Coming out in comics: Catman

Gail Simone confirms that Catman is bisexual and in the new DCU he will be witten as bisexual when she next writes him.

She also describes the make up of Secret Six. Who is who do you reckon?

Anyway, aww yeah!!

Comic reviews!

Spoilers after the jump for Brightest Day #23 (but no mention will be made of the identity of the White Lantern), Secret Six #32, Young Justice #2.
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Comic reviews the second (of March)

As in, my second late post for reviewing.  All issues are a few weeks old.

Secret Six #31
I had intentions to reveiw this for the LGBT Book challenge, but haven't got round to it yet.  Suffice to say, Knockout is back.  Hip hip hooray!

Wonder Woman #608
At it's best i'm just not finding this very engaging.  At it's worst, I'm finding it downright insulting.  Dr Psycho gets to rescue Diana? Really?
In addition to the abov, which I think is a fucking awful plot point, Diana is out of character.  This may be an alternate timeline and all, but she should still be the same basic person underneath.  And that, dear readers, I am not getting from these books.  Oh yes, I have turned.  notintheface covers this quite well here.

Brightest Day #22
Ok, 22 issues in, 2 more to go, and I'm not really sure of the point of Brightest Day.  I don't feel that we are reaching an all importnat climax, I feel like we've just meandered in and out of several stories. I have very much enjoyed the Aquafamily story, and the Hawks were good before they were killed but on the whole, I can't really bring myself to care too much about this series.

Red Robin #21
Oh yeah, this is the shizzle :)   Y'all should be reading this book.

Superman #709
I want the Superman Squad back please.  That is the only part of this story I am interested in.


Young Justice #1
This is surprisingly good.  I've read mixed reactions to the tv show, but this issue is enough for to have placed this book on my pull list.  yeah.

Prism Comics

I’ve written several articles for Prism Comics, all focusing on LGBT characters.  A list of the articles can be seen below.

I'll be updating this post as and when more of my stuff gets published by Prism, and I'll be including a link to this post on my blog sidebar.

Secret Six - Six Degrees of Devastaion: It’s a team of 6 villains, with one lesbian and one bisexual character.

Venus Envy: Webcomic about a young trans woman.

Coming out in comics – similar to my series on this blog, this is an overview of LGB characters in modern DC comics, what I think about them and why I think it’s important to have them.

Iono-Sama Fanatics volume 1: A Japanese yuri (girls love) manga about a visiting Queen, looking to build up her sobames (companions).
Paris:  2 women find love in 1950s Paris.

Starman #45: Featuring a gay male couple, and some rather dodgy gay men in prison assumptions.

Starman 80 page giant - Wherein I talk about the concept of bisexual erasure and what this comic does to break the trend.

End of January Comic reviews

Spoilers ahead


Gotham City Sirens #19
Good cover.  Shame the story is all about the Siren's love lives.  Sigh.  I do not want my book about a group of women to be about their romantic entanglements.  Can we have more of the Birds of Prey style writing here please.


JLA #53
I'm coming in at the tail end of this story arc, and it surprises me how good it is.  It's a solid comic, well adapted to it's short 22 page format, but one that will, I suspect, read just as well in a trade.  Dark Supergirl isn't really too dark, just a bit snarky.  She's not all out for evil and doom, not like she was in her introductory trade.  It's refreshing.
Now, as soon as DC clarify where dark Supergirl fits into regular Supergirl continuity I'll be happy.

Superboy #4
I may be feeling a little out of sorts today, but I am not thrilled with this art.  There's not enough detail in the faces.  This blog post talks about how women's faces are drawn with less pencil lines than men's faces, therefore they are more difficult to draw.  It's not a stance I particularly agree with, especially as a lot of the motivation for not putting in detail seems to be that less detail = beauty, and women = beauty.
Anyway, reading this comic makes me think of this post, as there's fuck all pencil detail on Connor's and other character's faces.  Any nuance comes from the colourist.  It's not an approach I care for.

Other than the art, the issue is good.


Secret Six #30
I have no fucking clue what is going on here.  The Doom patrol turns up, a lazy disaffected 23 year old decides to become an old style king of crime, and the Six are on Oolong Island, where everything converges.

Oh and Bane is taken to a strip club and there he meets 3 twitterati.  No really!  Gail Simone gave a cameo to @pseudicide (Dee) @ceebee_eebee (Elyssa) and @harleyquinnaid (Elise).  I chat to pseudicide and ceebee_eebee quite a lot on twitter.  They are adorable.  So, the panels with them in kind of made this comic for me. :D

Brightest Day #19
Aquawar! AquaWar! AquaWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Oh hells yeah.   Bring on the Aqua goodness.  And oh look, Arthur's lost a hand. Again.  How careless of him. ;)

And then I bought Gail Simone's books

Which is Secret Six, Birds of Prey and also Action Comics 896.  Ok, so Action isn't really Gail's, but it does have Secret Six in it.

