I’ve been a supporter of stopclustermunitions.org over the years, both philosophically and financially, and I’m doing something special with DMZ #50. ”Little Plastic Toys” is a four-page silent story, expertly illustrated by Fabio Moon, and I’m donating my page rates from that story to stopclustermunitions.org.
I urge everyone to check out DMZ #50 as well as the website. See what your home country is doing and sign the petition. Follow them on twitter.
DMZ #50 has an in-store date of this Wednesday, Feb 10th, for the USA/Canada, and later in the week for Europe. Forty pages for $3.99
Lately I’ve really been thinking about being a woman and how apparently that automatically makes my body political when I photograph it. I know you’ve created a lot of female-driven stories and I was wondering if you ever felt that by choosing to do so, do you feel they automatically become political? Much of your work is political anyway, so maybe this is nothing new. Do you feel you make a conscious effort to portray some sort of politically-responsible image of women in comics? Have you ever been criticized for having failed at doing so, even though you thought you’d succeeded?
I know I never overtly think that I’m making a political statement when I decide to create something with a female lead, meaning, I’m not sitting there while I write thinking “oh my god, this is such a great political statement!” At times I felt I was doing something progressive in doing so, within the comics realm, or necessary since I do think there is a real dearth of complex, not-easily-stereotyped female characters in comics. Maybe that’s political? If it is, its secondary for me. I’m mostly trying to be diverse and do what feels right.
I hope that my characters are politically-responsible images of women. I’m sure some of my earlier books weren’t always. But I have and have had nothing but women in my personal live, from my mother and sister who raised me, to my wife and daughter now. I think by now I’m hardwired to watch my ass in terms of how I write women, since somewhere someone close to me will slap me down if I do something stupid. And, you know, I love them all to death and would be careful regardless.
The women I write are the women I’ve known, flaws and all. Especially the flaws, which is what makes people human. I’ve taken some crap from self-stylized critics online for my flawed female characters, specifically Megan from LOCAL who has been called all sorts of disgusting names in reviews (always by men) due to her human imperfections. This is what I mean about feeling that its necessary to put this sort of stuff out into the comics realm - a lot of readers still don’t know how to cope with reading a woman who isn’t living up to whatever warped and sexist standards they’ve decided for themselves that everyone should adhere to. It’s at once infuriating, depressing, and satisfying to get that sort of reaction.
I feel good overall, though, because from the corners that matter, I’ve been almost universally praised for my skill in writing women. I also feel humbled by this, but proud, too, because I put a lot of effort into it and its an honor to be that guy that writes those types of books.
put your computer on mute and watch this video. jay-z is killing it visually. listening wise…not so much for me.
you’re right. visually, this is incredible. but this song is really, really terrible.
I like Jay-Z,and I like this song. The video was directed by artist Sam Brown, according to Rolling Stone, but I can’t seem to find anything about him.
But it is a music video, and I like that the visuals challenge the lyrics, echo and question their true meaning. The video challenges hip hop culture in general; it adopts the same attitude I’ve always admired about Jay-Z, the fuck-you-I’ll-do-what-I-want-to-do attitude. I don’t know how many rap fans will take the time to look at all the images in this video and figure out how they reflect the words, or if they’ll recognize it as an important step forward in pushing mainstream hip hop towards a better future - because if we can’t go back lyrically to Wu-Tang days, I at least want more intelligent music videos - but hopefully they like it and it inspires them. Sometimes that’s all it takes to make the shift from boring, booty-shakin’, bling-swingin’ videos to more culturally aware works of art. With swagger.
This video was released at midnight on December 31st, effectively making it the first music video of this new decade; I think it’s set a good standard.
I spent a half-hour this morning clicking around youtube looking for nothing in particular, and gradually came to the realization that: there are a lot of amateur covers of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland 1945”, and they are almost exclusively performed by weird, but utterly passionate young women. Some are good, some aren’t, but all of them are totally compelling. Viewed together they become, I dunno, more than the sum of their parts.
