Written World

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2012-01-29T23:24:00.003+01:00

This week there was a "Women Write About Comics" blogcarnival, and it's full of good posts. She's got four roundup posts so far.

I had been putting off blogging in order to participate, but I was hit by the double-whammy of a particularly draining workweek and being completely obsessed with Sherlock still so I had to hold off until the next one. It's projected for mid-march.

Happy Birthday Dad!

2012-01-20T23:04:00.003+01:00

It's my father's birthday and like so many other special days since I've gone overseas I've had a little trouble catching him. So each year I've been keeping to a tradition where I honor my father's career choice with a panel of my favorite superhero policeman... The original Human Torch.

This year I have a very special page for you, from the fateful Marvel Mystery Comics #7.

What emergency could this be? What justifies frightening the citizens of New York before they've learned that the Human Torch is not their enemy? What is so urgent that, in full fire mode, Jim Hammond must fly down to the sidewalk and run to his friend's house? What matter could possibly be so important that he must scare all of these bystanders in order to quickly contact Johnson?

Why, it must be a truly urgent matter that cannot wait!

Okay, Jim... I know you're excited, and only a few weeks old, and this is a very important decision but... yeah, you could've walked upstairs in non-inferno mode to ask him about this.

But that's okay. That's why there's a training school.

How do you solve a problem like Irene?

2012-01-14T20:41:00.007+01:00

I've held off on blogging about Irene Adler because after the double-punch of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Sherlock S2E2 A Scandal in Belgravia everyone seemed to have stated what we need to know about her. They've covered the problems of oversexualizing her, making her a subordinate to Moriarty, making her a love interest, becoming a damsel in distress, giving Sherlock a ridiculous amount of power over her, and the major problem of making it so that she doesn't win out in the end. All of these being things that are not in the slightest canonical (fucking one King does not a Femme Fatale make), undermine the theme of the original story, but somehow appear to be popular in adaptation after adaptation after adaptation.

And while many of you seem to be more focused on Moffat than Ritchie, I think we mostly agree A Scandal in Belgravia was a far better showing, even for all it's flaws. Those of you who haven't seen A Scandal in Belgravia and are jumping to the conclusion that it makes the exact same mistakes Guy Ritchie did in his two movies, you're jumping the gun. Irene's far more formiddable in Sherlock than in either of those movies, she makes a far better showing, and I believe she's placed equal to the level of Moriarty and Mycroft there. At the very least, it's something we can argue about over several seasons. Do my blood presure a favor and actually watch this one before you start throwing the same criticisms Ritchie is deserving of at Moffat.

But there is one big problem that I haven't seen anyone touch on. One major change from the canon that leads to all of the smaller problems with Irene. One major change that is at the core of what pulls the rug out from under those of us who loved the original Scandal in Bohemia story. One major change that betrays a complete misunderstanding of the point of A Scandal in Bohemia and the real reason Irene Adler could win against Sherlock Holmes and walk away from him scott free holding everything she ever wanted.

Stephen Moffat and Guy Ritchie made the exact same mistake that a million fanfic and pastiche writers have before them. They looked at the Rogues Gallery of Sherlock Holmes for a formidable female villain, someone with potential for romance and intrigue, and picked out the perfect-seeming Irene Adler. This is understandable. She's popular among fans, particularly female ones. She's one of his best known opponents, possibly the best known after Moriarty. She looks good in a suit. Her story involves political and sexual intrigue. She's cunning and resourceful. She won.

There's just one small problem.

Irene Adler isn't actually in the Rogues Gallery of Sherlock Holmes.

Look back at A Scandal in Bohemia. She's not the bad guy. She's the good guy. Sherlock's client is the bad guy, wrongly pestering his ex-girlfriend and painting her as a extortionist when all she wants to do is live her life. He lied to Sherlock Holmes. Her explanation for trying to keep a little insurance against future bad behavior from this man is perfectly understandable. The entire story is a misunderstanding.

And that, more than anything else, is why she got to win. Because in addition to being his equal, beating him fair and square, she was also on the side of right and he was the manipulated one.

Listing her among his "villains" is like listing Spider-man as a Daredevil villain.

I think I understand their logic. I love Sherlock Holmes, but there's only a few recurring characters and the active ones are men. But they want a really notable woman, a strong feminine presence (notice I didn't say strong woman character) for female fans to latch onto and straight male fans to be attracted to. And really, we all do. We want a decent dose of estrogen in these stories. Oh, there's Mrs. Hudson and Watson's wives and plenty of the clients, bystanders, victims and villains are women and they run the gamut from smart and willful to pathetic and panicky, but none of them shine like Irene. We love Irene better than any other woman because she was a match to Sherlock and she threw his unbelievable sexism back in his shocked face with three words. So we not only want to see Irene, we don't want her to disappear at the end of the first story like she does in the canon. We want her to come back for a rematch. We want to see her as a regular recurring character.

But because she began as an antagonist, a lot of "further adventures" want to keep that dynamic. So they come up with the interpretation of this character as a badass "Femme Fatale" (a role that in Sherlock's Gallery goes to one Isadora Klein, who lost) and the most coldly clever woman of the canon (actually, Maria Gibson was a hell of a lot more clever than Irene and she would've gotten away with it too if not for those meddling kids) that basically places her somewhere on the supervillain scale. This leads to our next problem.

Supervillains lose.

Oh I know, we've been reading grown-up pessimistic comics for so long we've forgotten this but in Sherlock Holmes stories this remains the rule. The Bad Guy loses. The criminals get caught. Justice prevails. The minor bad guys pay and the major bad guys might dick around for a while before they lose but in the end... Supervillains lose. That's why Sherlock can be the biggest jerk in London and we still love him, because he uses that horrible personality for good and he is very, very effective at it.

And before you say it, yes, Moriarty loses.

Canonically speaking, he loses in the first story he appears in just like everybody else does.

In adaptations it takes a while. That's what makes Moriarty Moriarty. But he always loses in the end. We know this. We expect this. We sat in that theater last month knowing exactly what would happen the second Mycroft said 'Reichenbach.' We'll all be glued to our sets tomorrow even though we're absolutely sure of the outcome. An experimental writer or two might throw this in our faces but the truth of the franchise is that at the climax, two men go over the falls and one man walks away. The supervillain does not walk away.

And so by the rules of the franchise, when we incorrectly position Irene Adler as a supervillain, she loses. And no matter how well you do it (and Moffat does manage this well, while Ritchie's Irene is more a nuisance and a henchwoman than a real threat, Moffat's is a full-fledged crime boss playing at Mycroft's level and poised to win completely at the climax), you're going to miss the appeal of the original story when she loses.

I've run out of synonyms for blinding fury, so bear with me.

2012-01-11T17:25:00.010+01:00

I've been blogging for quite some time, and I've had a few of these dry periods where I don't post much and when I do it tends to be something lackluster or sad. I suspect these periods happen because I'm not especially anxious or angry about something fictional (and I have a rule where I try not to blog politics or work) usually use this blog as an outlet for rage. I do this for rational and irrational reasons. I prefer expressing my anger to bottling it up. I've found that if I dedicate some time to writing about my reaction I can often find the underlying truth to it, the real cause of my anger rather than the often frivolous-seeming trigger. It lets me network my outrage, find people who feel the same way about these things and commiserate. And it lets me do some writing that can be clever and beautiful.

I'm not about to say everything on this blog is clever and beautiful, but every once in a while I get a turn of phrase or an analogy that makes me really proud. I think there's a poetry to ranting, if you really get yourself going, and you can come up with some vivid images and phrases to convey your level of upset to someone who is not reacting as severely. I'll often get a little carried away by that and express a higher level of indignation than I feel.

All the more disappointing then, when I run across something so infuriating, so gut-wrenchingly awful and insulting that I can't outline my reasons for it or come up with a pleasing way to express just how terrible I think it is.

I came across that today. The preview for Secret Avengers #21, courtesy the vigilance of David Brothers:

Let's move in for a closer look, just to make sure we're seeing this right.

Yes, that is Captain America saying "I'm going to let my friends torture you" like it's some sort of cool badass fucking thing for him to say.

I agree with David on the reasons this is vile. This subject for Americans is too raw and important to be treated like this.

And maybe it's a trick, and he's just trying to intimidate the guy but you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that stupid idea where it's okay to pretend we don't have any principles like it's not something that treads on the line of not actually having any principles, where it's okay to pretend threat of torture is good because it's not as bad as actual torture.

And oh god, just the thought that this character, the symbol not of everything my culture is but every ideal my culture aspires to be, actually walking out of the room to let someone else do this is so infuriating I can't even verbalize it. I was so angry when I read that page that I had to stand up, and walk back and forth doing breathing exercises so I wouldn't fall into a hyperventilating frenzy at just how careless a treatment of the subject and the character this is.

There's a way to handle this and show the character isn't perfect. Ed Brubaker wrote a scene in the "Winter Soldier" storyline where one of Captain America's colleagues, a Vasily Karpov, tortured a Nazi for information. He didn't interrupt. He in Karpov's territory, outnumbered by Karpov's men, and had the rest of the Invaders and the war effort to think about it. He stood outside the tent brooding, and confronted Karpov about his methods. He showed clear disapproval, but he compromised himself and it was clear to him they only shared a side against a common enemy. And later when Karpov turned out to be a fucking horrible piece of shit it was reinforced that the sorts of people who do these things are bad people, at least. At best, it reinforced for the character that he should never have allowed this sort of shit to go down in a camp he was in, or allied himself with that sort of man.

This? This is bullshit macho posturing. This is "See how badass he acts and sounds?" This is the loophole as a joke to show he's kinda clever, in addition to being unprincipled. This is treating Captain America like one your anti-heroes, because hey, everyone loves them and really they're the only kind of heroes you can write.

Except he's not like them. As David says, he's like Superman and represents the best of us. Captain America is your honest-to-god every good thing from the American culture, everything worth saving of our values, placed into a body that can make a difference in the world. He's the guy who is not only supposed to adhere to the moral standard, he sets it for the other heroes. Your anti-heroes, your fallen noir stars, your monstrous demeanors that cover hearts of gold and tarnished but upward-looking souls will pull this. They're coming from the bottom up, and steeped in the flaws of humanity. Captain America is already up there, though. He's established as an idealized hero, to the point that in the MArvel Universe he is the indicator of which side occupies the moral high ground. Having him do something like this, even in his Steve Rogers super-soldier leading a covert team garb, Says something about the moral high ground.

Even as a trick (ETA: It is not a trick), this is the further dilution of the sincere sadistic brutality into acceptability as "tough tactics." This is a complete misunderstanding of Captain America, the subject of torture, and the reality of what's going on in the United States right now.

The only thing left to say is Fuck You, Warren Ellis. Avengers is not Nextwave. Captain America does not fucking act like that, especially not for one of your cheap fucking jokes.

I don't often blog about work, but then I rarely think about the future.

2012-01-07T18:23:00.004+01:00

I seem to be settled into another one of those weird phases of disconnect, where I'm removed from the rest of my social circle at the same time I begin to consume media created by others rather than make it myself. It's weird, you'd think these periodic fits of reclusiuveness would be the perfect time to order my life, do creative projects, or even just blog but instead I read, go through all of the analysis and reaction in my head and never sit down to type it out.

I don't consider this a depression, though. I've been depressed in the past and my avoidance of creativity and society coincided with withdrawal at work. This is more like when I first got to Germany, when I threw myself into my job and found myself without energy for the rest of my life for a few months. I'm doing the same at my new base. I've gotten very energetic at work, where I'm currently filling the position of what's not even a glorified secretary, where I answer phones, track jobs for the other shops, and give briefings. For a few months I was on the lovely, relaxing night shift and was able to spend most of my time focusing on getting fit. Then I spent a period of time where I rushed into work and spent my first hour in preparation for a briefing which was actually in preparation for another briefing that turned out to be in preparation for a third briefing later in the day. In between this I answer phones and coordinate things. When I'm not doing that I'm spewing profanity because I've run across inefficiency, incompetence or sexism. I spend a good 95% of my day talking. About once a week I lose my voice.

This isn't my actual job, though. Sometime in the near future I'll be moved to my actual job, which is still removed from the parts of my job that I love, which mainly involved taking things apart and putting them back together. It's still technical work, but less of the blood and bones of the machine than I'd prefer. I'm in a unit that's filled with software technicians, and I am a hardware technician. I don't know what they're required to know, but a disproportionate number of them suffer from Alpha Male Nerd syndrome and I'm too old now to be dealing with that sort of bullshit from people who were in middle school when I was getting Ace Awards in Electronics Principles. (I don't even think most of these brats took Electronics Principles.)

I was getting quite depressed for a little while, because I'd worried a recent career field realignment had forever taken me away from the basic electronics work that I enjoy so much. Then I got my promotion study material, and found that even though a lot is cut out there's still enough of the basics to keep me happy. Still, the further I get from circuits and signalwaves the less joy and pride I take in my work. Which brings me to the ever-present question of what I'm going to do when I leave the military. No one stays in forever, and my first enlistment was basically a way to push final plans for the future down a few years. Sooner or later I'm going to have to take up a second career. All my life when I've considered higher learning I and everyone around me assumed I'd go for the softer social sciences or liberal arts, because I find it so easy to dedicate my leisure time to that and I disliked math so much in school. The idea of physics, engineering, or any of the hard sciences was not even brought up. But I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go into engineering. It's not something I study on my own, but it's the natural direction to go now that I've spent so many years in an electronics career field to realize what parts of the work I enjoy, and more importantly what parts of the work I can do best.

Winding Down.

2011-12-31T22:34:00.006+01:00

Every time I've come up with a post idea in the past few days I've put it aside until after the New Year, because around this time of year everyone else is doing an end of year wrap-up or something about resolutions.

This is a fairly ridiculous impulse, because I never do an end of the year wrap-up. My memory is geared towards things like the exact wording that was used on the phone, a national stock number, or the name of an obscure Wonder Woman villain. I'm not particularly good with dates, as my family (who have seen their birthdays forgotten nearly every year for the past decade) would attest. A year-end wrap-up would require me to remember things from earlier in the year, and even more dauntingly, remember just when in the year they happened.

In the meantime, I don't place much stock in New Year's Resolutions, because anything that requires more than a couple weeks is planning too far ahead for me. I hate planning. I went out of my way to form a lifestyle which excuses long-term planning, I'm not going to muck that up with New Year's Resolutions. Instead, I do End of Year Resolutions and this year I have busted all but one of them.

Still, if anyone is interested in a snapshot of this point in my life:

I have work this weekend, so I'm spending a quiet evening at home rather than going out.

I finished a Dispatches from the Fridge post, and am feeling rather satisfied that I've managed to post most of the weekends since starting it. We've managed 93 posts this year, nearly two per weekend.

I'm sitting in the middle of my uncleaned living (broken resolution number one), watching episodes from the old Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett. Lately, that series has been something of an obsession for me, and I'm getting a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I'm chatting with Kalinara about Sherlock Holmes inspectors.

I live in the middle of the village, rather than on the edge this year, so I'm surrounded by people setting off fireworks. I can see them from my window, but I hadn't noticed last year how much like artillery they sound. I didn't have any particularly interesting experiences in Afghanistan, but the sound is a bit unsettling.

I managed to beat the 50-book mark this year again. I used to keep track of every year I tried on Librarything, but sometime in 2011 I decided to delete all of my tags and start over. I wish I hadn't done that. Here is this year's list if you're interested.

The one strange end of year resolution I completed was to read through all of the comments on this post. (Warning: it gets pretty transphobic around the 700s.) Basically, one of the old and rather irritating personalities in the mainstream feminist community, Hugo, was interviewed for that blog. Hugo is quite disliked by a number of readers, and so they discussed that. Hugo's whiny, patronizing, and uninteresting so those who dislike him have ignored his blog for several years, and missed the post where he confessed to attempting to murder his ex-girlfriend and got out of being arrested because the police got the idea that she was suicidal from someone he chooses not to name. (Safe bet it rhymes with Lugo.) Someone who had been paying attention brings this up in the thread, and it is promptly shut down. Begin shitstorm. A post about the virtues of forgiveness follows this, with closed comments. Then an apology post that had reached 956 comments by the time I finished it went up.

I felt compelled to read through the entire thing to get links and elaboration on the murder thing, because it couldn't have been what it sounded like. But yeah, got high, saw her sleeping there, decided he needed to put her and himself out of his misery, tried to gas her. So, what it sounds like. Then it was a matter of disbelief that people were actually defending him. In the end I posted a comment siding with the "Are you kidding me?" faction and left.

On the bright side, through the tangents I read about some interesting comments and found out about some interesting books.

I was also duly reminded why I dislike the main political feminist blogs, and why I stopped reading them, and stopped reading and linking to a lot of the "Big Name Feminists" out there. I ducked out a few years over the whole mess about the tasteless illustrations chosen for Marcotte's book, but I'd been softening since so many of my newer friends who weren't around back then seem to be linking these guys. Much trouble as I've caused, I really don't like to be the one who constantly brings up old shit, especially if the people have finally recanted in the meantime and I just missed it. Based on these events, I'm going to guess nothing has improved.

Anyway, my apologies for the dim tone of this post. I had a long day at work and look forward to a long workday tomorrow. For 2012, I intend to exercise more (for the sake of my job), clear out some of the squalor in which I am living, shoot for the 75 book challenge, and use less profanity in day to day speech.

Those are only intentions, though. I resolve to drink a little wine and finally write that post about Irene Adler.

Review: The House of Silk

2011-12-20T20:09:00.010+01:00

Because the true canon of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries ceased around 84 years ago, and it was limited to a mere 60 tales plus apocrypha, even fans like me who feel no particular need to seek out fanfiction for other properties have a ravenous appetite for even terrible new stories. Mere faithful film adaptations aren't enough, we crave new tales. We want those stories Watson hinted at. We long for the stories that were too shocking and too entangled with the news of the day to publish. We seek out the confrontation with Jack the Ripper. We need the build-up to The Final Problem. We demand The Giant Rat of Sumatra and the other stories for which the world was not yet prepared.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of writers willing to give us new mysteries. Though the quality varies from time to time. (Do not read any take on The Giant Rat of Sumatra. It is no fault of the ambitious writer who tackles that tantalizing title that it is too much to live up to, but it is simply a fact that no rational explanation could live up to it.)

I've read some truly awful Sherlock Holmes fanfic in my day. And I don't mean awful because we found it on some poor young person's unprotected tumblr, I don't mean the sort of awful that was dashed off in an hour in response to a kinkmeme. I mean stuff people actually got professionals to publish and stock in bookstores.

But I've read some pretty good stuff. I've read some stuff that is pretty good despite falling to the perilous tropes of fanfiction, where the writer's style is aped awkwrdly and there is fanservice thrown in to the detriment of the story momentum.

And I've read some pretty great stuff too, some great stuff that no one has been willing to publish even. (Why is Marcia Wilson's You Buy Bones self-published when the first half is better than most of the stuff put out in the last 84 years?)

So even when I saw that little sticker saying that ACD's descendants have put their stamp of approval on the story, I still consider it fanfiction and I donn't mean that to diminish it. It was professional published by an bestselling writer, so I expected one of the better works I'd seen but I didn't expect it to succeed in capturing the style of the original sixty stories. But to that end, the House of Silk may be one of the finest pieces of fanfiction ever written.

This is probably due to his conscientious avoidance of the habits that annoy me the most about contemporary Sherlock Holmes writers. The mysteries are completely original plots that do not erase any of the canon stories. (Contradictions are okay, ACD did that all the time and we just blamed it on Watson being a bad notetaker, but I can think of a number of works that exist on the premise that entire stories were inventions of Dr. Watson.) All of the dialogue is new, no seeing Sherlock reuse his old phrasing in order to make him sound like himself, but it effectively captures the voice of the original writer. He alludes to other stories, but in a way that seems natural to Watson's train of thought. The characters are true to the original stories, while fitting the nicely into the trends of modern fiction. Horowitz's Watson is familiar and strong enough to carry the plot when Sherlock is out of sight. His female characters live up to modern expectations of character without being unrealistically enlightened for the era. New characters fit nicely into the traditional roles allotted for new characters: clients, villains, and victims, and he doesn't try to introduce a new detective or partner to tag alongside the main attraction. The appearances of fan-favorites like Inspector Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes aren't just a favor for the fans, their presence is logical and important to moving the plot along.

That's not to say there aren't continuity errors, contradictions, odd reasonings and other little problems. Thing is, all the little errors in this book are along the same lines of the sorts of errors ACD made back in the day. The real triumph of this work is that he manages to capture the voice so well. I suspect there was meticulous editing and rewriting to make the style match without just copying it. When you read this, you are reading something written in Dr. Watson's voice.

And he does that without sacrificing any of the other necessary elements in the book, the characterization and plotting are all up to par.

I only have one word of warning at the risk of spoilers, and that is that when the promotional materials state that this is a story too shocking to have published a hundred years ago, they aren't exaggerating. The book captures the Watson voice so well I just blew that off because that character has a very different idea of lurid that I do. The events depicted could easily have happened in the 1890s but would never have been published. I recommend this book, but with a trigger warning for sexual assault. True to the Watson voice, though, Horowitz doesn't linger over the details. It's referenced, not explicit, and not against a major character.

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
Mulholland Books
304 Pages

A moment to brag

2011-11-30T14:29:00.004+01:00

I've been quiet all month, mainly due to lack of internet, but I wanted to take a moment to brag.

I’ve done this before, but never had anything serious come of it. It was mainly a “get used to writing fiction and/or every day” thing. This year due to work I basically only wrote in large spurts once a week. (Another reason I wasn’t constantly posting wordcounts and angst about writing.) But I managed something surprisingly coherent.

It is not anything worth reading at the moment, and is loaded with typos and ridiculous ideas.

Nor is it a well-crafted plot with in-depth characters. That wordcount? I actually ended before the 50K and added another subplot with a minor character to drag out the ending.

But I am proud of myself. I did a "realistic" fiction story (it is still an adventure/detective genre book, though) the whole way through. I don't have five bazillion pointless subplots. Even the one I added at the end could easily be retrofitted to go with the rest of the plot (and it has a ready made pivotal point for my main character that didn't suit her at the end but would definitely make sense earlier.) I did not have aliens land at any point. The premise is totally absurd, and I took some leeway with probability, genetics and demolitions but that's all within the genre. The plotlines actually fit with each other. And I avoided padding. There are some nice in-depth descriptive scenes, and a few points where it gets redundant but really I just wrote plot the whole way through. If I did rewrite and edit it, it would actually get a lot longer.

All-in-all I put out something I could clean up and still shop around as a novel this time. It's not as funny as the last one, but it's there.

I am now officially an "Unedited novel the desk drawer" writer. Go me.

100 words on my personal life and over 1700 words on Wallander.

2011-11-05T12:49:00.012+01:00

Now that I'm settled in at work and have time to pursue home internet, I can't find the landlord. So yeah, will probably still be scarce for a bit. In the meantime I have plenty to preoccupy me without net access. I'm doing a low stress Nanowrimo (trying to write the requirement each day but not focusing my entire November and every interaction on making the damned wordcount), I've got loads and loads of beautiful (non-comic) books to read. I have books I've read I mean to review so I can sit and write reviews. I have a cluttered apartment to clean and the German trash system to navigate. Arts. Crafts. Comics. Sorting. Oh, and a new fandom.

Those of you who watch me on Twitter'll know this one. I ordered a DVD based solely on a preview and boy am I glad I did. It is AMAZING and so far the books I've gotten through are AMAZING too.

For those of you who skipped the post title, it was Wallander, starring Kenneth Branagh, based on novels by Henning Mankell, and rated EW, MC and AM for Extremely White Cast, High Body Count, and Abject Misery.

(Slight spoilers below)

So let's go over the amazing in increasing order from unsettling to excellent.

I admit first of all that the opening episode--Sidetracked--left me confused. Not because of any clumsiness with the filming or the writing, the story was good and the characters made sense. Just, as an American, it left me baffled. It's set in Sweden. Produced by the BBC. So, it's a British show about a Swedish cast based on a Swedish book. And in the British show about the Swedish cast based on the Swedish book there is a serial killer (Who is not the good guy.) that is appropriating Native American culture.

With no Native American characters around to comment on how fucked up that is.

It kinda overloaded my brain there. I wasn't sure exactly how to process that setup. My initial impulse--even in enjoyment--is to analyze that sort of thing when I notice it, and it's hard to analyze a culture that's not yours first off. Then it's a culture that's not yours interpreted through the lens that's not yours. Then it's about cultural appropriation, which is not my strong point.

However, if you are offended by what the villain is doing and how they're perpetuating stereotypes... You'll probably at least get some satisfaction over what happens to them.

Outside of that one, there's another episode that deals with actual racial violence. (Faceless Killers.) It's not perfect. The core cast of the show is all white, and pretty much all the POC characters in this episode are there as a plot point. (And I know someone out there is about to tell me I'm being unfair to even discuss the racial makeup of the cast because the UK and Sweden are in Europe, the homecontinent of all white people. So before you do that A--open a god-damned almanac and B--if there were nothing but white people in Sweden this episode would not work.) It's complex, though, and covers the interlacing problems of individual everyday prejudice, nativism, and public hysteria against the backdrop of a murder investigation. That's quite a bite for a 90-minute story and like with Sidetracked I still want the book to see how differently it's handled in the longform.

