This month was special in a few ways for the MKE Comicbook meetup – we met at a different location, had some new faces show up, and celebrated Women’s History Month with our topic of “Favorite Women Characters and Creators”!
We met at Binary Games, Food, and Spirits – Milwaukee’s newest “geek bar”. Everyone is familiar with sports bars, but “geek bars” are still a pretty novel idea. Milwaukee must be pretty special, though, as we have THREE of these places – 42 Lounge, 42 Alehouse, and Binary GFS! If you’re into any sort of geeky pursuit – gaming, comicbooks, sci-fi movies, fanfic – all of the above, a geek bar is a place to come and meet folks who enjoy those same pursuits! 🙂 Binary is 21+ only, unfortunately, though there’s much that kids would like to see there, too. The owners have on display a HUGE collection of geeky paraphernalia!
Here’s what everyone brought for the night’s topic!
Shawn brought the new Black Widow #1, which, while it has pretty sparse dialogue but tons of action and SFX, easily demonstrates why Marvel should make a Black Widow solo movie.
The Midas Flesh – is a sci-fi comic featuring some women explorers, is drawn by Shelli Paroline and written by Ryan North (of Squirrel-Girl acclaim!)
Dark Knight III – as it has given lots of panel-time to Carrie Kelley, the futuristic Robin, who took over the Batman mantle.
A-Force Presents Vol 1. is a great compilation of Marvel’s excellent heroines!
Lumberjanes – is a good, all-ages read – it’s fun, adventure story – Shawn especially digs the badges that Kate Leth comes up with.
Spider-Gwen – a creative twist on the Spider-Man-mythos, with an interesting female protagonist, and a skilled creative team telling her stories.
Klaws of the Panther – the time that time Shuri, T’Challa’s younger sister, became Wakanda’s Black Panther.
Amber
Red Sonja – classic barbarian-adventure issues from her mom’s collections
Cursed Pirate-Girl – a black-and-white indie comic, Amber described the story as “She’s like “Where’s my Dad?” and that’s the story…” A quick flip through it showed some amazing artwork!
Amazing Spider-Man 400 – the milestone issue where Aunt May dies!
Moon-Girl and Devil Dinosaur – super-smart young girl with a red T-rex best friend – as Amber said: “”Hook yourself up with this.”
Jonny Quest – “Jade Incorporated #5” – featuring the double-agent heroine, Jade, and portrayed in a not overly-sexualized way.
Don
Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling – Sabrina Jones (art) and Marc Mauer (w) – history of the prison-industrial complex
Sally Heathcote: Suffragette – a fictional suffragette story
Wonder-Woman 210 – features a fight between Wonder Woman and Medusa that’s as bad-ass as it gets!
Grindhouse: Prisonship Antares written by Alex De Campi (who incidentally, is a woman) – “was Bitch Planet before BP”
Concrete Park – another prison planet, where “poor and undesirables” are shipped to a 2-sun planet
Troy
Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl – is just the BEST and I talk about her all the time.
Spider-Woman – features a tough-as-nails private-eye superhero, who also happens to be a single mom. Here’s a neat interview with the writer and his wife, about what is was like writing the new adventures of Jessica Drew, the Spider-Woman.
Gracie
Rat-Queens – “it’s like if you played D&D, and everyone was AWESOME – it’s got four incredible female leads.” This book has also gotten mentioned pretty frequently at MKE Comicbook.
Gracie also mentioned “The Valkyries” – a group of women comicbook shop owners and creators that’s doing some great work in the industry to make it more woman-friendly.
