When Brian K. Vaughan’s science fiction comic epic Y: The Last Man began several years ago, Christine was right on it, praising its “mature and complex look at gender politics.”

Brought to life by Pia Guerra’s stunning artwork, Vaughan’s vision reveals the great potential of both the science fiction and comic genres. As Vaughan says, “Good sci-fi is always about our world rather than some far-flung future.” And he has created a subtle but very relevant political statement.

Well, it’s nice to know that such a vision can find a wider audience. Check out Douglas Wolk’s glowing review in Salon of the concluding volume of the series — just released in June — calling it the end of the “wittiest, most entertaining story about gender in recent memory”:

Vaughan gets a lot of mileage out of speculating about what would happen if all men really did vanish from the Earth: Vatican City, for instance, would become a mausoleum, and so would the floor of the Tokyo stock exchange, but the Israeli military would be just fine. Long-distance commerce would be a disaster for years, thanks to the highways being blocked by enormous pileups caused by half of all drivers abruptly keeling over. Australia, as one of the few countries that allowed women to serve on submarines, would rule the waves. Supermodels would be forced into new lines of work, like driving a garbage truck full of men’s corpses. (America’s next top undertaker!)

But “Y” isn’t an argument about what really would happen if the men were all transported far beyond the Northern Sea, or even a bildungsroman, as much as it is a wickedly clever satire of patriarchal culture. It’s a story about men and the chaos and ruination they’ve brought to the world, in which all the “male” roles are played by female characters. There are ferociously funny little riffs on women getting by on their looks, “man-to-man” conversations, “women and children first,” men as protectors and women as protected, women as sexual temptresses of men, men asking women to smile, “proving one’s manhood,” and practically every other kind of awful gender essentialism.

Vaughan has gone on to write for ABC’s “Lost” and even for the “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer” comic series — and there’s a “Y” movie in development. So expect to continue seeing the world through his unique lens.

“Iron Man” is a great movie for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the action sequences and pyrotechnic displays. Ultimately, though, the themes go deeper than this, and the informed viewer can sense their complexity beneath the surface of the film. Behind the character story of a young Playboy taking responsibility for his actions, and beneath the technological tale of a hero being born out of a medical miracle, there’s also the story of a war of technological innovation… a sort of a clash of engineering titans… and there’s a metaphor for military force. It’s this last theme that I’ll address, for the time being.

A lot of ‘Iron Man” is about Tony Stark’s life’s work, and a lot of Stark’s legacy is based on military power and a relationship to hegemony. Stark begins the movie with his finger on the big red button, trusting in absolute power and overwhelming coverage as an ethical way to keep the world safe. This is truly a Cold War mentality, an international survivalism staked on the fact that America will always have the biggest stick. Stark’s work in the world is designing massive military weapons that “you only have to fire ONCE.”

Of course, Stark discovers the downfall of this approach when he’s kidnapped in Afghanistan. When military power gets big enough, it can’t be controlled or contained any longer, and it becomes as much the enemy’s tool as it is our own. He sees that he can’t even trust his own company with this kind of power, and he sees that this isn’t just a flaw in his company… it’s a flaw in this whole approach to power. For this reason, instead of simply taking back control of his company’s weapons distribution, he decides to shut down Stark Industries’ weapons division entirely. Complete military dominance is no longer Tony Stark’s thing.

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John Guyton, main character

“The Nightly News” has been getting a lot of press, apparently, and for good reason. Jonathan Hickman’s graphic novel, which I finished over the last couple days, is a bold experiment in both style and content. Its storyline is designed, as much as illustrated, relying on entangled compositions, simple color schemes, and high-impact graphic art; it presents its themes brutally, without flinching or shedding a tear. Parents be warned: there is a lot of wanton murder between its covers.

The story, originally presented as six issues, is about a cult of victims of the modern media who shed their humanity and their propriety in order to kill journalists and news people. The protagonists, who are also the perpetrators, are neither explicitly condoned nor condemned… if there is anything “heroic” about them, it’s simply their brute single-mindedness. The depiction of their crimes has the exhibitionist quality of a forbidden fantasy exposed, like Nabakov’s “Lolita,” or “The Boondock Saints.”

