Tagged: Gail Simone

Joe Corallo: Nostalgia vs. Reality?

Kamala Khan

This past weekend, myself and some of the other ComicMix columnists went to see Hail, Caesar!, the latest film from the Coen brothers. I don’t want to speak for everyone else, but the general consensus as we all exited the theater was one of enjoyment. Personally, I thought it was one of the better Coen brothers’ films.

That being said, the movie has some possible drawbacks. For those of you that don’t know, Hail, Caesar! is a period piece taking place in Hollywood in the late 1940s revolving around the choices a studio executive has to make. They do a great job with it all, and really suck the audience into the setting. Although the movie is certainly lacking heavily in the diversity department, you might have just given it a pass considering the combination of the time period and the subject matter.

I’d have been more likely to give the movie a pass as well if it weren’t for this interview the Coen brothers gave. In it, they use some poorly selected words to describe what they think about diversity in movies. They claim that writers do not think about diversity as they come up with stories.

Now look, this doesn’t make the Coen brothers bad film makers. It makes them presumptuous to think that other writers in the business don’t consider diversity when writing, and that demonstrates their values are not the same as mine, but that doesn’t mean that they are inherently bad. And they have the excuse this time of doing a period piece, so it’s okay that it’s all white.

Or is it?

Outside of even the #Oscarssowhite controversy, I understand the idea that the executives at the studio, the actors at the studio and many others would be white. Really, I get it. However, nearly everyone we see on screen of consequence or not is white. All of the random celebrities that make an appearance in this film even for a scene or two are white. I don’t want to get into any spoilers, but we do see groups of people that you would imagine would have some more diversity in them. Perhaps not showing that diversity was a commentary the film was making, but if it was that never came across in the film.

This is a multilayered problem. Of course we can point to the Coen brothers both being white, having their own life experiences from that, and drawing from those in their writings. Another problem is one they point out in the interview I linked to above about how it’s not fair to single out a particular movie and question the level of diversity in it. Though they answer this question poorly, they do have a point and that makes this all the more complicated and difficult.

The Coen brothers did not get into film making to preach diversity; they’re making films because they want to tell the stories they want to tell. The problem isn’t exactly with individual movies. Everyone who makes it that far in the business should be able to attempt to make the movies they want to make. The problem comes when most of those people are white, and want to tell stories about other people who are white. It’s a difficult situation to tackle without an easy solution as this is an institutional problem, not an individual problem.

I feel this problem is driven heavily by our obsession with nostalgia. The good old days! The “simpler” times. Hail, Caesar! harkens back to a “simpler” Hollywood with overtones of the complexity of the red scare. The movie still paints a very black and white picture of that time. It keeps it simple. It glosses over the oppression part. Now, going back to my point earlier, this movie should not be held to such a high standard as to accurately depict the complexity of the time period. The problem comes down to that we have too many individual examples of this and not enough examples of movies not in nostalgia’s lens.

Naturally, I started linking this movie I was watching to parallels with the comic book industry.

This is a problem that’s been affecting comic books for a long time as well, and more recently comic book movies. I’ve touched on this before in other columns, particularly this one about Captain America. Since I’ve written that, we’ve seen articles like this one come out about comics that are in danger of being cancelled. It’s interesting to note that five of the ten comics listed star either a woman, black, and/or queer character. On top of that, another one of the ten comics listed is written by Gail Simone, one of the highest profile women in comics, and another of them stars Hercules which caused controversy when it was announced that he would not be depicted as bisexual this time.

Alarms should be going off in your minds right now. The books on the chopping block are disproportionately underrepresented groups in comics, and by a rather large margin. And similar to what the Coen brothers brought up in their interview, it is not the individual creators’ faults. This isn’t an individual problem, it’s an institutional problem. Just like with movies where we have a disproportionate about of famous white actors that are a draw at the box office like George Clooney, Channing Tatum, and Scarlett Johansson, and directors like the Coen brothers, comics have a disproportionately high draw with white characters and creators from Batman, Superman, and Wolverine, to Geoff Johns, Brian Michael Bendis, and Neal Adams.

It is not the fault of any of the individuals involved that they’re white. It’s not their fault that they’re successful or that they draw an audience. However, decades of entrenchment in the comics medium has created a class of successful white, mostly male creators and white, mostly male creations. Just like with Hollywood, TV, literature, you name. And latching on to nostalgia only keeps the cycle going on and on.

For comics, trying to solve this problem seemed to backfire. Over at DC some months ago, the editors there told their creators to “stop Batgirling” and to go back to the “meat and potatoes.” My initial take away from that was one of disappointment. Watching Hail, Caesar! and reading what the Coen brothers had to say has changed my attitude on this.

I think it’s great that both Marvel and DC have put at least some effort into making their product line more diverse. The Coen brothers are also right to believe they don’t have to consider diversity in the movies they want to make (whether I agree with them or not). And it’s a reminder that many, many people out there really don’t care about diversity and they don’t want to care about it either.