While the other episodes don't overtly address inter-racial interactions, there's definitely a heavy examination of Swedish xenophobia going on in all six episodes and in the one book (The Fifth Woman) I've managed to obtain. I'm not qualified to comment on Swedish culture, but I think I can safely recognize a theme. Watch whenever anyone mentions having been to Africa or being interested in America. Most of the time they will either be evil or get killed. Or both, in some cases. Thing is, while the surface problem might SEEM to be that the outside world is encroaching in on Sweden... in the end, the source of violence is usually something that's been below the surface in the Swedish countryside all along. And even when the initial crime is actually from outside Sweden, it's overwhelmed by the potential for violence that's present in the country already. The big challenges in the stories are problems that originated inside the culture that are covered up with anxieties about the rest of the world. The scalping killer in Sidetracked is not from the Western Hemisphere, it's a Swede who'd be fucked up either way. The real cause of the events in Fifth Woman is not the act of violence on another continent, it's violence that had been occurring in Sweden for decades.

While this is going on, though, there's another amazing thing. There's backstories of sexual violence in the first, second, and sixth episodes. And the way the cops handle this is fucking incredible.

They take the reports as the truth, and don't question the victim's histories, motives, or behavior.

And the way the writers handle this is incredible. They don't come up with a stupid twist later on that so and so is lying to get revenge or manipulate the characters (*middle finger to Season 2 Dexter*) or some shit. There's no "this is a story about sexual violence, with a twist that perpetuates the myth that this sort of crime gets falsely reported more than it actually does", it's more that a sexual assault happened in someone's past and THAT is why this event, this event, and this event happened. It's never the big crime of the story but it's never trivialized. And it's not every female character you see, just some characters.

And the way the director handles these revelations is incredible. It's not shot graphicly or sexualized or brought out as the big titillating revelation. It's part of some character's history, part of the horrible shit that happens in the world that leads to other horrible shit and in particular the horrible shit that lands on Kurt Wallander's desk.

I wish these were the guys in charge Law & Order: SVU, honestly. I hate that it's so rare to see a police show handle sexual violence in a way that doesn't make me ragequit it.

Thirdly, and this I can demonstrate with math, Wallander is uniquely suited to my own appetite for brutality. This series is a bloodbath. It is a tastefully subtle bloodbath (they don't go overboard with the onscreen deaths), but a bloodbath nonetheless.

They rarely show the body directly or linger for long on the grotesque stuff when they do, but in the cold open to the first episode a teenager sets herself on fire and things just get worse from there.

While recounting how much I love this series, I did a body count for one of my coworkers. There are no less than six deaths in each episode of the first season. In the second season, it dips down to four for one episode but there is a violent and traumatic shootout. The other episodes are up to par, at least six people meet gruesome ends over the course of events.

6 deaths over 90 minutes. That's a higher average than Dexter, folks.

Oh, and the first novel I got my hands on? I tried to count to compare. Mankell offs five people in the prologue. And sometime around the fifth chapter he sinks a boat and several hundred people die. (Also, the villain does much more damage to the cops in the climax of the novel than the climax of TV adaption.) Really, after 11 books I'm not sure how there's anyone left alive in Ystad.

Also, even though Wallander is consistantly portrayed as overweight, out of shape, forgetful, racked with insecurities, and reluctant to kill even the most horrible murderers he runs up against... He still manages to be a fearless badass in the big confrontations. I suspect he's just one "I'm getting too old for this shit" away from superpowers.

And finally, there's the most amazing thing and this one is done better in the book not because of any failing of the television series but simply because a novel is better set up to handle it: Kurt Wallander's sad, sad life.

Which really is something that needs to be examined episode by episode and book by book. It is so bleak it's actually absurdly amusing at some points. Each episode ends with a moment of quiet where the sun shines and the murders have stopped and everything is well with Southern Sweden but that's cinematography set against things like funerals. The ending to each episode reinforces that Kurt can only connect emotionally with another human by sharing mutual feelings of despair and convincing themselves to forget them for just a moment of sunlight on their faces.

It's kinda awesome, and I think I love him.

My amusement at misery aside, this goes beyond being chronically unlucky and mostly pessimistic. Wallander is a genuine man of constant sorrow type, and while the depressed cop stereotype in fiction can be excessively melodramatic, he's pretty relatable in his despondency. Sure, he cries more than any other TV cop I've seen, but it's usually at a point in the episode where you'd expect someone to be stressed to tears. Though really, when you take into account the disaster area that is his personal life and the job that is slowly killing his soul and his complete lack of hobbies (and for this character, not having outside interests from his work is a major character trait and not an oversight of the writer), he should be crying a lot more than just after an intense scene. If he were to start his day by weeping it would be perfectly understandable and natural, just because he's Kurt Wallander and he has to start his day. He is soaked in anguish, and every way I look at him he doesn't deserve to be. (Yet he's convinced he does.)

Basically, the world is built to a point where if you watch from outside the world and take into account what's going on, you watch this poor hapless bastard in disbelief and may even find yourself laughing at points like when Kurt's late for a date, the lady tells him off/storms out, and then--while he's standing dejectedly in the middle of the pub--the lights turn out. (This indicates a dead body at the power station, by the way, that Kurt gets called in to investigate) but at the same time you really sympathize with this guy's suffering because it's not a result of selfishness, or brooding over his bad luck. He definitely causes some of his own problems, but where I can be hard on characters I tend to naturally side with "You need to lay off yourself" a bit for this guy.

Maybe that's because of Kurt's motivations. He's not trying to prove himself, or aching to put away bad guys, or working off a history of personal trauma in his job. He's more personally invested in the people around--not just the victims, but he feels for the witnesses and the villains. He sees himself really clearly in everyone else, even the most monstrous people. Like he's missing a protective filter a lot of others have, something that lets them look at a killer and go "That's an inhuman monster I have nothing in common with" and instead has him being reminded by their crimes of his own actions. And while he's doing that, while he's getting tunnel vision and focusing on the killer and the victims he ends up completely missing the emotional cues from people he sees every day (Svedberg, Linda, his father) and he avoids them while chasing the monster. He's more guilt than self-pity and he's very introverted and empathetic at the same time. And I get a real impression that it's clinical, that his brain is set up to see things this way. If the viewpoint character were Linda rather than Kurt, I imagine things wouldn't seem quite so horrible all that time.

And there's just little moments in the novel and in the series that seem to me like something I could see a real person doing when they are operating under this level of crushing desolation every day of their lives. There's something deeply compelling about a character who gets that across and still manages to accomplish the stuff he accomplishes in these stories.

Also, Rupert Graves plays a bearded character in the 5th episode, which convinces me we're one "Oh, that's the name of Lestrade's identical Swedish cousin" away from a crossover.

Come on, BBC. You know you want to.

Womanthology listed on previews!

2011-10-25T06:09:00.002+02:00

It's right there at the end:

NOV110296 | WOMANTHOLOGY HEROIC HC | $50.00.

Y'know, if you want to order it or stock a few copies.

Okay, now you're starting to piss me off.

2011-10-21T02:18:00.004+02:00

Scott Lobdell--who was actually responsible for 90s X-Men books that I liked (That I liked a lot)--did an interview with Newsarama recently. He had some words to say about the Starfire complains:

What surprised me was that it almost caused the Internet to melt.   Mostly, what has surprised me has been the very vulgar way that people believe they are coming to the defense of Kori: they hurl words like "slut" and "whore" and expressions too disgusting to repeat here that are only used to demean women.  

 Lets consider an imaginary woman who has more than one or two lovers. Is it fair to label her with dismissive and derogatory language? Because we disagree with the choices she makes, to do what she wants with her own body? Are we still at a place in society where we're going to call a woman — any woman — names that reinforce gender inequality?

Heh.

See what he did there?

This guy made a creative work that portrayed a woman. Someone criticized their portrayal of those women, and they caught it. They turned the criticism around, changed it, and then lobbed it at the subject of their work.

Most people would call that a Strawman (or Strawfeminist) argument, but what they did here was much more specific. They positioned themselves not as the defenders of their own artistic visions, but as the True Defenders of Womanhood. In their new narrative, they are knights in shining armor defending attractive women from jealous, judgmental catty witches.

But really, they are doing exactly the opposite. They're defending themselves. They're pulling the subject of their work in between them and their critic and using them like a shield.

Now, I won't deny that there are some critics who go into slutshaming. Ridiculous judgments about real-life women who get their photos taken, who sign on for racy videos, or who dress a certain way that come out when criticizing a fictional portrayal of a woman or when discussing the appropriateness of a piece of art. (A protest video, for example, or a racy poster hung up in a place of work.) This does happen.

Thing is this defense gets pulled out when there's legitimate complaints going around to address. (But oddly, never does this defense get pulled out when straight men are gathered and making "hurr hurr" comments about the subject of the work.) It's pulled out to ignore those complaints, and position the creator/artist as the truly enlightened lover of women, and anyone made uncomfortable by this as a shrill fairy tale villain. We see it again and again, and you know what? It works.

It freaking works, because it puts the critic on the defensive. If the critic has a legitimate complaint, it's usually because they recognize that women are people and that real women are hurt by terms like "Slut" or "whore" and by encouraging a culture that judges based on clothing and appearance even if the work in question is entirely fictional.

Of course, with fiction we can always say "You WROTE every word she said and created every pose!" and continue the same way. But if the work in question features a real woman, a model or an actress or a girl who may or may not have agreed to the video? Oh, it's an effective defense right there. And it may just shut down the conversation.

Except, if the creator in question really had such a thoughtful attitude about what he was putting out, wouldn't he engage the actual complaints in a thoughtful manner? There's differences in taking a picture of yourself in a low cut dress, taking a picture of yourself in a low cut dress that focuses on your cleavage, a woman in a low cut dress with her consent, taking a picture of a woman in a low cut dress with her consent that focuses on her cleavage, taking a picture of a woman in a low cut dress without her consent and taking a picture of a woman in low cut dress without her consent that focuses on her cleavage without even getting INTO the politics of putting "Hey, Dudez! BOOBIES!!!" in glitter across the top (and who may have done this with who's knowledge). An intelligent man who had really considered the implications of his art would be ready to discuss it without directing criticism of his actions (the angle of the photo, the intent of the project itself) towards his model (who could be completely onboard, but that doesn't magically make the work feminist, or of any artistic value).

He could at least address his own actions, if his own actions are so defensible, before he tries to direct all attention towards the morality of his subject or women in general.

There's just something weasely about the whole tactic, and we see it ALL the time, from comics to commercials, to what sort of images are displayed at work, to just calling out a guy for leering at a stranger on the street. ("What's your problem with showing a little boob?" Nothing, my problem is with showing your eyes so far out of their sockets.) The default for some men seems to be to remove yourself from the equation and point all the complaints at the woman, rather than answer for your own behavior.

Accentuate the Positive

2011-10-15T04:13:00.009+02:00

Lest you think I'm nothing but angry at DC right now, I've coem to comment on good news. The truth of the matter is, I enjoyed almost (not Voodoo) all the books I bought from DC this month. (I did not even bother with Suicide Squad, Red Hood, or Catwoman.) In general, I think the relaunch/reboot was a success and I'm going back for second issues on everything. (Except Voodoo.) So I am optimistic about some things, and good news keeps coming. Ann Nocenti might get me to pick up Green Arrow. Azzarello has apparently hinted that Steve Trevor will be back. And of course, there's this:

Grant Morrison's Wonder Woman series could debut in 2012.

Now, you all know I'm a Morrison fan and a Wonder Woman fan who will give any writer a shot at her, but I'm actually especially excited for one reason.

Wonder Woman needs sex definitely because, you know, again as I said in the book [Supergods], they kind of transformed her into a cross between the Virgin Mary and Mary Tyler Moore,” he said. “This Girl Scout who had no sexuality at all and the character’s never quite worked since then. In the way that Superman’s supposed to stand for men but at least he’s allowed to have some kind of element of sexuality, Wonder Woman is expected to stand for women without any element of sexuality, and that seems wrong.

And this is the part where the fans are freaking out, especially after Voodoo and Red Hood and Catwoman. But here's the thing, Morrison is not Marz, Lobdell, or Winick. Morrison has actually addressed female sexuality in a thoughtful way back in Seven Soldiers. In fact, in that series he managed to delve deeply into the personalities and growth of varied and distinctive female characters, creating complex stories about women at different times in their lives that varied widely in tone and theme. If you have doubts that Morrison can handle sexuality with respect and complexity, check out Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer, Seven Soldiers: Zatanna and Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight.

This is not Judd Winick's sexy, sexy Catwoman.

The other thing is... he's absolutely fucking right. They are so terrified to delve into sexuality with Wonder Woman that they wrote out her love interest in the 80s reboot.. They insist she's a virgin at conventions.

Cheryl Lynn has said in the past that Marvel has no equivalent to Wonder Woman because there's not character that fanboys would freak out about if it was established they'd had sex in the past.

And for real, if you went ahead and had Diana casually mention that since arriving on Man's World and meeting men for the first time she experimented with sleeping with some of them, fandom would melt down.

If you established that back on Paradise Island there were female characters that were age appropriate and not foster mothers to Diana, and she sleep with them OR that since arrive in Man's World and meeting all these new women Diana had gone all the way with a couple... fandom would melt down.

If you established that Wonder Woman had had sex, the Internet would break in half.

And no, Kingdom Come and other Elseworlds don't count because they are AUs where she fucking married Superman or was enslaved by crazy Victorian misogynistics, and it's pretty much always in the bounds of marriage in those anyway.

And that is why no love interest has lasted since Steve left. Not because he's inherently better than the replacements (even though he is), but because writers are so fucking scared to address the sexuality of a truly liberated woman... because editors are so afraid that she'll be degraded by not being the purest woman possible.. because our society prizes chastity so fucking much that they are reluctant to even hint or explore the POSSIBILITY that she might someday have sex with someone.

And this is a character who was sexual when she was first introduced. A character inextricably associated in all incarnations with Aphrodite, the Goddess of Sexuality and Love. As long as this aspect of her personality is ignored? She will NEVER have the appeal she originally had, she will ALWAYS be a shell of her former self.

And he's right earlier. Batman can be sexual. Superman can be a symbol of sexual power. But Wonder Woman? Wonder Woman can't be sexually powerful. A strong dominant woman must be a virgin, married to a more powerful man, or subjugated in order to be acceptable.

Someone has to go there. Someone has to address her sexual nature from a position of agency and not objectification. It's how she was originally written. And here we have a writer who actuallly has the ability to do so. I acknowledge that it could suck, but I am beyond cautiously optimistic here. I want to read this and I think it could be just what the character needs.

Coming Soon: Daddy Issues

2011-10-11T02:55:00.006+02:00

I read Wonder Woman #1 and thought it was a lovely dark take on the character, and Brian Azzarello's gods have such incredibly potential. Apollo has never been so interesting in this franchise, Hera is foreboding, Zeus sounds clever, and Hermes is... well, poor Hermes gets beat up a lot in this franchise, doesn't he?

Either way, it showed a lot of promise and I was looking forward to the next installment.

Until I saw (Caution: Spoiler in the article TITLE, and from this point on in the post) this.

Bastards can't let me be happy.

Okay, two things:

1) Wonder Woman had a dad in the Silver Age. It was an unnamed Prince Hippolyta had been married to. He's referenced like, twice, and mostly for Hippolyta's angst.

2) This is a terrible idea.

Even if Azzarello does it brilliant, in the end it is a terrible idea.

Not as terrible an idea as Hercules, mind you (this was the rumor for the Crisis reboot), unless they decide Zeus also raped Hippolyta. But on the whole, it is probably a mucg worse idea than Hades as her dad in that damned animated movie. And a considerably worse idea than Hermes, a character who could technically be argued to be her father from the Perez reboot.

Really, any of them suck. I'll give you, Azzarello's a good writer and can pull this off, but it opens a couple nasty doors. It leaves Diana's story open to being able Daddy issues, thus letting a male character become the central focus of Wonder Woman for a while, and it sends a message that doesn't suit Wonder Woman.

And I don't mean the icky message that Diana a product of sexual assault, though that is a terrible message and I hope Azzarello does not go there. He was doing so well with a first issue that didn't have all the Amazons being raped.

It sends the message that Wonder Woman, the embodiment of female hope and strength did not get her strength from her mother or the cooperative all-female culture that produced her, or the goddesses. It came from her ultra-powerful male parent, the very god of the patriarchy himself.

And while there's ways of turning that on itself, making it symbolic of the Patriarchy creating it's own downfall... in the end, it's just too far from how she started, and the core of what Wonder Woman is.

DC, what are you doing to me?

2011-09-17T00:08:00.007+02:00

I'm still home internet-less, but I had to pay a bit to mention this. The GLC preview is up. Check it out.

You did not just dream that.

That's a beheading, followed by cutting a woman in half, followed by the loss of a finger, followed by a reference to an infamous Leni Riefenstahl film.

For those of you who are new to the Internet and it's population of history snobs, Leni Riefenstahl was an early 20th Century pioneer who made inroads for women in the field of Evil. She did a Nazi propaganda film called "Triumph of the Will" which to this day is still inspiring horror of authoritarian power in film classes and museums.

It is probably not the best choice of titles for a book where the main heroes are fueled by willpower.

Not that it couldn't be done. With a delicate eye for history and a gentle handling of the subject--keeping in mind that there are still people alive who fell for this propaganda and there are still people alive who were persecuted by the makers and followers of this propaganda--you could use that title and not be horribly offensive. Provided it's meaningful, respectful, and subtle.

Thing is.. and I say this as someone who's enjoyed a lot of Green Lantern since Rebirth... This isn't a subtle franchise.

And I'd say the over the top violence in the opening scene justifies my pessimism here.

Update

2011-08-31T10:48:00.004+02:00

So I've moved into a lovely German apartment that doesn't have phone or internet or my household goods yet.

It does, however, have a full kitchen and a full bathroom. Also, light fixtures. You guys back in the states are wondering at why that's so important but... trust me. Germans move in and out of apartments and take the lights and toilets with them. It's a Thing to find an apartment will built-in lights and toilets, not to mention a full kitchen.

So even without my hosuehold goods, it's livable, and my obsessive book-buying has combined with my e-book buying to give me plenty to read while I have no internet access at home. (I have it at work, but... there's a limit on what you can do at work.)

I also have a copy of the first season of BBC's Sherlock, which I would have watched a hell of a lot sooner had I known it was a successful adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in the 21st Century. It's freaking awesome, and I may even get cable if I can get BBC out here in time for the second season. It's only flaw is that it is too damned short.

In the meantime, I've watched it repeatedly in between reading wonderful books and it's even gotten me looking back at my old Sherlock Holmes stuff because I'd never really paid attention to Inspector Lestrade before.

Rupert Graves just freaking makes that character.

The commentary calls him remarkably inconsistent in the canon, but I have to disagree with them there. The problem isn't that Lestrade changes from story to story. The problem is that Lestrade has three conflicting characterizations: Sherlock's dismissal of Lestrade, Watson's descripton of Lestrade, and Arthur Conan Doyle's actual portrayal of Lestrade.

Sherlock Holmes is only too happy to describe him as stupid and ambitious in between allowing that he's a quick, energetic and conscientious policeman. This is where we get the idea that he's stupid and vain, even as Sherlock explains that he's the best person at Scotland Yard. That neglects that everyone is stupid in Sherlock's eyes, of course, and that Sherlock always has to insist that Lestrade leave his name out of reports.

John Watson seems to have decided before ever getting to know him that his physical appearance was shifty and sly, so each time the character shows up, he says that he's furtive, sly-looking, lean, sallow and rat-faced. This gives us the impression Lestrade is kind of sneaky and possibly untrustworthy. Watson KNOWS better when he describes his behavior, but it's hard to get away from the words used in his description.

When you look at how Lestrade actually talks and acts, though, you get more of the sort of person Graves is portraying (though a lot less likely to yell at Sherlock Holmes when he's being a dick and needs to be yelled at), but I'm running out of time on the computer. Let's just say that when Sherlock and Watson were so surprised at his praise in The Six Napoleans, I think that was Arthur Conan Doyle doing his normal characterization of them as both not really knowing Lestrade as well as they thought they did.

When I get Internet, we will discuss what a dick Sherlock Holmes was to him in Hound of the Baskervilles. You'll love it.

Checking In

2011-07-30T16:56:00.004+02:00

I've been mainly keeping to tumblr and twitter since my last post because I've spent the last two weeks in complete moving frenzy. My new assignment is still in Germany, but closing up your house and getting prepared to move is still exhausting and I was knee-deep in work stuff up until last week. I haven't been able to focus on anything serious. That's why I haven't really commented on the Batgirl of San Diego (though really, what is there so say now but "Thumbs up, Batgirl"?) or Womanthology's funding frenzy (though I got my script in and have even seen some character sketches! Yee!) or anything but Green Lantern on Tumblr.

Green Lantern requires very little energy to ramble on about right now, because I am back in full-on Green Lantern obsession mode. Rambling about Kyle Rayner on Tumblr and Twitter is actually a form a relaxation right now.

I wasn't quite up to a serious blogpost here on the subject, though.

In the meantime, I and my illustrious companions have been keeping up with Dispatches From the Fridge, so if you missed the commentary on the Batgirl of San Diego, Womanthology, or the loss of the Supermarriage I have lots of links from the past couple weekends there.

In the meantime, I did the Fangirl Friday interview over at Fantastic Fangirls. It has a short (for me) rundown of my recommendations for new fans just getting into Green Lantern.

I've finally gotten out of the apartment, out of the base, and have mailed/shipped everything but a few books that'll fit in my trunk. Now it's a few weeks experiencing ~~the horror of~~ family togetherness and then it's back to Germany. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to get back to serious blogging again during the trip. I've got some thoughts on Aida I need to share.

Green Lantern is Readable Again

2011-07-13T21:28:00.005+02:00

The Green Lantern solicits are up. Be careful before you click because there is a major "War of the Green Lanterns" spoiler on the cover of the mainbook.

Spoiler: It is the least surprising of the surprise endings we all thought of. It is also the one that's the least likely to last past the next movie.

But really I've brought you all here today to spoil Kyle's book. Because they show the actual team, and they show the Star Sapphire.

Most importantly, they show the Star Sapphire's outfit.

It has been improved.

And for once, that means actually improved.

No floating white collar.

No glowing vagina.

No incredibly odd cutaways.

Yeah, there's still cleavage to forever and it looks like she's going to an aerobics class in the 80s, but it's so much better than this:

Thank you, DC, for doing the one thing I needed you to do with Green Lantern for me to get back on board. I love you, and I will come back to you.

PS: Having what looks like my beloved Sheriff Mardin unconscious on the Green Lantern Corps cover helps, even if it is the ultra-glam white-coded makeover of her.

Wow.

2011-07-08T22:13:00.007+02:00

I was going to, when I got a breather, promote the Womanthology's kickstarter. I'm on the writer's list. (I also had a hand in picking the theme, if I may brag.)

Then a funny thing happened. The Kickstarter went live last night after I went to bed and by the time I reached the computer after work we were within $2K of our minimum $25K goal.

And then we blew it away.

Donations are still being accepted, because the more money there is the more books can be printed. All the profit is going to charity, so production costs are dependent on readers like you.

Green Lantern Pet Peeve: The Accepted Common Knowledge that Humans Suck.

2011-07-05T21:15:00.008+02:00

I snagged the Abin Sur movie prequel on Comixology for the lovely Patrick Gleason art, plus I'm one of those suckers who can't resist and Abin Sur solo story.

I think I have a thing for doomed men.

Anyway, I'm glad I bought it. The art is lovely and we get a surprise Amanda Waller story to boot.

Unfortunately, there is a convention in this book that annoys the shit out of me and it's been popping up all over the place in Green Lantern in the past few years.

There's this idea that humans are looked down upon by every sentient being in the universe, because we're violent, primitive, warlike, and just generally awful. It's a way for the writer to make a point about what's wrong with our society and how far we have to go. It's also an easy way to for the writer to set up a strawman in the sneers of aliens so that they can defend human society.

It's also really fucking arrogant.

We're to accept a universe with countless star systems that produce sentient and often humanoid life. We're to accept that the majority of these star systems have developed interstellar travel and trade with each other. We're to accept that interstellar communities have sprung up across the vast cosmos. I can handle all this, I think it's awesome.

We're also to accept that Abin Sur is responsible for 1/3600th of this universe. Inside his sector is every type of life imaginable, from bacteria to primitive peoples who haven't developed writing yet to full civilizations that have been developing for millenia and that cross the stars regularly enough to build communities inside that sector. I can handle this too, I think it's awesome.

But I'm sorry, I have to stop at the idea that a large number of these advanced beings give enough of a shit to comment on how much Earth sucks.

I have to stop at the idea that a large number of these advanced beings know anything about humans beyond us having not developed enough space travel to come out and say "Hi" yet.

I mean, it's one thing for the Guardians to keep tabs on Earth and be a little funny about it. There's lots of stuff on Earth.

