I was curious to read the story behind the headline, "Bring back the ambivalently sexualized She-Hulk," when I saw it linked at When Fangirls Attack. Written by Charlie Anders, a transsexual woman, the article identifies a shift in writing in the most recent incarnation of Marvel's She-Hulk comic book:

Over time, Slott has downplayed the issue of people desiring She-Hulk for her huge, imposing body. I can’t think of too many instances, since the first couple of issues, where we saw men throwing themselves at her when she was in green giant mode.

I know this is very late, but I wanted to write about it anyway. I picked up the comic DCU Infinite Holiday Special not out of any desire to celebrate the holidays, but because I knew it contained a Batwoman story.

The issue was actually much better than I expected it to be--I was expecting something much more saccharine from a holiday-themed book. But the writers had introduced a good bit of variety as well as humor into the storylines, and I wound up feeling full of good cheer despite myself.

As I came to the story featuring Batwoman, I called out to the Cute-Little-Red-Headed Girlfriend, who was busy surfing the net:

Me: Hey, guess what? It looks like Batwoman is Jewish.

CLRHG (unimpressed): She's a Superhero. They're all Jewish.

Me: Not like that. In this comic, her family is celebrating Hannukah. It's part of the story.

CLRHG: Is she Ashkenazi?

Me: It doesn't say. But her family's from Poland.

CLRHG: Probably Ashkenazi then. So the Commissioner was Jewish then?

Me: You're thinking of Batgirl. This is Batwoman.

CLRHG: It's confusing.

Me: I know.

Then I read 52 issue #33, which includes the panels I've shown here. In this scene, Renee Montoya and the uncostumed Batwoman are snuggled up on the couch at Christmas. But they're at Batwoman's place, so there's a menorah in the background.

I wrote several years ago about the possibility of a female superhero creating new superbra technology.

I thought I would revisit that topic today, since many strides have been made in bra technology since my original post. I'm also motivated by the recent Power Girl origin story that appeared in the comic 52 issue 36. Through When Fangirls Attack, I found this explanation of Power Girl's window cut-out costume design.

I'm not going to address whether the design rationale makes sense, I just want to talk about the design itself, as in the actual pattern. To me, it's clear that some of the DC folk need a crash course in bra construction. Because Power Girl's ample breast size and the extreme compression produced by her costume is going to cause one hell of a wicking problem. Her costume really needs to incorporate some mesh side paneling and possibly a wicking underband for additional moisture control.

I think today's female superheroes should be on the leading edge when it comes to their bras. Power Girl could definitely make use of the latest in cushion-support bra technology, including gel straps and cushioned wire.

Some female superheroes might be interested in adopting this iPod-bearing sports bra called the Power Pouch. I've included a picture here so you can see the very cunning front pocket for hiding gear. This disguised shopping bag bra is another technological triumph that could lend to many innovative storylines. It seems like a Catwoman type of thing to me.

And also my Wiisword and Wiistaff. Shortly before the 2007 Xena convention, there was a discussion on one of the forums about Xena and gaming. Someone suggested that it would be a great idea to set up a LAN at the convention for attendees to play a Xena video game. That would be great, if only there was a multiplayer game for one of the current generation of networked consoles or the computer.

I mean, damn, can you imagine how cool it would be to hear your fellow members of Clan Alti hail you over an Xbox 360 Live headset? "It's on, bitches!" Plus, if the game was open enough, we could kill Joxer over and over and over again.

I bought the Xena: Warrior Princess game for the original PlayStation. I can also remember watching a demo for a Xena game--I think for the Nintendo 64--at one of the cons several years ago. At the time, my fellow female convention goers didn't seem that into it, but times have changed.

Women, including lesbians, are embracing video games more. On the L Word, we've seen scenes of Shane and Alice playing video games together. In the illustration shown here from the Outsiders current issue (#44), a lesbian superhero couple can be seen enjoying some quality time with their PS2.

Now it's time for video games to catch up. The games industry has a craptacular history when it comes to addressing the female market. One of the biggest signs of indifference, in my view, is the unwillingness to make a female player character option standard for most games. How hard would it be, for example, for EA to make all-women versions of their sports titles?

