Meanwhile...

The comic blogosphere seems to grow larger every day and just like comics, sometimes it's pretty easy to get a little lost. "Meanwhile..." will act as your map pointing out what interesting discussions are happening out there while you're reading the Great Curve.

I just want to give a quick shout out to Tom's 50 Best DC Characters Survey he's running. There were a ton of blog posts out there from different bloggers making their lists this week, but I didn't want to spoil anything so you won't be seeing them here. I found plenty more to read about this week including...

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Cain Not Able?

If you've been following Robin at all you might know about the big brough-ha-ha concerning Batgirl in the book. I'm not going to spoil it here, but lets just say some fans were upset at her portrayal. To all those people freaking out over this, Kalinara says not to overeact yet. If you must have something to argue about Scipio gives you the perfect chance his dislike of the new Batgirl.

Regular Series

Kevin Church continues his series of Comic Book Girlfriends with Girlfriend #2, Milla Donovan.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed continues with #51, this week it covers: John Byrne's Scarlet Witch storyline in Avengers West Coast, Terror, Inc., and Colossus as Ferro Lad's brother?

Meanwhile Chris has another Profiles In Courage to share with us at the ISB. This time it's The Hypno-Hustler!

Pride in the Future

Ian Brill has an advanced review of Brian K. Vaughan's Pride of Baghdad

Speaking of the future, at least Marvel's future, H at The Comic Treadmill finally gets a hold of the Marvel series Earth-X and gives it the once over. I enjoyed it, but it's so steeped in Marvel history I wouldn't recommend it to the uninitiated.

Graphic Language

Chris Tamari, Ed Cunard, and Kevin Church recently started a new blog called Graphic Language (great name for a comics blog) with an idea I can get behind. I'll let them explain it.

"Graphic Language" is a blog dedicated to interviews on the subject of comics.It was founded in May of 2006 by Kevin Church, Ed Cunard, and Chris Tamarri.

The topic is a broad one, so the site's content will try to reflect that. Other than the focus and the format, the interviews will have few restrictions. The participants will vary greatly, as will the specific focus of any individual discussion.

They start things off with an interview with Douglas Wolk, who you may have seen recently at his new blog 52 Pick-up, a weekly examination of DC Comics 52.

Who Shall Pick Up The Fight?

Johanna discusses the futility in arguing about sexism in superhero comics. I can understand how eventually it could wear a person down, but that's why there is always someone else to take up the banner. As can be seen from Ragnell's recent Weekly Women's Geek-Out (which Johanna mentions) there are other's out there.

Whomp Upside Ya Head!
See comics pundit Ian Brill get smacked in the head. It's fun!

So if Ian didn't understand the significance Dr.Strange's window, does that mean we have to hit Kalinara with Ninja?

Comic Monsters

Ken Lowery writes about a comic related Mommy's Little Monster this week, The Saint of Killers.

The figure looms large in a lot of Garth Ennis’s fiction: men who, in war, find something inside themselves that ultimately consumes them. A primal, interior monster of hate, one that assumes dominance and uses the man’s intelligence to turn mere rage into atrocity. Possession by the dark side. Hyde run rampant over Jekyll.

Retcons, Re-Imaginings, Prophecies, and Infinite Readings

The Filing Cabinet of The Damned examines the retcon by taking a look at Captain America's long history.

Polite Dissent profiles the use of the prophecy in different series.

Double Articulation takes a stab at defending, and then offering alternate readings into, Infinite Crisis.

The speech that “our” Superman delivers in the climactic scene of IC #7 nearly makes this ideological struggle explicit: “It’s not about where you were born. Or what powers you have. Or what you wear on your chest. It’s about what you do… It’s about action.” These remarks—which plainly reject the stagnant and antiquated authority of tradition, power, and symbolism in favor of a kind of situational ethics—are of course addressed to Superboy Prime, not to the Earth-2 Superman. But if you buy my argument that Superboy is really just an authorially-displaced version of the former that allows Johns to tell us what he really thinks of old-school Superman, then it isn’t hard to see their relevance: this is Johns’s last word on how the current Superman differs politically from the Golden Age progenitor—a progenitor, I might add, that it is the story’s job to bury once and for all. The death of the Golden Age Superman at Superboy Prime’s hands in Infinite Crisis #7 is thus not a murder so much as a sort of dramatically externalized “suicide” in which the now darkened image of the original Superman tears apart his and earlier, nobler self-image, thus retracing the historical trajectory of the late twentieth-century’s increasingly troubled reception of the Superman mythos.

You may think only Jim Roag can get that out of a DC Crossover, but no, if you look in the comments section there is quite a bit of heavy discussion and alternate readings going on there too. It's in those comments which I found the next blog, Any Eventuality where "Nobody" takes on the politics of Superman: For Tomorrow.

Moving on Up

Before we get to the Illustration site this week I want to show you one more blog post, but I can't describe it. Just go read Sherman Hemsley, Spider-Man.

Illustration Site of The Week

This week's Illustrator is Jillian Tamaki who was recently interviewed for Illustration Friday.