And yeah, I can give the writer (Michael Green) some credit to the idea that maybe Earth is considered enough of a hotspot that Abin Sur was briefed on it when he took over. It is in his sector, and it is home to a species that gets super-powers when they are exposed to well... anything! Yeah, that might be important for old Abin to know. (Hell, between the Last Kryptonians, the Last Martians and the general weirdness of humanity, it's entirely possible that the Solar System is considered a Wildlife Preserve by Oa.)

I don't think this is the case, though. There's something off about what he said in this comic. And his attitude in the Flashpoint series. And just generally every notable appearance since someone retconned his last words to be "An Earthman... never thought I'd live to see the day."

And there's just this trend all across the franchise to having aliens bash humans, especially hypocritically, because they are traveling the spaceways without having achieved World Peace or a Warp Drive or what-have-you. And because humans aren't as scary to tease about this sort of behavior than Khunds are or any of the myriad hyper-violent species in the DCU that HAVE achieved unity of purpose on their homeworlds and interstellar travel so that they can make war on their neighbors.

I kinda forgave it in the movie because it was explained away as just a general look at how young the species is. There's some sort of taxonomy involved, I imagined, and humans fell into a group that was only so advanced and Hal wasn't just the first human but the very first person from that taxonomic classification.

And I get parts where they make monkey jokes, because it implies that these species are as advanced to us as we are to chimps, so we just look animalistic to them.

My brain rebels, though, when it's specifically about humans and specifically about Earth.

It just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, it's one thing to have Brainiac and Brainiac II copping an attitude because they have dealt with humans, but generally it seems like everybody in the Green Lantern Corps except Tomar Re and every idiot in a Mos Eisley Cantina rip-off scene has to make a comment about it. And none of them would have met a human before.

Only Abin Sur was in a position to have met a human besides Adam Strange or Captain Comet (both of whom are pretty damned awesome, so a negative opinion should not be formed based upon them), and he's played off as having had some pre-existing prejudice that goes away when he sees the Wall in action.

And yeah, I do remember the Legends of the DC Universe story where Abin Sur goes to the Old West and all the cowboys think he's a Native American. That's clearly not happened here, because if he'd had that adventure he wouldn't need the Wall to make him rethink how much humans suck.

If he'd had any horrible adventure there, he'd have said "It was my hope I would never to have to breach the orbit of that backward little world again." The implication is this is his first visit, and he wants it to be his last.

In the absence of any reference to a past experience and any reference to a prophecy foretelling his death on the world, we only have one explanation for Abin Sur's personal prejudice. There is a widespread dislike of humans among aliens. That's what every narrative clue in this book is telling me to conclude, that Abin Sur dislikes humans because he's been taught to dislike humans.

It seems absurd to me that we're so prominent in the minds of extraterrestrials that so many of them would bother to hate us. Abin's reaction on going to Earth should be much more matter of fact. It shouldn't imply that he's been dreading the idea of going to that planet his whole career. Really, he should either think of the specific items that the sector Lantern would be briefed on ("Last Kryptonian, Portal to Qward, Strange energy beasts sleeping within the planet that absolutely should not be disturbed, Queen Hippolyta and her Fleet of Invisible Jets...") or have to consult his ring and then pass judgement about how much Earth sucks.

If we're really a little backwater, primitive world... nobody should have heard of us.

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T17:55:00.001+02:00

Look what Kapellusch made for me!

On Hal

2011-07-02T23:20:00.008+02:00

I've gotten back on my Green Lantern kick in the past couple weeks, mainly because of that movie. I saw it last weekend, and have been meaning to review it but keep putting it off.

See, I think it was chopped to pieces and there were some cheesy parts. I want to see the Director's Cut because I can just tell that scene with Hal talking to the Guardians had some groundwork laid earlier that we all missed.

Thing is, even for it's weaknesses, I freaking loved it and there's one big reason.

One big, dumb, reckless reason.

The movie Green Lantern featured Hal Jordan in a way that's seemed missing from the comics to me. The guy who is reckless, wild, and often thoughtless to the point that it is destroying his personal life. A man who lives in complete denial of his fears and the trouble he's caused by his carelessness. The guy who destroys jets just to prove he can, who can't keep a steady girlfriend, and who doesn't even stock his fridge. A man who is a complete jerk, with a complete and utter mess of a life because of this.

But for some reason, he's actually likable, has a decent heart, and steps up to be a hero when he needs to be.

I've been fond of this guy since the 90s, when we saw him being pretty reckless and stupid in flashbacks. He was completely unaware he had this horrible fate hanging over his head. I became a fan with Marz's time-travelling Hal in Emerald Knights, who finds out that he went bad but somehow is able to work through it. That Hal was the sweetest thing ever. I've found I really like Broome's clueless doofus, and other sporadic uses of the character from time to time. I think my absolute favorite might be Neil Gaiman's take in Superman/Green Lantern: Legend of the Green Flame, where Hal's stupidity nearly damns both heroes for all eternity.

And I really like that just post-Rebirth period where Hal showed up and had to apologize to everybody in every guest appearance. After that, my favorite storyline with him is Agent Orange, where he can't think of a happy thought to use the blue ring. I think Johns understands that, at heart, Hal is not very happy with his life and his behavior.

Thing is, in recent years that take just hasn't come across very often. There's a real emphasis on how awesome Hal's job flying jets is, and how often he gets laid, that we miss just how crappy his personal life is supposed to be.

Hal Jordan, as a character, is simply too built up from his concept. He's too cocky, too reckless, and too privileged to begin with. Then he gets the Most Powerful Weapon In The Universe that gives him the power of flight in addition to the opportunity to travel in outer freaking space. He's pretty hard to feel sympathetic towards when you hear him described.

He's pretty hard to feel sympathetic towards as written recently. They're even downplaying the Parallax thing.

But Hal, at his heart, is an underdog. Broome sets him up with girlfriend troubles, Carol dumps him when she gets promoted over him. From the very first adventure, he's clumsy as all hell. We're not exaggerating the head injuries, he trips and falls and gets bashed on the head a lot. He also has Silver Age superhero personal life problems, and is a little bit dense in comparison to the other Lanterns. Later writers have him going from job to job, and give us some fallout from his stupid behavior.

Emerald Dawn is entirely about Hal's recklessness and willingness to do the right thing when he needs to.

In what's probably the best 21st Century Hal setup, Cooke's New Frontier introduces him as a man who has dreams of being an astronaut that he can't achieve. Becoming a Green Lantern makes that possible for him.

It always helps Hal when the audience gets a feeling all of his opportunities have passed him by and the ring is saving him. It helps us relate to him.

Not only that, he's a deeply flawed character, but if we don't see that his flaws are actively hurting him it looks like an endorsement of his behavior. That actually turns a lot of readers off of the character, who is basically a big jerk with a heart of silver. (Because gold isn't really that great in this franchise.)

The other option is to whitewash the flaws away, but that also removes the main theme of the character. Hal's human, and flawed, but he's still good enough to save the universe and he wants to because he is human and flawed. That's always been the underlying difference between him and Sinestro (who is introduced as a power-mad Lantern who took over as absolute dictator long before he was retconned to Hal's mentor), Sinestro feels the universe has to live up to his standards. Hal--on a subconscious level--understands the universe and feels it has the right to exist, warts and all. Because Hal's got his bad points too, and recognizes that.

The great thing about the movie as a character study of Hal is that this is the setup. Hal's character flaws are engaging in a nonstop assault on his personal and professional life. There's a sequence at the beginning that's dedicated into showing how no one else appreciates this, how he's hurting his friends and family and coworkers. It shows that while Hal seems to have the coolest possible life on paper, he is a complete wreck, from the empty state of his kitchen to his inability to get to work on time. He's one mistake away from being unemployed, one more insensitive act from his brothers never speaking to him away, and one lane change away from death.

We also learn that he's screwed up an Air Force career, a relationship with Carol, and god knows what else in the past. We learn he's a serial quitter.

And the beauty of this is in casting Ryan Reynolds, one of those actors who just makes you happy to watch him. He's just plain likable, so while you watch that Hal's an idiot and a jerk, you still empathize with and root for him.

That was pretty impressive, and that's the Hal I've been missing in recent Green Lantern. Like I said before, from Agent Orange, that Green Arrow teamup with the Black Mercy, the just post-Rebirth stuff, and the producer credit, I think that Geoff Johns understands that these are the necessary parts of Hal's concept. His personal life must be absolutely chaotic and he has to be, on some level, pretty miserable about the situation he's made for himself. Johns certainly does have a lot of moments where Hal is shown to be in complete denial, or at least very dissatisfied with his lifestyle.

But more often than not, he seems too focused on showing how good he is with women, how good he is at fighting, and how awesome his day job is (even though Hal really is the shittiest Air Force officer possible and oh god I want the proper Maj. Steve Trevor back so someone can chew Hal out for his conduct) to really drive home just how much of a mess Hal makes of his life. It's there, and you see it sometimes, but usually it's really subtle or completely shoved aside so we can focus on the crossovers instead.

It was nice to see that guy in the movie, though. Fingers crossed we'll see him again in September. I mean, the same writer did do Agent Orange.

Marvel...

2011-06-27T23:27:00.003+02:00

Tell me you did not, in the same month you killed off my favorite Captain America supporting character in a boring stupid crossover that I'm not interested in reading, kill off my second-favorite Captain America supporting character in a boring stupid mini-series which is a sequel to a boring stupid 90s crossover?

Because if you did that, we may not be on speaking terms for a little while.

Ragnell's Guide to Golden Age Wonder Woman

2011-06-25T11:03:00.012+02:00

They're doing a weekend-long 99 cent Wonder Woman sale on Comixology and the DC iPad app today, and they're offering a selection of Golden Age Wonder Woman stories. I am going to be totally upfront here, despite all their flaws I love this Wonder Woman run. It has the tone and creativity that I want from Wonder Woman again. More than anything I want them to re-establish the classic setup so that they have all of these things to play with.

Still, there's some flaws and people have limited funds so I'd like to offer this succinct shopping guide.

All-Star Comics #8
Introducing: Diana/Wonder Woman, Queen Hippolyta, Steve Trevor, Steve's gun
Featuring: The Story So Far

Recommendation: Buy it! It's the first appearance of Diana by her original creator, and it's the best place to find the original intentions for the series.

(ETA: It's free right now, don't pass it up.)

Sensation Comics #1
Diana's first few days on Man's World.
Introducing: Diana Prince, the Invisible Jet, Steve's exasperated modesty
Featuring: A lot of off-hand comments about how weird Man's World is.

Recommendation: Buy this! This is the other half of her origin story and still one of the best Wonder Woman stories ever written.

Sensation Comics #2
Diana meets her very first super-villain.
First appearances: Dr. Poison, Etta Candy and the Holliday Girls, Steve's uncanny ability to get in trouble even when he's asleep.
Featuring: Dancing! Breaking through doors! Steve giving orders and waving a gun around while being carried by Diana!

Racism: Maru falls under the dragon lady stereotype, but the art isn't as punch in the face horrifying as a lot of the other propaganda comics (including this one later on) of the era.

Recommendation: Buy. Give this one a shot.

Sensation Comics #3
Diana gets a job working for Gen Darnell at military intelligence.
Introducing: The Military Intelligence office environment, Lila and Eve Brown
Featuring: A glimpse at Pledge Week at Holliday College.

Recommendation: Consider it. I have a fondness for Steve in embarrassing situations, so I'd advise on this one.

Sensation Comics #4

Introducing: Paula Von Gunther, the Bondage weakness, and Col Darnell's crush on Diana Prince.
Featuring: The Fire Squad Feat, one of my favorite Wonder Woman moments.

Recommendation: Buy this.

Sensation Comics #5
Featuring: I only really remember this one because it's one of only two stories I've read from the whole of Vol 1 that involve a male friend of Steve's. (The other is the guy in O'Neil's run.) Every other friend of Steve's seems to be either a guy at work or a woman he knows through Wonder Woman.
It also has a couple great "Wonder Woman tells a bunch of men what to do and they listen" moments.

Recommendation: Consider it.

Sensation Comics #6
The Return of Baroness Von Gunther.
Introducing: The Lasso
Featuring: Weird Amazon Sports. It totally went over my heard the first few times I read this one, but this is where he really starts messing around with bondage jokes. We see an Amazon rodeo, and Baroness von Gunther is always pretty kinky, even as Wonder Woman villainesses go.

Recommendation: Consider it.

Sensation Comics #7
This is the Milk story.

Buy it.

Sensation Comics #8
Introducing: Steve's amazing ability to pick the absolute worst time to ask Diana Prince to dinner.
Featuring: "Great girdle of Aphrodite! Am I tired of being tied up!"

Racism: I've actually got two copies of this story, and that's where I first noticed the cleaning. There's a panel with two pretty bad black caricatures in my archives. The WW Chronicles has cleaned up the picture and the dialogue. I'm willing to bet it's been downplayed for the digital, and that this is actually why it's been taking them so long to release Golden Age Wonder Woman.

Recommendation: Consider it.

Sensation Comics #9
First Appearance: Dan White, the real Diana Prince's complete asshole of a husband
Featuring: Heavy-handed symbolism

Racism: One panel of a Japanese dude, and this artist never does a flattering portrayal of anyone who isn't white.

Recommendation: Consider it.

Wonder Woman #1
A-Story
Introducing: There is seriously a large strawberry blonde wrestling Amazon named "Fatsis" who nearly takes out Mala. It is also her last appearance, I believe. (Funny how the tournament retellings always give us the most Amazon body diversity, Diana and Mala both tend to get opponents who are bigger than them. Elsewhere, the Amazons are often just a stock body shape.)
Featuring: Steve pronounced dead by a medical professional. It doesn't take.

B-Story
This circus-based story is fairly unimpressive unless you like elephants.
Racism: Superstitious Indian (South Asian Indian) dudes as villains.

C-Story
Introducing: Little boys dressed as cowboys that idolize WW, and half-page guest victim Captain Loyal (I wish they'd bring him back just for the name.)

D-Story
First Appearance: Pepita the Matador, Etta's brother Mint
Racism: Stepin Fetchit porter character, Pepita's horrible accent, and a guy named Pancho who is both a Mexican and a black stereotype at once. Also, caricatures of Japanese soldiers. All of this in the art is downplayed in the edited Chronicles reprint.

Recommendation: Skip it if you're going to skip any of these. It's possible that they will only reprint the A and C story here. In that case, I'd say pick it up. But really, it's not so good as to bother with the B and D story unless you're making a study of the era's racism.

Wonder Woman #2
Wonder Woman goes to Mars!
Steve sort of dies and his soul gets stolen by Mars to be put to work creating war and strife on Earth. Aided by Aphrodite, Diana goes to Mars, rescues him, and faces his three generals over a set of 5 stories.
Introducing: The Citadel of the God of War on Mars, the Duke of Deception, the Lord of Conquest, the Earl of Greed and Marta (Lord Conquest's wife)
Featuring: Stolen souls, Hitler, Hirohito, Moussolini and the second time Steve Trevor has died in as many issues.

Racism: The fourth story, where she fights the Duke of Deception, includes a lot of Asian stereotypes and caricatures. I only have this in the Archives where nothing is changed, so they might alter them.

Recommandation: The first story alone is one of the best and most imaginative stories in WW history, but it's tough to recommend it for the fourth story. It's creative and amazing, so I would buy it based on plot alone, but I don't blame you if you skip it.

Wonder Woman #3
Featuring: Amazon religious festivals and the untold story of Baroness Paula von Gunther.

Racism: Two with men of color (a Japanese soldier and an African-American elevator operator) that will likely be edited for modern audience sensibilities.

Recommendation: Consider it.

Wonder Woman #4
Featuring: A disease that makes women lose their minds, Col Darnell's crush on Diana, male bondage, and Etta coming on to Steve.

Racism: The first story is about a Chinese girl who comes to the US to raise awareness of what the Japanese are doing to her people. Lots of stilting accents and Japanese caricatures.

Recommendation: Consider it

Wonder Woman #5
Introducing: Dr. Psycho!
Featuring: The first real and permanent death among the regular cast.

Recommendation: Buy it!

Wonder Woman #6
Introducing: Cheetah!
Featuring: the Hair Salon of Creative Restraint

Racism: Caricatured Japanese sailors in the second half of the beauty salon story.

Recommendation: Consider it. Grab it if you're a big Cheetah fan, I guess.

Wonder Woman #7
Queen Hippolyta uses the Magic Sphere to show Diana a future world where women run the US.
Introducing: The Future!

Recommendation: Consider it

(ETA: I made this based off the DC comics press release, and didn't realize most of the Sensation Comics issues are bundled together in groups of two. That's much better bang for your buck, because these are only a quarter of the length of the Wonder Woman story. I added links to the Comixology parts, but haven't had a chance to look at any of these and how they've been changed. Comment if there's something worth mentioning that I missed.)

2011-06-24T23:22:00.003+02:00

I'm sure you've all heard about Gene Colan by now.

His tumblr tag is really active and diverse today, if you'd like to take a moment to look at his art.

Wonder Woman Digital Sale

2011-06-23T20:18:00.002+02:00

On a better note, whoever is in charge of digital comics at DC is finally doing something I've been wanting them to for ages. They're putting up a Wonder Woman sale. 48 hours starting Saturday, 99 cents a piece.

Beginning this Saturday at 12:01 am The WONDER WOMAN 101 digital comics will be on sale for only $0.99 each. Offering a comprehensive digital collection of all things WONDER WOMAN, the sale event covers her storied beginnings to her reimagination in the 80s to the most recent critically-acclaimed storylines ENDS OF THE EARTH, RISE OF THE OLYMPIAN, WARKILLER and CONTAGION. Don’t miss out on stories from WONDER WOMAN creator Dr. William Moulton Marston and writers and artists including George Pérez, Adam Hughes, Greg Rucka and Roy Thomas - after 48 hours all titles will go back to their regular price.

Check out her classic early appearances!

All-Star Comics #8
Sensation Comics #1-9
Wonder Woman Volume 1 #1-7

Discover how she was reimagined in the 1980s!

Wonder Woman Volume 2
• Gods and Mortals (issues #1-7)
• Challenge of the Gods (issues #8-14)
• Beauty and the Beasts (issues #15-19)
• Destiny Calling (issues #20-24)

Read her critically-acclaimed recent adventures!

Wonder Woman Volume 3
• Who is Wonder Woman? (issues #1-4)
• Love and Murder (issues #5-10)
• Amazons Attack (issues #11-13)
• The Circle (issues #14-19)
• Ends of the Earth (issues #20-25)
• Rise of the Olympian (issues #26-33)
• Warkiller (issues #34-39)
• Contagion (issues #40-44)
Wonder Woman #219
Wonder Woman #600-602

Explore her adventures with the Justice League!

JLA #1
JLA/Planetary
Kingdom Come #1
DC: The New Frontier #1-6
Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman: Trinity #1-3

The listed items may not be everything.

I advise everyone to at least check it out. I'm going to go through my archives again and see if I can get out a decent guide to the Marston issues available. Stuff like basic plots, first appearances, racism warnings, and my own personal rating on the story.

If I can't do this by Saturday, I still recommend you check out the Marston run, particularly All-Star Comics #8, Sensation Comics #1, Wonder Woman #1, and Wonder Woman #2

Kittens and cowards

2011-06-23T20:07:00.003+02:00

DC pulled an act of desperate cowardice this week, a number of people hae weighed in but I'd like to draw your attention to Chris and David in particular.

The piss-poor excuse DC leaked to Johnston is that it was over a scene of Superman saving a kitten from a tree. (I'd rather link you to Dave than any retelling of this inanity. You can search it.) I have now downgraded Johnston on the insult scale from hyena to block of wood, because he actually seemed to lend this bullshit an ounce of credibility. This does not display the intelligence necessary to hang out waiting for scraps of attention, out of context quotes and press releases disguised as juicy gossip.

I'm not angry.

2011-06-21T21:07:00.003+02:00

Heh.

So, they came out and said it, the target is 18-34 year old males.

We all knew this. This is why what they say and some of the business decisions they make seem so stupid. However, I have to note some things:

1) This doesn't really make me want to drop anything. I liked stuff they thought wasn't for girls before, I'll continue to. They know about women like me, and will continue to rationalize us away as off and not significant enough to market to, but their sexism ultimately doesn't change that I'm into the genre and sometimes stuff I like comes out of it.

2) If that's the end of their plans, this is a stupid idea. It's the same demographic they've always marketed to, it's the safe demographic. If they think they can just make everything look sexy and exciting to bring them back to comics when their problems run much more deeply into distribution and pricing, they are taking a serious risk.

3) If this is the beginning of their plans, that's understandable but still cowardly. The culture believes this is the comic reading demographic, and they are trying to expand outside of insular fandom to the larger culture. So, they're gonna start with the safe demographic. Maybe if they get enough and get a foothold they'll go for a different gender or age grouping, but I have my doubts.

2 vs 3 all depends on whether this is a smart WB exec's master plan or if this is the corporate leadership giving the comics division leadership one last chance to get it right before they fire everyone and bring in their own people. If it's the former, I'd say they plan to expand. If it's the latter, I'd say they have no idea how to market outside the 18-34 male demo and don't have the imagination to do so. They'll fail spectacularly, and I'll point and laugh.

4) And this is the important thing. This changes nothing about what they should consider in their writing.

Men and women, boys and girls all need a decent representation of all kinds of people from all aspects of the media. Our culture is pushing a poisonous gender binary, where everything strong is male and everything weak is female. Our culture is pushing suffocating assumptions about race and class and sexuality. These ideas get into our heads early on and the only way to fight them is with thought.

You need to think about what you say, what you do, what you read and what you write. You need to think about the images you see and the images you show. You need to think about what these things say, and teach, and mean overall in the context of our culture.

The context of our culture doesn't ever go away, and upholding bigoted stereotypes because your intended audience is the majority just reinforces those bigoted stereotypes and all the social ills that come with them.

So, no... I don't care if it's for the boys. They're still accountable for what they write.

Dad's Day Greetings

2011-06-19T19:09:00.003+02:00

Since I am once again in another time zone and having to keep a dayshift schedule, I'm going to leave my greeting card on the blog:

Happy Father's Day!

I still say that Guardian was right about Hal.

2011-06-18T23:16:00.005+02:00

The Green Lantern movie has stirred up a number of old issues in the fandom. I've been avoiding these, of course, but even I have run across the disdain for John Stewart shown by those who can't be bothered to pick up anything prior to Rebirth. (Philistines!)

This naturally has put me back in a defensive mode for my darling John, and had me rereading old books to put together a recommendation list. As I believe a strong first appearance is the foundation of any decent character, the first place I went to was "Beware My Power", the backup story in Green Lantern #87 that introduced John. (It's reprinted in the second Green Lantern/Green Arrow trade and has the distinct honor of being one of the few collected in Green Lantern: The Greatest Stories Ever Told that deserves the title.)

And that's where I got myself into trouble, because I found myself staring at that first page with John again.

Longtime readers will recall my extraordinary affection for this first page John appears on. It's a masterful set up of the character traits that will put Hal and John at odds in this story.

The first page of John actually establishes quite a bit about his character and the upcoming conflict with Hal. John first shows up confronting a possibly crooked cop. The cop's harassing a couple of domino players on the sidewalk, and John actually walks up behind the police officer, touches his shoulder, and tells him they aren't really bothering anyone. The cop threatens him with the nightstick, and John holds his ground.

On the rooftop above, Hal and a Guardian watch. John is being hand-picked by the Guardians as Hal's new backup now that Guy is on the injured list. Hal argues with the Guardian that John shouldn't be trusted with a power ring.

About four or five years ago I became obsessed with this page and started blogging it panel by panel. And I don't mean I posted a panel with a sentence or two. I mean I posted a panel with five to twelve paragraphs of text commenting on the symbolism in the panel. I was saved by the very last panel on the page.

It's a very simple panel, and follows the Guardian chastising Hal for racism. Once again, I remind you that the Guardians of Oa are telepathic, so there's some basis for this accusation. I added back then that Hal's defensiveness supported that.

Hal continues to question the Guardian's wisdom by pointing out that John questioning the policeman's wisdom means he has a chip on his shoulder.

Let me rephrase that again for emphasis, he's being insubordinate to an authority figure on the rooftop, and is justifying his insubordination by saying that John is being insubordinate to an authority figure on the street below. That's... that takes a special kind of denial.

Anyway, in addition to a sudden desire to actually finish out the page on this feature, I just wanted to point out the angle of Hal's head. His head is bowed so much at the moment that he's reaching into the next panel. He was leaning back before. The Guardian hit a nerve, and Hal realizes his own hypocrisy as he's stating it.

So he's bowing his head and acquiescing to the Guardian's wishes even as he voices his final concerns. Look at his eyes and his posture. He's wincing. He knows he doesn't have a leg to stand on, that in fact a guy who'd back off from a bullying policeman wouldn't be qualified at all. He knows that he'd probably butt in too, and that his friend Ollie would butt in and shake his finger in the cop's face while calling him a Nazi. (To be fair, I sure as hell wouldn't give Ollie a power ring but Hal should have a bit of perspective on John after dealing with the blonde idiot for so many issues.)

