I Should Let This Go

Especially since the trolls have come out to play, but one or two things caught my attention about the Heroes for Hire cover.

The first is that some people seem to forget that a comic book cover is the first, last, and best advertisement for the comic within, especially for new readers. As such, the image that appears on the cover not only communicates what happens in a given story but also why a reader would want to read it. Which is why this cover is much more objectionable than a similar image would be if it appeared only within the book. Within the book, the image would suggest that a rape, horrible and cruel, might occur. As a cover, the image communicates that raped superheroines are something attractive to see, and that the value of female superheroes is entirely their sexuality.

Secondly was something I saw in the Beat:

Heroes for Hire... these sales are little short of atrocious.

This raises, in passing, the controversial topic of the cover for issue #13. There seems to a common assumption, both among publishers and among their detractors, that T&A sells comics. I wonder whether that’s really true. HEROES FOR HIRE has been distinguished by prominent cheesecake art from day one, and just look at its sales. The bad girl genre is virtually dead. MIGHTY AVENGERS, with Frank Cho’s art, is doing no better than NEW AVENGERS with Leinil Francis Yu - in fact, it’s actually the lowest selling of the three Avengers titles, although not by much. And when did you ever see Greg Horn’s covers on a high-selling title?

If this sort of thing is genuinely so popular, why doesn’t it sell better? Could it be that in fact, the audience for T&A comics (or at least comics which are quite so blatant about it) is actually quite small, and that chasing them is a waste of time on commercial grounds alone?

God, I hope so. I hope that treating female characters as more than just sex objects and saying that women can be heroes without needing to be wank material for men is also in line with better business practices.

And finally, I wanted to say kudos to Jason DeAngelis, President of Seven Seas publishing. Not specifically for canceling Nymphet per se, but for listening to the objections his fans and retailers had, re-examining the content he was planning on publishing, evaluating the audience he was planning on publishing to, and then taking full responsibility in an open letter. Things he did NOT do include deny that there was anything objectionable at all, hide behind the female creator of the sexist art, or explain that what we would find offensive in America is perfectly acceptable in Japan, as some other editor in chief did.

Catching Up

Sorry about that. I didn't actually intend to leave pseudo-pseudapod porn up for a week, but I left for my sister's wedding this weekend and found blogging in California surprisingly difficult.

So what did I miss?

Okay, so no one was exactly surprised that Joe Quesada's defense of the indefensible Heroes for Hire cover was a one-two punch of denial: "I don't see any rape here, so clearly there can be no rape here" and "A woman drew this picture, so how could it possibly be sexist?" As everyone else has pointed out, it doesn't matter how art is intended, it matters how art is read, and enough people have read that image as rape that Marvel needs to address the issue with something more that a "You're wrong! Now shut up and go away!"

Also, the defense that the objectifying aspect of the cover is necessitated by the plot falls apart fairly quickly once Lea Henandez demonstrates that, with relatively minor alterations (more assertive facial expressions, zip up Colleen's suit, remove the slime on Black Cat's breast), the Heroes for Hire can be tied up and menaced by slimy tentacles and still be portrayed as the "strong, lead female protagonists who kick major ass" Quesada seems to think we've forgotten they are.

It would be nice if Marvel actually made similar adjustments to the cover. They are not completely insensitive to cries of questionable content. When retailers objected to surprise Spider-Dingus in Spider-Man: Reign, Marvel took returns and offered a less objectionable variant edition. Perhaps if enough retailers, like Mike Sterling, explain to Diamond Distributors and Marvel that they'd be more comfortable stocking a less, um, rape-y cover, Marvel would actually take the time they have to produce a cover that won't actively offend a large portion of the comics reading audience.

Or am I pipe dreaming, because selling the rape of super-heroines isn't nearly as offensive to the average fan as a small sketch of a penis in a "Mature Readers" book?

On to other, happier matter:

---

I've been thinking for awhile that, now that the Vertigo imprint's biggest titles are no longer tied even tangentially to the DC Universe, it's time for the DC characters who helped launch the major mature comics publisher to "come home," especially Swamp Thing. It's just a shame Chris posted about it first.

