Wonder Girl, Batgirl, Bumblebee, And Miss Martian Team-Up On Young Justice: Invasion

On this week’s episode of Young Justice: Invasion, it was an all-girl team-up, with Wonder Girl, Batgirl, Bumblebee, and Miss Martian infiltrating a base in Bialya, the home country of the villainous Queen Bee.  Of course, we most care about Wonder Girl, the only Wonder-person doing anything outside of comics these days.  Nightwing tries to relay the plan, but keener Wonder Girl knows it already.  Sneak in, see if there are bombs, and sneak out:

The reason behind the all-girl team leads to the best exchange of the night:

NIGHTWING: Bialya’s dictator, Queen Bee, is another story.  Her ability to control the minds of men is why Alpha is an all-female squad for this mission.

BATGIRL: Oh, really?  And would you have felt the need to justify an all-MALE squad for a given mission?

NIGHTWING: [coughs] There’s no right answer for that, uh, is there?  So… Nightwing out.

BATGIRL: Queen Bee isn’t the only woman who can mess with a man’s mind.

Once in Bialya, Wonder Girl is disappointed to get lookout duty because of her lack of stealth skills.  She’s more smash and grab, and is bummed out:

But of course, once the mission begins, Psimon and a bunch of goons show up.  Wonder Girl sneaks in and warns Miss Martian, but gets intercepted by Devastation:

And then she escapes, because she’s pretty epic.  I mean, check out this bullet deflection… it’s coming at her:

And BAM:

Once freed, the whole team is fixing to rescue a bunch of kidnapped kids when OH NO the goons tear the wings off their airplane and they’re nosediving!!  Wonder Girl slows the plane down as best she can:

And then Miss Martian grabs the plane with her awesome martian ship and there is much rejoicing:

All in all, the mission took a bad turn but ended up being a big success AND Wonder Girl got to bust up a bunch of bad guys.  It was a pretty good time, and it was fun to see Wonder Girl get some more screen time again so soon in the season.  Plus we got a second of Marina Sirtis as Queen Bee at the end of the show!!  Deanna Troi popping in is always sweet.  This new season of Young Justice is pretty bizarre with it’s big time jump and all, but I’m kind of digging it so far.  Check back here for more screencaps next time Wonder Girl has another big episode!!

New Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Trailer Features Wonder Woman!!

There’s a new trailer for Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, and while she’s not featured heavily in the trailer, Wonder Woman is definitely in there a couple of times:

There’s a lot of Batman, Robin, Superman, and Flash though.  And CBR posted a picture of Wonder Woman with another character who doesn’t get a lot of facetime in the trailer, Green Lantern:

Despite Wonder Woman’s sporadic at best trailer appearance, this game is going to be AWESOME.  And you can play as Wonder Woman anytime you want in free play mode, once you’ve unlocked her of course, so that’s pretty great.  Look for Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes in late June.

Congratulations Northstar And Kyle (Who Doesn’t Have A Cool Superhero Name, I Guess)

The rumour we’ve been hearing about for ages is now officially confirmed, and on The View no less: Northstar’s getting married to his boyfriend, Kyle, in Astonishing X-Men #51!!  So that’s very exciting.  I have a few quick thoughts:

• The View!!  I know it’s all corporate synergy, like how CNN always has stories about DC characters on their site, but that’s still a huge and unconventional platform for Marvel.  I bet NO ONE who regularly watches The View has ever read an X-Men comic, and maybe a few will now.
• Hooray Northstar!!  Canadians are awesome.  I wonder where he’s getting married?  Gay marriage has been legal up here in Canada for years… maybe he’ll come get hitched at home.
• I know that Apollo and Midnighter pre-date Northstar and Kyle by about a decade, but a gay couple getting married in a mainstream comic book is still fantastic.  Apollo and Midnighter were in comics that kids couldn’t really buy… anyone can go get Astonishing X-Men.  Though yeah, Kevin Keller totally beat them to it, mainstreamwise.
• And in Johnny-come-lately news, DC’s got a gay character coming too, apparently.  An established, iconic character even.

