,” Quesada continued. “Zod, in this particular incarnation, struck me as not necessarily an evil man, but a man of … he had a particular … he had his orders, he had a mission. He was a zealot of sorts, but he was a zealot … again, correct me if I’m wrong  … but he didn’t say, ‘I want to rebuild Krypton,’ and then come back and destroy this little planet. ‘All I want is to rebuild this planet. And the only reason I’m blowing everything to bits here is because you’ve got what I want, and you’re not giving it to me. So please, give me my people, and I’ll leave.’”


Actually, a pretty good point by Quesada — Zod, although ultimately evil, clearly had noble intentions at one point, and that added a bit of complexity to the storyline. People like a complicated plto when it’s Batman, when it’s SUperman they don’t.

§ Michael Cavna profiles Herblock Prize winner Jen Sorensen:

Her award is notable partly because Sorensen is the first woman to win the prize in its decade-long history. But her career is also a barometer of another shifting wind: She is the relatively rare freelancer who scoops up so many industry honors while making a living not by seeking that scarce newspaper staff position, but by patching together a political-cartoon portfolio of webcomics, alt-weekly works, magazine gigs (Ms., The Progressive, the Nation) and even the occasional corporate assignment.

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§ Chris Sims was pretty annoyed by these heavily gendered Happy meal toys for Amazing Spider-Man 2 — boys got spiders and a mask; girls get pink wallets that say Spider-Man on them. And I found them icky too, but the DC Women Kicking Ass crew actually thought this was a POSITIVE step, since McDonald’s was at least marketing a superhero movie to girls. CHOICE YOUR SIDE. One thing that Sims wrote though:

There is, however, an argument in favor of the toys, one that I first heard with regards to the LEGO Friends set, a hot pink “girly” version of everyone’s favorite (pretty much gender-neutral) building blocks. It went like this: While the sets were clearly marketed as being “For Girls,” with an emphasis on cute puppies, hair salons, and friendship, the actual sets weren’t really targeting the kids. They were targeting the parents, encouraging them to pick something up for girls that would be a sort of gateway toy, for parents who wouldn’t have otherwise bought little girls sets that were based on Star Wars, superheroes or fire trucks. It’s an interesting argument, and it’s certainly true that toy commercials have conditioned kids to separate the stuff they like into the old blue-is-for-boys, pink-is-for-girls categories without even knowing it, and that girls as a market have been pretty traditionally underserved by superheroes. If the goal here is to give little girls a way to express their love of Spider-Man in a way that their stodgy parents won’t frown on, then that’s something we can get behind.


Yous are heavily, heavily gender stereotyped, but I have to say the new Legos for Girls definitely sell more than the gender neutral Legos did. Is it just socialization that allows girls to prefer cute little puppies and social situations? I don’t know, but those girl legos are adorable…

§ I totally did not watch the video of Diane Nelson playing pinball but luckily Kevin MElrose did.

§ Some Graphic Novel reviews by Paul Gravett.

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