What Happened To Primaid?

Lately on DCWomenKickingAss she's been running a contest for the most memorable moments in DC History. (Most recent poll.) I'm pretty sure most people are like me and a number of the most memorable things are the first time they encountered a favorite character, or at least the first time it hit them that this was going one of their favorites. There's a quote, or an action, or an image that is just burned into your mind and forever associated with the character after you've seen it. At least, that's how I've been voting. I look at the characters involved and judge if I'd remember that just from the character being mentioned, or if it's just a fairly cool moment. This has made it fairly easy to vote every day. And while my tastes really don't seem to overlap with most of the other nominators I'm reasonably certain that many of them are coming from the same attitude.

I think with Wonder Woman in particular many of us can pinpoint when we became fans. There's a point where you suddenly realize that this is Wonder Woman, and this is why she's had an uninterrupted publishing run since 1941. I know some of you were in love with the concept of Wonder Woman before we could read, but a good many of us turned up our nose at the First Lady of Superheroism before we finally came around. Some of us needed a little nudge in her direction.

I got into superheroes with the infamously soap operatic 90s X-Men cartoon, and that led to Marvel comics. I was a little down on DC at first, and not impressed with the idea of Wonder Woman. Fortunately, my sister had a friend who was an enthusiastic Grant Morrison fan, and Wonder Woman was in his JLA. I didn't really focus on her until the big fight with the white Martians. Now, bear in mind that every single one of these villains are as powerful as Superman plus Telepathy, Invisibility, Intangibility and Shapeshifting.



I know, she's not even in that panel. (She's in orbit, grappling a monster from outer space that has a mouth in its stomach.) Still, the point I became a Wonder Woman fan was that bit of dialogue. I'm not sure exactly what it is in this quote, but it's the first time I realized "Hey, that's Wonder Woman." I needed Martian Manhunter to point it out authoritatively to me. I needed him to let me know that Wonder Woman is basically a force of a nature and all he has to do is say her name so that people stop worrying that the Telepathic Tank that Changes Shape, Density, and Becomes Invisible has disappeared.



Two pages later, Diana lands on Earth and stands up. She attributes her victory to being able to hold her breath longer (in an exchange that leads to one of the best Batman lines in the history of comics), and they go on with the fight.

I'm not sure this moment would have been enough, but it was quickly followed by Wonder Woman doing more and more awesome things. The storyline that introduced Zauriel may have been the greatest thing ever because it featured Diana intimidating a freaking Angel, taking over as field leader, braving heavenfire (which burned her at the touch) to enter a Cherubim Chariot and tear out its systems, then go outside to keep it from falling on the city. Zauriel describes her actions in that storyline as "biblical", and we should bow to his expertise in this subject. She was continually presented as a force to be reckoned with, and the other heroes accorded her the proper respect. While my sister was buying our only repeated complaint about JLA was that there wasn't enough Wonder Woman and that wasn't because she wasn't used--it was because she was so damned awesome in this book no amount of spotlight was enough. Hell, Rock of Ages was specifically the reason my sister and I read Wonder Woman, because in the first issue of that storyline Kyle says Diana's dead (Don't let that turn you off the trade, she shows up later anyway) and we needed our fix! (It wasn't as good, though.)

I like Morrison's writing because I have a ridiculously short attention span and I require massive amounts of excitement in my fiction to prevent me from introducing unwarranted excitement into my life. His JLA run was and is well-suited to my tastes. I like really fast pacing where so much happens that sometimes you have to go back because you missed something. I like witty humor that fits seamlessly in with the action without focusing the entire plot around a punchline. I like that he never felt a need to stretch quiet character moments over seven pages, and instead had the team bond in one or two panels to the side of fight. I like a cosmic scope to my stories, and decisive heroes who know what the fuck they're doing and choose the ethical path without pages and pages of angsty navelgazing. I like when someone drops an idea that another writer would milk for an entire six issues in the background of half a panel. I like giant robots sitting on the ocean floor because enough action is happening in the book no one felt a need to show them getting beat up. (As opposed to when the action happens off-panel so that we can see panels and panels of people talking about it.) I like wall to wall weird when it manages to capture my imagination.