In Hollywood at least, movies like Creed, Straight Outta Compton, and even Star Wars: The Force Awakens are shaking things up and have the positive reviews and profits to back up their success. At Marvel and DC, they’re still in the process of figuring out how to shake things up in an equivalent sort of way. DC’s approach, which was admirable, spread itself too thin. They put too many titles out that were doomed to failure. They were doomed because they were rushing to capture an audience that hasn’t been properly cultivated yet.

It took time before Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, The X-Men, and many others were solid franchises deeply entrenched in our culture. Too many Bat titles or Avengers titles compete with these younger characters and titles and prevent them from having an equal chance, as I discussed the other week with Sam Wilson as Captain America and his almost certain end not long after Steve Rogers comes back.

Perhaps a possible solution is to invest highly in a small number of newer characters, like Kamala Khan at Marvel, build them up, entrench them in our culture to allow them to gain some permanence rather than spread diversity too thin and watch books rise and fall fast. Or maybe the world has changed too much where characters like Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man would never be able to be created and become kind of franchise juggernauts in comic that they are today and entrenching a new character like Kamala Khan just wouldn’t work the same.

Nostalgia is a powerful force, and that’s a force that is not only unavailable to help characters like Kamala Khan and characters from other underrepresented groups, it’s a hindrance. Not only to cultivating these new characters, but it’s a hindrance to us and getting us out of our comfort zones.

Is there anything that can really be done about this in the short term? I’m not entirely sure. It’s something for me to think about. Maybe for you too.

Joe Corallo: Brief Lives

DeathThis past week has made me reflect on life and death. Some of it has been personal, some of it has been David Bowie related, and some of it has been comic book related.

Despite never having met David Bowie, he’d been a part of my life for a while with his music, movies, and other works. And a celebrity of his status is hard to not be reminded of, regardless of if you’d like to avoid him or not. From his music being in a many films, to just hearing his songs in played on the radio, bars, and grocery stores, Bowie is just so entrenched in our pop culture that he’ll live on for the rest of my life, even though he physically hasn’t.

Comic book story lives and deaths are a little different. I probably didn’t need to tell you that, but it sounded like a good segue so here we are. Character deaths in mainstream comics are becoming more and more a staple of the medium. The increase in character deaths is leading to an increase in characters coming back to life. Oddly enough, characters who would sell a lot of books with their deaths get killed off (see Superman, Batman, Phoenix, Wolverine and more!) or characters that no one seems to know what to do with (see Coagula, Kraven The Hunter, and more!). Just like real life!

When it comes to characters coming back to life, it’s a bit harder to suspend your disbelief. At least for me. And I’m not saying that to mean in these worlds with alien worlds, alternate dimensions and time travel (just to name a few) that someone coming back from life is where I draw the line. It’s more just sad how these fictional characters we know and love seem to put more effort into bringing back their pals that sell books than bringing back all of their good friends, relatives, and innocent bystanders they’ve watched die over the years. Always comes down to the bottom line with these superheroes. It’s a damn shame. I know I’ve plugged X-Statix before, but if you haven’t read it the book does touch on that point.

Anyway, the big two used to at least try to take a break between ending lives in their comics and starting up lives again. Currently Marvel is advertising that they have a character coming back to life and a major character death coming up soon. The line between life and death in mainstream comics has become so blurred, with brief lives and briefer deaths. All as the ultimate gimmick to keep you wanting more.

This hasn’t always gone off without a hitch. Alexandra DeWitt’s death in Green Lantern sparked enough outrage to create Women In Refrigerators which helped to launch Gail Simone’s career. More recently, Joshua Fialkov quit a gig writing Green Lantern because they planned on killing off prominent black superhero John Stewart.

These two instances do have similarities. Yes, they’re both controversies in the various Green Lantern comics, but that’s not what I was getting at. It’s that both instances involve killing off characters that are not straight cis white guys. In one they’re killing off a woman, and in the other they’re killing off a black man. In both, the idea was to kill off a character that would have motivated at least one straight cis white man to take action and do the right thing. In one, Kyle Raynor was pushed to stop Major Force at all cost, and in the other different Green Lanterns would have been motivated to solve the mystery of who killed John Stewart. The latter of which caused such an uproar that DC cancelled its plans to kill off John Stewart.

And all of this got me thinking about deaths in comics and how it’s linked to diversity. Death in comics can be a double edged sword when it comes to diversity. On the one hand, if you’re only killing straight cis white guys, isn’t that implying that the only characters worth killing off, the only characters that could elicit a strong emotional fan reaction straight cis white guys? On the other hand, if you kill off a woman or minority character, wouldn’t you just be depleting from the already small (albeit growing) pool of women and minority characters in comics, and possibly using it as a tool to push a straight cis white guy to action?

