From Bond Girl to Bond Villain

Anyone who's paid too much attention to me might have realized that I adore when the children of supervillains become heroes. These characters, whether the sorts who were raised right and later found out the truth (the Maximoffs twins) or those who suffered from a dysfunctional, twisted upbringing (Cass Cain) have a particularly compelling story to them. These characters become heroes when they discovered a reservoir of moral strength that allowed them to make the most difficult decision any person in the world can make and break from their upbringing, their loved ones, and even at times their entire cultural makeup in order to make the right decision. These themes of discovering moral clarity, overcoming the fear of loneliness, and aspiration to be a better person can be repeated in some many different ways for the same character and still represent step-by-step self-improvement and true heroics. The character can be constantly moving forward without being stuck in a cycle. And while every subsequent attempt to make the right decision is just a little easier than that first break (allowing for the occasional slip-up, which lets them go through a moral crisis and find that internal strength again) they continually better themselves, their families and the planet with every step forward. These character exemplify the idea that it doesn't matter what your forebearers did, your life and your destiny is your own. They are paragons of independence, defying both nature and nurture to demonstrate that someone can calibrate their own moral compass and still have it point in the right direction. The children of supervillains can become the truest kind of heroes, agents of virtue and change and hope arising from the darkest of background and defending those ideals against the most ingrained personal interest--belonging to their own family. They have an incredibly inspirational concept.

There's another story pattern that can be incredibly compelling in this same vein, that of Reforming the Evil Love Interest. This one is compelling because not only does it have a person turn their back on their entire world, but they do it for the sake of a single other person. A lot of people love this story, and adore characters trapped in this story cycle because it ties the inspirational aspect of leaving everything you know and love for an ideal with romance because the ideal is love for another person. I find this pretty compelling too... when it's a single story and not a cycle that continually repeats itself. This brings me, of course, to a character think I should love but I very decidedly do not, Talia al Ghul.

As I said before, a lot of people like the Reforming the Evil Love Interest narrative because it's a compelling narrative, and they don't mind reading it over and over and over again. It carries with it the same courage and strength required to be a child of a supervillain who turns on their evil parent, and in many cases--such as with Talia--the two concepts are married and the inspiration to turn their back on their entire world comes from meeting one good person.

Except that Talia doesn't really DO that until what... five or six years ago? And she was created in the 70s? Her typical behavior pattern was that she'd act against her father to save Batman, but afterwards she'd return to the old man. Repeat over and over and over again. He's her father, he loved her, she loved him, and on some level she felt that his actions were to be excused. In fact, for loyalty to her father, she would commit any number of murders, thefts and even betrayals (short of directly causing his death) of her "beloved" Batman. As I've said, I really enjoy when a supervillain's kid turns on them, and it requires a tremendous amount of moral fortitude to do so, and proves to be the ultimate act of independence. But Talia never really turned on her father for the principle of it, she only occasionally got in his or his allies' way to prevent them from getting rid of Bruce. For it to be a true test of courage and strength, it pretty much has to be a one time thing. You go against your parent knowing you can't go back, you can't waiver between two people all the time. You are on your own from that point on, and what you just did is worth being on your own. You don't just save the life of the guy you wanna fuck and then go back to live comfortably with Daddy, performing atrocities in his name when they don't affect someone you personally care about. That doesn't make you a hero, or even an antihero. It just means you're a villain with the hots for the hero.

I don't like Talia. A long time ago (after a while of kind of liking her figuring eventually they'd lay this story cycle to rest) I realized she just wasn't a really admirable person. After I learned that, every time I saw her I knew exactly what the story was going to be and I simply didn't like the al Ghul family league of assassins/eco-terrorism/melodramatic love drama elements enough to sit through the same theme of potential reformation from what was actually a rather self-interested motive (she wanted Bruce, but didn't seem to give a shit about anyone else's life) followed by choosing the safe route of home and family to the unexplored and potentially difficult life of morality that I prefer my heroes adhere to. After so many times watching this, I really grew to hate the character on sight. Eventually she went against him, but not in a way that changed my assessment of her personality. It's telling that it wasn't until after her father tried to match her with a guy she didn't want that she got sick of his shit and tried to be a good guy for a while. Kudos for being her own woman there, but it's not really the heroic selflessness of a principled stand against the head of an organization that destroys lives every day--especially after you've spent years witnessing firsthand the misery he creates but kept bypassing the opportunity to tell him to fuck off and become a real hero. It's more the heroic selfishness of leaving a situation that's simply not good for you personally, having stayed in a situation that hurt other people until things went from comfortable to frightening. I think she's a very selfish person, in matters of love and ethics, and that's not a good thing for a hero or even an antihero.

And yes, I know there are those of you who say that every character can be redeemed, and every character has potential and with Talia... you're absolutely right.

Something happened in the last decade to this character. They killed off her father. The put her in charge of the family business. They introduced her son, and detailed the horrific lengths she went to to continue the family line with the man she'd personally chosen.

They broke the cycle.

They made her an official full villain.

I fucking love it, especially when Grant Morrison writes her because he doesn't mince the melodrama. He doesn't bother with the "I love you, but alas we are on other sides of the law" narrative that bores me to tears. This is a woman from a twisted family with a very twisted sense of what constitutes a family. She considers Batman her husband, and so will act to keep him alive and safe, but she is not a good guy at all. She will protect and nurture her son, and when he leaves her (as she NEVER left her father) she attempts to manipulate him back by threatening to disown and replace him. ("Why can't you just love me for me?" "It's not me" and it wasn't her father either. She's withholding her approval until he proves his loyalty just as he probably did to her and created the behavior pattern where she constantly returns to his side at the end of the story.) She will, in all likelihood, make him very miserable for the next few years trying to get him to return to her side of the family.

And so many people say they despise Morrison's version of the character, that she's not even a character but I don't see that at all. She's not one-dimensional, she's just as complex especially when it comes to her interpersonal relationships--she's just free of all the bullshit that makes me hate her. He's completely broken the cycle on this character, and she's gone from Bond Girl to full-fledged Bond Villain. I'm actually happy for her, it's quite a promotion.

As for the real thorn in fandom's side, Batman's statement that he was drugged when Damien was conceived? In a genre where 95% of female characters but just maybe 2% of male characters have been sexually harassed, threatened or assaulted... the biggest macho fanboy fantasy character in history has a sexual assault in his backstory and it hasn't hurt his standing in the slightest. It's still the male hero way, like Starman and Green Arrow, without the same lurid graphic depiction of sexualized violence that accompanies flashbacks of female characters. I think the imbalance there makes this far less offensive to me than if we'd had Oracle drop this memory. Don't get me wrong, Batman's wistful reaction is beyond fucked up and one of the things that Morrison annoyed me with, but I don't feel Talia is the character who suffers from this. She's a Bad Guy, after all, and I've never found her someone to sympathize with. I understand it really pisses off those of you who feel she should be a sympathetic hero, but I don't feel this character works as a hero or even a protagonist. Her heroism works on whether one person (or two, now that Damian's around) is in direct danger or not. If he is, she'll be a good guy, if not she's just her father's daughter. I do love her as a cold, corrupt villainess, though. Like I said, she strikes me as a very selfish person and that's a good thing for a villain.

My feelings on Talia are particularly worrisome for two reasons, though:

1) She is a character type I can only think of seeing in women. She's the chief henchwoman who falls for the hero character type, most often associated with spy thrillers like James Bond. It's a bit hard to untangle such a judgment from innate feelings about gender, and I'm having trouble thinking of a male character who boils down to the same concept for the "gender swap test" of prejudiced attitudes.

