Author: Martha Thomases

Martha Thomases: The Big Binge

Letter 44Yesterday, in a fit of inertia, I watched five episodes of Bosch on Amazon Prime. The show is based on Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, a detective in a series of terrific books by Michael Connelly.

It’s a good enough show, at least so far. It moves at its own pace, so I had plenty of time to wonder about weird, related stuff. Would I look like star Titus Welliver if I was a man, since we have the same bags under our eyes and the same beginner jowls? Don’t the female characters in the books have more to do than look at Harry with adoring eyes? Is that a part of Los Angeles I’ve been to, or has it been in a million other movies? Why aren’t there more food trucks in the LA on this show? Why aren’t there more food trucks in my neighborhood right now?

Once I was satisfied with my answers to those questions, I started to compare the phenomenon of binge-watching to reading a collected trade paperback collection of comic book series.

It is most satisfying to binge-watch programs made to be binged. By this, I mean that Orange Is the New Black, House of Cards, Grace and Frankie and, yes, Bosch work better than American network shows like Supernatural (which I’m trying to get into because it’s a popular Internet meme and I should know what’s going on) or even Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Television shows can work when you watch them once a week, when you need to be reminded who the different characters are and what happened. When you watch them all at once, it’s really annoying to be told the same things over and over (and over and over) again.

However, watching, say, the fifth episode of Bosch (or any other show designed for bingeing) would be less satisfying than watching the fifth episode of Buffy because of that lack of repetition. Each episode of a network drama is designed to be self-contained. When you watch any episode, you can tell who the main characters are, what kind of people they are, and what is at stake for them.

When I started to read comic books, each issue was designed to be self-contained. Regular readers might know more about the backgrounds of the characters, but the publishers knew that every issue might be somebody’s first. Every issue had a beginning, a middle and an end.

Even in the 1990s, when comic book sagas were planned to span several issues, each issue still had a complete story. If there was something from a previous issue that the reader needed to know, the creators and editors found a way to work that in, either with a flashback or dialogue. The best-selling collected edition at the time, The Death of Superman, can be maddening to read in one sitting, precisely because the necessary plot points are repeated so often.

The inside-out version of this is also true, at least for me. When I read a series that seems to be designed to be collected, I often forget what’s happening between issues (and I can’t always find my previous issues, but that’s a house-keeping problem of mine, not a general cultural crisis). Most recently, I notice this with Letter 44, a series I really like. And I’d like it much better if I could remember who the good guys and bad guys were from one issue to the next.

Comic book economics are such that it is not always possible to publish a graphic novel all at once. Those monthly pamphlets let the publishers amortize the costs over a longer term, so there is less risk. I get that. I get that so much that I want to support unusual work that needs my money upfront, at the pamphlet stage. I want artists and writers to get paid as often as possible.

There has to be a better way to do this than we’re doing it now. Either we need a better publishing plan, or we need better drugs for my memory.

Martha Thomases: Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow

Tomorrowland didn’t do as well as expected this weekend in theaters.  Some people celebrated this fact, apparently believing that the movie was the brainchild of George Clooney and that it was a propaganda film about climate change.

They must have seen a different movie than I did.

I’ll admit that, like the Big Hollywood website, I went to the theater with my own set of assumptions and biases.  Tomorrowland is my favorite area in the Disney parks, the first place I wanted to go the first time I went (in 1979).  I love the work of director Brad Bird, and have since The Family Dog. perro-de-familia

And, yeah, I have the hots for George Clooney and I think climate change is an issue deserving action.  Only the first of those affects my ticket-buying decisions.

So, the Disney nerd in me loved the movie.  But, more important to this column, so did the comics fan.

Because I love the future.  I remember when everybody did.

You see, one of the themes of Tomorrowland is that we, as a society, have become too enthralled with pessimistic stories and fleeting fads.  Instead of wallowing in disaster movies (like this) or dystopian dramas (like this), we should work together to make the future better.