Raising my sights a little higher, I'd like to see a Billie Jean King tennis game. And cross-platform, multiplayer Xena games in time for next year's con.

I've written before on In Sequence about my love for the character Bette Porter on The L Word. Now, as The L Word cranks up for a new season, I thought I would mention the parallels I've noticed between Bette Porter and Renee Montoya, one of the lesbian characters in the DC comics series 52.

Bette and Renee are both lesbians, racial minorities and professionals. Circumstantially, they're both going through what could generously be called "a career transition." Bette Porter recently took time out to care for her father during his last days (Incidentally, I thought Jennifer Beals deserved an Emmy for that). Renee Montoya, in issue #33, was doing caretaking for The Question in what appear to be his final days.

Next, there's the lawbreaking connection. When last we saw Bette, she was making a beeline for the border with her baby in tow, having kidnapped the little tyke from her ex, Tina. Renee, on the other hand, recently killed a suicide bomber while following a vigilante-like course.

Rene and Bette also share similar coping techniques. In the screenshot above, Bette is seen skulking in a bar before pouncing on an attractive young woman, whom she takes back to her hotel room. There follows a very hot scene--in which Jennifer Beals's outstanding upper arms are shown to great avantage--featuring Bette peeling the bra off her newfound friend from behind. The next morning we find Bette sulking in a chair, staring at the unclothed woman in her bed as she contemplates her actions of the previous night.

Compare this with Renee's stress management routine in 52 issue #18. Ridden with guilt after taking out a female suicide bomber, Renee is said to be "coping in her usual way." We see Renee, naked against dusky purple sheets, a dark-haired nymphette at her side. On the following page (she has to get dressed in a hurry when Black Adam, Isis and The Question burst suddenly into the room, just when she's "getting some"), Renee grips the neck of what looks like a beer bottle. Later, The Question refers to Renee's "week-long benders with the prettiest lass" in the city.

Clearly, Bette and Renee could enjoy a night out on the town together. I like the way the "old school" lesbian and "new school" lesbian ways are blended together in these two characters. You have the old school drinking-and-womanizing to block out the pain; then there's the new school nonmonogamy-as-personal-empowerment and underwear-by-Victoria's-Secret bits mixed in as well.

I just signed up for an account at MyComicSpace, the social networking space for people interested in comics. I've taken my handle from the title of Dark Horse's Conan #32, "Wild Cimmerian Bull," the cover of which is shown here. If you're a reader and you currently have (or decide to start) a MyComicSpace account, please consider making WildCimmerianBullDyke your friend.

I like to think of myself roaming Cimmeria, "land of Darkness and deep Night," swishing my little bull tail behind me, stopping now and then to destroy a china shop or what have you. Bulls figure prominently in Conan's world; if you've been reading one of the other Dark Horse series, "Conan and the Songs of the Dead," you may have noticed that a bull penis is used as a key at a crucial point in the story.

I am very attached to Conan and was overjoyed to find a copy of Conan: the Ultimate Guide to the World's Most Savage Barbarian waiting for me under the Hannukah Bush/Christmas Tree. It's just what WildCimmerianBullDyke asked for.

Mike Sterling wrote up an entertaining account of the Archie Comics' character Jughead's conversion to punk in Jughead #327. The comic script dialogue is great, but Sterling's commentary is even better. As you'll see in the illustrations, the Mohawk cut is really nice on Jughead. It's also a haircut that actually makes sense for him, because Jughead was always the iconoclast of the group.

At the end of the post, Sterling gives a pointer to an Onion A.V. Club article that shows the Archie gang's changes over the decades. All the comics images in the piece are pop-ups, but I went through every one of them. There are some media that are especially good at showing how idiotic the fashions and trends of previous decades are, and after reading this article, I now add Archie comics to that list.

I picked out the image of Archie wearing a patched jacket during the 70s to show here because I confess to sporting this very same look at around age 9. I think I saved up the money I would have spent on candy and Wacky Packs for several weeks so I could buy the Mickey Mouse patch that you see Archie wearing in this panel.