2) She is one of very few Middle Eastern women in comics, and the family politics and her position as a good guy or a bad guy are tied up with how the Western World views Arabic women. (Man, it does not help that her father was a terrorist but he's not religiously motivated at least.) It may be better that she stayed to run the family business and didn't just leave being an accessory to her father to try and become an accessory to Batman, or it may simply be another example of the Dragon Lady of the East archetype, particularly with her villainy so wrapped up in her family. I'm not really sure on this part. Though please don't try to defend the character based on cultural pressure to stay loyal to her father and family, because cultural pressure is something that makes a moral decision to value life more difficult, and therefore makes choosing to save lives so heroic.

Anyway, here's the rundown:

Talia al Ghul
Also Known As: The Cause of Shirtless Batman Fighting
First Encountered (By Me): Batman: the Animated Series
Franchise: Batman
Core Concept: Evil Love Interest
Writer Responsible For My Distaste: Every writer that has ever tried to pass her off as "not really a villain, but a tragic woman torn between loyalties"
Character I Want To Read That She's Attached To: Batman (and I don't really like to see her Dad pop up either when I'm reading Batman)

Best Character Trait: Brave
Worst Character Trait: Selfish

Similar Characters That I Like: Like I said, I adore the children of supervillains who break away from their parents Cassandra Cain in particular showed a moral strength and an empathy for the rest of mankind that's unheard of in her life up to that point when she ran away from her father after her first kill. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are recurring favorites of mine because of their constant struggle against their father--especially in the face of prejudice from the rest of the world. Damian Wayne is stuck-up little jerk, but he chose his father's more difficult path over the easy villainy of his mother and grandfather. But the thing is, these characters took the high road as soon as the exit presented itself, they didn't continue along Bad Guy Highway past exit after exit until they could actually SEE the dead end. These are characters marked early on to be heroes, and their family ties make them more compelling as a result.

Catwoman may be my favorite example of the "Reform the Evil Love Interest" thing, but it may be because she's not particularly evil or even selfish. She just doesn't feel confined to society's rules, whereas Talia's lawbreaking comes from conforming to her family.
I do recall another similarity, though, back in Devin Grayson's Catwoman run. Selina is approached during the story by a teenaged boy and an adult man. She spends much of the story thinking about family, and ends up arranging for both the man and the boy to be sent to prison (I forget which one she framed, or if it was both) and declaring that she wants a family, but on her terms. The issue ends with her peeking in on her new family in their prison cell. It was dark and humorous (and there was something in both the man and the boy's behavior that makes you side with Selina, but I forget exactly what it was), and it does remind me of Talia's possessiveness of both Bruce and Damian. She wants the family on her terms, so she's basically decided that Bruce is her husband.

Could I ever like Talia? Not as a good guy. She's aces as a psychopath, though.

Huntress

Helena Bertinelli
Also Known As: Honestly, I've called this character a lot of fairly misogynistic slurs and I'm trying to quit that sort of thing.
First Encountered (By Me): JLA #16
Franchise: Birds of Prey, Batman, Justice League
Core Concept: Ethnic Stereotype + Gendered Ethnic Stereotype
Writer Responsible For My Distaste: Joey Cavalieri
Character I Want To Read That She's Attached To: Fortunately no one, though she pops up on occasion. This is why I don't often rant about her.

Best Character Trait: Drive
Worst Character Trait: Moral compass requires external calibration

I think the first time I saw Huntress was the expanded team in JLA #16. As with Jade, she appealed to me at first. She had a great look in the 90s, full body suited black and purple (none of this exposed belly white stripe shit). She was presented a Gotham character who clashed with Batman, another of DC's attempts to answer the Punisher. Not bad initially, though it wasn't a surprise at all when Batman booted her from the JLA. She hadn't impressed me terribly during her short time as a JLAer, and I wondered if Morrison just wasn't that fond of her and her potential might be better explored elsewhere. So when my sister began bringing home Batbooks, I kept an eye open for the Huntress.

I confess that when I ran into her in the Batbooks I was disappointed in what I'd hoped would be the Punisher of the DCU. There was a characteristic present in her that the Punisher never displayed, a underlying need for acceptance by her peers in the cape community. When that need wasn't satisfied, she would turn darker and grimmer and seemed to slide further into the realm of rage-powered take-no-prisoners 90s lethal force characters, suggesting her moral compass was thrown off when left to her own devices. It wasn't an endearing character trait, because as much as we associate the 90s with everyone turning dark and grim, most of the well-established DC heroes adhered to the high road while lethal force was left to socially rejected minor characters and (used to highlight the morals of the main characters) and brand new characters and teams that occupied their own universes. Helena was a low-road character in my fan-formative years, a low-road character who aspired to be accepted by the high-road characters. I understand that the need to belong is a universal story, and by no means am I immune to it myself, but I can only be steeped in that theme so much before I lose patience. Helena stopped appealing for me back when her storyline focused on seeking the Batseal of Approval, and then getting pissed off because she didn't have it. The implication that this was a deep-seated problem involving her own family and particularly her father really didn't make her any more interesting.

None of what I've gone over so far is a reason to hate Huntress, it's just why I lost interest in what looked like a promising character and stopped caring whether she came or went. It wasn't hatred, it was just a lack of enthusiasm. For a good deal of time my feelings towards Huntress could be summed up as a marked indifference to whether the character existed or not. I'd read things with her in them, but she wasn't really a factor in whether or not I'd pick something up.
At this point, of course, Huntress fans will want to recommend that I read their favorite stories because surely I'll have an epiphany and convert to a true fan once I've found the proper work. Forget it. Writers I normally enjoy quite a bit like Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Gail Simone have written this character and no matter how much they let her shine I couldn't really bring myself to give a fuck what happened to her.

My problem with Huntress was not caused by clumsy, thoughtless writing that inadvertently exposed her worst character traits without actually being out of character. Nor was it caused by lackluster writing that failed that give her any distinguishing characteristics or allow her any notable accomplishments. The writers seemed to very much like Helena and spotlight her strengths. I recognize that she has strength, they simply aren't of the sort that I consider particularly impressive in a superhero on their own. No, my real problem with Huntress was caused mainly by her core concept, and my own personal revelation about my tastes.
There came a day--after the umpteenth time someone had seen fit to speculate about the morality of my ancestors or why I might be reacting to the implication as an insult--when I decided that I was fucking tired of Italian-American characters from Mafia families and gawddamned sick of ruthless, cutthroat Italian-American women with deadly tempers. That's pretty much it. I think I could take one stereotype or the other, and I suspect I could even enjoy reading both in one character if there was some joy and humor in the execution but Huntress is just such a precise measured blend of Stereotype That Irks Me, Stereotype That Irks Me, Fucking Miserable Background, and Fucking Miserable Attitude that I can't fucking stand the sight of her anymore.

Three of my favorite writers in comics have had Huntress under my pen, given her their best shots, written her as sympathetically and competently as they do any other character, and not one of them has succeeded in overcoming my disinterest in her dour overall story arc and my distaste for her infuriatingly stereotyped traits. It's not the writing. In this case, it's safe to say that it is the character I hate and the only person who can be held responsible is Joey Cavalieri for reintroducing what was once Batman's daughter as the Perfect Storm of Character Elements That Piss Me Off.

Similar Characters That I Like: Jeph Loeb of all writers wrote a story in which Catwoman discovered her real father was a rich mafia don, and she stole from him endlessly to get some revenge. Honestly, I rather liked that twist. Catwoman's reaction to a deadbeat dad and a family tree of ruthless thugs was essentially "I'll just steal my inheritance and get on with my life." Catwoman doesn't really give a shit what anyone thinks of her, and she is eminently practical even under writers I can't read.
I'm fond of Bobo Bennetti because his criminal past is a result of his gaining superpowers and choosing a life of crime. It wasn't a family thing for him.
I confess to both loving and hating Nately's Whore (yes, that is what the character is called in the book), the prototype for the hot-blooded Italian sex object from Catch-22. I hate what she represents, but damned if I didn't find the absurdity of the whole situation greatly amusing.
I can also enjoy minor characters in comedy settings who have Mafia Ties as a punchline, because I haven't lost my ability to laugh at this trope. I'll sit down and watch gangster parody movies like Analyze This and The Crew repeatedly without getting worked up over it. I'll admit that's a weird point of view, but in this particular case it's my ethnicity and I reserve the right to be offended when people take the stereotype seriously and laugh my ass off when people mock the shit out of the genre that created it.

