SSG Updates: Since I've Been AWOL11/27/2020
Hey, guys, it's been a while!
Life, the pandemic, the holidays, and general stress has gotten the best of me, recently, inspiring me to work on personal, unseen projects more than my blog. I don't mean to fall behind on my posts, especially with time on my hands, but it gets hard to keep up the same pull list format after a while--but more on that later. While I've been on a bit of a hiatus, there has been a lot going on in the nerd world! I've picked jsut a few topics to discuss, surrounding comics culture. Click the links to jump to a section, or continue reading for the whole segment! Yara Flor, Wonder Girl, on the CW! Grant Morrison's Coming Out Marvel Cancellations General Life and Blog Updates! (AKA: Since I've Been Gone) Stay Sweaty!
Yara Flor, Wonder Girl!
A few weeks ago, Deadline reported the breaking news that the CW TV channel will be premiering a Wonder Girl series, starring the brand new character Yara Flor! This is incredible news, for a few reasons. Not only does this put a female character of color in the fore-front of another popular CW show, but one who was entirely created by a woman in a male-based industry (hats off to you, Joelle Jones!), which will be co-produced by a woman of color as well, Dailyn Rodriguez. Yara Flor is about to premier for the first time ever with DC's upcoming Future State event, which sees the near and distant future of our known DC universe. While she's marketed as being the new Wonder Woman, the arrival of her Wonder Girl show alludes that we may be seeing more of Flor, even after Future State, as the younger version of the hero. This checks out with what creator Joelle Jones has already said, that there will be more Yara Flor comics, post-Future State. If DC is going to introduce her as an adult in Future State, it's and exciting thought that we may be able to see her grow in to that position in the coming years. In terms of her CW show, this is the first time a Latina woman is starring in a DC television property! Flor is Brazilian, apparently hailing from a lost tribe of Amazon warriors in the actual Amazon. Finally, Jones has made a name for herself in comics as a stellar, top-notch writer-and-artist on a number of series across the board. She's the creator, writer, and artist of Dark Horse's Lady Killer series, with more coming in 2021! She's done a number of DC comics issues, including a few gorgeous issues of Tom King's Batman, and a decent sized run of Catwoman, all on her own. As long as Jones is a part of the Yara Flor stories going forward, I have hitched myself to their wagon for the long-haul.
Grant Morrison's Coming Out
In an interview with Mondo2000 premiering publicly November 5th, legendary writer and creator Grant Morrison has officially come out as non-binary. Non-Binary, for anyone lost, is the term describing a person who does not identify as either male or female in gender, but rather a third, sometimes combination gender. As with most non-binary people, they have elected they/them as their preferred gender terms. To many fans of Morrison, this comes as more of a confirmation or explanation than a surprise, and rightfully so. Readers familiar with Morrison's style of writing, creating, and characterization is, in shorty, undoubtedly bizarre. They've never exactly presented as outright masculine in their writing style, and anyone familiar with the 2010 My Chemical Romance music videos can attest that Morrison's character in that story was decidedly genderless, cyborg or not. It was a surprise, more than anything, to see the comic community's repose to this new, official information. For a community fairly well-known for ostracizing their own members over drivel, almost all of the responses to Morrison's news were positive and supportive. Much of that, I imagine, is due to the aforementioned lack of surprise most fans felt, but I like to think the community is changing, becoming more open minded. While I still see so much toxicity in the comics industry, it's refreshing to come across a story like Morrison's. Grant joins a small, but growing, community of non-binary comics creators, off the top of my head including Vita Ayala (some Dawn of X, some DC work) and Jen Hickman (currently: Lonely Receiver). While the industry still continues to often mistreat or unfairly handle their women creators and creators of color, it's so good to see Morrison's identity accepted, welcomed, and supported by other comics fans and creators.
More Marvel Cancellations
Once again, Marvel HQ has come out with a fresh new list of comics series' that are being taken to the hangman's noose: 2020 IRONHEART #1, #2 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #21 FACSIMILE EDITION AMAZING SPIDER-MAN DAILY BUGLE #3, #4, #5 BLACK CAT #13 Unsurprising--when you pause a series for more than 6 months, sales are going to droop. DR STRANGE #7 The new take of Surgeon Supreme is cool, but fans like their magic. GHOST RIDER #8, #9 MORBIUS #6, #7, #8 ROBERT E HOWARDS DARK AGNES #3, #4, #5 Marvel trying their hand out at non-616 books... SCREAM CURSE OF CARNAGE #6, #7, #8 We've known about this one for months. Another victim of the Diamond shutdown, even though issues 6 and 7 were complete and ready to print. SILVER SURFER BLACK DIRECTORS CUT #1, #2 STAR WARS RISE OF SKYWALKER ADAPTATION #1 No one wanted this, anyway. VALKYRIE JANE FOSTER #11, #12 Hopefully meaning something new coming for Jane?? X-MEN DAWN OF X SAGA #1 I'm not even sure what this was going to be. Doctor Doom was also announced as being cancelled, not continuing past issue 10 to the twelve that was originally promised. I'm still not sure if this is a trend, old news finally making it out, or the beginning of some kind of Marvel NOW style restart, but I'm sure we'll figure that out, not too far into 2021.
