Designated Sidekick

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Goddamn Batman! I’m actually excited about getting to the comic store and handing over cash for DC products.   Roll on the shopping spree tomorrow!

Dear DC

Thank you for listening.

Dear Friends of Girl-Wonder.

Thank you for speaking.

Dear Opponents of Girl -Wonder

Thanks for letting me quote Christina Aguilera at you.

Dear Mary

Thank you.  You thought of it, you believed in it, and look what it’s done so far.

Designated Sidekick

(and damnit, I’m crying because Steph got the recognition so long over due)

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Thanks to Mary, Weaves, and the host of others who have going OMG! about this issue.

Earth to Tim Drake. Thanks for picking up on that one. I see you were trained by the World’s Greatest Detective (/obYoung Justice joke)

I have a vastly lowered set of expectations for Robin 171. I have a total lack of faith in this being anything but a swerve by DC.

This lack of faith is partly based on the experience, and partly on an assessment of the industry. What makes major players in an industry decide that screwing over the buyer was a better choice than selling products? I’m thinking about the way that representative from DC comics admitted to using pages from the Dixon Outsiders run out of context in the DC Previews / Solicits for the express purpose of inciting blogger anger. Using the sales tool to piss people off doesn’t fill me with the sort of confidence that I think they had in mind*

Given that, and the way that various other issues from DC have been handled with a sneer, a dismissive way, and a petulant whine about sales figures, I can’t bring myself to trust DC enough to feel excited about Robin 171 - which means, as some who has a car named Redbird (with the Tim Drake HeroClix and a Spoiler HeroClix on the dashboard), and had been buying the Robin series when it started (including the two variant covers), I wanted back into the love for the comics.

I don’t feel excited, I feel a pre-emptive dread that this will be a swerve, and it’ll be a swerve to go “HAHA! WE TRICKED YOU! YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK A LOT! HAHAHAHAH!” followed a few weeks later with some industry figure going “See? We screwed over the Steph Brown fans, and they didn’t buy up the comics after we screwed them over, so she doesn’t sell that well”.

I want to be wrong about Robin 171. I really do want to be blown away by the return of Spoiler.

I just hope that the opportunity to annoy a cohort of vocal fans is not more important than the idea of selling product to the same group.

Anyone want to bet on 171? Will it be a swerve or straight up?

*I have been reminded that it was Chuck Dixon, the person bringing us Robin 170 and Robin 171.  I feel less confident about 171

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Short  comment on the that Playboy cover featuring someone painted into a bad imitation of a Wonder Woman costume

1. It’s a bad imitation. That’s not Wonder Woman, that’s a celebrity in bodypaint.  Accessorize people, Accessorize! Lasso! Wrist band! INVISIBLE SANDWICH! err INDIVISIBLE JET!
2. Playboy rips off Frank Miller’s cover quite a bit there, doesn’t it?
3. Anybody got a definitive answer to question of whether DC authorised/licenced the use of their copyright materials for the cover?  I can’t imagine that Playbo’s lawyers would have cleared publishing a pretty blatant legal liability from Warner Bros.
4. If you want to see a disconnect between superheroic fantasy and mundane reality, look at the cover of the playbody.  This is the “costume” that we’re so mundanely used to seeing on hand drawn characters, it looks bloody stupid on a real person. OMG My costume is painted on yay!
5. As far as anything akin to sex appeal - I keep laughing at the cover, largely because I can’t stop rewriting it as an alternate universe PETA campaign “I’d rather fight crime naked than wear spandex!”
6. I have nothing to add on the substantive issues beyond saying that I like what Ragnell’s written because I’m not really up to speed with the Wonder Woman/Lynda Carter side of things.
   1. Anyone who has previously claimed the existence of a hive vagina and notices that Ragnell and Cheryl Lynn aren’t seeing eye to eye can have a cognitive disonance cookie
   2. Anyone who tries to prove some point about it being overblown reaction because two feminists have different opinions will be met with a swift kick to the Akismet filter.  I mean it.