Jeffrey at Sisyphus and the Cuckoo Clock Speech has a great write-up on the psychological theory behind Wonder Woman, plus a great story of how he came to research the subject. It turns out the force behind Wonder Woman also invented the personality assessment test used at Jeffrey's workplace. I can't stand those invasive personality tests. Next time some employer asks me to take one I'm going to say I've already taken it and I know I'm a FCKU.

I am one of those people who freaked out when Firefly was cancelled and, not surprisingly, I am also one of those people who went to see Serenity this weekend. (NO SPOILERS) I'm not going to say very much here other than it exceeded my expectations and you should go see it. Oh, and here's a lovely photo of Gina Torres.

One thing I would like to say about Joss Whedon is that he has done a superior job of maintaining the integrity of theFirefly story across multiple media. As it becomes more common for stories to be told over and across many formats--movies, TV, comics, games, fan fiction--audiences will be scrutinizing not just the way a story is told in one format, but how it is deployed across several. Some stories will be packaged in ways that disrespect the audience, cashing in on fan interest with half-hearted story extensions and silly licenses. Others will find innovative ways to knit stories across media experiences. For instance, I appreciate the way the Firefly comic book fits into the overall storyline. Also, I think Whedon did a remarkable job in making Serenity a movie that tells a whole story for new viewers and extends the original story for the fandom.

I've been trying to get my friend Joe interested in video games but it's been a slow process. Awhile ago he bought a copy of the Sims for PC, so that's a start, but I'd like to see him get excited about console gaming as well. Since Joe is interested in all things Italian, I've tried mentioning Mario games often, hoping this would convince him to buy a GameCube. Now I think I've found the perfect lure for Joe. While reading Joystick, I found a reference to this Japanese fan comic featuring Mario and Luigi as Super Bears. If this doesn't spark his interest, nothing will.

The June issue of Curve Magazine included a really large feature story called "Dykes in Comicland" by Lori Selke with illustration by Colleen Coover. There were also several sidebars on web comics, superhero comics, and manga, with contributions by Jocelyn Voo and Diane Anderson-Minshall. Unfortunately, the article is not available online, and although it's possible to order the back issue it appears in, there's an order minimum of two issues.

The artists discussed include Elizabeth Watasin, Roberta Gregory, Dianne DiMassa, Alison Bechdel, Colleen Coover, Paige Braddock, Gina Kamentsky and many others. It really is a generous overview, and comes at the question of women in comics from an angle outside of the usual industry-centric focus.

I've also noticed that After Ellen has been giving more feature space to comics recently. Their most recent feature is An Introduction to Yuri and Manga.

Following a link presented by Neilalien, I trotted off to discover what my comics affilation code should be. I'm going to identify myself as Teresa Ortega-YS, CIHI, DP, GCS=AM, which decodes to Teresa Ortega-Yay Superheroes, Continuity Is Hugely Important, DC Partisan, God's Second Child is Alan Moore. I'm actually a DP/NP waffler on an intellectual level, but in my heart I know I'm really DP.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts recently, just like my friend Joe, who discussed his favorites last week. My subscriptions cover a number of my interests, including comics. I've listened to several comics related podcasts in the last few weeks and my favorite so far is comicology. Rather than discuss industry news or peripheral subjects such as comics in film, this podcast discusses either a single or small number of comics from a reader's perspective. In other words, it's mostly about story and art. His site also provides links to other comics podcasts, including something called "The Bat Feed," which provides updates on all comics podcasts in RSS format.

I bought the first three issues of Doc Frankenstein, and having read them, I've decided not to continue reading the series.

I was attracted to Doc Frankenstein by the Wachowski Brothers, who are billed as the writers, as well as by the Frankenstein concept. Lots of people feel a special attraction to Dracula or vampires in general; I have that some feeling towards the Frankenstein story and its variations.

The story is illustrated with many beautiful panoramic scenes, such as the one I've reproduced here. The panels show great attention to detail, especially in the depiction of machinary. There are several two-page spreads in the series with imaginative viewpoints that certainly make a strong impression. What the drawings don't seem to do, however, is tell a story. Which might be okay, if only the script did a better job of moving the story forward.