Not only that, my old commenter Steven points out that he's shaded in yellow by some odd chance. He goes on to make a yellow space-bug joke, but he's right that it "literally puts Hal's disingenuous response in an off-putting light." Likelier than not that's a coloring mistake, but it's a pretty cool one and supports the effect of the panel.

I love Hal, and I especially love him in the O'Neil run where he's a flawed human being learning to open his mind to the rest of humanity for the first time. Part of this story is about Hal overcoming prejudice, and it's right there in those last two panels on that page.

And now, a lesson in avoiding the question.

2011-06-15T19:43:00.005+02:00

Comic Alliance interview with Bob Harras and Eddie Berganza:

CA: I had heard a rumor that after the relaunch that all the female characters would involve pants, although the recent Supergirl costume change seems to debunk that. Was there any consideration given to changing the costumes, particularly in terms of the disproportionately large amount of skin exposed on female characters in comparison with male characters?

EB: We looked at every hero, analyzing what's realistic within the realm of wearing a costume. Now, more and more people are being exposed to them on film. Look at what Green Lantern's wearing. Really, the sky's the limit. And that's not limited to gender. It's about what makes practical sense for a hero to put on.

CA: Sure, but I think that we all know that costumes for female heroes are significantly more revealing in terms of skin. Was there ever a conversation about have a more equal and proportionate approach to men and women's costumes?

BH: All the characters were looked at... That was across the board for all the 52 [new comics]. So I don't know where the pants thing came from because it was a very comprehensive look at what we were doing in September.

EB: And for Hawkman, we kept the shirt off.

They do the same dancing when it comes to the timeline too.

Wonder Woman, Architecture and Mortality

2011-06-14T00:15:00.003+02:00

Full September solicits are up:

WONDER WOMAN #1
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO
Art and cover by CLIFF CHIANG
On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The Gods walk among us. To them, our lives are playthings. Only one woman would dare to protect humanity from the wrath of such strange and powerful forces. But is she one of us – or one of them?

As I said on Tumblr, this makes me feel a lot better. Remember the opening to the 90s Kevin Sorbo Hercules? That's what this sounds like, and that's what Wonder Woman is supposed to me. She's supposed to be a modern Hercules in female form.

Not only that? No man-hating. Nothing about fearing Diana's wrath. Nothing about having to learn how men aren't evil. Nothing about the Amazons making war on humanity. Even the fluff on the end for the new readers to be intrigued about her origins doesn't imply anything bad about her personally, just puts her origins in question. Basically, a complete departure from the past year of "Will Wonder Woman be evil?" and the whole Flashpoint angle of "How did Wonder Woman go evil?" Hell, there's not even anything about having to adjust to men or teach the isolationist Amazons that men don't suck. She is straight up presented as a protector of humanity from the wrath of the Gods.

After the trajectory of the past year? I'm elated.

They'll emphasize the warrior, I'm sure. Azzarello doesn't shy from violence, and his portrayal of Diana in Superman #210-211 was heavy on the warrior side with a extra helping of cold restraint. It didn't bother me there, because of the stress of the "You really have to fight your best friend Superman and stop him from hurting a lot of people" setup on her side. It also didn't present Diana as a danger to humanity, just an opponent that would be able to defeat Superman. He gets her away from him by asking her to save two lives. If that's Azzarello's take here? If she's a dangerous woman, but not to humanity and her primary focus is saving lives? It's a lot better than what we've seen lately, and this solicit suggests that's what we'll get.

Really, the only solicit that could make me happier would be "Grant Morrison contacted WM Marston and Elizabeth Holloway with a Oujia Board, and will be presenting his masterpiece once Greg Rucka is finished editing all the inadvertant sexism out of it. See you in September!"

The other thing that has me optimistic is that I got Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's Doctor 13: Architecture and Mortality in the mail today. I am shocked that no one has ever recommended this to me. This is a story where the DCU's most stubborn skeptic, his daughter, and a crew of unused comic book characters team up to battle the combined might of Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid. Inside, Azzarello writes an argument for the reboot 4 years before the reboot.

It's also a great story that uses first-person narration to maximum effect. You get a look at how Dr. Thirteen sees himself and the people around him, and a sense of what he's in denial about and what he feels but won't narrate. You also sympathize with someone who is a wholly stubborn and often rude character, and want him to succeed and survive. That takes a little skill. The rest of the cast is peppered with people who are, at their concepts, completely ridiculous. They are the silliness DC often tries to sweep under the rug, and Azzarello digs them up for a meta-commentary made for adults. He uses them as characters with natural emotions and complex reactions without losing that commentary, and puts them in a serious situation where we actually worry about them without dropping the innocence or charm inherent in the characters. Chiang's simple, classic style is a big part of this, because we get an old comic book feel with modern artistic techniques.

This is very good sign for a Wonder Woman reboot team, because that's actually exactly what the Wonder Woman franchise needs. It needs someone to take some of the old silly concepts and bring them into the modern era without dropping the innocence or charm to them. It needs someone who can present Diana as a serious hero, and even emphasize the aggressive and active parts of her nature, without losing her humanity. And make no mistake, that is what we constantly lose in the endless rush to badassify Wonder Woman. We lose the little touches of her as a person, the impulsive young woman who lept into the ocean because someone needed her, the healer who worked tirelessly to save a sick man, the daughter who went behind her mother's back in order to earn her place in society, the hopeful explorer that was the first person to leave home for three thousand years, the woman who doesn't quite understand how men work, the visitor to a foreign land... All of these traits that surface off of the battlefield that are increasingly lost as writers emphasize the warrior in Diana. They tell us they do this because it makes her more flawed, more human, but really every time they take her from those soft moments they take her a little further away from her humanity and her relatability.

I'm not going to pin my hopes on seeing all of the potential in Diana's character in this reboot, but the subtle and complex characterization of Dr. Thirteen in this book tells me that this creative team has the skill to write her on the battlefield without completely abandoning the softer facets of her personality. And the use of the other characters in this book tell me that they can take franchise elements that aren't often taken seriously and use them as story elements with enough humor that they aren't warped but don't detract from the seriousness of the story. All with some obvious metacommentary because Wonder Woman is built on metacommentary about the genre and adventure stories in general.

If anything, this little book may have set the bar a bit high for this team. Still, this is more optimistic than I've felt about a Wonder Woman comic all year.

September Green Lantern Covers

2011-06-12T22:20:00.008+02:00

They've released the cover for the John and Guy book. Look at all the Lanterns who made it through the reboot:

I'm pleased to see Soranik, Brik, and Arisia still around. Less pleased to see Arisia's costume still around, but what can you do?

And I can't remember all the names for the guys on Kyle's new team but I've narrowed down everyone but the Star Sapphire. (Because the Star Sapphires all conveniently look alike in silhouette.)

Spiraling from Kyle in the center, we have the reptilian yellow lantern who fought Kilowog in Sinestro Corps War climax (Akrillo, thank you!), Bleez (thankfully, she avoids being drawn by Ed Benes), the Indigo Lantern who showed up on Oa during Blackest Night, Glomulus the orange lantern, a Star Sapphire and Saint Walker.

The Star Sapphire silhouette does not look like Miri, unless her redesign has really lengthened her hair and changed her headdress. Because Kyle is the sort of person who puts together a team of people he knows and trusts, Miri would be his most likely pick. Second most likely? Actually Fatality, since he knows her and can predict her and is kind of a sucker. That would also make the best drama. Then Carol, based on Hal's recommendation.

It doesn't look like Miri, and I don't think Johns is giving up Carol Ferris to Tony Bedard. Silhouette-wise, that character looks like Dela Pharon (the blonde version) to me. But again, all of the Star Sapphires are nearly impossible to tell apart in silhouette. If I wanted the most volatile team possible? Fatality, so she's probably the one there.

Either way, this book just went up on my want list from this image alone.

Only you can stop Donna Troy.

2011-06-11T22:44:00.006+02:00

All right, DC, we do have a big problem with the reboot so far.

You started out strong and took care of Hawkman right away. That was good. Thing is, most of us saw the cover to Justice League International and assumed that was Donna Troy in the black.

Turns out we were wrong.

Jurgens: Some have speculated that it's either Wonder Woman or Donna Troy.

Both guesses are wrong.

Since this interview, Donna Troy has not been mentioned in any of the reboot announcements. It is entirely possible that they have put her on the shelf because she is too confusing. A number of people have suggested, based on Cassie's Teen Titans costume, that Donna has been folded into that character.

I think this could be extraordinarily dangerous.

Now I'm not fan of Donna Troy. (In fact, I despise the character.) But a lot of people, including your writers, are. And if you don't settle this character's origin immediately, you are setting yourselves up for failure.

Seriously, this woman is a menace. Donna Troy is a reboot killer, more powerful than the combined willpower of your creative directors. You absolutely must have her origin established with the opening salvo of the reboot. If you do not, you are sowing the seeds of your own destruction because she will pop up and it will lead to several "Who is Donna Troy?" stories that will grow in complexity and number until they have eaten both the Titans and Wonder Woman franchises and threaten the whole universe. And all this could be averted with a simple cameo on Paradise Island in Wonder Woman #1.

You only have one shot at this. Her one weakness is actually making sense in continuity, and in order for that to happen she must be a contemporary of Dick Grayson and Roy Harper. Your window of opportunity will be short, and you must grasp it if you are to avoid another reboot.

I had a thought.

2011-06-10T23:48:00.004+02:00

This is a big strange, but I'm going to go ahead and put it out there. The Action Comics solicit says "their first super-hero" and some of the speculation on Twitter is that means the JSA is erased.

Certainly, they that team didn't get a reboot book. But that doesn't mean they were erased.

I've been talking on and off to people on Tumblr and Twitter over the last few months about Wonder Woman. One thing that keeps getting brought up is how cool it'd be if Diana was REALLY old and actually had been the WWII Wonder Woman. She's basically ageless and immortal, after all.

Well, Superman's an alien with enhanced physiology. Morrison has him survive within the sun until the 853rd Century. Maybe the huge, radical change for Superman is that they're going to backdate his first appearance to 1938 and make him have been active that long.

It's a longshot, but it is something they can do with Superman and Wonder Woman that allows them to bring in any flashbacks they want for their stories, and any supporting cast members they want. It also lets them keep their inspirational status and their WWII cred. And they made one thing clear to the press:

Among the top heroes, none of them will change more than Superman and Wonder Woman.

That's a pretty big change without actually changing Clark's personality, and it is the same sort of change they could make with Wonder Woman. I'm not going to commit to this as my Grand Theory of What They Are Doing, but I do want to put it out there now that I've had the idea.

It would be gutsy, creative, change the way we look at the characters without truly changing how important they are or dropping all of their character evolution, and it works within the rules of their world. I wouldn't be too upset with it.

Do I think they are brave enough to do this? I don't know, we'll see what happens when the interviews start. I do think it's a possibility, and it has not been a possibility to have Superman and Wonder Woman as themselves in the JSA for years now so that right there is a big change.

Big Changes. Right.

2011-06-10T22:26:00.010+02:00

I'm going to crosspost a little bit from my Tumblr because it's pretty much in line with stuff I've been posting here. Skip ahead to the Superman stuff if you've already read it.

I was answering this dcwomenkickingass post:

The reveal of the cover of Action Comics #1 was accompanied by an article where DC executives talk about the DCnU. This one stood out.
One thing that is clear: Among the top heroes, none of them will change more than Superman and Wonder Woman. The changes, such as a notable but still-secret shift in the status quo at the Daily Planet, will be met with fan ranting, but of course that’s part of the relationship here. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy, and DiDio and his team will be more worried when fans aren’t debating comics and their true or proper mythology.

In a reboot that has Barbara Gordon going from Oracle to Batgirl, the idea that there an even bigger change for Wonder Woman makes me nervous. And “still-secret status quo at the Daily Planet”? We see it looking destroyed on the cover of Superman #1, is that what they mean or is something else?

We've known a reboot was coming to Wonder Woman for a full year now. They've been hinting at bringing Steve back as a steady love interest, and that in itself is a HUGE change. Perez took out so much of the pre-Crisis elements that returning the jet and tech to Paradise Island would be a huge change too. We've got two worries:

1) They overemphasize the warrior side so much so that they cut out saving the pilot and replace it with her coming to the US on a mission other than "Return this injured party to his home" because then we won't get the merciful aspect of her personality coded into her from the start. The absolute worst case scenario (which they pretty much did in the animated movie even though they kept a bit where she saves him first) is if she captures the pilot rather than rescues him, like in Flashpoint. Since Flashpoint is supposed to be a perversion, I'm hoping this means the decided upon origin will be the normal one.

2) They lose themselves in trying to make her relatable by adding the trappings of American culture and forget that she was created to be a visitor from a foreign land free of our cultural (sexist) hangups who can COMMENT on our culture's weirdness.

Fingers crossed the big change they refer to is just a full reversion to classic origin/setting and not yet another JMS-style way of making her more like an average woman. No being raised in the states, PLEASE.

All that said, I don't buy for a second Superman's personality is changing much. They're mucking with the setting to revert to something Pre-Crisis (the marriage is probably gone), which will mess with the franchise as much as it does with Wonder Woman's. But Superman as a character? Too iconic to mess with his behavior too much. In fact, that Action Comics #1 cover?

(I'm going to make you sit in the corner with a dunce cap if you think that's his new costume. We've already seen the dumb without-red-trunks costume all over the place.)

Half Clark Kent farmboy clothing, half Superman clothes. A visual that focuses on his down home roots is exactly like the sort of thing to emphasize Superman's humanity and his connection to the Earth. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the focus of this issue.

This September, New York Times bestselling writer Grant Morrison (ALL-STAR SUPERMAN) joins with sensational artist Rags Morales to bring you tales of The Man of Tomorrow unlike any you’ve ever read before in ACTION COMICS #1. This momentous first issue will set in motion the history of the DC Universe as Superman defends a world that doesn’t trust their first Super Hero.

Oh, so the whole issue is the world changing their attitude about Superman... and him trying to continue acting like he always does. Huh. Sounds like a pitch that explores Superman's relation to humanity, and his own humanity in turn. That's cover and solicit, and the sort of thing Morrison would write.

Out of today's books, I'll try out Action Comics, going to pass on anything George Perez writes and not too interested in Superboy yet. I'm iffy on Supergirl. Sounds like they're doing a just-arrived from Krypton and must learn to connect to humans thing. Don't know those writers, don't know if I care for that story.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Reboot.

2011-06-09T21:32:00.011+02:00

I understand that this blog has gone quiet since Monday, but that's because DC's Tuesday announcements contained an amazing and unique book.

A book that left me so giddy I couldn't bring myself to write a longform reaction to anything since.

A book I read when I was in High Scool.

A book that stood out among all of the DC offerings.

A book that couldn't even be saved by the main character's involvement in DC's best company crossover.

A book that I haven't even seen referenced in a very long time.

A book that I never dared hope to see again.

A book that is weird, and morbid, and seems to be written specifically with my dark sense of humor in mind.

A book that justifies the entire reboot. No matter what they do to Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Batman, the Teen Titans, Sgt. Rock, Lois Lane, Superman... all of it is worth it even if this book is cancelled at the six-month mark because even then for six sweet, sweet months we'll have all been able to enjoy...

RESURRECTION MAN!!!

That's right folks, this September a character from the above image will DIE!

And then again in October... and then again in November...

They decided not to even TRY to top Grant Morrison here.

2011-06-06T22:40:00.011+02:00

So DC's posted the Big Franchise, the Batman books for September, and I am beyond underwhelmed this time. The sad offerings for their flagship franchise make the Green Lantern announcement seem rather optimistic and serve to soothe any anxieties I may have had about Azzarello's Wonder Woman.

Because damn it, even if he goes totally over the edge to make her edgy at least they gave Wonder Woman to top notch talent.

The Batman franchise announcements are weak.

They've said that Morrison is involved, but I suspect his involvement stopped at making a list of everything he'd created for the Batman universe and circling one random item. Then the editors instructed the other writers to undo everything but that item.

The good news is, we've gotten to keep Damien. Thing is, he'll be Bruce's Robin. I think Morrison established quite nicely that the two didn't quite work out together and I really liked the dynamic with Dick, but there are unexplored avenues with his real father. Also, Batman and Robin will be the Tomasi-Gleason series making it the second most interesting title to me and putting it on the maybe pile.

The bad news? The three other books starring Bruce Wayne don't look the slightest bit distinctive or intriguing. They seem generic and none of the writers appeal to me.

The next announcements were the female-led books. Now, it is a good idea to have as many female-focused Batbooks on the market as you can because Batman has a huge female fanbase and they love Extended Gotham. This announcement was where the one must-buy book came in for me: Batwoman by J.H. Williams III, Haden Blackman and Amy Reeder.

It seems that the last push-back was to coincide with this reboot, so finally we will get our promised Batwoman solo series, five years after the first rumors spread about a Rucka-penned series. But who cares, we finally get Batwoman.

The Catwoman cover was annoying but not a turnoff on its own. She's leaning backwards, unzipped to the navel. BUT since she's wearing pants, apparently she's tastefully done. Ugh. Still, I freaking love Catwoman even though they cheesecake her up all the time so I was intrigued... until I saw Judd Winick was writing it, and it had the following solicit:

Meet Catwoman. She’s addicted to the night. Addicted to shiny objects. Addicted to Batman. Most of all, Catwoman is addicted to danger. She can’t help herself, and the truth is – she doesn’t want to. She’s good at being bad, and very bad at being good. Find out more about what makes Catwoman tick in CATWOMAN #1, written by Judd Winick and illustrated by Guillem March.

Yeah, screw going from the Robin Hood of Gotham to that. I'll be rereading my old Catwoman comics instead.

Batgirl I knew I wouldn't want at first look. The cover was a redhead. Now, Barbara Gordon has always been a fine character even thought she's not one of my favorites. I'm not even half as interested in her as Batgirl as I am in her as Oracle though. Oracle is a unique and powerful character that serves as Batman's chief lieutenant. Oracle is one of the few disabled superheroes in comics. Batgirl is just another martial artist on the level of Nightwing and the Robins.

Other writers have covered the wheelchair better. She's a disabled hero, and that means a lot more in terms of diversity than another female Bat-sidekick.

I speculated that it might be an origin story, and someone on Tumblr is suggesting she'll be Oracle again soon but... Gail Simone is writing. Read that post, that excitement. And we all know from every interview she's wanted this since she did WiR. I really think the intention in this case is to keep her as Batgirl.

Disappointing. Not enough to chase me out of the DCU, but I've no reason to pick up this book, or the revamped Oracleless Birds of Prey, which interests me as much as... something so uninteresting I can't even call it to mind. I don't even care who the creative team is there. Nor do I give a damn about 3 characters I have no interest in or more Judd Winick writing.

Last, and actually the least, Nightwing #1. The initial cover leak had us all asking "Could it be Dick Grayson?"

Yeah, it's Dick Grayson.

These are the worst offerings yet.

ETA: Fortunately, they're continuing Batman, Inc in 2012 as Batman: Leviathon and I'll read it, but really, that doesn't make the September Batbooks any less pathetic.

Damn: Green Lantern Edition

2011-06-05T17:57:00.001+02:00

DC announced the Green Lantern creative teams for September and to be honest, I've spent the last couple days in stunned disappointment.

It was my fault for getting up my hopes. I thought a reboot would bring in a new set of creators who haven't had a chance to mess with Green Lantern since all of Johns sweeping changes, but it seems that the writers will be the same as before with the addition of Peter Milligan. (Who is paired with Ed Benes, and nothing on Earth could make me want to see how Ed Benes draws Bleez.)

It will also take place a few months in the future, after the completion of the "War of the Green Lanterns" storyline.

Fortunately, we won't see a clumsy attempt to fit everything created in the past few years into the origin story again.

Unfortunately, we won't see a creative attempt to fit everything created in the past few years into the origin story again.

Really, this is wise because it is one of the best selling titles, and there is a lot of appeal to it that would be lost in a reboot. We won't have to wait as they slowly roll out Guy, John and Kyle again, after all, and they have no excuse to run through the Blackest Night and War of the Green Lanterns crossover plots again. We can start at the status quo, with four Earth Lanterns and seven Color Corps.

I'm just disappointed, because I was getting the impression that Johns had run out of interesting stories to tell in this franchise. I was hoping at least he'd be moved to a character other than Hal, and someone else could give us their interpretation. I loved Johns's Hal right after Rebirth when he was reviled by everyone. Once he became the golden boy again, he lost his shine. There's an excessive masculinity in Hal Jordan that's hard to sympathize with unless his personal life is somehow in the crapper. Johns keeps pushing home how exciting his life is and how much he gets laid along with the impression that he's the go-to guy on the superhero world. The text supports his macho character flaws rather than mocks them, when Hal's character is best when the writer makes fun of his alpha maleness. Basically, he needs a good humiliating conk on the head every issue or so and he hasn't been getting that enough from this writer.

The other irritation of course is that Carol Ferris, the main Star Sapphire, will remain under Johns's dubious control. Honestly, I don't like a thing he's done with the Star Sapphires other than give us an excuse to make thousands of them. This whole angle on love is just mean-spirited and cynical. There's a spark of a chance that the energy is good at the core of it, but things have been set up so that it completely takes over a woman's mind. She turns into a nightmare stalker. She lives only for love and captures others in crystals. They brainwash villainesses into becoming this way. The name of the Violet Entity is The Predator.

And oh yes, this is all based on taking every bit of continuity into account and explaining away Carol, Debbie, and Dela's behavior as Star Sapphire. And using the Predator, which Englehart used to explain why Star Sapphire's behavior was so completely over the edge, to explain that the violet energy is difficult to control. All in the canon, after all.

Carol is presented as the good Star Sapphire because she resists control and has the most experience. That way she can be a hero now but have been a villain then, and the Violets can be a menacing threat.

What I don't get is why the Violets must be a menacing threat overall. Why can't it have been a problem with Carol or even a problem with EARTH as a location somehow causing the violet energy to be unbalanced? Why is Miri the exception of the ones we've seen for being noble and helpful? why is Carol played as special for having some control? And why couldn't the Predator have been the red entity taking control of Carol and mucking with the violet energy like Parallax took control of Hal and mucked with the green?

Why is Love bad in Green Lantern?

And why are they all scantily clad women, except the dude who gets some armor? What the hell? Do you just not want women reading Green Lantern?

I suspect Johns thinks this is a creative, fascinating take on things since Love is supposed to be a virtue. Except that since the Star Sapphires are conflated on every level with sex (another aspect I hate about them) it's not a new take. It's an old take on sex as all-consuming, addictive, and dangerous. It's an old take on women as the wicked temptresses who would distract the hero from his noble duty.

And it's an incredibly shallow view of Love.

Really, the only thing that even mildly redeemed this take on Star Sapphire was Tomasi and Gleason's Miri. She should be the template for Star Sapphires. Carol should be like Hal, someone who messed up badly.

I had some hope in a reboot that we'd see the Star Sapphires revised to something less horrible, but seeing the exact same writers on the books kills that.

Though maybe we can count on losing the pink nightmare outfit if the Pants for Everyone! trend continues. That's something I suppose, even if it's a wrongheaded something.

Reboot Madness! Everything Must Change!

2011-06-02T20:38:00.005+02:00

Sure enough, right after I posted my concerns about the reboot the news went up about the next ten series that are getting rebooted. They seem very nonthreatening. I've already made some buy choices.

Of course, barring Dave Sim (and honestly, I think I'd pick that up just to see how fucked up it was) or Frank Miller I knew I'd be getting Wonder Woman. I had my fingers crossed for Grant Morrison, but DC handed the pen to someone else:

New York Times bestselling writer Brian Azzarello, author of The Joker and 100 Bullets, teams up with the immensely talented artist Cliff Chiang (Neil Young’s Greendale) for WONDER WOMAN #1, an exciting new series starring the DC Universe’s greatest superheroine. The cover to issue #1 is by Cliff Chiang.

Right away my heart sank. A lot of the big problems with Wonder Woman seem to derive from this ridiculous idea that she needs more of an edge. (I suppose being the personal enemy of the God of War and Violence himself just isn't impressive enough.) Brian Azzarello is known for 100 Bullets and just having the dark, edgy element to his stuff. No only that, bloodied sword on the cover.

But... Rucka was known for edgy street crime, and he was one of the best. The complaints I've heard about Azzarello's women seem to stem from bashing the supporting cast around, so a franchise like Wonder Woman that is purposefully gender-swapped might shake up his habits a little.

He's written Wonder Woman before in Superman #210-211, and David had some reassuring things to say about that. It's been a long time since I've read any of For Tomorrow (I only remember some heavy bondage with Kyle Rayner), but it's one of three Azzarello series on Comixology so as soon as I get my account straightened out I'll check the Wonder Woman parts out for myself. A couple people have recommended Doctor Thirteen so I've ordered that out of curiosity.

Not that not liking any of this will stop me from getting the next Wonder Woman origin retelling. I freaking love that story, and this is a character I usually give anyone a chance with.

Also, that is the best the pants have looked yet.

The other surprise I got was a Mr. Terrific solo series, just as I was worrying about the character's fate:

The world’s third-smartest man – and one of its most eligible bachelors – uses his brains and fists against science gone mad in MISTER TERRIFIC #1, the new series from writer Eric Wallace and artist Roger Robinson. The cover to issue #1 is by J.G. Jones.

