The Week in Gay Geek: Gay marriage comic, Lynda Carter doesn't like the Wonder Woman title used in vain and more!

IF COMIC STRIPS WERE DRAWN BEFORE A STUDIO AUDIENCE THIS IS WHEN YOU'D HEAR THEM GO 'AWWWWW':
The Concord Monitor recently ran a delightful little autobiographical comic strip by Clay McCuistion about his civil union to his partner, Max. (You can check it out as a JPEG or as a PDF file), "How We Got Gay Married". McCuistion's strip is so mundane, it's adorable.

A panel from "How We Got Gay Married"

Yeah, it did get the expected grumpy readers writing:

One woman said she didn't want to be confronted with "this garbage" and said she would canceled her newspaper subscription. Another said that the cartoon format seemed intended for children - but that the subject matter was inappropriate for kids. A third caller said he had no trouble with gay people but didn't want the issue of civil unions "pushed on me" by his morning newspaper. In a letter to the editor, the minister of a local church accused the newspaper of promoting "sodomy."

I should be a little bothered about the anti-gay crowd getting worked up (or the racist anonymous comment at the end of the article) but McCuistion's comic has me in too happy a mood.

WHEN THINGS ARE BETTER BEHIND THE SCENES:
Gay advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign recently released its 2009 Corporate Equity Index and gaming sites were quick to note that three gaming companies recieved a prefect score -- Microsoft, EA and GameStop. The HRC says their index measures anti-descrimination policies.

However, as comment threads at sites like GayGamer have noted, how does the way a company treat its LGBT employees match up with how they treat their LGBT customers? Microsoft still has gay gamers frustrated with their banning of "gay" as an X-Box Live gamertag, as well as the declaration that identifying yourself as gay is "inappropriate sexual innuendo".

Where do you find the balance? Does seeing Microsoft's employment practices make up at all for any frustration their X-Box Live policies may have created?

METAPHORICALLY, SHE'S STILL WEARING THOSE SATIN TIGHTS:
When she first hit the national radar, pop culture fans were quick to notice the resemblance Gov. Sarah Palin held to a number of celebrities, including TV Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter. Some people have also called Palin a Wonder Woman and it turns out the still-fabulous gay geek icon had a few words to say about that comparison:

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman

Don’t get me started. She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness … that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about... Doesn’t mean that I’m godless. Doesn’t mean that I am a murderer. What I hate is this demonization of everybody but one position. You’re un-American because you’re against the war. It’s such bullshit. Fear. It’s really such a finite way of thinking about God to think that your measley little mind can know the mind of God. It’s a very little God that way. I think that God’s bigger. I don’t presume to know his mind. Or her mind.

Let me join Dorthy Snarker in swooning... though, I guess we're swooning for different reasons.

And going on a nerd tangent, am I the only one who sees those signs calling Palin "Superwoman" and gets nostalgic for time-traveling superhero historian Kristen Wells? Yeah, I figured it was just me. Y'know I don't think Marvel would let a trademark like that laspe...

Sigh, not that Superwoman...

Speaking of the Amazon Princess, MTV's Splash Page blog asked if we'll ever see a Wonder Woman movie.

Sadly, it sounds like we're as likely to see Emma Peel return to the big screen just as soon as we see Diana, with producers Leonard Goldberg and Joel Silver lamenting a lack of good ideas, even when Joss Whedon was attached to the project. That seems a shame, considering Wonder Woman's iconic nature... is there another superhero who appears on so much merchandise without appearing on the big or small screen?

AFTER THE BREAK: Best. Rock Band addition ever and nostalgia for the adventure game

HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU, ON VOCALS:
Every time I've tried playing Guitar Hero I've quickly failed, so Rock Band has mostly been a curiosity for me. It's also been a more temping game since I imagine I could handle the Rock Band drums as well as I handle a Dance Dance Revolution floor pad, even if the other instruments leave me fumbling. For the most post, however, the price tag has been a little too high for me to try it out for myself.

Stephen of Stephen and the Colberts

Here's a bit more temptation -- apparently there's a new free download available for Rock Band players on the X-Box... "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by Stephen and the Colberts. Yeah, that's right, Rock Band players can rock along with Stephen Colbert... now if only I spent that Wii money on an X-Box instead.

DO GAME GENRES DIE LIKE SUPERVILLAINS?
I'm going to go on a bit of a nostalgia trip, now and look back on the days when adventure games looked so promising. They were obvious next step after text games like Zork, Nord & Bert and... oh, I'll just say Suspended because I never could figure that one out as a kid. For a little while, they seemed like they'd continue to develop as gaming technology increased as we started to see adventure games make use of motion capture, full motion video and animation. Sadly, technology also limited game design and the internet greatly hurt the "interactive story" aspect of the genre.

The visual evolution of Gabriel Knight

I find that regretable for a number of reasons. As someone interested in gay visibility, the adventure game genre was one that opened plenty of possibilities for gay inclusiveness. More importantly, grew up playing those games and remember a lot of those series fondly. (Even Leisure Suit Larry, even with some of its homophobic humor.

Here's a little bit of hope for the genre, it turns out that Jane Jensen, who co-designed King's Quest VI and created the horror series Gabriel Knight (some of the best examples of what adventure games could be) has a new game in development, Grey Matter. Now, it turns out that the game hit some delays but if not for the delays I probably wouldn't have heard about the game in the first place.

A bit of Grey Matter art

Am I alone in the excitement, here? Is the hope the adventure game genre might see a revival? Any other AfterElton readers have fond memories of Gabriel Knight or, heck, even Phantasmagoria (which did have its so-bad-it's-good qualities, at least).