I was intrigued by the brief few pages where Doc Frankenstein appeared as a lawmen in the Western United States. But before the idea could take off, the story had already moved to another time period and another set of interesting but poorly developed ideas.

Although I'm not by any stretch a defender of organized religion, the anti-religious venom of the series is so over the top as to appear farcical, which I doubt was the author's real intent. I found myself giggling uneasily through issue #2, the way one does when a movie attempting to be serious comes off badly.

Perhaps film would be a more forgiving medium for Doc Frankenstein; an actor's forceful personality might be able to carry the weak story. I actually lost track of the plot thread for several pages at one point, unable to piece together transitions or narrative sequence from the visually-engaging but mute panels on the page.

The nice thing about a series is it gives you time to clean up your act. I like most of what the Wachowski Brothers have done, so I'll probably check back with Doc Frankenstein a year from now and see if it's improved.

After having seen one of its authors, Steven D. Levitt, on Jon Stewart, I decided to pick up a copy of the book Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I enjoyed it, though it read more like a series of interesting magazine articles rather than like a book.

Freakonomics is not a new discipline or way of thinking, and the economist referred to in the title (Levitt; his co-author is Stephen J. Dubner) is not really rogue. The book encourages you to think both are true, and that's it's biggest failing: the book totally believes its own hype. But setting that aside, Freakonomics is engrossing in the way that most freaky things are engrossing. Despite it's problems, I found it difficult to put down.

The "freaky" part involves the application of regression analysis to a variety of real-world questions, like "Who cheats?" or "What makes crime go down?" The answers given are usually not what one would expect, but in a way, that's besides the point. The real focus is watching the authors unravel their unusual data, documenting cause and effect and showing where and how our intuition about these problems leads us astray.

One of the chapters, titled "How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" explores a part of Superman's history that I wasn't aware of. The chapter begins with a brief but informative history of the rise and fall of membership levels in the Ku Klux Klan. With high-profile Klan trials in the news lately, this was pretty timely reading.

On the first page, the authors refer to the Klan as a "multi-state terrorist organization." I had never thought of the Klan in exactly that light before--as domestic terrorists. But as it turns out, the authors didn't apply the term first, a past U.S. president did. In an address to Congress, President Ulysses S. Grant charged that the Klan's goals were

"'by force and terror, to prevent all political action not in accord with the views of the members, to deprive colored citizens of the right to bear arms and of the right of a free ballot, to suppress the schools in which the colored children were taught, and to reduce the colored people to a condition closely allied to that of slavery.'"

The book details how, despite Grant's efforts to defeat the Klan in 1872, the organization continued on into the twentieth century. In the wake of World War II, the Klan's numbers began to grow again. One man, Stetson Kennedy, decided to infiltrate the Klan in an effort to subvert it. He discovers the Klan's most precious secrets, including details of the group's structure, its special rituals and passwords.

Kennedy passed the material on to the producers of the Adventures of Superman radio program. Although the book doesn't mention it specifically, from surfing around the web, I gathered that this was during the program's "Unity House" season of 1946. In this season, Superman took on racial and religious intolerance in his fight for truth, justice and the American way.

The Klan information was woven into radio plots, where, the authors write,

"It had the precise effect he hoped: turning the Klan's secrecy against itself, converting precious knowledge into ammunition for mockery. Instead of roping in millions of members as it had just a generation earlier, the Klan lost momentum and began to founder."

This was definitely my favorite chapter in the book. Although people make fun of superheros all the time, here's a great example of how one superhero had an undeniably positive effect on society.

Popular Science has a recurring feature where it looks at the representation of science in popular culture. This month it takes on the science of superpowers in It's the Nanomeds, Stupid. The article isn't about comics, but rather comic book films. Spider-Man II, The Incredible Hulk and the upcoming Fantastic Four come in for some gentle ribbing over their scientific explanations of how various characters got their powers.

I can think of no better example of the destructive power of advertising than the Batman series of films. Each time one is released, I tell myself in advance I won't go see it. Each time, the hype penetrates to some place in my skull that makes me powerless to resist seeing it. I wind up sitting in the movie theater looking around like an amnesiac wondering "How did I get here?" Then I leave the theater at the end of the film filled with self-hate.

