Bent Corner

When Fangirls Attack is a blog dedicated to linking to blog posts dealing with gender issues pertaining to the world of comic books.  It is maintained by three bloggers, Kalinara, Anna, and Ragnell.

Mostly it was about the reactions to the stupid, sexist stuff that comic book companies do.  It also dealt with the stuff stupid, sexist and misogynistic comic book fanboys said or did on the Internet. Being that there is never a shortage of sexist or misogynistic crap in the world of comic books, When Fangirls Attack was always worth checking out.  On the few occasions one of my blog posts was linked there, I received a massive amount of traffic from there.  It is a popular site.

The site has not been updated since July 1, 2008.

Now either there hasn’t been any comic book misogyny on the Internet, or something else is going on.  I’m guessing it’s the latter.  I miss reading the posts linked there.  Some of them were really quite good.

There was a slowdown in June.  That slowdown has since turned into a complete standstill.  I’m hoping the site returns soon.  Normally I would delete the RSS feed from my newsreader if a blog went dark for over a month.

I’m not going to so that with When Fangirls Attack. I hope it returns soon.

While touring a Chrysler car plant in Detroit, Michigan, Barack Obama used a sexist slur while giving a reporter — who happened to be female — the dust off. Reporter Peggy Agar dared to ask Barry a question on how he was planning to help American auto workers. It’s never a good idea to ask Barry for specifics.

From BBC News:

Mr Obama said: “Hold on one second, sweetie” and did not answer.

He later left a message for Ms Agar saying it was a “bad habit” and he “meant no disrespect”.

Ms Agar told the Detroit News: “I’ve been called worse.”

At least she didn’t tell Ms Agar to go home, take her shoes off, make some babies, and fix her husband his supper. It’s not just a “bad habit”. Smoking is a bad habit.

Sexism is not a habit.

There’s been an uproar on some comic book blogs over the fact that Wizard has decided to crown itself the #1 men’s pop culture magazine. The idea is that by Wizard declaring themselves to be a men’s magazine, they are purposely and unnecessarily going out of their way to exclude female comic book fans.

I don’t see why that is such a bad thing. To be excluded from the intended demographic of this particular magazine can only be looked at as something positive. To be excluded from Wizard is a good thing.

I can’t imagine why anyone - man or woman - would want to read Wizard. Anything that can be learned from the pages of Wizard could have been learned months ago online on Newsarama or Comic Book Resources. When was the last time something broke in Wizard? It was the New York Post and not Wizard that broke the story that Spider-Man was going to take his mask off in CIVIL WAR #2. It was the New York Daily News that broke the story that Captain America was going to be killed in CAPTAIN AMERICA #25.

It wasn’t Wizard magazine that broke these stories.

Wizard has become irrelevant and outdated. I get my comic book news and information from sources that update content on a minute by minute basis, not on a month to month basis like Wizard. That’s not to say there wasn’t a time for a monthly comic book magazine that could be purchased at any grocery store. That time has simply passed.

Sometimes I wonder if the only people still reading Wizard are female comic book fans looking for something that offends their feminist sensibilities. One has to look no further then to the website When Fan Girls Attack to see this strange phenomenon in action. Why else would they go out of their way to read something they know they’re going to find offensive?

If Wizard is in fact the #1 men’s pop culture magazine, whatever magazine came in at #2 must be really bad.