Look, it’s really normal for adolescents to be drawn to the “grim’n’gritty” dystopias.  And, by “normal,” I mean that I did it.  For me, devastated that I was not only the center of the universe but my parents weren’t all-powerful and my body was doing strange things that involved icky fluids, it seemed that pessimism was the more sophisticated viewpoint.  I wasn’t a little kid anymore, with bright colors and flowers and candy.  No, I wore black and I was sullen.  If the cool kids (the jocks and the cheerleaders) wouldn’t have me as one of their own, I was going to act as if I rejected them first.

And then I grew up.

Look, I still like a lot of things that can seem pessimistic.  Blade Runner remains one of my favorite movies, based on the work of Philip K. Dick, a rather depressing writer whom like a lot.  I like punk rock and Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen.  I like Transmetropolitan and The Dark Knight Returns.

The older I get, however, the more I want hope.  And that hope lies in the future.alanna-and-adam-strange

Comics helped me with this.  Adam Strange not only engaged with an alien world, but fell in love and married an alien.  The Legion of Super-Heroes posited a time when the whole universe would band together to make life better.

A lot of today’s best comics come from a hopeful place.  I’d include Saga  and Sex Criminals and even Bitch Planet as works that rouse the spirit.

Another science fiction writer I enjoy, William Gibson, is sometimes credited as one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement, which often painted a bleak future.  His most recent book, The Peripheral, has it’s share of dystopian prophecy, but ends up (SPOILER, maybe?) making the case that we can change the future.  We can make the world better.

A better world is worth the effort.  Especially if it includes George Clooney.aa19ac627923e9f171a6e379af4c6c36

Martha Thomases: It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s A Girl!

My editor suggested, if I was having trouble coming up with ideas about what to write, that I note that the new CBS prime-time show, Supergirl, will air at eight o’clock Eastern time on Mondays when it starts this fall… up against Gotham on Fox.

The assumption, when he mentioned this to me last week, was that Supergirl would have trouble against the adventures of Bruce Wayne as a boy, since the Batman character has a known success across several media for more than fifty years. Kara Zor-El, on the other hand, starred in one lousy movie and guested on a season of Smallville.

And then, this happened. Pitch Perfect 2 beat Mad Max: Fury Road for highest grossing opening box office this weekend. By a lot.

“Well,” you say (you being my rhetorical projection), “that’s really irrelevant, because movies are different from television.” This is true.

“And anyway,” you continue, “women don’t like superheroes, so who will watch the show?”

You, my rhetorical projection, are wrong. Women watch the current crop of superhero shows in large numbers. They also watch shows in related genres, including fantasy (Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, for example) and horror (like Supernatural and iZombie).

I’m really psyched because, as you know, I’m a long-time Supergirl fan. I have enjoyed almost every incarnation of the character, including the one who had a flying horse that would turn into a cute guy when the occasion required. This new television version seems to owe a bit too much to The Devil Wears Prada, at least in the trailer, but it is my hope that, as the writers get comfortable with the material they’ll find a more unique take on the characters. It’s what happened in other 0808-produced shows, including Arrow and The Flash.

They should also stop being self-conscious about the character being named “Supergirl.” Yes, it’s kind of anachronistic, so I guess they have to address it. However, the explanation in the trailer has Kara’s horrible boss explaining that “What do you think is so bad about ‘girl?’ I’m a girl and your boss and powerful and rich and hot and smart. So if you perceive ‘Supergirl’ as anything less than excellent, isn’t the real problem you?’”

I don’t know. Why don’t you ask the black James (Jimmy) Olson how excellent it feels to be called a “boy?”

Let’s face it. “Supergirl” has the same number of syllables as “Superman.” It scans a little bit better. We’re used to it. There are other characters already named “Superwoman,” and they are not Kara Zor-El.

