* I find it amusing that an article about the recent Batgirl variant cover that was pulled would have a headline that doesn't fit the rest of the article tone-wise. The article's a measured look at the competing forces that drive the overlapping fandoms and creative custodians of DC Comics. I'm not surprised that a big corporate set-up to facilitate a creative enterprise would have competing voices, and I'm not surprised that a company that asks its fans to become really involved with their characters has fans that are really involved in a way that now has greater influence than it might have 30 years ago. What stands out in this case isn't the conflict but the clear contrast between a really goofy set of creative principles -- degrading superheroes as a way of tweaking their baseline positive formula -- and a creative outlook that has a great deal more positivity to it, and I'd say calls for greater attention to plot and detail and nuance. I'm surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more frequently with other disagreements in the forefront.
* finally, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are fascinating to me as a franchise that survives with a severely limited bible -- it's just not a deep universe relative to the kinds of worlds and properties that tend to survive in perpetuity like that one has. So a narrative moment that has fans take notice is something that interests me.
* Sean Gaffney on 