I’m sure we can all think of a lot of potential examples in our heads right now. What if Marvel killed off Steve Rogers (again)? Sure, that’s making room for Sam Wilson to really assert himself as Captain America even further, but in a way doesn’t it have the implication that Steve Rogers is more important? What if Marvel killed off Sam Wilson? Wouldn’t that lead to Steve Rogers somehow probably taking the role of Captain America back, taking a step back in diversity as the cast of characters gets just a little more white and a little less black? It’s something to think about. At least I’m thinking about it.

If they would just come back anyway, then that’s not great for diversity either. In DC Comics 52 series showcasing the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, we got characters like Batwoman stepping up, and The Question passing the torch from Vic Sage to Renee Montoya, as Batman and Superman and some others are out of the picture. It was a flirtation with diversity that ended with our beloved white heroes Superman and Batman coming back from obscurity as Batwoman and The Question fell back a bit. The Question has even went back to being Vic Sage after The New 52 reboot. Go figure.

DC has other examples of this, like bringing back Hal Jordan as a Green Lantern instead of maybe delving more into John Stewart, and more. Over at Marvel, they killed off Wolverine, and now X-23 has taken the reigns in her own book All New Wolverine. Speculation of Wolverine coming back (Not Old Man Logan, who is already back, but the real deal Wolverine) in 2016 has been high. If he comes back, isn’t that a step backwards for diversity? Even if they still try to push X-23 as Wolverine, won’t it eventually just move back to Logan? They must know that over at Marvel, and that makes it a little troubling to think that they would be willing to undermine their own progress. Maybe they won’t though, but it’s something that’s more than possible, it’s likely.

Often character deaths in mainstream comics lead to brief lives of those that take their place. The Death of Superman brought us Steel, but since Superman’s return he’s often been used very sparingly and rarely with much thought or creativity outside of his original creative team. These are all just some examples of life and death in comics, and how they can work against diversity or hold diversity back. If Marvel and DC are really going to take diversity seriously, they may need to let the dead rest in peace.

I understand it’s complicated, I know that no one wants to throw away an opportunity to make a few bucks, and work for hire contracts keep many creators from wanting to invest their hearts and souls into characters they don’t own. However, something needs to change. Some of the current ideas in mainstream comics need to be allowed to die, and new ones need to be born and thrive.

Joe Corallo: Knowing Your Place

Hellcat Patsy WalkerThe other day at a comic shop I saw a flier for the upcoming Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! #1. It was advertised having writer Kate Leth and artist Brittney Williams attached. I think it’s great that the two of them are on this book, as I enjoy the work they’ve put out over at BOOM! Studios. However, it did start getting me thinking about the direction the comic industry is going. A direction that it may not want to go in.

We’ve seen the big two added more books with a woman lead. This has been great. A lot of them have at least one woman creator attached as well. We should absolutely be thrilled by that and support those efforts.

Just off the top of my head I can think of Amy Reeder on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Kelly Sue Deconnick’s recent Captain Marvel run, G. Willow Wilson and and Sana Amanat’s work on the new Ms. Marvel, Marguerite Bennett on the all woman’s Avengers team titled A-Force, and of course Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! just at Marvel.

Over at DC we have Amanda Conner on Harley Quinn, Amy Chu on Poison Ivy, Ann Nocenti followed up by Genevieve Valentine on Catwoman, Gail Simone followed up by Babs Tarr on Batgirl, Meredith Finch on Wonder Woman, Annie Wu on Black Canary, Marguerite Bennett and Marguerite Sauvage on DC Bombshells and Emanuela Lupacchino on Starfire.

That’s a pretty hefty list for right off the top of my head, and I could have even missed one or two. We should be proud of the comic industry for having more women being involved in the creative process. However, you’ll also see the problem I was getting at before. All of the women creators are working on comics starring women… and not much else.

Just to be clear, I am not at all speaking on behalf of any of the creators listed, or making any judgments on the work they choose to do. I think they’ve been doing incredible work, and I’ve picked up most of the mentioned titles that are currently available. My concern lies with the pattern of the big two pairing up women on women lead books while not doing that with books that have a man in the lead.

It’s very possible that some of these instances they asked creators the characters they wanted to work with and these are the results we have. I highly doubt that was every single instance. We have had a long history of men, particularly straight cis white men, writing women in comics. Many of which have been great. I thoroughly enjoyed Charles Soule on She-Hulk and Brian Azzarello on Wonder Woman. However, I’m starting to get concerned that we’re moving more towards compartmentalizing creative teams, and that’s not a good thing.

How many women can you name who’ve worked on Batman? Sure, you might have thought Devin Grayson right off the bat. You’ll probably be racking your brain for a while after that though. Becky Cloonan did a fill in issue on Scott Snyder’s run a few years ago. And yes, Genevieve Valentine is currently one of the eight writers on Batman and Robin Eternal, the other seven being men. We haven’t had a woman creator have a lengthy run on either Batman or Detective Comics. Mostly fill-ins.

