I picked it up on Friday but haven't read it yet.

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Wow.

You put a bunch of immature men, many of whom were very sick as children or had absent fathers or both, and all of whom escaped into over-muscled power fantasies as a result, in charge of a publishing subgroup with no prestige and little money. Several of them have never worked anywhere else, or if they have, it was at one of the few similar companies in the same industry that behave the same way. They’re still geeks, mentally, with low self-esteem and no success with women, few of whom they actually know in person, but they’re power brokers within their little world, and there are thousands like them who desperately want to be them… and you wonder why it all ends up so twisted?

The scenario she's talking about and the quote she quotes are heinous, but she's talking about real people above, and it tenses me up.

My experience in the comics industry was that there were a lot of geeks-made-good running it. And I don't doubt there's a fair amount of institutional sexism both culturally, and coloring the product.

But reading her blog, she's constructing a narrative about how she's been raped by comics that's kind of whackaloon. And I don't mean her charges of sexual harassment in the industry which I have no basis to judge. The creepy comic book store guys and her broken bloody vagina and her father's steroidal rage taken out on her Wonder Woman poster and the inside scuttlebutt on creating Identity Crisis and the tribute to Ned Halsey all merge together in her narrative as One Ginormous History Of Abuse And Betrayal By Comics. But she's the only real link in that chain.

The geek thing I'd be silly to try and contradict. It's the armchair psychology that goes from

immature men, many of whom were very sick as children or had absent fathers or both

and

low self-esteem and no success with women, few of whom they actually know in person

to

you wonder why it all ends up so twisted

Damning with faint praise, but the rape peril is shorthand that's been used over and over again, not just in comics. It's possible she has some insight into the personal histories of the majority of people working in the industry (but I strongly doubt it). Making there some sort of causal and unsurprising link between being ill, being a geek, and being twisted bothers me.

And this is coming from someone who rarely goes to her comic book store in street clothes, because she garners less attention in her krav stuff.

Okay, I read Astounishing #18 and I think I need to go back and do a re-read.

Also, have you noticed the odd choices that have been made as to which Angel scripts they're doing scriptbooks of?

#1 City Of -- made sense to me -- being the first episode.
#2 A Hole in the World - odd to skip, you know, the entire series to do the second book but still -- a good episode.
#3 Spin the Bottle - ?
#4 - Waiting in the Wings ????
#5 Five by Five & #6 Sanctuary -- good episodes -- but odd choices what with the Buffy crossover stuff.
#7 Smile Time

I don't know how many they are planning on doing -- but am I wrong in thinking that these are eccentric choices?

#s 5 through 7 make sense to me, as the first two are a seminal two-parter with major repercussions for the Faith and Wesley characters, and #7 is a hugely popular comedic stand-alone. But I'd have thought "In the Dark," "Rm w/a Vu," "Somnambulist," "Eternity," "Blind Date," and any number of Season 2 episodes would be better choices than #s2 through 4.

"Five by Five" is the only one Whedon didn't write, or co-write. I suspect that's why.

"Five by Five" is the only one Whedon didn't write, or co-write. I suspect that's why

I thought SMILE TIME was Ben Edlund, or was he co-writer?

"Smile Time" was Joss & Ben Edlund.