I've been enjoying the short origins stories at the back of DC's weekly 52 comic. In week 26, however, I was stopped short by the opening image of Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Quite unexpectedly, in looking at the two figures, I got an overwhelming sense of something pornographic.

Now there are many people, both comics fans and detractors, who make snarky jokes about "super underwear perverts" and think that all superhero comics are in some way pornographic, but I am not one of them. I was surprised by the mental association I had and tried to figure out what was behind it.

I started with Hawkman's bare chest: could that be the trigger? But I immediately thought of other bare chested heroes, like Warlord and, in some cases, Aquaman. My mind wandered to Sulu appearing shirtless in an episode of Star Trek. These images were indeed sexual but not exactly pornographic.

I then checked out Hawkman's gear. There was a bit of bondage imagery in the chest harness, but didn't Green Arrow wear something similar? If anything, the chest harness combined with Hawkman's ball-heavy mace seems to have more of a camp sensibility than a pornographic one. Examining his expression, I noticed that Hawkman definitely has a feral look about him, but it doesn't seem much different from Aquaman's latest scruffy incarnation.

I couldn't figure it out. I was stumped.

That is, until my last visit to my local comic shop. Gliding down the aisles, I stepped past the cover of the current Hawkgirl and came to a halt as the answer came to me. It was the combination of the close-up with the kneeling position that recalled it for me: The Story of O. The owl mask that O. wears to the party, while otherwise completely naked. That was the connection.

Your results:
You are Batman


You are dark, love gadgets and have vowed to help the innocent not suffer the pain you have endured.
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

The latest newsletter from Aeclectic Tarot contained several interesting decks, including an homage to video game art called 8-bit Tarot. I've shown a sample here of the "Wheel of Fortune" card. This is an unfinished deck, part of a work-in-progress scheduled to be exhibited in November 2007.

I also liked the Manga Deck, although I don't feel I'm enough of a fan of mainstream manga to be able to render an intelligent opinion on the translation of manga from comics to cards. However, Aeclectic Tarot does have several reviews of the deck on the site which shed light on different aspects of the deck's interpretation of Tarot. I thought it was particularly intriguing that the deck reversed traditionally gendered roles on the cards, so that female figures become males ones and vice versa.

I enjoyed the story of Batman #657 even though it revolved around the character of Batman's supposed son Damien, a freakish man-boy with the personality of a sociopath. Sometimes the most annoying characters can be incredibly entertaining.

I don't know if it's intentional or not (I think probably not), but throughout the book Damien is drawn with bizarre proportions and facial expressions that make it difficult to determine if he's a man or a boy. In the image shown here, he has a mature face and a longwaisted torso. I can't figure out his age at all--twelve, maybe?

For some reason, as I was reading, I kept being reminded of the Peter and Raymond recordings. Every time Damien opened his mouth I would hear in my head Shut Up, Little Man! Shut yer dirty little mouth.

The Cute Little Red-Haired Girlfriend and I settled in this past Friday to watch Lucy Lawless perform in the final segment of Celebrity Duets. The show was built around a competition and Lucy came close to winning but wound up in second place. If you missed it, you can download clips from all of Lucy's performances or just view pics at Mary D.'s subsite devoted to the show. There's even more available at Lucy's official fan website, where Lucy is periodically posting, podcasting, and videocasting.

Earlier that day there had been another close call involving Lucy. I'd picked up a copy of the October 10 Advocate because there was a feature on Lucy focusing on her appearance on Celebrity Duets but also touching on other shows, including Battlestar Galactica. One of the questions asked in the interview was whether Lucy would be making an appearance on The L Word, a question that has crossed my mind, say, a zillion times.

As soon as I read Lucy's answer, I knew I had to call the Cute-Little-Red-Haired Girlfriend immediately and tell her about it. This was a mistake. Because Lucy's answer was that she had been considered for a role on The L Word, but hadn't gotten it--the role ultimately went to Karina Lombard. This tantalizing message, once delivered to the Girlfriend, almost resulted in the world's first death by completely unassisted orgasmic implosion. Just the thought of Lucy Lawless in The L Word was almost enough to do her in. It was a close call, but I am happy to report she made it through.

