Happy International Women’s Day 2013!!

Today is the 102nd International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the achievements of women while continuing to fight to improve the lives of women the world over.  Every year the United Nations picks a theme for International Women’s Day, and this year it’s “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.”  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon explains in his annual message:

As we commemorate International Women’s Day, we must look back on a year of shocking crimes of violence against women and girls and ask ourselves how to usher in a better future.

One young woman was gang-raped to death. Another committed suicide out of a sense of shame that should have attached to the perpetrators. Young teens were shot at close range for daring to seek an education.

These atrocities, which rightly sparked global outrage, were part of a much larger problem that pervades virtually every society and every realm of life.

And in response, the United Nations makes the following pledge:

This year on International Women’s Day, we convert our outrage into action. We declare that we will prosecute crimes against women – and never allow women to be subjected to punishments for the abuses they have suffered. We renew our pledge to combat this global health menace wherever it may lurk – in homes and businesses, in war zones and placid countries, and in the minds of people who allow violence to continue.

Working to end violence against women is a fantastic theme for this year, especially after the many atrocious incidents we’ve seen lately.  These dramatic and reprehensible events make it to the news, but we also need to remember that they’re dwarfed by the commonality of millions upon millions of smaller acts of violence against women worldwide each year.  Even here in Canada, comparatively a pretty fantastic place to live, half of Canadian women over the age of 16 have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence.  The insidious regularity of violence against women speaks to a larger problem that supercedes nationality or culture.  We need to acknowledge the gender inequality that breeds this violence and raise awareness to counteract this hostile environment, while working to continue to improve the role of women in our society.

Now, as always, Wonder Woman is completely onboard for this year’s International Women’s Day theme.  Hell, she was all over it 70 years ago!!  In this scene from Wonder Woman #4 in 1943, a thuggish fellow fights with his girlfriend, Elva.  He threatens her with a weapon, insults her, and slaps her:

Sad fact: Over 80% of dating violence victims are women.  Similarly, over 80% of domestic assaults are against women, and women are three to four times more likely to be killed by their spouse than men.  Luckily for Elva, Wonder Woman’s not going to let anyone be killed here, and she busts in and quickly turns the tables:

Unfortunately, superheroes aren’t real.  No one with tights or a cape is arriving in the nick of time to stop violence against women.  However, we can all follow Wonder Woman’s example and do our best to stop violence against women in any way we can.  You can learn more at the UN’s International Women’s Day site or at internationalwomensday.com.

It’s Ladies Night At My Local Comic Shop, Strange Adventures, On February 23 PLUS Wonder Woman Is On The Poster

My local comic shop is pretty much the best comic shop in the world (seriously… it’s won awards and everything) and every so often they do a Ladies Night after hours.  The next one is February 23, from 6-8 pm.  A lot of people don’t think that comic book shops are a particularly welcoming place for women on account of all the dudes, and thus a lot of ladies just don’t bother to go check them out.  Ladies Night, however, is for women only, with female employees running the shop, so that interested gals can see that comic shops aren’t scary or weird (well, not scary anyway…) and sort of ease into the comic book scene.  Here in Halifax, where tons of ladies are involved in the making, selling, and buying of comics, it’s also got a cool celebratory feel, like a fun get together for all the gals that support comics here.  Plus it’s got giveaways, gift bags, and sweet deals!!

Aside from being a great way to get women into comics, Ladies Night at Strange Adventures is fun for two other cool reasons.  First, it’s got a great poster by local artist Kate Leth, who is super internet famous and has had comic strips in tons of cool books.  The poster includes Wonder Woman, which is awesome, and is patterned on a Spice Girls cover, which is amusing and fun.  Wonder Woman is Ginger Spice, by the way.

Second, last year’s Ladies Night created quite a hullabaloo here on this very site.  When I reviewed the absolutely awful TV show Comic Book Men, I chose to talk about how great my LCS was instead of how terrible their store seemed to be, and I mentioned Ladies Night in passing.  A commenter was extremely offended at the idea of Ladies Night and considered it a civil rights issue because it was a women-only event where they got access to sales and prizes that men didn’t.  They said that they’d contacted the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to try and shut it down.  We had a “dialogue” on the topic for a while, which then hilariously ended up getting picked up on Twitter and Tumblr and rebroadcast by various comic pros and soon Ladies Night was getting TONS of free publicity and attention just because of this one loon taking issue with it.  It all turned out to be a bunch of talk, too.  For example, they threatened to send a man to try to get in and to film him being refused so as to get some media attention, but that never happened.  And Ladies Night went off great!!  It was an amusing scene, and worked out well for all of the sane people involved.