Favorite Appearance: I didn't her JLA stuff, but I actually enjoyed a Christopher Priest story better than a Morrison or Waid story. JLA: Secret Files #2 is about how the new team was put together (without just sitting around a table dealing out pictures and flashing forward to events DC is never going to carry out) for their unveiling in JLA #16 and focused a lot on her. It held up on a recent rereading. I think this is the story that made the Batbooks in the same period such a disappointment, though, and Priest's portrayal was the exception rather than the rule with her.

Could I Ever Like Huntress? Probably not. Good writers haven't worked. Acceptance into the Batfamily hasn't worked. Having a badass moment in each appearance hasn't worked. Developing a strong moral fiber hasn't really worked, because that tends to change based on whoever she's teamed up with. Really, I'm not going to like the character unless she turns into a completely different person, down to her Secret Origin. And while I'm not ruling out DC erasing their universe and either replacing her with Pre-Crisis Huntress or rebooting her as an Amazon, it is unlikely. Still, I know some people do so I promise not to vote in any official polls for her death.

Unless of course it's a direct choice between her and a character I love. Or like. Or wouldn't mind seeing in another issue.

Jade

Jennie Lynn Hayden-Scott
Also Known As: Alan's Daughter, Todd's Sister, Kyle's Most Annoying Ex-Girlfriend, Pretty Girl Who Tells You Something is Wrong With Her Male Relative
First Encountered (By Me): as a background character in Kingdom Come
Franchise: JSA, Green Lantern, Justice League
Core Concept: Compelling, but problematic when you get to her parents
Recurring Story Roles: Love Interest, Good Daughter, Damsel in Distress, Hero Support
Writers Responsible For My Distaste: Judd Winick, Ron Marz, Roy Thomas
Character I Want To Read That She's Attached To: Kyle Rayner

Best Character Trait: Smarter than Kyle
Worst Character Trait: Underachiever

So I linked it all in my last post. You've all read my feelings about this character. For a time, I was best known for hating her so much. Even now, after that bitter disappointment of death scene and her lackluster resurrection in a lackluster crossover I still can't stand the sight of her. My passionate aversion has cooled since the return of the Corps and the prominence of characters like Soranik, Brik, Iolande, Arisia and even the porn-vomit-clad Star Sapphires. Still, for very long time Jade was It in the Green Lantern franchise and that's probably why you'll find fewer female Lantern fans than Gotham and Titan fans. Because even if you didn't find her as loathsome as I did, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a convincing reason for her inclusion in a list of the Best Female Characters or hell, even a list of the Best Female Lanterns before Soranik was introduced.

Why? She's just not that impressive. She doesn't really have any feats under her belt, she's consistently shown as less capable than her father or the GLC Lanterns, she is constantly tied to her brother, or her father, or her ex-boyfriend. She's a perpetual supporting character, doomed to never shine, and each time she gets what looks like a chance to really kick ass, it's stolen from us. This despite the fact that she's been established as extremely powerful (which really only serves to make her look like she's squandered that potential) and has a long history of heroics behind her.

Her personality isn't terribly compelling either. She seems irritable between moments of complacency, displaying flashes of wisdom and compassion. She yells at people and acts hurtful without thinking, then feels bad about it later and apologizes. She rarely mentions the foster parents who reportedly loving raised her from infancy, pays little attention to the history of her biological mother, and focuses most of her love and support on her biological father and (when he's actually being paid attention to by writers) her twin brother. She dates men who look like her father, the exception being the guy with the same powers as her father.

I've said all this before in far more acidic terms. She's not really so hateful nowadays, when I look at it objectively (though she's clearly not a character for me). But here's the twist, superfans, the dirty little not-so-secret that knowing me I've said a billion times but no one could believe it:

I used to love Jade.

Seriously. When I was a kid and started reading Green Lantern, she was the love interest. She had a great design and Green Lantern powers internalized so she didn't need any weird jewelry. I was super-excited when Kyle went away and she took over for a few issues. A few times during the run I got the impression, and I'm not sure where from because I'd never read Jade in any other series, that Marz was mishandling the character. In the end I swore off the book when the far less experienced Kyle had to save her butt from Fatality.

Then a few years later I was recommended Winick's Green Lantern series. So I picked up some of the trades and read the Power of Ion storyline. In the book, Winick attempted to present Jade as a strong-willed and admirable woman who handles things on her own, but something about the presentation was off. She seemed forced, and unlikable. Then he brought back her natural powers in the most insulting way ever written, with Kyle telling her specifically "You can't do this on your own."

I was pissed off, and blamed Winick, and figured at least Marz wrote her likable... until Marz returned and wrote her as unlikable. At the point I wanted a better Jade story, so I took a lot back at my old comics, the Marz stuff where I liked her and actually got defensive of her. There wasn't really any evidence of her overcoming a great obstacle or showing any feats of power. So I hit the back issues and picked up Infinity Inc. Nothing there. A sprinkling of guest appearances across the DCU... Nothing. There was nothing to suggest that Marz or Winick had characterized her as less skilled or capable than ever before. She was a mediocre Lantern, except in the Green Lantern/Sentinel: Heart of Darkness series where she was established as having been more powerful than anyone suspected all along... and she was depowered. But not without giving the impression that she hadn't really been pushing herself to her full potential until then. And it was after that that she was given a Green Lantern ring twice, and shown to be simply adequate at it... which isn't really adequate when the norm in your franchise is saving entire galaxies on a daily basis.

To top it off, her personality wasn't really that great either. Marz's falling in with a blonde dude, avoiding sending word to Kyle to break it off, getting into a confrontation about it and then feeling guilty was... not really contradicted by any intense displays of character strength. Digging deeper into her history, I found there was even a part of her core backstory--that she had a villainous mother with mental illness and different powers that needed to be ignored in favor of emulating her father so that she could be a hero--that left a bad taste in my mouth and made me uncomfortable with the character setup.

So these two writers I was mad at had been writing her as she'd been established before. I'd just been dazzled by a green lady with green powers. So who do I blame?

Well, really, Roy Thomas. Also Winick and Marz for not taking the opportunity to break that cycle and make her worth reading again. Thing is, while the handling of Jade was the last straw for Winick for me, I've seen Thomas and Winick treat female characters as better so I'm not really swearing off their work over Jade. By the time three writers have established that the character isn't really an outstanding Lantern, it's become a character trait. She's just not as good as the guy Lanterns. For this to change at this point, there needs to be a storyline dedicated to what makes her change. I was fucking pissed by this realization because I had liked her before and, again, this is a franchise where the adequate characters are supposed to be saving galaxies on a regular basis. I wanted Katma Tui, Boodika, Brik, Arisia, KT21, Laira, Krys, Donna fucking Parker... ANY of the space women back because they were so much more skilled and capable than Jade. But no, all we had for female presence in the increasing guy's club (because at that point John and Kilowog were back and Hal was on his way) was Jade.

Even then, I could take her or leave her as the only female character, except that she was dating a character I liked to read so I had to see her over and over and over again. So I can kind of see where the Sharonhaters are coming from, but I can't exactly say this is the best way to approach character hate. Now that we have some decent female Lanterns in the space books, it's easier to see the potential in Jade. I'm not a fan of characters who aren't at the top of their field (I can't really think of any male second-placers I'm fond of either) but Kalinara has made a few good arguments for turning her around and I think if she were to slip into a teambook without any other Lanterns (particularly not her father or her ex-boyfriend) in it (that wasn't written by Winick, I will not read Winick writing Jade ever again), she'd get a chance to shine a bit.

