You may recall back in May I was discussing the global media attention focussed on DC’s 52 series. More specifically the amount of attention being directed at the new Batwoman character, which, of course, had nothing to do with the fact she was a very fit woman in tight clothing who happened to be a lesbian as well. Oh, hold on, yes it did! The imminent week 11 issue of 52 (unusually for a US publisher, it is a weekly publication – not unusual in UK terms of course) will feature her arrival. I’m not going to go back into pontificating about gender expression in comics and popular culture (you can read the previous post for that) but I will offer this image of 52‘s Batwoman, purely in the spirit of gender studies and not simply for your visual titillation. Really.
Of course, it is all but impossible to discuss the representation of women in comics without mentioning Wonder Woman and, in other DC news, it has been announced that author Jodi Picoult will be writing a five-issue mini-series for our favourite Amazonian princess some time next year. Jodi’s latest novel, The Tenth Circle, follows a comic book artist whose daughter is sexually attacked; the novel reached the giddy heights of number two in the New York Times bestsellers list recently, so it is a pretty high profile signing for DC. Of course I am not using this just as an excuse to post a picture of Wonder Woman.
The trend for comics companies to bring in writers from the worlds of novels, TV and film seems to be getting stronger: Allan Heinberg who writes for the O.C. show has a current Wonder Woman series, acclaimed Scottish novelist Denise Mina is now the scribe for Hellblazer and Orson Scott Card’s Ultimate Iron Man is due in a trade paperback collection this autumn – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Of course J M Straczynski‘s been doing it for years and his friend, the great Harlan Ellison, has had a comics connection for even longer (his new Dream Corridor anthology is due this winter from Dark Horse). I wonder if we’ll ever see J.K. Rowling doing a Books of Magic mini series? What about Rich Hall to write Plastic Man? Perhaps we should bring back ROM the Space Knight and get Charlie Stross to write him as a post-Singularity technological being working for the Eschaton? Any suggestions, folks?
Tue, Jul 11, 2006
Comics and cartoons