So naturally I really fucking like this run, and much of what else he's written, including the things people cite as hard to understand because those tend to be the extremely fast paced and esoteric stuff that benefits from a reread--the stuff that appeals to my short attention span and obsessive eye for pattern and symbolism. A great many of my favorite characters (and periods where I find I like characters I otherwise hate) lead back to Morrison's writing in some way. And yeah, I'll forgive a number of things from Morrison I wouldn't from other writers simply because so many moments in my mental "Favorite Moments of All Time in Superhero Comics" file were written by him, so many characters that on paper sound completely uninteresting came across as complete badasses under his pen, and there's so much going on in his stories I don't ever get bored enough to realize when he's offended me. (Yes, he's offended me but as he's usually been able to win me back afterwards. I don't tend to remember it even after I've realized it.)

Morrison is the one writer I would give a chance writing any character, but for years I've wanted him on either Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) or Wonder Woman. (I've only just now got DCW on my side) People think that's because I'm just a rabid Morrison fan who wants him on her favorite characters, but the truth of the matter is that Morrison is the reason that these two number among my favorites. I can rationalize all I want about the inevitable sales bump, and that he'd freshen the franchise or what have you... none of that actually matters to me. He got me to love Wonder Woman to begin with, and I want to see him write her more.

Huntress

Helena Bertinelli
Also Known As: Honestly, I've called this character a lot of fairly misogynistic slurs and I'm trying to quit that sort of thing.
First Encountered (By Me): JLA #16
Franchise: Birds of Prey, Batman, Justice League
Core Concept: Ethnic Stereotype + Gendered Ethnic Stereotype
Writer Responsible For My Distaste: Joey Cavalieri
Character I Want To Read That She's Attached To: Fortunately no one, though she pops up on occasion. This is why I don't often rant about her.

Best Character Trait: Drive
Worst Character Trait: Moral compass requires external calibration

I think the first time I saw Huntress was the expanded team in JLA #16. As with Jade, she appealed to me at first. She had a great look in the 90s, full body suited black and purple (none of this exposed belly white stripe shit). She was presented a Gotham character who clashed with Batman, another of DC's attempts to answer the Punisher. Not bad initially, though it wasn't a surprise at all when Batman booted her from the JLA. She hadn't impressed me terribly during her short time as a JLAer, and I wondered if Morrison just wasn't that fond of her and her potential might be better explored elsewhere. So when my sister began bringing home Batbooks, I kept an eye open for the Huntress.

I confess that when I ran into her in the Batbooks I was disappointed in what I'd hoped would be the Punisher of the DCU. There was a characteristic present in her that the Punisher never displayed, a underlying need for acceptance by her peers in the cape community. When that need wasn't satisfied, she would turn darker and grimmer and seemed to slide further into the realm of rage-powered take-no-prisoners 90s lethal force characters, suggesting her moral compass was thrown off when left to her own devices. It wasn't an endearing character trait, because as much as we associate the 90s with everyone turning dark and grim, most of the well-established DC heroes adhered to the high road while lethal force was left to socially rejected minor characters and (used to highlight the morals of the main characters) and brand new characters and teams that occupied their own universes. Helena was a low-road character in my fan-formative years, a low-road character who aspired to be accepted by the high-road characters. I understand that the need to belong is a universal story, and by no means am I immune to it myself, but I can only be steeped in that theme so much before I lose patience. Helena stopped appealing for me back when her storyline focused on seeking the Batseal of Approval, and then getting pissed off because she didn't have it. The implication that this was a deep-seated problem involving her own family and particularly her father really didn't make her any more interesting.

None of what I've gone over so far is a reason to hate Huntress, it's just why I lost interest in what looked like a promising character and stopped caring whether she came or went. It wasn't hatred, it was just a lack of enthusiasm. For a good deal of time my feelings towards Huntress could be summed up as a marked indifference to whether the character existed or not. I'd read things with her in them, but she wasn't really a factor in whether or not I'd pick something up.
At this point, of course, Huntress fans will want to recommend that I read their favorite stories because surely I'll have an epiphany and convert to a true fan once I've found the proper work. Forget it. Writers I normally enjoy quite a bit like Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Gail Simone have written this character and no matter how much they let her shine I couldn't really bring myself to give a fuck what happened to her.

