Like many other comic fans, I've seen a lot of interest in the Spider-Gwen character that was introduced just a little over a year ago. I don't follow the Marvel universe any more, but I'd gathered enough to learn she was a super-powered Gwen Stacy from an alternate timeline that was recruited for some battle along with a bunch of other spider-themed characters across the multiverse. Good on Marvel for introducing her, I thought. It's cool that they've been continuing to introduce female characters that women are able to connect with, and that's proven, in part, by the ton of Spider-Gwen cosplay I saw at C2E2 a week and a half ago.

Over this past weekend, I finally read my first Spider-Gwen story. Her very first appearance from Edge of Spider-Verse #2 via the Edge of Spider-Verse TPB collection that was included in last month's Comic Bento subscription.

And I was incredibly underwhelmed.

Now, granted, there was more depth of character there than Gwen's original appearances, and she certainly had more agency than any version of the character I've seen before, but the story was just... not all that good, frankly. And I don't mean to throw this on Jason Latour and Robbi Rodriguez specifically -- none of the stories in that collection were very good. They were all incredibly predicated on the fact that the reader was intimately familiar with a huge chunk of the Spider-Man mythos generally and the Spider-Verse event specifically. Removed from that context, the stories don't hold together very well. I don't think creators should spoon-feed their readers, but there were more than a few storytelling leaps that readers had to make in order for the stories to make any sense. They may not seem like leaps if you're familiar with the Spider-Man backstory, but things like the whole Peter-becoming-the-Lizard flashback really only work if you know the Lizard character in the first place. The stories aren't really terrible, but that they rely so heavily on shortcuts and assumptions about the readership that they are, at root, bad storytelling. Not to mention some minor, but completely illogical story beats -- a band does NOT go on stage without their drummer, for example. And doesn't Captain Stacy know where his daughter lives -- doesn't the whole "leave before I come to my senses" idea kind of not work at all because of that?

I read a piece recently where the author suggested Spider-Gwen's popularity was due, in part, to the character being "unfridged." Her original incarnation was basically just to be a love interest for Spider-Man and die at the hands of his enemy. Though the phrase wasn't coined at the time, she was a poster child for the notion of "women in refrigerators." That Gwen was not only brought back to life, but given power and agency on par with Marvel's signature superhero, Spider-Man, was something that women celebrated. Thus she became more of a stand-out character than other women, like Silk and SP//dr, who were created around the Spider-Verse event.

To be fair, Marvel saw the enthusiastic response to Spider-Gwen and tried to come out with more material about her as soon as possible. I haven't read those stories and can't comment on their quality, or what they've done with the character since her debut. But here's where I'm going with this: that women responded so vigorously to a character in a single, short, not-all-that-good story says to me that they are collectively so desperate for any character that has a remote chance of not completely sucking that they're grasping at anything they can. I'm not surprised to the reactions for Kamala Khan and Carol Danvers -- from what I've read, there were some good stories there. But Edge of the Spider-Verse? There's some good ideas there, but not they're not executed very well from a storytelling perspective.

I've heard a number of people of color comment how they were thrilled when Luke Cage debuted, despite being entrenched in Blacksploitationism and bad stereotypes, because it was one of the very, very few times that comics even came close to reflecting them on the page. I get that same feeling with this first appearance of Spider-Gwen. The story isn't as cringe-worth as Luke Cage, Power Man #1, but women would rather have something like Spider-Gwen to build on than the nothing they've had before.

So despite a few years of a female Thor and a new Ms. Marvel and a new Captain Marvel and whatever, Spider-Gwen's rise to popularity is indicative of just how LOOOOONG a way to go Marvel (and presumably DC, Image, Dark Horse, etc.) has left! Seriously, I'm thrilled Spider-Gwen has gotten some traction, and props to Marvel for quickly realizing they captured something positive with her, but I think the overall readership had to meet them way more than halfway to have Marvel do something actually good with the character.

• Nick Sousanis gave a talk about his Unflattening at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign a couple weeks back, and Carol Tilley provided a response, which has been posted online.
  
• Here's a report on how/why Houghton Mifflin is including some xkcd strips into their high school textbooks.
  

