Alex in Wonderland has a literal interpretation of Jade’s death:

I wonder if it is possible to apply that conundrum to other misogynistic occurrences in comic books? Is Jade’s death, and subsequent empowering of Kyle a literal image of how the public pain of a female lantern is sublimated by killing her, and then returning the power to the male character?

I’m still digesting the thought, but that paragraph notes that this is a surface symbolism of the fridge phenomenon.

We all know the basics, Jade suffers, and the story is not about her. It doesn’t make her worth reading. (I’ve yet to see the story that makes her worth reading.) It serves to make Alan and Kyle more interesting characters through their grief.

I know her powers went to Kyle, but her body disappeared when Alan was holding her. She was dissolved into both of their characters. In-story and metatextually. I know I’m not the only one who was angry with the literal enacting of the this. She powers his personality, his plot, his actual literal powers.

It’s just, instead of the regular ranting, this is someone pointing directly out that Jade is more representative of the WiR complaint that Alex ever was. That’s a thought that hits like a two-by-four.

I’m not up to organizing these thoughts this early in the morning (it’s very late as my day goes). I just wanted to share this one.

He’s in this preview for Omega Men#2 out next month.

Always Bet on Bahlactus has started a weekly feature on black superheroes called Dark Stars and the first one features none other than the severely underused John Stewart.

The 80s reintroduction didn’t go over quite so well with him. Granted, we all know that John is a complete nerd, being a bookish architect and everything (but also having a history of boxing in school, because comic book creators like their nerds kickass) but it seems like Englehart went a bit overboard in trying to divorce his character from slang-slinging stereotypes, ending up with dialogue best suited for an old codger like Alan:

Black in the day, we were using words like FRESH!, WORD!, and Ain’t No Stoppin’ was blazin’ your boombox on the corner while you rocked that headspin on your cardboard mat. My point isn’t to say that John Stewart should be all shuk-n-jive (and it’s clear he was a seriously intelligent type brutha), but, I am saying that in 1984 no Black man worth his weight dropped lyrical bombs like oh, swell [page 17], or callin’ another man pond scum [#182,page 8] or even fella [#182,page 12,17]. It’s not realistic and as a Black man, I can’t relate. Especially with a flagrant foul like nutty as a case of cashews! [#183,page 15]

From there, he goes into how the villains perceived and interacted with John and the time-honored Fantern tradition of Hal-bashing.

(Hattip to BeacoupKevin for the link)

Okay, I’ve been slacking on this blog. I almost missed that Newsarama has a preview up for Green Lantern Corps #5!

It appears to be shipping on time.

Right this way.

I love this meme.

This one is from Phil, and this one is from Empty Book on DeviantArt.

(Don’t stop here, everyone!)

SallyP just sent in her Arisia makeover. It is wonderful!

Wow, and I just asked yesterday. Here’s two already:

The first two, art by Sandicomm:

And we have three from Planet Karen!

Keep ‘em coming, everyone.

Newsarama has an interview with Geoff Johns about Green Lantern.

There’s some good stuff in there. Nice things to say about Guy, an indication that there’s something larger beyond the POW plotline, a look at Hal’s worldview (he seems to be going anti-Earth), more vague promises about John, and, of course, it wouldn’t be complete without something to piss me off:

As Hal’s said before, he answers with, ‘Borders are ridiculous. I’m Green Lantern and my duty is to the whole planet if I need to go somewhere, I’m going to go.’

And then, he adds: ‘Do you realize that I’ve been to hundreds of planets – hundreds, and the only one with countries is earth.’

Not to mention Earth is the only planet that has people with differing skin tones, oh, and different cultures, who wear different styles of clothing and speak different languages, and live in different climates!!

I hope Hal is just being dense, and has seen like, one patch of land and assumes the whole damned planet is like that. Because I hate that stupid One Planet, One Culture, One Race, One Language, One Fucking Climate shit that pervades the worst sci-fi.

I mean, I see, he’s trying to make a point about Earth there. That we’re all fucked up, right? But its really limiting to try and establish stuff like that. That we’re all so diverse and the rest of the universe isn’t. Because the beauty of outer space stories is when we can explore our own problems wtih parallels to the alien cultures.

“Sentient beings have more commonalities than differences,” I think that’s what J’onn said to Kyle in Recharge #1. And Mars had two clans that may as well be countries. I can’t imagine the White Tribe and the Green Tribe living under the same rule, after all.

And it’s really only lazy writing to actually hold to that. You don’t want to put too much work into a single world that’s not Earth, so you basically make a planet like you would another country. No need to spend too much time explaining how everyone differs. And they slap some explanation like “Countries are a primitive idea. When these other planets discovered space travel, they suddenly banded together in perfect harmony…” or, in the case of a hostile world “The first country to discover space travel wiped the rest out.”

I hope this is just Hal being stupid, or that Gibbons doesn’t hold to that. So far over in Green Lantern Corps, Gibbons has been pretty good about the different people we see. The cast is diverse. Not nearly as diverse as the cast of Mosaic, granted. That was the best series just because it dealt with as many different cultures as possible, and how they relate ot each other. It was just unbelievably cool to read all the wonders of that little world, you never knew what John was going to have to work with next. Shirley Temple-style psychos with psychic knives, singing plants, clergybirds, a small mining town…

I miss that. I’d like to see some real diversity in the universe again, dammit.

Well, everyone should know by now that Arisia is awesome and deserving of a better costume. But does anything have an alternative to what the fashion-impaired Ivan Reis cooked up?

We discussed it over on this thread, and I already had a volunteer in my comments on my regular blog, so it looks like people have ideas.
So its time for The Arisia Makeover Meme.

Simple idea: Redesign Arisia’s costume. Comment below with a link, or email me and I’ll post it here.

Here’s her Fashion History, for reference (Click for a larger picture):