My problem with Huntress was not caused by clumsy, thoughtless writing that inadvertently exposed her worst character traits without actually being out of character. Nor was it caused by lackluster writing that failed that give her any distinguishing characteristics or allow her any notable accomplishments. The writers seemed to very much like Helena and spotlight her strengths. I recognize that she has strength, they simply aren't of the sort that I consider particularly impressive in a superhero on their own. No, my real problem with Huntress was caused mainly by her core concept, and my own personal revelation about my tastes.
There came a day--after the umpteenth time someone had seen fit to speculate about the morality of my ancestors or why I might be reacting to the implication as an insult--when I decided that I was fucking tired of Italian-American characters from Mafia families and gawddamned sick of ruthless, cutthroat Italian-American women with deadly tempers. That's pretty much it. I think I could take one stereotype or the other, and I suspect I could even enjoy reading both in one character if there was some joy and humor in the execution but Huntress is just such a precise measured blend of Stereotype That Irks Me, Stereotype That Irks Me, Fucking Miserable Background, and Fucking Miserable Attitude that I can't fucking stand the sight of her anymore.

Three of my favorite writers in comics have had Huntress under my pen, given her their best shots, written her as sympathetically and competently as they do any other character, and not one of them has succeeded in overcoming my disinterest in her dour overall story arc and my distaste for her infuriatingly stereotyped traits. It's not the writing. In this case, it's safe to say that it is the character I hate and the only person who can be held responsible is Joey Cavalieri for reintroducing what was once Batman's daughter as the Perfect Storm of Character Elements That Piss Me Off.

Similar Characters That I Like: Jeph Loeb of all writers wrote a story in which Catwoman discovered her real father was a rich mafia don, and she stole from him endlessly to get some revenge. Honestly, I rather liked that twist. Catwoman's reaction to a deadbeat dad and a family tree of ruthless thugs was essentially "I'll just steal my inheritance and get on with my life." Catwoman doesn't really give a shit what anyone thinks of her, and she is eminently practical even under writers I can't read.
I'm fond of Bobo Bennetti because his criminal past is a result of his gaining superpowers and choosing a life of crime. It wasn't a family thing for him.
I confess to both loving and hating Nately's Whore (yes, that is what the character is called in the book), the prototype for the hot-blooded Italian sex object from Catch-22. I hate what she represents, but damned if I didn't find the absurdity of the whole situation greatly amusing.
I can also enjoy minor characters in comedy settings who have Mafia Ties as a punchline, because I haven't lost my ability to laugh at this trope. I'll sit down and watch gangster parody movies like Analyze This and The Crew repeatedly without getting worked up over it. I'll admit that's a weird point of view, but in this particular case it's my ethnicity and I reserve the right to be offended when people take the stereotype seriously and laugh my ass off when people mock the shit out of the genre that created it.

Favorite Appearance: I didn't her JLA stuff, but I actually enjoyed a Christopher Priest story better than a Morrison or Waid story. JLA: Secret Files #2 is about how the new team was put together (without just sitting around a table dealing out pictures and flashing forward to events DC is never going to carry out) for their unveiling in JLA #16 and focused a lot on her. It held up on a recent rereading. I think this is the story that made the Batbooks in the same period such a disappointment, though, and Priest's portrayal was the exception rather than the rule with her.

Could I Ever Like Huntress? Probably not. Good writers haven't worked. Acceptance into the Batfamily hasn't worked. Having a badass moment in each appearance hasn't worked. Developing a strong moral fiber hasn't really worked, because that tends to change based on whoever she's teamed up with. Really, I'm not going to like the character unless she turns into a completely different person, down to her Secret Origin. And while I'm not ruling out DC erasing their universe and either replacing her with Pre-Crisis Huntress or rebooting her as an Amazon, it is unlikely. Still, I know some people do so I promise not to vote in any official polls for her death.

Unless of course it's a direct choice between her and a character I love. Or like. Or wouldn't mind seeing in another issue.

