Better than the first issue. I still hate the art, but the writing's much smoother.
Another villain displays sexism, but its seems like there's more of a point to it. It's setting up a personality, specifically a leadership style, and makes more sense.
Less Spanglish, too. Though isn't "puta" a bit profane for an all ages book? I could be wrong about the meaning, it's been a while since I lived in Texas.
Same sort of stuff slipped by editorial in the Gorgon storyline in Wonder Woman. Weird how TV and radio are getting more restricted, but comics are getting more slack right now.
(And the sad thing is that this isn't even the most trivial thing I've ever criticized. I'd say that the most trivial thing I've ever posted was the rant about Captain Comet's name, but I'm sure there's something more miniscule in my archives that I'm forgetting about.)
Being a Puerto-Rican born in New York, I don't notice the spanglish* until I go back and re-read it after someone points it out. I'm not saying everyone speaks like that, I'm saying it's nowhere near the point where I'd feel it was pandering or overdone. If she wasn't a former FBI agent (and as thus would have long since trained herself to stop) I would say she probably needs a little bit more.
ReplyDelete*The exception being the use of Puta, which did make me stop and wonder how many books use "bitch" these days. :)
It could be a North-South thing. When I lived in San Antonio, no one mixed it up like that. Aside from a pet name or talking about food, they either slipped entirely into Spanish or spoke English.
ReplyDelete::The exception being the use of Puta, which did make me stop and wonder how many books use "bitch" these days. :) ::
ReplyDeleter. nav - If you're using terms like "puta" or "bitch" to show a male character's sexism (as we were with Eddie the gangbanger), we think dropping it in once or twice makes sense. Don't forget, we also had White Tiger call Eddie a "puto" on p. 4, which nobody's dinged us for - yet.... >:)
Ragnell - Tammy and I lived on the Upper West Side of NYC for nearly 20 years, and heard a fair amount of Spanish - and Yiddish and Japanese and Chinese and Korean and Kreyol - words mixed in with the English spoken there. New York City's proudly polyglot and multicultural - we've even got some Japanese terms (though fewer than originally written) mixed in w/the English in this issue.
As for "all ages" - actually, the book has "Parental Advisory" written on it...in skinny letters...along the bar code where I had to search for it.... ::sigh:: Ruwan, our Marvel editor, told us the book's target rating was "Teen +", which seems to mean more-or-less strong PG or TV-14 - so that's what we're writing to. If we'd been asked to do an all-ages comic, we'd have minded our language and been more careful about the violence (don't forget there's also a beheading in WT#2, though thankfully little blood!).
As for Phil's pencils - I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, Ragnell. I'm still happy with his work overall - which may not have been the case if we'd gotten one of the "name" artists some of the fans seem to think Tammy got shorted on.
Best,
Tim Liebe
The Other WHITE TIGER writer
Man, this is a really great blog. I hope I can do as well with mine. Blue Book
ReplyDelete