---

Shane Bailey might be too modest to link to it in Blog@Newsarama, but his ode to the Hulk demands linkage and response.

---

Yes, I'm just as happy as everyone else that Supergirl is going to be written and drawn as a teen girl and not a tarted-up nymphet wearing a frilly belt, half a shirt, and no internal organs. Now comes the hard part: assuming the book's any good, you have to buy and get other people to buy the portrayal of Supergirl that we as a comics community demanded. If the sales tank, DC's marketing is going to learn the wrong lesson, and we'll see a lot less Birds of Prey and a lot more, well, Heroes for Hire.

---

Speaking of Nymphet... you know what? I'd rather not. Someone else can handle this one.

---

and finally:



Someone celebrated an anniversary! (image by Kevin)

Why the Cover for Heroes for Hire #13 is Wrong

I find it hard to believe that people actually don't understand what's wrong with this cover:

Those are our Heroes (for Hire) being threatened with rape on the cover.

The selling point of this comic is that you might see one of these busty women raped. By a tentacled beast. That's just repulsive.

If you don't object to this cover because you don't recognize it as rape, you're either blind or in denial. I mean, look at it. Red-eyed voyeurs watch while grotesque phalluses strip Colleen Wing on the right and drip white slime on Black Cat's exposed cleavage on the left. The image could not be more explicitly sexual and threatening while still being displayed with Amazing Spider-Man.

Maybe you do recognize it as rape, but say, "so what? There's racks and racks of tentacle porn manga being sold. Why is this cover wrong?" Because this isn't a porn comic! It's a superhero adventure comic, and the image doesn't even match the solicitation copy. Which means it's just false advertising, playing on the worst desires of fan boys.

These aren't La Blue Girl, who exists to be tentacle raped. These are supposedly superheroes, people who protect others from rape. To show them as potential victims, to make their (potential) rape a sales feature, denies them of their capability as heroes and their existence as developed characters, and makes them into sex toys, to be leered at.

You want to know how you know it's wrong? Because a cover like this would never grace a book about men. You just wouldn't see a cover where Danny Rand hangs naked from a chain while a tentacle wipes itself off on Luke Cage's bare chest.

I mean, take a look at these Marvel covers from last year (a few covers down, where Spencer Carnage presciently forecasts Marvel's turn to hentai). They all feature heroes being threatened by tentacles or snakes, but all of the men are fighting back! Are these women fighting back? No, of course not. They're passed out or frozen in terror or cowering in fear. And it doesn't help that Black Cat, the cowering woman, was recently revealed to be a rape survivor. I mean, that's just wrong.

Look, I'm not one who says rape flat out doesn't belong in superhero stories. I actually enjoyed Identity Crisis and the "Trial of Starfox" arc in She-Hulk. But I do feel it's a very emotional issue and should be used sparingly and carefully and most importantly, should never be a sales feature unless your comic actually is porn.

Dear Greg Horn,

God bless you, good man. God bless.

The Point

I think most people understood what I meant with my "prediction" for how the Marvel Universe was going to change, but clearly not everyone did, as this comment shows:

Is your point that the Marvel Zombies would blindly buy books with the same titles as their favorites regardless of the actual content?

Yeah... no.

My point is that "shocking revelations" that "change the Marvel Universe" tend to neither be shocking nor change very much in the long run, so the only way Marvel could truly surprise me is to drop superhero stories altogether and strongly push comics set in other genres.

But they won't, of course. Despite being the largest American comics company, Marvel is also the most conservative. No matter how many times they threaten to "really shake things up," the stories will never really change because Marvel will never stray too far from their bread and butter: superheroes. I can tick off on one hand the number of comics they publish that DON'T, in some way, feature superheroes (and all of those are adaptations of established properties).

Even last year, when they ran tribute books to other genres Marvel used to publish (Romance, Western and "Monster"), the books all ALSO had to feature some established superhero. It couldn't just be Devil Dinosaur, it had to be a Devil Dinosaur vs. The Hulk.*

And this is a problem because Marvel dominates the American comics field and what they SAY is comics, is comics. And as long as Marvel refuses to change, then the medium and the audience for that medium stagnates. Even if superheroes are your biggest selller, publishing superheroes exclusively tells everyone not interested in men in tights that comics as a whole are not for them, and that's suicidal.