In any case, we’re finally getting a prime-time show dedicated to a female adventure hero. From the trailer, it doesn’t seem as if her love life is going to be her defining reason for being. I expect there will be romances (as there are on Flash, Arrow, Gotham and, let’s face it, every nighttime drama), but there will be existential crises, and action and explosions.

Hollywood has a real problem with diversity issues, especially as they relate to women (and especially especially women of color). There are non-feminist women who think this isn’t a problem, but I can only presume they have rich husbands or fathers, or they’re being paid by rich men to defend the status quo.

Two of the five Supergirl producers mentioned on IMDB.com for this series are women. Here’s hoping that’s a good sign.

Will Supergirl be able to hold its own in the ratings against Gotham? I have no idea. I’m never home on Mondays. i know which one I’ll watch on my DVR first.

Even if there is no flying horse.

 

Martha Thomases: Betty and Veronica and Adam Hughes and Sex

Betty & Veronica Adam HughesThis week, Archie Comics announced a Kickstarter campaign to launch a bunch of new titles. If you read the comments at the link (which normally, I would never recommend), you’ll see people who object to Adam Hughes drawing Betty and Veronica because it objectifies the characters, seeing them through the male gaze.

First, let me say that I like Adam Hughes’ work. I think the women he draws, while beautiful, also look physically possible, more like movie stars with trainers than broomsticks with hair and boobs.  If that gets me booted out of Feminism Camp, so be it.

But mostly, when has Betty and Veronica been about anything but the male gaze? Two beautiful teenage girls, interchangeable except for the color of their hair, wear the most revealing clothes the Comics Code would allow, mooning over a boy who is average at best. The fact that these have been described as “comics for girls” is an example of gender-role indoctrination at its most insidious.

And, yes, I kind of like them, too. I contain multitudes.

Anyway, this story, which might not be important in and of itself, seems to me to be part of a larger issue. We are in (I hope) a period of transition, as women and other groups who don’t look like studio heads and venture capitalists (i.e. by and large mostly straight white men) are trying to tell their own stories or, at least, see stories about characters who look like them.

This happens most felicitously when a variety of people get to tell their own stories in their own ways. It can also happen when talented straight white men who actually know a variety of people tell a story honestly.

It doesn’t happen when they take a straight white male hero and slap tits/black skin/brown skin/queer impulses on him. Unfortunately, that last option happens a lot. And when the hero is made female, she is too often cast because she looks beautiful, not heroic.

This was satirized brilliantly on a recent episode of Inside Amy Schumer. A jury of 12 angry men sat in judgment as to whether or not Amy Schumer was hot enough to star in a cable television show. They didn’t talk about whether or not she was funny, or a talented actor. They talked about whether or not her appearance gave them a “chubbie.”

Lots of women in show business have complained about this type of behavior, and for the most part, men – even sympathetic men — haven’t fully believed them. In fact, the show was inspired by a real event  and a real idiot, a man with access to entertainment executives, a man to whom the industry listens.

It’s tempting, at this point, to sigh and make a (stereotyped and bigoted) joke about nerds who live in their mothers’ basements and don’t know any real women. Those jokes might even have a bit of truth to them. However, we live in a time when women who express opinions and demonstrate autonomy get death threats. Their jobs are threatened. The men responsible complain about the tyranny of feminism (in which case, where is my scepter?) and lament that women get to control their own bodies when deciding with whom they want to have sex.

(Note: I read that somewhere online in a comments section, and can’t find the link anymore. It might be the opinion of only one guy. I hope so.)

There will be nothing on television in the upcoming season that extreme because television exists on advertising aimed at the mass market. Instead, we’ll get a bunch of shows that pat women on the head for being so gosh-darned resourceful as to manage both a career and a vagina . All the women starring in these shows will be as beautiful as Betty and Veronica. and they will have gorgeous wardrobes. Some will be able to chase criminals while wearing high heels.