Jade

Jennie Lynn Hayden-Scott
Also Known As: Alan's Daughter, Todd's Sister, Kyle's Most Annoying Ex-Girlfriend, Pretty Girl Who Tells You Something is Wrong With Her Male Relative
First Encountered (By Me): as a background character in Kingdom Come
Franchise: JSA, Green Lantern, Justice League
Core Concept: Compelling, but problematic when you get to her parents
Recurring Story Roles: Love Interest, Good Daughter, Damsel in Distress, Hero Support
Writers Responsible For My Distaste: Judd Winick, Ron Marz, Roy Thomas
Character I Want To Read That She's Attached To: Kyle Rayner

Best Character Trait: Smarter than Kyle
Worst Character Trait: Underachiever

So I linked it all in my last post. You've all read my feelings about this character. For a time, I was best known for hating her so much. Even now, after that bitter disappointment of death scene and her lackluster resurrection in a lackluster crossover I still can't stand the sight of her. My passionate aversion has cooled since the return of the Corps and the prominence of characters like Soranik, Brik, Iolande, Arisia and even the porn-vomit-clad Star Sapphires. Still, for very long time Jade was It in the Green Lantern franchise and that's probably why you'll find fewer female Lantern fans than Gotham and Titan fans. Because even if you didn't find her as loathsome as I did, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a convincing reason for her inclusion in a list of the Best Female Characters or hell, even a list of the Best Female Lanterns before Soranik was introduced.

Why? She's just not that impressive. She doesn't really have any feats under her belt, she's consistently shown as less capable than her father or the GLC Lanterns, she is constantly tied to her brother, or her father, or her ex-boyfriend. She's a perpetual supporting character, doomed to never shine, and each time she gets what looks like a chance to really kick ass, it's stolen from us. This despite the fact that she's been established as extremely powerful (which really only serves to make her look like she's squandered that potential) and has a long history of heroics behind her.

Her personality isn't terribly compelling either. She seems irritable between moments of complacency, displaying flashes of wisdom and compassion. She yells at people and acts hurtful without thinking, then feels bad about it later and apologizes. She rarely mentions the foster parents who reportedly loving raised her from infancy, pays little attention to the history of her biological mother, and focuses most of her love and support on her biological father and (when he's actually being paid attention to by writers) her twin brother. She dates men who look like her father, the exception being the guy with the same powers as her father.

I've said all this before in far more acidic terms. She's not really so hateful nowadays, when I look at it objectively (though she's clearly not a character for me). But here's the twist, superfans, the dirty little not-so-secret that knowing me I've said a billion times but no one could believe it:

I used to love Jade.

Seriously. When I was a kid and started reading Green Lantern, she was the love interest. She had a great design and Green Lantern powers internalized so she didn't need any weird jewelry. I was super-excited when Kyle went away and she took over for a few issues. A few times during the run I got the impression, and I'm not sure where from because I'd never read Jade in any other series, that Marz was mishandling the character. In the end I swore off the book when the far less experienced Kyle had to save her butt from Fatality.

Then a few years later I was recommended Winick's Green Lantern series. So I picked up some of the trades and read the Power of Ion storyline. In the book, Winick attempted to present Jade as a strong-willed and admirable woman who handles things on her own, but something about the presentation was off. She seemed forced, and unlikable. Then he brought back her natural powers in the most insulting way ever written, with Kyle telling her specifically "You can't do this on your own."

I was pissed off, and blamed Winick, and figured at least Marz wrote her likable... until Marz returned and wrote her as unlikable. At the point I wanted a better Jade story, so I took a lot back at my old comics, the Marz stuff where I liked her and actually got defensive of her. There wasn't really any evidence of her overcoming a great obstacle or showing any feats of power. So I hit the back issues and picked up Infinity Inc. Nothing there. A sprinkling of guest appearances across the DCU... Nothing. There was nothing to suggest that Marz or Winick had characterized her as less skilled or capable than ever before. She was a mediocre Lantern, except in the Green Lantern/Sentinel: Heart of Darkness series where she was established as having been more powerful than anyone suspected all along... and she was depowered. But not without giving the impression that she hadn't really been pushing herself to her full potential until then. And it was after that that she was given a Green Lantern ring twice, and shown to be simply adequate at it... which isn't really adequate when the norm in your franchise is saving entire galaxies on a daily basis.

To top it off, her personality wasn't really that great either. Marz's falling in with a blonde dude, avoiding sending word to Kyle to break it off, getting into a confrontation about it and then feeling guilty was... not really contradicted by any intense displays of character strength. Digging deeper into her history, I found there was even a part of her core backstory--that she had a villainous mother with mental illness and different powers that needed to be ignored in favor of emulating her father so that she could be a hero--that left a bad taste in my mouth and made me uncomfortable with the character setup.