For example, "Spider-Man 3" is going to be Sony's biggest movie this year, but that doesn't mean Sony is going to do just Spider-Man movies, or even just superhero movies. That would be insane! Most people would stop seeing Sony films, and if Sony made up half the movie industry by itself, most people would stop seeing movies altogether!

Even DC Comics, which admittedly publishes mostly superhero stuff, has in the last year alone published two western on-goings, a war comic or two, a bunch of fantasy/horror through their Vertigo imprint, a Looney Tunes comic, distributed the CMX line of manga, and launched MINX, which feature teenage girl protagonists.

So there's at least one major publisher pushing different genres, giving top writers and artists the chance to tell stories about anything else to an audience that likes the medium but might not be that into superhero stories. Where's Marvel's Pride of Bagdad? Their Plain Janes? Heck, it's been over twenty years, where's their Sandman?

As for actually turning Amazing Spider-Man into Picture Perfect, I guess I had a second point. I believe Marvel Zombies AREN'T actually that interested in superheroes. They're interested in specific characters and relationships. Which is why Marvel books sell fifty thousand copies and other companies' superhero books maybe sell ten, regardless of perceived quality. And by stripping away the flashy costumes and superpowers, Marvel might be able to prove to their audience that, not only could they enjoy a romantic comedy book, they're already reading one!

It's just been hiding behind a mask.


*The book itself was extremely good, I should say. I was just using it as an example.

NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME!

This just in:

MARVEL UNIVERSE TO CHANGE! AGAIN!

Here, let me take a crack at guessing the "shocking revelation" that "everything has been leading to" but at the same time "you never saw coming":

Wanda "Deus Ex Machina" Maximoff reappears, mutters "No more...

...superheroes"

and everything goes white!

LINE WIDE CROSSOVER! EVERY BOOK RETITLED AND RE-GENRE'D!

Amazing Spider-Man is now "Picture Perfect," rom-com about struggling photographer and model/actress wife!

New Avengers is now "Avengers," police procedural about an elite F.B.I. squad!

Wolverine is now "Logan's Run," Keuroac-ian stories about a surly tough who rides across America, living and loving!

Uncanny X-Men is now "Gifted," high-school dramedy about students at a boarding school for troubled geniuses!

Captain America is now "Captain Rogers," 80 year old World War II veteran solves murders in small town!

Fantastic Four is now "Weird Chemistry," work place comedy about a science lab!

The Incredible Hulk is now "Banner," dark drama of man dealing with his violent tendencies!

Iron Man is now "Gears of Industry," political drama of weapons manufacturer with a conscience set in today's high tension climate!

and so on and so forth...

For six straight months, Marvel will truly change their universe by publishing NO SUPERHERO BOOKS, forcing the retailers who buy only DC and Marvel books to stock something different and making Marvel Zombies discover how many other types of stories can be told in the comics format, and hopefully getting those same readers to admit they can enjoy a comic book, even if it doesn't involve someone in tights shooting lasers out their eyes!

Oh, if only...

The Character of New York City

One of the tropes of superhero comics is that the hero and his city reflect each other.

Scipio Garling at the Absorbascon has written extensively about the fictionopolises of the DC Comics world, the imaginary cities that, over time, have established themselves as architectural echoes of their protectors: the neo-futurist Metropolis is home to the Man of Tomorrow; cloud enshrouded gothic Gotham is haunted by Dark Knight; Central City has the wide open spaces needed for a hero who can encircle the Earth in under a second; even the quiet and pastoral Smallville reflects the hopeful and nostalgic Adventures of Superman when he was a Boy.

This theme is an updating of the more classic trope that the king embodied the country he ruled, and as he faired, so faired the kingdom. L'État, c'est moi, as King Louis once said.

But what of the Marvel heroes, the ones who work a) in real places and b) almost entirely in New York. How can New York BE Spider-Man AND Iron Man, Daredevil AND Dr. Strange, and each member of the Fantastic Four as well?