So congratulations to Jean-Paul and Kyle, and congratulations for Marjorie Liu and Mike Perkins for getting all this sweet press and getting to tell such a cool story.  It’s always good to give heteronormativity a swift kick in the ass, and a high profile gay marriage will certainly do that!!

Women In Comics Statistics: DC And Marvel, March 2012 In Review

My regular Gendercrunching article is up on Bleeding Cool now!!  Go check it out to see the women in comics stats for March 2012. DC had an average month at 11% female creators, but Marvel broke the monthly record with 12.7%!!

There’s also a look at Marvel’s monthly numbers from a different perspective, focusing on DIFFERENT creators instead of CREDITED creators, though interestingly the numbers turn out to be about the same.

Anyway, go to Bleeding Cool and check out Marvel’s record-breaking month!!

Wonder Woman #9 Review OR Hell Is A Pretty Messed Up Place, You Guys

When we last left our team of adventurers, Hermes and Zola had beamed out of Hell, leaving Wonder Woman behind to marry Hades after he shot her through the heart with Eros’ love gun.  What does this issue hold?  A daring escape?  An intrepid rescue?  Let’s find out what happens, after the usual spoiler warnings!!

So yeah, SPOILERS!!!!!

If you haven’t read the issue, I’m about to spoil EVERYTHING that happened in it.

Seriously, all of it.

Even if you’re trade waiting or something, all of your enjoyment will be ruined.

Or roont.  I’m reading Wolves of the Calla right now.  I’m very worried about Susannah!!

I really doubt anyone is going to know what I’m talking about there.

I mean, I know it’s a Stephen King book, but I NEVER hear people talking about the Dark Tower stuff.

Anyway, SPOILERS!!!!!

Yeah, nothing really happened in this issue.

Elaborate, you say?  Okay.  The issue starts with Wonder Woman in Hell, about to marry Hades.  The issue ends with Wonder Woman in Hell, about to marry Hades.  There’s a bit of conversing in between, a lot of gruesomeness, and yeah… nothing really happens.

Let’s do a quick run through: Strife invites Ares to the wedding, but he’s not coming.  Zola is pissed the Hermes won’t go save Wonder Woman, but he promised to protect Zola above all else.  Diana gets dressed for the wedding and talks to a freaky Persephone.  Zola and Hermes meet naked Aphrodite, and Zola forgives Hermes basically.  Strife convinces Hades to make sure Diana loves him.  Hephaestus shows up (invited, to the wedding) with Eros and Lennox.  Hades decides to test Diana’s love by putting her in her lasso, hangman’s noose style… if she loves him, then good, if not, then she dies.  Cliffhanger ending!!

Also, this cliffhanger ending is on the dang cover, so there’s that.

Nothing is resolved, other than a minor conflict between Zola and Hermes that only begins in this issue.  The plot barely crawls forward.  Last issue was cool and creepy and exciting.  This issue was really flat and slow for me.

Part of it is no Cliff Chiang.  If you’ve read any of my Wonder Woman reviews, then you know I’m all about Cliff Chiang and that I think his art just makes everything WAY better.  Tony Akins is fine, and has some good moments here.  I particularly liked Zola’s rainbow hoodie:

But really, none of the characters feel quite right to me without Cliff Chiang drawing them.  I don’t want to be down on Akins or anything, but Chiang is just EPIC.

Azzarello seems to be using this issue to let us get to know people, but anything we learn is stuff we knew already.  It’s no shocker that Ares is a curmudgeon in the middle of a war zone.  Strife being conniving is nothing new.  Zola is hot tempered, Hermes is calm and rational, Hades is a creepy weirdo.  Aphrodite’s new, but all we really learn about her is that she’s super pretty, and anyone with the tiniest mythology awareness would know that.  Oh, and that Wonder Woman misses Paradise Island is also not a shock.  And again, the cliffhanger was on the cover.  The whole issue felt like rehashing filler.

