An Update On Charlie Hebdo

I actually managed to pick up an issue of Charlie Hebdo a few months back (early April). It was blathering on about "les terroristes Islamique" (seemingly every other cartoon was about Muslims). Though this urge is understandable, they seem to have forgotten that one of the three police officers who died in the Charlie Hebdo was a Muslim.

Since I last reported on it, Charlie Hebdo has received a PEN award. This is an implicit approval of its incredibly racist content. There is no way around it: Charlie Hebdo is a racist publication, and it has been approved by the biggest cartooning awards.

And again, France is not the bastion of free speech it was painted as after the Hebdo attacks.

Related:

• In the Mideast, as in France, satire is a weapon against extremists
• No, we’re not all Charlie Hebdo, nor should we be
• Why Charlie Hebdo attack is not about Islam
• This Attack Was Nothing To Do With Free Speech — It Was About War
• Why I'm Protesting PEN's Award For Charlie Hebdo
• Everything the Hooded Utilitarian wrote on Hebdo
• The Aesthetic Failure of 'Charlie Hebdo'

In Another Galaxy...: "Marvel is for everyone*!"

I wrote something for Special Snowflake. It's called "Marvel is for everyone*!", and I like it. It's about how the MCU's lack of female characters is fucking up young girls. You should check it out.

Seconds - Bryan Lee O'Malley

Seconds is a delicious treat that left me wanting seconds. If Bryan Lee O'Malley continues in this direction, he has a dedicated fan in me. The book's vivid depictions of food left me ravenous, and what's more, the restaurants were a perfect metaphor for the unrest in Katie's life.

Comic Book Superheroines

What comic book superheroes do you think are overly-sexualised? The one that's thrown out a lot is Dick Grayson-discounting his costume, which shows less skin than pretty much every female superhero ever, the first covers of latest efforts (by creative team) for Grayson and Wonder Woman are so different.

Source 1: Wonder Woman #36

Source 2: Grayson #1

This week in T-POP! News:

[T-POP! News is a new semi-weekly feature I will be running from here on out. T-POP!, of course, stands for The-Person of Porlock, which is semi-similar to the name of this blog, that I run.]

"I don't know if I should take a husband or a wife": Krazy Kat and Gender

I received Fantagraphics' first collection of Krazy Kat recently and, flipping through it, I was struck by how modern the notions of gender are. At one point, Krazy complains that they "don't know if I should take a husband or a wife" (October 1915). Despite the heteronormative ideals clearly present in that statement, it strikes me as similar to the new genderfluid movement - a movement that aims to free people from the gender binary.

Superheroes' Superpesonality

The title of my post is a lie. Superheroes do not have well-defined personalities, and that's part, or most, of their appeal. Their blankness allows them to be placed in any sort of situation-like how a Wonder Woman comic can be anything from a myth-themed epic to a "hip" '60s adventure set in Greenwich Village. They adapt. Wonder Woman's a particularly good example for this, because she isn't static (not even her origin story, unlike Batman or Spiderman).