Personal Updates
As for myself, I haven't been very active on my own blog, but I've been working hard on personal projects, behind the scenes. Some of them aren't exactly for this blog's use, because they're more along the lines of things that will get published, some day. One is an original story, which I obviously can't say much about. What I can say is that it is a sci-fi story, and is something I've never seen anyone get close to, in terms of similar topics. It was an idea sparked, in part, by the outdated and proven wrong saying, "write what you know." It'll be ages before I'm ready to get the story out in the public, because there's a fair amount of research and complexity involved in creating it. But it's an idea that's stuck with me for the better part of a year, and I'm always thinking about it, in the back of my head. Another of the projects is more for fun, which I could write about in an ideal world, is my Marvel mutant character. Like the first story, I can't say too much about her, but her name is Elora, and she is visibly non-human. Her powers are something I've been developing for a few weeks now, figuring out how to make everything that I want for her to work. I even found an online program that helps visualize character designs, so that REALLY helped in my creation of her! I have some ideas on how she would fit into the current X-Men universe, and no matter how theoretical, it's exciting to think about. Maybe someday Elora will be made official, too. I'm still working on updating the Magik reading list, to include more details about her character's portions of the stories. Meanwhile, I started on my Binary read list, which actually follows along a lot of similar eras as the Magik and Madelyne Pryor ones. Binary is a specific era of Carol Danvers' character that I'm intensely fascinated with, because it doesn't get talked about much. More than anything, in the MCU, I want to see Carol Danvers become Binary and Monica Rambeau become Captain Marvel. Binary is also an interesting era for Carol because of the expanse of time it passes. In Avengers #197-200, we learn Carol Danvers has been impregnated through twisted and demented means, then is brainwashed and kidnapped by her son/rapist, again. When we next see her, it's in Avengers Annual #10. She's made her escape, but no longer wants anything to do with the Avengers, who gleefully sent her on that unwilling adventure with her rapist. Unfortunately, due to overhearing a frightening premonition, Rogue almost kills Carol by absorbing her powers, essence, and memories, and dumping her body in the SF Bay. She's saved by Jessica Drew's Spider-Woman, who takes her to Charles Xavier for help. He does what he can, but there is no total fix for what Rogue did to her psyche. So she stays with the X-Men, for a while, and is with them when they are kidnapped by the Brood. Carol is experimented on, unlocking stupendous powers. With this change, she calls herself Binary. It doesn't take long for Rogue to come crawling to the X-Men for help, causing Binary to flip, understandably, and head off into space for a good while. She joins up with the Starjammers, and by the time she returns to Earth, Captain Marvel--her predecessor Mar-vell--has died of cancer. It's a complicated time in Carol's life, passing through an incredible era of X-Men and Marvel history. It's always worth remembering that these stories came from the seventies and eighties, so take it all with a grain of salt. Even the writers of that Avengers #200 story-line claim they didn't like writing it, but it's still the story we got. We can learn a lot from retro comics, including how to write stories and treat our characters better. It's no doubt that creators like Chris Claremont and Ron Lim did some incredible things for comics, but they are in no way the best writers of the century. With the world evolving and people getting smarter, use these older, dated stories to study and learn to write better, more conscientious stores in the future. I kind of got away from myself for a moment, there. In other SSG blog news, I think It's time to change up my pull-list formats, again. It's getting to be a bit tired and repetitive to write about what's really the same books week after week, month after month. In all reality, there are always comics that I'm just not as excited to read or write about than other, and I see no use in forcing myself to write some uninteresting drivel, just for the sake of it. I think my future pull lists, when I get back in the swing of them, will be a little more conversational, discussing general geek-culture topics of the week, and things coming up. For the end of the year, I'm planning on at least one collection video: prints of 2020. I started the year with two things in mind: more indie comics on my pull list, and more prints from artists. I'm happy to say that both of those worked out very well! I'm definitely going to do a long video going over the various prints from various artists I've purchased this year, and I might do one for top series' of the year, as well. It's been...unique, to say the least, and not all in good ways. Hopefully I can shine a bright light on the darkness of 2020 with some of these end-of-year wrap-ups. I think that's it for today's updates. I have some general site updates planned that I'll be working on in the next week or so, just links and look and whatnot. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so wherever you're reading from, I hope your day was fruitful. Until next time, stay sweaty!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
What you'll find on the SSG Blog:*Yancy St. PODCAST NOTES! Categories
All
Archives
September 2023
|