Summertime summertime sum-sum-summertime. Long days. Sultry nights.
Summer is hot. Literally. We are very aware of our bodies, and the bodies of those around us. We wear lighter clothes. We wear sunglasses and/or glamorous hats.
Love is in the air, or at least lust.
Naturally, I asked myself, “What do superheroes do about this?”
I mean, skin-tight costumes are hot. Literally. And while certain superpowers like invulnerability might make it easier to wear synthetic fabrics or leather, that still doesn’t explain how a Batman can get through a humid Gotham summer.
I guess he’s had his mind on other things. Last month, he proposed to Catwoman Selina Kyle, on a rooftop, both dressed in their superhero outfits.
Neither one of them appeared to be sweating. Although it’s raining, so maybe that made a difference.
I like the Batman/Catwoman romance. I liked it in the old comics I read as a kid, and I liked it in The Dark Knight Rises. I loved it. I loved the Alan Brennert story, The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne, where they got married the first time.
I’m not sure I love this Batman and this Catwoman together.
There are a lot of iconic relationships in comics. Because some characters have been in existence for more than 75 years, these relationships have gone through a lot of ups and downs. If you’re a continuity geek (and sometimes I am, but not about this), you can make yourself crazy with the seeming contradictions over the years. Is Lois Lane a jealous snoop, or an independent professional dedicated to her craft? Is Carol Ferris a stuck-up heiress or a lonely little rich girl? Is Iris West a busybody nagging busybody or simply a person who doesn’t like to be lied to? Is Steve Trevor a macho man or a wimp?
Instead, I choose to see these relationships as reflections of both their times and the people (usually men) who write them. This is especially obvious in stories from the 1970s and 1980s when the modern day feminist movement achieved its first successes. You can tell that the writers (and, probably, editors) know something is happening, but they aren’t sure what they are supposed to do about it. So you get a lot of female characters proclaiming themselves “women’s libbers” while wearing hot pants.
(Note: I’m not saying no feminist ever wore hot pants, or that wearing hot pants is anti-feminist. I’m just saying it wasn’t as common in real life as it was in say, Metropolis.)
Today, with movies and television as well as comics, we have a lot of different versions of the same relationships from which to choose. I enjoy Lois and Clark in the Superman comics, who are comfortable being married and being parents. I enjoy Barry Allen and Iris West on the television Flash, mostly because Candice Patton is so refreshingly straightforward. I thought the Wonder Woman/Steve Trevor dynamic in the new Wonder Woman was totally believable, way more than it has been in the comics for decades.
I’m not so sure about the current versions of Batman and Catwoman. Bruce Wayne has been through even more trauma than usual lately, what with losing Tim Drake and everything. If I were his shrink, I would advise him to wait at least a year before making any life-changing decisions. I know he’s hurting, but divorce would hurt even more.
As I write this, the Senate vote on Trump’s health care plan has been postponed. One poll shows that only twelve percent of Americans support the Senate version of the bill.
Personally, I think this is a good thing. Everything I’ve read about the bill, both the House and Senate versions, show that tens of millions of people would lose their health insurance, and almost all would have to find other, more expensive ways to get healthcare. The Obama plan isn’t perfect, but it is better than this.
What does this have to do with comics? I’m glad you asked.
My favorite feature of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, is that it is possible for unemployed, self-employed people and those with jobs at small businesses to buy health insurance as individuals. This was possible before, but really, really expensive. I remember trying to buy some in the early 2000s, and the policy for my husband and myself was going to be more than $3 thousand a month. Luckily, through New York State, we were able to get coverage for around $800.
A policy that costs $800 a month isn’t cheap. That’s $9600 a year. The other plan would have cost nearly $40 thousand a year. That’s more than I made at my first two full-time jobs combined. And the hospital bills for the cancer that killed my husband ran well into six figures, which would have bankrupted us if we hadn’t had insurance.
Affordable health insurance saves lives.
Less obvious, but just as true, is that affordable health insurance for everyone makes your individual life better, or at least more entertaining. John Backderf recently wrote a post on his Facebook page about how important Obamacare has been for comic book creators. Instead of getting a day job just for health insurance, and making comics on nights and weekends, creators can take a chance and devote themselves to their art.