One of the more interesting devices in Hickman’s design is his use of asides, including infographics and obvious references to real people and speeches. The schematic and annotated stylization lends the book a certain authority, even as it’s clearly a work of fiction, with no pretensions of being a manifesto or an instruction manual. It’s not making a specific argument, but the stylization lends some weight to … what?

Ultimately, I do see an argument in “The Nightly News,” and though it’s not an argument I would condemn (i.e. it’s not an incitement to hatred or murder), it’s one that deserves our attention and some caution on our part. This argument is in the story’s framework, its depiction of the news media as a behemoth of corruption and maliciousness. The narrative is built entirely on the assumption that reporters and news outlets are spiteful and morally repugnant, and it’s not science fiction or alternate history. The story is interesting, and even appealing, because part of the reader believes in this sick world of evil corporate news.

And I think, more and more, the citizens of this country do distrust mass media journalism, and everything they hear from it. It’s a perspective characteristic of both the left (”media consolidation”) and the right (”the liberal media”), and in a lot of cases and a lot of ways, it’s justified — as in, for instance, Bernie’s recent post on the fate of the evening news. Ratings and income prompts sensationalism, short-sightedness, laziness, and alarmism, and as often as not, I’m with those who suspect the news media of falling victim to all of these at once.

But in the eyes of “The Nightly News,” reporters and their employers aren’t just lazy or greedy. They’re downright malicious. One reporter in the book claims that “We destroy people without fear of retribution or litigation. It’s what we do.” According to the graphic novel’s extensive end-notes, this quote is related to (and perhaps lifted from) the Page Six scandal of 2006. This is an uncompromising, confrontational portrayal at the heart of a cynically brilliant work of art.

Beyond the compelling story and challenging artwork, there are questions to be answered: are we ready to see our headline pushers as heartless criminals? And if so, are we right about them?

In a glorious explosion of media cross-pollination, Dark Horse Comics has partnered with MySpace to bring an online series of comics to social network pedestrians. I found it in an ad on MySpace?s front page, and I?m shocked I hadn?t heard of it before then. After all, it was announced more than a month ago at the San Diego Comic Con, and one of the first representative writers is the infamous Joss Whedon.

The idea here is that Dark Horse is resurrecting Dark Horse Presents, an old anthology title dedicated to showcasing pilot comics and new talent. Like the original series, the online version brandishes a solid arsenal of artists and some solid work from new authors, like Brazilian twins Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. The MySpace page brags that future issues will include work by other important authors, including Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame, who?s been a personal favorite of mine for a number of years now.

Besides being incorporeal, there?s something important that differentiates this collection from the standard comic title: it?s free. Even the old Dark Horse Presents comics, along with comparable titles from other companies, like Marvel Fanfare, were sold at cost to readers. Now, in the interest of promotion and brand recognition, Dark Horse has decided to offer these titles to an unlimited number of readers at no charge.

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We are very excited to welcome Jesse Miksic as a new contributing writer to PopPolitics. When he is not writing fiction or criticism, taking photographs or making his living as a graphic designer, Jesse is pursuing his MA in media studies at the New School.

Check out his occasional political rants at BlogCritics.org or peruse his essay, fiction and design work at miksimum.com.

At PopPolitics you can look forward to his takes on everything from films and literature to video games and graphic novels.

Enjoy the conversation.

A Virtual Moral and Spiritual Crisis: Mitt Romney’s latest campaign ad identifies video games as part of “a cesspool of violence and sex and drugs and indolence and perversions” in which “our children now swim.” Matt Peckham of PC World (yes, PC World) correctly tags Romney as just the latest in a long line of politicians that have fomented a “climate of fear” to create a more malleable populus.

By the way, is gambling “indolence” or a “perversion”? In either case, Romney will probably be happy to know that the producers of Second Life have outlawed gambling in their virtual world — which is beginning to feel like a “ghost town,” according to ValleyWag.

On the other hand, evangelizing is making a much smoother move into that same world — at least for the Jesuits. Father Antonio Spadaro tells the Financial Times: “This virtual Second Life is becoming populated with churches, mosques, temples, cathedrals. synagogues, places of prayer of all kinds. And behind an avatar there is a man or a woman, perhaps searching for God and faith, perhaps with very strong spiritual needs.” (Thanks, Lede, for the lead)

And whether it’s Second Life, MySpace or Facebook, Henry Jenkins, building off of Danah Boyd’s research, wants us to consider the “participation gap” among online users.

