Kyle Baker 1985-1986: “It’s Genetic” from Marvel Age #31 - 60
Having landed an internship at Marvel somewhat effortlessly and being well-liked in the Bullpen, Baker could have been a shoo-in for a bright future at Marvel. The big problem is that Marvel is mostly in the superhero business, and Baker is the first to admit he’s not a big superhero fan.
I was still trying to be funny, and I had been submitting strips to syndicates with no luck. It’s very hard to get into a newspaper syndicate. Jim Shooter and Stan Lee both tried to help me get into the syndicate that does the Spider-Man strip. Shooter liked me — I was doing some Marvel stuff, too — but he felt that I was just all wrong for Marvel, because they didn’t do any comedy. So he was always trying to get me set up at the syndicate so he could get rid of me. [laughter] That was nice of him — I’m not knocking him.
During his time freelancing at Marvel, Jim Salicrup commissioned him to write a few one-panel gags about the X-Men, called “It’s Genetic” published sporadically in the pages of Marvel Age’s “Mutant Report” feature.
Baker did twelve of these comics over the course of a little over a year and it’s the first time we get to see him in his element. I have a fond memory of these comics and loved the way he drew such a short squat Wolverine.
Man it really tickles me how many years women were banned from fighting in the military and now men are turning around and blaming the fact that only men have to register for the draft on feminists
I think the actual correct response is "which little boy?" with some patient, gentle follow-up questions. Not because I assume that a little boy has hurt her because little boys are evil, but because it's possible that a little boy she knows has been acting out because of a bad home situation.
If a little girl says that she thinks boys are gross, the correct response isn’t “you’ll like boys when you’re older, honey,” it’s “you don’t have to like boys if you don’t want to.”
HERE’S WHAT REPEAT MISOGYNIST JOHN KASICH HAS STOLEN FROM OHIO FAMILIES.
70% OF WHAT PLANNED PARENTHOOD DOES IS CONTRACEPTION AND STD’S. YOU CAN THANK KASICH FOR THE NEW WAVE OF UNWANTED PREGNANCIES AND STD’S. OH AND FOR THE CANCER, SINCE CANCER SCREENING AND PREVENTION IS 16% OF THEIR BUDGET.
In a first-of-its-kind ruling, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found Tuesday that a male transgender teen prohibited from using a male bathroom does indeed have a Title IX discrimination claim that deserves to be heard in court.
Gavin Grimm, 16, was told by the Gloucester County School Board that he must use a separate bathroom, per its policy for transgender students. The ACLU petitioned a federal district court last year to put a preliminary injunction on the policy so Grimm could use the male bathroom, but U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar dismissed the Title IX-based discrimination case. However, the Fourth Circuit appeals panel sided 2-1 with Grimm—it's the same circuit that governs North Carolina, which is now facing a Title IX challenge from the ACLU over its HB2 law. The ruling relied on a U.S. Department of Education policy that transgender students should be allowed to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. Anne Blythe reports on the ruling:
“The Department’s interpretation resolves ambiguity by providing that in the case of a transgender individual using a sex-segregated facility, the individual’s sex as male or female is to be generally determined by reference to the student’s gender identity,” Judge Henry Floyd wrote in Tuesday’s majority opinion.
The three-judge 4th Circuit panel reversed a lower court ruling in Virginia, saying the judge had used the wrong legal standard in denying the student a preliminary injunction that would have allowed him to use the bathroom at his high school in Gloucester County, Va. Floyd also ruled that the boy’s discrimination lawsuit could move forward and sent the case to the lower court to be reheard.
An ACLU press release noted the historic nature of the ruling.
As easy as it is to decry how San Diego Comic-Con isn’t about comics anymore, the gigantic convention is still home to one of the most prestigious awards in the industry, the Eisners. The list of nominees for this year’s awards are out and it is, as usual, jam-packed with amazing comics.
can we take a moment to just think about how incredibly scary magical healing is in-context?