Okay, how about Superman? Louise Simonson had a huge impact on the character. She was integral to the Death of Superman storyline, and she created Steel. You’re gonna need to think real long and hard to come up with too many more names than that. Sure, Ramona Fradon did many of the Super Friends comics, but that’s most of it. Justice League comics are even more male dominated. As are The Flash, Green Lantern, and so forth. Ramona did work plenty on Aquaman and Plastic Man, but we did already mention her.

How about over at Marvel? Let’s start with Spider-Man. Sara Pichelli did co-create Miles Morales with Bendis, but beyond that there isn’t much else. Louise Simonson did some work on Spider-man as well, but I did already mention her with Superman. And those examples aren’t exactly examples of long runs on Amazing Spider-Man or even Spectacular Spider-man.

And the X-Men? Louise Simonson and Ann Nocenti did a lot of work in the X-Universe, but again, both of them have already been mentioned for other contributions. I can also add Majorie Liu for her work on Astonishing X-Men, but you get the idea.

Again, to clarify, I am not knocking or belittling any of the contributions these creators have made. I admire the work they have all done and continue to do. I’m highlighting all of this to make the point that this is still a very male dominated industry, that women have not had all the same opportunities over the years as men whether it was deliberate or not, and that this should change. I also understand that the comic book industry is small. Smaller than I think we realize sometimes. Even still, this situation could be better.

I’m not asking for Superman to spin the earth backwards in time and fire the DC editorial teams of yesterday and replace them all with women. I’m not asking for Kitty Pryde to project herself back in time to do the same thing at Marvel. The past is the past. It was a different time, and there is very little we can do just dwelling on that. What we do have to do is acknowledge the past and understand it as we move forward.

I think Scott Snyder is doing great things with Batman, but maybe when he’s done with the title Genevieve Valentine or Amy Chu might have some great ideas of where to take him next. After seeing the kind of work that Amy Reeder has done on her title Rocket Girl with Image, maybe she’s got a great run for someone like Iron Man that she could be working on. Maybe the next big Superman creator will be a woman none of us have heard of yet.

I believe the best stories are yet to come. Many of the popular comic characters are decades old and have mostly been handled by male creators. One way to revitalize these decades old characters would be to get creators with different perspectives.

As a queer man have enjoyed a great deal of comics that involve exclusively straight characters. People from all backgrounds enjoy all sorts of stories. Someone with a different background could help flesh out other characters in these stories as well. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and many others have both men and women in their stories, and people from all walks of life.

It’s not only important to have representation in the main character or characters, but characters off to the sides and in the backgrounds as well. More women tackling comics like those I mentioned could be a way to help revitalize these titles, and hope it’s something that’s being considered.

 

 

Joe Corallo: Coagula, DC’s First And Only Transgender Superhero

CoagulaLast week I met with my friend Kelsey to get a tarot reading. I brought along my copy of Rachel Pollack‘s Arthur C. Clarke award winning novel, Unquenchable Fire, to lend to her. Beyond being a novelist, Rachel Pollack is a well-published authority on tarot, a transgender woman who tackles the subject in her different works, as well as having written comics.

She wrote Doom Patrol for two years following up on Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s popular run on the series over twenty years, when it moved from DC’s main line to the Vertigo imprint. Her run built on the bizarre nature of Grant’s image while creating new characters.

The most important of which was Kate Godwin, a.k.a. Coagula, DC’s first – and to date only – transgender superhero, with the power to coagulate liquids and dissolve solids at will. Prior to joining the Doom Patrol, she tried out for the Justice League, and it’s implied that she was rejected in part for being an out transgender lesbian activist, brandishing a pin on her jacket stating, “Put a Transsexual Lesbian on the Supreme Court.”

Rachel Pollack was able to use the character of Coagula to discuss trans issues and to inform readers who were unaware of these issues as to what it means to be trans. She even crafts a brilliant moment in storytelling where a transcendent being requires the strongest example of a man and a woman, and Robotman and Coagula are the man and woman the best personify those genders, driving home the fact that a trans woman is a woman. Period.

So decades before the biggest and most active push for more diversity and representation in comics on the page and behind the scenes, DC had a trans superhero written by a trans woman. You would think that’d be a bigger deal, wouldn’t you? It would seem to fit right into what people have been clamoring for, doesn’t it?

That’s not to say that DC hasn’t created trans characters before; they just haven’t been superheroes. Wanda from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman run was trans, and has been both embraced by fans keeping it in the context of the time it came out and criticized in hindsight. Shvaughn Erin, the Legion of Super-Heroes Science Police Liaison, was trans but that has since been retconned and she’s back to being cisgender. Gail Simone put in the effort and created Alysia Yeoh, Batgirl’s transgender roommate for her New 52 run on the book, and often incorrectly sited by blogs and news sites as the first true transgender character at Marvel or DC. Unfortunately, after Gail Simone left the book, Alysia Yeoh has mostly faded into obscurity and the team that took over Batgirl afterward was quick to fumble on trans issues. They have since apologized and the issue in question has been modified to remove the transphobic dialogue in subsequent reprints.