Drawing Well: Tim Cavanaugh of the Los Angeles Times is surprised to learn that sales of comic books have been increasingly steadily for the last five years. He’s been used to hearing only of the impending death of the genre:

If it’s striking how many movies are based on comic book properties these days, it’s even more striking how few of those properties were minted within the last decade or so … A favorite sport of industry watchers is figuring out just how the form went from being something youthful and dynamic to becoming something fearful, risk-averse and cramped.

He sees some hope in — you guessed it — the web, where sites like PvP and Modern Tales are pushing the envelope and turning a profit.

Comic books, of course, have always been a strange mixture of regressive and forward-looking ideologies. Lyle Masaki at AfterElton is sure to spark a conversation with his list of “ten of the coolest gay superheroes you (probably) haven’t heard of.”

Adhir Kalyan as Raja in “Aliens in America”

Aliens in Hollywood: Lisa de Moreas, whose laugh-out-loud columns make me feel like she’s a stand-up comedian in a television critic’s body, is having her usual fun at the summer press tour in Beverly Hills. But the story she tells in the second part of this column is both funny and revealing.

De Moreas loves the upcoming CW sitcom “Aliens in America” — in which a Pakistani exchange student finds both friendship and prejudice in America. She sees it as the next coming of “Freaks and Geeks” (and from the hilarious trailer, I’m probably going to agree).

Other critics, though, took great offense at its portrayal of a bigoted Middle America. De Moreas’ transcription of the critics’ confrontation with “Aliens in America” producers could be the basis for a sitcom itself.

Black is Intellectual: African American public intellectuals are not a rare breed — the incestuous mainstream media just make it feel that way, according to David A. Love’s insightful analysis in The Black Commentator.

Mark Anthony Neal’s defense of Michael Eric Dyson in PopMatters makes a similar point from another direction. Dyson, according to Neal, has been the source of scorn both for his popularity and for presenting too reductive and celebratory a picture black life: “This widely circulated and decidedly worn ‘poverty pimp’ thesis has been applied to figures as diverse as Reverend Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, and the current cadre of hip-hop generation intellectuals, who supposedly, as the critique goes, wallow in victimization and refuse to hold the black rank-and-file, particularly black youth, accountable for bad behavior.”

But Neal says we should show praise Dyson and others who have “leveraged the appeal of popular culture” — whether that’s television, hip hop, etc — to fight the good fight. Neal brings up BlackProf.com and Professor Kim’s News Notes — which we have been long fans of here at PopPolitics — as examples of how black intellectuals have harnessed the blogosphere.

Finally, Cornel West himself reinforces both Love’s and Neal’s perspective in a recent interview with the Washington Post, where he defends Dyson and his own forays into music and other modes of cultural expression.

I Want My Culture Back: David Browne and Alan Riding, from two very different perspectives, are lamenting the demise of serious culture — art that challenges us, both intellectually and politically.

Browne, in his “Anti-Cheese Manifesto” for the Huffington Post, admits his own obsessions with low-brow pop culture but refuses to celebrate them: “The danger in perpetually embracing the awful is the way it trivializes sincerity and makes earnestness seem mawkish and old-fashioned. It says: Don’t take it all so seriously, since nothing matters … Perhaps it is simpler to chuckle than invest genuine feeling in anything, since that can be too chancy, too uncool, and too emotionally risky.”

And Riding, in a column for the International Herald Tribune, writes from a more nostalgic perspective, recalling the way the arts in the past have directly challenged corrupt and repressive governments. He sees recent spectacles like Live Earth as symptomatic of a culture that values performance over action.

Viva Ruth Frankenburg: Speaking of intellectuals, culture and political engagement, it’s worth reading some of the homages to the recently deceased Ruth Frankenberg, a ground-breaking British-born sociologist. Donna Haraway, an exemplary intellectual in her own right, wrote the obituary for the Guardian, in which she praised her feminism and anti-racism — and her nuanced exploration of the complicated intersection between the two. Dana Goldstein has a more personal response to Frankenburg’s work on her blog, Une flâneuse.