Surprisingly, there are people who disagree with this. And they said so, in the comment section of the link above. In general, I’m a firm believer in the Internet doctrine which states, “Never read the comments.” In this case, however, I don’t understand what their problem is.
Some took offense at Derf’s description of cubicle jobs as if he was sneering at them as if there was something dirty about working in a cubicle. Needless to say, these people don’t read enough, or they would know that Derf, the author of Trashed, has worked in all kinds of jobs, including the actual dirty job of collecting garbage.
I would also point out that getting that cubicle job is not a sure thing. It’s not easy to find a new job if you are in your 50s or 60s. Coincidentally, these are the years when a lack of healthcare is especially terrifying.
Some seemed to think that wanting to take a chance on a dream was shameful or lazy. I can only assume that these people have never tried to work for themselves, nor have they been the kind of “job creators” praised by the GOP. It takes a high tolerance for risk to start something new, whether that thing is a comic book, a podcast, a dry cleaner or a restaurant.
It seems to me this is a win/win/win. Creators can take a chance on their dreams, there are more day-jobs for people who really want to do them, and we get more comics. As Derf said, “It’s no coincidence, I believe, that this (the ACA) coincided with the golden era of comics we’re currently enjoying. Creators could take a chance on a comics career without dooming themselves to a life as a debt slave if they contracted a serious illness.”
There are some people who think that every person who publishes is rich. They think that a byline on a news article or a comic book or a novel means that person is another Stephen King or J. K. Rowling. These are the same people who think teachers don’t have to work in the summer.
A lot of the comic book professionals I know, people whose names are used in convention advertising and who attract long lines at these shows, could only get health insurance these last few years because they qualified for Medicaid. Without the supplements, they would have no insurance at all. And if they had to get day jobs to get insurance, they wouldn’t have been able to produce the comics the rest of us line up to get signed.
We talk about diversity a lot here at ComicMix, partly because it is often in the news, but mostly because it’s an interesting topic. Comics, like most popular entertainment, have generally been most lucrative for straight cis white men, but changes in demographics and delivery have made that less true in recent years. There are now visibly queer, non-binary people of different colors who are also expressing themselves in our medium, sometimes in ways that earn them money.
So I’d like to talk about diversity this week, but not in terms of the politics or the morality. I’m in favor of discussing politics and morality, but that’s not what’s interesting to me right this second. At the moment, I’d like to talk about diversity in terms of capitalism.
In other words, when we acknowledge that our society has many different facets and sub-cultures, we can fine-tune our marketing strategies to make even more money. In the process, we get more different choices in our entertainment. This “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to be the justification not only for capitalism but the First Amendment as well.
It’s not a perfect system. Hollywood, like so many others (myself included), will often find itself in such a rut of conventional thinking that they miss opportunities that would have enriched our imaginations and their bottom line. Still, the major studios move more quickly than their comic-book counterparts.
For example, in most cases, when an entertainment conglomerate was about to launch a superhero movie franchise in which they had invested hundreds of millions of dollars, they would do everything they could to arouse curiosity about the project. However, even though Marvel’s Black Panther film is coming out next February (Black History Month) and the trailer for it has been seen almost 100 million times online, the interest in the character has not been sufficient for the publishing side of the business. The World of Wakanda, written by the best-selling author Roxane Gay, was recently canceled, and it is not certain that a trade collection will be published.
Even if the single issues weren’t profitable, one would think the loss they caused would be just a small fraction of the total marketing budget for the character. And, in the meantime, people who were intrigued about the writer because she had just appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah would be able to find something that might turn them into comic book readers.
Comics don’t market like that. Marvel and DC own characters, not writers. In general, they see no incentive to promote a writer, especially one who hasn’t been brought to the public’s attention by comic book publishers. There are exceptions (Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example), but they are few and far between.
Comic book marketing needs to change, along with comic book publishing and comic book retailing. I don’t know what it’s going to take for that to happen, but we must adapt or die. All retail businesses must do this.
If you read a link above, it’s about how Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods might change the retail experience beyond simply Amazon and Whole Foods. The kinds of trips to stores we make might change, and our experiences within those stores might change. In some cases, we might interact with humans and in some cases, we might not. Our interactions with other humans might be more personal than simply handing a cashier items to be scanned, and might require conversations about our mutual wants and needs. In the process, the kinds of goods and services offered in stores might change as well.