Similar Characters That I Like: Any space-based Green Lantern.
Jesse Quick/Liberty Belle is portrayed as a Lesser flash. She will never be as fast as Wally or Barry (or probably Bart when he gets up there) or allowed any major speedfeats over theirs, but she's never been romantically shackled to the more powerful male speedsters, she has a full personal life (and now a marriage into a franchise where speed is less redundant), and her bursts of strength makes her distinctive from the other speedsters. It's okay that she won't be as fast, because she has strengths they don't. Plus her mother's legacy is also as big a part of her character as her father's, to the point that she's now using her name.
Obsidian, Jade's angsty gay brother, when he isn't evil. (He's really annoying when he's evil.)

Could I Ever Like Jade? I've hated on Jade so vehemently in the past that Kalinara has taken it as a personal mission to see if I could like her. She came up with some good ideas:
Right now it really sucks that Jade can be a Lantern, but not as good as her father or the space Lanterns. After all that's happened becoming a great Lantern overnight would seem really off. They could, however, do a story where she takes stock of her life, comes to the conclusion she's going to change and develops enough drive and ambition to start really making a name for herself. She plays catchup, but manages to pull off some impressive feats along the way.

Alternately, there was a story a long time ago during one of Jade's depowered periods where she started developing her mother's powers. It's been ignored, but it would make her distinctive from the other Lanterns and give her a twist. Or Kalinara's other idea that takes out her of the space stories that she seems ill-suited for and immerses her in a fairy tale setting.

And for fuck's sake, give her some spotlight away from her father, her brother, and her ex-boyfriend. I'm damned sick of seeing writers play personality ping-pong to suit their story needs.

On Hatred

A few days ago on Tumblr, Sharon Carter fans and Sharonhaters came head to head over a post on the increasingly poorly named "Comic Secrets" tumblr. Seems someone felt that Sharonhaters were falling prey to sexism, but didn't felt comfortable calling them on it and naturally they did an anonymous posting that pissed a large number of them off. Even though Tumblr has gone to great length to make it nearly impossible to have a conversation, a post claiming that Sharon Carter "gives men a reason to be sexist" and that, based on examples solely from Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, the character is inherently worthless has led to an intense fight via reblogs (across a second post, too). I'm particularly fond of how she cites Sharon's advice to kill Bucky as her being a "bitch", but claims she hates her because has no agency whatsoever.

Despite it being a glaringly irrational argument based on a single writer, it nevertheless reminded me of my recent Crystal irritation, my old Donna Troy hate, my old Jade hate, and my history of calling for the deaths of Spoiler (which ended up sucking), Jade (which also ended up sucking), and Cassie Sandsmark (which would probably end up sucking so I've stopped wishing she'd die). The entire affair has me thinking about the nature of character hate, especially in a genre like superhero comics where the storytelling is serialized across portrayals by different writers and artists. When is it really hating the character for something in their core concept and not simply being angry about the role in the story or the writer's individual view of the character? And how often is it simply based on another character? How much of a role do demographics like gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity/nationality and religion play? You can't divorce it completely, and many of us are harder on the ones with demographics in common with us. What about exposure? A character you're indifferent to can soon become hateful if you see it way too often. There's a number of characters I can't stand because they dated other characters I like, and a significant portion of the books I read were dedicated to a character I had zero interest in. Too much time of that and a lack of interest turned into disgust and misery whenever the character appeared.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that every character I read gets measured against a number of traits and values I try to cultivate in myself. (Yes, villains have these too. They just don't have a moral compass.) I find myself taking little interest in characters without those traits, and that turns to hate if I read too much of that character. There's a few character traits I despise in myself and other human beings, and I'll take a strong dislike to anyone fictional who displays them. It's simply things I don't want to read about. Sexism plays a role here. I know of some traits (such as Daddy issues) and storylines that are more palatable with a male character than with a female character to me.

But then we get into the problem of what's a character trait and what's just the writer. This is especially problematic because what's just the writer can soon become a character trait if taken on by the next writer, and the writer after that and so on. See Crystal's infidelity: the first could simply have been an accidental falling for Pietro, the second they tried to explain away as mind control, but by that point writers had gotten too attached to her and Pietro in some sort of love triangle so then there was the Black Knight infatuation, and Johnny Storm was played up again, and the next thing you know the fucking Sentry's been retconned into her past (this does make me pity her more than I hate her, though). I'd say anything transferable between writers can be argued as a character trait, with the clincher being three or more writers with no mind control/imposter plot or a majority of the character's recent appearances.

Fortunately, character traits can change and the right growth plot can turn a hated character into a tolerated or even beloved character (though I think it's safe to bet you won't see a post on this blog entitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Queen" anytime soon).

A trait that's in the core concept is tough to change, though. You can't suddenly decide that Huntress isn't a temperamental Italian woman with mob ties without making her into a completely different person, so if your problem is that Huntress is an ethnic stereotype than probably nothing is going to change your mind. There's a number of characters I can trace my hatred back to things that are inherent to their characters, and that's just the way it is. In such a case, though, I can usually tell I'm not going to like them from the description and it's not a reflection on any writer other than the one who created the dreadful waste of panel space.

Still, there's a place for reasonable dislike and hatred that takes the gender of the character into account without focusing that hatred on the femaleness of the character alone, and without extending it to real live women. You may hate a character because you object to sexism that's become inextricably entwined with them in stories, but when you throw gendered slurs at the character when ranting about them, you problem may be more rooted in sexism itself than objection to sexism. I'm not above saying "Emma's a bitch", but anyone offended by the vocabulary certainly has a point that I'm letting misogynistic attitudes creep into my rhetoric.

Now, before you accuse me of thinking myself inherently better than someone else... 5 years ago, I wrote this post. It's another thing that has me thinking about character hate. This may seem like an inappropriate subject for the holiday season, but the celebration of Yule is the expectation of dawn after a long darkness and I'm in one of those religions dedicated to personal exploration, so I can't think of a better way to spend December than wading through the depths of my hatred of female characters feeling blindly for the root cause. I believe I'll look into some individual cases in my upcoming posts. Feel free to join me.

The Tragedy Here Was the Marriage, Not the Divorce

I'll level with you right away that my first exposure to Pietro as a romantic hero was Age of Apocalypse. He had a sweet romance with that universe's Storm, and it really got me on the side of the character. I sought him out in X-men, in Essentials reprints, and in his own series during the 90s. There was something absolutely engaging about this woobie fanfic mode Draco Malfoy living Luke Skywalker's life at superspeed, so I ended up devouring any appearance he made in anything. I ended up really fond of him, his sister and his little daughter before I ever read anything with his wife.

Then I finally met Crystal in X-Factor back issues. There's a story where Pietro tries to mend his marriage by going to a little log cabin. External forces take pictures of Crystal sleeping with another man, and Pietro's approached by a shadowy PI type who shows them to him. he gets mad at the guy, denies the thing, but goes back to the cabin in a foul mood. He doesn't tell her what's wrong, and Crystal ends up crying and leaving early. I remember thinking at the time the pictures were forged and Pietro would eventually see the truth and feel horrible, and that he was in the wrong.

Then I read more of Crystal. The whole reason for the marriage breaking up was her having an affair, and there's the implication she's actually a serial cheater (and you know what, I'm not interested enough in Crystal to track down all the instances of her romantic tension with characters who aren't Pietro and analyze them for whether or not she slept with the guy just to quibble it out with Crystalfans on the internet. I'll do that for Sue Storm and Reed Richards in an online argument, but Crystal met Pietro while she was linked to Johnny, and she's got at least one established affair during the marriage, and from that point on any plot with her and Pietro either revolved around Luna or that threat that she would have another affair.) This didn't make me HATE her, but it did make me think that this was pretty doomed marriage as she had already broken the trust and a major character trait for her husband was that he didn't trust easily.