It is up to us, as the audience, to see to it that this condescending, patronizing kind of show falls flat on its face.

 

Martha Thomases: The Usual Gang

Are you watching the last season of Mad Men? It’s our last chance to see Jon Hamm in so many crisp suits – at least for a while.

It’s also a weird sort of time travel, at least for me. I figure that I’m about the same age as Sally, the oldest daughter in Don Draper’s (i.e. Hamm’s) family, so I’m watching events I lived through, but from the perspective of my parents, if they were stunningly beautiful, not Jewish, lived in New York, and worked in advertising in the 1960s.

In the ten fictional years since the show started, we’ve watched the turbulent 1960s from the point of view of successful, media-savvy adults, mostly men. We saw Kennedy get elected and assassinated. We saw the Civil Rights movement and Woodstock. We saw Americans land on the moon.

This season, it’s 1970. And it’s remarkable how that time, 45 years ago, is so much like now.

If you click on the link, you’ll read an insightful analysis of Sunday’s episode when both Peggy (the first woman to write copy at our fictional ad agency) and especially Joan (a secretary who became an account executive and partner at the firm) faced subtle (in Peggy’s case) and not-subtle-at-all (in Joan’s case) sexism.

My problem with the episode is that it didn’t play like something from the past. That crap still goes on far too much. Even (maybe especially) in the so-called “liberal” entertainment industry. (See here for an extremely vile assortment of examples).

This is bad news for working women, and it’s bad news for society in general. We miss out on different points of view and we miss out on the great work people with different backgrounds can do. There is no reason to think you have better talent available from a smaller group of applicants.

Comics have the same problem, albeit with less money at stake. When I was at DC in the 1990s, at least one prominent editor said as a statement of fact that women can’t write superhero comics. This is the cousin to the Hollywood attitude that female superheroes can’t star in movies. At least in comics (again, probably because less money is involved), we have writers like Kelly Sue DeConnick, Gail Simone, Amanda Connor, and G. Willow Wilson as best-selling examples to the contrary. (Also probably dozens of others. Forgive my laziness at looking up stuff.)

We suffer as an audience when we are only offered the stories of white people. Most recently, a group of Native American actors walked off the set of an Adam Sandler movie because the dialogue was so profoundly offensive to them. As this article about the incident suggests, Native Americans get far fewer roles than they should, so it took great courage to give up a paycheck. I hope that the attention they get encourages someone to make a comedy movie from their point of view. It has to be funnier than Jack and Jill .

Nearly 30 years ago, when I saw Spike Lee’s School Daze, I walked out of the movie theater thinking, “That’s how black people talk when there are no white people around.” I’ll never know whether or not that’s true, but I felt I had been offered the chance to eavesdrop on a different world. I still enjoy that opportunity, but Spike Lee did it in a way that had singing and dancing.

Of course, no one actually talks the way people do in the movies. We hem and haw more, we don’t finish our sentences, and we digress from the subject at hand. Movie people talk with precision because they only have two hours to tell the whole story.

Mad Men isn’t a bad show because its point of view is limited. Every piece of art has a limited point of view. The way to enjoy different points of view is to live your life and pay attention. One purpose of entertainment should be to open our eyes to other experiences.

 

Martha Thomases Reviews Marvel’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron

UltronLucky for me, it was the “friends and family” screening of Avengers: Age of Ulton.

First of all, I was lucky because I got to go. I was lucky to hear Joe Quesada introduce the film, not only because he was amusing but he was gracious enough to thank the event planners before he thanked the Hollywood bosses. Trust me, as someone who has worked events for more than 20 years, it’s unusual when someone says “Thank you.” He also thanked all the people who worked on the books, the source material for the movies.

And I was lucky because of the audience. The people in Manhattan’s Ziegfeld Theater on Tuesday were Marvel (and Disney) employees, freelancers, and their plus-ones. It was the kind of audience that cheered the coming attractions (Ant-Man), of course. They cheered the created-by credits. They cheered Stan Lee. From their cheers, I could tell that I picked up all the Easter eggs, thrown in for the fans in the audience by the fans who made the film.