Belly Dancers, Billionaires and Bombers: William Booth of the Washington Post simultaneously reviews, interrogates and praises the new documentary “Reel Bad Arabs” — which “makes the case that Hollywood is obsessed with ‘the three Bs’ — belly dancers, billionaire sheiks and bombers — in a largely unchallenged vilification of Middle Easterners here and abroad.” The documentary centers around the work of Jack Shaheen, a retired Southern Illinois professor who painstakingly has cataloged decades of representations of Arabs on film. Ultimately, Booth explains, Shaheen is simply calling for balance — and a recognition of humanity: “Hollywood still shows black pimps and Latino gangbangers, but pop culture has also made some room for Will Smith and ‘Ugly Betty.’ ‘I’ve seen the Arab hijacker, but where is the Arab father?’ Shaheen says. What we need, he says, seriously, is a sitcom called ‘Everybody Loves Abdullah.’”

A Comical Cultural Divide: “Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean” is the very enticing title of an upcoming book-length analysis of the comics genre by Douglas Wolk. Serious comics criticism is, of course, much-needed and long overdue. Interestingly, though, the excerpt from the book on Salon is a pretty take-no-prisoners attack on a comics culture that is unnecessarily divisive: “The medium’s new enemies are internal: the much less casual snobbery of the commercial mainstream and the art-comics world toward each other, and cartoonists’ nostalgic yearning for the badness of the bad old days. Reading only auteurist art comics is like being a filmgoer who watches only auteurist art cinema, but more than a few art-comics enthusiasts wouldn’t dream of picking up a mainstream comic book, even as entertainment.”

YouWho?: Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel has a noteworthy response to all the YouTube political madness of late:

For a candidate little known outside of Alaska, for which he served two terms as a U.S. senator, Internet buzz about his weird videos beats no buzz. But has it really come to this? Presidential candidates making spoofy-goofy home movies to win votes?

To be fair, candidates are as much victims as benefactors of the YouTube age, trapped between two dimensions of reality that are fundamentally in conflict. One reality pertains to Americans who have neither the time nor the urge to “get” the latest hip thing. The other concerns the very real phenomenon of a parallel universe where younger, more technologically attuned Americans preside.

Candidates can’t afford to ignore either, but ultimately they’re forced to present two different faces to two different audiences — the plugged and the unplugged, the hip and the un-hip.

The question is: Which is the true face? Which persona will lead the nation? Come Election Day, it may not be so cool to be so cool.

That last question, of course, is a timeless political question — and one that requires a critical thinking electorate to answer.

YouInsurgency: While we might want to rachet down the “Internet buzz” on the presidential campaign trail, the mainstream media would like us to be very scared of how terrorists are manipulating the online world: “Al Qaeda and other terrorist factions are have all the media niches covered. The battle for hearts and minds has gone online and multimedia — and the more the rest of us know this, the better,” reports CBS. Apparently, the terrorists don’t actually see themselves as we do — in grainy, distorted streaming video. What a surprise.

It Wasn’t a WMD, After All: This one’s is a little dated — but we’d still like to give Mark Simpson the final word on “The Gay Bomb” (news of which we previously unearthed here): “The Gay Bomb is here already and it’s been thoroughly tested — on civilians. It was developed not by the U.S.A.F. but by the laboratories of American consumer and pop culture, advertising, and Hollywood. If you want to awaken the enemy to the attractiveness of the male body, try dropping back issues of Men’s Health or GQ on them. Or Abercrombie & Fitch posters. Or Justin Timberlake videos. Or DVDs of 300.”

Black Women Changing and Making Change: After surviving Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit,” it’s nice to see some recognition of the complexity of African American women. Whether it is Jennifer Hudson helping to redefine beauty or Tasha on “The L Word” breaking the silence of black butch lesbians in pop culture, stereotypes are so last … month?

How Low Can You Go?: A little lower, it seems, if you are a girl. Meta Wagner of PopMatters dissects the gender gap between media representations of celebrity “bad girls” and “bad boys”: “Nothing short of truly bizarre behavior, a la Tom Cruise or Michael Richards, will garner anything remotely like the harsh treatment that befalls female celebrities for behaviors that should, in some cases, draw compassion rather than moralizing judgment.”