I am not counting any characters that are magically trans, or have powers that allow them to change their genders, because that’s not a trans character and you shouldn’t count those either. Marvel has even less trans representation.

If you haven’t heard of Rachel Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol, it’s probably because it’s never been reprinted. And if you haven’t heard of Coagula, it’s for the same reason. Her stories have never been reprinted. After Rachel Pollack’s run on Doom Patrol ended, no one seemed to know what to do with the character, and she would appear just a little more before being unceremoniously killed off.

In order for me to read those stories, I used a combination of eBay and multiple comic shops to find all the issues. You should be able to find all the issues reasonably priced if you feel so inclined. It’s a fantastic run, and a worthy follow up to Morrison’s Doom Patrol. Rachel Pollack, in my opinion, is the last writer that truly understood the Doom Patrol.

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles written lately about the efforts DC has been putting in to making more diverse comics. If they’re really invested in that, why not bring back their only trans superhero and reintroduce Coagula to a new generation of readers? Or at very least just reprint Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol run? Reprinting those issues in a couple of trades or so would be a great start for DC to show that they have an interest in trans representation.

And while they’re at it, they could hire a few trans writers and artists, too. We have more openly trans writers and artists working on comics now than at any other point in the history of the medium. They’re here, they’re queer, many of them could use the opportunity to craft stories at DC or Marvel, and we could all benefit from the opportunity to read them.

John Ostrander: Savaging Barbara Gordon

Barbara Gordon

Warners has announced that they are making an animated feature of Batman: The Killing Joke, the 1988 one-shot by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Central to the storyline is The Joker shooting Barbara Gordon at point blank range with a large caliber handgun, then savaging her (she is later seen with welts and bruises all over her face), ripping off her clothes, possibly raping her, and photographing her. Some consider it a classic. Others are asking how they can make an animated feature that’s true to the story and more are asking why they are doing it.

The “why,” I think, is pretty obvious – the book made money, evidently continues to do well on the backlist, and the powers that be are presuming it will sell well as an animated feature. They are probably not wrong.

I’ve read many comments on the idea online including female members of the comics community and all the comments I’ve read are disgusted with the idea of the comic as well as the announced animated feature.

At the time that Batman: The Killing Joke was released, I was co-writing Suicide Squad with my late wife, Kimberly Yale. Don’t get me wrong; I was and I remain a big fan of both Alan Moore and Brian Bolland. Individually and together they have done stunning work. Moore is one of the giants of the comic book industry. He is, IMO, a better writer than I am and I don’t say that about many other writers (I have a very healthy ego and opinion of my own work, thank you very much). That doesn’t mean he can’t go wrong and I think that Batman: The Killing Joke went wrong.

In the controversial scene, there is the ring of a doorbell at the apartment of Commissioner Gordon. Barbara, all smiles and virtually going “tee hee,” goes to answer it. I should mention there is no chain on the door, no peephole to check who is in the corridor. There is evidently no policeman on guard duty in the hall. This is Gotham City, home of costumed psychopaths, and needs a vigilante dressed up as a bat to control the criminal population. James Gordon is the Commissioner of the Police and there are no safety measures where he lives?

Barbara opens the door. Barbara has been Batgirl and faced some of the costumed psychos inhabiting Gotham. She’s a grown woman who, in her own continuity, had been a congresswoman for at least one term. And yet she just flings the door wide open like a silly ninny.

There stands The Joker and he has a large caliber handgun. He shoots Barbara somewhere below the middle. From the angle, Kim and I thought it was the spine although others think he actually shot her in the uterus. He then rips off her clothes, beats her, takes pictures of her (while her father, off panel, is held motionless by The Joker’s henchmen), and possibly rapes her. Kim and I felt that was strongly implied but, to be fair, it was not directly shown.

I know women who have been assaulted. I know women who have been raped. That’s heinous enough but can you imagine what it would be like to have been shot, to have your spine broken, and then to be sexually assaulted? The pain, the horror – I can’t dwell on it too long.

Kim and I discussed it. To have been shot at the close range, to have your spine shot out, should have killed Barbara. If not, Kim thought severe sepsis would have set in and Barbara would not have survived. However, in the story, she does. That’s a given.

I should point out that the cover has a close-up of the Joker aiming a camera at the reader and saying, “Smile.” In that context, the only possible interpretation I can conceive is that the reader, the viewer, is Barbara as she lay on the floor, after she had been shot, presumably after she had been violated.

How does that feel?

The Bat office was done with Batgirl at that point. Barbara no longer fit into their plans. Kim and I asked if we could have her and we were told that. So we re-created her as Oracle. To us, it was important that the act have consequence. We didn’t want Barbara to magically recover. Given the violence she had endured, we felt she would be paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. However, we felt she could still be a hero.