I seem to be having some deadline problems lately, so for today's post, I'm just going to pull out a Fantastic Four-centric interview I conducted with Danny Fingeroth back in 2002. (And for the record, I'd still like to see "Fathers and Sons" published!)

Sean Kleefeld: Happy New Year, Dan. I've put together some questions for you about your work with the Fantastic Four, if/when you've got a few moments.

Now, I suspect few people associate you with the FF since you've only written a handful of stories that directly involve them. Despite that, however, you've had a surprisingly large impact on the group, adding some significant history to the Thing and some powerful emotional baggage for the Torch. But let's start at the beginning of the process: how did you get your various writing assignments for the FF? Were they written as inventory stories, or to let you test the FF waters?

Danny Fingeroth: They were pretty much inventories. I've always loved the FF, and was happy to write or edit those characters whenever I got the chance.

My Thing story ("The Day After") in Marvel Fanfare was originally pitched to Marvel Comics Presents, along with three other springboards. The others were accepted and published. Luckily, editors' tastes vary, and Al Milgrom liked the Thing story and bought it for Marvel Fanfare to be included in an issue (#46?) that featured a Mike Barr FF story as the lead. I was as surprised as anybody when the FF office had no problem with me establishing Ben's girlfriend and how she reacted to her guy's having turned into a monster. So it's part of the "official cannon" now. I'd be curious to know if any other writer has ever referenced it.

SK: It's clear that you're writing the characters as people first, but the "super" issue seems almost less than incidental at times. When writing those stories, what made you decide to keep your focus so far away from super heroics? Was it a sort of challenge to yourself, or simply a desire to do something a little different? Is that why you kept looking at the FF as individuals rather than a group?

DF: The FF (and all great characters) are individuals first. Their personalities are expressed through their words and their actions (or heroics, if you will). I tried to do both. With inventory stories, since you don't know when and where they will appear, there can be tendency to go for the all-out slugfest or the inner-focused story. I thought I balanced the super with the personal, but I could be wrong.

SK: Although you've clearly acknowledged the FF's history in your work, your Human Torch story (Fantastic Four #342) especially plays off already existing continuity. Was there any concern on your part on not being redundant or were you confident enough in your vision to do something unique?

DF: I always thought Byrne's original story dealt with some issues that could credibly rear their heads again. In real life, we don't get over traumatic events in one fell swoop, so I figured the Torch would still have feelings about the kid in FF #342 who set himself ablaze trying to imitate him. In a similar manner, several years after the initial Iron Man-Tony Stark alcoholism story, that idea was brought back because the creative team at the time felt there was more to say on the topic.

SK: A series you did work extensively on was Dazzler. One of the things that strikes me about that comic is that there are a surprising number of Fantastic Four relations. Her early villains included Dr. Doom, Terrax, and Galactus, and the Human Torch was played with as an initial potential love interest. That seemed to create some good, successful stories early on but those relations tapered off as the series progressed. So I'm curious if you felt that angle wasn't working for the book, or if it was a more deliberate attempt to bring the series to the attention of existing Marvelites.

DF: Boy, this goes back a ways. Those FF-related characters just seemed appropriate for Dazzler. To have her take on Galactus sure attracted attention. And Black Bolt was a natural. His awesome sound converted into immense light power by Dazz seemed like the ideal showcase for her power. We also played off and with X-Men characters, and many others.

Let's face it, Dazzler was a hard concept to get taken seriously. We felt it important to place her clearly in the same universe as the Marvel's other heroes, the FF among them. (Maybe it was my subconscious way of getting to write the FF, too.)

SK: You've done your fair share of editing as well. And the FF have cropped up in several of those books. They made a number of appearances in New Warriors and are fondly remembered for helping Spider-Man first rid himself of his alien costume. How much input did you have in bringing the team (and how they were used) into those books?

DF: The Marvel Universe is an interrelated place. Anybody can show up anywhere at anytime. Now, if taken too literally, you should by all rights have hundreds of heroes showing up every time Dr. Doom or whoever is doing their bad guy thing. After all, why take a chance? But, of course, it's not the real world, so license is taken and if it's the FF's book, they'll generally be the ones to save the day.