Check out Wagner’s revealing comparisons of the way gender bias has influenced portrayals of drug abusers, “Whitney Houston vs. Keith Richards,” rehabbers, “Britney Spears vs. Ben Affleck,” and others.

America, the Allegory: Captain America died earlier this month (for a second time), but Neely Tucker of The Washington Post argues that he left a vacuum of symbolic nostalgia in his wake:

Recalls a character in Captain America #25, yesterday’s landmark edition: “Even though he was a soldier, you could almost feel the kindness behind those eyes hardened by war. He’d fought through the worst days of the 20th century, and he was still the most decent man you could ever meet.”

Ah, yes, dreamy-eyed dames liked their Real Men like that back in the day, and it was, of course, a metaphor for America’s romantic view of itself: tough but fair, honest and undeniably studly

America sees itself a little differently now, however, and even the Captain doesn’t always stay the course:

In comics, things got edgier, meaner, grimmer. Violence became more realistic, with more consequences. Superman died, Batman broke his back, Spider-Man took off his mask. The good guys were flawed.

And so was Captain America, much like his country. He started out a true-blue patriotic icon, but in recent years grew more complex. He had gone from always fighting for the government to sometimes fighting against it. The battle for American ideals had changed, and so, we learned yesterday, had the means of menace and treachery.

TIME magazine put Joss Whedon and comic book creator and author Neil Gaiman together for a chat “about their work, their fans, their Klingon bodyguards and, of course, Timecop.”

Does that fact that both Whedon and Gaiman have films coming out tomorrow make Sept. 30 “National Geek Day,” as Neiman suggests? More discussion about geeks and geek culture sparked this debate at Slashdot. Yes, I will be in line for Serenity tickets tomorrow — after finishing the last episode of Firefly on DVD tonight … I watched every episode that FOX aired, but what a joy it’s been to view all of them in the intended order.

Here’s an excerpt in which Whedon discusses the mainstreaming of sci-fi/fantasy culture and touches upon the fantasy-like quality of Roseanne:

JW: [...] It’s not like I want to have the clubhouse with the No Girls sign. I appreciate the people who are stepping into genre a little bit because they realize there’s more there. For me, ultimately, even though I miss my twenty minutes of actually being cool and marginalized, I think it’s more gratifying ultimately to be in this world.

TIME: Have either of you guys considered going straight, doing a non-genre project?

NG: My mind tends to work in this way. Every now and then I’ll do little things, a short story or something, that doesn’t have any fantastical elements, but mostly I like the power of playing God and I like to imagine things. You can imagine. It’s the power of concretizing a metaphor. Taking something and making it real and making it happen and seeing where it goes. It’s a special kind of magic.

TIME: Joss, I realize when I said that that you’ve actually done plenty of non-genre stuff.

JW: But it’s funny, I keep having to remember that. I always say, I will never do anything that’s not genre. People go, well, what about Roseanne? I’m like, yeah, okay, but . . . That to me was genre because it was a sitcom with real people in it which, to me, was at that point a fantasy. I always tend to think just left of center, to remove myself from the world by one step. It is very freeing, and it’s a particular way of coming at stories and looking at them that I find the most beautiful stuff that I know comes from, ultimately.

It’s all stories about people. I mean, that’s all anybody’s writing, with very few exceptions. I can’t imagine doing anything just straight up, unless it was a period piece, because so much of science fiction is basically creating history. A fascination with any time that’s not ours is inevitable, so I love period stuff. That’s the only thing I could imagine myself doing right now that wasn’t straight-up fantasy.

As for Serenity, let’s hear it for a bit of allegorical revenge. Fortunately, the reviews I’ve seen so far have been positive.

“[A] brash, funny, action-packed bit of sci-fi ecstasy — and a giant raspberry to the execs who let ‘Firefly’ fall out of the sky,” writes Robert Elder, giving the film 3.5 out of four stars in the Chicago Tribune. Elder continues:

Outer space as the new western frontier isn’t anything new. In fact, when Gene Roddenberry was trying to sell “Star Trek” to networks, he pitched it as “‘Wagon Train’ to the stars.” Whedon takes the metaphor even further.