So these two writers I was mad at had been writing her as she'd been established before. I'd just been dazzled by a green lady with green powers. So who do I blame?

Well, really, Roy Thomas. Also Winick and Marz for not taking the opportunity to break that cycle and make her worth reading again. Thing is, while the handling of Jade was the last straw for Winick for me, I've seen Thomas and Winick treat female characters as better so I'm not really swearing off their work over Jade. By the time three writers have established that the character isn't really an outstanding Lantern, it's become a character trait. She's just not as good as the guy Lanterns. For this to change at this point, there needs to be a storyline dedicated to what makes her change. I was fucking pissed by this realization because I had liked her before and, again, this is a franchise where the adequate characters are supposed to be saving galaxies on a regular basis. I wanted Katma Tui, Boodika, Brik, Arisia, KT21, Laira, Krys, Donna fucking Parker... ANY of the space women back because they were so much more skilled and capable than Jade. But no, all we had for female presence in the increasing guy's club (because at that point John and Kilowog were back and Hal was on his way) was Jade.

Even then, I could take her or leave her as the only female character, except that she was dating a character I liked to read so I had to see her over and over and over again. So I can kind of see where the Sharonhaters are coming from, but I can't exactly say this is the best way to approach character hate. Now that we have some decent female Lanterns in the space books, it's easier to see the potential in Jade. I'm not a fan of characters who aren't at the top of their field (I can't really think of any male second-placers I'm fond of either) but Kalinara has made a few good arguments for turning her around and I think if she were to slip into a teambook without any other Lanterns (particularly not her father or her ex-boyfriend) in it (that wasn't written by Winick, I will not read Winick writing Jade ever again), she'd get a chance to shine a bit.

Similar Characters That I Like: Any space-based Green Lantern.
Jesse Quick/Liberty Belle is portrayed as a Lesser flash. She will never be as fast as Wally or Barry (or probably Bart when he gets up there) or allowed any major speedfeats over theirs, but she's never been romantically shackled to the more powerful male speedsters, she has a full personal life (and now a marriage into a franchise where speed is less redundant), and her bursts of strength makes her distinctive from the other speedsters. It's okay that she won't be as fast, because she has strengths they don't. Plus her mother's legacy is also as big a part of her character as her father's, to the point that she's now using her name.
Obsidian, Jade's angsty gay brother, when he isn't evil. (He's really annoying when he's evil.)

Could I Ever Like Jade? I've hated on Jade so vehemently in the past that Kalinara has taken it as a personal mission to see if I could like her. She came up with some good ideas:
Right now it really sucks that Jade can be a Lantern, but not as good as her father or the space Lanterns. After all that's happened becoming a great Lantern overnight would seem really off. They could, however, do a story where she takes stock of her life, comes to the conclusion she's going to change and develops enough drive and ambition to start really making a name for herself. She plays catchup, but manages to pull off some impressive feats along the way.

Alternately, there was a story a long time ago during one of Jade's depowered periods where she started developing her mother's powers. It's been ignored, but it would make her distinctive from the other Lanterns and give her a twist. Or Kalinara's other idea that takes out her of the space stories that she seems ill-suited for and immerses her in a fairy tale setting.

And for fuck's sake, give her some spotlight away from her father, her brother, and her ex-boyfriend. I'm damned sick of seeing writers play personality ping-pong to suit their story needs.

On Hatred

A few days ago on Tumblr, Sharon Carter fans and Sharonhaters came head to head over a post on the increasingly poorly named "Comic Secrets" tumblr. Seems someone felt that Sharonhaters were falling prey to sexism, but didn't felt comfortable calling them on it and naturally they did an anonymous posting that pissed a large number of them off. Even though Tumblr has gone to great length to make it nearly impossible to have a conversation, a post claiming that Sharon Carter "gives men a reason to be sexist" and that, based on examples solely from Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, the character is inherently worthless has led to an intense fight via reblogs (across a second post, too). I'm particularly fond of how she cites Sharon's advice to kill Bucky as her being a "bitch", but claims she hates her because has no agency whatsoever.