So if you’re a lady in the Halifax area, come by Strange Adventures at 5262 Sackville Street on Saturday, February 23, from 6-8pm.  It’s going to be a fantastic event, as always.

I Wrote An Obituary Yesterday OR My Grandmother Passed Away

My grandmother died in her sleep yesterday, after 86 years of impressively thwarting all of the various illnesses that had tried to take her down.  The woman had EVERYTHING, and survived it all.  Then last spring she started to have heart troubles that affected her breathing and she was hospitalized for a while.  She came out of that pretty well, but she caught the flu a little while ago and that combined with her heart/breathing issues proved to be too much.

I spent the day with my family, which was nice.  It wasn’t overly morose or anything.  Nan was 86, and we’ve all sort of been expecting this since the spring.  We wrote up an obituary, which Nan would have liked a lot but which wasn’t really me.  It was pretty Jesusy, and I’m very much a heathen.  It’s what Nan would’ve wanted us to print, and most of my family really dug it, so that’s good.  But it wasn’t me, so I’m writing this.

My grandmother was an impressive lady.  My grandfather died when my dad was a kid, and Nan raised three kids on her own.  Then after that, she got every illness possible.  She had various sorts of cancer, and the doctors were ready to write her off a few times.  I think she had an aneurysm or some other huge brain problem at one point.  I was just a little kid when all of this happened, so I don’t really remember.  She lived another 20 years after, and quite enthusiastically.  Nan was the sort of lady who went to a senior’s dinner to help serve.  She was a keener.

Nan had some fun quirks.  She read ALL the time, especially books about royalty.  She was all about the royal family, and the queen in particular, and that interest extended to other countries too.  She read Nicholas and Alexandra every other summer.  She also had barely any sense of taste left after her various illnesses, apart from stuff that was super strong or tart.  So she ate for texture.  She’d stick crackers or chips in her sandwiches, which would have the weirdest combination of fillings that sounded gross by flavour but super varied by texture.  They were loud.

She liked to garden, she liked to swim, she liked off-colour humour but would try REALLY hard not to show it.  She would NEVER ever ever play cards because someone at some point told her they were anti-Christianity in some capacity.  Nan was very much a stickler that way.  I don’t know if she ever set foot in a movie theatre, and was a very proper sort of lady generally.  Which is why one of my favourite stories about Nan is that she secretly read Gone With the Wind by flashlight under her covers when she was a kid, even though she wasn’t supposed to get it out from the library.  There was a bit of a rebel in her that she kept very tightly under wraps, but it came out every now and again.

And now she’s gone.  It’s sad, but not unexpected.  Most of my family were bummed but nonetheless considered it a “happy day” because she’s with Jesus.  I wouldn’t call it a happy day, but Nan lived a very full life.  She was super active well into her 80s, got to see her grandchildren grow up (and I got to tell her some fun news a month or so back that you all don’t know yet… she was over the moon excited), travelled all around the world in an epic adventure years ago, and it seemed like she was ready to go.  She certainly wasn’t worried about dying.  Part of that is the Jesus/heaven thing, of course, but I think part of it was that she was satisfied with everything she’d done and what she’d lived.  It was certainly an impressive 86 years.  I’m going to miss her, and her loud sandwiches.

My 10 Favourite Non-Comic Book Things Of 2012

Much like with my best of comics list, “things” is vague, but it’s a good way to look at everything at once.  Plus this is a comics blog!!  You don’t need my Top 10 of everything in the universe.  So we’ll stick with the vague listing.

I liked a lot of things this year, but this list is the things I absolutely loved.  Let’s get to it!!

10. J.K. Rowling

I read ALL of Harry Potter for the first time ever this year, in about three weeks, and it was absolutely spectacular.  Reading Harry Potter for the first time was my favourite thing of 2012 that didn’t come out in 2012.  But then, J.K. Rowling had a new book, The Casual Vacancy, written for adults and without a single wizard.  It was really quite good, as well as impressively dark and depressing, and was the complete opposite of Harry Potter in almost every way.  It takes guts to do something so different from the bestselling book franchise in the world, and skill to make small town politics as engrossing as the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

9. Elf on an Elk

The best of The Hobbit happened about five minutes in after Smaug took over the Lonely Mountain and the dwarves looked to the elf king, Thranduil, for assistance.  Thranduil stared them down and then dismissively looked away, all while riding an elk with HUGE antlers.  It was amazing, and lasted all of six seconds.  It was so brief and majestic, I can’t even find a good picture of it online.  It was the best, most random thing I saw all year.