The film. How was it? There may be SPOILERS, depending on how you define the term, although I will try to avoid the big ones.

If you haven’t seen the first Avengers movie, you might have some problems jumping into the plot of this one. If you haven’t seen any of the Iron Man, Thor or Captain America movies, you may miss a few key character developments. And if you didn’t watch Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this week, you missed the set-up.

None of this was a problem for me. I’m going to guess, given the name of this site, that it isn’t a problem for you either.

The plot, as you might surmise from the title, concerns the creation of Ultron, using the Infinity Stone from Loki’s staff (from the first Avengers movie) and Tony Stark’s tech. Ultron runs amok, and the rest of the movie involves our heroes trying to stop him/it. As they do, they first fight and then team-up with Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. In the process, many, many places suffer severe damage, including Wakanda.

(During the fight in Wakanda, our heroes must deal with the local police and, later, the military. In both cases, the first faces we see in uniform are white. Given current events, this took me out of the narrative for a beat.)

If I approach this review with my English class lessons, it is difficult to describe. There is no single protagonist, no character who has a transformative story arc. My future husband, Robert Downey, Jr., and the other heroes with their own film franchises (i.e. Captain America and Thor) do very little other than fight and trade quips, once they get past the exposition parts of the dialogue.

Instead, the revealing character moments belong to the Hulk, to Hawkeye, and the Black Widow. If anything is going to rile up the fanboys, it is the changes the movie makes to Hawkeye. Since I haven’t followed the character in the comics (although I’ve enjoyed a bunch of the new version), I wasn’t offended. I think it works for the character in the movie. It explains a lot about his relationship with Black Widow.

Here’s my favorite thing about the version of the Black Widow we get in these movies, a part of her character I credit to Joss Whedon (based on Buffy and Firefly): she not only holds her own with the male characters, but she has relationships with them that are collegial, not romantic. She is, first and foremost, a friend and an ally. While there seems to be some suggestion that she and Bruce Banner might click, even that possibility comes from the trust and respect they have for each other as teammates, not hot bodies.

Ultimately, The Avengers: Age of Ultron suffers from the fate of most middle films in a trilogy. There can’t be a real resolution because then there would be no need for the third movie. Still, there are a lot of pretty people doing a lot of pretty spectacular things, with plenty of explosions and lots and lots of fight scenes in exotic scenery.

Go. You’ll have a good time. Just don’t try to write an English theme about it.

 

Martha Thomases: Tim McGraw, Frank Cho, Sex and Guns

spider-gwenIt’s going to take me a bit to get to comics this week, so please bear with me. We have a lot of outrage to get through first.

Recently, country singer Tim McGraw decided that, when he was in Hartford, Connecticut on his national tour, he would do a benefit concert for the charity Sandy Hook Promise. This organization was started after the shootings at the Sandy Hook elementary school and describes their mission thusly:

“1) Protect children from gun violence so no other parent experiences the loss of their child by engaging and empowering parents and communities with targeted prevention programs in the areas of mental wellness early-identification & intervention, social & emotional development and firearm safety & security.

“2) Help our community through this tragedy by providing resources and programs that foster connection, resiliency and overall wellness.”

Naturally, all hell broke lose.

By volunteering to do a benefit concert for an organization dedicated to protecting children from gun violence, Tim McGraw had, according to the haters, betrayed country music. In order to be a true country music artist, they seemed to say, McGraw had to love guns, cowboy hats, hunting, and vote Republican. McGraw, a self-confessed Democrat, had revealed himself to be an apostate.

(I wouldn’t know about these standards, because this and this and this and this are the kinds of country music I like.)