My pal, Mike Gold, frequently jokes about the impending demise of the bookstore at the hands of Amazon and other online retailers. I appreciate Amazon (no pants required), but I love bookstores of all kinds, and I hope he’s wrong. I like grocery stores, too, although I use them less and less for produce, preferring to shop at my local Green Market. If I’m going to go shopping in a store, I like to make my own choices based on what is in front of me and ask advice from someone whose expertise I believe. This is true whether I’m looking for sugar snap peas or something to read.
In my experience, which I sincerely hope is outdated, comic book publishers tend to think of their market as almost exclusively the direct market. When I worked at DC, if I would suggest a particular idea that would appeal to bookstores, for example, I was told that comic book stores would object to such an action. I understand that comic book stores are the largest customers for the product, but they are not the only customers. In fact, I thought that if I were part of the creative team who hoped to earn royalties, and I found out that a big chunk of potential customers for my work was being dismissed, I would be pretty angry.
Bookstores are bigger customers for comics than they used to be, but the business is still, for the most part, not designed for them. Too many publishers decide what to print solely based on single-issue sales, even though the way to grow the market is to provide products for readers in every format that might be appealing. If this means formats that are more appealing to new readers (like graphic novels instead of serialized fiction), give those a try. Certainly, DC, with its Earth-1 series, seems to be willing to take that tiny little chance.
For the most part, however, corporate entertainment companies, at least those that include comic book publishers, seem determined to not only focus on superhero comics … but only certain kinds of superhero comics. They still target that straight, cis white guy, and in a way that seems, to me, to be guaranteed to turn off anyone else. My FaceBook friend, writer and editor Mariah McCourt, recently posted this (I have edited her post for brevity):
The alt-right sees diversity at Marvel Comics as a betrayal by Jews of the “white race.”
“Possibly the most perennial… “debate” in comics is about the sexualized imagery of female characters. For many decades now the depiction of female comic book characters has relied on sexualized exaggeration through a (mostly) straight male creator lens.
“What I have just said is a fact. It’s not an interpretation or an opinion, it’s a fact. … It’s not just true of comics, although it’s definitely one of the more obvious examples. Fine art also has a history of this, which is why there is the entire method & school of art critique that revolves around the concept of the ‘male gaze.’…
“For years now my issue is not that sexualized art exists, or whether that’s inherently offensive or even sexist. It can be and often is, but art having a sexual nature doesn’t bother me.
“What bothers me is when that is the default state of female characters and people try to deny it, excuse it, or otherwise wriggle around that reality. When they argue that all comic characters are exaggerated, as if there isn’t a significant difference in how and why and by whom and for which audience.
“Comics are a medium, not a genre. You can have sexy sex comics, in which case sexualized characters and art make a lot of sense. That would be a pretty understandable context for them to exist in.
“It makes way less sense, when you think about it objectively, to constantly walk a very fine line between softcore art in what are supposedly “mainstream” comics that do not exist to depict sex. They may contain sex, but they aren’t sex comics. So it’s pretty weird for them to constantly default female characters, and almost exclusively female characters, to exaggerated depictions that are clearly sexualized.
“It is also intellectually dishonest and not even borderline insulting to suggest that comics art cannot be critiqued because it is “not supposed to be realistic”. That is not a valid argument. That is a crappy deflection.
“Plenty of non-comics art is not realistic or exaggerated and it is subject to criticism. Van Gogh, Munch, Picasso. No art is above that. … It exists within the framework of its time, its creator, its intention, its execution, and more. Art does not get a pass. Art is not neutral or stagnant or banal. Or it’s not really art.
“This is all maybe even more true of commercial art, of art that is part of a collective zeitgeist or cultural movements, times, places, and creations.”
Yes, let’s have sexy sex comics. Let’s have comics with stories about adorable puppies and kittens. Let’s have historical comics and science fiction comics and fantasy comics and non-fiction comics. Let’s have graphic memoirs and space operas and unicorns and fighting squadrons. Let’s have biblical comics, Hindu comics, Sharia comics and pagan comics. Let’s have military history and genderqueer confessions.
And then… let’s make those comics available where readers can find them.
There comes a time, Constant Reader, usually on a Sunday afternoon, when I start to look at a few news sites to see what might interest you this week. Not just interest you, but provoke a reaction from me that might interest you. That’s because I love you, Constant Reader, and I want you to be amused… nay, more than that, I want you to live life to the fullest.
