Disturbing Toy That I Found In The Mall Today:

A Tusken Raider Female and Child set of Star Wars action figures, which I presume is meant so that small children can reenact the “Anakin Skywalker on a genocidal rampage” scene from Attack Of The Clones. It doesn’t really console me much to think that maybe it’s just guys over 20 buying this particular toy, either.

Rolling My Eyes

In one sentence, Michael Sangiacomo destroys what little journalistic credibility that he and Newsarama ever had:

In his classic, powerful yet understated style, writer Mark Millar says more about battered relationships in one story than I learned in my college psychology courses.

I really do hope that Mr. Sangiacomo went to a terrible college…

For those who haven’t seen it – he’s talking about the scene in the new issue of The Ultimates (aka The Avengers updated for new audiences) in which Giant Man beats up and psychologically tortures his wife, The Wasp. It’s ham fisted, it feels tacked-on, it’s typical Millar sensationalism. In the context of his recent work, which involves all sorts of severe (often sexual) torture of women and gay men for the sake of shock value, I think that this scene reveals to me more about Millar’s faux-liberal denial about his own misogynistic and homophobic tendencies than it does about Giant Man being a horrible prick. If there’s any real depth to Millar’s writing it is accidental – the man writes without grace, it only ever becomes really interesting when you read his work with several layers of detachment.