DivaLea: Here She Comes, Miss Millllarwoooorld!

It's not just me that sees the vintage Ken-L-Ration mascot Fido in the Sin City "Gail" promos, is it?

Right.
So, two things have erupted over the comicsblogospheroid in the past week: Millarworld's campaign to pick an Amazon worthy of telling the Times of London that Kevin Maher's poorly-researched screed about comics and the fans who love them, and the Penny Arcade guys tearing off the heads and shitting down the necks of Cayetano Garza, John Barber and Scott McCloud in the guise of talking about the documentary "Adventures Into Digital Comics."
And lo, I find I'm tangentially involved with both of these things, and there's a post for TGC! What could be nicer on a Monday?

The first one, which I'll call Miss Millarworld, I got an email about from Alice Doyle, ed-in-chief of the.magazine. I was asked to come read the thread at Millarworld and decide for myself if I'd like to be part of a campaign to tell The Times they were wrong.
Too bad I couldn't.
As pointed out by Heidi MacDonald and Johanna Draper-Carlson, and even myself, Maher's column is awful, and his editor ought to be ashamed for not (apparently) fact-checking at all, but Maher's not totally wrong, either.

In fact, the Millarworld thread generates a huge amount of well-meaning but wrong-headed hilarity such as a call for the most attractive women in comics to answer the article, hatin' directed (unfairly) at Trina Robbins because of Maher's inclusion of a five-year-old quote from Trina that describes bad comics stores, and this all together funny instruction on writing to The Times from Millar himself: "PS Don't talk about Sequential Tart or FOL or whatever. They won't know what the fuck you're talking about. Think mainstream audience."
But why not, Mark? Sequential Tart may not be mainstream, but they've been running an all-volunteer, all-woman staffed web magazine for more than half a decade. FoL was squarely dissed in the article ("despite some pretty lonely websites such as Friends of Lulu (“Bringing Comics to Women!”)"), and Tart dissed by exclusion.
FoL's slogan, incidentally, is "Comics are for Everyone", and Maher was answered well by FoL viceprez Ronee' Garcia Bourgeois. (Although I disagree with Ronee' that Witchblade and Wonder Woman are good places to start looking for female characters that refute Maher's charges of misogyny in comics.)

On a completely personal note, I'd love to see the Tart Valkyries come screaming down upon Millar's head. That'd be popcorn and lawnchairs awesome.

Later for the Penny Arcade dudes. I'm waiting to see if Shaenon Garrity's Sunday Narbonic strip sends them nuclear.
Wait, what? My connection to "Adventures"? Besides that I'm friends with McCloud, Garza and Barber, and admire their work? I'm in it.