Jem

Well, a Jem And The Holograms comic from IDW is coming soon.

Here is an interview with the writer and artist of the comic.

edited 29th Dec '14 5:55:01 PM by DS9guy

Kimber and Stormer will be gay in the series, which is a nice touch. Ascended Fanon?

edited 24th Feb '15 3:52:41 PM by comicwriter

Stormer I can see, given that she never so much as looked at a guy, but Kimber had a boyfriend, didn't she? An actor, or some such? Not that previous depictions need to stand in the way of that kind of thing. Why the heck not, right?

Maybe Kimber's bi. Or she might be still in the closet in the cartoon. Or possibly it's an entirely separate continuity.

It is a new continuity since its suppose to be set in the modern day and they race-lifted one of the Misfits.

...So a new comic, a new movie... wonder if Hasbro plans on making a new cartoon or anything.

I remember noticing that about the original show, that the Holograms were pretty painstakingly diverse (2 white girls, one black girl, one Asian girl, and eventually an Hispanic girl) and the Misfits were a whitewash. Kinda like the Rebel Alliance and the Empire...

Jetta was supposed to be black originally, but they realized that since she was a liar and a pickpocket, it'd make for some Unfortunate Implications.

edited 25th Feb '15 4:04:02 PM by lalalei2001

There are Unfortunate Implications in that too; what, villains can ONLY be white people? Still, it was the '80's. They were trying, anyhow.

Which is ironic because Jem was the exact sort of show you could get away with that.

If Jetta were the sole black person or minority on a show full of white people yeah, I can see why they'd be wary (since you do still see shows where the heroes are all white and the only minorities are villains) but Jem already had at least one other heroic black woman and in general a cast of positive minority portrayals. I don't think anyone could have looked at that and said Jetta is racist.

Same thing with the lesbian thing. They're making a point of saying it's both Kimber and Stormer not just a token evil lesbian.

Calnos: Unlikely. This is Jem we're talking about. I think it did OK when it was on, but the fandom hasn't exactly endured like Transformers, GI Joe, or even My Little Pony. The idea is just to make a little money off an as yet unexplored section of 80s nostalgia.

I think we can consider Ross Campbell a Promoted Fanboy thanks to these.

edited 5th Mar '15 4:48:10 PM by DS9guy

I think Jem and Synergy come off the best in those (though Synergy looks too young, IMO). The rest all look too much alike.

Read the first issue. It is mostly set up. We learn that Jerrica is a great singer but during a video recording of a song, she is shown to have massive stage fright. Through a conversation with Kember, we learn that their father has recently died and that the band (which I don't think is named the Holograms yet) is entering a contest to compete against the Misfits. Jerrica goes home and a storm-induced power outage leads Synergy to be activated. It turns out Synergy was suppose to be a birthday gift from Jerrica's father but he died before he could reveal it. The sisters arrive and they all go into the secret white room with the organ, which is MUCH BIGGER than the cartoon, and we get to establish what Synergy can do. In the last page, we see Jerrica put on those earrings and turn into Jem.

Kelly Thompson gives an actual reason for Jerrica to become Jem since they never really gave one in the cartoon. It's to overcome her stage fright.

I love that Sophie Campbell gives the girls different body shapes instead of the same doll body with different hair, skin color and makeup. One detail I find amusing is that Kember is noticeably taller than non-Jem Jerrica despite being the younger sister. Another aspect of the artwork that is interesting is that she found a way to "illustrate" the music by making it look like colorful shapes. While we are still "reading poetry" as Linkara likes to point out about songs in comic books, we can at least get some idea of what the music is suppose to sound like.

edited 25th Mar '15 12:30:25 PM by DS9guy

I was browsing IGN today, and noticed its review of the first Jem comic. Will I run out to purchase it? Probably not, but then again, I usually prefer trade paperbacks. And I'm okay with digital comics, if I have reason to think that the service doesn't have frustrating restrictions and will last for years.

I've occasionally thought about the Jem franchise ever since it started popping up in the AMV Hell Mini fan videos. I'm hoping that this recent revival can be used to tell an interesting story.

I originally posted this on the Jem thread at Western Animation, but I guess since I'm talking about the comic, I guess it should go here.

