2025 Readings 81

 I've tried to be completely honest in regards to chronicling my readings this year (after all, I did discuss my cryptid picture book), so I'll go ahead and talk about my reread of Marvel Masterworks collection of Avengers comic books. The key above is the word "reread." What led to me delving into the early Avengers comic books is that I am using it in a chapter in the Epics books. In the seventh chapter, which deals with women and gender, I have a section about gender roles and expectations and norms in the Iliad, etc. In the last paragraph I provide a little late context for the discussion by focusing on this frame - and also some egregiously misogynistic passages - to show that if this was so routine in the early 1960s in the US we shouldn't be too hard on a series of epics that were written hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The point is not to give them a pass, but rather to problematize the issue. The funny thing about all this is that I was looking for this frame, but also one in when I remember Ant Man telling the Wasp why she, as a woman, much like the Hulk and Captain America's teenage friend Rick Jones, couldn't be a full-time, official member of the Avengers. However, apparently that was just a fever dream of mine because I can't find it. This may also be moved up a little further into the chapter to a section on the nature of the patriarchy - or maybe both. Anyway, getting back to the "reread" part of this: I already have the first six collections of the Avengers Masterworks on my Kindle, so I can't simply rack this up as the demands of the epics book. They were on sale a few years ago so I grabbed several of them. What amazed me was how bad they were. Granted, they were created in the early 1960s and I read them not much later, but still, they're pretty bad, and not simply the inherent misogyny of their universe, but also the language and the plots. Still, I had fun rereading them, even if they were far clunkier than I remembered. That said, I also plan to reference that utterly cringeworthy five minute section in the last Avengers movie when the female heroes get to run around with the Infinity Gauntlet for a highly compartmentalized scene, before the dudes step back to the forefront to save the day (some things never change).

"SPOKEN WITH HONOR, AND WITH DIGNITY, LIKE A MAN!" Many people have commented on Trump's odd insistence on typing in all caps, but I wonder if anyone has researched whether this is because all he's ever read are comic books? Lord knows he's apparently never read a novel.