About Yesterday

…my brother called to tell me that he understood what I was getting at, but that I didn’t express myself clearly enough. Alright.

The thing about commenting on much beloved popular culture is that it opens you up for all sorts of personal attacks, people trying to ascribe nefarious motives to your actions, all that shit. I knew that going in, but man, did that fucking cover really strike me the wrong way when I saw it. So, I posted it. That’s about 90% of how the blog works, and I tend to worry about the consequences later.

I could probably spend another full day responding to the various message boards, blogs, livejournals, etc., that all proclaimed to have some insight into my mind’s inner workings, but instead I’ll just leave you with this:

Mary Jane isn’t Storm or Invisible Girl, she isn’t a superhero being zombified on a classic cover. She’s a civilian, Spider-Man’s wife. She doesn’t appear anywhere in the book that she’s on the cover of, looking sexy and dismembered. This isn’t about the worry that 12 year olds will buy copies of a $25 hard cover, this is more a worry that Marvel thinks that a physically injured woman making a come-hither glance at the reader of a book that she isn’t even in, is the best way to sell their comic books. And the fact that, judging by the reaction yesterday, they’re right.

Brian Wood called it about half-way through the day yesterday; “This cover is actually a real boon for the basement dwelling set. This Mary Jane has so many more holes they can fantasize about fucking her in!” …and, yeah. It’s just a sad state of affairs and I probably should have just mocked it, rather than actually trying to engage it. Don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson.

So, since I’ve got a comics festival to run, a few articles to write, and a few thousand other things to do, this is pretty much all I’ve got left to say on this particular issue.

Thanks for reading,

– Christopher