Country music fans are funny like that. A decade ago, when the Dixie Chicks criticized George W. Bush and the build-up to the Iraq War at a concert in England, they were banned – by programmers, not the government – from country radio. Some pro-war people burned their CDs in public.

As a leftie, there are creative people who have political opinions with which I disagree. Sometimes, that is enough to make me question their art (Andrew Dice Clay) and sometimes I continue to like their work anyway, but with reservations (Mel Gibson). Sometimes I never liked their work in the first place (Ted Nugent) so not liking their opinions has no effect on my life.

Never have I wanted to ban them. Never have I burned their products in the public square. If it comes up in conversation, I am not shy about expressing my opinion. I might even join a demonstration, but to protest those opinions with which I disagree, not their attempts to earn a living.

We seem to confuse those two things.

Which brings us to comics. Finally.

Artist Frank Cho recently drew his riff on the Spider-Woman cover controversy on a comic book with a blank cover. He did not do this for Marvel, nor did he make a poster and try to sell it. He did, however, post the image online.

And then the Internet happened.

I haven’t read all the commentary because, well, it upsets my stomach. There are people (often but not exclusively women) who don’t like the image and have said so. There are people (often but not exclusively men) who liked it a lot and don’t like it when other people say they don’t like it. There may or may not be people who wanted to ban the image, but, to be honest, I just can’t.

Look, if you put an image on the Internet or any public forum, you are asking for a reaction to said image. If you’re lucky, you will be met with universal acclaim. That happens so rarely that you shouldn’t expect it.

The next best thing is that some people will like it and some people won’t, and those who don’t will write something thoughtful that is useful to you and your work.

Again, that doesn’t happen much, because of said Internet.

Speaking only for myself, I don’t find Cho’s drawing interesting, nor do I think the point he seems to be trying to make is very compelling. I would say the whole thing is a sophomoric attempt to shock using boobies (BOOBIES!) except it isn’t funny and my hero, Michael O’Donahue, once said that “sophomoric is liberal code for funny.”

However …

Cho drew the picture for his own amusement. If he is amused, that’s fine. That’s all he wanted to accomplish. If he wants my opinion, it is here for him. He is welcome to be unamused by my opinion, and that is the risk I take for putting it out here.

Now, if Marvel had commissioned and published that image, that would be a different thing. Then we could discuss the editorial perspective, the marketing issues, and what Marvel was trying to say about the audience it wanted to reach. This isn’t the Spider-Woman cover, but Cho’s personal riff on the Spider-Woman cover.

You, Constant Reader, have every right to let Cho know what you thought of his effort. He put it out there. I would urge you to keep your criticism (if you have criticism) to the subject at hand, and not blow it up into an Indictment of All Society.

In any case, whatever point he was trying to make seems to have been missed by his own statements. The good news (go, read the link, it will make you feel good) is that, in an attempt to clarify his point, he sold the drawing and gave the money to a domestic violence shelter.

I would say we can all agree that’s a good thing, but, it’s the Internet. I don’t think we can all agree it’s Friday.

 

Martha Thomases: New York is Comics Country

There used to be a wonderful street fair on New York’s Fifth Avenue in the fall, usually on a Sunday, called “New York is Book Country.” Publishers would show their wares. A few bookstores would set up shop on the sidewalk in front of their shops (there were still bookstores on Fifth Avenue then), and one could stroll down the middle of the street, meeting authors, finding new treasures, and enjoying the city that was, then, the center of American publishing.

That was where I met Madeleine L’Engle, a true high point of my existence.

New York used to be Book Country and, even more, it was Comics Country. Comics were born here. The largest comic book companies were here (or, in the case of Archie, in our suburbs). The business was small enough so that one could no everyone in it. An outsider (like me) could become an insider by learning where people hung out and arranging to be in those places often enough to become friends.

Last week, DC Comics moved its offices to Burbank California, and many noted that this was the end of an era.

