Friday News: Controversial new Spider Woman cover, Canadian copyright’s unintended consequences, Arab Noir fiction, and Gretna Green’s marriage business
New Spider-Woman comic cover condemned for ‘blatant sexualisation’ – An interesting illustration of the disconnect between the diversification of the comic reader and those still producing them (and a good companion piece to the diversity in publishing story from yesterday). The new cover, a “variant” cover by erotic illustrator Milo Manara, is presumably being marketed to male readers, I’m guessing (?). Besides what many note about the inappropriate eroticization of Manara’s Spider Woman , and the original art and cover by Greg Land, is the distancing series author Dennis Hopeless is doing from the alternate cover, hinting at a pretty significant awareness divide in the comics industry.
Sneddon said that Marvel had been making “great strides this year in making their comics appeal more to women readers”, pointing to titles including Ms Marvel and Storm, “all featuring women with a great reception from comic fans, including many new readers”. Ms Marvel, she said, went through six printings just to keep up with the demand for the new character Kamala Khan.
“But while diversity on the page has improved, diversity behind the pens really hasn’t,” said Sneddon. “There still just aren’t enough women breaking into the superhero comics industry, and covers like these help illustrate why – they put up a very big ‘no women welcome’ sign, which puts off not only women readers, but the many women creators working on a great variety of other comics.” –The Guardian
Copyright Changes Hit Canadian Publishers Hard – When Canada expanded its “fair-dealing” copyright guidelines, including education among those authorized to use the licensing exception, the system under which academic materials are being produced has changed, and by extension, the licensing fees that colleges and universities pay. In turn, publishers are struggling, including Oxford University Press Canada, which shut down its K-12 Canadian publishing operations in February.
I think this is a really tough situation, because in the US, for example, textbook prices are insane, and many students, especially those at community colleges and state public institutions simply cannot afford to pay the exorbitant prices that are charged, especially for textbooks that become more and more expensive with each new edition, as compared to older editions with many less expensive, used copies available. There needs to be some kind of balance between compensating rights holders and upholding the spirit of fair use for educational purposes, which helps to facilitate new scholarship and research, as well as a strong foundation for educational access and learning.
Roanie Levy, the executive director of Access Copyright, explained that in educational institutions’ interpretation of the law, “it is fair for them to use up to 10% of a work or a chapter of a book. And they believe it is fair to copy a chapter, put it on a course management website, and share it with a class of 10 students or a class of 150 students…. It would be fair to take chapters from multiple publications, journal articles, and 10% of a book, compile it all into a course pack, and use that as the readings for a given class, without paying any of the rights holders.”
. . .
That impact is perhaps most apparent in the revenues lost when educational institutions decided not to renew collective licensing agreements administrated by Access Copyright. Under those agreements, universities pay C$26 per student and colleges pay C$10 per student as a flat fee for the reproduction of copyrighted material, and Access Copyright distributes royalties to the appropriate publishers and creators. According to figures provided by the organization, the drop-off in licensing renewals in 2013 resulted in a C$4.9 million decline in Access Copyright’s payments to publishers and creators last year. They lost another C$13.5 million in 2013 because provincial education ministries also stopped paying licensing fees for the K–12 sector in public schools. –Publishers Weekly
The Case of the Arabic Noirs – One of my favorite things about doing the Dear Author news is that I periodically stumble on an article like this that opens up a whole new world of literature and literary criticism to me. The incredible popularity of books like Magdy El-Shafee’s Metro, an Egyptian graphic novel, or Donia Maher’s The Apartment in Bab El-Louk, reflect not only the development of the Arab pulp fiction tradition, but also the way popular genre fiction often serves as a source of social critique.
These translated thrillers captivated Egyptian readers in part because they shined a torch on the contested legal system of colonialism. The plots would be familiar to those who watch The Wire—inefficient courts, bumbling officers, the law’s futility in the face of crime. A classic example is Tawfik Al-Hakim’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor, a 1947 novel that’s part biographical, part hard-boiled, with a dash of bitters thrown in. The prosecutor waxes cynical about the legal institutions of British colonialism. In a satirical courthouse scene, Al-Hakim demonstrates the law’s worthlessness in the Nile Delta, where rural Egyptians are “required to submit to a modern legal system imported from abroad.” As in James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, the law here can be fudged; the real disputes are settled outside of court.