Aside from that, she just didn't interest me. She was flat, sweet, smiling and had a temper for the purposes of the plot. She seemed to exist to fret over the baby, and give Pietro a reason to act like a dick. Crystal didn't even fit the wife role very well before the writers decided to break up the marriage, because she was never as entertaining in a scene with her husband as his own sister was. She was never as entertaining in a scene with her husband as his brother-in-law was. Crystal just didn't compliment Pietro like Vision complimented Wanda. Vision and Wanda had opposite temperaments, but similar values and histories (Ultron is a mechanical Magneto, after all). Vision and Wanda shared their troubles and triumphs, and smoothed out each other's weaknesses with their strengths (Vision's logic and self-control to Wanda's emotion was traditionalist, but they suited each other). Crystal's flaws only amplified Pietro's flaws, which amplified Crystal's flaws. Their backgrounds were too different. Crystal was a princess and Pietro lived much of his life as a poor outcast criminal; and Crystal was a alien woman, a modern creature of science from the moon while Pietro was a gypsy boy with a witch sister from a fairytale mountain. Opposites attracting is a fine story when we have a common thread in the wildly different settings, but Pietro and Crystal didn't share enough of the "human experience" within those settings to bond over like Vision and Wanda did with their respective fathers, origins, and treatment from the outside world.

The marriage seemed like an editorial directive to free up Johnny Storm and get Wanda's overprotective brother out of the picture while Vision wooed her. Pietro's reasoning seems to have been that she was the first woman he ever got close to. I think Crystal just liked the old-fashioned romance at first. Really, though, I didn't want her to die but I wanted that marriage over with for good so that Pietro could have a new love interest.

I only hated her after Son of M. There's a scene where he gets jealous because she gets a flower from someone else, and I think he even hits the guy. Now, if I didn't know the history to this marriage, I'd say that Pietro was insane dick that she should dump and no one should ever date here. And if it were any other marriage at Marvel, and we saw T'Challa getting told off by Storm, or Scott by Jean, or Reed by Sue... Yeah, I'd side with Storm, Jean, or Sue because while the latter two have tension with other guys, none of them have done anything to justify jealousy. Hell, I'd side with Crystal, even, if her reaction was "Can't you control yourself? You're overreacting! He didn't mean anything, and it was just one mistake and you can't ever seem to let it go!" instead of what it was, which basically amounted to "You're a backwards human who isn't as enlightened as us. Stop acting like you own me. That's why the marriage didn't work out." CRYSTAL who actually had an affair and gave Pietro plenty of reason to be jealous, calls him "primitive" and possessive and basically lays the blame for the marriage not working out at his feet when the cause of the tension is her not keeping her word to be monogamous. Basically, she regards him as a caveman and feels she's never done anything wrong in this whole fiasco when she's the one who is OATHBROKEN at that point. Like many fans, she puts herself up as blameless and enlightened, when SHE broke the marriage contract. It comes off as her REALIZING she can't hold to the marriage contract, but saying "fuck it, I can do what I want because I'm an enlightened being and he is an asshole if he expects me to hold to it." Hell, under Hine all of the Inhumans look down their noses at him, and treat him as an irrational lower life form.

To make matters worse, the way Son of M unfolds I'm supposed to sympathize more with her because she's in the right when it comes to Luna, but I'm too busy being pissed off at her condescending attitude towards her ex-husband after all her bullshit to care about her anxiety as a mother. It would be different if they'd well and truly ended the marriage before like they did in Silent War, because they were such a bad match but they kept trying over several freaking decades to fix it so it came off very badly.

Honestly, she's supposed to be the sympathetic party in Silent War too but all I could think was "He's incredibly sick and needs someone to just grab him and toss him in Detox, and you are the only family around who can DO that right now since the rest are depowered/having a breakdown herself" but she cuts him loose THEN of all times rather than ending it during the several years when they knew it wouldn't work but he's strong enough to handle it and move on. She just kicks him to the curb. And it's irrational, because she's in the right to annul the marriage and I've been wanting them to divorce the two for years but this just served to get me pissed at her. Really, they need to catch him and toss him into detox and she just makes it so he HAS no one. But oh, she tried to make the marriage work because she LOVED him so much back when he wasn't in real trouble. That's probably also the fault of Son of M because that's she went from merely uninteresting to awful to me.

I'll admit that Abnett and Lanning redeemed her quite a bit to me. I've read some of Realm of Kings, searching for Lorna and Pietro, and they've managed to upgrade her from hateful to irritating. I still don't like Crystal, I don't want to read about Crystal, and I sure as hell don't want to read about Pietro and Crystal married anymore. She's probably a better wife for Ronan, and he's probably a better husband for her than Pietro. (Pietro would be a better husband for a lot of women than Crystal.) I do feel bad for her when she finds out about the Lie, and I side with her if she socks him in the face when he tells her. He deserves it for the Lie. But if she pulls this "You are so primitive, and this avoiding responsibility and openness is what caused our marriage to fall apart" bullshit, she loses that. It's good to see with her calling Pietro on bullshit, but when the blame is laid entirely at his feet and he's labeled as a "bad husband" to a "good woman" when really it was just an unsuitable marriage, I've got issues with that.

Maybe I'd side if there were something in her character I could relate to. But she's always been just generic and sweet with a hint of temper. She's no doormat, true, but she doesn't have anything going for her as I see it.

Add to that that in multiple Alternate Universes, Pietro is paired with the infinitely more interesting/likable Storm and shows none of the negative traits that feed his marital tension with Crystal. On the contrary, with Storm he's a sweet and devoted romantic hero. There's major differences in personality there, and while Pietro is more grounded and controlled in Age of Apocalypse, for example, he's also with a partner who never broke his trust, and I believe that's the bigger difference.

I don't want Crystal dead. That would suck, because then someone would bring her back to life and Luna would be sad. But the marriage was simply a bad match. They don't truly suit each other like Vision and Wanda did, and the big part where they differ (fidelity) is a dealbreaker for Pietro. Pietro married the first woman ever interested in him, and Crystal married the guy who seemed more stable than the Human freaking Torch. She needs someone less temperamental who can deal with an open marriage. He needs someone monogamous and modern, but who isn't condescending to him over his being old-fashioned. He needs a woman with a logical, stable outlook who controls her emotions, a female version of the old Vision, really. Someone who won't break his trust, and if the storyline happens that he thinks she's cheated it'll be revealed as a villain hoax and he can beg for forgiveness and she can forgive his flaws. He needs someone who can be his rock, really, like Vision was Wanda's rock. And even with all her strengths highlighted, Crystal's too soft and flighty to be the rock in a relationship. The best thing to come out of Silent War (even though it made me mad at Crystal and was set up to put the blame for the end of the marriage entirely on Pietro even though Crystal's the one who dissolved the bond to begin with) was they finally got the divorce, and it just needs to stick.

Update: Oh, Crystal. This is pretty low.

Today's Unscheduled Unedited TV Rant

One of my favorite television series is Newsradio--it makes me happy and I can watch the entire series repeatedly--but I swear if one more character refer to Matthew as a "sweet guy" I'm going to chuck one of my prized DVDs out the window. Matthew, the resident Weird Guy in the office, the low man on the totem pole so to speak is NOT a sweet guy. He's a fucking hyena.

In several episodes, Matthew momentarily gets the upper hand and starts to act like a complete asshole. Like when he punches Bill and suddenly gets Alpha Male Syndrome, or when Max shows up and Matthew enters a power struggle with him, or when Matthew suddenly becomes smart and condescending as hell, or any of the numerous moments when the punchline is Matthew suddenly saying something cutthroat or mean. And whenever this happens one of the other characters gets concerned that sweet but annoying Matthew is acting so unlike himself and tries to talk him down.