Something about the comic that I can't get out of my head:

When it was just starting, the artist was Ross Campbell, and I thought "Oh cool, he did that cutesy TMNT art style that coincidentally reminds me of the 2012 show." But then when I saw how it was doing, I noticed that the artist was now Sophie Campbell. I thought "That's weird, what happened to Ross?" So I Googled Sophie Campbell and found out that Sophie used to be Ross, which meant that she's a transgender woman.

...

Okay, I want to say right now that I'm not an LGBT-hater. And I really, really don't want to come off as one, alright? Heck, a deceased uncle of mine was gay, and I've got a lesbian couple as next door neighbors and I've never raged about either or.

It's just...how does a trans person transition from one gender to the other? Is it just getting a sex-change operation or is the process much more involved than that?

Again, not an LGBT hater.

edited 21st May '15 11:21:10 AM by TargetmasterJoe

Well there's a difference between sex and gender. Sex is based on your physical characteristics and gender is based on how you identify as a person. So a trans person wouldn't really transition genders so much as come to a realization about themselves or come out as trans to other people. And while some people do so, you don't need to have an operation to be trans.

(apologies if I got anything wrong)

They introduced an original character named Blaze. She's a fan of the Misfits, according to her profile◊.

I wonder if we'll see the Stingers or planned characters like Graphix, the Mongrels, and Entropy.

TargetmasterJoe: OK, first one needs to distinguish between sex and gender. While the two are used interchangeably in common parlance, in psychology they are considered different concepts.

Sex refers to one's anatomy. It is usually male or female, but there are also hermaphrodites, intersex people, and a few others.

Gender refers to one's mental perception of oneself as male or female (or other). The majority of the time, one's mental gender corresponds to one's anatomical sex. Transsexuals are people for whom mental gender and anatomical sex do not match up. It is known that male and female brains are structured differently, and there is some evidence that transsexuals have brains structured like the anatomical sex counter to the body they are born with.

In the case of Sophie Campbell, she was essentially born with a female brain in a male body. While she lacked breasts and a vagina, but did have a penis and lots of body hair, she always felt her body was wrong, and she should have a female body. Obviously, it can also happen in reverse.

Sex change surgery[[labelnote]]Also known as gender reassignment surgery, but this term is inaccurate because the gender stays the same and it's the sex that changes[[/labelnote]] is a complicated and long-term operation. Hormone replacement therapy is a common approach, in which the patience is injected with sex hormones from someone of their desired sex in order to induce their own sex to change. The penis or clitoris may also be surgically modified to turn it into the other organ.

Such a procedure usually renders the patient infertile due to removal of the sex organs. However, this is not always the case. Thomas Beatie is a transsexual man who opted to keep his womb when he changed sex, and has since had three children by sperm donation.

Also, as you might have noticed, it is considered proper to refer to transsexual people by the pronouns corresponding to their mental gender regardless of anatomical sex.

What kind of story arcs do the comics have? Are they self-contained or Myth Arcs, or 4-part stories?

I'm not really sure what you mean. Can you elaborate a bit more?

A lot of comic stories these days are made into 4 parts to make them easier to collect in trade paperbacks. But some stories are oneshots or 2-parters, and others are like one long, continuous story.

I've only got the first 7 issues, but the arc starting with 7 seems to pick up where 6 left off so it seems like the last option.

Yeah, technically it's being done in arcs, but so far, it doesn't come across that way. It's more an ongoing story.

Also, it's really good. I'm a 30-year-old guy, but I decided to read the first issue, and it's a really good comic. I almost wish I had a daughter I could be buying this for.

I decided to read up on this, and at first, and didn't like what I saw. One question asked if there would be LGBT character, and one of the writers answered, "Of course there's going to be LGBT characters." I hate these kind of statements. I hate it when that question gets asked. But I kept reading, wondering if Jem was really this progressive show they were alluding to, or if this was just another Alan Scott scenario.

That brought me here. Now at first I didn't really see it. I kept going down until this Kimberly and Stormer were embracing each other at sunset. Yeah, okay, now I see it. But then I read this:

What the hell was going on in this show?

edited 23rd Oct '15 5:05:51 AM by Soble

This was the same show that had the Misfits use a time machine to make the Holograms miss their concert.

http://comicsalliance.com/best-jem-episodes/