Despite it being a glaringly irrational argument based on a single writer, it nevertheless reminded me of my recent Crystal irritation, my old Donna Troy hate, my old Jade hate, and my history of calling for the deaths of Spoiler (which ended up sucking), Jade (which also ended up sucking), and Cassie Sandsmark (which would probably end up sucking so I've stopped wishing she'd die). The entire affair has me thinking about the nature of character hate, especially in a genre like superhero comics where the storytelling is serialized across portrayals by different writers and artists. When is it really hating the character for something in their core concept and not simply being angry about the role in the story or the writer's individual view of the character? And how often is it simply based on another character? How much of a role do demographics like gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity/nationality and religion play? You can't divorce it completely, and many of us are harder on the ones with demographics in common with us. What about exposure? A character you're indifferent to can soon become hateful if you see it way too often. There's a number of characters I can't stand because they dated other characters I like, and a significant portion of the books I read were dedicated to a character I had zero interest in. Too much time of that and a lack of interest turned into disgust and misery whenever the character appeared.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that every character I read gets measured against a number of traits and values I try to cultivate in myself. (Yes, villains have these too. They just don't have a moral compass.) I find myself taking little interest in characters without those traits, and that turns to hate if I read too much of that character. There's a few character traits I despise in myself and other human beings, and I'll take a strong dislike to anyone fictional who displays them. It's simply things I don't want to read about. Sexism plays a role here. I know of some traits (such as Daddy issues) and storylines that are more palatable with a male character than with a female character to me.

But then we get into the problem of what's a character trait and what's just the writer. This is especially problematic because what's just the writer can soon become a character trait if taken on by the next writer, and the writer after that and so on. See Crystal's infidelity: the first could simply have been an accidental falling for Pietro, the second they tried to explain away as mind control, but by that point writers had gotten too attached to her and Pietro in some sort of love triangle so then there was the Black Knight infatuation, and Johnny Storm was played up again, and the next thing you know the fucking Sentry's been retconned into her past (this does make me pity her more than I hate her, though). I'd say anything transferable between writers can be argued as a character trait, with the clincher being three or more writers with no mind control/imposter plot or a majority of the character's recent appearances.

Fortunately, character traits can change and the right growth plot can turn a hated character into a tolerated or even beloved character (though I think it's safe to bet you won't see a post on this blog entitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Queen" anytime soon).

A trait that's in the core concept is tough to change, though. You can't suddenly decide that Huntress isn't a temperamental Italian woman with mob ties without making her into a completely different person, so if your problem is that Huntress is an ethnic stereotype than probably nothing is going to change your mind. There's a number of characters I can trace my hatred back to things that are inherent to their characters, and that's just the way it is. In such a case, though, I can usually tell I'm not going to like them from the description and it's not a reflection on any writer other than the one who created the dreadful waste of panel space.

Still, there's a place for reasonable dislike and hatred that takes the gender of the character into account without focusing that hatred on the femaleness of the character alone, and without extending it to real live women. You may hate a character because you object to sexism that's become inextricably entwined with them in stories, but when you throw gendered slurs at the character when ranting about them, you problem may be more rooted in sexism itself than objection to sexism. I'm not above saying "Emma's a bitch", but anyone offended by the vocabulary certainly has a point that I'm letting misogynistic attitudes creep into my rhetoric.

Now, before you accuse me of thinking myself inherently better than someone else... 5 years ago, I wrote this post. It's another thing that has me thinking about character hate. This may seem like an inappropriate subject for the holiday season, but the celebration of Yule is the expectation of dawn after a long darkness and I'm in one of those religions dedicated to personal exploration, so I can't think of a better way to spend December than wading through the depths of my hatred of female characters feeling blindly for the root cause. I believe I'll look into some individual cases in my upcoming posts. Feel free to join me.

We may need to be proactive with this guy.

Via Mizzelle, we have some intriguing news in the DC management area. Seems they've put a new person in charge of developing their franchises. Given how badly they've been doing with Wonder Woman, this could only be a good thing. Right?

I'm sure it is. Let's meet the new guy:

In his new role, Desai will develop and implement the individual franchise plans for Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Flash, MAD Magazine, Vertigo titles, and other DC properties. This will include driving wider cross-promotional support across all Time Warner divisions.

Amit Desai joined Warner Bros. in 2004. Most recently, he was responsible for Warner Home Video’s non-theatrical family and animation business. During his tenure with Warner Home Video, Desai helped grow non-theatrical family & animation revenue +45% and secured #1 studio market share position for first time in business history. Among his accomplishments, Desai is credited with the launch of new franchises such as DC Universe – a series of animated original movies inspired by DC Comics graphic novels.