Especially as that life relates to comic books.
Some weeks, there are lots of stories from which to choose. Some weeks, there are very few. And some weeks, like this one, there are interesting stories that don’t seem to have any comic book relevance at all.
In fact, the only story that interests me at this moment, in terms of popular culture and the joys and stresses it can bring to us is this one about the Public Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that is part of its free Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theaterhttp://www.centralpark.com/guide/attractions/delacorte-theatre.html in New York’s Central Park. As so often happens with productions by the Public Theater, and productions of Shakespeare plays throughout the centuries, Julius Caesar has contemporary political overtones. In this case, the play is staged to suggest certain similarities between Caesar and our current president. As you may know, if you passed your high school English literature classes, Caesar is assassinated.
Right-wing commentators were appalled and denounced the production, accusing it of promoting violence against the President. As a result, Delta Airlines and Bank of America pulled their support for Shakespeare in the Park.
And then, as if to answer my prayers, comic book writer Nick Spencer chimed in with his opinion. The story has a comic book hook! It’s appropriate for this column!
I don’t know Nick Spencer, nor am I particularly a fan of his work. I think it’s kind of adorable that he thinks readers who don’t want to buy his work is somehow parallel to corporate sponsors reneging on commitments they made, citing political reasons for an excuse, but, sure, if that makes him feel better, I’m happy for him. That he thinks his work is comparable to Shakespeare makes me think he may have been over-praised as a child.
Let me be clear: Delta Airlines and Bank of America are entirely within their rights to refuse to fund work with which they have problems. This is not censorship, just as advertisers pulling their sponsorship from Bill O’Reilly’s show was not censorship. Depending on the specific terms of these specific contracts (about which I know nothing), they should be able to do with their money as they wish.
In this case, however, I think they are being stupid. And I’m not the only one. That links to an editorial in the New York Daily News, which, for the record, endorsed Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.
Julius Caesar is a play about an assassination. It is about a leader who overreaches in his quest for power, and the reaction (and over-reaction) to his actions. It has been performed for centuries, and, frequently, audiences have remarked about its relevance to their particular political moment.
In my high school English literature class, we read the play, discussed it, and I don’t remember anyone interpreting it as advocating assassination as a solution to problems. I was at an Episcopal boarding school, where I would guess that most of my classmates and many of my teachers were Republicans, yet we did not disagree on this point.
This has also not been the interpretation of other productions of this play, including a recent one that imagined Caesar as an Obama-like figure . I don’t recall any calls for a boycott of that version.
Some people compared the Public’s Caesar to Kathy Griffin’s recent posting of a photo of her holding a prop of a bloody Trump head. I guess they are alike in that they upset a particular demographic, but I don’t think there are similarities beyond that. Griffin’s photo was, in my opinion, a stupid and graceless bid for attention. It did not engage in any discussion of any issue. It made no statement other than that Kathy Griffin sees herself as a fighter against Trump. I believe she had a right to post that photo, but I also think it added nothing to our national conversation about this administration.
That’s not the case with Shakespeare. The plays have lasted for centuries because they continue to reveal new things about human nature and human society. And, in this case, they bring a little more Corey Still into our lives, which is always a good thing.
On Friday, June 9, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California partially granted ComicMix LLC’s motion to dismiss the Dr. Seuss estate’s copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit over the book Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go! To prevent publication, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, LP filed the lawsuit in 2016 against the book’s publisher ComicMix, its author David Gerrold, illustrator Ty Templeton, and Glenn Hauman, ComicMix’s co-founder and vice-president.
United States District Judge Janis Sammartino dismissed the trademark claims under the doctrine of nominative fair use, and largely agreed with ComicMix’s position that fair use protects the book from copyright infringement claims. Judge Sammartino found that the book is “a highly transformative work that takes no more than necessary [from Dr. Seuss’s books] to accomplish its transformative purpose and will not impinge on the original market for Plaintiff’s underlying work.” She emphasized that the case has broader significance: “This case presents an important question regarding the emerging ‘mash-up’ culture where artists combine two independent works in a new and unique way. … Applying the fair use factors in the manner Plaintiff outlines would almost always preclude a finding of fair use under these circumstances. However, if fair use was not viable in a case such as this, an entire body of highly creative work would be effectively foreclosed.”
