Fan Art Friday II - Aang's Yoga Revenge

Just wanted to point everyone to the blog of my first yoga teacher. She just taught a Halloween-themed yoga class and one of her yogis rocked an Avatar Aang costume!
Amazing, right??? What are you going as for Halloween? I know Jason has some spectacular plans!

Fan Art Friday: Jason Todd

Yet another great piece by Jemma Salume. Some of the most innovative use of lettering I've seen It's really quite beautiful. I've never been a fan of Jason Todd as Robin or after, but this makes me want to read more bat books. Click to embiggen. [source]

SuperQueeros! for October 27th, 2010

X-Men: Curse of the Mutants - X-Men vs. Vampires #2

KARMA STORY! The traditional annual collection of X-Men character vignettes has rolled around to it's requisite queer story, and it's about KARMA! I've definitely been missing my monthly Karma-inclusive stories ever since New Mutants started ignoring its X-men to focus on Project Purgatory, so this is going to be like a rainstorm in the desert for me! And it's about her being in Weight Watchers (BEST NOD TO THE 80s EVER) and having a metal leg (THANK YOU FOR FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGING IT) and checking out the sexy ladies! So basically it's amazing. #getit

X-Men: Legacy #241

The conclusion to the Dubai story! Anole + Loa + butt-kicking = AWESOME. I can't wait to see what happens to Luz (is she going to become a cast member for the new book? Is she going to be an X-Ally, thereby mitigating or ending the threat of the Children of the Vault?) and how Magneto and Rogue end their trip together. I figure that they won't hate each other, given that Magneto is getting his own continuing series, but I'm also hoping they don't hook-up. Now that Rogue can control her powers she should go find some GOOD love interests! #Anole!!!

Wildcats #28

So the world is basically exploding around our heroes right now as Gaia tries to kill everything, Ladytron has resurrected a robot army to take on the Spirit of the Earth, and those not on damage control are trying to find a new Doctor quickly who can cure the planet and set things to rights. Midnighter has so far been MIA in this new storyline, but Apollo is at ground zero, fighting to keep Gaia at bay. Hopefully we'll get some character development for him this issue? #notlikely

JSA #44

New creative team!!! Obsidian isn't featured on the cover or the variant cover, so I'm not holding my breath for his inclusion in this title, but it was his last known team affiliation. Hopefully he's included and used, and the spotlight he and his father had last issue wasn't a farewell issue to placate fanboys and fangirls. #fingerscrossed

Wonder Woman #604

AWESOME! Another story arc resolution this week as JMS's first Wonder Woman tale closes out. NewDiana faces down the man who re-wrote reality and turned her world (and ours!) upside-down! I don't usually advocate misandry but, Diana, KICK HIM IN THE BALLS!

Madame Xanadu #28

It's the last of the Five Senses as Xanadu helps a chibopath (see Chew) who's starving from all the stories she's eating! MX continues to be a very entertaining read, though I'm not sure what aspect made it a GLAAD nominee last year... ALSO: next month is THE SIXTH SENSE!!!!!!!!

Fan-Art Friday: Lady Dazzler

Erica Henderson who is a Project Rooftop frequent contributor recently did a series of Lady Gaga inspired Dazzler fan art. I've been of the opinion that Dazzler has desperately needed an update from her rollerdisco past, and Henderson knocks it square on the head of the nail!

Funnily enough, I recently ran an X-men themed role playing game where the player characters attended a Dazzler concert in Mutant Town, where we all called her Lady Dazzdazz informally. haha! Great minds think a like, eh? [source for more]

Bullying, Suicide, and Superheroes

The January 2011 solicitations are out and Marvel's shows a very interesting development: two X-Factor books in one month, one of them dedicated to bullying-related suicide! With teen suicide the current rallying cry of queer-related politics, it will be especially interesting to see what the details of this story are. Will the bullying have been homophobia related?

X-Factor has

the highest percentage of queer characters in a single book on the market today, so it has heroes who would be personally affected by a queer-centric soryline. The only thing I know for certain is that, with the consummate Peter David at the helm, this is going to be a seminal comic book no matter how the story unfurls:

X-FACTOR #214

Written by Peter David

Penciled by Emanuela Lupacchino

Cover by David Yardin

The suicide of a high school student triggers X-Factor's most personal case as X-Factor is hired to learn the identities of the bullies who drove the student to take his own life. But once they have the names, do they turn that information over to the authorities...or to the student's angry family, who may well take punishment into their own hands?