Not familiar with the creative team, but I will be checking out the first issue unless someone drops something ridiculous in the lead-up interviews.

In the meantime, I'm relieved to see Johns leave the Flash:

Rising superstar Francis Manapul, fresh off his acclaimed run on THE FLASH with Geoff Johns, makes his comics writing debut in THE FLASH #1, sharing both scripting and art duties with Brian Buccellato. The Flash knows he can’t be everywhere at once, but what happens when he faces an all-new villain who can? The cover to issue #1 is by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato.

I'm unfamiliar with Bucellato but I'll definitely give Manapul's writing a shot for his art.

On the maybe pile I have JLI and Justice League. Johns and Lee are setting the stage for everything and Justice League used to be one of my staples, but I'm honestly getting tired of those creators. Lopresti on JLI is solid, and I like the lineup but I'm still deliberating on Jurgens. He's hit and miss for me.

In the meantime, Yan's keeping a list of books and creative teams as they get officially announced in case someone wants a scored.

All right, the serious reaction to the reboot.

2011-06-02T13:55:00.006+02:00

J. Michael Straczynski:

When Dan DiDio comes out to the West Coast, we tend to get a bite for dinner to discuss projects, ideas, books and just hang. Dan is a great guy and an energetic speaker, chockful of ideas and aspirations for DC. As part of that, he shared repeatedly on and off for really more than a year his dream of rebooting the DCU and starting over.

So I felt confident that it was coming soon (which is one reason why I felt there wouldn't be a problem in the long run leaving the monthly books, since most of the things done in Superman and Wonder Woman would be erased by the reboot anyway, so ultimately it didn't matter whether I stayed or left. I just couldn't say anything at the time because I wanted to respect Dan's privacy and his desire to do what he thought was right when he thought it was right to do it.

To a degree, I think the success of Superman: Earth One was very helpful in showing that you could reboot a major character in a very personal sort of book and have it become a real hit (27 straight weeks and counting on the New York Times Bestseller List for graphic novels).

(H/T)

Yeah, I feel so much better knowing you planned your big Wonder Woman storyline from the start with the attitude of "It won't count anyway." (That pisses me off more than anything. Who cares if it counts? It needs to be worth reading. I've said some bad things about JMS's writing but I didn't have him pegged for the Cult of Continuity before. I'd assumed he'd at least TRY to do his best work whether a reboot loomed or not.)

In all seriousness, this makes it seem like they're serious and it's not just another mass retcon frenzy in the midst of the continuing storyline. In that case, it is remarkably brave, especially since they've clung to the continuity-focused stories as their main events for so long.

I'm trying to keep an open mind here because it could be pretty good, but really whether or not this works all depends on what they're willing to put in at the beginning through the launch. The DCU started out as an all-white, assumed straight, mostly male universe and slowly evolved to something more inclusive. It didn't become perfect, but it had stuff that we liked and a lot of those characters are dependent on being somewhere down the timeline. We know from the last few years that very few of the diverse characters are prioritized. Unless they consciously try to include them at the starting point, changing the company story to be genuinely diverse from the start and not just giving lip service in the form of one white woman and one black guy (both established as straight) in the Justice League, we're going to have to wait a while until the appeal comes back.

I don't doubt that if characters like Todd Rice, Cass Cain, Kyle Rayner, Michael Holt, Ryan Choi and others are neglected in the first wave they'll all return in some fashion after time passes, but it could take a long while. They'll need writers who remember them and want to use them. Their origins will have to be redone in order to use them and fit them into the universe. More waiting on the part of the fans that see themselves in these characters.

I'm not ready to completely write off a chance we'll have a more diverse universe than we do now, but things look bleak. If Didio had gotten to do this 5 or 6 years ago when they were creating characters like Ryan, Jaime and Kate I'd be more optimistic. I don't know who's pushing what and what personnel changes brought on what we've seen since around Blackest Night, but things aren't as hopeful in this area as before. (Also, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with Geoff Johns having the first word on Star Sapphire.)

Once again, it all comes down to wait and see. This is a tremendous opportunity for them. I'm hopeful for Wonder Woman, I'll check out Green Lantern, I'll definitely look into whatever they've put my favorite writers on, but my expectations aren't particularly high overall here.

Deja vu all over again

2011-06-01T21:21:00.002+02:00

So.. anyone hear any big news this week?

Okay, these rumors have been flying for quite a bit and as we've know that Wonder Woman was likely to get a complete reboot I was mentally prepared anyway. Really, what with Green Lantern Corps #60 I was anxious for one for Green Lantern. A full universe-wide reboot is a great way to undo all of those deaths they SHOULD have undone in Blackest Night (but somehow forgot to), and clear some of the ickier circumstances out of their product. They can bring back Ralph and Sue and Ryan Choi and Mogo and Katma and Hawkgirl and so on. Then they can weave together the stories from the start and make wise use of their character stable. At the very least, if they're out of ideas they can kill the next few years reintroducting all the characters again from the starting point. It's a great opportunity.

Or it could be, if they have the brains to do it right or the guts to do it all the way.

Blackest Night gives us reason to doubt they'll introduce a diverse cast from the ground up.

They also plan to keep some of the continuity. Heaven only knows what this means for sure, because a proper linewide reboot would mean everyone goes back to the same spot and there is no continuity. Possibly September is just Origin Month and we get back to business in October. They'll use those #1 issues to set out what the new character history is and/or setup the new storyline. Some continuity will change, some fat will be trimmed, but a lot of stuff will be the same. New series will be launched, old series will be cancelled.

Hmm... Where have we seen this before?

No, not there. That was half-assed, but they are organized now. Getting them all on the same track in one month. Real jumping on points for new readers. Hell, they may not actually reboot, they may just fudge the backstories.

Hmm... Nope. Not that either. We're beyond rumors and they said it was changing the past rather than jumping ahead. Also, they're renumbering. Granted, they might just renumber September's issues and go back to normal the next month for some series... Oh!

That's the one.

Flashpoint: Is This Event Over Yet?

2011-05-31T21:20:00.003+02:00

So I hadn't seen this before.

Okay, we've been through the whole Flashpoint rant a few times already. I do not like this angle for the Amazons, and I think it undercuts Diana's character. With Amazons Attack, it was stupid but I was open to the "mystically manipulated" idea and figured it wouldn't hurt the franchise.

I guess I was wrong, because it seems someone liked that idea and decided they should try it again in an alternate timeline. And now someone will like the idea and decide they should try it again. Because they don't get Wonder Woman. They don't understand how women can withdraw from men and not spend all of their time thinking about men, holding a grudge against men, and plotting to come out and hurt/maim/kill men. They don't get that women might spend their lives away from men and be perfectly happy and not obsessed with men in some way.

They don't get that the point of Wonder Woman is that sexism in our society was holding women back, and that Diana is what a woman who had never suffered institutionalized sexism can be. Instead, Wonder Woman only makes sense if she's lopping off heads and ranting about how terrible men are. For franchise purity, she has to have the moral high ground in her own book but when it comes to crossovers all bets seem to be off.

I know that this is an alternate universe and it won't really immediately affect how she's portrayed in her own book.

I know that the whole point of this timeline is that everything has gone horribly wrong and the heroes (which, coincidentally, don't seem to include Wonder Woman) will have to set it right.

I know that this cover is just there to get us riled up and they probably have an explanation inside that will make Diana sympathetic.

That doesn't make this crossover and everything released about Wonder Woman in it sound any less stupid.

Here's the thing, the best alternate universe storylines are the ones that show us the true measure of the characters. They're the ones that show us that the characters will remain true to their core characteristics in different circumstances.

There's a quote running around somewhere that Batman wasn't changed much because the audience wouldn't accept it. I can pretty much guarantee that Superman will be the same sort of person he always has been. Same for Hal, because they are building up the Green Lantern franchise around him. And of course, Barry will remain Barry because he's the centerpiece here.

For some reason, Diana is getting remade to be much more violent, though. And that suggests to me that they feel the core characteristics of Wonder Woman are her warrior characteristics, and that her kinder nature is only due to circumstances.

To me, that's bullshit. The very first act that this character performed in publication history is an act of mercy. The very first thing that Diana does in All-Star Comics #8 is to save someone from a plane crash. It is an action repeated in every retcon of her origin up until this idiotic JMS reboot. She has a friend with her usually, but it's always Diana's idea to go help the guy. It is an essential part of her origin and the first character trait that was established in her very first appearance. She is merciful.

And not only that, that someone is a man. She's heard nothing about men except that they were violent, enslaved her people, and that they retreated to the island to live in peace from them. She's raised to think that this person will try to hurt her even after she helps him, but she still does. Her instinct to be heroic and merciful is overwhelming. If she does not have that, if that is not a prominent trait, then that is not Wonder Woman.

Really, every depiction at odds with that as her true nature muddies the waters of a character that a lot of people don't seem to know/understand to begin with. People complain that WW is a cipher, a physical presence, a cardboard character and that's because anytime she's outside her own book the writers seem to ignore that she has very specific character traits that were laid out in her appearance. They ignore that her warrior aspects are tempered by mercy and reason. They do this because it's kewler to have her collecting heads than demonstrating a clear head.

A few minutes before I saw this I had been answering a comment on the other day's Steve Trevor post. I was explaining how Steve was more important to the mythos than Batman's first love interest, and this whole Flashpoint thing came to mind. Because with Steve around, we have a reminder that Diana's first act was an act of mercy. We have the basis for her opinion on men standing right by her. We have a guy around that is there because not only did she save him, she actually nursed him back to health and hid him from the rest of her people so he'd be safe.

Steve Trevor is a walking talking example of how good a person Wonder Woman is at heart. And that, more than a desire to see romantic stories around Wonder Woman, more than an affection of the character, is why I feel it's so important they bring him back.

Because this may be another big fakeout, but they are slowly moving towards it crossover by crossover. They are losing Wonder Woman in this, as each event they make her just a little more like the Punisher.

What does she see in that man?

2011-05-29T23:54:00.011+02:00

First, an enjoyable diversion that hopefully won't be pulled anytime soon. Then on to the business of expressing a pretty complex opinion.

The biggest thing I see among fans that irks me is the insistence that Wonder Woman be paired with another costumed hero like Superman (in the letter columns and the freaking 90s Elseworlds) or Batman (since the cartoon series set them up a ratehr dedicated fandom has surfaced). Worse than the fans, this is a trend among writers, who gave her a crush on Clark in the 80s (this was their way of establishing she wasn't lesbian or asexual, I suppose, since the 80s reboot got rid of all the female characters she could have been paired up with as well as getting rid of Steve), a dozen alternate universe stories where she marries Clark in the 90s, and a relationship with Batman in 2000s JLA that is so important that it saves her from the Black Lantern in their company crossover (I will never let this go. Ever.) but is never mentioned in her or his book.

Now, a lot of us object to this based purely on franchise integrity. Wonder Woman dating Batman or Superman makes her into one of their supporting characters. It's not right, and she should be treated on equal terms with them but the writers, editors and most importantly the marketers clearly favor both men over her. Until we can replace Warner Bros execs with doppelgangers who love Wonder Woman boardroom fights over Superman and Wonder Woman or Batman and Wonder Woman will end with her getting the shaft.

But my objection to these two relationships and my insistence on bringing back Steve Trevor does go further than franchise integrity. It's all about character background, masculinity and femininity, and the underlying theme of Wonder Woman. Consider if you will, the classic origin story.

Despite some variation (particularly with Kanigher, but he seems to have soft-retconned the classic origin back in when he really got to writing), most writers stick to her saving a downed pilot. This is the first man she's ever seen. He's usually half-drowned and horribly injured from the crash. She cares for him and sees him at his most vulnerable. While he's helpless, sometimes delirious, and in the cases when she hides him (Martston, Kanigher's later retcon) completely dependent on her for survival. Even when he's lucid (Kanigher's first story, Conway), he's still defenseless and has no control over what happens to him. She has to rescue and protect him.

She notices early on that he's pretty attractive. Even as a complete wreck, waterlogged and injured he is absolutely gorgeous. That's the basis for the initial attraction, but with some writers there's a little bit more. Pre-Crisis Diana knew English somehow (magic TV or there's Amazons that were shipwrecked English-speakers or Hermes willed it--she also knew Caveman language in the Silver Age). In one of the Golden Age origin retellings (I can't find it right now), Steve's delirious and babbling about the war, how his people are fighting a great evil, and how he swears he sees an angel. In the Silver Age, the first version has him telling her he doesn't see the difference between an Amazon and an angel, and then ridiculously offer to fight off sharks while she gets away. Later he shows up leading a charity outing for underprivileged kids. Both cases, he says something while helpless that demonstrates he's brave and selfless, he admires her, and he's community minded.

She decides she's attracted to him based on him being beautiful. Sometimes she gets to factor in that he says nice things about her and cares for others above his own well-being despite being absolutely helpless. Not exactly a lot to go on but I'm sure you all do a background check and require them to accomplish three quests before you'll approach an attractive stranger in a bar.

Later on we see that he's the sort of guy who tells the villain it doesn't matter what they do to him, they'll never beat Wonder Woman. Other times we see he can be gentle and thoughtful and takes care of her emotionally. He's also brave and honest. He has some very attractive qualities that are present whether he's shooting out the lock on her prison door or he's lying in her arms recovering from a recent blow to the head. He's passively desirable. It's not things he does that interest her, it's inherent qualities that show through at his weakest moments whether they're superficial like his appearance or the truest expression of his courage like laughing in the face of a villain who has him completely in their power.

The updates on Steve Trevor through the years, the new interpretations by Kanigher, Conway, Thomas, and Mishkin for their respective eras, kept that he is a doer and a heroic character but still understood that Diana's attraction was based on his characteristics rather than his accomplishments. It meant more to her that he was the sort of person who would TRY to help her than the sort of person who COULD help her.

Somehow, though, people always ask why she likes him. They want him to have done something to deserve her. Or they consider the character a complete wash, and favor her with Superman or Batman, the only two men on the planet who can be said to have accomplished more than her. They want a super-powered love interest. The long-standing trend among anti-Steve fans who are still in favor of a male love interest is to get her a so-called "Real Man" because they don't get how a woman of her calibre could fall for someone who needed her help. This is one thing to see from fans, but to have writers try and establish this too, to have her go for the one guy who outpowers her or the badass normal, to write her as the female fighter who insists on a man who matches or defeats her betrays a misunderstanding of our culture and Diana as a character.

Wonder Woman was raised in a society of women, with no positive views of men until she met one herself. This is important because it tells us that she has no investment in or even concept of the Cult of Masculinity.

The Cult of Masculinity is a way of describing how society pushes this construct of what men need to be like. It is the thing that makes us value certain traits in men above others, and insist that men are worthless unless they are superhuman overachievers who never show a moment of weakness. It is the collection of traits that men are expected to embody in order to keep their place of superiority over women. It is, among other irritating things, the expectation that men have more important jobs and earn more money than their wives. It is, among other infuriating things, our cultural requirement that even if women are allowed to be heroes men must be bigger heroes.

Wonder Woman has no clue that men are supposed to be stronger, more active, more capable, better fighters, more famous, or make more money than she is. She has no idea what we would consider a worthy mate for her. (In fact, one of the great things in the Bronze Age is that the rest of the JLA doesn't quite understand why she's with him.) She doesn't know that she's supposed to be dating UP somehow, that she's supposed to go for someone who has more power or influence than she does. She doesn't realize that when she saw him drowning, exhausted, and near death she was supposed to conclude he was defective. She never figures out that every time he needs her to save him she's supposed to think less of him.

Diana doesn't see Steve the way we do, the way Black Canary does, the way Batman does, the way our society would see him. We see a man we have no use for because he dates a woman who is better at his job than he is. (Never mind how good he actually is at his job, we're blind to that.) She sees a person who is physically attractive that turns out to also be selfless, kind, brave, light-hearted and supportive. She sees someone who often needs her help, makes sure she gets the appropriate credit for that help, and lets her know how much he appreciates it. She sees a person who is a little thick-headed, sometimes kind of irritating but that will always be at her side and always ready with a smile or a word of encouragement when she needs it.

Miss America

2011-05-27T22:44:00.009+02:00

Marvel's remembered they have the Miss America name in their properties again, and they've released some preview art of the new title carrier. Naturally, we're all arguing about her clothing:

My own first reaction was "What the hell? Who the fuck designed this outfit?"

Because seriously, another superheroine who walks around with her belly exposed and those look like high heels. I cringed and raged, but now I've calmed down a bit. It's still a bare midriff, but the artist isn't the worst one ever. I hate that every superheroine is perfectly packaged to land as a sex bomb, and male writers expect us to find that empowering.

Of course, the more complex complaints are being overwhelmed by slutshaming and "that doesn't suit America" reactions that go beyond complaining about Marvel's artistic predictability to insulting women who actually dress like this.

This is a style that real women wear. It was popular when I grew up, and Cheryl Lynn and Joe both pointed out how true to life the outfit looks. That doesn't make it practical for crime-fighting, but it does mean that when you make a character judgement about this costume you're making a character judgement about real women so knock off the misogynistic trashtalk.

The other thing is, like Cheryl, I remember that style on women I wanted to be. I know, white girl from hillbilly country but I still took daytrips to NYC and had a TV in the 90s. It's sexy, outspoken, and unapologetic. The hair, the pants, the boots and the top were assumed to go with an attitude that was beautiful.

I think that's what the artist is trying to capture here.

I'm still unsettled, though. The artist interview didn't reassure me. I don't understand this emphasis on being able to "shake it like Shakira, but still kick your ass" over a substantial character hook, it sounds like empty marketing babble. And I'm deeply annoyed that Madelyne was last written as a "dead, out of touch racist" (I didn't read it, but I'm guessing they needed an old Golden Age hero to be a racist and had to use Miss America because all the Golden Age men are still alive) but at least someone's got the mantle and a later writer can do something that ties them both together.

I don't trust a male writer telling me she's a "new vision of American female empowerment" either. Show me.

I can't look at her yet without imagining her solo miniseries with covers by Greg Horn and shuddering.

Still, she is kind of intriguing. Marvel's reviving the Miss America name. A Hispanic woman (and Dragotta drops her name, Chavez, possibly America Chavez if I'm reading that interview right) wearing the flag, in this political climate. "Ego and indestructibility."

That last part would seem to take care of some of the impractical parts of her costume.

She reminds me of Power Girl. Modernized version of an older character, that pose, costume that the worst artists are going to go crazy with, already being judged based on that costume... "Ego and indestructibility."

And the mini also features Angel from New X-men.

Don't let me down, Casey.

The Stupidest Idea I've Ever Heard

2011-05-26T21:23:00.010+02:00

So, someone spoiled Green Lantern Corps #60 for me. I don't really mind, because what they spoiled turned out to be the Stupidest Idea I've Ever Heard.

It's the sort of idea you'd think I'd get angry about, but I didn't. I was simply too baffled at the Stupidest Idea I've Ever Heard. Of course, I probably wasn't angry because the Stupidest Idea I've Ever Heard isn't racist, sexist or really offensive on any of those levels. It takes a certain amount of logic to come up with an offensive idea. You have to be adhering to certain stereotypes and actually attempting to craft a half-assed story. It takes a special cluelessness about humanity or malice to offend. It takes a small amount of intelligence.

It takes no intelligence to come up with the Stupidest Idea I've Ever Heard. It is in no way offensive to me as a person, or even as a fan. It is just something so pointless and wasteful that I feel sorry for the person who came up with it. The person who came up with it works in the entertainment industry. That person is paid to come up with ideas to entertain us. That person needs ideas in order to pay for food and rent.

That person is so clearly out of ideas, the bread and butter of their chosen business, that I can't help but feel sorry for them.

Indeed, I fear this is worse than simply being out of ideas. The Stupidest Idea I've Ever Heard can not have come from a simple lack of creativity. This can only have come from a complex lack of creativity. A lack of creativity so intense that it has collapsed in on itself and pulls ambient creativity into it. A lack of creativity that has grown into a Void That Swallows Creativity.

And as Creativity is sucked into this Black Hole of Banality, another substance is emanating from the Void That Swallows Creativity. It is the opposite of Creativity. It is the opposite of Light. It is Anti-Creativity, and whenever it touches Creativity it renders all present incapable of detecting Story Potential as it rends the fabric of the universe.

If that's too melodramatic for you, perhaps the following story will illustrate what I think of this latest plot twist and the direction the Green Lantern franchise in general has taken since the middle of Blackest Night:

I was walking along one day when I saw a water truck parked on the side of the road. In the cab sat a man with a canteen. His skin was cracked and dry and his lips were parched. He was moaning quietly about his thirst.

I asked the man if his truck was out of water and he told me no, it was full.

So I asked the man if the water was undrinkable and he told me no, it had been tested and was perfectly potable.

So I told him to drink.

He shrugged, bent over, and lifted the back of his pants. Then he poured the water underneath the fabric. It ran out of his pants-leg and collected in a puddle at his feet.

Then he looked at the canteen and sighed, and sat on his wet behind. He'd been drinking like that all day, but he was still thirsty.

I'm worried about the Green Lantern creative team. They could die of thirst despite having an abundance of water, because they insist the proper way to drink it is through the ass.

Someone can still set them straight, though. Unlike the Wonder Woman creative team, who insist that the perfectly potable water is poisoned and that it doesn't matter because no one's known how to get water from the truck since World War II.

Wonder Woman Wednesday

2011-05-25T20:56:00.004+02:00

Well, it's ridiculous that I haven't gotten in on this so far, but I've been busy Wednesdays.

The scene I initially considered is too awesome, I need to blog the whole issue and explain the context. Instead (from the same run) here's Diana meeting the esteemed wielder of the "Daggers of Vulcan" in Wonder Woman #307:

Something cheerful

2011-05-24T21:39:00.003+02:00

I've heard this episode is getting postponed, but at least they've released some of the Wonder Woman intro. (Via)

That has to be the best first scene of a guest yet. I can't wait until she gets a full episode.

This is exactly why I say DC is being stupid about Wonder Woman.

2011-05-23T20:33:00.004+02:00

Blog@Newsarama:

When it came to the most talked about pilot they were shopping around, Roth said he thought Wonder Woman was a very “well crafted” pilot. “But after seeing the announcement of the NBC schedule, I now understand and agree with [NBC Entertainment Chairman] Bob [Greenblatt] that it doesn’t necessarily fit particularly well with their schedule,” said Roth, “As well crafted and contemporized as it was, it was a big and radical shift for viewers to embrace this new idea — and that may, to some degree, have had to do with why it didn’t make it.”

When asked if Wonder Woman would be seen in another form, on another network besides NBC, Roth answered, “To be determined. I’m just not sure yet; we haven’t given it a lot of thought.”

One of the classic, iconic comic book characters of the 20th Century, the most recognizable female superhero in our culture, is a "big and radical shift" for viewers to embrace.

Oh, and this project got more press and excitement than ANY of the shit they'll be flinging at us next fall based purely on the name Wonder Woman but they haven't given any thought to trying another adaptation.

This is stupid. It's very clear people want some form of Wonder Woman, they were hungry for news of it. They devoured every picture and release and casting decision. People want to watch Wonder Woman.

You're supposed to be fucking businessmen. You are on top of a fucking gold mine, but you're standing around at the entrance looking at your map trying to find some copper.

It hurts to say this, but Steve Trevor is not a complete idiot.

2011-05-22T19:59:00.007+02:00

We all like to make our "Nice house, nobody home" and head injury jokes about Wonder Woman's boyfriend, but the truth of the matter is that he's not meant to be an especially stupid person. He can be a bit slow sometimes, and he's certainly mockable for it, but he's not actually unreasonably stupid about the secret identity. Yes, this man is completely in love with Wonder Woman but does not recognize Diana Prince. There's an interesting metatextual aspect to this, but Marston was a very smart man who actually included an in-story reason for Diana's secret identity being secure.

See, the thing everyone conveniently forgets is that there actually was a Diana Prince in the Golden Age. She's the Pauper in our Diana's Princess and the Pauper style origin story. Diana Prince has a job at the hospital and a man who's going to move to South America, but she doesn't have the money to join him. Princess Diana has the money, but she's really got no home, no job, and no way to keep an eye on her danger-prone love interest while he's in the hospital. So one Diana helps the other out, and manages to get a quiet place from which to observe Man's World.

A lot of people hate the secret identity, I know those are the stories where Diana looks the worst in the Silver Age (but they are also the sort of stories where CLARK looks the worst in the Silver Age), and I actually do like emphasizing Truth and Honor as what Diana represents among superheroes. But if we have to have one (and for some reason they seem insistent upon it), I prefer the story where she comes up with it herself while helping another woman out. It's certainly better than "Batman set it up for her."

"But RAAAAGNELL! It's too implausible that she'd find an EXACT lookalike."

Bullshit.

The gods have taken an active role in Diana's life. This isn't "Magneto's magnetic powers are allowing him to control stuff that can't be magnetized" implausibility, this is "What the fuck? A Steve Trevor from an Alternate Universe breached the wall between realities at the EXACT SPOT his recently deceased counterpart landed years ago, the DAY after Diana's memory of this universe's Steve has been erased" implausibility. This is a "part of the plot, and showing the mysterious works of Fate" coincidence, the sort of coincidence that is perfectly in keeping with her fairy tale/fantasy setup, having Hermes the god of chance meetings as a patron, and knowing that the Fates have woven this meeting into Diana's life.

