Just wanted to announce I'll be participating again in the Young Adult Scavenger Hunt (be sure to follow updates over on Twitter as well with #YASH or from my account, @mattphillion). I'm on Team Teal this year (which I love, given that teal was a running theme at my first real job). 

Stay tuned for more details to come! 

Just once, I want someone to say to me, "step outside that door, and you're an Avenger." I don't even care WHICH Avenger. I'll be Doctor Druid if I have to. Although as bald Avengers go, Major Victory would be preferable, is all I'm saying. 

My oft-times collaborator and friend Sterling Arts & Design had a little time on his hands today and, out of nowhere, decided to see what would happen if he photoshopped cats as the different characters in the Indestructibles universe. 

I cannot get over how funny some of these are. The beast of a cat chosen as Titus and the "I will mess you up" cat he picked for Kate are particularly funny to me, though folks are reacting really well to Emily and Doc too. Rose might be my favorite, though, with her photoshopped scars... 

I haven't weighed in on the all-women Ghostbusters sequel/reboot yet, despite all the internet hullabaloo. Mostly I haven't bothered because I'm not really interested--according to my eight year old brain, the original Ghostbusters was a perfect movie which my childhood best friend Ian and I reenacted approximately six thousand times (give or take) using Legos, building the Ghostbuster firehouse before Lego made kits for themes like that. We preferred astronauts as Ghostbusters because they had those backpack things. 

For realism. 

But when the all-female Ghostbusters reboot was announced, my first though, honestly, was "well it's too bad they aren't giving those extremely talented comedians a chance to do their own, original supernatural project, but hey, good that they're turning the all male paradigm on its head." But in the back of my  head I thought: man, we are still so segregated between genders, even in terms of adult actors in comedy films. It's kind of sad. But we're still a long way from equaling the playing field for women in film, so if the inclination is to create all-girl comedies, that's more than fine--it's the right time. 

But it's been announced that there will be an all-guys Ghostbusters in tandem with the all-women cast, and now I'm annoyed. 

When I wrote the Indestructibles what I really wanted was to tell a story that was not a book for boys or a book for girls but a book about both genders working together as equals without ever falling into the expected tropes. I've said this in interviews over the past year, but my goal was to write the characters as such that if you went back and swapped everyone's gender--made Jane Jack and Billy into Billie and Emily into Ernest or whatever--they could play out their behaviors and dialogue essentially the same. I wanted them to treat each other equally, and I did not, in any way, want their genders to be the central factor in their friendships. 

But in Hollywood, we can't have a team of supernatural investigators working together as hilarious equals, sharing screen time and adventures and splitting the punchlines with equal fun and skill. We need to have two separate movies, the same way we have two separate bathrooms at the movie theater. Boys go here, girls go there. 

And I think that's ridiculous. 

I hope both movies are incredibly funny. I hope the casts  have fun. I wish no one to fail. But I'm a little tired of seeing an industry that doesn't seem to believe that men and women can't be on screen together as equals, even as they face down a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. 

So CBS has released its first image of its new Supergirl costume, which has, of course, started the usual internet battle of like versus dislike, and everything in between. (And also inspired the funniest story I've ever seen about pre-production photos by Arrow's Stephen Amell, who continues to be the most approachable superhero working today). 

First thought: I like it. It's classic but simple. It calls out older versions of the costume without being too over the top. I even like how they gave her tights. (Why should she be cold?) But I also like it because, as readers of the Indestructibles know, Jane (AKA Solar) is a superhero in a skirt, and her teammates give her a bit of grief over it (particularly function-over-form specialist Kate/Dancer). 

But Jane picked her own costume, and she chose the look not because it was feminine, or because she felt pretty in it, but because it harkened back to a now-gone generation of superheroes. Remembering the past is important to her, and her costume reflects that. In the Indestructibles, Jane, more than anyone else, wants to know and remember where she comes from and who came before her. History means a lot to her. And so she wears a superhero costume with a cape and a skirt, because it helps her remember people long gone, and because, like Supergirl, Jane is strong enough that she can compensate for some of the tactical impracticalities of a costume like that. 


Like the Incredibles, we all know capes are an occupational hazard for superheroes. But if you're invulnerable, maybe it's okay to be a little ridiculous, if it helps you remember where you came from. 


So there. I like it. I think it looks just fine. Because I like remembering where we all came from too. Even if Edna Mode says: NO CAPES! 

A friend and colleague, Sterling Arts & Design (who created the cover for the Christmas short story) created a minimalist-style poster/print based on Entropy Emily's signature look. He's made it available through his website as a low-cost fine art print, poster, stationary, and even... and this is where I go a little crazy... iPhone covers. 

Like minimalist art? Need a new iPhone cover? Check it out! He's also done some really great minimalist Legion of Superheroes and Green Lantern posters as well that are extremely striking if you're a fan of either of those comics as well.