M. J. > Recent Status Updates

It's clear that Marston fetishized the women's movement and was a fraudulent professional in many ways, however, he was a vocal advocate for feminism and an active propagandist of it, aware of their iconography and stories, which he used to write his WW comics. Another reminder of how morally complex historical characters can actually be (I'm still processing Margaret Sanger's weird connection to eugenics).

If you've read any intro to EC or "silver age" anthologies you know every comic book fan blames Wertham for the downfall of the "golden age" of US comics, but it's good to get a bigger picture, the social contexts that made comics and other popular written media so easy to target. All the decades-long moral panic and how it was explored by political figures is bizarre, but not really surprising.

Slowly reading this for the past few days and it's adorable (if a little too forgettable), different from other DC comics from the time for the drama and moral ambiguity of the supporting characters; the weirdness of it makes it read like a Doom Patrol spinoff, which is always appreciated (and Bob Haney claimed to have created them too). The art is kinda disappointing, though Frandon's design for Metamorpho is cool.

Gotta love Otto Binder stories, from zany superhero adventures to emotional sci-fi tales, they're an acquired taste, but they sure are fun to read.

'I would dress the women well in elegant clothes, and the men would have beautifully tailored suits, and they would be living in a nice house somewhere, and they would go out for a nice walk, and she would push him in front of a truck.

There were no happy couples, except for the girl and the truck driver in the end, and something terrible would happen to them, probably'
– Jack Kamen

Can't blame them for trying to criminalize jungle comics, those are bad. Although some talented artists have worked in the genre, the stories are boring. I was impressed there was a light dispute between Inger and Eisner over Sheena's creation. I'm with Jack Cole on this, let the work speak for itself, and in this case, it's not very good work lol
Anyway, ban Tarzan!

Finally getting to the EC Comics transmutation from christian company to socially aware crime & horror publisher. Wish I could read a memoir / biography of one these artists / editors (or something like it), they're too interesting...

I mean, in an industry so full of opportunism and backstabbing, Bill Gaines gotta be one of the coolest "golden age" comics people, along with Cole, Kirby Severin. I'm really fond of his rebel and awkward persona, the way he clumsyly, but surely, built a safe space for artistic expression. It's also endearing that he kind of "ruined" it for everyone too with his honest answers at the comic book trials lol.

I feel kind of weird the way I hunger for juicy gossip about these men and women who have been dead for decades, the whole M. C. Gaines / Bill Gaines family drama is so amusing to me, the turn from the father's forgettable Educational Comics, bible stories, to the scorned son's legendary Entertainment Comics, vicious crime and horror comics, is narrative gold.

Apparently, other than creating the crime genre in comics Charles Biro also had a pet monkey on his shoulder while writing and this is the kind of old comic book trivia I'm here to discover. Hope the monkey was treated well and had a cool gangster name.

Made my peace with the fact that this is not a book about comics, but rather a biography of Marston and his wives, who were saints to put up with that incompetent man. I'm basically halfway through this, post-textual material is 100+ pages, and we're finally getting to WW's creation!

Wish I was reading more about comics, but Marston was such a hypocrite and a mess, it's upsetting, but also entertaining.

Last few chapters were tough, too many tangents about criminal law, and just too many tangents in general. It must be so hard to write a history book like this, you are expected to give context and keep the text engaging with interesting information, which might lead to tangents, but who knows where's the line between context and off topic information?

Continuing my little obsession with the history and making of comics. Bought this one for my boyfriend, but he hasn't read it yet, I'm the only one who has fun reading non-fiction in this house.

I'm enjoying the thousand facts per page style of Lepore, the way she weaves history, biography and WW lore into a colorful tapestry, we're not yet deep into the character history, but the journey has been pleasurable.

Irony poisoned Le Guin alert, using the tired move of punching veganism like she's not one of the most original voices in science fiction, at least the sarcasm fueled essay was brief, but it was weird to see Ursula taking a pseudo scientific route in "defense" of plant consciousness. What an odd little text.

«A Igreja atualizou o rito em 1999, aconselhando que 'tudo deve ser feito para evitar a percepção de que o exorcismo é mágica ou superstição'. Isso parece um pouco como emitir instruções para dirigir um carro ao mesmo tempo que se adverte que tudo deve ser feito para evitar a percepção de que um veículo em movimento está sendo guiado»

Te amo Ursula.

A velha sendo racista em plena pré-história, te orienta mulher.

Prosa absurda, poética, mas orientada pela ação. Ouvindo o audiobook com a maior atenção do mundo, já sei que vou precisar da edição física.

Brutal.

Lady Orlando > Sadboy Orlando
A shame it took half the book for her to transform.

Woolf's worst mistake with this book is to think that being British is intrinsically amusing, Orlando has some interesting insights, Woolf is good at writing interior monologues, the language can be gorgeous, but the framing here is unexpectedly narrow, very aristocratic and colonial. A product of its time? Maybe so, it's mostly boring nevertheless. My first time reading a Woolf I don't really like 😔

Ugh, I feel sick, what a depressing closure, another one to my pile of "I had few pleasurable moments reading this, but I can't deny its brilliance" books – I feel a certain kinship to Kafka, although his cynical world building and psychosexual logic makes me nauseous. His portrayal of women varies from silly to creepy (not necessarily bad), but otherwise I get all the systemic hopelessness, I really do.

«O texto é imutável, e as opiniões muitas vezes são apenas a expressão do desespero acerca disso»

🫪🤯😖

Left the introduction for last (as I usually do with books by writers I'm already familiar with). A bizarre and luminous little book, damn Leonora, what a wild person.