• Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed takes a look at the origins of Dazzler. The character certainly has an interesting history. It’s surprising that she’s managed to have any interesting moments.

• Jon Carroll gives a perfect quote while talking about politics and science:

  This is why politics and science are so frequently at odds. Science is not a matter of public input; it does not work according to democratic principles. Science is an autocracy of the facts. Either the motors catch fire or they don’t — it’s not a liberal or conservative issue. It’s not “on the one hand, this” and “on the other hand, that” sort of deal.

• A fairly lengthy interview with The Sopranos‘ Joseph Gannascoli (who plays the recently-outed Vito) serves as a reminder to how well the show works with character.

• Oh, goody, more political drama in San Fran. Seriously, someone needs to create a scandalous soap opera inspired by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors… or maybe it could be an absurd sitcom, like Arrested Development with politics.

• For some reason, just being able to recognize images from the Death Note trailer (link to Windows Media File) has me wanting to see it. Oh, bloody hell, I’m too addicted to this title. (via)

Supplemental tags: Dazzler, Jon Carroll, Joseph Gannascoli

Christopher Rice asks in his column for The Advocate:

Here’s my advice to all of you who are still broken up about Brokeback Mountain’s loss at the Oscars. Head to your local gay bookstore and shell out a few bucks for something besides porn….Gay op-ed pages abound with condemnations of the formulaic treatment we receive on television sitcoms, but any defense of the gay bookstore and the much wider array of representations it offers is weak at best. At worst, we get dismissive essays from successful gay authors who seem determined to disregard the bookstores that helped give them their start.

Rather than spending all of our energy trying to guilt-trip the media into representing us more diversely, it’s time we put our passion and our dollars behind the nuanced representations of gay men that have already been written.

Don’t think you’re part of the problem? Here’s a test. Which of the following do you recognize? Mack Friedman, Richard McCann, Barry McCrea, Vestal McIntyre, Sulayman X, Aaron Hamburger, Dennis Cooper, Harlan Greene, Thorn Kief Hillsbery, Keith McDermott, Patrick Ryan, Blair Mastbaum, Bart Yates, K.M. Soehnlein, Michael Lowenthal, Eric Shaw Quinn, John Morgan Wilson. This is but a small sampling of current writers whose work collapses stereotypes of gay men. (Here’s hoping you’re already familiar with living gay literary lions such as Alan Hollinghurst, Felice Picano, Andrew Holleran, Edmund White and others.)

(Found through Kethylia Duuk’Tarquith)

I’ll admit that I recobnize only two of those authors (Dennis Cooper and Edmund White) and neither writer told stories I enjoyed, making the rest of the list look unappealing. However, I agree with Rice’s point, that patronizing positive LGBT images in the media is a small but important step in getting more positive representation.

In many ways groups like Prism Comics and the Gay League are perusing a similar goal with comics. Part of the goal of Prism’s annual guide (which started as a minicomic-style booklet prepared by Andy Mangels and distributed at the annual Gays in Comics panel at San Diego Comic Con in 1999) is to make it easier for LGBT comic fans to find material with queer themes, helping raise their financial success and profile.

Both groups have maintained booths at comic conventions (Prism eventually took over this activity from the Gay League) and have sold books for LGBT comic creators, giving those creators an additional outlet to sell their work, often allowing those titles a more prominent location in the exhibitors’ hall and even allowing creators unable to travel to still sell their work.

(Unsurprisingly, that booth has faced double standards like the year San Diego Comic Con staff warned the Gay League to only leave G-rated material on the table… and then found themselves across of Greg Horn’s booth.)

Additionally, both groups aim towards creating a community for gay comic fans, a space where gay issues can be discussed and where support can be built for series with positive representation.

• Note to self, don’t forget to set the DVR to catch Stephen Colbert on 60 Minutes.
  

• How cute, Dr. Who as a Lego figure! Inspired me to go back to the Mini-Mizer and attempt another self-portrait.

• Speaking of Lego, I wish I knew the story behind this great animation of an orchestra of Lego Stormtroopers playing the imperial march. It’s just magic.

• Yeek, Debrah Harry’s MySpace page is a mess! I went there to check out her new song (it’s pretty cool) and it tried to play the new single, the video for “Rapture Riders” and a new video by The Cars all at once. Did anyone give this one a review before letting the public see it? (via)

• I’m totally lukewarm on the news of a Battlestar Galactica prequel in development, named “Caprica”. While I’m inclined to trust Ronald Moore, the premise offers too much opportunity to become didactic where Galactica is subtle. Hopefully my fears are misplaced.

Supplemental tags: Caprica, Deborah Harry

David Carter is once again giving away free comics for a month. Visit Yet Another Comics Blog for more informtion on how to get yourself a free comic.

Last year, I enjoyed seeing how David matched up people’s tastes with the comics he was giving away; I look forward to seeing new matches.

Asia Pop columnist Jeff Yang wonders if there’s an Asian dessert that might match the trendiness that bubble drinks briefly saw. He offers two possibilities that sound tempting.

Creations Desserts is a Chinese pastry chain (known as Hui Lau Shan elsewhere) with the delightful-sounding mango mochi:

the item that more than any other demands a special trip to Creations from wherever you are in or out of the Bay Area, is their famous fresh mango mochi, consisting of a large, succulent piece of Luzon mango wrapped in a satiny dumpling of pounded sweet rice flour dough.