Characters talk in an artificial “OK Corral” vernacular (people are always “fixin’” to do something), pausing only to swear in Chinese. Mal’s love interest, Inara (Morena Baccarin), works as a Companion, a revered class of intergalactic saloon courtesan. Space battles are at a minimum, since Serenity doesn’t have any guns. No aliens. No transporter beams. No phasers on stun.

“Firefly” was never about the techie stuff, and unlike its peers, “Serenity” isn’t designed to sell action figures (although, yes, there are toys). Instead, it’s a character-driven series about fundamental human issues: love, the morality of genetic engineering, big government, etc.

You can see why I’m hooked. Whedon is all about defying expectations — whether they be related to gender, science fiction or the television genre.

Update: “Scene for scene, ‘Serenity’ is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucas’s recent screen entertainments. Mr. Whedon isn’t aiming to conquer the pop-culture universe with a branded mythology; he just wants us to hitch a ride to a galaxy far, far away and have a good time. The journey is the message, not him,” writes Manohla Dargis in The New York Times.

“Mr. Whedon shows little interest in recycling the gloom-and-doom scenarios that have become ubiquitous in science-fiction cinema over the last few decades. [...] As both a writer and a director, he isn’t staking a claim on genre; he’s just using it for a short while to tell a story about some decent men and women struggling against both the tyranny of bureaucratic control and their own very human failings.

I celebrated the start of the second season of Veronica Mars last night by watching the final three episodes from season one. I know, I know — I fell miserably behind, but I have to say that I had ambivalent feelings about the series almost up till the end.

I never understood many critics’ comparisons to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer — other than the obvious fact that both heroines were cute, blonde and fully capable of out-smarting and out-kicking their foes.

But part of Buffy’s allure was the depth of its allegory as well as the intense darkness the Scooby gang faced. Buffy had to save the world, damnit. Veronica, by comparison, is often the last hope for her fellow high school students who think they’re parents are hiding something or who have lost a dog (and what was up with Miss Mouse turning the stun gun on the dog thief? That was unnecessary horror-show material). At its worst, it gives in to ethnic stereotypes that a show of this caliber should really be beyond.

Yet last night, watching three episodes back-to-back, my attitude changed. Veronica’s search for the truth about the night she was raped and the realization of who killed her best friend, Lilly, was nothing short of remarkable. The show was so much more narratively complex that I finally got what Veronica Mars‘ fans — including Buffy creator Joss Whedon — had been raving about all along. From here on, I’ll be an on-time viewer (well, sort of. I still have to watch the season opener).

Speaking of Whedon, the Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan yesterday mentioned that Whedon will do a guest spot on the sixth episode of Veronica Mars. The series, wrote Ryan, has “all the makings of a cult classic — one that actually has rather broad appeal, given that no vampires or aliens are involved.”

Before we hit the beach, I wanted to post links to a number of stories — some new, some not — that deserve mention…

* The 2005 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves has received plenty of great press. But as Alexandra Jacobs reveals in The New York Times, you can’t please everyone — especially readers who mine only certain chapters looking for flaws. Jacobs, an editor at The New York Observer, is a bit miffed by the book’s pink cover and what she perceives as a lessening of the feisty, hippie vibe she found so appealing in the earliest versions. By comparing the “drastic makeover” to “a contestant on ‘The Swan’ concerned with brow furrows,” Jacobs shows a preference for nostalgia over fact.

I’m biased; as I’ve mentioned before, I helped edit one of the chapters. But I, too, remember the thrill and shock Jacobs describes of discovering the original Our Bodies, Ourselves. I’ve appreciated the way it has expanded in scope over the years. The growing number of contributors, which Jacobs seems to be put off by, is evidence of the amount of research included, as well as the multitude of women’s experiences it reflects. The women whose stories are told inside the book are still “average and anonymous,” despite the “glitz” of the endorsers. And there’s still plenty of “advocatory vigor” — just ask the next generation of readers jolted into awareness.

Yes, things change. And that’s a good thing, as this year also marked the launch of the companion website for Our Bodies, Ourselves. Readers will find excerpts, links and resources, as well as health updates — all of which makes the book’s wisdom even more accessible and influential.

*Keep your hands off my Petri dish: “The extremists that Romney is courting so assiduously in his bid to be the GOP nominee in 2008 are expanding their crusade against abortion to deny women access to birth control methods and fertility treatments that do not meet their religious litmus test,” writes Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara, who sounds off on the rise of embryo politics and the need for a coordinated response.