8. Nate Silver

Obama winning the presidential election was great and all, but the best part of election night was watching the results come in and seeing that Nate Silver had called EVERY single state.  Pundits on both sides had predicted 12 billion different outcomes, and the absolutely asinine media coverage of the campaign tried to make the race look like it was too close to call, but Nate Silver got it ALL right.  With math.  It was awesome.  I sincerely hope that in four years, when the media tries to create ratings-boosting narratives instead of reporting facts, everyone ignores them and listens to the guy who’s actually using his brain.

7. Louie

Louis CK’s been killing it for the past few years now, and Louie remains one of the most enjoyable and fascinating TV shows on the air.  It was weird to begin with, but each year he takes it further from traditional comedy and story structures and makes it more and more bizarre.  It’s hilarious and surprisingly touching, and just amazingly cast.  The young actresses that play his daughters are particularly excellent.  You never know what’s going to happen when you tune in to Louie, and that’s what makes it great.

6. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson

I’ve enjoyed G. Willow Wilson’s for years.  Cairo was fantastic, and her recent Mystic mini-series at Marvel was super enjoyable.  Her first novel, Alif the Unseen, combines Islamic mythology with modern technology, and the result is a fascinating and great read.  I don’t know a lot about Islamic mythology, like djinns and such, so it was really interesting to be immersed in this world.  And also useful to enter it through the modern computer hacking world, which I’ve got a better grasp on.  Alif the Unseen is a unique and exciting novel, and I highly recommend it.

5. Sherlock

It’s a testament to how great Sherlock is that the two leads are so busy with other projects that the next season keeps getting delayed.  Martin Freeman was busy with The Hobbit, while Benedict Cumberbatch is just in everything now.  Cumberbatch gets most of the Sherlock love, but it’s the duo that makes the show so enjoyable.  They just ARE Holmes and Watson, and their chemistry is perfect.  That their cases are exciting is a bonus; I’d watch just to see the two of them sit around and chat.

4. Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live

As always, Saturday Night Live was hit and miss this year.  There was also a lot of cast turnover, with some big names leaving the show.  By far, my favourite new cast member is Kate McKinnon, who does great impressions (her Ann Romney was spectacular) and who starred in my absolute favourite sketch of the year.  As the Spanish woman who infamously repainted Ecce Homo, McKinnon KILLED me with lines about Jesus’ “enormous round monkey face.”  I could watch that bit on a loop forever.

3. Marvel’s The Avengers

I can’t recall ever having a better time at the movies than when I saw The Avengers.  The action was crazy, the new cast members were great, and it perfectly brought together all of the existing Marvel movies while FINALLY making the Hulk work on the big screen.  I’ve never heard a theatre of people erupt in laughter like they did when the Hulk picked up Loki and swung him around like a ragdoll.  It was a fun, crazy movie that perfectly captured everything that’s great about superheroes.

2. HHhH by Laurent Binet

HHhH is a novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi leader, during World War Two.  Sort of.  It’s half a novel, and half Laurent Binet’s ruminations on how you turn history into fiction and the various pitfalls that entails.  Binet critiques other books and movies that tell the same story while saving the harshest critiques for himself, and wonders about how much we can actually know about historical events and how much is just speculation.  It’s completely fascinating and engrossing, and serves as a brilliant lesson for how to approach history.

1. Happy Endings

There are a lot of great comedies on TV right now like Parks and Recreation, Archer, and Community, but I think the funniest show this year, and my favourite non-comic book thing of the year, is the criminally unwatched Happy Endings.  This show is just wall to wall jokes, and you’ve got to watch it a few times to catch everything.  It’s weirdly wonderful, and includes bits like Jane staging an elaborate Gallagher-esque watermelon smashing to amuse her dad, and Brad rediscovering his early 1990s love of ventriloquism with his stand-up comedian dummy, Sinbrad.  It’s all SO ridiculously funny, and I laugh like crazy through every episode.  It’s pure hilarity.

So there was some decent stuff in 2012, particularly of the funny and/or weird and/or fascinating variety.  Hopefully we’ll get even more in 2013!!