Well, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko did something very clever: they carved up New York and placed their heroes in the neighborhoods that fit best:

Industrialist Iron Man is a leader of Wall Street;

Dr. Strange has the sweetest Greenwich Village bachelor pad and lifestyle ever;

Daredevil fights on the side of the angels in Hell’s Kitchen;

And Spider-Man’s at his very best as the hero of Queens.

And the Fantastic Four, well that’s extra clever. While the Baxter Building fits neatly into the Mid-Town collection of art deco skyscrapers, the members of the team reflect New York's four boroughs.* Ben Grimm is Brooklyn-born and bred; hot-head Johnny Storm is a Yankees fan and ladies man like any Bronx boy aspires to be, motherly Sue Storm fits into the more residential Queens (and I'm guessing is a Mets fan, just to annoy her brother), and is there a better name for a Manhattan-ite than “Mr. Fantastic”?

Later writers would add Luke Cage, Hero for Hire of Harlem, and the Punisher, scourge of Sheepshead Bay. And with each story, with each issue, the city would gain more and more personality, more and more character, until it seemed to breathe.

Which is why I think it’s kind of silly when fans and Joe Quesada insist Marvel Comics take place in “the real world.” The Marvel Universe just isn’t real. Not just that super-powered soldiers and alien invasions would warp the course of history, but by their very legendary nature, superheroes imbue any city they exist in with mythic qualities.

When seen through the mask of Spider-Man, New York becomes a fictionopolis, a place as alive, as full of personality and absurdity and horror and hope as any Metropolis, as any Gotham.

When Spider-Man swings through Manhattan, New York lives!


* “Jon, everyone knows Staten Island doesn’t count.”

Two Views of Ms. Marvel

Most of what I know about Ms. Marvel I picked up from the blogs. I gather that she's a super-strong powerhouse and leader of one of Marvel's premier super teams with a confusing back story and, um, a generous endowment. Basically, she's Marvel's Power Girl. But nevertheless, I'd like to take a moment to consider how Marvel is presenting their blonde bombshell to the potential comics buyer (as taken from their July Solicitations):

First up is the cover of Ms. Marvel #17 by Greg Horn. I know Horn mostly as the cover artist on She-Hulk, where a reputation for bad cheesecake poses didn't stop him from producing some really awesome covers.


First off, I like that after photo-referencing the face, Horn went ahead and photo referenced the hair too, giving the finished image a more natural look (rather than looking like a real person wearing a yellow foam wig). I also like how the lighting and speed lines emphasize her smile and the flaming bits of debris suggest how powerfully she broke through. The head seems maybe too big for her body, but the rest of her seems reasonably well proportioned. Over all, this is a very good representation of a strong woman who really, really enjoys beating the crap out of doors.

And then we have Frank Cho's cover for Mighty Avengers #5:


Oy.

I don't mind that Ms. Marvel is shown getting shot in the back; I assume that's a scene in the comic itself and seeing the leader and strongest member of the team taken out on the cover shows the seriousness of the threat. It's that she's shot off to the side, facing away from the viewer, while Ant-Man--Ant-Man?--gets to look badass front and center.

Okay, we get it. Frank Cho likes to draw women's butts. But this is getting ridiculous, especially after the ass-tastic covers for Mighty Avengers #3 AND Mighty Avengers #4. Why can't Ms. Marvel face the viewer, so we can see her reaction to the attack? Why can't we empathize with her, rather than gaze at her?

Is she a character, or is she an object?

Greg Horn has his answer, Mr. Cho. What's yours?

It Had to be Said #5

Professor Xavier is NOT Martin Luther King Jr.

While both have a dream of a better world for their respective repressed minorities, Martin Luther King was a pacifist who refused to use violence, even to defend himself.

Professor X trained his students to be masked vigilante freedom fighters who beat the crap out of anyone, human or mutant, who gets in the way of his goals.

No, Professor X's belief that mutants have the right, and sometimes to the need, to use violence to defend themselves makes him a lot closer to, appropriately enough, Malcolm X.