You get your insides ripped open but your friend waves his hands and your flesh just pulls back together, agony and evisceration pulling back to a ‘kinda hurts’ level of pain and you’re physically whole, with the 100% expectation that you’ll get back up and keep fighting whatever it was that struck you down the first time.
You break your arm after falling somewhere and after you’re healed instead of looking for ‘another way around’ everybody just looks at you and goes “okay try again”.
You’ve been fighting for hours, you’re hungry, thirsty, bleeding, crying from exhaustion, and a hand-wave happens and only two of those things go away. you’re still hungry, you’re still weak from thirst, but the handwave means you have ‘no excuse’ to stop.
You act out aggressively maybe punch a wall or gnash your teeth or hit your head on something and it’s hand-waved because it’s ‘such a small injury you probably can’t even feel it anymore’ but the point was that you felt it at all?
Your pain literally means nothing because as long as you’re not bleeding you’re not injured, right? Here drink this potion and who cares about the emotional exhaustion of that butchered village, why are you so reserved in camp don’t you think it’s fun retelling that time you fell through a burning building and with a hand-wave you got back up again and ran out with those two kids and their dog?
Older warriors who get a shiver around magic-users not because of the whole ‘fireball’ thing but the ‘I don’t know what a normal pain tolerance is anymore’ effect of too much healing. Permanent paralysis and loss of sensation in limbs is pretty much a given in the later years of any fighter’s life. Did I have a stroke or did the mage just heal too hard and now this side of my face doesn’t work? No i’m not dead from the dragon’s claws but I can’t even bend my torso anymore because of how the scar tissue grew out of me like a vine.
Magical healing is great and keeps casualties down.
But man.
That stuff is scary.
shit just got creepy
Or maybe magical healing doesn’t leave scars or damage. It is magical, after all.
So after years of fighting, your skin is still perfect. Unmarred. In fact, you’re actually in better shape than regular people who don’t get magical healing when they fall out of trees or walk into doors or cut themselves while cooking dinner. You’re in such good shape that it’s unnatural.
And the really good healing magic takes away more than just the obvious injuries. You first start noticing it after about ten years when you go home and haha, you look the same age as your younger sibling, that’s funny.
Not so funny ten years later when they look older. Or forty years later, when you bury them still looking like you did at twenty. When do you retire from this gig anyway? How much damage is too much damage?
How many times do you glimpse the afterlife, or worse, how many times don’t you? What do you live through, get used to, show no outward sign of except a perfectly healthy body, too perfect for any person living a real life.
How many times are you sitting in a tavern with your friends and you hear the whispers, because the people around you know. How can they not know? Your weapons shine with enchantments and your armour is better than the best money can buy and there is not a damn scar on you. You hardly seem human to them.
How long before you hardly seem human to yourself?
And you find yourself struggling to remember the places where the scars should have been, phantom pains that wake you screaming, touching all the old injuries and finding nothing there. It’s all in your head. Was it ever anywhere else?
How long before you’re fighting a lich or a vampire or some other undead monster and you wonder…
I find it good to learn something gross and horrifying about how the bodies of other species are put together, because it allows me to forget, for a moment, just how gross and horrifying ALL bodies are.
me *throwing bread at ducks*: do not forget this act of altruism. if i am ever in trouble i expect you and your brethren to come to my aid. Do not forget
*is in trouble*
*turns to face attacker, defiant to the end*
*reaches slowly into pocket*
*produces slice of bread*
*holds arm out to a side, and slowly crumbles bread onto the ground, while maintaining steady eye contact*
why are fingers called fingers like who came up with that
“these are called fingers” “why? what do they do?” “they… fing”
so i had like never fucking thought of this so i looked it up and the truth is even dumber because it turns out it’s derived from an old word for “five” or “number or five”
meaning someone looked at a hand and was like
“i’ve got five of these things on my grabby parts. i’m gonna call them………………….fivesies”
Tumblr steps out into the real world with hilarious results… reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it reblog it More Times Tumblr Reported Back From … Continued