But how does this make Steve less dense? Well, Nurse Prince worked at Walter Reed. Steve Trevor is based in Washington and has probably been in and out of that hospital a few dozen times for physicals, checkups, and minor injuries. He may not have ever talked to Diana Prince, but he's probably seen her around. And this is an established woman with a paper trail, a birth certificate, a diploma from a nursing school and (by Kanigher's retelling) a picture of herself standing next to Wonder Woman.

Along with not realizing there was once another Diana Prince peopel also tend to forget that Wonder Woman's real name isn't Diana Prince. (At least, they do when tagging on Tumblr.) It wasn't pre-Crisis, and it's not now. She is simply not that person. She has an origin that involves being raised on Paradise Island at the same time that Diana Prince was growing up in the US. While Diana Prince was establishing her paper trail, being photographed, meeting people that a private investigator can track down and talk to, Princess Diana was on Paradise Island. And while some people may doubt that the Amazons exist and their princess never set foot on US soil until the day she dropped of Steve, there's one person who has seen and spoken to them and knows that girl never saw a man before he showed up.

Steve Trevor is the only man on the planet who can be absolutely certain of where Wonder Woman came from, and he knows it's not the hospital on Diana Prince's certificate.

But why does he insist one is more attractive than the other? Well, he's pretty dazzled by Wonder Woman and it goes much deeper than her having a pretty face. He's wowed by her strength, capability and energy, traits that are hidden when she shows up as Diana Prince.

In case you've been missing the Wonder Woman ranting

2011-05-21T17:11:00.013+02:00

Oh, and for those of you who've been wondering when I'll get back to Wonder Woman. I've been having a rather lengthy conversation on Tumblr, here and here.

All kidding about Steve's intelligence aside, we've actually got a couple really good reasons he doesn't realize he's working with his girlfriend. I'll get around to posting about them sometime when I'm finished making pilot jokes.

Also, the usual twitter conversations with jmatonak and mizzelle. Got into a tangent today on how anti-military fans get at times. It's not just that guy on Tumblr. It's just something that comes up a lot when talking online about stuff with a civilian-military mix. You see it among SGA and Green Lantern fans too. I've seen John Sheppard, Steve Trevor, and Hal Jordan all dismissed in the same derisive way by different fans. From the POV of someone who works with military men, these are three widely varying personalities, but somehow there's fans who hate them for the exact same character traits (which they don't all possess...?).

What's really annoying is that comic writers seem to be buying into military as shorthand for one personality type, whether they like the military or not. John Stewart is being made more Marine stereotype and less John anymore. Hal's being slid into this macho military caricature. Steve was shoehorned into being Hal in the animated movie. Bucky's not always handled by other writers with the complexity Brubaker gave him. Not to mention that soldiers are pretty much cannon fodder henchmen in a lot of stories, and you only ever see reviewers point out that's a bad thing in their jokes.

Wonder if Captain America fans ever get this, or is he just a special character?

Petition to get the Wild Hunt on the Daily Show

2011-05-21T15:25:00.010+02:00

I'm late to this because it broke last week, but over at Patheos they're fed up with the current media take on religion:

When the Washington Times thinks it’s appropriate to publish a column stating the Air Force Academy is “pandering” to my “fringe” religion, despite the fact that Pagans have fought and died for this country, I get angry.
Around the 1950s, fringe leftists enamored by the concept of worshiping the Earth adopted the ancient labels and pretended to follow the old ways.
When David Barton can advocate for a Christian government and actively work against my religious rights only to get away with lying about these activities on television, I get angry.
The true historic meaning of “religion” excludes paganism and witchcraft, and thus, does not compel a conclusion that McCollum has state taxpayer standing … paganism and witchcraft were never intended to receive the protections of the Religion Clauses.
When I have to deal with people who feel it’s appropriate to tell me I will burn in hell because they are the “keepers of the truth”, I get angry.

So do I. Star Foster has a more productive idea than ranting, and that's to petition to get some more pagan voices into the mainstream.

Specifically, Jason Pitzl-Waters on the Daily Show.

Instead I’m going to ask you to write The Daily Show and suggest they invite The Wild Hunt author and Washington Post columnist Jason Pitzl-Waters on the show to discuss David Barton and the real challenges religious minorities face in this country.

As a journalist he is familiar with the legal battle facing Patrick McCollum, the discrimination against Santeria, the triumphs of and challenges before the Lady Liberty League, the AFA earth-centered spirituality space, the Witch-Children of Africa and India, and many more stories important to our communities. He’s the journalist at the nexus of all of these stories, and he’s an excellent public speaker.

I'm going to take a moment to whine personally here. I do not represent pagans or the military or even pagans in the military. I certainly am not telling anyone US Air Force policy. I just want to tell you a little about my experience.

I'm scheduled to go a less intense unit soon, but in the midst of preparing for that, training my replacements for my multiple additional duties, and taking care of my personal stuff I was in the all-consuming field exercise this month. I just spent weeks working my ass off to help train and prepare folks so they can go to the middle of nowhere and do their job even when there are no amenities and a bunch of people are trying to kill them. That's not political, that's what we fucking do no matter who's in charge. (Whether it's for good or bad is all based on who you vote into office if you're in the US, so if you're an American citizen who sits out the primaries because "only the jerks ever win" I personally hate your guts.)

While I was in Afghanistan last fall, I saw no information about pagan services or a pagan rep at the chapel, but regular Christian services were scheduled. We had one Muslim dude in our unit, and he had to personally contact the Chapel to get a waiver for some Ramadan practices. They were nice about it, he didn't get any trouble over it, he just needed a special letter for some uniform thing. I never got any trouble over my solitary practices and I didn't feel a need to keep my religion under wraps on site, but I wasn't comfortable going to the Chaplain about Wiccan stuff and there was no contact information available for pagans there. I accept There were posted hours for Christian services, though.

At the field ex last week, Sunday was tear-down day. Work for everyone taking down equipment and tents. I got a good laugh when my boss (who knows that I am a witch) interrupted me to ask me if I wanted to go to Church. Our Group's Chaplain came down from base and they were busing anyone who wanted to attend Christian services to the nearby German Chapel. My boss was required to ask everyone in the office if they wanted to attend, to make sure no one who wanted to go missed it.

This is not against the rules, or oppressive. I haven't seen anything personally to file a complaint about (I've heard stories, but I've been lucky) or been treated bad by anyone in my chain of command. I've just seen some examples of the consideration Christians get that I will never see extended to pagans. It's like how Christmas is a federal holiday but I have to ASK for a special consideration if I want Beltane off. It's just an extra step I have to take (though I haven't ever actually gotten Beltane off...). These conveniences are all over the place, and I can actually see the necessity because it would suck if someone missed the bus for Sunday services while they were pulling up grounds like I was...

...

Anyway, I understand completely that I'm the rare religion here. I don't want to end Christian services or anything like that, and I'm not mad at anyone who goes to Church. I understand that if I want a group service for my religion, I have to contact the Chaplain personally (and cross my fingers that he's not a dick, because some of them are about this) and if we don't have a POC already ask around the unit to find the pagans and get a group together. I've known this at every base, it's more difficult some places and less others. And really, this unit is not bad in the regard.

I understand that there are a bazillion Christians, so everything is already nicely set up for Christians. There will always be networking at Churches. They don't have to worry about whether or not there's a volunteer POC for all of monotheism at their new base. They don't have to explain what they're reading when someone sees their bible. Good for them. That actually doesn't make me angry.

What makes me angry is when someone tries to make it seem like I want special treatment when I want the same consideration the Christians get.

What makes me angry is that we can't get a Pagan Chaplain attached to any of the four branches.

What makes me angry is that if I want the symbol of my religion on my tombstone to protect my remains and soothe my soul after death, the VA Administration is going to pale and stammer and give my relatives the runaround.

What makes me angry is that a ridiculous extremist can be elected if they're a Christian, but pagans and Atheists are scared risk political doom if they just mention their beliefs.

What makes me angry is when I log onto my computer to see someone who likely wouldn't even think of joining the National Guard in an admin position talk about how my religion isn't a real religion, it doesn't matter, and that we are being PAMPERED and PANDERED to when someone dares to set a place of worship aside for us.

This is old in social networking time, but it's still necessary. Do me a personal favor and do this, even if you're an atheist or a Christian reader. I want to see an intelligent Pagan speaking on these subjects in the mainstream for once.

So we're back to frisson of woo.

2011-05-17T21:50:00.008+02:00

So last week we packed up the Squadron and went out to one of the many beautiful forested areas of Germany so we could destroy the meadow with our tents, our trucks, our vans and our competition. It was both stressful and relaxing, stressful for the long hours working and relaxing for being outdoors in Germany with no access to phones or internet. As lovely as it was, we still packed in record time once we got the endex and convoyed out of there before the Germans could see what we'd done to their lawn. (I'm kidding, they play war games on that lawn too. We saw some of their units training out there, trying to ignore us.) We spent a week and a weekend there.

Oh how I wish it had been this week instead.

When I returned, the first thing I saw was the unfortunate news that NBC had passed on the Wonder Woman pilot. I had been dreading that.

Not because I badly wanted to see a Wonder Woman TV show by David E. Kelley. I did want to see it, of course. He had some interesting ideas and really, in lieu of nothing I'd take it. I read the Byrne years, after all.

Not because I knew it's failure would be used as an excuse to kill any subsequent female-led projects. It will, but sexism is overwhelming and they'd find other excuses if this was successful.

Not because I'm worried that we'll never see another media adaptation of Wonder Woman. Oh, it's going to be a long long time but that wasn't my primary concern.

No, my primary concern was the immediate Internet reaction to a Wonder Woman failure. By that I mean the hundreds of posts by hundreds of idiots who have never read Wonder Woman, yet somehow know exactly what is wrong with her. Or the ones who have read and have concluded that there is something fundamentally weak about the character as opposed to a problem with the individual creators. The ones who claim that she only survived because she's a female hero, even though there were tons of female heroes from the 40s who did not survive. The ones who claim that Freudian bondage was the only reason for her popularity, which is akin to suggesting that little boys only ever watched He-man for the homoeroticism. The ones who blame the costume or the time period. The ones who say there's nothing compelling about Wonder Woman in the post-feminist world. The ones who think she's tied solely to the war. The ones who claim that she's a piece of cardboard, a physical presence, a pair of tits, an untouchable character with no personality and no humanity.

Basically, just a giant pile of bullshit. A lot of female heroes didn't survive the end of the Golden Age, but Wonder Woman made it despite the deck being stacked AGAINST her because she was female and singled out by Wertham. Her personality is actually more clearly defined in her Golden Age origin than Clark's is in his Golden Age origin. Everything you need to know about her personality is spelled out in the classic origin, if writers can't get those traits across they are poor writers. We are not in a post-feminist society. That costume is no less stupid than Superman's. Little girls are the audience that elevated Wonder Woman to iconic status, not 40 year old fanboys.

And stop letting Frederic Wertham set your talking points, for fuck's sake.

Seriously. Wonder Woman was one of a handful of characters published continuously from the Golden Age to the Bronze Age. She is the best known female superhero in our society. People still remember that cheesy 70s show. Women who have never read comics get tattoos of her logo as a symbol of strength. She sells underoos, t-shirts, purses, barbie dolls and cosmetics.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this character.

There is something inherently appealing about this character.

DC is doing something wrong when they hire writers to "fix" Wonder Woman. You can't approach her like she's a third-string failed character who needs to be revamped. That's a road to disaster. She's not a third-stringer that only you see the potential for. She's a top tier character that millions of women have adored.

I know, post-Crisis fans are screaming in horror when I say it but this is the one character who can actually benefit from some nostalgia. They need to go back to her origin, and to the incarnations where she was the most popular (the Golden Age, the TV show) and figure out just what was the appealing aspect back then. Don't raze the place and add new stuff. Find the positive from back then, and accentuate it. Take Wonder Woman back to her roots, and streamline the old story for modern sensibilities.

If you're really confused, get outside help. Get together some people and--without telling them this is Wonder Woman's story--tell them the Golden Age origin story. Tell them about the Amazons, the princess, the pilot, and the contest. Tell them about the daughter who defied her overprotective mother. Tell them about the princess who fights dragons. Tell them about the woman who personally struggles against the God of Violence. Tell them about the warrior who rescued the monster (and don't dance around it, Men are the monsters Amazons use to scare their daughters into eating their vegetables) and nursed him back to health. Tell them about the first woman to leave her hometown in 3000 years.

Then ask them what they think of that woman, what they like about the girl in the story. That's where you'll find your Wonder Woman.

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T18:07:00.005+02:00

Well, my work and time differences are making it difficult to get ahold of my mother by phone. I'm not the only who finds her mother unavailable from time to time, though.

And since I can't just post that without giving you a view of what the fight's about, here's a little of what Diana watches.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Thoughts

2011-05-03T22:39:00.007+02:00

It looks like they made a whole episode of the Brave and the Bold just for me. (Hat/tip)

That's right, not only is that a Green Lantern episode, but it's a Green Lantern episode with Star Sapphire and Wonder Woman. Not only that, I'm almost positive that's Steve Trevor. I mean, look at him. Who else is that comfortable being carried around like this?

I think we can safely assume the Wonder Woman scenes are the cold open. If so, that's an incredibly good choice for a Star Sapphire episode. The Zamarons are the outer space all-female society that create a female warrior and force her to fight her boyfriend to convince her to leave him. It's a good thing to have the princess of the peaceful earth-based Amazons being heroic in the lead-in just for that.

Also, I'm a sucker for the off chance they'll compare Steve and Hal. Those two characters have a lot in common on the surface. They're both military pilots. They're both adventurous men notable for their courage. They're both a bit slow on the uptake at times and prone to head injuries. And using the classic setup, they both love women that have some authority over them. In Hal's secret identity, his love interest Carol is his boss. Steve Trevor is dating Wonder Woman, who naturally outpowers him in every way he can imagine But they deal with courting a woman of authority... differently.

Here's Steve trying again for marriage in August, 1959.

Here's Hal asking for a date in October, 1959.

Granted, Steve has a standing Saturday night date with Wonder Woman and Carol has told Hal to call it quits for a while... but I think it's pretty clear right there why Steve has a standing date despite spending most of his time unconscious and Hal has to wear a mask and fight monsters to trick Carol into giving him a second chance.

Cultural Differences

2011-05-02T22:11:00.007+02:00

This is not a comics post. This is a current events post. As such, it requires a disclaimer. I do not speak for the US Air Force. I can not presume to speak for any other member of the armed forces except for myself. However, I've been in so long that it's impossible to speak from any other point of view than as a member. So take this as my personal experience, my personal speculation and not anyone else's opinion or the official line.

Like every other American old enough to remember the day, I have a September 11th story. It's one of those things that only ever seems to come up in military conversation, so I've related it to few civilians. To be honest, I'm not really comfortable relating it to civilians. That's not because it's such an intense, emotional experience that only another military member can understand it. It's because the story is humorous.

If that bothers you a lot because of your own experience, I won't be hurt if you stop reading now.

I'd been in the Air Force a full year by that point and was at my first duty station. It was my first permanent assignment, but the primary mission of the base was training. Because my first career field had been an extremely poor choice I was working in the dorms while I waited on my retraining paperwork. The week prior the Command Chief for the Wing had made a surprise visit and been shown the worst three rooms in the dorm by the dorm manager. So Tuesday, September 11th, we were scheduled to have the Command Chief and ALL of the First Sergeants come to the dorm to inspect.

I was making sure the common areas were neat when the second plane hit. There were three or four people watching television in the dayroom, transfixed by the sight. It didn't register as anything more than a very foolish pilot to me (and as the spectacularly poor career choice had been Air Traffic Control, this was easy to believe), and I couldn't do anything about it so I continued with my work. I had no idea how big this was until an ALS (Airman Leadership School, which was held on the first floor of this multipurpose building) student tapped me on the shoulder and told me the Pentagon had been hit. He took my ID (which he should not have done) and assigned me to guard the door to the dorms. For the rest of the day, the biggest worry on my mind was getting my ID back.

I spent most of that day in front of that door, checking identification and observing the first true military crisis since the beginning of my career. It remains the most absurd experience of my life. People ran in and out to get things, my instructions changed at least five times, I helped enact baffling security measures, I painstakingly examined the orders of hungry foreign officers, and I witnessed what may be the most mind-boggling decision ever made in military history.

The decision to inspect the dormitories, as scheduled, on Tuesday September 11th, 2001.

We were all sure this was canceled. Anyone with a command position would surely be involved in important decisions. Everyone was running in the dorms to grab their equipment before rushing back to work and the bay orderlies were all occupied by security, so all the cleaning done over the weekend was ruined. I was iron-clad certain of one thing when I started to guard the door, and that was that I would not see the Chief that day.

Then the First Sergeants started filing in. The First Sergeants from all the Squadrons that shared this dorm. One by one, they came. One by one, they cheerfully set their coffee cups down and showed me their IDs. Once by one they went past me into the common areas. I was incredulous. So were they, but they were expected to be there and no one had canceled. Even then I personally assumed the Chief had been so busy she didn't prioritize calling off the pointless nitpicking of our living quarters. It was the shock of my life when she showed up and asked what I'd do if someone didn't have any ID. The more important decisions had been made and now the highest ranking enlisted person on the base was smiling and ready to not only look at clean dorm rooms but grill unsuspecting door guards about security procedures.

I tell that story whenever I think an Airman is making too many assumptions about leadership. I always get a mixture of disbelief and laughter.

It really is one of the most amazing stories I have, but it feels weird to tell it. Most Americans have Sept. 11th stories that are deeply emotional. They describe horror, despair, unity, and hope. Our younger Airmen tell their stories like my mother's generation described JFK's death. Everyone remembers where they were, and everyone remembers feeling the same things.

I and a lot of the people who had begun their career by that point have different types of stories. The unity was there before, it's always been there because that's part of being in the military. We have stories with sadness, fear and hope like our civilian counterparts but a lot more of us tell those stories with wry humor and pride. Military culture cultivates an emotional distance that a lot of civilian culture doesn't seem too. It surfaces in that famous gallows humor where you joke equally about the deaths of your enemies, your friends and yourself.

It seems very cold and impersonal to the uninitiated. Many people may find it horrifying, but it's a necessity to the sort of work we do.

Today, we had a mass briefing for the squadron. We're doing a big training exercise, it's not a real mission but it's something we've been preparing for a long time. We went in early, and before the briefing I heard someone asking if anyone had heard Osama Bin Laden was dead. One row down there was a Captain who cynically interjected "allegedly dead."

I grinned at him. "He's been allegedly dead for years sir, we might as well take this one."

This weak joke got a chuckle out of him.

After the briefing, the Group Commander got up to give us a pre-exercise pep talk. As part of his icebreaker, he announced that Bin Laden was dead. We dutifully clapped and cheered. Then he went on with his business, and told us what he expected from us during this exercise. And we were on with our business, discussing this during breaks and while waiting in line like we discussed any piece of news.

I know some of you think we're monsters, and no doubt I'll get a few people in my comments anxious to discuss American policy and the worthlessness of this one deed, and the wickedness of revenge, and what a terrible person I am for making a joke about the rumor. And I also know some of you are troop-boosters, ready to give me some words of encouragement and talk about closure, and relief, and maybe some sense of joy from it.

Really, both sides make me cringe because I can see them both philosophically but I get the intense feeling neither side can see where my own reaction is coming from. Not only that, not many people seem to think too deeply about this group of SEALs. If they're like any other military office I've seem, they probably come from wildly different backgrounds and have opinions that cross the political spectrum. And they maintain that vital emotional distance in the face of the most intense circumstances I can imagine. They are almost certainly not perfect human beings, but rather a mixture of admirable and objectionable character traits. I have no way of knowing whether they did everything right or anything right at all.

The conversation in the office mostly revolved around them, and what might have happened that led to a death rather than a capture. It was mostly theoretical, reserved, and distanced despite the intensity of emotion below the surface. And it was done during moments of downtime, because just like on Sept. 11th and every day since we had work to do.

Happy Beltane

2011-05-01T17:30:00.004+02:00

I know, Rebirth is more Yuletide but I liked the image of Hippolyta offering flowers to Aphrodite in front of the torch.

Wonder Woman #270

Hey, I'm looking forward to a Wonder Woman comic again.

2011-04-25T20:25:00.004+02:00

Courtesy Mizzelle, this early August solicit:

DC RETROACTIVE: WONDER WOMAN – THE ‘80s #1
Artist Rich Buckler teams up with writer Roy Thomas as Wonder Woman must battle Silver Swan to protect her secret identity from being revealed.
ONE-SHOT • On sale AUGUST 3 • 56 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T

The Retro-Active stuff is set in the era he wrote during, so I believe we can safely say that we'll be seeing this Silver Swan.

My favorite Silver Swan.

In case you haven't been paying attention or just found this blog today, my last two posts have been gushing over Roy Thomas-written Wonder Woman. You'll find all my recent Roy Thomas gushing here, here, and here.

Captain Wonder

2011-04-24T22:45:00.007+02:00

Wonder Woman #289 opens with a five-page sequence of Wonder Woman battling the many-tentacled Kraken.

Yes, really.

It's actually a really neat fight where we get to see her helping Russian sailors, speaking Russian, and dispensing a little environmentalism. She gives us a little exposition in her thought balloons while she disentangles the monster from the ship, protects the Russian sailors, and follows it down into the ocean to discourage it from coming back to the surface.

Then she continues on her way to visit home and talk to her mother. Her goal is to get permission to bring Steve back for a purple ray treatment. She's so focused on this goal that she doesn't quite realize that Hippolyta is extra-concerned about the chance Steve might die. That's because this Steve is from an alternate universe, and Diana's memory of the previous Steve and his record two deaths in a row has been erased. Hippolyta's fears include Diana suffering another bout of grief from losing a Steve, Diana finding out her mind was wiped AGAIN, and probably having to deal with a third Steve Trevor because the Fates seem pretty big on the Diana/Steve ship.

Then she pops by the apartment to pick up her uniform and her roommates, and heads to the hospital, finds out that Steve's not there and leaves. Oh, then we find out that her second roommate is actually the Silver Swan. All in all, the exposition in this book about last issue's story takes nine pages, but it's peppered around a pretty cool fight scene and some new information. We don't get to Dr. Psycho, in the story named His Name is PSYCHO! until ten pages in, which even I'll admit is a bit odd to me. This is definitely the second issue of a three-issue arc.

Eventually we get to the moment we've been waiting for since the last panel of last issue, a naked and unconscious Steve Trevor:

Oh, and the villain.

All joking aside, we should all recognize Dr. Psycho even without the creepy facial hair. We've seen him quite recently, after all. He's been one of those villains fortunate enough to survive fairly intact to the current era. His personality and motivation have been fairly consistent. His schtick where he takes over people's minds is still around, as is his deep obsession with destroying Wonder Woman because she represents all he hates about womankind. There is a big difference, though. Right now, he's a straightforward telepathic villain. Pre-Crisis he had a slightly more interesting set of powers.

Pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho controlled minds with hypnosis, and had a spiritual twist. If he could link minds with a specific person that he referred to as a "medium", he could reach into the psychic plane and pull out ectoplasm. Then he could use that ectoplasm to make himself a physical body that he could wear like a creepy psychic suit and pretend to be a tall, dark and handsome man. The ectoplasm seems to be the traditional ectoplasm of the spirit world, and not some psionic substance. We're never clear on whether he's a mixture of two types of psychic powers, or if his mesmerizing power lets him use the medium to activate their own latent powers.

His first medium was his late wife Marva, hypnotized to marry him and stay with him. In the Golden Age Wonder Woman rescued her, in the Bronze Age he seems to have murdered her. This was unwise, because although Marva's talent was passive it was actually very rare. He spent years searching, and as of this story has only encountered one other person he can use as a medium.

I'll give you three... On second thought, there's really no point in guessing. The only other person in the world with Marva's latent power is Steve Trevor.

I'd like to stop a moment and thank Roy Thomas just for putting this idea out there. He does imply that it might just be a one-time thing because this Steve is from an alternate universe and is suffering from a "Being From An Alternate Universe"-related illness, but that doesn't change that the idea is out there. Dr. Psycho is by far Diana's creepiest villain. I can think of few better ways to annoy the living crap out of her than making it so her creepiest villain is specifically fixated on her love interest and now that option is out there.

Full disclosure here, I am the first person to cringe at the idea that Wonder Woman needs a super-powered or otherwise extranormal love interest. I don't even like giving her another vigilante like Batman or Nemesis, I prefer someone who is initiated into the World of the Weird through Wonder Woman and his association with Wonder Woman. I want him to be in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that he has to adjust to in order to understand her just as she's in love with someone from a completely different sort of reality that she has to adjust to in order to understand him. My favorite love interest is non-powered, completely mortal Steve Trevor. Old Wonder Woman lettercols are full of people who suggest giving him super-powers, or chucking him aside for Superman, but I think those people are wrong.