And the thing is, I've seen this behavior in real life. I've seen it at school, I've seen it in the military, I've seen it on the internet. For example, we had a guy in my last office office who got picked on. At first I would tell the guys to lay off him, and defend him when I thought things were overboard. Then came the day someone on shift let someone embarrassing slip and garnered the mockery of the entire office. And GUESS WHO was the one who went too far trying to cement himself as Not The Lowest Ranking In The Room. He failed because the other guy's embarrassment was fleeting, but we all got an ugly glimpse into his true nature. The process seemed to repeat itself whenever someone new became the butt of the day's joke. And almost always, due to his overdoing it, he would be the butt of the day's jokes again before the shift was over. In trying to leave the shitty social role he kept digging his way into it, because everyone quickly realized that if they didn't assert themselves over him they'd be in for ruthless teasing rather than the normal maintenance-world joking.

And the thing I started to perceive about this guy, and other guys who display the same behavior pattern is that they look at the social order like a wolf pack. The Matthews of the world figure there's a bottom and they are it, but there's a chance they can seize on someone else and not be the most put upon person in the room. And so he is very nice and deferential and self-effacing around the other members of the office because he knows they can and will kick his ass. But the second he sees the slightest bit of weakness he tries to exploit it.

And this is the sort of person that Matthew in Newsradio is patterned after. And the thing about this character type is that everyone assumes that--because they act sweet when trying to ingratiate themselves to the rest of the group--they are sweet kind people who can't cut a break. But the real nature shows through NOT when the social order offers you the least power, but when the social order offers you enough power to act out what you really want.

So characters like Matthew, created to be sweet sympathetic people? They aren't. It would be one thing, I suppose, if the guy acted sweet and deferential once he got the upper hand but Matthew (and the guy in my old office, and the guy from my old school and a thousand other "sweet guys" scattered across the internet) does not. He's an asshole just waiting for the opportunity to be an asshole. That's the punchline of at least a third of his jokes. That's why we enjoy watching the other characters push him around.

And why does seeing that the characters are fooled by Matthews sweet facade piss me off so much? Because of all the real-life Matthews who've managed to sell themselves as sweet guys, and all the fiction dedicated to selling this personality type as a sweet guy and because I just plain don't like people who put up a false front and succeed at it. Bastards.

Is There Room in the Fridge, Hon?

Anyone who's been following my incessant rambling here and on various message boards will have noticed something very odd about me.

Well, odd, as far as female comic book fans go.

I'm often screaming for the death of a female character.

This is unusual for a woman, I admit.

In fact, there are members of my gender so horrified by the Women in Refrigerators list that they are sensitive to any violence against any female character. Cries of misogyny ring out across the internet whenever a female dies graphically (See Phantom Lady, Sue Dibny, Maura Rayner). And sometimes, yes, my voice goes out with them. But to be perfectly honest, when Gail Simone was compiling that list in the late nineties, I was on the the very same message boards screaming for Cassandra Sandsmark's head, detached from her body, and nicely mounted on the wall of Cheetah's library -- while I was panning Ron Marz for his portrayal of women in Green Lantern. That's just the kind of person I am.

You see, although I always advocate creating more female characters, there just sometimes seem to be just too many.

But, there can never be too many women, you say...

Ooooh yes there can.

You see, while there are precious few prominent females, there are even fewer worth reading. Picture the whole of comic book feminity as a nice juicy steak -- but not a lean cut with the choicest meat. Envision about 15% edible beef, with 85% sensuous-looking fat.

It's true, there is a wide variety of worthwhile females to read about -- Iconic goddesses (Wonder Woman), wicked world conquerors (Gloriana Tenebrae), admirable overachievers (Oracle/Barbara Gordon), utter bitches (Emma Frost), spunky teenagers (Courtney Crumrin), talented ingenues (Batgirl/Cassandra Cain), ideal role-models despite their poor taste in men (Black Canary), cross-dressing knights (Shining Knight), violent hard-asses (Huntress), cheeky feminists (Power Girl), respectable family women (Invisible Woman) all regularly grace your comic book shelves. These women are the choice cut. They are the healthy, varied meal in your comic book diet. Basically, these are women who's shoes a female would like to place herself in. Whether it's because they exemplify the best character traits possible or they just plain do stuff you wish you could when you are in a certain mood ("What was that about looking good on my knees, Max?" *KRK*), these are the kinds of woman a fangirl would picture herself as. They are fun people, and you can hate or relate to your heart's content, because it is enjoyable to do so.

Next to the healthy choice, however, is the sensuous fat. Women of no substance, who add nothing to the comic book landscape, women who hurt your head just to read. They tend to be used as romantic fodder. Most of them have super-powers or martial prowess, yet more than end up playing damsel-in-distress in the story. Oh yes, they may look good to fanboys, but beware! They are bad for you. In addition to causing headaches, neck pain, and vomiting, they increase heart problems and risk of personal injury.
These are the female characters I most commonly direct my venom towards. Most of them have an inexplicable, but rabid fanbase. Many of them have been around too long, but time after time, have been shown to be utterly useless and uninteresting. Many are downright loathsome. I hate them, but I don't love to hate them, and I can't relate to them except for the parts of myself that I truly wish weren't parts of myself -- I mean, anyone can end up not qutie measuring up but who wants to be there? Or who wants to be in the victim's or sex-toy's place? Most girls don't. And even Lancelot used to get his butt saved by girls sometimes -- because Chretien deTroyes was writing for a female audience and he knew that even if was socially unacceptable to be the Knight, they did want a more heroic role to put themselves in.

Anyway, most often I avoid the senuous fat. I never bought Chaos Comics, Witchblade, and I tend to stay away from anythign draw in the Nineties sexualized style. I don't even bother to learn their names half the time.

Unfortunately, sometimes a little piece of sensuous fat hasn't been trimmed from my usual meal. And it'll be there irritating me for one issue (like Supergirl!), or, much worse, it becomes a regular part of the series until your disgust with her incompetence leads you to drop the book, and when you pick it up again she's cheating on her ideal lover while he's off in space freezing his ass of and savign teh universe (I'm sure by now we all know who I'm talking about here). This waste cannot simply be left alone or avoided.

And because they are good eye-candy, they are kept around indefinitely, and even, yes, used more often than more worthwhile characters. Some of them are placeholders for legacies that could go to a more interesting person, but don't. And when there's an open chopping block for a huge event, who's neck gets put on it? The sweet-natured supportive female or the worthless slut? The unusual, energetic quirky woman or the personality-less cipher? I man, Sue Dibny dies but that bitch Loring gets to become a return villainess?! She's not even fun to hate!! Ice bites it in a crappy storyline in Justice League and is gone forever, but Donna Troy and Jean Grey each have a lamenated "Get Out of Hell Free" pass! Where's the Justice in that?!

Alexandra DeWitt was created to die, I understand that. But she was an interesting, likeable, intelligent woman (which actually came across nicely in the very few pages in which she existed) who helped Kyle out and ended up stuffed in a fridge, while Jade spends several years utterly worthless despite her powers, then goes Queen Guinevere and yet continues to live.

That's Just. Not. Right. (And neither was Guinevere's continued survival. Lancelot, just let her burn -- for the good of the Kingdom!)

And why? Is it be because writers have somehing worthwhile to do with her? Not possible, even Roy Thomas barely did anything worthwhile with her! Is it because DC is afraid of being called misogynist? Maybe, but that didn't stop them from offing Hawkwoman. Is it because she has a large fanbase that consists of guys with a Green skin fetish, nostalgic Infinitor fans, and women who don't realize what a crappy character she is? Bingo!

