Carl Brandon Society

June 25, 2009May 21, 2015

Justice League of America fans who prefer tokenism

Dwayne McDuffie (co-founder and creator of Milestone media and the comics writer who co-created Static Shock and other black comic book heroes) points out some of the reader responses to his final issue of Justice League of America, featuring the JLA teaming with Icon and Hardware in battle with Starbreaker:

I don’t think anyone will support an original black “mainstream” character. I know I won’t.

Maybe they should establish a separate league for all the negro superheroes. I’m not saying kick them ALL off. One would be okay. (Doesn’t Hollywood have some kind of law that says every movie has to have at least one black in it?) I just think they’re going overboard with all this diversity stuff. I mean, how many comics do minorities read anyway?

June 9, 2009May 21, 2015

Haikasoru: new publisher – Japanese SF in English translation

From Haikasoru editor Nick Mamatas:

Haikasoru — that’s “high castle” with a Japanese accent — is a brand new imprint of Japanese science fiction (with plenty of fantasy and even a dash of horror) in translation, brought to you by VIZ Media.

June 3, 2009May 21, 2015

Eileen Gunn interviews Nisi Shawl, first black winner of the James R. Tiptree Jr. award

I’ve been talking a little bit about this with Ted Chiang and some other people in a book discussion group I’m in, Tom Foster and Evan Cherniavsky. In light of that old “death of the author” idea. Is a story something I create to communicate ideas, or something I participate in with my readers? I’m always thrilled when someone gets out of a story what I was trying to put into it. And I’m also often thrilled when someone gets out of a story a totally other thing I didn’t even know was up in there.