elsewhere: le voila!

Or, the project about which I was being sort of coy because I wasn't sure how much I should say in public before it actually appeared.

Strange Horizons Columns: Anyone for Blasphemy?, by Iain Jackson:

What do you believe?

Faith and religion can be used in fiction, speculative or otherwise, to show how your characters are or are not like others in their society, how faith or lack of it shapes and forms them and their reactions. This is true even when your world is this one at a slight remove. (Or not so slight, as the case may be.) But sometimes, the mix of comics and religion can just be . . . odd.

I can't describe how shocked I was to be asked to do this, or how glad I am that they asked!

It's a regular gig, a monthly column on comics as speculative fiction. I have to say, until I was asked to do the column, I hadn't really thought of comics as speculative fiction. But then, if you're flinging superpowered people, beings, entities, what have you, around the universe, into and out of civilizations that could only exist in someone's imagination ... well, what else is that but speculative fiction?

I think I even have the idea for the next column, assuming that it gets preliminary approval.

comickal: dc-itis

COUNTING DOWN WITH DAN DIDIO: THE FIRST THIRD - NEWSARAMA:

[...]NRAMA: With the success of 52, the success of Countdown, with what you said about if you’d stop and where readers would go…is DC, for lack of a better term, locked into doing weekly series forever?

DD: I would love to say yes. Even if the book did half as well as we’re doing with Countdown, it would still be a success. Again, fans and critics look at the weekly nature of it, but I look at it as putting out four issues a month that sell well. In that sense, I’m hard-pressed to come up with four titles that can sell as well as Countdown on a monthly basis. That’s one of the things that we have to do as a publisher – we have to examine our entire publication schedule. There is a limit to the number of books that could put on a shelf without breaking editorial and burning through the talent, but also breaking the internal production systems and procedures that we have inside this building. There is a limit to what we can do.

So when we evaluate our production schedules, and we evaluate what we do as a publisher, we have to make the choices that we believe are the best choices, not just in regards to the commercial viability, but also in the value that a given book produces for us. If I could create one weekly book that gives me such great value for the DC Universe, then that’s probably a better investment on our parts than to try and create four monthly titles that will deliver the same weight to DC.

The bottom line is that, as long as people want them, we will create them. That’s the simple answer. The fans determine what we do by their buying power and strength. Right now, we’re getting a rousing response that is supporting the weekly books. There is not one piece of information that I have received contrary to that.[...]

You know ... I'm not entirely sure that weekly series forever and ever amen is a bad idea, necessarily. Neither am I convinced that it's a good idea. I don't know if you'll burn out the audience -- I'm not sure you can completely burn out the audience. I do think you can burn out the talent; doing a weekly comic book is clearly an incredible amount of work.

The one aspect of it that is a relentlessly awful idea is tying your entire line and continuity to a weekly series. That stands every chance of alienating your audience, because they don't want to have to buy all these series to figure out what's going on with the stories and characters they care about. Countdown may be a success at a certain level -- that said, DC has to be worried that they're having their hats handed to them by Marvel week in and week out. It's one thing to settle for being number 2, but at the moment, DC is a very distant number 2, and once upon a time, not all that long ago, they were a competitive number 2. Longer ago than that, they were a dominating number 1. A weekly series that drags every other title in its wake really would not seem to be the way to handle this.

comickal: metacommentary

ANGBAND - They got it about right (caution: rape talked about below, trigger warning):

So I was looking at the above-linked entry via When Fangirls Attack, and I ran across the below comment:

madthinker12357 on August 20th, 2007: Ugh. I'm not asking for rape in comics. If there is never another rape, I won't care. I am absolutely NOT saying that because rape happens in real life that it should be in comics. I am not even implying that.

My point was that if men are raped in comics as much as women, it make women and gay men look like the predators and men (who are usually straight men) look like the most common victims. Is that what you want? Because like me, feminist theory is usually against that. If you want to send what many would consider to be anti-feminist messages that imply that it is really straight men we need to protect from rape because they get raped soooooooo much, you can make that case, but I, like most feminist, oppose it.

Leaving aside the issue actually being discussed in the thread, all I have to say is: most men who are raped are raped by other straight men. (And, actually, I'm pretty sure that most men who get raped are straight, for that matter. It's not about lust, particularly; it's about doing something because you can and because it will get inside someone's head.)

Probably should have commented over there, but (1) it's a complete side issue to the thread, and (2) didn't want to get into it. But I did just want it said.