Being negative is no fun though.  There were some good things.  I thought that the opening pages, that were available earlier in a preview, were really strong.  It’s some of Akins’ best work to date, and Ares and Strife interacting was lots of fun.  Strife is always nice to see, and I’m glad she’s back.

The issue also succeeds with its horror bent.  Hell is a terrible, gruesome place.  Hades sits on a throne made of his starving father (Kronos, I assume), whose tears supply the wine for the wedding.  Wonder Woman meets Persephone, Hades first wife, whose arms are slashed from when she tried to escape Hades.  It looks like she tried to kill herself to get away from him, but since he’s the lord of the dead that sounds like the dumbest plan ever.  Maybe I read it wrong.  Regardless, all of Hell is SUPER creepy.  Even Wonder Woman gets in on the creepiness with her blood red gown, accessorized with severed hands, after being dressed by her attendants (with dog faces and crazy snake Medusa-style hair):

Azzarello’s been going for horror with Wonder Woman, and he hits it more conventionally here.  Last issue was more about the existential horror of Hell, and while this issue touches on similar themes (particularly with Persephone) it’s also more straight up unsettling and creepy visually.

At the end of the day, though, nothing really happens.  And more importantly, Wonder Woman is barely in it.  In her two scenes, comprising seven pages, she’s not even the primary character.  Her first scene is much more about Persephone and her screwed up situation, and her second scene is just Hades going on about making sure she loves him.  Wonder Woman doesn’t do anything in the issue except powder herself and ride an undead horse.  To be fair, no one else actually does anything either.  But the book is called Wonder Woman.  I don’t think it’s out of line to expect Wonder Woman to be doing something in such a publication.

So Strife is back and it was freaky all around, but we’re going to have to wait until next issue for anything to happen.  Hopefully Wonder Woman can pass the test and escape, or fail the test and bust out of Hell triumphantly.  Whatever goes down, I just hope that Wonder Woman does something other than wear a freaky dress.

Women In Comics Statistics: Marvel, March 2012 Week By Week

While DC is the picture of consistency, Marvel is always mixing it up, and March was no exception.  This was an impressive month for them, with some very big numbers.  Let’s jump right in:

So that 7.7% in the third week isn’t so great, but luckily the rest of the weeks are NUTS.  Two weeks over 13% and then a whopping 15.8% is crazy good!!  While that third week will be a drag on their overall total, this is nonetheless a really great span of female creators.  And the mega-chart is looking pretty decent as well:

Let’s go to the zero counter first… in February, Marvel hit a new low with an adjusted zero counter (because it was a five-week month) of 9.6, but they’ve bounced back this month with 8 zeroes!!  Not that 8 zeroes is fantastic, but 4 of them are a given because they never hire female letterers.  We shouldn’t write off lettering and excuse Marvel’s perpetual lack of female letterers by any means, but apart from lettering Marvel has only 4 zeroes in the 28 remaining slots, which is really quite good.  Lettering is a constant stain on Marvel’s record, but at the same time they do well elsewhere.

Cover artists did well in March, with one week in double digits, two other strong weeks, and a zero.  That third week wasn’t very good for Marvel, despite their overall success this month. 

Writers skipped the third week curse, though, with solid totals across the board!!  There was at least one female writer every week in March, and most of the time there were several.  It’s good to see such strong numbers for the writers.

The art categories had three zeroes, but there were also two weeks in double digits too, so there are some pros and cons.  Pencillers had a fairly solid month, apart from that third week, with inkers not doing quite as well but still having some fair representation.  While not great, it’s not too bad either, comparatively.

Colourists had a very consistent and very good month, sitting squarely in the mid-teens all four weeks.  The third week curse knocked them down slightly, but only negligibly so.  There were, as always, no letterers.  We need to start a counter for how long it’s been since Marvel’s had a female letterer, like they did way back with the Iranian hostages.  Let me tabulate… Marvel last had a female letterer on X-Men Forever 2 #16 way back on January 26, 2011 (Lois Buhalis holds the honour), so that’s 476 days without a female letterer. 