Yet just as I might have tumbled into a pit of nostalgic regret, the very next day saw the beginning of this year’s MoCCA Festival. In the heart of the hyper-hip Chelsea gallery district, MoCCA was a breath of fresh air. Literally, in that it was housed in a building with a lovely rooftop terrace.

MoCCA is unlike most of the other New York comic shows in that it doesn’t include retailers or dealers. There are a few booths from publishers (including Abrams, Pantheon, .01, Fantagraphics and others), but mostly it is individual creators, selling their own creations. And while sometimes this can make me feel like an old fart, it’s also exciting and energizing. Every year, there is so much eager new talent.

As I walked down West 22nd Street from Tenth Avenue, I noticed that almost all the other pedestrians were women and girls. I think most of the people inside the facility were also women and girls. Klaus Janson tells me that more than half of the people who take his class at the School of Visual Arts are female.

Another sign that this is a new era for comics.

The very next evening after MoCCA ended, there was a panel discussion at Columbia University about the work of Denis Kitchen, who just donated his archives to the library’s collections. He spoke, along with a few academics and Howard Cruse about the early days of underground and independent comics. At one point during the Q & A part of the conversation, one of the academics said he looked forward to a time when comic book studies were considered to be just as important as film studies.

Still another sign.

In two weeks, the City University of New York will host a two day conference titled, “08,” which will feature keynote speakers Howard Cruse and Alison Bechdel. Alison’s keynote is already sold out.

Publishing comics might not rely on New York City anymore, but it’s still home to a lot of people who love to read them.

 

Martha Thomases: We CAN Be Heroes

I’m pretty much out of the closet when it comes to my love of superhero comics. The appeal of the “super” part is pretty obvious (flying! telepathy! shrinking!) but I also enjoy the parts about heroes.

Recently I read two graphic novels that dealt primarily with that last, non-powered part, and it made me ponder the distinction between “someone I admire” and “someone who is a hero.” This is not going to be a tirade about how we idolize sports stars but what about the teacher at the school, buying food and pencils for her students who can’t afford them. That can be an interesting conversation to have, but it’s not what I mean.

NBM recently published an American edition of Girl in Dior, by Annie Goetzinger. Through the eyes of fictional character Clara, a journalist who becomes a Dior model, we see the life of Christian Dior, starting with his historic “New Look” collection in 1947. Clara introduces us to the man who designs the dresses, his middle class background and his commitment to beauty. We also meet the small army of (mostly) women who help him create the gorgeous gowns and run his business.

After the deprivations and rationing of World War II, the New Look was, in its way, revolutionary. The full skirts used yards and yards of fabric, and the small waistlines required (for most women) extensive undergarment technology, using a lot of materials (like rubber and metal) that had most recently been used for weapons.

What wasn’t exciting and new and different was the customer for these clothes. Haute couture has always been expensive, requiring hours and hours of human labor for each opulent outfit. The styles we see in this book – day dresses, cocktail dresses, evening gowns – are appropriate to the needs of a woman whose life is all about being seen, how she looks, not what she does.

This isn’t to say that Dior is not a genius, nor that his work is without meaning. Like a painter or a sculptor, he works with color and shape to express a vision of life and what it means. And, like so many artists of all kinds on our modern world, his success depends on how well he can sell his vision to the ruling class.

I very much admire his talent, and the work he created. I would love to be, just for one day, the kind of woman who wears those clothes and looks good in them. That would be a true fantasy adventure. But he’s not a hero, nor do I think Goetzinger presents him as such.

To see a real hero, check out the second volume of March, the autobiography of Representative John Lewis (with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell). Like the first, this goes back and forth from modern day (the inauguration of Barack Obama) to the struggles for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. “Struggles” is too mild a word. In their attempt to be treated like humans, the African-Americans marching for their rights (along with their white allies) are attacked with hoses, fire, bombs, guns and cars.

