On competing for the one single diversity spot in the writers’ room: Aisha Harris writes about the unbearable whiteness of TV writers’ rooms.

Nobody could be more excited about the new Star Wars trailer than stars John Boyega and Daisy Ridley.

Recovering the history of years in slavery, and the story of a forgotten forced deportation: An article that opens with an oddly upsetting anecdote.

New details emerge about that Harry Potter play! (It’s not a prequel, it’s a sequel! Joke’s on you, prequel-wanters! You’ll never ever learn more about the Marauders.)

“Jenny, shut up about Hamilton already, Gahd!” NEVER.

Kelly Sue DeConnick spoke with Alyssa Rosenberg about her comic Bitch Planet, and predictably, she has lots of interesting things to say. In particular, she notes that comics do a thing where “they will set up something to be deliberately salacious, and then pretend to have some ethical structure around it.” YEP. The interview is in two parts, here and here.

Are you excited for Jessica Jones? Or do you wish her backstory didn’t have to be so rapey? Or both?

South By canceled a panel about harassment in gaming because they’re afraid of getting harassed. Caroline Linders, one of the organizers of the panel, has a good rundown of what happened. BuzzFeed has withdrawn participation from the festival in protest. SXSW appears to be in damage control mode, but as of today, no final decisions appear to have been made.

The post Why can’t you shut up about Hamilton?: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

There are many reasons to feel grateful that I live in the times I live in, but here’s another one. Tom Stoppard has a new play at the National, and although reviews of it have accused it of being all ideas and no feelings, I still want to see it. And because of technology, I can. And that is pretty great.

Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction, that widely-beloved power couple of the comics world, are coming for your televisions. I have just ceased to care about any of the Marvel TV shows, and I’ll be caring about this instead.

In other Matt Fraction-adjacent news, Jeff Lemire and Ramón Pérez are taking over Hawkeye after Fraction and Aja finish their run. Sniffle, sob, but — well okay! Their ideas about the series sound rather cool!

Do y’all know about how crazy I am about family corvidae? In case you are like “what, crows are not that good,” let me go ahead and prove you wrong.

Bahahaha.

You have most likely already forgotten about that dress that was maybe blue and black or maybe white and gold. But cast your mind back to those forgotten days, and then read this piece by Megan Garber about attention policing.

A version of the movie Foxcatcher that I would actually watch.

Y’alllllll, I love Eddie Redmayne, I truly do, but why is he playing a trans lady in The Danish Girl? It’s not that I don’t think he’ll be good. I know he’ll be good; he’s a good actor. But I am so tired of hearing “we cast who was best for the rule” as a defense. You know who else might be good for the role of a trans lady? AN ACTUAL TRANS LADY ACTOR I DUNNO JUST SPITBALLING HERE.

In which Kate Elliott reminds writers not to default to male.

A profession I did not know existed: Recording the dialogue used for crowd scenes in films.

Some of my favorite bloggers are launching the Book Blogger Buddy System, where you can go to acquire a blogging mentor or just ask questions about blogging.

Laura Miller is at Vulture to talk about fanfiction.

Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion are making a short-run show about two guys from a beloved canceled TV show, one of whom becomes Matt Damon famous, and the other of whom spends his life making the rounds at various conventions around the world. They got funded almost immediately because those dudes are the best.

An extremely touching article about finding a fat YA heroine in Eleanor and Park.

Happy Friday!!

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Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson

This is the same Noelle Stevenson of Lumberjanes fame! And, okay, this isn’t something the library had, because the print edition of Nimona won’t exist until May. It began its life as a webcomic about a girl called Nimona who shows up to be the sidekick to an arch-villain named Ballister. He isn’t in the market for a sidekick, and she is a powerful, bloodthirsty shapeshifter. It is all the best all the time, and the author’s comments under each day’s page are wonderful too. Here is a sample page that will demonstrate the delightfulness of the series as a whole.

(Note: One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read more webcomics. I have already accomplished that! HA!)

The Manhattan Projects, Jonathan Hickman and Nick Pitarra

“What if the research and development department created to produce the first atomic bomb was a front for a series of other, more unusual, programs?” Hey, yeah! And what if those other programs involved aliens and monks and doors to other worlds and a bitter Albert Einstein and Wernher von Braun but absolutely no ladies? Would a lady comics fan such as myself find this annoying?

Yes. As it turns out, she would.

Pretty Deadly, vol.1, by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Ríos

Not what I expected! When the world said, “Death’s daughter in the Wild West,” I pictured a comic rather brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed than this turned out to be. If that sounds like a loony expectation for a book about Death, please note that DeConnick’s Captain Marvel — while certainly dark in spots — is on the whole a cheerful and bantery run of comics.

Anyway, this isn’t. It’s got the bloody-minded fatedness of a Greek tragedy and the do-what-you-have-to morality of an Elmore Leonard novel. Strange, dark, and beautiful, but nowhere near fun.

Rat Queens, vol. 1, by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch

The blogosphere is so high on Rat Queens I don’t even remember where I heard about it first. The elevator pitch is, it’s a bunch of diverse, hard-ass lady mercenaries doing adventures. After that I don’t know what else there is to say. It’s fun, it’s profane, it’s about fighting women who are fiercely loyal to each other. And the first volume ends with a nice little cliffhanger. More please!

The post Comics round-up! appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 17

Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Here are the contents of the podcast if you wish to skip around:

Starting at 1:21 – We talk about Captain Marvel, a series of 17 comics in the Marvel Now initiative, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Captain Marvel is just how I like my comics: Heavy on bickering, light on prerequisite reading from elsewhere in the Marvel universe, and lots and lots of ladies doing stuff.

Starting at 19:00 – Very briefly we talk about G. Willow Wilson’s new Ms. Marvel, which features Muslim teenager Kamala Khan. There’s only one issue of this so far but we’re excited to see where it goes from here.

Starting at 22:50 – We talk about Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky’s deeply weird and wonderful new comic, Sex Criminals. The cover of the first issue looks like this.

Hear us out! It’s really a very good comic, and we think you should check it out.

35:18 – Closing remarks and outro.

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Song is by Jeff MacDougall and comes from here.

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep. 17: Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals appeared first on Reading the End.