Brian Wood: Vag and Dong and homophobia
So I did an “X-Position” interview, which is where readers on CBR, I believe, can ask me questions about my X-Books and I answer them in a column. This is possibly the 15th interview I’ve done about my upcoming X-Men relaunch and its a challenge each time to answer questions about a book noone’s seen, and without spoiling anything. I try and make it as interesting as possible. Then I get this question:
As for allegiances, while Kitty is firmly in camp Wolverine, can the same be said for the rest of the ladies? I know Rachel has been with Wolverine since returning from space, but she did briefly side with her dad during AvX. Psylocke also made it clear to Logan when he started the school that she wasn’t a teacher so she chose to be Cyke’s Utopia security (and events from the new Uncanny X-Men series showed her attempt at school life didn’t work!). Rogue’s another who seems, well, a rogue in that she may be with on the Uncanny Avenger team but she hasn’t exactly said she thinks Wolverine’s method is the right method. Since there’s still a camp Cyke and a camp Wolvie, do these ladies straddle the line or if push came to shove would they stand behind Wolverine’s approach to mutant life?
So there are some real answers I could give to this question, mostly variations of “I don’t know” or “I’m not thinking much about that” or “look at what’s already happening in the other books and see”. But not only are those boring answers, something else about this got a little under my skin. This long, involved question that was basically asking which of two guys are these six female X-Men going to align themselves with. So I answered THAT aspect of the question…
Click through for the rest. Brian Wood knows what’s up, and this is why I read him.
G R I M E S: I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living
i dont want my words to be taken out of context
i dont want to be infantilized because i refuse to be sexualized
i dont want to be molested at shows or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction
i dont want to live in a world where…
So, people ask me this sometimes, and I appreciate that they want me and Peter and Jon to get maximum paid for the records we make. And it is true that we’ll get the biggest cut from sales at shows, because those copies are copies we buy directly from the label. However, I am every bit just as happy and in fact in some ways happier to take a slightly reduced cut if you’re buying from your local record store, which is almost doubtless scrambling to survive every day, or from a cool mailorder, or directly from the label if the label does mailorder.
I make a little bit of a big deal about this because more people than me need to get paid for the stuff I do to happen. There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about labels and publishers as if they were hurdles to be cleared, obstacles to be circumnavigated. I can’t speak for anybody else’s experiences, though stories of label skullduggery abound, and shame on such labels. But my personal experience in independent music is that the people releasing Mountain Goats records aren’t “The Label.” They’re my friends, and they’re also almost all musicians themselves. They are people who share exactly equivalent praise or blame for the music I make, because you wouldn’t have heard it without them, by which I mean without their support and nurturing and faith I would never have made the music in the first place. So while I’m, again, grateful that people think of my well-being, it’s my opinion that the people who make the music available - especially independent labels, especially independent stores - deserve your patronage, and it’s 100% ok if I have to sell a few more records at retail to make as much as I’d make selling them at shows. I don’t do what I do in a vacuum. Without the labels that put out my stuff and the stores that stocked it and the people working in the stores who told people browsing to maybe check out the Mountain Goats, I would almost doubtless not even own a guitar right now. I’d be a nurse somewhere in California, and I’d write poetry in my downtime. Which would also be a good life, because every day above ground is a good day, unless you’re getting shot at, it sucks to get shot at, but you see my point
“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
I have a hard time ‘liking’ or reblogging a post about this event. It’s the end of an era. I became a bibliophile at Nicholas Hoare. You were always overcome by a reverent hush as soon as you crossed the threshold to a literary oasis. It looked exactly the way you imagined a book-store to be. The walls were lined with books of heft and importance. There was a ladder you could climb to reach the uppermost shelves. Exactly like in the Beauty and the Beast. Which, to my five year old self, was simply the bees knees.
Hours spent in front of the wood fire thumbing through some coffee table tome. While din of classical music mixed with the sound of shuffling feet across the carpeted floor. There was never an ill spent afternoon there.
Nicholas Hoare’s book store was a place where you could always judge the book by its cover - a feast for the eyes and for the imagination. I went down to Front to say goodbye to the book shop on Saturday. Half the store had been emptied and quite a few people were there… it felt like everyone was in mourning; thankfully, the day was gorgeous as if it were trying to remind you that there are many things that make the city beautiful.
After debating inwardly between taking home ‘In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Famous Fashion Magazine’, ‘W: The First 40 Years’ (both of which I still want), and ‘The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs’ (for my sister), I ended up defaulting to the children’s section - almost completely barren now - and buying a copy of J. M. Barrie’s ‘Peter Pan’ (though I already own one). I couldn’t resist the beautiful blue and gold cover, the enchanting illustrations by F. D. Bedford - just holding it made me feel like there were still adventures to be had and it made me a little less forlorn.
(via cayleybjames)
.@BrianaRayner found a book. We took pictures. @JordanMoffatt & @JayReid are Civil War soldiers
Book trailer for New School by Dash Shaw (Fantagraphics Books, 2013). Music by Lily Benson and Doron Sadja
Spring tour info: http://www.fantagraphics.com/news/newschooltour
(Source: kingtrash)