On the other hand, if appropriate either to character or marketing considerations, guest-stars are fun for the creators and the readers. So who came up with the idea for a particular guest-star at a particular time is hard to say. Hopefully, a story would evolve so that that the most logical hero or villain to insert would be dictated by the story's needs. On the other hand, sometimes a writer or artist just has a need to have the Thing show up and announce that it's clobberin' time.

Of course, as often as not, a guest-star is used as on outright attempt to gain attention and sales for a book. (Ideally, a reader would say: "I bought this comic that I never buy because Wolverine was in it. But now that I've read it, I like it enough that I'll come back for next issue even if he's not in it.")

SK: You mentioned earlier that you helped launch The Complete Fantastic Four, a weekly reprint book in England from 1977. How did that come about? I understand the financial need to drop color and print only black and white art, but didn't having to go back and shade everything in grays raise the cost of producing the books again? The thing that struck me, too, was that each issue had one full-size "current" story and half of an old Lee/Kirby yarn. How did that format come to pass?

DF: The Marvel UK books were intended to compete with the weekly black and white British-made comics (Beano, 2000 AD, etc.) that were then popular. For the weeklies, we usually split monthly Marvel books into chapters, adding recap splash pages. There was some new material, too, such as Captain Britain, Night Raven and others. Some was produced here, some in the UK. There would be four or so features per issue. The theory with the Complete Fantastic Four, as I can best recall this ancient history, was to devote a complete magazine to one character and see what would happen. (A magazine called Rampage that featured the Defenders launched around the same time.)

The British distribution system was very different from the then-dominant US newsstand system, and more like our current direct market. In other words, there were no returns of unsold issues, so a retailer would only order what he thought he could sell. If he ordered a hundred of a title and only sold eighty, then next week he'd only order eighty. Or less, to be sure he wasn't stuck with extras. With no real back issue market for the weeklies (at least then), no title could last more than a few years. Weeklies were always being cancelled and others launched to start the ordering level at a high number that would inevitably spiral down.

The Lee/Kirby stories were included because... well, because they were great! Why else?

As for the gray tones, they were mostly zip-a-tone. Those were overlays with glue on the back that came in various types of moire dot patterns. It was pretty inexpensive to add, and was supposed to make the comics look more like the black-and-white the UK public was used to seeing in a comic. Clearly, these books were intended for casual readers, as the hardcore fans generally preferred the regular color (or colour) comics from America.

SK: The last thing I want to touch on is an unproduced graphic novel you did called "Fathers and Sons." From what we have seen of your FF, coupled with the title, I have to presume it's a very well-written look at the relationship between Reed and his father, and how that relates back to Reed and Franklin's relationship.

DF: "Fathers and Sons" explores that relationship and several other actual and metaphorical father and son relationships, including those between Reed and Franklin, the Mad Thinker and Quasimodo, as well as the Vision and his twin children (who were later established to not be "real").

SK: John Byrne had already established some of Reed and Nathaniel's relationship by that point, hadn't he? How did that project get going? After Mark Bright bowed out of the project, Al Milgrom took the pencilling duties going so far as to re-create Mark's first dozen or so pages for consistency. What happened to keep Marvel from producing something that was already written and drawn? Al was editing a number of things at the time anyway, wasn't he?

DF: I pitched the project to the the FF editor, who loved it and gave it the go-ahead. As time went on, the story became less and less in line with developing Marvel continuity. And since it wasn't scheduled, it fell between the cracks. Marvel has many tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars worth of written, penciled and inked material that for various reasons has never seen the light of day. It's the nature of the business. (For an idea of how Al's FF pencils and inks look, check out the Thing-Wrecker story he and I did that was published in FF #355.)

SK: One final question, how many people would need to pester Tom Brevoort in order to get "Father and Sons" published? :)

DF: The more the better, I suppose. Also, if you could get folks like Tom DeFalco, Jeph Loeb, Walt Simonson, etc. to say they'd like to see "Fathers and Sons" see print, that might carry some weight. It would have to be solicited as a peek into the past, or into an alternative universe or something like that.

SK: Thanks for your time, Dan.

DF: Take care, Sean.

