Ramblings about the industry from the Chief.

I have to point out the absurdity of something in the comics world.

Comic Foundry editor Tim Leong has put up a video blog in which he criticizes the newest issue of Wizard, an activity akin to shooting fish in a barrel. In this video, he takes Wizard to task for objectifying women, not only because it has Jessica Alba on the cover but because there's an article about Frank Cho that says that the boobs Cho draws are a good reason to pick up the issue of Avengers he's doing. I don't really care about Jessica Alba being on the cover, but, yeah, the article about Cho is stupid and it makes me nervous that most fanboys out there, the ones who are mere feet from me at conventions, have a mind that says "BOOBIES BOOOBIES BOOOOOOOOBIES" on continuous loop and Wizard feeds into that.

What's ridiculous about this, though, is that Comic Foundry has featured two covers featuring headless women in underwear. Here's the latest, with a "yellow brick road" leading up to the headless young woman's crotch. At least Jessica Alba has an identity! One of Leong's readers, Leigh Walton, points this odd situation out to him, only to have his comment called "some of the laziest verbal jujitsu I've ever read" by another reader, D. Edward Sauve. What crap.

I don't read Wizard OR Comic Foundry because the imagery both magazines use tells me, "This is not for you." So, you know what, Tim Leong? We women don't need you demonstrating what a sensitive man you are and how much you care about our sex being objectified. Deeds speak louder than words.

Speaking of sensitive, apparently Leong gets teary-eyed over the tasteless hook that Wizard uses in the Cho article about Cho's dead neighbor ("apparently" because I stopped watching before it got to the tears--it was just too awkward to watch this guy get so overwrought). I don't know if it's supposed to be funny. But if I want to see an emo outpouring on the Internet, I can watch Hope is Emo. At least I know that's supposed to be funny.