As an example, Judge Sammartino refers to this image:
Plaintiff’s work depicts two similar-looking, fanciful “Zax” creatures arguing in the middle of a desert, with footprints to mark their arrival. Boldly takes the same desert landscape and footprints, and in the fanciful creatures’ place puts two similar-looking beings of seemingly Vulcan descent—one of which is drawn in the same position as his Dr. Seuss counterpart and one of which is transformed from the Dr. Seuss creatures’ aggressive stance into a contemplative pose—deep in the midst of playing some type of alien board game. Additionally, Boldly’s text reveals that the two Vulcan creatures are, in fact, the same person, unlike Go!’s distinct “North-Going” and “South-Going” Zaxes. Boldly therefore transforms the argumentative Zaxes and their corresponding depiction into a cloned Vulcan matching wits with himself over an alien boardgame. One Vulcan is positioned almost identically to his Zax counterpart to “conjure up” the Dr. Seuss work, while the other Vulcan is drawn anew and a board-game added in order to fully accomplish the work’s overall transformative purpose.
The copyright claim survives, awaiting proof of any harm to the Dr. Seuss estate’s licensing opportunities, and the estate was given two weeks to amend its trademark claims.
Dan Booth of Booth Sweet LLP, ComicMix LLC’s lead counsel, said, “I have never seen a case so focused on mash-up culture — and so strongly supportive. Judge Sammartino’s decision implicates not just literary hybrids but music remixes, appropriation art, supercut videos, and more, strongly suggesting that they should be protected from copyright claims.”
Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go began as a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, written by Gerrold, a Hugo and Nebula Award winning science fiction author perhaps best known for writing the Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles.” Ty Templeton is a veteran Eisner Award winning comics artist known for his work on Batman, The Simpsons, and as the co-creator of the Vortex Comics series Stig’s Inferno.
ComicMix publishes a line of graphic novels by some of the best new and established talent in the industry. ComicMix Pro Services works with creators to produce, publish and market their work in a competitive marketplace. In addition, ComicMix runs one of the Internet’s most popular pop culture news sites.
The Wonder Woman of my youth was a fairly ridiculous character, whose adventures included less fighting and more romantic entanglements, not only with Steve Trevor but also a merman and a bird boy. She was no more a feminist icon to me than Supergirl, Betty or Veronica, but then, I was a child and there was no feminist movement at my elementary school in Ohio for me to know.
I still loved her. I wanted to be able to fly by catching a wind current. I wanted to be able to make people tell me the truth, especially if I could tie them up, too. To be honest, I probably also wanted a merman for a boyfriend.
This is a long, roundabout way of saying that while Wonder Woman influenced my feminism (breathing influenced my feminism), she didn’t create it. I did not expect a movie about her, especially one from a major studio, to make much difference to me.
I was wrong.
All over the world, women went to see Wonder Woman and cried. These were tears of relief, of gratitude, that someone had finally put their hopes and fears and experiences onscreen, without the filter of a male gaze. We saw a woman who defined herself by her goals and her purpose, not her dress size or men’s approval.
Was the movie perfect? Of course not. I can pick nits with the best of them. Still, it was the most high-profile, big budget movie to show women doing heroic things that we have not seen women do in other high-profile, big budget movies. The director, Patty Jenkins, knows how women see the world, and what women think is heroic, and filmed accordingly.
I didn’t go to a women-only screening. They sounded like a lot of fun, but they sold out quickly and were not at a convenient time or location for me. Instead, I went to one of the hundreds of other available showings, with a group of friends of differing genders.
Wow, did I have a good time! I loved watching Diana grow up, mischievous and scrappy and eager to be alive. I loved seeing her fish-out-of-water reaction to man’s world, during which we saw both curiosity and determination on her face (and also, well, wonder). Gal Gadot captured more emotion in her face than any other actor in a superhero film, except, possibly, Mark Ruffalo.
Perhaps because I’ve been reading superhero comics with an appreciation for their socio-political subtexts, I did not cry when I saw Diana go into battle. I cheered. The only time I came close to tears was at the end, when a wall of photos of fallen soldiers reminded me of so many similar walls in New York after September 11.