About a month back, I noted some of the possibilities that could go on with SDCC beginning to use RFID chips in their convention badges. Over this past weekend at WonderCon (which is put on by the same people), Mark Evanier noted the use of scanning the tags to track movement...

Periodically as you walk about the convention center, you have to pass through set-ups that look like subway turnstiles without the turnstiles and you must "tap in" or "tap out," tapping your badge where specified. It's not a hardship, though those of us who are over six feet in height have to stoop a bit to make the tap. I am wondering if in addition to verifying that your badge is valid if it also yields info about how long you remained at the con, where in the building you roamed, etc.

The fact that people had to "tap in" essentially confirms they are indeed passive tags with a very short range. Somewhat akin to Disney's "Magic Bands" that I talked about over at FreakSugar last year.

But that they set up those check-in points also all but confirms they are indeed doing some tracking of attendees within the show. Kerry Dixon, over at the Unofficial SDCC Blog caught that attendees will also need to make sure they "tap out" as they leave the show or they wouldn't be able to return. That, to me, sounds like a logistical problem on their end. Disney is using the same technology, after all, and has no such "tap out" requirements. The only reason I can think of for this is to assess how many people are on the premises at any given moment for the purposes of remaining under capacity limits from regulations. Disney, I'm sure, has to adhere to those as well (indeed, I've seen where they stop admitting people to their parks) but I suspect that Disney has better metrics/algorithms on how long people stay on site, and possibly limits capacity well before they hit any legal thresholds in order to make sure the park doesn't get uncomfortably crowded.

It will be interesting to watch how shows continue to utilize and take advantage of this technology going forward, and how many other shows pick up on the same ideas.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: On Business: A Different TPB Model
http://ift.tt/1WChIFs

FreakSugar: Fanthropology: Inclusion at C2E2
http://ift.tt/1RaLH7p

Kleefeld on Comics: On History: 1999 Roger Stern Interview
http://ift.tt/1U4IhoZ

Kleefeld on Comics: Weekly Comics Links
http://ift.tt/1RkFKRQ

FreakSugar: Webcomics Wednesday: Audience Challenges
http://ift.tt/1WInIN3

Kleefeld on Comics: On -isms: Labels
http://ift.tt/1RBbcAS

Kleefeld on Comics: On Strips: Newspapers without Comics?
http://ift.tt/1MpGIzm

Robert Harvey recently penned this piece, arguing that newspapers (and, by extension, comic strips) are not nearly as doomed as people often make them out to be. He points out that the main group screaming that the sky is falling on newspapers are newspapers themselves and that, rather than not making money, they're simply not enjoying the huge profits that they used to hold for so long.

He presents a solid argument for newspapers' overall sustainability. He ties comic strips in by basically saying that it will be cheaper and easier for newspapers to utilize syndicated content than having to generate anything themselves. His reasoning is generally sound except for one thing. There's nothing to guarantee that newspapers will continue to choose comic strips as the syndicated content they want to use. There is plenty of syndicated news available (via sources like the AP) which means that a newspaper can still purchase loads of content that's tied to their (ostensible) primary mission and and the loss of a page or two of comics likely won't harm them.

The other point that Harvey doesn't mention is that most syndicated newspaper strips are really webcomics any more. You might be thinking, "Sure, they appear online, but that alone doesn't make them webcomics." What you might not realize, though, is that any syndicated newspaper comic appears online BEFORE they're actually printed up. You can read the day's newspaper strips online right at midnight ET, but they won't actually be available in print form for at least a few hours. Not to mention getting the printed pages from the printer to your doorstep.

While people frequently think of webcomics as catering to a very niche audience, compared to the broad base that newspaper comics have, that's not always the case. Many webcomics see huge cross-spectrum audiences. The Oatmeal, for example. How many do you see shared repeatedly through social media? Also pointing to that is that UClick syndicates (electronically) a number of webcomics as well. That suggests that they still feel there's quality material there that's viable for a wide audience, just perhaps not quite as wide a one that Jim Davis has. Indeed, some newspaper strip creators even maintain webcomics as well!

