This week in geekdom:
- Marvel has announced a new comic starring our favorite green lawyer and arguable gay icon (some great drag here by Dax!). The comic is written by acclaimed author Mariko Tamaki, but it also promises a darker, more serious take on the character (hence the title Hulk, rather than She-Hulk), on which I'm not completely sold:
“The title She-Hulk evokes light-hearted stories about a Jennifer Walters who is at peace with herself and in full control of her powers,” says Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso. “This isn’t that book."
- The first trailer for December's sci-fi blockbuster Passengers premiered; Jennifer Lawrence makes some of us jealous by getting to be alone in space with Chris Pratt.
- At Mashable, Heather Dockray writes about how this year's Emmy Awards were a victory for queer women like Transparent creator Jill Soloway (pictured above).
- DC Comics is joining forces with fellow comics publisher IDW to release an anthology, Love is Love, in memory of the victims of June's Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Proceeds will benefit Equality Florida.
- Trans author Magdalene Visaggio (of the queer-themed comic Kim & Kim) offers a critique of the new trans superhero comics Alters, and of cisgender writers' often-misguided attempts at writing trans-themed stories:
The gender identity of Alters’ main character, a superhero named Chalice, drips over this book, providing the main narrative thrust and the comic’s most noteworthy idea. Now, as a trans woman who writes comics professionally, this frustrates the hell out of me, because this isn’t just a book with a transgender character. Jenkins clearly fell in love with the concept of a hero who can “only be herself when she’s not herself”; the main conceptual focus of Alters #1 revolves around Chalice’s identity, and all of the characterization is centered on this plot point. Her struggles over being trans—her conflicted emotions, her worries about upsetting her parents, her sly sotto voce confessions (admitting that she’s not attracted to girls like normal boys under her breath while her buddy gapes at another woman’s posterior)—occupy a full seven of the issue’s 20 pages. That’s a solid third of the book dedicated to internal monologuing about transgender angst. And that’s where this comic really rubs me the wrong way. I am (obviously) all about transgender representation in media. But there’s a distinction between telling a story with a transgender person in it and telling a trans story. The former is the purview of any writer; Kieron Gillen, Gail Simone and Marguerite Bennett (among others) all handle this approach admirably. But the other? Well, the other is not.
As always, look for more coverage of these comics and movies here at Geeks OUT!