Monday, May 24, 2021
Saturday, May 22, 2021
Tini Howard Talks Betsy Braddock
Word Balloon: I think much of the pushback people have when it comes to representation and progressivism in modern comics is due to a lack of empathy, and an inability (and refusal) to occupy a different headspace.
Tini Howard: One thing I noticed is that we all read comics and we all engage with media differently. I’ve noticed that sometimes people prefer their version of a character over the realistic version of a character because their version might have been the version they fell in love with, might have been a little more streamlined for “comic coolness.”
Leah Williams and I are two of the first female writers to write about Betsy Braddock. We gave her a lot of interiority that to some people seemed like weird or foreign, but to Leah and I it’s like “this is always how we’ve read this character as women.” But a lot of people were like “Betsy Braddock is Psylocke, the badass ninja who doesn’t care about anything” and that’s fun. Everyone has their take on a character, but sometime when you want to do things like giving Betsy struggles that I’ve dealt with as a woman, that show her struggling as a woman, people are like “I don’t want to see her fail. She’s a badass. I don’t want to be remined that women fail.” But we do. We do fail. I like being able to write about that and that’s important to me. But some people resist. That is progressive. Letting women tell stories about women is progressive. Because of that, sometimes we want to tell stories about women suffering and failing and some people who have really held these characters up as icons are unwilling to occupy that headspace, unwilling to think about the fact that this character is in the hands of a woman who might want to say something about women. It’s not because I’m putting thoughts about women into the book for people to get mad at me about. It’s that I’m a woman. It’s my perspective. It’s part of me. It doesn’t make me different, but it does shape my views.
Word Balloon: It’s the struggles that make them stronger heroes and stronger characters as well. Sometimes people make judgments on a chapter two of a five-chapter story. Let the writer tell the story and then see how things come. I think it just makes them more real because we do fail in general. That’s something that’s part of life.
Tini Howard: One of the best things that Shelly Bond taught me is that a book doesn’t exist the week it comes out, it exists on the shelf forever. If you’re writing a book and people are like “I don’t get it!”, and you’re like “I know where I’m going!” Sometime you have to do that. Sometime you just have to log out of Twitter and let people freak out at you. Hey, I know where this is going and ultimately in 10 tears, you guys won’t be tweeting about this anymore, but it will be on the shelf with my name on it. Above all else, I have to stand behind it, I have to believe in what I’m doing. I’m so grateful that I feel like I have a lot of readers who are willing to do that with me. I’m very thankful for each and everyone.
Tini Howard: One thing I noticed is that we all read comics and we all engage with media differently. I’ve noticed that sometimes people prefer their version of a character over the realistic version of a character because their version might have been the version they fell in love with, might have been a little more streamlined for “comic coolness.”
Leah Williams and I are two of the first female writers to write about Betsy Braddock. We gave her a lot of interiority that to some people seemed like weird or foreign, but to Leah and I it’s like “this is always how we’ve read this character as women.” But a lot of people were like “Betsy Braddock is Psylocke, the badass ninja who doesn’t care about anything” and that’s fun. Everyone has their take on a character, but sometime when you want to do things like giving Betsy struggles that I’ve dealt with as a woman, that show her struggling as a woman, people are like “I don’t want to see her fail. She’s a badass. I don’t want to be remined that women fail.” But we do. We do fail. I like being able to write about that and that’s important to me. But some people resist. That is progressive. Letting women tell stories about women is progressive. Because of that, sometimes we want to tell stories about women suffering and failing and some people who have really held these characters up as icons are unwilling to occupy that headspace, unwilling to think about the fact that this character is in the hands of a woman who might want to say something about women. It’s not because I’m putting thoughts about women into the book for people to get mad at me about. It’s that I’m a woman. It’s my perspective. It’s part of me. It doesn’t make me different, but it does shape my views.
Word Balloon: It’s the struggles that make them stronger heroes and stronger characters as well. Sometimes people make judgments on a chapter two of a five-chapter story. Let the writer tell the story and then see how things come. I think it just makes them more real because we do fail in general. That’s something that’s part of life.
Tini Howard: One of the best things that Shelly Bond taught me is that a book doesn’t exist the week it comes out, it exists on the shelf forever. If you’re writing a book and people are like “I don’t get it!”, and you’re like “I know where I’m going!” Sometime you have to do that. Sometime you just have to log out of Twitter and let people freak out at you. Hey, I know where this is going and ultimately in 10 tears, you guys won’t be tweeting about this anymore, but it will be on the shelf with my name on it. Above all else, I have to stand behind it, I have to believe in what I’m doing. I’m so grateful that I feel like I have a lot of readers who are willing to do that with me. I’m very thankful for each and everyone.
Thursday, May 20, 2021
X-Solicits for August 2021
*Excalibur, New Mutants and S.W.O.R.D. are all skipping the month.
|
X-Men
#2 |
|
Marauders
#23 |
|
X-Force
#22 |
|
Hellions
#14 |
|
Children
of the Atom #6 |
|
Way of
X #5 |
|
X-Corp
#4 |
|
X-Men:
The Trial of Magneto #1 (of 5) |
|
X-Men
Legends #6 |
Monday, May 17, 2021
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
Monday, May 10, 2021
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Monday, May 3, 2021
Thursday, April 22, 2021
X-Solicits for July 2021
|
|
Excalibur #22 |
|
|
X-Men
#1 |
|
|
Marauders
#22 |
|
|
New
Mutants #20 |
|
|
X-Force
#21 |
|
|
Hellions
#13 |
|
|
S.W.O.R.D.
#7 |
|
|
Children
of the Atom #5 |
|
|
Way of
X #4 |
|
|
X-Corp
#3 |
|
|
X-Men
Legends #5 |
Monday, April 19, 2021
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“For so long, my life has been out of control. Chaos and serendipity, wrapped in insanity. I have suffered, I have lost. Not just my life, but my very soul, my self. But no more. Now I know who I am.” – Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, daughter of Otherworld, mutant, telepath, telekinetic, defender of the realm and, above all, X-Man.