Wait.. He's an animated feature exec. Didn't we recently hear something about animated execs? Let me check my archives... Ah, here it is:

We had originally planned to do sequels for Wonder Woman [but] sales started out extremely slow and then over time were eventually able to catch up to probably Justice League Frontier. The execs decided because it wasn’t able to sell quickly right away, where as Justice League was, that there wouldn’t be any more female super hero films right now. We were developing and hoping to get started on a Batgirl film based on Year One, but because of Wonder Woman’s slow sales start, that won’t be happening now.

...

Fuck.

Does anyone have his contact info?

Girl-Wonder.org Membership Drive

The old Board of Directors at Girl-wonder.org were a driven, organized, and (rare among comic fans) practical bunch that managed to convince the suits at DC Comics that a third-string sidekick girlfriend of Robin should be returned from grave and given her own solo series. Pretty fucking impressive on it's face, and they had considerably wider goals. Alas (as with my own projects) life gets in the way and you don't always have a successor available who can hit the ground running when you need to move onto a higher priority. As a result, the site's columns have been silent (I understand the forums are still active, though) and we haven't yet seen a major followup to Project: Girl Wonder. But that could change:

Girl-Wonder.org is pleased to announce that it is holding elections for the Board of Directors for its governing body, Gworg.

Gworg is an incorporated non-profit feminist organization dedicated to fostering an attentive, empowered comics fan community, to encouraging respect and high-quality character depiction, and to assisting the professional development of women working in the field of comics. Anyone who supports these aims is eligible to become a member, and all members are able to vote, stand for office, and nominate others to the Board.

Becoming a Director is an excellent opportunity to support and direct the progress of Girl-Wonder.org! Moreover, since Gworg is a registered non-profit organization, this also makes a great entry of volunteer work on your resume.

This is how it works:

1) To become an official member of Gworg, you must purchase a voting membership good for one year. There is a nominal fee of five dollars, which is waived for Girl-Wonder.org volunteers (bloggers, cartoonists, forums moderators, etc). All members are eligible to vote in elections, and to nominate themselves or others for Board positions.

2) If you want to be a Board Director, nominate yourself! You can also nominate others – don’t worry about approaching them to see if they’re interested or if they’re members, because we’ll do that.

3) We’ll make sure all nominees want to run for election and are eligible to do so.

We will be accepting new members and Board nominations from Tuesday, November 30th through Tuesday, December 21st. Elections will be announced on Tuesday, December 28th. Members will then have until Tuesday, January 4th to vote for this year’s Gworg Board of Directors.

Just a few years ago Girl-wonder.org was the most effective female-focused comics charity around, and with the right people on the board it could be again. If you have interest in superheroes, a progressive outlook, enough drive to confront a resistant industry about its ingrained attitudes towards women and spare time, I advise you to look into this. (Even if you're not into Batfandom, because heaven knows things like this need variety.)

I just have two things to say, at the risk of opening old wounds:

1) When you do join, choose your officers carefully. The old Board were the founders, so they were engaged. But there's another female-focused comics industry charity that once did a great deal of work but found itself slipping into inactivity. This charity attempted to infuse itself with new life by electing for their President a popular blogger with a prize peacock personality rather than a dedication to the goals of the organization. It did not work out well. Take my advice and pick yourselves some down-to-earth people who aren't into self-promotion for your leadership.

2) If you get a position but later find that your professional, student or personal life is reaching a point that you can't fulfill that duty, don't be ashamed to step down and let someone with more time take care of things. Both Kalinara and I hesitated on that with When Fangirls Attack and we had several months without a post, nearly killing our venture. We finally faced facts and passed it on, letting it survive a few more years. The projects themselves are more important than any discomfort that results from having to give them onto another person.

Mangatron

There are so many beautiful things about JLA #6-7 (the introduction of Zauriel, numerous pithy ways to say the world is at stake, and an unrelenting stream of awesome Wonder Woman moments to name a few) but I had until recently overlooked the introduction of Mangatron. Mangatron is a giant robot. He sits on the bottom of the ocean. This is all he does. I am not normally impressed by giant robots, but I love him.

I suspect if we could ever figure out exactly why, we'd be able to mass produce comics to my taste.