Incidentally, I thought I would report that I am not reading the new Xena comic books from Dynamite, though I have given them the once over. From what I've seen in the comic store and read online, they seem to be focused on or around the season two timeline, in a very Joxer-centric sort of world. I've been through too much blood, sweat and tears on the road to a fully acknowledged subtext to go back to stories where Joxer's courting Gabrielle.

Plus, if you've seen the covers of the Xena comics, you'll see they've drawn Xena's breasts all wrong. There's been a lot of focus on how to draw proper breasts in the comics blogosphere of late ("comics--the breastiest fandom of them all!"). However, this is not about "proper" it's about Xena. We have spent a long time observing Xena's breasts chez In Sequence and I can say with some authority that those are not the breasts you're looking for. (Ooops, that's another fandom entirely!)

It's true, it's official, it's confirmed. I, Teresa Ortega, will buy any comic book title that features two women kissing on the cover. I am powerless against it. So feel free to continue this trend, publishers, especially those of you pursuing the long tail--rest assured that this maneuver will gain you a sale with me, now and always.

While we're discussing lesbians, I noticed Yahoo! News seems to be getting into gay humor, or at least I supposed that was the purpose of their recent headline story, Finger length linked to female sporting potential. As always, the gay community appreciates your outreach.

I received an email from one of the creators of the new erotic graphic novel Sticky, requesting a mention. I'd seen coverage of the graphic novel in several places, including at Journalista, (postmodernbarney), and Jockohomo, but I like the endeavor so I figured I'd mention it. (Incidentally, I don't accept review copies or freebies, but I do look at press releases and e-mail pointing to things I might be interested in.)

The interview with creators Dale Lazarov and Steve MacIsaac over at Comics Nexus has been linked in other coverage but I thought I would call out a point that interested me in particular. Artist Steve MacIsaac notes the merits of pornography in comics format as opposed to video or prose, stating,

"Prose is great for immersing you into the scene psychologically, while video has motion and visuals, which are sexually arousing for obvious reasons. I think comics combines both strengths--they're more immersive and participatory than video while still stimulating arousal through visual appeal. Plus you can play with temporality, setting and story complexity more than with video since people can spend more time with each panel."

I've shown an image from Sticky that's part of a Halloween-themed story in which a costumed monk hooks up with a pirate. (I guess this can double as my belated "Talk Like A Pirate Day" post. When will we see Hallmark Cards?)

I'm sad that DC's Solo series is coming to an end, because it was a great project and the issues produced were of high quality. The comics series was a showcase for a single talent, though sometimes other artists played a supporting role. I appreciated seeing what an artist might produce when unleashed from the constraints of writing or drawing a specific hero or brand. I'm also a fan of the multi-story comics title, so I enjoyed that fact that Solo was comprised of a series of short pieces.

I was completely taken with Sergio Aragones's Solo title, which appeared this past summer. I find it impossible to look at his drawings and not feel happier as a result. I mean, just look at the picture I've put up of a dog drawn by Aragones. Is that a happy dog or what? I wish I was as happy as that dog just one day a week. I think it's actually a representation of Aragones's dog, so I guess what I'm saying here is that I would like to be Sergio's dog on a part-time basis. I read on Mike Sterling's blog that Aragones came into his shop recently, so Mike, if he comes in again, please let him know of my interest.

The story I liked best in Aragones's collection was called "Heroes." It showed how a hero in one country might end up looking like a villain in another, or else forgotten entirely. To illustrate, Aragones's tells the story of Irish Catholics in the United States who fought for Mexico in the Mexican-American war. This San Particio Battalion became heroes in Mexico, but deserters in U.S. history books.

The detail in Arragones's artwork is a great source of visual humor. In "A Batman Story," there's a wonderful image of the Batcave, with every nook and cranny stuffed with crime-fighting doo-dads and bat paraphernalia. There's joyful chaos everywhere you look.