RIP Hostess OR A Twinkie Tribute From Wonder Woman

Today, Hostess Brands Inc. announced that they would be shutting down their American production, ending more than eighty years of delicious Twinkies, Ho Hos, Ding Dongs, and Fruit Pies.  The owners are saying that the unions are bleeding them dry, but it seems that the CEO’s salary was tripled earlier this year and several other top executives got their salaries doubled.  So yeah, those unions are REALLY screwing Hostess.  Regardless, lunches will never be the same.

At least in the United States.  Up here in Canada, another company owns the Hostess brand and will keep cranking out the delicious, seemingly immortal treats.  I’m thinking about setting up a Hostess smuggling syndicate to meet the cream-filled snack needs of my neighbours to the South.

In honour of the end of Hostess in America, here’s a classic Twinkies ad from the 1970s with Wonder Woman battling a bizarrely created giant, Cooky La Moo!!  You’ll never guess what ends up saving the day:

McDonald’s Yet Again Excludes Female Characters In Young Justice Toy Line

This is, sadly, the fourth post in what’s become a series about McDonald’s and DC Comics’ poor/non-existent treatment of their female characters in their Happy Meal toy lines.  Let’s start with a quick refresher.

In March 2011, McDonald’s first line of Young Justice toys featured no female characters at all, despite there being several ladies on the team:

Then in May 2011, their numerous Batman: The Brave and the Bold figures didn’t have any women either:

Then in April 2012, McDonald’s put out toys based on Green Lantern: The Animated Series, which also didn’t include a single female character:

And now they’re back at it.  They have a new line of Young Justice figures comprised of skateboards featuring some of the cast of the show.  Let’s see if there are any female characters this time:

Not a one.  We have Robin, Batman, Superboy, Superman, Aqualad, and Kid Flash, and that’s it.

First off, they’re WAY behind.  The show jumped ahead five years a while ago and became Young Justice: Invasion.  Robin is Nightwing now, Aqualad is a secret bad guy, and Kid Flash is retired.  Superboy looks about the same, but regardless, these are some very poorly-planned tie-ins.  And it’s made even worse by the fact that the show isn’t even on the air right now.  Well done, everyone.

Second, no ladies!!  Young Justice has several great, starring female characters.  Miss Martian, Artemis, Zatanna, Batgirl, Wonder Girl, Bumblebee… there are options, and most of them are on the show more than Batman and Superman are.  But no.  McDonald’s and DC Comics have shown yet again that they don’t think girls and superheroes go together.

They also clearly don’t think that girls want to get superhero toys either, since alongside the Young Justice toys there’s this very pink and purple line of Littlest Pet Shop toys:

The Young Justice line is for boys, and the Littlest Pet Shop line is for girls, because I guess it’s 1952 and that’s just how things roll.

This is a big problem.  Dichotomous gender roles pigeonhole kids and teach them that it’s not okay to just be themselves and like what they like.  They have to match these prescribed roles.  I’m sure there’s lots of girls who’d want a Young Justice skateboard (my nieces sure would), and there’s lots of boys who’d prefer a cute animal from the Littlest Pet Shop, but two things happen:

a)  Kids aren’t given the choice, seeing as they are assigned toys based on their gender.

b)  If given the choice, kids are more likely to align themselves with their gender role when it’s presented to them so starkly, lest they be considered odd.

That’s just awful.  Plus, teaching them these gender roles at such a young age colours their thinking for the rest of their lives.  This stuff gets engrained.  Women are homemakers and mothers and they love pink and adorable things.  Men are big, strong breadwinners and they love sports and action.  Now, none of those things are bad at all.  It’s the idea that you’re SUPPOSED to fit a mould based solely on your gender that screws up a lot of people.

Anyway, McDonald’s may be delicious with their chicken nuggets and golden fries, but they’re awful when it comes to gender roles.  And DC Comics isn’t much better.  Give us some female characters next time, please.  They exist, and people like them.  Don’t pretend the show is all boys, for boys.

Blog Mini-Vacation!!

I’m going off the grid for a few days to relax and read some books, so the blog will be on a semi-hiatus.  I say semi because I’ve got some posts lined up.  There’ll be more Olympic fun, and some posts about Game of Thrones and Dejah Thoris.  Random, I know, but they’ll be a good time.

However, since I won’t be online I’m going to miss the DC solicits on Monday and the Wonder Woman #12 preview that’ll probably be out early next week, so sorry about that.  The “Women at DC Comics Watch” will go up later in the week, and I’ll be back late Wednesday night with my usual Wonder Woman review.  So yeah, I’ll see you all on Wednesday.  Be good, and don’t go crazy in the comments or anything!!