It would be an interesting story, I think, if Xavier and his small army of demi-gods met a truly King-esque mutant rights activist, someone who thinks the violent tactics of the X-Men themselves hurt the cause, one who refused to attack the Sentinels, but rather lay in front of them, absorb their blows and refuse to budge. This would be particularly entertaining if said pacifist was the Blob.

p.s. And here is an excellent post on why Magneto isn't Malcolm X

Oh you've GOT to be kidding me

SPIDER-MAN
Theatre
MUSICAL
AEA 29-HOUR REHEARSED READING
Director: Julie Taymor
Music and Lyrics: Bono and The Edge of U2
Musical Supervisor: Teese Gohl
Book: Julie Taymor and Glen Berger
Producer: Hello Entertainment/David Garfinkle, Martin McCallum, Marvel Entertainment
Casting Director: Telsey + Company
Rehearsals: Begin 7/2/07 in NYC
Reading: 7/12/07 and 7/13/07

Oh my God, they're ACTUALLY doing Kiss of the Spider-Man!

Who Ya' Got?

OR

I Aten't Dead

Just resting. Big changes at Casa del Padnick (looking for a new job in publishing) and a HECK of a lot of travel took the blogging bug out of me for awhile, but I'll be back. Just you wait.

In the meantime, amuse yourself with some of my Marvel musings:

Has Fin Fang Foom ever fought Galactus? If not, why not?

When I started reading Civil War, I kind of wanted Millar to surprise me and show me that Captain America was in the wrong. But to quote a great man, "Not Like This! Like This!"

Aunt May's dead. Again. Was that really the best way to go with the whole unmasking storyline? Couldn't they have taken this opportunity to take Spider-Man somewhere actually new?

In honor of the second greatest cover of 2007, I'm trying to a write a song. So far I've got:

"His name was Ego:
He was a planet
With heart-shaped craters on his head
and a beard all filled with dread"

I'm trying to figure out why Spider-Man killing Mary-Jane with his "love" in Reign icks me out but a similar development near the end of Peter David's run on The Incredible Hulk I was fine with. Is it the fact that Kaare Andrews specifically locates the radiation to Peter Parker's erm, "fluids"?

Yeah, yeah it is.

NEXTWAVE: Agents of Atlas. Am I right, or am I right?

Fixing Civil War

I was enjoying Marvel's Civil War. The basic premises, a conflict between security and individual rights played out as a literal battle between established superheroes, and how honorable people can end up violently disagreeing over important issues, are very strong and the art is very pretty. However, there have been MAJOR problems that have turned me off the whole thing.

And it didn't need to be that way. Here's how I would solve the problems of Civil War. (Nope, no hubris here).

1. The production delays. Yes, these are a problem. And whether by delaying the whole series until the late summer, to give Steve McNiven more time to draw, or calling in a fill-in artist, or simply not delaying other major titles so as not to spoil the shocking, shocking (ultimately, not that shocking) reveals, the delays should have been anticipated and dealt with. Personally, I would have disentangled it from the Marvel universe proper until it was resolved or almost resolved.

2. More to problems in the story itself, I'd make the Superhero Registration Act damned specific. Right now it's a vague mess. And if the debate is security vs. privacy, which it should be, the law should be a strongly enforced anti-vigilantism law, because, honestly, if you're using your mutant powers to bake cupcakes, who cares, but if you're just a regular joe using M-60s to mow down Mafia goombas, I think the police would like a word with you. Then the debate becomes whether superhumans have the right to take the law into their own hands without accountability to the public, and then, if you agree that they need to be watched, well, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

3. As a corollary, the opening incident needs to be the direct result of the superhero committing a crime in the name of justice, and innocent people dying because of it. As it stands now, the New Warriors, funded by a television company and being documented by their own news crew, failed to stop a bad guy from killing lots of people. It is hard to see how the New Warriors could have been MORE public and MORE accountable, considering most of them died trying to save lives and there is still a major corporation that can be sued for damages, and being restrained by the law would NOT have prevented the explosion.