Even more than the last volume, I was struck by Lewis’ great generosity of spirit. He takes great pains to include all sorts of people who fought the good fight, even if he, personally, did not always agree with them. He says respectful and admiring things about Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, for example, two men who did not follow the non-violent principles so important to Lewis. No, he doesn’t ignore their disagreements, but he disagrees with their tactics and not their goals.

That’s a lesson too many of us need to learn.

This is a thrilling story. For every bit of progress made by the movement, there are more than a few pushes back, often with violence. The faces of the white crowds, so threatened at the thought that a black person might use the same door as a white person, are contorted with rage and hatred, truly frightening.

John Lewis was a college graduate who could have taken a job that paid better and didn’t require him to put his life on the line. Instead, he devoted himself and his abilities to making the world a better place, not just for himself but for all of us.

That is a super power.

 

Martha Thomases: Gen Con Freedom Fighters

When I first started to work in comics, even though the medium was looked down on by mainstream culture as a bunch of geeks, it was very much an old boys’ club. There were women involved, even feminist women, but we were few and far between, leftovers from the hippie and underground comix scene. The boys in the boys’ club were as terrified of being considered feminine or queer as everyone else in the world was terrified of being considered geeks.

And now, being a geek is cool.

As geek culture becomes more mainstream, the definition simultaneously becomes more vague and more specific. That is, the meaning is in the ear of the beholder.

This week we saw some evidence that geek culture has transcended homophobia. Not that there aren’t still plenty of homophobes (and misogynists) (and racists) among us, but they are no longer our loudest voices.

As my pal, Marc Fishman, noted here on Saturday, Indiana recently passed a “religious freedom” law that, according to the Associated Press, “prohibits state laws that ‘substantially burden’ a person’s ability to follow his or her religious beliefs. The definition of ‘person’ includes religious institutions, businesses and associations.” For example, a bakery owned by conservative Christians (or Muslims) (or Jews) could refuse to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple.

The people who support the bill don’t like the way it has been perceived by the public, because it makes them look like the bigots that they are. As this Christian news site describes it:

“Under Indiana’s religious freedom law, not one Gen Con attendee (gay, transgender, cross-dressing) could be denied a seat at a lunch counter by that mythical boogeyman – the Christian bigot burger-maker with his ‘gaydar’ fully activated. That’s not what this law does.

“Instead, it protects a private business owner (who might be gay themselves) from being coerced by the power of government to act in a manner incompatible with their deeply held religious convictions. In other words, it protects the Jewish sign maker from being forced by the state to make pro-Nazi placards for the next skinhead convention.”

Aside #1: There is a long history of printers refusing to publish work with which they disagree, whether because the content is “pornographic” or otherwise politically distasteful. These printers simply turn away work they don’t want to do, without wrapping themselves in any kind of religious trappings.

Aside #2: So far, there have been no laws protecting the religious freedom of those devoted to other proscriptions from the book of Leviticus. I eagerly anticipate the first case in which a tattooed person or a menstruating woman is denied service because such things are forbidden by the Bible.)

Gen-Con, by the way, was one of the first companies to announce that they would look for a more hospitable business environment. Yes, the game convention. Rarely have I been so proud of my geek-dom. Instead of presenting themselves as the home of the Gamergate crowd, Gen-Con chose to stand up for all the people who enjoy gaming, insisting that everyone be welcome.

In the process, they pointed out that geeks (even queer and female and trans and non-white geeks) have money to spend and we won’t be shamed into use our dollars in ways that insult our own selves.

In other nerd news this week, the tech venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers won a Pyrrhic victory over Ellen Pao. She had sued them for gender discrimination and lost, but in the process she opened the curtain on the casual misogyny of tech culture. As with Anita Hill a few decades ago, this case will have long-term effects that will last longer than the particular judgment.

And the Ellen Pao decision has the added benefit of not putting Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court!

It’s been a good week. Say it loud, “I’m a Geek and I’m Proud.”

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