Editors did very well, with several solid weeks preceded by a really great week that almost hit 40%.  Those are some of the best numbers we’ve seen from Marvel editors in a while.  Assistant editors weren’t so hot though… two weeks in the low teens isn’t great, and while they ended the month on a high note, overall their total is going to be pretty low for March.  In an otherwise strong month, assistant editors didn’t have the best go of it.

Altogether, March was great for Marvel.  Their monthly totals should be pretty stellar, and a lot of categories had some consistently good numbers each week.  This may be the best month Marvel’s had since we started keeping track of the stats.

Notes:

• It was a tie for busiest book of the month, with Fear Itself: Fearless #10 and #11 taking the top spot yet again with 14 credited creators each, no women on either.
• There was a tie for highest percentage of female creators as well, with Journey Into Mystery #635 and Northanger Abbey #5 both at 3 of 7.  This was Northanger Abbey’s final issue, so maybe JIM will take the top spot alone next month, or they’ll be a new challenger for the crown.
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.

Women In Comics Statistics: DC, March 2012 Week By Week

DC is an impressively consistent company.  Over in spreadsheet land, I’m neck deep in May numbers and the Second Wave is finally mixing things up a bit, but until then DC is following their usual patterns.  The numbers look to be about average, because DC is always average.  They are consistency personified, except that it’s a company and not a person… institutionalized maybe?  That just makes them sound crazy.  Anyway, onto their overall totals:

A bad first week, then things get better, as always.  In March, however, the bad first week wasn’t all that terrible, and the weeks that followed weren’t all that great.  Having 8.4% as a low and 11.9% as a high isn’t particularly extreme, and it should all even out into the usual range overall for DC.  Let’s go to the mega-chart… maybe something fun is going on there:

First up, of course, is the zero counter!!  Last month, with the extra week, we had an adjusted zero counter of 9.6, but in March DC had 11 zeroes.  Not good… that’s a bit of a step down.  It’s not their worst total, but double digits is a bad scene.  Over a third of the slots in March were zeroes.

Cover artists had one really good week, hitting doubly digits, one fairly average week, and two zeroes.  With nearly one hundred covers a month, counting variants, you’d think there might be more ladies working on them, if only because eventually you’re going to run out of guys.  Cover artists is always the biggest category in terms of sheer numbers… there were 164 credited cover artists in March, and the next highest total was inkers at 116.  And only 6 women on covers in the entire month.

There were two writers for low percentages, and two zeroes, but finally Gail Simone  doesn’t have to carry the load all by herself now that Ann Nocenti is on Green Arrow.  That’s a silver lining at least.

On the art side, there were five zeroes in the eight slots for pencillers and inkers, but pencillers hit 7.1% one week, which is rare for them.  Altogether these numbers are abysmal, but you’ve got to celebrate the little things… HOORAY one of the eight slots didn’t totally suck!!

Colourists had a wide array of weeks in March, from bad to good to awful to great.  All in all, colourists should end up in double digits for the month, which is good.  It’s still odd that what used to be such a stalwart for female creators continues to falter though.  In terms of letterers, March started off slow but finished well with Saida Temofonte getting some gigs on some video game and digital first properties.

Editorial was a bit all over the map, but never got too disastrous.  While 13.6% isn’t a great number for full editors, we’ve seen FAR worse, and the other weeks were up in the 20s and 30s.  For assistant editors, the first three weeks of March were fantastic, and although the final week was lower it was still pretty decent.  All in all, it looks like a fairly solid month for editorial.

Overall, March 2012 was pretty routine for DC.  There were no big surprises, and even the ups and downs were less severe than usual.  Only colourists had a really zany month, and colourists have become an odd mystery just generally.  So yeah, very average all around. 

Notes:

• The busiest book of the month was Action Comics #7 with 14 credited creators, none of them women.  Action Comics had routinely been one of the busiest books at DC since the relaunch, and I don’t think it’s had a single female creator the entire time.
• The book with the highest percentage of female creators was Batgirl #7 with an even 50-50 split at 4 of 8. 
• To learn more about this statistics project and its methodology click here, and to see the previous stats click here.