If I were writing Civil War, the Stamford Incident would have been caused by any of Marvel's monstrous or murderous anti-heroes beating Nitro to death, releasing his explosive energy in a civilian setting. In my dream scenario, it's Ghost Rider, who uses his penance stare to make Nitro go boom, so that only he remains in the burnt out field, charred bodies all around him. (Now he has to lam it on his bike every time the super authorities catch up with him, but can he out run his own guilt? But that's my pitch for a GR ongoing, and I digress...) So instead of heroes dying before they can prevent a mad man from killing, we have an immortal demon chasing vengeance regardless of the human cost... and THAT could get some people talking about new laws and new enforcement.

4. Captain America is the conscience of the Marvel Universe. Once he picked a side, it was all over. So I'd switch Captain America's and Spider-Man's positions, making Spider-Man the anti-reg leader and Cap the conflicted supporter/patsy of Iron Man. Yeah, it's America torn by Civil War, but even with the cliché, it works. It also makes more sense that Tony Stark would court his old friend and long-time ally, the universally beloved World War II hero Steve Rogers, to be the face of his campaign, rather than the publicly reviled Spider-Man, who Tony Stark may have worked with before but barely knows. And I could imagine Cap. America, Iron Man, and Reed Richards (the daddies of MU) making a good case that the kids can't just run around breaking things unsupervised.

It also puts Spider-Man in a more interesting position. More than anyone else (except maybe Matt "Daredevil" Murdock) Spider-Man knows the dangers of having his identity exposed. At the same time, Peter is hardly used to working on a team. What will he do when he has the power and responsibility of leading others into battle? Is openly flaunting a law putting his family in less danger or more? It also opens up class questions (Rich (Iron) Man/Poor (Spider) Man) and age gap issues.

5. I wouldn't put all the assholes on one side. The pro-registration side could have a very strong case, if they were not also so into throwing their friends into concentration camps, hiring mass murderers to hunt down people who have broken no laws but disagree with them, and play Odin by trying to clone gods. Not that superheroes can't make mistakes or be wrong, but shouldn't both sides be guilty of doing terrible things? Wouldn't it make more sense for the side without public and government support to be doing the more desperate, ethically questionable things? (so far, the worst thing they've done is let the Punisher save Spider-Man's life).

6. And less "shocks". The conflict is strong enough to carry seven issues without reveals like Thor, Clone of Thunder, the all new Suicide Squad Thunderbolts, and Dark Speedball. All that does is distract from the main idea, the underlying moral conflict. I know it's the major crossover, tying into tons of books and launching more than a few series, but the story would be better served by paring down the "moments" and leaving more space for character work and emotional beats.

So, to re-cap,

1. Cut it off from the rest of superhero books, for now.

2. Clarify that the debate is over vigilantism, and who watches whom.

3. Have the catalyst explosion be caused by over-zealous, not incompetent, super "heroes."

4. Put the moral center of the universe in the center of the conflict.

5. Morally compromise both sides, especially the less powerful side.

6. Get rid of the stupid stuff.

Oh, wait, that's Kingdom Come.

Hey Asians!

More offensive?

OR ?

Last Words (and Pictures)

Hey, I'm back. Miss me?

I want to talk about last pages. It's really the advantage of the singles over the trade. The shocking reveal. The nail-biting cliffhanger. The joke and freeze. Even the summation, moral, and coda. The great last page confirms "Yeah, you just read A Story, a real story, and don't it suck for you that you have to wait a whole 'nother month for what else we got in store." You lose that in the trade. Golden moments, like Superman and Lex Luthor plummeting to Earth in Up, Up, and Away, are frozen in time as you wait weeks for the next issue. In the trade, it's just another page in the middle of the book.

Yeah, it's arbitrary, a product of the medium rather than a creative choice, but good creators can make the boundaries work for them. I bought six comics last week* and all but one had BRILLIANT last pages. (The outlier was Boys #4, which is probably my new definition of "wait for the trade.")

Secret Six #5 employed the classic, reveal and cliffhanger one-two: forgotten character reappears, then immediately puts our heroes in mortal jeopardy. Now you have to read issue #6, the conclusion, to see how our "heroes" get out of this one. If they get out of this one.

52 #25 does the classic with a double twist. Not only does the mysterious mastermind behind the Island of Mad Scientists step forward to imperil Black Adam and Isis, his identity turns out to be a new twist on an old, buried character, and his particular threat references earlier clues in the series itself, drawing the disparate plots together.