That said, I am perfectly fine if he's a medium. It's receptive, passive, brimming with story potential, and suitable for a character who crosses mystical boundaries and gets knocked out/killed a lot.

Also, Captain Wonder is an astoundingly effective villain.

Sorry, I've jumped ahead of myself. See, when Dr. Psycho switches on his Evil Machine to suck ectoplasm out of the spirit world through Steve's mind, Wonder Woman bursts through the doorway. Since Dr. Psycho is already building an ectosuit for himself based on Steve's appearance, he uses the distraction to add Wonder Woman's powers to it. The result?

CAPTAIN WONDER!

This villain is often sloppily described as a combination of Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman. That leaves out two important factors. One, this villain is Dr. Psycho. Not Dr. Psycho-controlled or a Dr. Psycho illusion. Captain Wonder is like a super-suit that Dr. Psycho wears to battle. Two, this is not a Steve and Diana hybrid. This is Steve's appearance added to the powers that Steve thinks Wonder Woman has. That's a big difference, as Diana soon finds out in the battle.

Ouch.

In later scenes, we learn that he can also use the jet and the lasso because Steve has seen Wonder Woman use the jet and the lasso. Also, since Steve doesn't know any of Diana's weaknesses, Captain Wonder doesn't have any of them. Not only that, but even after Diana destroys the Ectoplasmotron Dr. Psycho still seems able to make the connection between himself, Steve and the spirit world.

He does have one hell of a weakness in that Steve has to be under Dr. Psycho's control in order to maintain that connection to the spirit world. Otherwise, the ectoplasm breaks down and Captain Wonder turns back to Dr. Psycho. Steve regaining consciousness manages to do it, which happens due to luck and things like Diana destroying the Ectoplasmotron. As Steve has the Mysterious Multiverse-Based Illness at the moment, these moments of consciousness don't last.

Still, this being Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman she always manages to win and Capt. Wonder/Dr. Psycho is down by the act break.

Captain Wonder's another good villain idea introduced by Roy Thomas that's just sat on the shelf since Crisis. They use Dr. Psycho, but because he's lost the spiritual aspect of his powers and Steve's lost prominence we're not likely to see the Captain Wonder persona anytime soon. Dr. Psycho's a really strong villain, but he can't get into a fight with Diana so he needs another villain or a strong enough hero to. Captain Wonder gave him the ability to fight her on a psychical level if he could work out the right conditions.

And honestly, I think I prefer the pre-Crisis Dr. Psycho. He's super-creepy back then too, but the spirit world aspect of his powers make him distinctive from other telepathic bad guys. This ectoplasm thing was a unique idea, and one that always brought a person for Diana to save into the equation when she squared off against Dr. Psycho. Really, if they thought of it we could have him discover this ability through a medium anytime in the future, but so few writers seem interested in reviving pre-Crisis elements that I doubt we'll see anything more than the usual telepathy.

That's a shame not only because writers seem to always be complaining that Wonder Woman has a bad Rogue's Gallery (She does not. The writers just only use the same four villains over and over again, and they don't use them to their original potential), but also because Roy Thomas uses Captain Wonder and Silver Swan together so effectively next issue.

The Silver Swan

2011-04-23T22:42:00.012+02:00

I'd read some of the classic Roy Thomas works like All-Star Squadron and Invaders and liked some of what I read but been completely unimpressed with other stuff like Infinity Inc. I took him as a decent writer, but not always up to my tastes.

This may be why I'm so taken with his short Wonder Woman run back in the early eighties. I was actually surprised when I read Wonder Woman #300 that he was the writing credit, not because of disrespect for his skill but because I hadn't realized that this would be the writer who wrote such a perfect story for me. It was possible there that it was more Dann Thomas, or even a fluke, until I read the other Thomas back issues I had. As a result the RetroActive special I'm most looking forward to is his 80s Wonder Woman.

I can't figure out which of these stories they'll go with for the reprint backup, though. It was a short run dominated by multi-part stories, and the only standalone was the extra-sized issue 300. Still, they could do worse than reprinting issue #290, which ended the three-part story that introduced Silver Swan.

Silver Swan is one of those villains we see pop up from time to time Post-Crisis, who has the powers to throw down with Wonder Woman but doesn't ever seem to join villains like Cheetah, Ares, and Circe in the regular Rogue's Gallery. I think that's because when Perez introduced her, Valerie Beaudry was a sad young woman who had experienced a tragedy and was manipulated by a man. The guy she was with was the real threat, she was sympathetic. So you felt kind of bad to see Diana punch her, and wanted the whole thing resolved with her reformed.

This is a good story for a one-off bad guy, or an origin for a hero (see Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch), but not something for a regular member of the Rogue's Gallery. Valerie did reform and help Diana later, but she never caught on as a hero. The poor woman was mercifully retired.

I liked Jimenez's idea to bring in a new Silver Swan that Diana could fight, and making it Vanessa Kapetalis allowed for some intriguing angst. He could have executed this better, because the way he did it made for yet another young woman manipulated by a man story. Vanessa's trauma was even more emphasized than Valerie's, with several scenes establishing she was violently kidnapped, brainwashed and unhinged by the experience. The man who made her the Swan was the real villain, Vanessa was an innocent victim thrown at Diana. And while Vanessa's ranting, misplaced violence, and general dislikability made it easier on us when Diana had to beat her up, it still put Wonder Woman in the unsuitable bully category. Vanessa was not a villainess, she was someone Diana had to save and protect.

So I and probably most other Post-Crisis readers categorized the Silver Swan as a sympathetic victim of male manipulation, a name for Diana's Rogue's Gallery but not an identity that could really stay with a single person. Her strength, flight, and sonic scream made her a great punch-em-up bad guy, but her backstory made it hard to watch the fight. The common themes tended to be that she was "ugly duckling" who was suckered into scientific testing and remade as a terrifyingly beautiful force for evil.

This was not how Silver Swan was Pre-Crisis. Pre-Crisis, Helen Alexandros was still an "ugly duckling" given a beautiful, powerful superhero identity. She had flight, super-strength, and a sonic scream.

That's where the similarities stopped. Because Helen Alexandros was a bad guy of her own volition.

She was a young woman with acne who pursued a career as a ballerina. I feel for her in this early part of the story because dammit, she worked her ass off and if things were done on pure dancing skill alone she would have danced the lead in Swan Lake. But things are not done on pure skill alone, and she overheard that she was passed over for prima ballerina in favor of a prettier girl.

In grief and rage, she calls out to the gods in a scene straight out of Greek Mythology (and drawn by the amazing Gene Colan) that her looks are unjust, that the world is run by men, and that she HATES men!

And the gods, or rather, one god answers her.

Guess which one.

Ares tells her that she's his descendant, and also a descendant of Helen of Troy. He begins to summarize the plot of the Illiad and Helen Alexandros interrupts with how much she likes "the part about bring death and destruction to men!"

He offers her great power and beauty, provided she use those gifts to cause wars among men. She gets them for an hour at a time, until she manages to kill Wonder Woman. Killing Wonder Woman will make her permanently the Silver Swan. Helen readily agrees and pledges her fealty to the God of War.

This is not an innocent, manipulated victim. This is a woman embittered by society who has chosen to strike at society as a criminal. This is a villain with the seed of sympathy who nonetheless possesses the wickedness necessary to fully deserve being punched repeatedly in the face by Wonder Woman. This is a perfect origin for a regular member of Wonder Woman's Rogue's Gallery. Not only that, she has a mythological tie.

I cannot for the life of me understand why they didn't just use this woman when re-introducing the Silver Swan. I don't know why they didn't just make her the second one. I don't know why they don't just bring her in as the Swan right now. Because we have a villain who is a physical match, and a thematic foil for Wonder Woman just sitting on the shelf while every writer says "I want to add to her Rogue's Gallery, she doesn't have enough good villains."

But I digress.

Anyway, the Silver Swan isn't the only great villain in this storyline. In Wonder Woman 288 we establish Helen, her history, her motive, and the fact that she's figured out Wonder Woman's secret identity and managed to make herself Etta and Diana's roommate. Then we go to check in on Steve Trevor.

Poor Steve is in the hospital after a head injury because ~~he is clumsier than the love child of Hal Jordan and Bella Swan~~ spies/terrorists/something or other attacked them. It should have been superficial, but for Mysterious Reasons he's lapsed into a coma and is hanging onto his life by a thread. Despite this condition, the doctor signs him over to Dr. Psycho, because he seems like a nice man who has authorization from the Pentagon. (He does not have authorization from the Pentagon.)

And that's just the first issue in this storyline. Really, I wanted to get through the whole thing because one of them is cover-dated for my birth month and today is that kind of day, but I've squandered all of my time explaining why I will never be able to accept another Silver Swan. I'll get to Dr. Psycho, Steve, Captain Wonder, and the wonderful way these two plots weave together later.

I aten't dead.

2011-04-21T22:18:00.002+02:00

This week has been pretty exhausting. I'll get back to blogging eventually, and maybe someday answer my comments but right now I'm just too pooped to do anything but argue on twitter and muck around on tumblr. I'm really just dropping this note to try and get my brain back into the updating this blog mindset.

Who's up for an old-fashioned letter campaign?

2011-04-16T23:50:00.004+02:00

The other day I posted this on tumblr.

All right, so Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman pitch got attention back when I was on the way to Afghanistan so I never got a chance to comment on it (even to note it has lovely art), but tonight I'm thinking about Wonder Woman, DC current direction for her, fans and such. A postcard campaign got the series renumbered to 600 rather than reset at 1 for this latest reboot. Letter campaigns got Manhunter two reprieves. A letter campaign brought Stephanie Brown back from the dead.
I think there's an off chance we can get this published, or at least get it in their heads that we want Wonder Woman to be for young girls too. And if it works, we can finally have a Wonder Woman book to give to our younger family and friends. That should be something worth shooting for even if you don't like certain aspects of it.
So, if you'd spend postage to get this a second chance, please Reblog. We'll get organized if there's enough of us.

Most of the reblogs happened within the first hour, and it seems to still be slowly trickling throughout the community five days later.

As a thoroughly unpleasant person by choice, I'm not a particularly effective leader. I'm also someone in a ridiculously busy job who can get called away from her hobbies for long periods of time in order to take little trips, or cover for people who are on little trips. So I'm not a particularly good fit for fan activism, however... No one else seems to want to do this and this is something I think can work.

Like I said, fan letter campaigns have gotten books extended, characters resurrected, and Wonder Woman renumbered rather than rebooted for a fourth issue one. DC right now is flailing about for something, anything, they can do to make Wonder Woman a seller again. There's a bit of an interest upsurge because of TV show casting and the fact that every major superhero property to hit the main-stream has been male-dominated, and the first character to come to mind when they ask what female superhero can have a movie is Wonder Woman.

And lately DC and it's related companies have passed on every chance to reimagine super-hero related properties for young women. But everytime something like Caldwell's pitch, or Lois Lane: Girl Reporter or now Barbara Gordon, Girl Detective hit the internet as a failure every reaction seems to be: "What is WRONG with them?" And to me, the biggest "What is WRONG with them?" is passing on any female-aimed Wonder Woman adaptation, because Wonder Woman was originally pitched as a way to bring girls into superheroes. It stars a princess superhero who dances between high fantasy and utopian sci-fi. The classic cast is all female except for one token boy, like so many other girl properties. Wonder Woman is a girl franchise, most successful at times when it is accessible to girls (the 40s when every kid read, the 70s in TV form when every little girl watched, and now she's at her best in merchandising, which women eat up), but they're resisting every pitch that's designed to bring her back to girls.

Meanwhile, DC's desperate attempts to revamp Wonder Woman have led us again to a point where the very opposite of her concept is emphasized in all of the solicits (and interviews with the crossover writers) even as better writers desperately try to keep true to the character and still emphasize balance. And these attempts to revamp her always seem to come back to the same ideas, which are custom-designed for the shrinking superhero audience that would already be reading Wonder Woman if they wanted to. All of this as the audience she's intended for is unaware that an icon of this genre was in fact custom-designed with them in mind.

Really, the whole thing is indicative of some very thick heads and soft spines.

However, if we were to give them impression that a number of us would buy the thing if we saw it on the shelf, they may be more inclined to open their eyes and take a risk. I think Caldwell's pitch is the best shot at this. It's using Wonder Woman, who has serious brand recognition but much less out there than Superman or Batman, and who won't be mistaken for a spin-off or tie-in to another property. It's specifically designed to appeal to the fantasy readers and the romance readers as well as the adventure readers. There's some imagery that I'm sure is meant to appeal to the coveted audience of Twilight but unlike Twilight, it features characters and relationships originally designed by a psychologist to turn traditional gender roles upside down and portray girls as heroic and active.

And it has one major thing going for it that some of the other rejected properties don't have. It's from a creator that has already been allowed to write the character being pitched. Caldwell got Wonder Woman for Wednesday Comics, someone at DC was already willing to trust him with her. He's got a foot in the door, there, so logically he's got a better chance of them letting him back in, especially based on a fan campaign. And if this idea works, and sells, it opens the door for other properties like Lois Lane and Barbara Gordon to be optioned for a wider audience.

Hell, even if there was something else blocking Caldwell's pitch in particular, we might get into their heads that we want a modern Wonder Woman aimed at young adults and get someone else's pitch through.

If it doesn't work, and they use it's failure to turn down other ideas... We're in the same boat we're in if we never tried, except without a streamlined Young Adult Wonder Woman story we can give to our younger female friends and relatives to introduce them to a female superhero.

I'm up for this, and it looks like a large number of people are. Thing is, I'm pretty busy in my regular life, so I'll need a lot of help. Drop me your email in my askbox or my formspring if you're up for it. We'll get a mailing list. We'd have to put together a website, set a date, write up our reasons and find ways to expand beyond people who read my little blogs.

Your reblogs, retweets and links are appreciated here.

(Cross-posted)

More on pre-Crisis Diana and Steve

2011-04-10T17:24:00.009+02:00

I swear I just read a back and forth about how Diana and Steve weren't ever a loving relationship because he was "such a blithering idiot" in the Golden Age (and it's taken as a given that he's not worth reading in the Silver Age), and someone stated that the most loving they seemed in the Silver Age was in the opening two issues of Denny O'Neil's run.

I'm not going to single anyone out for last year's conversation (besides I've seen similar attitudes in letters pages and on boards and journals across the internet) but I have to say I'm boggled about that particular assertation, because... Well, it can't be the same Denny O'Neil run I'm thinking of. In the first couple issues of O'Neil's run, someone gets drunk and calls Diana a freak, she doesn't say anything (just looks uncomfortable), and Steve punches the guy. They go leave the party to park and make out. So, Diana's not herself. Then Steve gets mad at her for testifying about it at the trial when the dude gets killed. So, kinda rocky there. I suppose you might think it's sweet that he lost his temper and engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer to defend her honor rather than use the appropriate amount of force for the situation. I guess it is, I'd rather have seen Diana at least push the guy away and get an offended look.

The end sequence of the story has him holding Wonder Woman in her arms and wondering aloud if he should start dating Diana Prince since she cleared his name of a murder charge in that identity. Now, we all know Steve goes on about Wonder Woman when talking to Diana Prince, but he is actively dating Wonder Woman and only seems to be hanging out with Diana Prince because she's his friend. This has him saying to his girlfriend that his affection for her is in danger if any other woman saves his life. That's at odds with all any strife stories in the Silver Age, where Steve would either be under mind control or have had a fight and a breakup with Wonder Woman before looking elsewhere. I will grant O'Neil that he only ever gets attracted to women who look exactly like Wonder Woman. He got that, and the not interested unless she can save his life thing right. Still, not really the best moment for this relationship.

Any time they're together afterward, he's near death and she's crying over his injured form.

And honestly, that's why I hate the O'Neil run. Diana doesn't assert herself, cries even more than under Kanigher, gives up her powers so can be with Steve and then completely fails to protect him from Dr. Cyber... TWICE. And after he dies, the first man she's attracted to is evil. That opening storyline is just freaking annoying.

I mean, we bash the Silver Age but even though Kanigher made her emotional at times she was always really active and assertive. And while Kanigher's Diana was a complete stranger to logic, and his Steve was a stranger to forethought, I wouldn't call it an unpleasant relationship. They were really devoted to each other.

Kanigher wrote some extremely sweet stuff even though he also had stories where one or both of them were complete jerks. And it is generally BOTH of them being idiots. For every time Steve breaks up with Diana for a really stupid reason there's a story where Diana's angry at him for a really stupid reason and purposefully messes with his head. Not only that, everyone except Hippolyta comes off as an idiot in Mer-man stories. But for every one of those, there's cute little stories where he has to identify her by her kiss, he brings her gifts, takes her on dates to get her mind off the crime-fighting stress, builds her up when she's feeling down, doesn't dump her after tossing him across the room because of a hallucination, ignores the extremely weird goings on during a date to continue spending time with her, and doesn't give her a hard time for choosing the greater good over his life. Story wrap-ups are often Steve setting up Diana so she can give the moral, or Diana giving the moral and Steve following up with a flirtation or compliment. He's a jerk at times, but he's also the most supportive person in her life and dedicates a good percentage of his time to making sure she's comfortable and happy.

Even with Diana Prince, he's a thoughtless jerk who drones on about how awesome his girlfriend is but he's also fond of her, friendly to her, and protective of her. He's always trying to get Diana Prince to have fun and take a break from work, trying to find a way to introduce her to Wonder Woman and when she's not present for an adventure he feels bad about her being left out.

In the Golden Age, he's more outwardly macho (which I find greatly amusing) but still her absolute biggest public support. He defends her, talks her up, makes sure she gets proper credit for her heroism, attends any public appearances to offer his support, comforts her when she's upset, brings the cavalry, gets along with her friends, respects her culture and sticks around during danger on the off chance he might be able to help her in the smallest way. He can get bombastic, but that actually makes it more impressive when you see him defer to her wisdom and skill, or just when you see those panels where he's standing quietly in the background while she's in the spotlight.

Yeah, these characters weren't perfectly refined. It's Golden and Silver Age comics, Batman, Superman and their supporting casts had some odd behavior too. Still, this was not a bad boyfriend at all. A lot preferable to most of the leading men who were in the hero role, actually. Probably because he's designed to be the supportive, laid back partner to someone dominant and driven. Before I actually sat down read this stuff, I always heard the two things: He's a jerk, and he's a wuss. Reading the archives and the Showcases, I don't see a significant basis for either conclusion.

I swear, people must be reading the comics from the red universe.

This again?

2011-04-08T23:52:00.006+02:00

Today's Flashpoint Friday at the the Source, and they've been releasing solicits all day. Naturally, we've been watching them in anticipation.

Remember how I said I was leery of this crossover from the Wonder Woman solicit? Well... about the time they solicited the second Aquaman issue with him holding a dead woman, I started to worry again. A quick glance at the covers up until then revealed a wide-eyed love interest, a villainess, and a banner referencing "Angry Amazons Unleashed!" along with the dead woman. And then more confirmation the Amazons were the Big Bad. I started, of course, to get irked.

Then they released the Lois Lane solicit.

FLASH QUESTION: Lois Lane meets the mysterious leader of the Resistance – but will she survive?

FLASHPOINT: LOIS LANE AND THE RESISTANCE #2
Written by DAN ABNETT and ANDY LANNING
Art by EDDIE NUNEZ
Cover by EDDIE NUNEZ and SANDRA HOPE
On sale JULY 27 • 2 of 3, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

So, we have a woman of action balanced out by an injured woman on her knees. There is also a shadowed man, meant to represent the leader of the resistence. This is where I really started to worry, because this guy is a surprise reveal. And yes, he could be anyone, but we've had a male character teased recently that has ties to the Wonder Woman franchise and a very specific connection to Themiscyra.

Granted, I have been complaining that DC should bring Steve Trevor back. Thing is, my brain's been going. On Twitter we discussed the horrible option this crossover would end with Wonder Woman marrying Aquaman, or at least confirming an arranged marriage to Aquaman could be happy and successful. That led to the worst possible things they could do with Wonder Woman.

In the meantime, we're seeing solicits that imply horribly evil Amazons, and the solicit for the first Wonder Woman issue says she wants to take over the world. As this is very un-Diana-like behavior, I'm thinking a shapeshifting/illusionist imposter or some form of mind control is behind it. And that leads me to DC's remarkable ability to do things that I've been wanting them to but nonetheless piss me off in the execution.

I've already outlined how making Steve Trevor a jackass would piss me off, but I hadn't realized there's another option. If he were to show up for the first time specifically to save her, I think I'd be quite pissed actually. Now, I'm not AGAINST Steve in the spotlight or pulling his weight and saving her at times. Marston had him save her butt every few issues it seems, and even Kanigher gave him some pivotal moments (though they were love interest coded), and one of my favorite things is a fight between him and Eros in 322. But it's one thing when he's been around and she saved him in the origin and regularly does the heavy fighting while he helps out and saves her once in a while. It's another thing entirely when the character in this form has been off the board for a full 25 years, and we haven't even seen the origin where she rescues him from the plane crash. It would be establishing this character in the opposite way for modern readers, from the start. And I can see them doing it because the most common complaints from fanboys who hate Steve, along with their suggested alternatives of Batman and Superman, seem to go back to the idea he's not man enough for Wonder Woman. As he has a masculine job, a masculine personality, was a war hero before he met her, and can hold his own in a fist fight it's not a stretch to gather they get this idea from how he relates to Diana. He accepts her help, he doesn't try to boss her around, and he gets his ass saved a lot by her. Introducing him sa her savior would change that dynamic for modern readers.

Of course, I hate this little idea I've conjured up, because I think it's fundamental that she save him first not only in his experience but in ours as readers. There are too few male characters who have this role in a romantic relationship, and the point of Steve Trevor was to PUT a male character in that role and still have him be masculine and attractive.

On the bright side, I could be jumping to conclusions and that could be Sgt Steel, Nemesis or Max Lord.

My fingers are crossed for Max Lord. Why? Because look what the second Wonder Woman issue's solicit is:

FLASH QUESTION: How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?

FLASHPOINT: WONDER WOMAN AND THE FURIES #2
Written by DAN ABNETT and ANDY LANNING
Art by SCOTT CLARK and DAVID BEATY
Cover by ED BENES
On sale JULY 20 • 2 of 3, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

That's right. "How many must die to avenge Queen Hippolyta’s death and satiate Diana’s fury?"

The implication, of course, is that Hippolyta is dead for Dian a's run amok. Because we know from past experience that the death of her mother unhinges her and makes her lash out against... wait a minute. She didn't do this after her mother died in Our Worlds at War. And she isn't doing this in the Odyssey storyline where her mother's dead again. So where the fuck did this idea come from?

Not only that, what is with this Vicious Bloodthirsty Amazon obsession? Don't they know we don't like that? That it runs contrary to the Wonder Woman concept? That it completely shits on eveyrthing established as far back as Marston? That it just pisses off Wonder Woman fans? That even if this is an imposter Diana, we're still saying that the Amazons are bloodthirsty and horrible and she's the only GOOD one? That this is just reactionary panic that if women were allowed to take a leadership position they'd automatically run roughshod over men? Do they really want to tell us that all-female organizations like the Amazons and the Star Sapphires are inherently unbalanced and liable to explode violently while male-dominated organizations are perfectly fine? And is Wonder Woman really the appropriate vehicle for that message?

Abenett and Lanning are good. They are good good writers. I have no doubt there's some sort of twist coming, but I have a lot of doubt it'll be worth it. And if Odyssey was leading into this, it certainly wasn't worth it. There's a strain of fandom that loves this idea, and several of them are comics writers. They don't like our compassionate, balanced, thinking Diana who knows when to use force and when to use mercy. They want the daughters of Ares. They want a violent, unrestrained woman who kicks men in the crotch even though she has superstrength and she can easily put them in a hold without causing any damage, and uses lethal force after saying "Don't call me Baby." They want bloodthirsty Amazons carrying spears, impaling male soldiers and ranting about the Patriarchy as they do so. I don't see the appeal at all, but it's THERE and people demand it. Everyone knows someone who only liked Wonder Woman when they read Kingdom Come and really wish she'd be edgier and they'd "play up the warrior aspect."

And whatever the twist is... Circe, Dr. Psycho, Diana's really Lyta or Donna, Dark Angel, possession by Eris or Belladonna (I forget her Greek name) or one of the furies, Max Lord, White Martians, soemthing to emphasize the wrongness of this timeline (which would still imply this is in Diana's heart somewhere), whatever... this desire is being fed. We'll have a crop of fanboys going "I preferred that, I want to write Wonder Woman that way again" after all this is over. We'll have reinforced the hard-edged manhating Amazon stereotype in people's mind, especially if the twist only applies to the female-led books and the Amazons are running amok everywhere else. And really, it's just not worth it. It's not worth going back to this idea that hacks away at the foundation of what makes Diana Diana.

And that's probably why so many people don't "get" her, or have trouble writing her. If you don't faithfully read her series, and all you see is her appearing as the humorless Amazon warrior who is the one person from her culture who doesn't kill everyuone, or is the person who goes bad in every alternate timeline, you have no fucking clue who Wonder Woman is or why she endures as a hero. That's why people don't realize she has a distinctive and enduring personality, because they never showcase it and when she DOES get a big part it's because they are completely tearing down the foundations of her franchise, and the basis of her personality. They're sabotaging themselves.