It remind me of that drug they supposedly give to women about to give birth. It doesn't keep you from experiencing pain, it makes you forget the pain once you've been through it. Could I have been exposed to a time-release version in the movie theater? I just don't know how to explain it.

So I am wary of Batman Begins. I am also resigned to seeing it. I hold onto a glimmer of hope that it won't completely suck, based on Roger Ebert's positive review. I generally trust Roger in otaku matters, even though I've never really gotten over his thumbs-up review of The Passion of the Christ.

I love DIY stuff generally and DIY art stuff in particular. Lately, I've found a lot of DIY comics links for the artistically impaired. For example, there's a new Mac program called Comic Life that lets you easily create comics from photographs. Over at Mac Merc, there's a tutorial on achieving a "comics art look" from photographs using Photoshop. Via Boing-Boing, I found two interesting community-oriented web sites: one allows you to create and share comic strips online and another uses game screenshots to create comics.

The game site seems like an interesting extension of the "fan media" movement, in which fans use a commercial property such as a TV series as a jumping-off point for fiction, movies, songs, and now comics based on but extending the original premise. I just read through the archive of The L Ward, a site that uses comic strips based on screen shots from The L Word to comment on the series. I imagine programs like Comic Life are going to make this type of fan media much more prevalent.

After Ellen has an overview of lesbian characters in comic books, covering both mainstream and independent comics. It's not comprehensive, but it works as a nice introduction for general readers. The piece ends with a few recommendations.

While perusing the most recent issue of Wired, I came across a reference to an interesting exhibit on display at the Japan Society Gallery in New York. The exhibit is called Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture, and it explores the roots of the kawaii or cute aesthetic in Japanese art and culture.

According to the gallery site, the name "Little Boy" refers to a nickname given to the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima as well as to the innocence of a traumatized child, an emblem of post-war Japan typified in the oversized eyes of manga and anime characters. I noticed this show is a follow-up to the Superflat exhibit, also curated by Takashi Murakami, that I saw here in Los Angeles several years ago.

Via Dr. Menlo, I traced my way back to a post at Grand Text Auto on when video games are going to have their Citizen Kane moment. (By happy circumstance, the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend and I just watched Citizen Kane this past weekend on a two-disc special edition DVD.)

I tend to think games have already had their Citizen Kane moment, to judge by the diversity and quality of game offerings these days. I should also point out that just because an industry produces Citizen Kane doesn't mean that some 60 years later it won't be primarily producing Son of the Mask and Van Helsing.

It seems like there was a fruitful discussion about this, which tended down two tracks: first, that the Citizen Kane moment wasn't all that (I'm sure David Fiore would agree), and second, that artistic development in games is following a more fractured and fitful course than film, but the artistic output is nonetheless significant.

I'm not an expert in video game history, so I can't point to a single moment where a Kane-like threshold was reached. It's simply an impression. I was pushed towards this view by the novel Lucky Wander Boy by D.B. Weiss. The book jacket contains a blurb asserting that the novel does for games what The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay does for comics.

I was mightily skeptical when I first started reading Lucky Wander Boy's stripped down narrative that it could match the artistry of Chabon's work. But I was mislead by the differing prose styles. Whereas Chabon's work is thickly intertwined with the sights and sounds of New York, Lucky Wander Boy take it's stylistic cues primarily from Tokyo. Once I adjusted to its pared-down aesthetic, I found it to be just as remarkable a book as Kavalier & Clay.

Perhaps that is the direction in which the real difficulty lies. There is still a widespread belief that there is something disreputable about popular culture, whatever form it takes. Currently, there are more people who are willing to expect great things from film, as opposed to comics or games. That doesn't mean, however, that the great moments aren't there in comics or games, if one is open to appreciating them.

Franklin wants to hear about what people think about casting for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. The Cute Little Red Haired Girlfriend directed me to a poll over at TV Guide showing that Lucy Lawless clobbers all competition. So now that we have that taken care of, let's start casting her Amazon sisters. Need any extras, Joss?