Special Favors: Playboy Rights the 2-D Woman

Back in early October, we shared our thoughts on Marge Simpson's appearance on the cover of this month's Playboy Magazine.

The November issue hit newsstands October 16th, and it may very well become a collector's item: after all, Playboy's featured Jerry Seinfeld on its October cover back in 1993, but never before a cartoon character or illustrated woman. We doubt too many of Playboy's readers will be playing with 'their little guy' as Marge likes to say. But we do think it's likely November will long be remembered as the month when yet another glass ceiling was broken.

Marge's Playboy spread will certainly be doing no favors for the magazine's subscribers, who are on average 35-year-old males, although subscription copies of Playboy will be more cautious and feature a traditional 3-D woman instead of Homer's wife on their cover.

Playboy hopes not to loose their standing readers by featuring Marge in all her implied nude beauty, but to attract new readers, primarily Gen Y males in their twenties. Frankly, they need it: Playboy's readership has fell from 3.15 to 2.6 million in 2006, and has been declining since. With Marge on the cover, Playboy's clever concoction of pop culture marketing has insured a broader reach for their struggling magazine -- even convincing 7-11 to stock the Marge issue in all of their 1,200 corporate owned convenience stores nationwide.

As previously blogged, magazines are only looking at the short-term where their survival is concerned, and Playboy's new marketplace is itself only a temporary fix. In the broader scope of Popular Culture, Marge's centerfold may not do much for Playboy's continued circulation, but her time astride the staples has done much for the future of the women's movement. Make that, the animated women's movement.

Illustrated or 2-D females have rights, the same as their flesh-and-blood sisters in the three-dimensional world, and like 'real' women, face similar restrictions, stereotypes, and even fewer opportunities than their male counterparts. Given our comic boom sensibilities, abbracadabbling's very aware of these issues, but to a political 3-D public, the struggles of animated women are mostly invisible.

The rights of illustrated women are, in fact, hot topics of ongoing discussion about a very sore subject within the comics industry. Comics is a male-dominated business, and I'm not complaining that it is. But I can certainly see - and even agree with - Gail Simone and political comics groups like Women in Refrigerators: more often than not, it's not healthy being a female character in comics.

Marge Simpson has made significant strides to change all that for the better this month. November's issue stands to become a collector's item, joining the ranks of other Playboy milestones like their Marilyn Monroe edition and their 1971 issue which featured Playboy's first black female cover girl, whose front-cover pose and hairdo is identical to Marge's own.

That comparison alone indicated that a big step has been taken this month. Marge has clearly opened doors with her presence in America's most popular gentlemen's magazine, and should Playboy's strategy prove successful, the days of their needing models like Tiffany Fallon to dress as Wonder Woman are over. Now, they'll get the real Wonder Woman.

The number of animated persons on the covers of adult and mainstream magazines is sure to rise like never before. And we'll all be the richer for it.

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The November issue of Playboy must be selling flying off shelves like their model's panties, dabblers. And if the sales figures are speaking, it's clear to us the magazine's been listening. An anonymous abbracadabbler grabbed these photos for us while attending last night's Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion.

Still, we're a little concerned - in more ways than one. Are you? Will Marge's success just be the tip of Playboy's iceberg, or do you think they've gone off track with a once-good idea? Take a quick trip to our Back Issues department and let us know!!

Special thanks to our informant, Holy Taco!

Understanding Superheroes with Gail, Greg, and Kurt

Tomorrow, I'll be understanding superheroes just a little bit better, thanks to three of my favorite DC Comics writers. You’ll recognize their books and their names immediately and wish that you were me. Ha!

I saw Gail Simone on a Comic-Con panel Prism Comics was hosting at the 2006 (i think!) convention, but never in room smaller than an airplane hanger. Gail's been a supporter of and has given a voice to many important causes within the comics industry, from Women In Refrigerators to her championing writer John Ostrander's (Wasteland) campaign against blindness.

Simone's a strong lady, in many ways similar to the heroines of her two DC titles, both of them among my top monthly pics. Among my favorite five titles is Simone's Secret Six. With Six, the main characters are villains played as heroes, and the fine line that separates the two is a ultra-fine line indeed. Nicola Scott, one of the few female penciler's in comics, is Gail's co-creator on the book, and her artwork is just as impressive as Gail’s writing. [ And perhaps given the few women artists in comics, sometimes even more impressive.] Talk about a lady who knows how to make every character completely real and totally sexy at the same time!

Simone's other monthly, Wonder Woman, continues to bring depth and pathos to the Amazon, and since the title's restart three years ago, Simone's hands have proven the most capable. I'm truly looking forward to meeting her.

If I had to vote for my favorite Wonder Woman writer, I'd probably skip the polls all together. I mean, how can one really choose between Simone and Greg Rucka. Rucka is the comics world's Tom Clancy. He's a former WW scribe, the co-creator of Whiteout (the OGN on which last September's feature film was [poorly] based), Queen and Country, Gotham Central, as well as the current writer of DC’s longest running books: Action Comics and Detective Comics starring the new Batwoman. [Notice I didn't mention she's the lesbian character everybody talked about?]

Last but certainly not least is the one guy I've yet to see, hear, or shake hands with. Ironically, I've been reading his comics and have known his name far longer than Simone's or Rucka's. Heck, I've even met know one of his childhood friends, Scott McCloud. McCloud was one of the two professionals who taught the Comics Creation and Storytelling course I took four (five?) summers back at the University of California at Fresno. Actually, he's the reason I even enrolled in the course.

If not for Fresno, I'd never know that McCloud was the man who first put a comic book in Kurt Busiek's teen-aged hands. At least, that's how the legend goes. The picture it paints is a brave one, and I wish Dan Clowes would make a movie out of it.

Kurt Busiek's been at the helm of such notable works as the pivotal Marvels with Alex Ross, the brow-busting weekly DC series Trinity, as well as his creator-owned Astro City, for which Busiek's probably best known. In fact, he’ll be signing my copy of the newest Astro City mini -– Astra -- tomorrow; he just doesn't know it yet.

Busiek joins Simone and Rucka the University of Oregon’s Understanding Superheroes conference when it continues for its second and final day tomorrow, October 24th. All three writers will be present for a topical Q&A from 11am until about 12:15pm on the U of O campus. The presentation's aptly called Writing the Contemporary Superhero, and bar none, it's the highlight of my weekend.

I’ll post a more thorough review of the conference, or perhaps something less comprehensive but equally stimulating, on the blog by Sunday. But I'll say this now: For a guy who's been away from home for as long as I have, Understanding Superheroes came as a very unexpected but certainly welcome surprise. Even Springfield has a little magic, I must admit.

If you want to start Understanding Superheroes, go here. And for bios of all the conference's guest speakers, including Simone, Rucka, and Busiek -- the U of O has made available a downloadable PDF here. More to come.