And remember:

Homophobia Literally Kills

Save Lives: Donate, Volunteer, Campaign

Kevin Keller Gets Mini-Series

Our boy, Kevin Keller over at Archie Comics just won't quit making news. It was announced at the Archie Comics panel at New York Comic Con that the new gay character in Riverdale has been so popular and well received by fans that he's receiving his own 4-part mini-series due out in summer 2011. Kevin's profile has been steadily rising and has been getting great press exposure for Archie Comics as a whole. I'll say this, I was the last person who expected to be excited about an Archie Comics announcement, but I can't wait to read Kevin's mini series. Hopefully we'll get to see Kevin with this mysterious "William" he's been texting back in his home town.

Sidebar: My crossover-slashfic brain immediately imagined William being Billy Kaplan aka Wiccan. Someone please write me some Billy/Kevin slash! #awesome

Also, check out Feast of Fun's interview with Dan Parent about Kevin Keller [source].

SuperQueeros! for October 20th, 2010

It's evidently X-men week for the queers; both queer-inclusive titles this week are X-books!

X-Factor #210

So Rahne came back and told Rictor that he's the father of her baby even though the father is actually a Norse wolf-god and nobody seems to have done the math on the conception date. MEANWHILE, everyone else (read : Shatterstar) is in Vegas fighting Hela and some other Norse godlings and ghosts (read: working through the rage of being slighted for a pregnant ex). But what's M up to? Evidently, a stranger comes to town this issue, and he's got something to tell Monet...

New Mutants #18

Fall of the New Mutants continues! The Hell-raised hellions of project purgatory get the last chapter of their back story revealed and start the New Mutant smack-down that will result in some serious casualties. This is the beginning of defeat! Will Karma survive? And will she keep all her limbs???

SuperQueeros! for October 13th, 2010

It's National Coming Out day! So go tell soemone you're a queer-o and then swing by your local comic book store to see which heroes are coming out this week too:

EDIT: KNIGHT AND SQUIRE NUMBER ONE FEATURES A BRITISH, GAY PUNISHER-TYPE CHARACTER NAMED FACEOFF!!! IT'S AWESOME CHECK IT OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Daken: Dark Wolverine #2

More intrigue as Mystique gets thrown into the mix this week, along with the revelation that Daken helped send his father to hell (see Wolverine's continuing solo series), makes this title my number one pick this week. With Marvel's two best bi baddies in one book, will they bump and grind before trying to bump each other off? Or is this the start of a beautiful friendship? Only one way to find out! #buyit

ALSO: hot vamp variant cover!

JSA #1 2010

The first of this week's two annuals, this issue makes the list because Obsidian has his own story! I'm so excited to see where they'll go with him! Will we see some of his relationship with Damon, now that it's established that they're still an item? Or will this be more of a smash-and-soliloquize story? The new "Rogue-ing" of Todd and his twin sister Jade (they can't get within twenty feet of each other or the world ends) means that our boy is going to be brimming with angst! Let's hope they make it good!

House Of Mystery Annual #2 Halloween

And the last title out this week is a Trick-or-Treating themed HoM. Not sure if the queer content will be there (Tursig isn't mentioned in the solicit), but given HoM's past and the sheer number of stories in this issue (each of the scary trick-or-treaters who are stopping by the house have a tale to tell, I'm sure!), there's got to be at least one 'mo in the mix! Plus, isn't Halloween the gayest holiday? #queer'ed!

Fan-Art Friday: DCU Elementary

I've been a big fan of Project Rooftop since its inception oh so many years ago. Recently the crackerjack team over at PR just posted some great fan-art of our favorite Justice-Leaguers in elementary school. Super amazingly adorable. Shout outs to Tom Bancroft (pencils), Howard Shum (inks), and Joey Mason (colors) for such amazing work. [source]

Scarlet Betch Episode 28

Hey betches!

