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Storysellers Auction
For the #Storysellers auction, to raise funds to help Irish independent booksellers and comic book stores during this COVID-19 emergency period, I'm offering a bundle of items.
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RBG is FTW
The documentary RBG, about the life and career of American Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is a fascinating portrait of a civil rights advocate who has developed into a cult figure late in life.
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Resistance is Fruitful
It should comes as no surprise to any readers of my blog or Twitter that I’m not a fan of the soon-to-be elected President of the USA. I have taken a policy on social media of not posting any of the stream of prophesies of doom of what’s coming over the next four years, but I’m making an exception with this segment from the recent episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. This show has provided exceptional, pointed, satirical reporting since it was first aired, and I think it’s essential viewing (you can find it all on its YouTube channel, including extra online material). At least you can laugh while…
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Horror Writers Association
I’ve been accepted as an Active member of the Horror Writers Association, which is based in the USA. I’ve been contemplating joining the organisation for a number of years, but decided I’d wait until I could enter as a professional, so it’s nice to hit that landmark. Throughout my life I have worked with, and for, societies, unions, and Guilds whose purpose is to bring people together to form a collective voice. I believe quite passionately in such groups, even when they have their failings. I also appreciate that the HWA changed its name a number of years ago from the Horror Writers of America to the Horror Writers Association…
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Kapow ignores women again
Tickets for the 2012 Kapow! comic book convention went on sale today, with the first version of the guest-list announced. After the controversy from last year over the lack of representation of women guests at the convention I expected it would lead off with a better showing on its subsequent line-up. How wrong I was. There are twenty-three ‘star guests’ listed so far, all of them men. If you dig into the programming you’ll find there are a few actresses mentioned, but in the ‘hot’ film writers/directors section there are no women listed either. Not surprisingly, I tweeted about this as soon as I noticed and several people retweeted it…
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Womanthology
I’m sure many of you reading this blog have heard about the Womanthology project: it’s the brainchild of artist Renae De Liz, and is an all-woman anthology comic book that will be published by IDW Publishing this December, with all proceeds going to the charity, Global Giving Foundation. You can read a long interview at Bleeding Cool with Renae about the project and its evolution. With the aim of raising $25,000 Renae set up a Kickstarter campaign for the project, and by the end of the first day that goal had been achieved. Now, with just five days to go until the campaign ends, the amount of money pledged stands…
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jennifer 1 preview
Here’s page 1 of my next comic book, Jennifer Wilde. Art and lettering are by the talented Stephen Downey. If you hop over to the web site you can see page 2 and 3 as well. It’s a little naughty, but this is the art scene in 1921 in Paris! Today The Irish Times published an article called “The brave new world of comic-book heroines“, written by Sinéad Gleeson. It looks at the women who are emerging on the Irish comic book scene at the moment. I’m one of the women featured in the piece. Earlier in the year when I assembled the list of women working in comic books…
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DC's Mad Hatter tea party
News and reaction to DC’s reboot of 52 titles in its catalogue this September has been rumbling on since I blogged about it last week. First I’d like to forefront a couple of repsonses that contain useful insight for the DC executives. Comic Book Resources put up part of a fantastic discussion with Dan Harmon, the creator of the comedy TV show Community, about creating a writing staff with an even gender split. It’s called “We have to stop thinking of it as a quota thing and think of it as a common-sense thing” Here’s an extract: There’s the same percentage of genius happening in both genders, but there’s less…
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embracing the paradox
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf This TED Talk called Reinventing Feminism is by Courtney Martin, feminist, journalist, activist and editor at Feministing.com. It’s a fine overview of feminism in the 21st century and why women should continue to agitate for change despite the times when the issues seem overwhelming. I found it personally inspiring. It reminds me that our moments of despair often contain the seeds of what can save us eventually. If we care deeply about issues it’s inevitable that lack of progress or failure will cast us into a depression. It’s okay to falter because it matters so much. That’s also the best motivation to keep striving for change.
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2% is not equality
The comic book blogosphere has been obsessed by one topic of conversation lately: the reboot of the DC Comics Universe that’s coming in September. All the forthcoming 52 titles will be reset to number 1, which (theoretically) will leave the creative teams free to forge new identities for the characters. Information has been released to the fans about the forthcoming changes in a slow-drip fashion. It’s a cunning PR strategy to inflame interest and discussion about the direction DC is taking. They’ll also be offering digital downloads of the comics on the same day as the print release, which is a big indicator of where they think the market is…
