Friday News: Controversial new Spider Woman cover, Canadian copyright’s unintended consequences, Arab Noir fiction, and Gretna Green’s marriage business

JanetPublishing NewsArab fiction / Canada / Comics / copyright / crime fiction / education / Fair Use / gender / Gretna Green / patriarchy / Scotland / sexuality / textbooks / weddings11 Comments

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

Janet

isn't sure if she's an average Romance reader, or even an average reader, but a reader she is, enjoying everything from literary fiction to philosophy to history to poetry. Historical Romance was her first love within the genre, but she's fickle and easily seduced by the promise of a good read. She approaches every book with the same hope: that she will be filled from the inside out with something awesome that she didnʼt know, didnʼt think about, or didnʼt feel until that moment. And she's always looking for the next mind-blowing read, so feel free to share any suggestions!

→ Janet