Action Comics #844 has a reveal, but really the last page serves as a summation and conclusion. It ends the chapter being told. The story could conceivably just end on that last page, since it establishes a new but relatively stable status quo. Not that it will, because there's a "to be continued" hiding in the bottom right corner and the new status quo is too big a change to be confined to just one book.

Nextwave #9, plotwise, doesn't have that great a last page. Nothing's revealed. The heroes are in no more or less danger on the last page then they were six pages earlier. It certainly isn't the end of the story, or even the beginning of a new one. But it was a PERFECT last page. Because it contained a joke--a joke so powerful that I could not continue reading. That's right, Ellis and Immonen knew that anything read after that page would be lost in its massive wake, so they moved it to the end where it could do no harm to the rest of the story, while at the same time positioning the joke for maximum focus, making it more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

But of course, the comic of the week, my HANDS DOWN pick, is Seven Soldiers of Victory #1. And it had THREE great last pages. Sure it could have ended on page 37. With its narration directed at the reader and image and panels that recall the first page of the first issue of Seven Soldiers, it would have been a nice bookend. Or it could have ended with page 38, the twist ending. But like Nextwave before it, Seven Soldiers had a moment, an image so powerful that it FORCED itself to the last page. The moment certainly isn't the end of the story. It's not even a very important moment to the main plot.

But the image IS the story of Seven Soldiers. It's a monument to unending nature of comics, that every last page is an advertisement for the next issue, that every death and birth is there for later writers to undo and redo. It's an image that mixes the macabre with the sacred, the simple with the mysterious, the absolute mundane with the beyond fantastic. It's an image that says superheroes can do impossible things, and that's why we love them. It's a moment so great that there just can't be another page, even though it's a last page that SCREAMS "TO BE CONTINUED!!!" without saying a word. It has to be the last page, because after seeing that page, there's nothing left to say...

until next month...



*yeah, vacation doesn't stop the habit. Once, when traveling through Alaska, I made a stop at the world's most Northern Comic Book store to pick up Zero Hour #0, which was out that week.

Scatter-Thoughts

Going on vacation for a week, so new post for a bit.

In the meantime, I leave you with some random thoughts.

Hey, Robert Kirkman, if you want to read about "an inexperienced hero who would get beaten up constantly and probably die," check out this week's Robin. Or Birds of Prey. Or 52.


The only thing that would have made the page of new heroes shouting their stupid names better is if they had shouted them in Logo Font.


Speaking of, Red Tornado looked beyond the veil of universe and saw 52... what? My guess: 52 other universes (which, including the universe he was in at the time, would be a full pack plus a wild card). And they're coming.


If the conversation on superheroes and class is going to keep going, we might want to start defining our terms. I realize in my own arguments I'm getting thrown off my point a lot by confusing aristocracy, wealth, style, education, power, and morality. The original question was whether the superhero genre perpetuates the myth of aristocracy, that some people are just born to rule. That's shifted a bit into whether Batman fights social injustice and why aren't more superheroes classy, with claims of anti-intellectualism thrown in.


The anti-intellectualism claims really bother me, for some reason. There's this odd assumption that having an education, particularly a post graduate education, is synonymous with being upper class, an influential figure on the course of society, which just isn't true. Most of the academics I know toil in obscurity (and read this blog! Hey, Aaron, David, and Jeff)!. As Cole points out, Kal-El is not a lost prince of Krypton. He's the son of a smart but not highly respected scientist. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne (who we all agree runs Gotham, yes?) never even went to college. And back in the real world... well let's just say that being a total and complete moron doesn't stop you from getting elected President.


Casanova is a heck of good read. As is 100 Bullets, which has started barrelling towards its conclusion.


Has it really been a month since ANY issue of Superman's three ongoings have hit the shelves? And I have to wait till December for more All-Star goodness? C'mon! I'm starting to feel like a Green Lantern fan over here.


Speaking of, sort of, Morrison Batman run filled-in by The Spectre team of Ostrader and Mandrake? Yeah, I'll take that.