Now, I understand not everyone likes the same females. Check out Comics Fairplay's archives from August-October 2005 when she does her Harsh! Hated Female Characters feature, there will be choices you disagree with.

So, of course, don't advocate the death of every female character I despise. Donna Troy can happily exist as long as people are willing to read her (just keep her appearances to a minimum). Supergirl is going to be written by Greg Rucka, and hasn't been around long enough to be completely ruined yet, so I recant my previous protests. She still ahs potential.

But come on -- Jade? Jade's beyond help.

And it just burns me so much that this was the only female Green Lantern for a decade. I actually dropped Green Lantern, because of her. I thought it was the writer not being able to write women, but I discovered that everyone else handled her like that too. She had nothing impressive under her belt at all, and really no experience with regular Green Lantern villains, so it actually did make sense that Fatality,an experienced Green Lantern hunter, could kick her butt, and not Kyle's because Kyle was shown to be especially talented. *Rolls eyes*
Katma Tui Stewart could have wiped the floor with all three of them combined at that point in Kyle's career, though. Arisia and Brik would have made a better showing than Jade. Even without her hand and her ring, Boodika would have torn Fatality apart.

But not Jade, born with powers, but not the inclination, drive, or imagination to do anything worthwhile with them.

Can't you see, it's actually better to kill a character like this off. I'd rather there be no female members of a franchise than have females who are constantly shown to be less competent than the males. I believe it hurt feminity to have Jade be the only female Lantern for so long. I only hope Brik and Soranik Natu, and whoever else they come up with to fill the Corps can make a better showing.

Anyway, my point is that the sensuous fat needs to be trimmed. If there are only so many females, but most of them can't measure up to the standards set by the male characters and really only exist as romantic interests, it is even worse than having no females at all because it sends the general message that women are incompetent sex objects.

So I say, kill all the stupid, worthless, and incompetent female characters.

Kill the mediocre and uninteresting.

Replace them with fun women who can play with the boys, and even show them up sometimes.

And stop killing the good ones, already.

Oh, and bring back Ice.

And Katma Tui.

Last Line Round-up

I have squandered my valuable time with schoolwork. As a result, I have not written full reviews for nearly a month. And, with two speeches due this week, I don't have time to do full reviews this week. However, I felt a need to weigh in on Infinite Crisis. So, in the interest of brevity, I'm going to review the last bit of dialogue or internal monologue from each of the Crisis lead-ins and the first issue itself, along with the accompanying artwork. A good writer should be able to convey a lot in the last line, after all.

And of course there are Spoilers below. I'm talking about the last page here!


The OMAC Project #6
"It feels nothing."

This line was delivered by Batman. It, and the accompanying page, demonstrate one of the Major Laws of the DCU ever since Green Lantern: Rebirth -- Even when he comes to the correct conclusion, and does everything right, Batman is Still Always Wrong in Some Way. It's a frightening change from Morrison Uber-Bats.


Day of Vengeance #6
"Of course we're with you, boss, we're superheroes."

Just taking this line out of the mini-series makes the entire mini, placed against the entire tone of Countdown, 10 times better than when I actually read it. What a way to drive home the theme, Willingham. Good job with this one.


JLA #119
"Wait... You're..."

Martian Manhunter perfectly articulates the feeling conveyed by the entire DCU line this month.


DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #4
"This is too much--too big! I need help!"

Thank you, Donna Troy, for setting the Women's Movement even further back. Wuss.


Rann-Thanagar War #6
"The Guardians' side, Poozer -- the side of the whole universe!"

Kilowog answers the question posed on the cover of Issue 1 in a way that beautifully defines the point of being a Green Lantern. A lot of people have been complaining about Gibbons, but I, for one, am glad the new GLC writer has such a handle on the Lanterns (and is willing to accept ideas from online ramblers!).

Note: This mini would have worked a lot better if this hadn't only been the last of the dialogue, but the last of the verbage for the entire mini. There was some useless narration on the last page that could have been replaced to better effect with the second half of Kilowog's line. But, I'm willing to forgive a lot with Dave Gibbons since he gives Kyle and his fans so much respect, and worked so hard to cram so much into so little space.



Villains United #6
"Aw, Hell. Lets just flip a coin."

I think the question this was answering is fairly obvious.


Infinite Crisis #1
"This looks like a job for Superman!"

After six months of cursing the darkness, this last page is way beyond lighting a candle. This is lighting the freaking Sun.

That line, and the accompanying splash page, made the entire issue worth it. It made the entire Countdown worth it. I'll even go so far as to say it made the Deathstroke fight in Identity Crisis worth it.
I got all tingly and giggly. I had to stand up, pace, then sit down. I couldn't read another book that night. It may sound corny and cliche, but somehow Geoff Johns can make the corny and cliche work very well. That's pretty talented in our society of cynics. I think he does it by surrounding the cliche in tragedy, so that it seems extra-special. I am loving this so far.

Why I Hate Donna Troy

I must confess, I picked up her miniseries in hopes of a Wonder Woman appearance, and discovered my true feelings for Donna Troy. I now continue to read out of morbid curiosity, and in the hopes that they will give her a personality. I am a fool. But at least I get to see Jade act in-character during it, and Starfire's pretty likeable there.

Anyway, due to the solicitation for Green Lantern Corps: Recharge #2 (First issue was a work of beauty, Kim -- Rest assured, Kyle remains Kyle!) and it's implications, I felt a need to outline my feelings about Donna Troy, who is scheduled to invade my regular reading more often than I'd like this fall. So, on with the Bile!

Mild Spoilers for JSA #77 below

1) Even less personality, on average, than Wonder Woman herself. Seriously, at least under certain writers, Diana leaps off the page. Even badly written, you have an idea of what she will do in a given situation. Mark Waid outright admitted he didn't understand the character, but he still managed to inject her with personality. With Donna, even writers who claim to love her can only manage to give us an overly emotional twit with watercolor substance, at best. Wonder Woman may have an inconsistently complex personality, but at least she has her interesting portrayals -- Wonder Girl/Troia is consistently vapid and weepy.

2) Her creation was a big mistake, and this is not simply my opinion. A DC Editor saw Wonder Girl on the cover of Wonder Woman and actually thought she was Wonder Woman's teen sidekick, when in fact she was just a teenaged version of Wonder Woman. From there, they had to create a distinctive personality. They seem to have failed miserably.

3) Gaudy Moon-shaped earrings. Yuck. I'm sorry, I am against jewelry on a superheroine (and yes, this includes Wonder Woman's star earrings, which, most artists mercifully leave out. Her bracelets are actually bracers, and a kind of armor, so they are acceptable), particularly stupid dangly jewelry, and Donna was decked out in JSA #77. They should've stuck with the armor on the cover of Return of Donna Troy #3, that looks cool.

4) Poor Choice of Pantheon -- The Titans as opposed to the Romans or Olympians. Anyone who hasn't read the Greek stories is totally unfamiliar with her Pantheon (unlike Wonder Woman's, which most people at least know some names from) and anyone who's read the old Greek stories know that Titans were the bad guys.

5) Depressing. Donna's natural state is weeping. Every time I've seen her spotlighted, it's a tragedy fest. Everytime she speaks, she's so firkin' serious! She smiles sweetly, but never cracks a joke! She's like some dreadfully melancholy Mary Tyler Moore. Please! Just because you're in the Greek-influenced Wonder-family doesn't mean you have to walk around like Antigone! No, I'm being unfair -- to Antigone. That play was much more optimistic than any Donna Troy comic I've read lately.
I suspect the only way the writers could think to add depth was with depression and darkness, forgetting that the best characters punctuate their angst with a sense of humor and optimism.

6) Her miniseries is late. Yes, I blame the character for this, because somehow she's attracted a large enough fanbase that DC believed this would work better as a miniseries than an Outsiders/Teen Titans crossover. As part of of an ongoing crossover, I believe it would be on time and I wouldn't be seeing the results of the mini-series before the resolution.