I'm glad I bought Action, otherwise Secret Six 29 would have made no sense.  And when you have an issue which narrated by Ragdoll who thinks he's an angel in heaven, you'd really like to know the backstory.

Action Comics was Lex vs Ra's with the Six in the way.  The art is adorable, Lex is sneaky, there's something about a prophecy and I sort of want to pick this up now but I shall hold off till Superman comes back to it.  Hopefully with a heroic and admirable personality.

The Jimmy Olsen back up was very surprisingly good.  Chloe Sullivan from Smallville features and had a wonderfully Chloe line - you're kinda unintentionally cute when you're ineffectually jealous Jimmy Olsen.  Have I mentioned how badass Chloe has got in SV season 9?  She's badass.

Birds of Prey had possibly my favourite line of the week.  Batman turns up to help out the Birds (under Oracle's permission, not just because he decided to), and Dinah comments:

"But Damn it;s good to see him back.  And not just because he makes a bigger target."

OH DINAH I LUFF YOU!

Dawn continues to be cute and vomity.  I didn't know that was possible, but apparently when i can't smell the vomit it is possible.

Here's an interesting thing

Apparently when I'm an overtired zombie I can't tell the difference between Secret Six and Birds of Prey.  Which is how I came out with Secret Six #27 today and now have the title on standing order.  I blame the dinosaur on the front.

It's a very cool looking dinosaur and it's being ridden by Bane.

Spoilers ahead.









So, the Six are in Skataris fighting another bunch of villains, except they're not really fighting them as Scandal is friendly with Jeanette (who turns into the Silver Banshee at one point) and Bane (whom she's stabbed thinking he was her father).  Ragdoll is fighting a giant shark who likes pale white meat and now has one eyeball hanging out, thanks to Ragdoll.  The Six are now forced to quit the fight as they are surrounded by armoured dinosaurs. Catman is turned into the symbol of the resistance and is given a very fetching and beefcakey outfit.  Meanwhile, Spy Smasher is trying to pull a fast on Amanda Waller.  This is not a good idea.

Fuck knows the background to this issue but I quite enjoyed it.


Superboy #1 was a solid opening issue.  We get a supporting cast, ruminations on his life so far, Krypto, the Phantom Stranger being all silver age-y and ominous (Connor is all modern and cut the bullshit-y), Parasite is on a revenge spree and then Poison Ivy turns up very unexpectedly.  Last of all we have a retro 'coming up' page - Ivy and Connor work together, Connor and Bart race, there's some new titans and Connor crosses the multiverse.  Looks like fun!

Brightest Day #13 continued the retcons that we've had so far - nor Geoff Johns is fleshing out the backstory of Chay-era's mother.  It struck me that I probably shouldn't be pissed off at this, because Rebirth was all retcon too and that worked out fine.  Surprisingly, Hath Set appears to have now been killed by Hawkwoman.  There's some fantastic splash pages of Hawkman, and some not so fantastic alpha male-ing of Batman.  I do not want Bruce to be the goddamn White Lantern (altho the Goddamn White Lantern might be fun).  Bruce Wayne is not the answer to fecking everything.

I did a review for Prism Comics!

And they published it :D.
It's the Secret Six: 6 degrees of separation book.  You can read the review here.  I had fun writing it up and I hope to submit more reviews to them in the future.  They're a great site - they basically promote all sorts of comics with LGBT themes or characters.

Readers with good memories might notice I also reviewed the book for New readers... a while ago.  Being totally honest, I put together the Prism comics review from the New readers... one but tried to give it a different slant as it's for a different audience.  I hope it worked.

Well, my weekly reading just got a whole lot more interesting!

(Not really spoilery)

Well!  In Brightest Day #7 we found out what the White Lantern's missions are which means the story will really pick up the pace.  Hurrah.  I really liked the artists for Dawn and Boston Brand in the diner.  Whoever it was seemed to have a really good feel for Dove.  The pencils for J'onn J'onzz and M'gan M'orzz seemed a little undefined, but they ARE shapeshifters so blurry features aren't really a problem.  Sheira in the cage was also drawn really well.

In Red Robin #15we see Tim developing a clever ruse to put Vicki Vale off the scent of his secret identity.  Gosh.  It's quite an extreme ruse.  This *will* be interesting.

Secret Six #24 sees the Six in what I presume is a past life, which seems to be a Western where Scandal is a sheriff.  It was great!

AND I got The Question: the 5 books of blood which I should have read by the time this is posted, and I haven't even started the assorted bag of 20 Robin comics that I got last week.  As there are no job applications for me to do this week I foresee a lot of comic reading going on!  And mayhap some blogging and reviewing.  If you're really lucky.