Yes, I heard about NextWave. No, I'm not surprised. No, I haven't rent my garments nor gnashed my teeth. Yes, that will be one less Marvel title I'm buying. Yes, I'll probably pick up whatever NextWave limited series come down the pike. No, I'm not buying Thunderbolts.

Best Cover of 2007!

Neutral

Hey Everyone! How ya been?

First up, thanks for the links, anonymous posters on The IMDB and Television Without Pity message boards. With your help, I cracked the 10,000 mark. (and while I appreciate being considered an "expert" on Lois Lane, the idea of "Chlois" just creeps me out to no end, possibly because it sounds too much like "Clor".)

And thanks to Ragnell for conscripting me into Beefcake/Cheesecake Week. It saves me the trouble of having to come up with a separate post. (and HOLY! Is this the kind of traffic you get everyday?)

This response from Robert Kirkman to the strong criticism of the death of Freedom Ring got me thinking. Kirkman cops to being too clever by half, basically, taking two really good ideas for a superhero ("being superpowered isn't enough to make you a superhero" and "being gay is not the beginning and end of defining a character") and muddling them both by combining the two. While clearly not his intention, a very clear interpretation of the result is that Freedom Ring was killed because he was gay.

What I started thinking about was how Kirkman could have told the first idea without getting into trouble. (The idea of a superhero actually suffering and sacrificing to do his job, obviously, interests me.) And I realized the only way he could have done it is if Freedom Ring was a straight white male.

If Freedom Ring was black, or Hispanic, or Asian, or if he were a she, then Kirkman might have been accused (rightly accused) of implying that Freedom Ring was incompetent because he was black, because she was a woman.

But no one would reasonably say he would have died because he was male, or white, or straight. For storytelling purposes, a straight white male is neutral, contains no value that informs or overwhelms other, subtler personality traits.

It reminds me of something I read in... a book whose title escapes me now, but I'll remember later a book by Douglas Hofstadter. It said that you can't start a joke "a woman walks into a bar..." unless the joke was about her being a woman. If the punch line is "I was talking to the duck" then the listener is left wondering why you specified the lead as a woman. This does not happen if you say "a man walks into a bar..." "Man" is a blank template, and if his sex is not essential to the story, no one tries to figure out why you brought it up. For some reason, "man" is less specific that "woman."

Which is crap, of course. In reality, being straight, being white, or being male, DOES inform character just as much as being gay, black or female. So those traits SHOULD inform the writing and reading of characters just as much traits that aren't "neutral". Which is to say a little, but not entirely.

The solution, I feel, is just having more and more varied characters who are gay (or who are black or Hispanic or who are women), so that the "value" of "gay" is weakened until the unique person shines through.

But it does put Kirkman in a bind for writing a character "who happens to be gay," right now. Without counter-examples of competent gay superheroes to compare Freedom Ring to, it's hard to argue that the failure and the gay have NOTHING to do with each other.

He certainly shouldn't have told the story at Marvel, which has so few gay characters. It would have been better, but not much, in the DC universe, where at least Obsidian, Piper, Montoya, and Maggie Sawyer kick ass.

But in the Wildstorm Universe, where the two baddest bastards on the planet also happen to bone each other, Freedom Ring's story would have taken on an entirely different meaning. There, the lesson would be "being superpowered AND gay isn't enough to make you a superhero." And that's a story I can support.

Wish I Had Thought of This Last Week

So, what's the over/under on how many years until Marvel releases Ultimate Civil War #1?

And for the perfecta, how many years after that does issue #7 come out?

You Hear It... First

Who would you rather have tell you that a great evil is coming and only you can prevent the destruction this Earth and every Earth throughout the multiverse?

This guy?



Or this guy?



Now, neither of them are going to give you much to go on past, "Beware! Beware!" But the Watcher will be a bit of whiny jerk about not helping you, claiming he can't help you because he's "not permitted". Not permitted? Who's going to stop him, the Living Tribunal?

On the other hand, the Phantom Stranger's kind of stand-offish. I mean, he's been working with some of these superheroes since the beginning of time, and he's still a stranger? Shouldn't he be the Phantom Friend by now? Phantom Chum? Phantom Amigo? Phantom Casual Acquaintance?