iFanboy (comic books)

REVIEWED BY: Ms. Cairo

MY RECOMMENDATION: YES

AMAZON SUBSCRIPTION LINK: iFanboy.com, by iFanboy.com

WEB ADDRESS: http://ifanboy.com/

BLOG DESCRIPTION: iFanboy.com - The Place to Discuss Comics. By Fans For Fans. With Audio and Video Podcasts about Comics Weekly!

MY REVIEW: It always annoys me to hear teenage males referred to as "fanboys" - or heck, even 40 year old virgin fanboys. Girls and women are just as interested in comic books as guys are, although they might be a little turned off to see that the books do pander to the male of the species, giving superheroines large breasts incompletely confined in bustiers, usually, and wearing a costume with a French cut underwear to reveal as much leg as possible, and usually cut so the bellybutton is visible too. (What is this fascination guys have with belly buttons? Thank god they like innies rather than outies, but it's just a button in the belly, what'ts the big deal?

As a matter of fact I somewhat like the redesign of the new Wonderwoman, just because she's now no longer a sex object (from the legs down, anway, but they still give the viewer some decolletage) and more of powerful super hero.
http://www.dccomics.com/sites/wonderwoman/

I prefer the Kindle version of this blog to the web version... considering that it deals with comic books - a visual medium - the website isn't that nicely designed!

The articles are well written and informative. Anyone into comics will like this blog, so subscribe to it!

Sample post

I Can't Believe My Favorite Book Got Cancelled!21

This week we got the news that Atlas – the freshly re-launched Marvel series about a band of 50s do-gooders brought into the modern era – has been cancelled as of Issue #5. This isn’t the first time a Marvel series has suffered a quick exit in recent memory:
S.W.O.R.D. cancelled after the first arc
The Order cancelled after 10 issues
Doctor Voodoo cancelled after an arc
Captain Britain & MI-13 cancelled after 15 issues

In each of these cases, the books were (in my opinion) well written, deviated from the normal formula that’s so commonplace in mainstream superhero comics, and were beautifully illustrated. And in each case the sales just weren’t there to support the book.

Atlas is a title near and dear to my heart, and it’s my love for that band of characters that led to my becoming friends with Gabriel Hardman (the artist on Atlas) and friendly with Jeff Parker (the brilliant writer). I loved this series. I own several pages of original art from Atlas-related books (yes, this page is hanging on the wall of my comic room). This is a series I didn’t want to see cancelled. But I wasn’t surprised to hear that it was.

But no matter what the sales of a book may (or may not) be, chances are it’s a favorite of SOME group of comic book fans. And we fans have armed ourselves with voices. So when the news hit that Atlas was done after just one arc, it didn’t take a lot of work to find angry Tweets and disappointed forum posters and the requisite lamentations of podcasters. So the perception might be, to some, that these books had a stronger base of support than they really did. But here’s the thing folks (WARNING: I am about to put my “SUIT” mode on)…money talks. It’s perfectly natural to want to blame someone because your favorite books got the ax too soon, but if the sales aren’t there (and they weren’t in the aforementioned titles), it just doesn’t make sense to continue.

But what you rarely see is a writer willing to come right out and speak to the economic realities of a mainstream book. That’s why I need to tip my cap to Jeff who not only made the decision to end Atlas (yes, he wasn’t forced into it by the Marvel higher ups), but spoke to Comics Alliance about his rationale.

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Ms. Cairo writes several blogs including:
Seaborn: Oceanography Blog
Star Trek Report: Space Sciences
Topical Murder and Dated Death
The Rush Limbaugh Report