It was a given in Barbara’s continuity that she was also a computer wiz. I mean first class. So we gave her banks of computers and made her the info wizard of the DC Universe. It started in Suicide Squad with her advising Amanda Waller, although we didn’t reveal Oracle’s true identity at the beginning. We left clues and, eventually, we showed it was Barbara.

Kim and I felt that, if we did the job well, Oracle could become an important part of the DCU. It solved writing problems for other writers; how did their protagonist learn a necessary plot point? They went to Oracle. She went on to become a valued member of the Justice League and led the Birds of Prey in their own book.

The last story that Kim and I worked on together before she died was Oracle Year One, drawn by the wonderful Brian Stelfreeze. We showed that year as Barbara made the transition from broken hero to dynamic Oracle. She became a strong and much loved icon for the disabled community. In making her a hero again, Oracle allowed others to heal with her. The reader healed with her.

Eventually, DC returned Babs to Batgirl status. Her spine was healed. Gail Simone was offered the job and she took it; she knew they were going to restore Barbara whether she wrote the series or not. She could, and did, make the events of the Killing Joke and Oracle a part of Barbara’s backstory; it wasn’t just forgotten.

It has been suggested that someone else could become Oracle but, to my mind, that wouldn’t work. You can’t just put anyone else into that role. It was the fact that she had been Batgirl, that she was Jim Gordon’s daughter, that she had her own long history, that she suffered the events of The Killing Joke – however heinous – all contributed to who she was. I don’t think anyone else but Barbara could be Oracle for the character to have any meaning.

I don’t know how all that gets fitted into an animated feature. I’m also not sure what parental response will be. It’s Batman, it’s Joker, it’s a cartoon. Great for the kiddies, right? Except this sure won’t be Frozen. If they change what happens to Barbara, I’m not sure it will be The Killing Joke either. If it’s not, why bother?

Oh, right. It’ll make money.

 

 

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.

 

Mike Gold: Our Pulp Roots

Justice IncOne would think that because the roots of comic book heroes are deeply planted in the forest of pulp heroes, adapting such characters to the four-color medium should be a snap. Despite the superlative efforts of such talents as Garth Ennis, Frank Robbins, Eduardo Barreto, ComicMix’s own Denny O’Neil and a handful of others, this is not the case.

Let us politely say that, overall, pulp heroes have enjoyed a mixed reception. Some good, some bad, some wonderful, some insipid. Sturgeon’s Revelation remains in complete control.

In making the transition, some people resort to measures that put these characters in modern times. Usually, that trick doesn’t work: The Shadow, The Spider et al are creatures of their own times. Sometimes they become something different – in the 1960s Archie Comics turned The Shadow into a routine, and boring, costumed superhero. At least the guy who wrote most of it, Jerry Siegel, knew something about capes.

These days most of the pulp hero resurrections are being handled by Dynamite Comics, and by and large they’re doing a fine job. I didn’t care for their approach to The Spider, but I was surprised that their putting Doc Savage in the modern era while maintaining his past actually works. Their Shadow is mostly terrific; there’s a lot of it so some is better than others.

It’s hard to go wrong with Gail Simone, and she fits Red Sonja like it’s her second skin. Probably has something to do with the red hair. Zorro has been in fine hands, particularly the stories by Matt Wagner and then even more particularly those stories drawn by John K. Snyder III. The idea of team-up up Zorro with Django is nothing short of brilliant, and Quentin Tarantino teamed up with Wagner to provide the story.

Because The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Avenger are all owned and licensed by Advance Publications (better known as Condé Nast, which is one of their divisions), it was inevitable that these three would share their own mini-series. Any fan with an appreciation for history felt his spider-sense a-tingling when Dynamite announced they had all three licenses. The concept is akin to skating on thin ice.

Not to worry. This just-completed mini-series, Justice Inc., was written by Michael Uslan, and Michael knows his stuff.

Now, you might be asking “Geez, Mike, what the hell are you talking about?” In fact, you might have been asking this question for several years now, but I’ll just assume you’re referring to Mr. Uslan’s far greater notoriety as a Hollywood producer who specializes in bringing comic book characters to the screen. You know, like all those Batman movies. And the forthcoming Doc Savage movie, the one IMDB says is starring Chris Hemsworth (maybe) and is to be directed by Shane Black. Yep, that’s the guy.

However, he’s also written quite a few comic books. In fact, I regard him as one of our best writers – I will read any comic book with his name on it, and I just might even pay for it. (I heard the phrase “hey, kid, this ain’t a library” so often I salivate at each utterance). And he’s done some truly innovative stuff: he’s the guy who married Archie Andrews off to both Betty and Veronica – sadly, separately – and now he’s got Betty and Veronica out of Riverdale for a year in Europe. He’s written Batman, THUNDER Agents, The Spirit, The Shadow / Green Hornet crossover “Dark Nights,” the revived Terry and the Pirates newspaper strip, Beowulf, and an issue of DC’s original Shadow run. And other stuff.

