There’s been some backlash to Brian Wood‘s upcoming all-female X-Men team of Storm, Rogue, Jubilee, Kitty Pryde, Psylocke, and Rachel Grey, and I feel like this variant cover by Skottie Young is the perfect response.

Previously in X-Men

DC Comics teased a single picture this week, under the title “What’s New in The New 52 – Joker’s Daughter?!” (I’ve put the full picture below the jump.) And while a lot of you are probably thinking “ugh, what a trite idea for a female character,” I was thinking “Oh, neat, are they really going to bring back Duela Dent?

Now at this point some of you are probably going “Dent? Like… Harvey Dent? And Duela is “two”… but she’s the Joker‘s daughter?”

Yes. Come, lets talk about weird shit in comics, and a strange female character who maybe is getting a comeback, who knows?

The quotes from Chris Perna, art director of the Gears of War series, that have been floating around today actually say something a little more complicated than can be reasonably slimmed down to a single headline. A slightly longer summary? Perna says some puzzling things about gender presentation in character design, acknowledges that he’s proud of the playable female characters of the Gears of War franchise and that he knows that a lot of women fans of the series find those characters to be empowering, and then turns right around and shores up the self-fullfilling prophecy that games with female lead characters don’t sell.

The Cave is a game about terrible people. Yes, the artwork is charming and inviting. Yes, the oddball humor is every bit what you’d expect from a Ron Gilbert game. But underneath the surface lies a dark morality tale, where the faintest glimmer of redemption is mired in an Edward Gorey-like atmosphere of playful doom. The Cave itself — both the narrator and your host — disapproves of the sordid lives of the seven (technically eight) characters, but it does so with great relish.

Could it be that the Cave is purgatory? Are we facing judgment? Is it all — as I strongly suspect — a whimsical riff on the seven deadly sins? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that despite its imperfections, The Cave is a place well worth diving into.

We featured Heymonster‘s series of Patron Saints of Female Characters a while back when it contained only four women, Dana Scully, Liz Lemon, Kara Thrace, and Leslie Knope. The most mentioned possible additions to the pantheon in the comments of that post just so happened to be Ellen Ripley and Buffy Summers. Those commenters might be interested to know that both Ms. Ripley and Ms. Summers have their own prints now, also available as shirts, hoodies, and tote bags right here. Check out Buffy behind the jump.

I never really understand when people say that I like playing strong characters. I always find that a little weird because, I could be wrong, but I don’t think people ever say that to men. It’s like, well what should I play, a weak character? Does that mean that I can lift weights? I guess it means strong-minded, right? But it’s weird because people never say that about a male actor — Michael Fassbender or George Clooney, for example — that they love playing strong characters. It’s a weird gender thing. — Rachel Weisz to The Sun.

Rachel Weisz, professional pretend action librarian, lays out some truth.

Previously in Female Characters

Anne Hathaway’s made no secret that she really wanted the role of Selina Kyle went she went for it in the casting process for The Dark Knight Rises. It should surprise no one that she’d be 100% down for reprising her role as the character in some form. (Not that any such thing appears to be on the horizon, or is even likely to be on the horizon.)

But the emotion with which she regards the character is pretty endearing:

Earlier this week, I was contacted by Gordon Luk, lead developer of newly-released indie game Beast Boxing Turbo. He had come across the article I wrote on what women want in female game protagonists, and was left with some questions about his own work. See, Beast Boxing’s got a female protagonist, but she’s the only lady in the game. This is a trope I mentioned as being problematic, and Mr. Luk was worried about the affect it had on his game, and if women gamers might be put off by it. He offered me a copy of the game and asked for my two cents. I asked for his permission to dissect his concerns publicly, to which he agreed. I got to playing, and now, here we are. Having recently become the boxing champion of Beasthalla, I can safely say the following:

Gordon, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

When we retumbld St. Scully, Our Lady of Skepticism, the other day, we didn’t know she was part of a set! HeyMonster has all four of his Strong Female Character set up for purchase on his Society6 page, promises more to come, and also wants to know who you’d like to see as a patron saint!

In 108 minutes, Wreck-It Ralph accomplishes something the entire video game industry has failed to achieve for more than 30 years: Wreck-It Ralph contains more positive and nuanced female characters than the entire current video game landscape. Three major consoles. Hundreds of major and indie developers. Mobile and handheld gaming. Thousands of writers, programmers and artists. Millions, maybe even billions, in marketing dollars. All schooled by one movie.

I applaud the filmmakers, but I’m utterly baffled, because they made it look easy. And for so long, we have been told it’s “hard” to sell games with female characters we can look up to, care for and relate to. I think $49.1 million at the box office, which is Disney Animation’s highest opening weekend in history, tells a very different story. Listen up gamers, it’s time for a revolution.

Let’s start with Vanellope Von Schweetz and her home game, Sugar Rush.

Editor’s Note: The rest of this post contains SPOILERS. Read at your own risk!