However, as a straight cis white woman, I see more examples of people like myself in popular culture than anyone else besides straight cis white men. I appreciate how people who don’t fit the default assumptions could find themselves overcome by the recognition this film provides.
One way to tell how effective the movie was at reaching its target audience is by the reaction of those who felt threatened by the content. The Alamo Drafthouse, a small theater chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, decided to hold a few women-only screenings, one in each of their six theaters. They had done similar promotions in the past, such as veterans-only screenings and senior-only screenings.
For some reason, no one had any problems with those. But for Wonder Woman, the crybabies came out en masse. The whining from their butthurt was deafening. In my favorite example, one wrote to the mayor of Austin to protest this heinous discrimination. His reply is not only spot-on, but hilarious.
I hope Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot return for the sequel. I hope they find a way to bring back Etta Candy and Antiope. I hope they all go shopping together again. I would watch that movie.
This past week saw an uncomfortable convergence of political issues and Geek Culture. A man tried to enter the Phoenix Comic-Con in order to shoot someone, using cosplay as a disguise. Instead of artfully crafted fake weapons, this man had real weapons that would have caused real injury to real people.
Needless to say, this completely wrecked the plans of any cosplayers whose outfits included prop weapons. A lot of them were disappointed that they couldn’t share the fruits of their hard work and financial investment with their friends.
I don’t think any of the cosplayers would say that their costumes were more important than the lives and safety of the other convention attendees. Still, I imagine they were disappointed at best, and perhaps felt it was unfair that they were under suspicion just because a crazy person represented himself as one of them.
It was unfair.
Cosplayers were not the only ones to suffer over the weekend. Dealers who sell to cosplayers lost money, not only because they couldn’t sell at the show, but could not quickly arrange to sell at another show. To their credit, the Phoenix Comic-Con seems to have tried to make things right, as best they could.
Unfortunately, this is the best we can hope for in our current political climate. As long as we refuse to invest the time and money on treating mental illness, we will continue to live with the untreated mentally ill. And as long as we refuse to implement even the slightest limits on access to firearms, the mentally ill will be able to buy all the guns (and bullets, and knives and swords) as they might wish to own. Or use.
But we won’t pass any laws that limit guns to people who can pass simple competency tests, much as we limit cars to people who can drive. We won’t say that, maybe, someone who thinks he has a relationship with the Green Power Ranger shouldn’t walk around armed in public, especially after he makes threats against police officers, too. As a country, we have decided that we’re more comfortable telling women what to do with their bodies than we are with protecting those same bodies from random bullets.
The cosplay community is not going to be able to solve this problem. I’m willing to bet the solution is beyond the greater geek community. People who want to dress up like their favorite fantasy characters, whether they be Ghostbusters or Jon Snow or Lobo are going to have to find ways to do so that don’t look realistic enough to be perceived as threats.
There might be a possible solution, and it might offer an opportunity for profit that is attractive enough for it to happen. If Nerf could up their game enough so that their toys look realistic, but can still be easily squished, they might be able to pass inspection. At least, as long as no 11-year old black kids in Cleveland don’t play with them.
People would say, “Your kids are going to be so lucky” when they looked at all the toys on our shelves.
John and I would say, almost in unison, “Those are not for kids to play with. We have them to have.”
I completely understand the lust for acquisition that inhabits your average toy collector. I love my toys. I miss the smell of caps.
But beyond the joy they bring to me, personally, I think toys are important for a lot of reasons. Most important, they are the means by which children discover the world. In that, they are as important as other media, whether it be television or music or poetry or dance.
That’s why I think this development is fascinating. For lifetimes, toys marketed to girls have emphasized either the role of mother (toy ovens and vacuum cleaners and baby dolls) or passive object of beauty (Barbie). But because of changes in society (and therefore changes in marketing), things might be different now.
A much larger segment of the toy market is made up of licensed products, often from major studio movies, with large casts and lots of explosions. This is not a new development, but rather an increase. When movies cost so much to make, and with limits as to how many movies an average person can go see in any given year, the studios are looking for as many other revenue streams as possible. So, toys!
When I was a girl, and even when my son was a child, there were strict gender differences in the way toys were sold. There were “boy” toys and “girl” toys. As a child, I accepted this as the way of the world, although thanks to shows like this and thishttps://www.dailymotion.com/video/x47l89v, among others, I insisted on having that aforementioned cap gun. For my son, I bought dolls and stuffed animals as well as trucks and cars. Just because They wanted to raise my kid to their gender standards didn’t mean I was going to do so.