Joining Uslan on Justice Inc. is artist Giovanni Timpano, who is quite up for the challenge of drawing such a character-heavy story in period. Covers – well, there are a lot of them by a lot of good people. Dynamite tends to approach variant covers the way a 16-year old boy approaches an orgy. But, yes, Alex Ross has one over ever of the six issues.

Since we’ve got at least three heroes and sometimes their associates, I should note the villains are two of the pulp classics: Doc Savage’s arch enemy John Sunshine and The Shadow’s persistent creep Dr. Rodil Mocquino, a/k/a The Voodoo Master. These are choices that might be obvious to the hard-core, but they are so for a good reason: they are solid villains right out of the best pulp traditions.

Even though Michael and I have yet to work together, he avoids violating one of my great many cardinal rules: he keeps the in-jokes accessible to the knowing without getting in the way of those that don’t know. Indeed, in-jokes abound in Justice Inc, ranging from very cute to quite clever. He takes some extremely minor liberties with the characters: Doc Savage is a bit more sarcastic than in the pulps, The Shadow seems a bit more OCD given the fact that he’s hardly a team player (unless it’s his team), and The Avenger’s origin story is bent slightly to accommodate this being set at the very beginning of his career.

You might ask why I’m plugging this mini-series after its conclusion last week. Outside of the fact that I’m absurd, it is possible that your friendly neighborhood comics store has a run left, and you should always support your local friendly neighborhood comics store. Aside from that, the trade paperback collection comes out in mid-May and is available for advance order from Amazon.

I doubt Uslan is going to give up his day job in order to churn out more great comics. That’s just a guess, but, damn, I can hope.

 

Martha Thomases: Free Comics, Convergence And More!

This is going to be a slap-dash column, full of random thoughts (and, I hope, insights) because I’m having a slap-dash episode. The plumber is supposed to be here fixing my kitchen sink at some time in a four-hour period. I don’t know when he will arrive, but I’m pretty sure it will be when I’m in the middle of something really complicated.

The super in my building is supposed to come by to hang a picture for me that is too heavy for me to hang by myself. Again, that time thing makes it difficult to plan properly, or to think and act in an orderly manner.

My son and his girlfriend are coming to visit (hence the increased urgency for a working kitchen sink) and I have to make up the guest room, make sure there are snacks in the fridge, and explain to Salina the cat that she can’t sleep there at night.

So yes, I’m not thinking a lot about comic books, nor their spin-offs into other media. Except that super-speed and super-strength would be especially useful right now. Together, they would put my plumber and super out of business. Working people will have enough problems from Congress over the next two years without me wishing for extra abilities that make their lives more difficult.

Anyway, here are my random thoughts.

  • Convergence, the DC event that lets the corporate staff move to Burbank and get settled, sounds great to geek me. No, it won’t draw in new readers. No, I won’t like everything. But I’m psyched for Tom Peyer on The Atom, Larry Hama on Wonder Woman, Gail Simone on Nightwing/Oracle, Alisa Kwitney on Batgirl and Greg Rucka on Question.
  • That said, it seems that event-driven comics are not the guaranteed sales they once were and this is only good for comics. I mean, I’m fine with Spider-Man showing up in the third issue of every new Marvel series (god, I’m old), or a new DC character finding herself in Gotham, because that’s a way to introduce new readers to the book. Universe-spanning crossovers are the antithesis of this. Instead of using something familiar to make a new reader comfortable with taking a chance on a new title, crossovers tend to be so complicated (especially if one reads only a few titles consistently, not all of them) that it’s easier to skip the whole thing.
  • You know what would bring in new readers? Free comics. And, yes, Free Comic Book Day is a wonderful thing. So wonderful that I think we can take its success and use it to try to reach more targeted audiences. For example, if I, as a single woman living in Manhattan, could get a Groupon for a free first issue (or trade paperback) of Saga, redeemable at my local comic book shop, I might try it.

Yeah, it’s not cheap. Image would have to support the plan with co-op dollars. Still, I think it would draw in a bunch of people that comic book marketing doesn’t normally reach.

  • I’m liking Matt Ryan as the title character on Constantine. He seems to enjoy the hell out of all the snark he’s supposed to convey. The scripts aren’t terrible – a bit heavy on the exposition, but that’s what happens when there is a new universe to introduce to viewers. I like the way they use comic book art as Easter eggs.

However…

His tie is always askew in exactly the same way. I just know there is someone on set whose job it is to wrangle the tie. It doesn’t look casual. It doesn’t look reckless. It doesn’t look like John Constantine, man of mystery, is caught in a world beyond his control.

It looks affected. More than anything, it reminds me of Miami Vice.

It’s a tie, John Constantine. If you don’t want to wear it, don’t wear it. If you put it on in a half-assed way, day after day, every day, I will think (and I’ll try to use words you’ll understand) you are a wanker.