“These novels form a tradition of legal muckraking,” writes Elliott Colla, chair of Georgetown’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and the author of a new thriller, Baghdad Central. “Writing fiction about impolite or contentious social issues became an alternative way of addressing problems normally resolved through legal deliberation and action.” The stories of prosecutors and shamuses portrayed the ambiguity of law and order. All crime novels are political. –The Paris Review
Gretna Green: The bit of Scotland where English people go to get married – An article on the enduring popularity of marriage at Gretna Green, although these days it’s largely planned weddings, as the network of hotels, wedding planners, and other bridal industry businesses suggests. Sounds like a perfect match for Romance novel readers. Has anyone married at Gretna and would like to share your experience? Please feel free.
There is still a small Gretna “gap” in the two legal systems. Marriage is legal at 16 in Scotland without parental consent. It’s still 18 in England and Wales. Although 15 days’ notice is currently required to marry in Scotland, there is no residency requirement, meaning English couples can still get married there at relatively short notice.
But despite the whittling away of the legal distinction that made Gretna a marriage capital, it retains a romantic allure. “Running away to Gretna Green” remains a commonly used phrase. And couples still come. –BBC News
I didn’t get married at Gretna Greene, but while visiting, my then boyfriend and I were asked to be witnesses for a couple who lived a few hours away. They had two small children and had decided to run away for the weekend and surprise their family. (Initially I thought the celebrant was asking if we wanted to get married! It took a bit to realise he was asking us to be witnesses :) )
Read a couple of articles this morning on the that ridiculous Spider Woman cover (Time, iO9) and they all pretty much say the same thing: Do better Marvel. Marvel’s main response currently seems to be “but it’s only in limited release”. Gah.
Is it just me or is that cover ugly, even disregarding the butt-crack focus. Her nose is really weird and it seems the artist focused on one aspect and barely bothered with the rest.
@Lada: They hired an erotic illustrator, of course he did an erotic illustration. Marvel knew exactly what they would be getting.
@Lada: I agree. The cover looks weird. It’s not even the boob bouncing, cheesecake style of “sexy” they’ve done in the past. It looks like a high school art project made with crayola colored pencils. And what’s with the horribly unsexy butt shot? So uncomfortably bad on so many levels.
The Arabic noir article was really interesting. I recommend running through the slide show of the covers at the top too. The translations of titles and the descriptions of the books are well worth reading.
Milo Manara’s cover looks like it was inspired by the Nicki Minaj video Anaconda, or vice versa. But Nicki’s uber behind was manufactured: http://bossip.com/268166/nicki-minaj-before-plastic-surgery/
Some of the comments in the Guardian are spot on, like the one by MarquisDeSod wondering what male superheroes would look like in the poses created for females.
http://www.entertainmentfuse.com/images/sexism3.png
Marvel’s art direction: mentally gender-shift covers as part of the approval process. It will help avoid PR mistakes in the future.
Could anyone tell me WHY are textbooks so expensive? My university has a 48-hour loan on course textbooks, so that everyone could have a chance of photocopying the entire thing. Does anyone win when this is the only affordable alternative? (At 450 students in some courses, it wasn’t an option to have copies for everyone).
@widdidsexycool LOL. LOL. The male super heroes! It’s all about dat azz. I want it animated so I can see The Hulk drop it like it’s hot and then twerk for Mama. Now that’s the film I’d pay to see.
correction @wikkidsexycool.
I thought the Minara cover, in addition to being wildly inappropriate, was also just poorly drawn and executed. I looked up some of his other work and he has lots of gorgeous pieces. This one’s crap.
I thought this post at the Mary use did a great job of critiquing the art without crapping on the style: http://www.themarysue.com/controversial-spider-woman-covers-redrawn/
Am I the only one who thought “Kiss of the Spider Woman” when they read this? I was kind of eager to see a new erotic cover…that would be something inventive.