mariness

1. Apparently, I did forget to make an official announcement about this, so here goes the official announcement: I will be at Lone Star Con in San Antonio, August 29-September 2, 2013. Apart from definitely owing Cat Rambo and a few others some drinks, I have no official schedule, so if you are there, feel free to come by and wave; I'll be the small blonde woman rolling around in a wheelchair.

2. Some time ago, a few people said some very evil words on Twitter: "Superhero" and "limerick."

Most of you know me well enough by now to know that I can't resist that sort of evil. So, after multiple assurances that this was supposed to be for an anthology of bad superhero poetry, emphasis on bad, I wrote a very very bad limerick and shot it over.

To my joy, the limerick was pretty much immediately accepted for the anthology. To my horror, when I got a copy of anthology a few weeks later, I realized that several poets had entirely forgotten the word "bad" and instead gone for "excellent."

What this means is that my terrible, terrible little limerick is surrounded by some very good and when not very good, hilariously bad superhero poems in Flying Higher: An Anthology of Superhero Poetry, available in multiple formats for free over at Smashwords.

In fact my limerick is so terrible that I was halfway tempted not to link to this at all, but some of the other poems in here are hilarious and will completely make your day: check out Alex Bledsoe's O Captain, America's Captain; Amy McNally's little untitled haiku; A.C. Wise's little limerick which unlike my contribution is actually funny; Matthew Kuchka's The Wolverine; and...oh, just go read it already. There's even a villanelle.

My advice is, go get the book, and when you reach my poem, for the sake of your own brain, skip it, and go on to the better stuff. And if my limerick harms your eyeballs by accident, I can only say, I was told that these were supposed to be BAD poems, not good ones!

3. And the latest Tor.com post, about Mary Norton's Are All the Giants Dead just popped up, which means that we are only a couple posts off from a reread you've all been waiting for.

A group of mothers protesting all those gay superheroes in Marvel and DC Comics.

A couple of reactions:

1. So, yes, I stopped being a regular Marvel reader years ago, but, seriously, am I actually expected to think that Northstar's marriage is going to influence anyone that much? Northstar's? I am willing to bet that about half the people reading this post, if not more, have no idea who Northstar is - and I have a relatively comics-aware readership.

I don't mean to be cynical. Ok, yes, I do mean to be cynical, but the entire Northstar marriage strikes me less as an attempt to influence society, and more as a desperate attempt to restore some sort of relevance or interest to the X-Men comic and drive up sales. Now, putting Cyclops and Wolverine together -- that's indoctrinating young minds. (And don't tell me Cyclops wouldn't be not so secretly into it.) Actually, let's go for that.

2. On a related note, unless Diamond (the major U.S. distributor of comic books) is lying to all of us, and let's face it, they might be, sales of Astonishing X-Men have been steadily dropping for some time now, although 2012 comic sales have increased relative to 2011 comic sales. I'm assuming the improvement is more thanks to a slightly improved economy, the recent DC reboot, and possibly some spillover from interest in the films.

But let us just say that if you are looking for actual influential images of superheroes in current media, you should be looking at films (hi, Avengers!) and not comic book media.

3. I gotta tell you: I can see Batman as bisexual. Absolutely. Let us, as comic readers and viewers, face it: his relationships with Nightwing, Joker and the various Robins? Oh, yeah. (Or, Hoo-yay!) But totally and only gay? Not so much. Oh, sure, I gotta say that the various strings of Bruce Wayne/Batman girlfriends are mostly there as camouflage, and I for one was convinced that in the last movie Rachel went for Harvey, instead of Bruce, because she knew Harvey was a) better in bed, b) more interested in her than Bat-toys, but, still. You can't tell me nothing is going on between Batman and Catwoman. Or Batman and Poison Ivy. Or Batman and any number of other masked criminals. Actually that's probably more what we should be focusing on, and not so much the gender of said masked criminals.

Aquaman gay though? This I TOTALLY SEE. Go for it, DC. Green Lantern, or I guess, more specifically, one of the Green Lanterns, gay? Sure. And if Wonder Woman turns out to be a lesbian deeply into various kinks -- come on, is anyone really surprised? I didn't think so.

4. Yes, this entire post, with its link to an article quoting Dan Slott, is in part meant as box_in_the_box baiting. What can I say?

I didn't watch the series finale of Smallville live, partly because setting up the television and trying to find the CW channel would be a major effort (we watch a lot of DVDs, but not broadcast television), and mostly because I hadn't seen the show for several seasons, especially after the departure of the only person consistently worth watching on the show: Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor.

Oh, yes, Lionel Luthor was often worth watching, and I liked Chloe Sullivan, but Lana annoyed me (and many other people) and Lois annoyed me and plotlines annoyed me and so on. To be fair, I've seen Lana Lang's actress in other things, and given a decent script, she can act, and to be fair, I don't think it was Erica Durance as Lois who annoyed me but just the Lois character in general. The only Lois portrayal I've ever liked was Teri Hatcher's in Lois and Clark, and I'm digressing. Anyway I'd drifted off from the show.

But I decided that I'd invested enough time in the show to give the series finale a whirl. And what do you know? It was corny, the dialogue was frequently gag-inducing, it had plot holes too large even for the Man of Steel to fix (and a bit at the end that just does not make any sense), it had incredibly cheap and pathetic narrative tricks to handle previously poorly managed actor contracts that came across as incredibly cheap and pathetic narrative tricks, it had people talking to gravestones and clichéd scene after clichéd scene and by the end I was grinning, a bit teary eyed, and clapping and all happy. It's enough to get me to go back and check out the last couple of seasons. Maybe.

Damn you, show.

( I don't suppose anyone really cares about spoilers or couldn't guess the ending, but just in case, cut for spoilers and some prurient thoughts about White House interns, not the current ones )

From around the internet: the opening sequences of Doctor Who:


What we learn from this, I think, is that Matt Smith is young. Very young. I mean, ok, we already knew that, but this just emphasizes the point. He's young.

Also, I am still all nostalgic for Christopher Eccleston.

Meanwhile, box_in_the_box brings us what I must agree is the all time worst superhero idea ever: Foreskin Man. It is, and I do not say this lightly, worse than you are expecting (although safe for work). As the comic itself says, "Although the guests had an idea of what to expect..." Surprisingly safe for work, if not safe for your actual brain.

Ah. Superman. Not only an illegal immigrant with a penchant for destroying valuable commercial property in his quest to arrest potentially innocent people on no more say-so than his unproven "X-Ray" vision, but also, as it turns out, a flaming liberal.

(I'm always fascinated when comic book heroes are dragged into political arguments in whatever era.)