* One thing I’ll say for Dove: real women = real publicity. The Associated Press (via MSNBC) looks at the discussion Richard Roeper sparked. As for the controversial love your body/firm your body campaign, Deb Boyda, managing partner at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago, said, “We are telling them we want them to take care of themselves, take care of their beauty … That’s very different from sending them the message to look like something they’re not.” Hmm.

* “To the truly religious, the Torah is like mother’s milk — sustaining and nurturing. Many, however, don’t believe the sanctuary is a place where mothers and their babies should extend that metaphor into breast-feeding,” writes Debra Nussbaum Cohen in The Jewish Week (via BeliefNet). “In their view, the only thing that should be uncovered during services is the Torah scroll. But a new religious opinion passed recently by the Conservative movement’s law committee endorses the idea of women discreetly breast-feeding their children in the sanctuary.” With related links to discussions on Anglicans and Catholics breast-feeding during religious services.

* “The latest Bollywood heroines seem to be taking a page out of Mae West’s book: when they are good, they are very good, but when they are bad, they’re better,” writes Anupama Chopra in The New York Times.

* “In the ’80s and ’90s, I reacted to my sexual invisibility vis-a-vis white men with faux feminist sarcasm and wannabe black nationalist contempt. But I’m 46 now and far less full of bullshit,” writes Debra Dickerson in Salon. “I’m not angry. I’m hurt. It’s not that I want white men to want me. I want all men to want me. I want to be seen as desirable, if I actually am. As available, if I actually am. As fuckable, though you should be so lucky. But, because I’m black, I’m somehow seen as a gender crasher, an imposter fronting as a real woman.”

* Neal Lester, chair of Arizona State University’s Department of English, has long explored the gender and race politics of African-American hair. His research helped inform “HairStories,” an exhibit that is traveling to art galleries across the country. Much of his work focuses on how the straight-hair ideal affects children, particularly girls, according to an ASU news release.

“There are multitudes of messages being sent to little black girls and their mothers about the necessity of transforming themselves into someone else’s cultural image of beauty,” said Lester. “Among African Americans there are so many hairstyles: dreadlocked, ‘natural,’ curled, faded, braided, twisted, straightened, permed, crimped, cornrowed and even bald. I’d like to see all of these images represented and celebrated.”

* Fritz Lanham reviews The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning, and Sexual Power of Red Hair in the Houston Chronicle. Author Marion Roach writes of Lilith: “In all, she is an icon in the history of the world of red hair, the oldest female cornerstone on which to build an argument for the evil and sexually charged identity of the red-haired woman.”

* Women’s eNews covers the craze for manga — Japanese comic books — fueled by teenage girls. Starting in August, reports Grady Hendrix, monthly installments of the manga “The Adventures of CG!” will appear in CosmoGIRL! Magazine, which has formed an alliance with Tokyopop, a major U.S. manga publisher.

* Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins does things on a skateboard few have the courage to even attempt. The Los Angeles Times‘ Pete Thomas catches up with the 15-year-old on top of a wooden platform at the extreme sports camp where last winter she made history “by becoming the first female skateboarder to negotiate a successful landing — after a jump across a 50-foot gap — on the harrowing Mega Ramp.” My brother keeps promising he’ll teach me some moves …

*cross-posted from Ms. magazine’s “ms.musings” blog.

The Cupcake Series blog posted a note today signaling the end of the successful reading series run by Cupcake co-founders Elizabeth Merrick and Lauren Cerand:

In the nearly two years that the series existed, we were proud to have presented readings by some of New York’s best women writers. The time has now come for each of us to move on to pursue other endeavors.

We thank you for having made Cupcake one of the many reasons that people look to downtown New York for cutting-edge arts and culture, and hope that you will continue to support talented women writers wherever you may find them.

I’ve always heard great things about the reading series and I’m sure it will be missed. Look for Merrick soon in print — Publishers Lunch reported this week that Random House will publish This Is Not Chick Lit: A Collection of Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers. Merrick will select and introduce stories by the likes of Francine Prose, Myla Goldberg, Vendela Vida, Aimee Bender, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jennifer Eagan, and Samantha Hunt.