We got such a good response from y'all on our last video, we've made the decision to transition to a video podcast. We hope y'all like the new format and bear with us as we experiment with a new medium. Clearly, we had some technical difficulties in recording via skype (what else is new)... but there's still the great content you're used to coming from us!

We give shout outs to some of our favorite new releases and talk in depth on JMS' newest issue of Wonder Woman and X-men: Legacy's adventures in Mumbai.

Let us know what you think of the new layout!

New York ComicCon: Queers, Quotas, and Questionable Practices

A few months ago, a friend of mine who runs a production company specializing in producing panels at geek conventions like Otakon, AnimeUSA, and New York ComicCon (NYCC), asked me to join a panel called "This Panel is Gay"-- a frank and irreverent discussion on the intersection of queer and geek culture and the state of queer in the pan-geek universe. As many would be, I was immensely excited to be asked to be a panelist at New York ComicCon, one of the fastest growing Cons in the nation. Even though the panel was initially green-lit and approved, twice, by the NYCC staff, it was finally cancelled and swapped out for one of the other panels the production company had proposed on fan fiction. The reason we were given?: "We have enough queer panels this year."

Now I'm well aware that Nerd conventions aren't known for being particularly well-oiled and smooth operations. Panels get added and dropped all the time with even less notice or reasoning. But when convention staff cancelled a pre-approved queer panel citing the fact that they already had plenty of queer content, I wanted to hold them to it and make sure that there indeed was a decent track of queer panels at this year's New York ComicCon. 

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they had indeed an overwhelming amount of panels on queer topics. It seemed unlikely since last year's NYCC had a total of zero explicitly queer panels, but you never know (they did have a panel on diversity with included Disney producer and young adult fiction novelist Perry Moore, who wrote a gay superhero young adult novel Hero*). So when the official panel listing came out last week, I dove through the impressive listing of over 650 panels. How many queer-related panels did I find? Two.

Read more »

SuperQueeros! for October 6th, 2010

Welcome to October! This is my favourite month: leaves are changing color, the weather is cooling down, Halloween is on the horizon, and it's my birthday month! So which queer-featuring comics are coming out this inaugural Wednesday?

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #37

Spike is back, Angel is back, Riley is back... The only prior season love-interest missing is... SUNNYVILLE! Yes, the answer to solving the havoc of Season 8 is to return to the Hellmouth we all know and love! I'm assuming that it's to face down the Master again, but Spike (and the writers) is the only one who knows for sure. Maybe it'll be that he and Angel have to make out??? With the Master??? #nowitisjustweird

The Authority #27

Rescue mission!!!! Some meanie aliens have stolen everyone and Swift, River, and some others (Rainmaker?) have to get them back! Before they're tortured to death! Only 3 issues left before the Wildstorm White Out! With so little time left, what exactly is about to go down?????

House of Mystery #30

More Tursig this month??? Probably! I mean, he has to become a kick-butt general by December, so this month he's probably going to have to take a stand against his crush and wrest away control of the goblin army! I'm guessing. Also this month: a killer ribbon! (hunh??????) #getit

Secret Six #26

Secret Six bloodbath, part 2! Scandal has a team, Bane has a team, and only Six will be left standing (by 2011)!! This is what we in the industry (actuarial science? blogging? being human?) like to call AWESOME. Super villains were made to fight, but very rarely do we get to see them win! #excited!!

Madame Xanadu #27

Touch! Part 4 of the 6-part senses storyline for Madame Xanadu is all about a cold-hearted beauty, averse to physical contact and whose touch brings terror! Set in the swinging '60's with art by Celia Calle, this is sure to be an interesting tale and a visual extravaganza!

Fan Art Friday: Billy and Teddy - INCEPTION

So, we've seen Chilean anime artist Cris-art on Scarlet Betch before. She does some awesome slash art (Tim Drake/Connor Kent and Billy/Teddy are some of her favorite pairings). She posted a livestream drawing she did of Billy and Teddy in some kind of dreamscape. Now, all I wanna see in the next issue of Avengers: Children's Crusade is an Inception themed adventure of the Young Avengers running around Dr. Doom's mind. I'm imagining Billy dressed up in Ellen Page's awesome scarves and Teddy in those sharp suits they had Joseph Gordon-Levitt in. #yum. [source]