And I wasn’t the only one. Today’s parents (or a segment of them affluent enough to be attractive to retailers) don’t want to limit their kids’ ambitions in those ways. So while Disney still makes a lot of money with its Princesses, they are also allowing that some girls might want to be fighter pilots against the Empire.
As a fan of superheroes, I’m thrilled at the thought of more toys for girls who also want heat vision and lassos of truth. I’m excited that they can imagine themselves to be part of the Avengers or the Justice League.
My fear (and I have one) is that because comic books are aimed at a much more diverse audience than they were when I was a kid, some parents might not realize that not every comic book is appropriate for their particular children. Just because there are toy tie-ins doesn’t mean the story won’t scare the crap out of a five-year-old. Personally, I think it’s immoral to sell products based on R-rated movies in toy stores, but I am not the Empress of the World. If adults want to collect items based on their favorite stories, whatever those stories might be, that’s swell. I’m not talking about taking away their joy. I’m talking about the possibility that parents might buy a toy electric chair just because it was in a comic book, without doing the research to find out what kind of comic book it is.
Given our political climate, there may very well be parents who think toy electric chairs are exactly how they want their kids to discover the world. If so, I hope they are upfront about it so I can keep my family away from theirs.
Warner Bros. spent an estimated $145 million on a movie about King Arthur, directed by Guy Ritchie, hoping to have a new tentpole hit like his Sherlock Holmes films. Instead, the movie opened in third place, far behind Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which had already been out for two weeks, and Snatched, starring Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn.
In other words, a movie based on a male hero of white culture (albeit one with a random but beautiful black man) flopped behind a movie about a multi-racial multi-species space gang and a movie about two women, one of them old enough to have grown children and one of them not conventionally movie-star beautiful.
I’m not here to say that King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, failed because it is not a good movie, or that the two other movies I mentioned here are of higher quality. I like Guy Ritchie, or I did when he made movies like this. Instead, I want to talk about how the modern American audience, the people who pay for our popular entertainment who buy movie tickets, books, comics, music and television subscriptions, is more accepting of diversity than the people who sell them.
That’s the facet of the discussion about the Marvel story that I think gets neglected. Marvel Vice-President David Gabriel did not say that the inclusion of more non-white, non-male characters was the reason for Marvel’s sales slump. He said that a few retailers told him that was the reason.
By itself, this does not mean that books with diverse characters don’t sell. This means that they don’t sell in those retailers’ stores.
There are all sorts of reasons this could be true. I don’t know where these stores are, or what their surrounding communities are like. I don’t know what the capacities of these retailers might be in regard to advertising, promotion, and outreach. Are they located near colleges or other kinds of schools? Are they rural or urban? Do they see themselves as a community asset for everyone, or a safe haven for their loyal Band of Bros? Any of these factors can have an impact on the kinds of books a store sells best.
It is this very variety in the kinds of markets comic book stores serve that should encourage publishers to produce more diverse kinds of books, not only in terms of the characters but in the genres and packaging of the stories. Saying that books about people of color, or books about women won’t sell is just as stupid as saying the same things about movies.
I can understand that many readers of superhero comics are tired stories where an established character is suddenly replaced by someone of another race, gender or sexual orientation. It was daring and interesting when it first happened 40 years ago, but today it’s neither new nor newsworthy. Anyone who tells stories like these today should have some different insights than we’ve seen before.
It’s much more interesting, to me anyway, to create entirely new characters. That’s what Milestone Media did back in the day, and it’s what Catalyst Prime from Lion Forge Comics seems to be doing now. I haven’t seen them at my local store yet, but I have faith in any comic book company that does this.
My real reason for encouraging diversity is entirely selfish: I want more, and I want different. I want to have the time and resources to sample as many different things as I can in this life. Whether that means strange foods or different kinds of stories, I want the opportunity to try the new and exotic.
By the way, the article in that last link (about the growing Jewish community in Berlin) has one of the funniest things I’ve ever read in The New York Times. I don’t know if the Gray Lady meant to be so snarky, but it’s hilarious. See for yourself:
“Jewish culture here is a bit superficial,” said Elad Jacobowitz, a 39-year-old real estate broker from Tel Aviv who moved to Berlin 13 years ago. “It doesn’t fit,” he said, sipping horseradish-infused vodka while listening to a klezmer band at the gefilte fish party during the Nosh Berlin festival.