Harvey isn't wrong when he's discussing the future of newspapers. And if they continue to carry comics, then his arguments completely fit. I'm just saying that there's nothing to say that newspapers will continue to use comics as a part of their content strategy but, even if they don't, they have potential viability online.

At C2E2 this past weekend, I attended several panels on various -isms issues. (CBR has a great write-up of what I thought was the best panel of the whole convention: Comics, American Culture & the Black Male Image: Perspectives from Creators.) One that stood out was the LGBTQA Roundtable, hosted by Michi Brady.

The discussion was centered around some basic definitions. What's the difference between gender and sexuality? What does queer/questioning mean? And one thing they joked about: the increasing alphabet used to describe this community. If you've followed along over the years, you may have watched as LGB became LGBT became LGBTQ became LGBTQA... The running joke at the panel was that it's now LGBTQABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP...

The reason for the increasing additions is to try to be more inclusive. LGB, for example, basically only addresses sexuality and ignores people with sexuality-related concerns, but who still conform to sexual social norms. Like transmen and transwomen. Each additional letter represents another one of those groups; however, it's readily apparent that continuing to add letters is confusing to those outside that community and who might not keep up, not to mention that it can highlight who isn't being considered in those discussions.

Towards the end of the panel, they invited audience members up if they wanted to share their stories. They had spent the previous 45 minutes proving that it was a guaranteed safe space, and a number of people went up to relay what life had been like for them growing up. And how they often felt different or isolated from everyone else, but never had a name for why they didn't fit in. Frequently, they never heard words like "intersex" or "genderfluid" until well into their 20s.

And what hearing those labels means, often, is that someone else has had the same issues. It signifies that whatever-it-is-they-are, it's been seen in enough other people before to name. And that means they're not alone. The testimonies people gave for how these huge weights were lifted off their shoulders when they discovered that there were others out there they could turn to for support and guidance were incredible just in seeing these people's faces light up, often glittering with tears of joy.

(Sadly, not every story ended happily. Some people were still dealing with some very cruel relatives and divisive workplaces.)

Labels are often seen as a bad thing. But the problem with labels isn't so much that they exist, but that they're applied to others. One of the things panelist Sasha Katz repeated was that it's about your identity, and you can identify yourself however you want. And to be more all-inclusive, there's a contingent of people trying to push the suggestion of identifying that whole alphabet of letters above as simply SAGA, Sexuality And Gender Acceptance. All the old labels don't go away, but they're intended to be embraced under an inherently non-exclusionary umbrella. (And that it's also the name of a reasonably popular comic doesn't hurt either!)

I've always been one to eschew labels for myself. I don't self-identify as this type or that; I've always just thought of myself as Sean Kleefeld. Full stop. Of course, I also recognize that I can do that by the nature of my privilege. Because I'm a cishetero white male, no one has ever really tried assigning labels to me, and it was never an issue to adopt my own. But Katz was arguing (rightly, I think) that no one should have labels applied to them, and that everyone is free to choose whatever labels they feel are appropriate for themselves.

I was talking with a comic creator this past weekend and he expressed some discomfort with a "young adult" label that's sometimes applied to his latest book. It's not bad or wrong for young adult readers, but he felt that was too limiting a niche for the story. It can be read and enjoyed by anyone. People apply labels like that, though, because it works as a shorthand to help them organize their thoughts. "This thing is like that other thing, and if I file them under the same name, I can find both quicker."

The problem, though, is the label other people might apply might not make much sense because they're making an incomplete or superficial comparison. You might, for example, put "blue" and "lava" in the same bucket because they're both four-letter-words. But "blue" probably makes more sense to be identified as a color, while "lava" is more something that comes out of the ground and probably would really hurt if you touched it. So when it comes to labels for people, doesn't it make sense to defer to someone who is most expert about the subject -- namely the individual her/himself?

If you attend any cons this year, I highly encourage you to show up for whatever -isms types panels you can. Whether the discussion centers around Black people, gays and lesbians, disabled individuals, Latinos... anything where a segment of the population is feeling disenfrachised, try to sit in on some of them. Try to learn what labels these people might apply to themselves and how those might differ from the labels you apply to them. If you then look at these people through the lenses of those new labels, you might be surprised at how differently you read their work.