7) She's going to play a large role in Infinite Crisis. Crap.

8) Donna Troy was singlehandedly responsible for the FUBAR Wonder Woman continuity. If no one had insisted on keeping Donna in the Teen Titans, there would not have been a Wonder Girl who predated Wonder Woman! That would mean no need for a Golden Age Wonder Woman to inspire Wonder Girl. This removes any need for Byrne retcons, because Wonder Woman continuity would be streamlined according to the Perez reboot.

9) The above continuity situation led to the untimely death of Queen Hippolyta, whom Byrne retconned as the time-traveling, Wildcat-boinking, fun-loving Golden Age Wonder Woman! Hippolyta was the best character in all of Wonder-dom at the time, and due to an excess of Wonder-females, TPTB declared that one needed to die senselessly in a stupid crossover -- Of course, the one with the most actual personality gets the axe! And of course, the one with the least actual personality (Donna) gets resurrected while Hippolyta remains dead!

10) She is currently powered above Wonder Woman. This is unacceptable, UNACCEPTABLE! Donna must always be subordinate to Diana.

11) Whenever she appears, she robs valuable panel-time from far better female characters (Wonder Woman, Hippolyta, Wonder Girl/Cassie, Starfire, Raven, Jade, Maura Rayner) and adds nothing of value with her presence.

12) Hypocrisy in JSA #77. Donna spends 3 issues under mental memory manipulation that causes her to attack the Teen Titans and the Outsiders, and attempt genocide on a peaceful, innocent, technologically backwards race. She meets Hal Jordan in JSA#77 and despite the fact that he is very obviously Green Lantern again, and Alan Scott is at his side vouching for him, she still gives him attitude about having been Parallax. Okay, much fun as Rebirth was, Batman has the right to give him crap. Kyle Rayner certainly has the right to give him crap. Wonder Woman has the right to give him crap. Superman no longer has the right to give him crap, but he won't! The Flash has the right to give him crap. Hawkman has the right to give him crap. Green Arrow has the right to give him crap. Donna, fresh off of mind-control herself, has absolutely no right to give him crap about things he did while not in possession of his full senses! I really hope Kyle rips her a new one for this in GLC: Recharge #2 (if it is indeed her that is being referred to in the solicitations -- Jade is still running around, after all, and if Jason Todd can come back, so can Alex DeWitt!)

13)Current Taste in Men -- and this is the one I think Diana needs to beat some sense into her over!

Fiction is wish-fulfillment. It is the only way for women to get certain ideal types of men. You know, men who never appear in real life. There are several archetypes, for example, that women are attracted to, hoping to scratch the surface and find another archetype underneath -- a two-in-one deal. One of these is the introspective artist. Most women I know, when attracted to the introspective artist, are secretly hoping that he will turn out to be a masculine solar-hero archetype underneath his introverted outer self. Not in a deceitful way, mind you, but simply hidden strength. In my experience, most introspective artists have the emotional/moral fortitude of a shaved hamster. So, we turn to the comic books and books for our idealized men -- your rogue with a heart of gold, your sensitive hero, your vulnerable tough-guy...etc.. The only way to be assured of a decent man.
Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern, is the introspective artist who shows the hero when you scratch the surface. The man (as written by Morrison or Johns) is selfless, virtuous, kind, funny, has a will of cold iron at his core, surrounded by this incredibly romantic dreamer exterior that is just as much a part of who he is as his hidden qualities. He's really cute with coal-black hair and tree green eyes. He can paint a beautiful picture of you, and fight off an alien armada with his mind. He can make glowing green flowers out of thin air. I mean, even when he's written as really stupid, he's actually quite a catch -- especially for vain women like me who like to see themselves as inspiration for art!

And Donna Troy dumped him.

For Roy Harper.

Roy Harper.

Those of you who don't follow DC will be unfamiliar with Roy Harper, aka Arsenal aka Speedy (Green Arrow's sidekick. Let me reiterate -- Green Arrow's sidekick). He's a single father -- her mother is a supervillain, who nuked an entire country -- who irresponsibly continues to be a non-powered vigilante despite his daughter constantly being used to manipulate him or her mother. He's the sole parent and provider, but does very little to preserve his own life. He doesn't really even have the ability to plan for the future, which was a huge joke when he started dating Donna. Rather than stay with the baby, he frequents a strip joint often enough to know everybody's name. He thinks he's a total hotshot, when I'm sure Connor Hawke is actually a much better fighter. He never shaves and has an ugly red goatee. His hair is basically red stubble. I don't believe he showers. He's sleezy. He's easy. He makes me feel queasy.

And Donna dumped gentle, introspective, humble Kyle for this loser.

Who dumps a guy like Kyle "Custom Designed for a Romantic Relationship" Rayner for Roy "Nice boots, let's knock them!" Harper?

Who dumps any Green Lantern for that matter? That franchise has everything you'd be looking for in a man! Artistic Romantic? We've got Kyle Rayner, just waiting for someone. You want a responsible, moral father-figure? We have John Stewart. Looking for a one-night stand? Hal Jordan. Inexplicably attracted to Neanderthals, but wish for one who is loyal good-natured under the rough exterior? Yes, there's actually Guy Gardner (who, while he may be a jerk externally, was actually a pretty loyal and faithful boyfriend to Ice).

Jade, I can forgive -- Kyle flaked out and she got lonely. With Donna, he was right there. She left. And don't tell me was an editorial mandate, it's always editorial mandate, she's a fictional character! But, we have to take all behavior that is not explained away by mind control into account when considering the character -- and to have her run into Roy's arms when she just told Kyle she wasn't up for romance -- Yuck! Donna is so stupid.

People on certain message boards are supporting a resurrection of this failed romance, but the idea sickens me. She is unworthy of any Green Lantern -- even Guy Gardner! Hell, especially Guy Gardner, because he at least has enough class not to move in on a girl who's been totally mind-whacked after losing her entire family! In fact, I hope Guy Gardner kicks her ass in Recharge for putting Kyle's recently rebuilt heart in a blender and pressing the puree` button! He can be pretty protective, y'know.

Come to think of it, the last person in the DCU I'd want to get on the bad side of is Kyle Rayner, given the Guardian's treatment of him in GLC: Recharge #1. He's a big man at Oa right now, and the Green Lantern Corps is swelling to about 7200 members to be the police force of the universe. And we all know how ex-girlfriends of cops get treated when they get pulled over. "Ma'am, it looks like you have a broken *SMASH* taillight on your spacestation. 100 Deneb-buck fine"

I hope she hooks up with Roy instead, and runs off with him to Outsiders obscurity so I never have to see either stupid character again!

Or, she can become a Green Lantern villainess. Why not? She's already conflicted with the two lead characters of the franchise! And she was able to smash through Jennie Hayden and Hal Jordan's constructs easily. Though, I think Kyle would be the one to come up with a way around that.

Hmm... According to Phil Jiminez interviews, she is getting some new, important role in the DCU during Infinite Crisis that separates her from the Wonder Woman Mythos -- and Geoff Johns helped come up with it! Maybe she will be a new Green Lantern villainess after the dust settles. Donna Troy, Inter-galactic Outlaw! I think I could grow to like her evil. She'd at least have personality, if only evil personality!



And, now, as a reward for reading through that, some funny stuff:

Kyle Rayner Fans, try here, here, and here.

I feel incredibly guilty for laughing at this. If you are of a conservative political bent, I suggest you scroll to the Green Section before turning away in disgust.

I actually don't feel guilty for laughing at this at all.

Memorable Quotes from JLA.

Guy Gardner actually comes off pretty nicely in this 1998 Fan-fiction.

Aquaman comes off as impressive in the last JLA.