In other book news, Salon interviews Persepolis author Marjane Satrapi about sex and secularism. Introducing Satrapi’s Embroideries (see excerpt here), Michelle Goldberg writes:

Satrapi’s latest, “Embroideries,” is less explicitly political than the Persepolis books. The earlier works combined the public and private, drawing surreal contrasts between the small currents of domestic life and the catastrophes of history. In “Embroideries,” Satrapi confines herself to the dramas that happen inside, telling the romantic (or unromantic) tales of a group of female relatives and friends. Yet in the context of a regime determined to control women’s sexuality, these stories are subversive.

The title itself sounds quaint and homey, but it’s a spiky double-entendre. In a “full embroidery” operation, we learn, a woman’s vagina is sewn to trick her husband into thinking he married a virgin. Satrapi’s book is a mocking rebuke to the cult of chastity, and a statement about the way human passions find their way around the most determined repression.

The Spring Issue of Ms. features an excerpt from the new book Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq (Feminist Press, 2005), a collection of writer Riverbend’s blog entries about life in Iraq since the war began in 2003. Earlier this month, BuzzFlash interviewed Riverbend via e-mail. “I don’t worry so much about myself personally when writing the blog as I worry that if I weren’t anonymous, I wouldn’t be able to write half of what I write,” said Riverbend. “I wouldn’t be able to write about the rise in fundamentalism, for example.”

Plus: Is there a link between reading fairy tales and domestic violence? A British researcher thinks so.

Also heard recently on NPR — a good discussion about Marvel’s first Latina superhero, written by Fiona Avery, and summarized as such: ‘”She’s half-Mexican, half-Puerto Rican, 15 years old, never leaves home without her cell phone — and happens to have spider senses. Who is she? Araña Corazon, Marvel Comics’ latest — and most diverse — addition to the Spiderman legacy. NPR’s Allison Keyes speaks with the comic’s editor, Jennifer Lee, and Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada.’”

The interview lasts less than 10 minutes, but in that short time the conversation touches on a number of important issues, including visibility of minorities in comic books and more life-like representations of female superheroes. Keyes knows her stuff, and Lee and Quesada are great guests.

“It’s our responsibility that if we’re going to put our characters in the real world … they have to reflect the real world,” says Quesada.

In reality, it means better sales for Marvel, too.

Here’s more on the comic book industry and the growing number of female readers, from the Washington Times. And last month The New York Times ran a story about the manga (Japanese comics) boom in the United States driven by female consumers.

Couldn’t come up with a better title than what Salon gave to this interview with Jaime Hernandez.

Hernandez talks about his new comics collection, Locas, described as ‘”the 20-year odyssey of two L.A. rock ‘n’ roll chicks looking for love (and rockets).’” (Read a page from Locas.) Salon’s Scott Thill writes:

“Locas” is as much a treatise on Southern California’s seemingly insurmountable race, gender and class divide as it is a journey of self-discovery for two women looking for Mr. — or Ms. — Goodbar. Jaime’s early entries in the saga feature an epistolary relationship between the two heroines, amid adventures with space travel and dinosaurs, but Maggie and Hopey soon ditch their more fantastical sci-fi exploits for the real life of SoCal’s burgeoning punk scene. Channeling the music’s anti-authoritarian energy, the duo find a vehicle for their various frustrations and desires, eventually forming an inseparable bond that sustains them until the end of “Locas,” as they are carted off together in the back of a police car.

Like Gabriel García Márquez, to whom they’re frequently compared, the Hernandez brothers find the immanent transcendent in the drudgery of everyday life. “Love & Rockets” is sort of the “One Hundred Years of Solitude” of bisexual punk-gal comic books.

Looks like one of the ‘”men we love’” is getting some big-time attention. The Washington Post features cartoonist Barry Deutsch (Ampersand) in its Off the Beaten Career Path series. Besides being a brilliant blogger on feminism, same-sex marriage and other issues of interest, Deutsch is the creator of the online comic series Hereville, about “the magical adventures of a 12-year-old Hasidic girl fighting monsters.”

The entire series is free this week because of the Post piece, so go take a look. Over at Alas, a Blog, you can read the full answers Deutsch submitted to the WP; while you’re there, check out his many great posts of late.