Exploring the Geek - FL Style
All things Floridian and Geeky
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Short & Sweet: Orphans & Angels
Orphan Black
#1
Graeme Manson, John Fawcett, Jody Houser (W)
Szymon Kudranski (A), Mat Lopes ©
IDW
February 25, 2015
The first issue of IDW’s comic book adapation of sci-fi series Orphan Black has made its way into my greedy little hands and… it’s bad. It’s a bad comic, guys. The issue tries to recap the first arc of the TV show but without narrative structure or logic. The whole of this first issue is a series of disjointed recollections; moments from the Sarah Manning’s life as she comes back to town to collect her daughter, meets a woman who looks just like her, watches as she kills herself, and then takes over the woman’s life, only to find out that, oh shit, clones are a thing, and Sarah is one. In the TV show, the introduction of Sarah, her family, and the clones, takes about half of the first season. In the comic, it’s compressed into one issue, with nothing else added. No story, no point, no revelations, no nothing.
But who can this appeal to? Written by several of the show’s writers, the comic is billed as a deeper look into the Orphan Black mythos and is meant to tie into the show. The comic, then, is supplementary, not a standalone story. This impressionistic intro issue is unnecessary for existing fans, and likely to be off putting to potential new ones: I can’t imagine their being able to navigate it. The next issue will focus on serial-killing clone Helena, and I welcome that narrow focus. Without the burden of (unnecessarily) re-introducing the show’s material, Hauser, Manson, and Fawcett can focus on telling a story, and Kudranskis’s lovely pencils can be put to good use. As a fan of the show I’m invested in the comic — the clone club wants issue 2 to be better, IDW. Please don’t disappoint.
— Megan Purdy
Cook Your Comics: Big Bertha’s Big Molasses Muffins
Not familiar with Bitch Planet? Check out our other coverage of this series and read all about it!
As soon as I read Bitch Planet #3, the origin story of the indomitable Penny Rolle, I wanted the recipe to make the muffins that were such an integral part of the story. I also felt like crying and cheering and getting a “non-compliant” tattoo, but there’s a big part of my brain that fixated on the muffins right away.
That part of my brain is loud and persistent. I love to cook, and I love to eat. I always have. But there’s a lot of cultural baggage associated with those things, particularly for women. Penny Rolle was “born big,” and her society deems that unacceptable. Authority figures press her to conform and comply, to fit an arbitrary beauty standard, and to suppress the parts of yourself that others find less pleasing—Bitch Planet‘s setting might be sci-fi, but its overall society is not.
There’s baggage associated with cooking, too. “A woman’s place is in the kitchen” became shorthand for the whole concept of sexist notions about gender roles. I’ve never been one to reinforce outdated gender politics, but I really do like to cook. It’s my natural inclination. Not because I’m a woman, but because it’s a creative outlet, and after a lot of practice, I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
Sexy Sex Criminals is coming to your living room!
Super fantastic comic book writers Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction will be adapting the comic series Sex Criminals to TV. They are open about this being a plot to pave the way for more great comics to become TV adaptions, thus spreading even more comic book awesome everywhere. They have a two year deal with Universal TV (who produces TV shows for NBC as well as other networks), and Sex Criminals is merely the first scheduled project of DeConnick and Fraction’s brand new TV production company, Milkfed Criminal Masterminds. They will be working with other creators like: Emma Ríos, Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, Christian Ward, Howard Chaykin, Steven Sanders, Kieron Dwyer, and Val De Landro.*
As a reader of the comic, my first concern is how they’ll be changing it for TV. Will we lose the glowing junk? (Please don’t lose the glowing junk). Will there still be that amazingly honest, frank depiction of female sexuality? At its heart, Sex Criminals is a mystery about love that just happens to include pretty explicit sex of a variety not often seen in television. I would argue that the sexual content is necessary to the story. Would we care about Suzie and Jon as much if we didn’t get to also the intensely personal, real moments when their sex is awkward?