  • Like a good geek, I get my comic books on Wednesday, usually in the morning because that’s how it fits into my round of errands. Often, I don’t actually sit down to read them until the weekend.

For the last few weeks, I have left-overs on Tuesday.

Are comics worse? Am I outgrowing them, finally, fifty years after all my childhood friends? Is it just a fluke of chance, that storylines aren’t appealing to me?

I take my own advice and try to pick up something new, from an independent publisher, on a regular basis. Lots of these comics (see Saga, above) become part of my regular list. So I don’t think it’s happening because I’m a slave to super-heroes. I still like them.

Any suggestions?

  • There is a new Stephen King book out this week. It’s titled Revival and I know almost nothing about it. I love Stephen King books. Reading one feels like getting into a warm bath, because I know that he can tell a story, and create characters I’ll care about. He cares about them, too.

And I’m probably not going to have the time to read it until the kids go home. And I like having them here and don’t look forward to their leaving.

Maybe I can stay up all night reading. When I finish reading my comics.

 

Mike Gold: The Wonder Woman Sensation

Back in the 1970s during my first tenure as a DC Comics employee, I rhetorically asked the question “who was relaunched more often – Wonder Woman or Captain America?” For you young’uns, in today’s lingo “relaunched” means “rebooted.” Even as a rhetorical question, people’s heads exploded. This, of course, did not stop us fanboys from counting.

It turns out in order to get a fair count we needed to summon the spirit of Milton Sirotta. Oh, okay, check it out here. Yes, I’m asking you to Google Googol.

My advice, offered at the time and I continue to offer today, was to treat Wonder Woman as though she were a genuine superhero and have her do all the other stuff the other superheroes, almost exclusively male, could do. It’s amazing how often she was just… lame. I’m not saying the mythological approach, as best presented by George Pérez although the present team of Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang is absolutely first-rate, is in any way wrong. Not at all. They-all use mythology in a manner similar to Jack Kirby’s Thor, and that’s about the highest praise I’ve got.

Wonder Woman did not get her start in the All-American Comics’ anthology title, Sensation Comics. She got her start a month earlier, in the DC/All-American hybrid, All-Star Comics #8. But it was Sensation Comics that was her launchpad to superstardom.

Wonder Woman quickly earned her own title, as well as a regular slot in Comic Cavalcade and the job of – wait for it – secretary in the Justice Society. As time wounded all deals, only the eponymous title survived the “Golden Age,” one of only three superhero comics to do so. And that’s about all of WW’s really, really strange creation history that I’m going to share right now.

Last week, DC returned Sensation Comics to the world as part of its much celebrated (well, celebrated by me, often, in this chunk of the Ethersphere) Digital First line. That means it’ll be reprinted, I think today, in traditional comic book form and then ignored by too many retailers who think “digital” is a four-letter word. Woe onto them: Sensation Comics is a pure superhero title. It is Wonder Woman the Superhero. Which is what she was created to be.

You couldn’t put this first story in better hands. Gail Simone is no stranger to the character and no slouch as a writer – in fact, she’s one of the best practicing the craft today. Artist Ethan Van Sciver is a fan-fave as well, and for good reason: he is great at handling superhero stories. He should be cloned.

Together, Gail and Ethan give us … well, a Batman story, except Batman isn’t in it, Wonder Woman is. Instead of the ever-expanding Batman family, we’ve got WW’s sisters-in-arms. We’ve got The Joker, The Penguin, Two-Face, The Riddler et al, and Wonder Woman is taking them all on, as any great superhero would.

This is one of the best superhero comics I’ve read in quite a while. More important, it’s the superhero comic Wonder Woman deserves.

Check it out.

 

 

Michael Davis: Milestone Rising

I don’t get it.

I just don’t get it.

Last week I wrote to both my audiences at ComicMix  & Bleeding Cool that I’d answer any and all Milestone questions. (Well, that’s any and all questions except the ones I won’t answer.)

Over at Bleeding Cool I got a TON of questions. So many in fact I’m missing my weekly deadline so I can better organize my responses.

And what about ComicMix?

ONE guy supplied ALL the Milestone questions.

WTF?

Translation…WHAT THE FUCK?

I just erased a few hundred words of righteous WTF wisdom. Why? What’s the point? I’ll just answer Doctor R-Man questions and spend the rest of the week pouting.

Does DC have to pay Milestone any amount of money to either publish Milestone titles or have Milestone characters appear in their books? i.e. in teams or in guest appearances? Hence, no Icon in the Justice League or no Static in Teen Titans?

Sorry doctor-that’s a business question best left alone.

Going from the previous question, is the reason DC isn’t publishing Milestone     titles or having Milestone characters make appearances in DC books because there’s not enough people purchasing them or enough demand to justify publishing them, as a result of those fees DC has to pay? Hence, little return on their investment?

(more…)

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