If they’re anything like the divine ice cream stuffed mochi from Bubbie’s, that’ll be an amazing sweet snack.

Meanwhile, the cream puffs from Japanese chain Beard Papa sounds just divine:

The differences between Beard Papa’s puffs and old school choux are subtle, but many.

First, there’s the pastry: Most cream puffs have a single-layer choux shell with a soft, breadlike texture. Beard Papa’s shells are made of two layers of dough: an outer pie-crust layer, which provides the crunch, and an inner choux layer that holds the filling and insulates the crust from moisture.

Second, the filling isn’t just a straight whipped cream — it’s a mix of whipped cream and custard, beaten together to create a lighter, less overpoweringly rich blend. Everything’s made from natural ingredients. And to ensure crispness, the cream filling isn’t injected into the shell until the time of order.

“They aren’t overly sweet,” says (Bay Area franchise co-owner) Ongpin, marking off the Beard Papa’s advantages. “They’re fresh. You can taste the actual vanilla bean.

Okay, now I can’t wait for this place to open in a couple weeks…

Supplemental tags: Beard Papa

• You can get yourself a Dwight Schrute Bobblehead! Me, I’d rather have a stapler encased in jell-o.

• Oy, I’ll never look at a Gatorate bottle the same againvia)

• Yep, that would be pretty much all I’d want out of a Teen Titans archive. I’m not sure if I’ll buy the most recent release (I’ve got too many reading choices as it is) but if there’s a second volume I’ll be getting that one since I expect they will include Lilith.

• NCSoft’s next MMO sounds like another attempt at expanding the kinds of MMO games are out there. Their latest is a soccer themed game with martial arts. I am extremely curious about this one.

• To be perfectly honest, I’m not ordering a copy of Glenn Greenwald’s new book because I’ve already got too many books I haven’t’ found the time to finish. Still, I was thrilled to hear that it was the top-selling book at Amazon. He’s a very sharp-minded political commentator.

Supplemental tags: Teen Titans, , NCSoft, Soccer Fury

This morning, BeaucoupKevin wondered if giving each comic review a separate post could be considered spamming the comics weblogs update-o-tron. (Note to self: still need to ask to have new URL added.)

I believe the intent here is one of format and not spamming. It makes the site easier to read, since one can more easily skip over reviews of books not read (and, more importantly, be able to anticipate that the focus on the comments thread) the reviews I’ve looked at aren’t insignificant, short posts. It’s a matter of personal preference, I realize, but this is a change of format that I’m happy to see — I find it easier to follow.

I’ve been feeling a little bit too serious of late, so I’ll try lightening things up by asking…

“Why do I like the Daleks?”

Could it be that they look like the bastard child of R2D2 and Rosie the Maid?

Or is it the voice? The spouse believes they sound like metal grinding against metal, I think of a robot who learned how to speak from a copy of the Maude: The Greatest Tirades DVD.

Then again, maybe it’s because their affinity for words with three-sylables. I find that oddly charming

Yeah, they’re single-mindedly focused on universal genocide, but something about their steady glide makes me forget that. I’m looking forward to whatever future episode of Dr. Who features the multiple Daleks we see in ads for the DVD.

• Tim Goodman’s list of the best shows you’re not watching leaves me further annoyed that my cable provider doesn’t offer Oxygen.

• Christopher Butcher introduces a new game, Manga, Manwha or OEL? and tries to guess the origins of a title based solely on its description.

• Season three of Project Runway will debut in the summer, possibly July and will climax at fall fashion week.

• I love the idea of Blockade Boy’s new theme for redesigning costumes, Moral Realignment where he considers how he’d remake a pair of characters if they played a different role.

• Lost gets spun-off into an interactive online game. Am I the only one worried that this game looks like a motorcycle ramp leading to a shark tank?

Mike Sterling and Bill Doughty write about the problems with big superhero universe events, both noting that (with the exception of Crisis on Infinite Earths) the big, shocking plot points rarely make any dent in the long-term, along with the constant game of one-upmanship that goes on in comic events, with each one trying to be bigger than the last.

They’re both excellent posts that I recommend heavily. They describe the road to the disillusionment I feel for superhero comics. The big shocking developments rarely shock, anymore. I’m sure this is partly due to my knowing how these comics are made, understanding that a successful character is only a trademark and a source of revenue — that the only character that will stay dead is one who has little commercial potential. A bigger reason for my cynical perspective is that I’ve seen enough of these changes undone that nothing is really shocking, anymore.

(I will admit, however, that I was sure Adam Warren killed the Gen-13 kids for good. They’re interesting characters, but Warren made a point of how their time had passed. Hence, I was pretty annoyed to see Caitlin on the cover of one of Claremont’s issues.)

To some degree, that may hint at why I’m still enjoying Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men. Since the characters also exist in the “proper” Marvel universe, the writers aren’t required to keep any character around to maintain a licensable property. A few unpredictable surprises have happened and when characters have died, those moments felt like the shocking consequences to a dangerous lifestyle and not cheap drama.

However, I would say there’s one franchise that constantly changes — The Legion. Perhaps that’s because the franchise has gone through such a radical change every five(ish) years, none that ever manages to turn the clock back to the Legion’s peak in the 1980’s. It seems to me that the Legion’s fandom was permanently divided into polarized camps after the “Five Year Gap” era and every revamp has only managed to win over one half of the two factions (as a general rule, of course, individual reactions may vary), with the other half angry that the current version they enjoy is being replaced.