Like much of the planet, I saw the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie this weekend. Like a smaller percentage of this group, I saw it with a friend who isn’t into super-heroes.
Let me be clear. She isn’t opposed to super-heroes. It’s just that they are not her genre.
Still, she had heard good things about it from people at her job, and she was visiting from out of town and wanted to be a good guest, and it was pouring rain and there weren’t a lot of other activities available to us, so we went.
She loved it. She was completely knocked out by it. The whole experience put her through an emotional wringer.
I don’t think she’s about to become a super-hero fan, but I think there are reasons that super-heroes reach us emotionally in ways that other genre fiction does not (and vice versa). In the process of explaining what I mean, there may be SPOILERS about this particular movie. I don’t think any will ruin your enjoyment, but I don’t know your tolerance. Be warned.
There have been a tremendous number of movies in the last few decades about fathers and sons. I blame Steven Spielberg, but I’m sure you can come up with a list of your own. And I get it. We imprint on our parents for every other relationship we have. With the increase in the divorce rate over the last several decades, as well as the stress on the family caused by income inequality (and loads of other reasons that we don’t have time for right now), lots of people feel estranged from their fathers.
Most movies that play with this issue, especially those by the aforementioned Mr. Spielberg, usually find a way to show that Daddy Really Loved You All The Time. And I hope that’s true, for Steven and for you.
But it isn’t for my friend. She had to leave home at 14, and over the next five decades her parents resisted every attempt she made at reconciliation. The only way they would accept her is if she gave up her own identity and lived the life they expected.
Like Ego, my friend’s father felt that she could do what he wanted or she could be dead.
At the same time, my friend was lucky enough to find a father figure. This man didn’t kidnap her from her home and use her to commit acts of piracy, but he found a place for her and made her feel worthwhile. She didn’t learn to command a spaceship, but she can play a wicked game of poker.
Because Guardians is a super-hero movie, there are epic space battles, exotic aliens, amazing special effects and fantastic scenery and costumes. I think these fantastic elements actually make it easier to find oneself in the story. Our inner infant feels parental abandonment and betrayal as world-destroying events. Watching worlds actually get destroyed is the ultimate catharsis.
After all the explosions, we are left with a new family. Unlike my friend’s birth family, these people choose to stay together, to love each other not despite their flaws but because of them. They take care of each other without even thinking about it, because that’s how real families work. Whether the threat is a blob monster, an unplanned pregnancy, divorce or unemployment, we find our real family through these crises. DNA doesn’t matter as much as commitment.
I don’t mean to suggest that Marvel Studios is a substitute for a good therapist, or that we can stop worrying about our kids as long as they can go to the movies. We still need to do the work. Still, I’ll take all the insight I can get, whatever the source.
I’m now waiting to see how well Wonder Woman deals with mothers and daughters. I doubt Hippolyta berates Diana about her weight as much as my mother did to me.
Summertime summertime sum-sum-summertime. Long days. Sultry nights.
I mean, skin-tight costumes are hot. Literally. And while certain superpowers like invulnerability might make it easier to wear synthetic fabrics or leather, that still doesn’t explain how a Batman can get through a humid Gotham summer.
There are a lot of iconic relationships in comics. Because some characters have been in existence for more than 75 years, these relationships have gone through a lot of ups and downs. If you’re a continuity geek (and sometimes I am, but not about this), you can make yourself crazy with the seeming contradictions over the years. Is Lois Lane a jealous snoop, or an independent professional dedicated to her craft? Is Carol Ferris a stuck-up heiress or a lonely little rich girl? Is Iris West a busybody nagging busybody or simply a person who doesn’t like to be lied to? Is Steve Trevor a macho man or a wimp?
Today, with movies and television as well as comics, we have a lot of different versions of the same relationships from which to choose. I enjoy Lois and Clark in the Superman comics, who are comfortable being married and being parents. I enjoy Barry Allen and Iris West on the television Flash, mostly because Candice Patton is so refreshingly straightforward. I thought the Wonder Woman/Steve Trevor dynamic in the new Wonder Woman was totally believable, way more than it has been in the comics for decades.