And at the end, there's three ways this can go. Fans who already read her book are pissed off, and would drop it if she were changed. Fans who like her in the crossover don't see what they want in her book. And fans who would like her but see her in the crossover and get the wrong idea never pick up her book. And then they can't figure out why featuring Wonder Woman in a crossover didn't help her sales.

As I've said before with Amazons Attack. This will not ruin Wonder Woman. She has too much appeal in the mainstream community. She's an American Icon, and the franchise is strong enough to take Robert Kanigher, Denny O'Neil, John Byrne, Jodi Piccoult, Will Pfiefer, and J Michael Straczynski. She can weather the end of World War II, the death of the main love interest, the white suit era, losing the most iconic features, dating Superman and dating Batman. She can live through three different variations on the bracelets-based weakness. She can survive Millenium, War of the Gods, Our Worlds at War, Infinite Crisis, Amazons Attack, Blackest Night and certainly Flashpoint. She's survived constant supporting cast changes, 2 hard reboots and countless soft reboots. She's gotten through every fucking writer feeling the need to cast off the previous writer and rebuild her franchise from the ground up. This is far from the end.

But it is a stupid, stupid idea nonetheless.

Little stuff.

2011-04-06T23:35:00.007+02:00

I was going to write about what a terrible leader General Darnell is, but I got distracted by Tumblr. Today's topic is Wonder Woman's costume, again. I wrote a bit on her look and her personality, and almost got into it about Pre-Crisis vs Post-Crisis characterization but that's a very complex subject and I want to get my head straight first before laying out what I think about that.

So, what do you get rather than a link to my Tumblr, a post on General Darnell and an essay on characterization? This realization:

Which is all Kyle's fault.

Yeah, those pictures are from Wonder Woman #1, Wonder Woman #17, and Wonder Woman (Series 2) #94 respectively.

And since I feel bad about not telling you why General Darnell's behavior is a threat to good order and discipline, straight out of Wonder Woman #279, here's 1/3 of the reason he sucks as a commander.

At the time of this scene, Captain Diana Prince works directly for Colonel Steve Trevor, who works directly for General Philip Darnell. Yes, that's in the direct chain of command and separated by three paygrades.

The Reason We Have Conventions

2011-04-05T23:17:00.002+02:00

Found on tumblr, the Earth-11 Justice League.

These guys have been all over the place since Sunday. Here's a closer look at Power Man:

Diana's anxieties and Steve's social shortcomings.

2011-04-03T23:14:00.016+02:00

Wonder Woman #300 by Roy and Dann Thomas might be one of my favorite single-issue comics. It's fairly self-contained, and gives us 7 stories in one issue that all tie into the same plot. The framing story is pretty complex. Basically, she decides to marry Steve and kill off her secret identity. She's fighting a shadowmonster throughout the whole thing, and the Sandman is annoying her to dump Steve and run off to dreamland. She has four dream sequences (in addition to an Earth-2 diversion and the Sandman's origin story) that lay bare her anxieties. Dorian took five posts to recap it humorously, but I wanna look into it a bit more seriously because the Thomases address a lot about pre-Crisis Wonder Woman and her love interest in this. Still, go ahead and laugh at it and get the plot. I'll wait.

One of my favorite aspects of this is that the entire story is through Diana's eyes. This is not only refreshing as the Perez reboot set the trend of we see Diana's life through everyone else's eyes, but it's a plot point that Steve gets maybe one or two balloons in the whole special.

Early on, the argument the two have over lunch is entirely from her point of view. There's any number of reasons he might be cranky at the time but she suspects his ego is threatened. He might not have sleep the other night himself, he might be stressed over the arms conference, he might be lonely because Wonder Woman hasn't called, General Darnell might have been needling him over something before Diana and Etta got to the office, he might even be thinking about the General's constant sexual harassment and have the same doubts Diana herself has about his motives for pushing an extremely unorthodox double-promotion (The Thomases have never heard of Time-in-Grade requirements). Or she might be right, he's just weirded out by having a subordinate suddenly become an equal and it may or may not have something to do with sexism. Either way, we just know he's irritated with the General, concerned about the unorthodox double-promotion, has some general malaise about military life, and still has his absent-minded propensity for putting his foot in his mouth around Diana Prince. We never really find out what causes this, only that he's sorry about it later on.

We do, however, get some confirmation of one of my theories:

This is just slightly more tactful than "Wait, you're a woman?" and part of that tradition of odd behavior from Steve that Diana always finds insulting and a lot of fans take as just being mean to her. Personally, having worked with military men and seen how they speak to each other and women who are part of the office, I've always thought he just considered her his work-buddy and didn't realize she took any of this stuff seriously. In the Golden Age, he teases her at times but he's genuinely protective of her (he decks a guy who harasses her at lunch) and pretty friendly towards her. In the Silver Age he turns down her requests for a date as bluntly as possible (and by constantly pointing out that he is already dating someone he finds incredible), teases her about her appearance (and Diana rarely gives him an indication she's insulted by this, but instead rants at her mirror later on), but is still really protective of her and friendly enough to try and drag her to see Wonder Woman whenever she appears, and invite her out when he can't find his girlfriend. Bronze Age Steve is much better behaved than both of them, generally quieter and more thoughtful, but he still blurts out stupid things and gets surprised when she's mad at him. From what I can gather over sampling this 40 year period, he's basically coded her as a man for most social interactions. This is so ingrained in his behavior towards her that I imagine even telling her to seek safety during dangerous situations isn't a sign of chivalry, and he'd be like that with any lower ranking person that accompanies him.

That said, it's remarkably tactless, even for Steve Trevor. Poor Steve tries to be courteous but just gets his foot in that mouth without thinking. At least, that's what I gather from his surprise at her leaving and how readily he took the blame later on for his stupid big mouth. Somehow this guy always knows the right thing to say to Wonder Woman, and the wrong thing to say to Diana Prince.

Diana, for her part, has gotten better. She's less upset that he's not attracted to Diana Prince and more upset that after two years of dating Steve still doesn't suspect that these two women might be the same person. Oh yeah, this Steve is one of three Bronze Age incarnations. You have the Earth-2 version (seen in the trip to Earth-2 in this issue), the original Earth-1 version (so nice the writers killed him twice!), and this version from an unknown Earth who crashlanded on Paradise Island after she was an established superhero who was made to forget the original Earth-1 version. So she's only been dating him two years and thinks she's only known him for two years, but it feels like he's been oblivious for 39 years.

Still, she has an overall good image of the man as evidenced by the dream sequences. Each sequence presents a scenario where something different happened in her origin and her life sucked as a result. In each scenario, Steve is not the problem.

In the first story, her mother and her duty keeps them apart. Hippolyta kills herself to force Diana to take the throne. (The really horrible thing? When Diana tells her this dream Hippolyta confesses she'd thought about it.) He goes home with Mala, her runner up. We learn here that Diana will choose her people over her boyfriend, something we've seen a couple times in Silver Age stories.

In the second, the first man to find the island is evil. He's a sleazy conniving thief, but Diana's young and doesn't see this right away. Hippolyta does. Diana runs away with him to Miami and is horrified when he kills the cops who come to bring him in, so she captures him for them and forces him to confess he committed the crimes. He also gleefully tells her he never loved her. Instead of being a nightmare about Steve being bad, though, this is about a different man. His method of romance, his hair color, his eye color, that he has facial hair, he's the exact opposite of Steve down to being named Trevor Stevens. We learn that Diana's worried she'd have just run off with the first dude she ever saw, but once again Steve is not the problem.

In the third, Superman lands on the island. She marries him right away, becoming more Wonder Wife than Wonder Woman. They're too alike, and spend their days apart on the superhero job and the rest of the time arguing. They get divorced and, unlike the times she broke up with Steve or he died, she gives up on Man's World and returns home. We learn A LOT here. She sees Superman as basically a male version of herself and doesn't think they'd mesh because she needs a complementary personality. She thinks she'd have abandoned her mission if she got married too early, and that if she married Superman she'd be defined as his wife rather than as her own person. We also learn that she thinks Lois would be more pissed off than heartbroken, and I think she's right there. Still, Steve is not the problem.

The fourth and final dream is intense and horrible. She dreams herself as "a super-villainess, a murderess, so incapable of love and compassion that the world would despise me." She reject Steve's love along with any thought that men might be complex or sympathetic human beings. She comes to man's world intending to conquer people she considers sub-human, and her lack of caution and empathy cause Steve's death. This one amazes me, because along with the second story it (and her dialogue about how easy it would be for her to have been that woman) establishes that she could see herself going evil more easily than Steve ever would.

In-between she blames the Sandman for these, but I'm not sure I understand that. It is incredibly clear in each one that there's nothing wrong with Steve in her eyes. Each and every dream reinforces that Steve Trevor is her ideal mate, and that she would be miserable without him. As the Sandman's stated goal is that she dump Steve for him, this would be a really shitty tactic in addition to being incredibly creepy.

Really, it's just her increasing guilt over having lied to him so early on because even pre-Crisis, Diana is not cut out for a secret identity. And her biggest nightmare is before the big reveal of how badly she screwed with Steve.

Once again, one of my favorite things about this issue is that Diana's head is an open book while we don't really know what's going on inside Steve's head. It's an easy joke that we rarely see Steve's thought balloons, but there's a reason for that. In this romance, the man is the inscrutable, illogical, mysterious party. The woman is the one who acts for easy to understand reasons and has an obvious and serious train of thought. Even when writers like Kanigher and O'Neil make her hyper-emotional and even her creator Marston attributes stereotyped female behavior to her, we still know how her head works and the item she's concerned about is always the most important thing in the story.

(Honestly, I'm a bit relieved that Steve Trevor hasn't been the love interest for the Perez and Byrne runs, because those writers told everything through supporting cast members and it would have been too damned easy to make him the viewpoint character for them. Rucka seems to have permanently turned that around, though. All of Vol 3 is back to Diana's POV.)

In the run-up to the wedding Diana's overtired and has a lot going on between arranging a rushed but still lavish ceremony and faking her secret identity's death.

Even so, I'd say she have should given thought to just how horrible getting rid of her secret identity via tragic death could be. She's actually surprised by how upset people are at the funeral. Not only that, she completely misses when Steve hints that he's so freaked out he wants to postpone the wedding, and assumes the offer is for her feelings. Perfectly understandable, it's not like she makes a habit of completely misreading him after all. Steve, normally pretty inscrutable to Diana, is extra inscrutable because she's too preoccupied to pay attention to his behavior.

Still, there is one last point where we all should have known he was in trouble, but Diana was again too plagued by her dreams to notice. Take a look at the wedding party.

Did you catch it?

Except for Hippolyta, Etta (dressed as the Maid of Honor), and General Darnell, every guest is a superhero. These are all Diana's friends. Steve's best man is his jackass boss.

Not only that, when he does blurt out his infamous "No" (after trying to get a chance to warn the bride he's having problems), everyone looks surprised and angry. Not a sympathetic face on that dais. He not only doesn't have any friends closer than his boss, he's not close enough to his boss to tell him he's not sure he can go through with the wedding so soon after Diana Prince died.

His only friend on the platform is the bride he just turned down.

And when you think about it, that's in continuity. We rarely see a story where an old friend of Steve's shows up. He has lunch with Diana Prince usually. When his girlfriend is not around, he chooses to socialize with Diana Prince. Of course, this particular Steve is from another universe and doesn't remember any of his old friends, but he's had two years to make new ones. He mainly hangs out with Diana and Etta. Silver Age Steve hung out with Diana in either of her identities. Whenever he had tickets to something and couldn't find his girlfriend, he asked Diana Prince to go with him and specifically stated it was because he couldn't get hold of his girlfriend. Golden Age Steve had lunch with Diana Prince and socialized with her, his boss or the Holliday Girls, who were Wonder Woman's friends.

Aside from Diana and Etta (he just doesn't seem very friendly with the General to me), this man has no friends. I don't think it's so much a social fault of his, although maybe it is alienating among men to suggest that women are people not to mention being from another universe and dividing his time between work, dating and being kidnapped. Bronze Age Steve is pretty introverted and the sort of person who cultivates a few close friendships. He's not sitting at home obsessing over his girlfriend, he's just a man of few friends. Unfortunately, one of those precious few friends happens to be his girlfriend in disguise.

A lot of people seem to read his confession as a evidence that he's also in love with her secret identity but over the next 29 issues he never displays any real romantic feeling for Diana Prince. He's just happy she's not dead. They once hold hands when she's at his bedside and he tells her he's glad for her company, but he never explores any potential romance with her. Hell, over 39 years of comics he only briefly considers dating Diana Prince after she's saved him from prison in the O'Neil run. Every other time he goes out with her it's like he's going out with a poker buddy, and he wants to talk girls (well, one girl) with her. He's completely telling the truth here when he says the woman he loves is Wonder Woman. But Diana Prince is his closest platonic friend, and he does care deeply for her and he can't go through with his wedding so soon after her death.

It turns out that Diana made herself into his best friend. Now she feels like crap because she didn't realize it.

Diana's solution, of course, is to tell him she's not angry, resurrect Diana Prince and set herself to coming clean as soon as humanly possible. This being comics she takes 12 issues to work up her nerve, then he tells her he doesn't want to know.

I'd call him a jerk for that and Diana stupid for not telling him off, but I'm too amused that he worries she might be the janitor where he works.

Ahem

2011-04-02T22:02:00.004+02:00

Okay, so yesterday's post was not entirely honest. I framed it with stuff that I actually think about retcons, but the Thomases didn't really rewrite Diana's origin to make her into a strawfeminist.

It was one of four dream sequences in Wonder Woman #300, where she makes two major life decisions: 1) She asks Steve to marry her, and 2) She fakes Diana Prince's death. Because of the Diana Prince lie and the impending wedding, plus the Sandman (Not Morpheus, Daniel, Wesley or Sandy, but that one dude in the stupid red cape that nobody likes) hanging around, she has some anxiety dreams.

There's one dream where the night before she left for Man's World her mother killed herself, and she was forced to take the crown while the runner-up went home with Steve.

In another dream, Steve Trevor doesn't crash near the island at all. Instead, Trevor Stevens does, an obnoxious black-haired man with a moustache. This guy isn't a military man, but instead someone who's stolen military tech and intends to steal from the Amazons too. It ends with him telling her he'd never loved her.

The third dream? Superman falls to the island after being hit with a kryptonite meteor. Her mother likes him so rather than mess around with secret identities, she marries Clark right away. They find that they are both too busy to spend time together, and they butt heads too often. They get a divorce and she goes home.

And the fourth and most interesting dream was the one I detailed yesterday. She rejects Steve, comes to Man's World intending to take over by force and ends up accidentally killing him. The only bit I changed was the thing about her becoming a hero at the end, she didn't. She just woke up, more horrified at this one than any of the others.

I'd like to go in-depth with this one, because I love it so much. But because it tells us so much about Diana and so much about Steve (the framing story is basically about how badly she's been screwing with him with this Diana Prince identity), it's taking me a while to dissect it. So yeah, this'll be a long one.

Reboots and Retcons

2011-04-01T00:02:00.000+02:00

I suppose the fact that they couldn't find any letters praising the new JMS reboot for the Wonder Woman lettercol this week proves that this direction just isn't working. Really, though, I'm not that horrified. She'll be back to herself when it's over, and we'll have some nice Hester-written moments to show for it. My reaction to Wonder Woman reboots has changed from outrage to fatigue, because really this is a character that has been rebooted and reinvented so many times that this resiliency has become part of her franchise. Kanigher retooled the origin to get rid of the golem part and add some boyfriends in her teen years (for some reason, though, every commentator seems to focus on Hippolyta's makeover and losing the Holliday Girls--who did show up after a few dozen issues) and did some Golden Age revival attempts, but it really started with O'Neil. Ever since he took out both the Paradise Island and Man's World supporting casts, her powers, and her costume in one fell swoop we've seen writer after writer change the place.

I mean, we all know the Post-Crisis history of cast devastation and sporadic revival. JMS reboots the whole damned thing after Simone had to rebuild the supporting cast because Pfieffer tore up the Amazons in a crossover after Heinberg brought back the secret identity/secret agent and Rucka left the place in ruins on Infinite Crisis orders. This was of course after Jimenez took out her mother and brought back some Golden Age villains after a series of quite forgettable writers failed to do anything interesting with the elements Byrne brought back once he'd erased the entire Boston supporting cast, which had been put in post-Crisis to replace the classic military supporting cast that he shoved to the side along with the personalities of the gods and any Amazon technological advancements. No matter how good the writer, they are either responsible for or immediately followed by mass destruction of any recognizable elements.

But much as I get on about Perez (and damn it, I will still complain about Perez), this was nothing new. A sampling of Bronze Age comics easily reveals a similar addiction to soft reboots. After O'Neil, they drop the white suit and bring back the powers, go on for a bit, bring back Steve, play around on Earth-2 for several issues at a time, kill Steve, then bring back Steve and wipe Diana's memory. They move her from Washington to New York to Washington again. The UN to the Pentagon. I think this constant change is why I see Diana as an active explorer and a traveler. She doesn't put down for very long. (Simone's run was pretty good in that she incorporated travel into the plotlines, focusing on Diana rather than try to convince us to accept a brand new supporting cast as permanent fixtures.)

Thing is, hard reboots--retelling the origin completely from scratch--are few and far between. We've had Perez and JMS (which is only fleeting anyway). Anything else (Heinberg) has been a flashback retcon in the middle of the moving story. Diana's still the same Diana, just with a slightly altered past. Pre-Crisis we had Marston and Kanigher and.. well, a particularly odd one from Roy and Danette Thomas. See, back in 1983 they decided they might try a harder-edged Wonder Woman for a while. Even that far back it seems they wanted to drop the boyfriend and the motivated initially by romance thing to reflect modern sensibilities, and this seems to be the first try for this.

Umm.. yeah. I didn't photoshop that, that's really what she says when she wins. And it gets more annoying to me. See, as they fly home Diana makes her intentions very clear to Steve.

That's right, no dating, because he's a man and he sucks. At this point, and I believe it's intentional, we're meant to think she sounds pretty terrible and might be a bad guy. But JUST in case, old Roy wants to drive the point home by giving us her thoughts on killing in battle.

To be fair, she doesn't kill the guy. But clearly we're dealing with a brand new Diana here. Even more of an overhaul, I'd say, than O'Neil gave. (On the plus side, she did not give up her powers for a man!) However, as this is an origin story she's going to have to learn a valuable lesson. From, of course, a man...

Now, all of us and Steve know at this point that he has no chance in hell of actually hitting her with a bullet. He even tells his men that she can deflect them, but of course they shoot anyway and things go from bad to worse.

Turns out poor Diana really did feel something for the guy. She's horrified and upset, and flees the scene not out of fear but grief. A regretful scene later, she decides to turn over a new leaf but the damage has been done. She's been branded as criminal menace and must now seek redemption while on the run!

If this had become the regular origin, I imagine I'd be infuriated. But as it goes, this was a gutsy attempt. He has her come to the world all full of war and judgment, which causes tragedy and teaches her a lesson. And we have a Wonder Woman: Fugitive! set-up at the end. Could've worked, if they'd given it a chance. But really, it didn't last very long and before you knew it we were back to the regular setup and Mishkin took over. And I'm glad, because while heroes that start off bad and learn an important lesson are compelling, one of the things that makes Diana unique is that her origin is relatively untragic and her motives are optimistic and altruistic.

She lives an idyllic life which is disrupted by the appearance of a man--a creature she's only heard stories about. She rescues him, nurses him back to health, and wins the opportunity to accompany him back to his legendary world and fight the terrible evil that threatens it. She becomes a great hero to the universe and maps the modern world for her people. She's an explorer, a traveler, a wandering hero who takes the first opportunity to leave home and seek her destiny. She's not a reformed villainess, a woman haunted by her failures or traumatized by her losses and mistakes. She's a peacemaker and a warrior, and yes I do agree that she would kill if it was absolutely necessary but she has the wisdom to know when it's necessary and she doesn't carry the guilt of reckless destruction with her. She is isolated, caught between two cultures, and carries the heavy burden of the mythic hero who must always put aside her personal wants to serve the greater good, but she's a genuinely good person who came from a genuinely good place. She's not a dark character, and making her one simply doesn't ring true, even if you start from scratch with a reboot.

All scans from Wonder Woman #300, written by Roy and Dann Thomas, art by Keith Pollard. I advise anyone who gets a chance to pick it up and read the whole thing, because it has some very interesting ideas in it.

Arisia. In a movie!

2011-03-30T22:25:00.004+02:00

Is it just me, or does Arisia sounds very much like the main character here?

The full-length animated Green Lantern: Emerald Knights will be distributed by Warner Home Video as a Blu-Ray™ Combo Pack and DVD. The film will also be available On Demand and for Green Lantern: Emerald Knights weaves six legendary stories of the Green Lantern Corps’ rich mythology around preparations for an attack by an ancient enemy. As the battle approaches, Hal Jordan mentors new recruit Arisia in the history of the Green Lantern Corps, telling tales of Avra (the first Green Lantern) and several of Hal’s comrades – including Abin Sur, Kilowog, Laira and Mogo. In the end, Arisia must rise to the occasion to help Hal, Sinestro and the entire Green Lantern Corps save the universe from the destructive forces of Krona.

I might just love this.

Two ways to brighten my day

2011-03-30T20:30:00.006+02:00

Two good pieces of news via the increasingly indispensable DCWKA today. First, of interest to the widest audience, set photos and spectator camera footage of the in-production Wonder Woman TV show. My favorite is this one:

Oh, they've also made some minor adjustments to the costume.

I would've been okay with the light blue but I do like this better and I do like the red boots best. Kinda wish they'd do something about that oddly textured girdle, but I'll never get a perfect Wonder Woman unless I write and direct it. It looks like it works, and maybe when the dust settles the comic Wonder Woman (that we only know for sure will still be in pants after Odyssey) will have blue pants and red boots too.

And there's longer video of her chasing that dude at the end of this post, and DCWKA's got a poll.

Second, and really only notable to me and the other two Steve Trevor fans on the internet (I love you guys!), they printed my letter in Wonder Woman this week. (I am such nerd that it makes me super-excited to be in a lettercol for the first time.) As I am still waiting on the mail every week, DCWKA was kind enough to scan the lettercol for me.

You can click to enlarge but I'll make it easier for you.

I'm bit worried by the "surprised" (I may be an optimist among Wonder Woman fans, but I'm still a Wonder Woman fan so any surprises worry me) but otherwise very happy about it.

And isn't it amusing that none of these letters seem to like the JMS storyline?

Resurrecting Steve

2011-03-29T23:56:00.003+02:00

Back in Wonder Woman #180 (1968) Denny O'Neil offed Steve Trevor in a way that made both him and Diana seem pathetic and ineffective. Steve got shot and beaten by Dr. Cyber's henchmen, escaped (I got the implication he was let go on purpose but I missed any confirmation) and found Diana. She sent him to the hospital, which he was kidnapped from, and then tortured to death by Dr. Cyber's henchmen. Meaning she not only failed to save him once from this bad guy, but twice. And somehow the white suit period is the best remembered of the Silver and Bronze Age runs. Chalk one up for the first major reboot in Wonder Woman history. (But more on Mr. O'Neil's mistakes later.)

When we get to Wonder Woman #223 (1976), Mark Pashtu brings him back in what's actually a pretty sweet way. Diana's memory had been wiped of his death because Hippolyta knew she'd be really upset by that. This gets revealed to Diana when Aphrodite returns him to life as part of some heroic fitness test. (As this is Wonder Woman, the superhero who most directly recalls the Great Heroes of Folklore and how they got arbitrarily tested all the time, this works for me.) Aphrodite reveals she has passed, and is about to take him away again when Diana convinces the goddess to leave him alive.

They try to settle in on Steve knowing about the Diana Prince identity, and recovering from the trauma of death and resurrection, and having to rebuild his identity from scratch. Ready-made drama, right? Well, it doesn't work for them so come Wonder Woman #248 (1978) Jack C. Harris offs him again. Also by having him tortured to death, after intense interrogation and a machine/magic combo that sucks out the lifeforce Aphrodite had granted him to give to some... thing. I only really remember that he had converted to her religion. Isn't that sweet?

By this point Steve Trevor has died in-continuity twice. (I'm starting to really think this and all the letters in the lettercol that call him things like "helpless ragdoll" are significant indicators of how people feel about a man who pairs up with a powerful woman than any real weakness with the character.) Diana's lovelife is beginning to look like Kyle Rayner's, but with just the one guy.

Then Gerry Conway comes along and wants him back and he manages it in Wonder Woman #270 (1980), which along with Wonder Woman #271 is now one of my favorite Wonder Woman story arcs. It's a giant middle finger to fans who think the franchise is better without Steve Trevor, topped off with confused Amazons and a horrified Hippolyta.

At the end of Wonder Woman #269 Diana's still depressed that her boyfriend died (again) so she goes home to sulk. She is so miserable that Hippolyta prays to Aphrodite to rid her daughter of these horrible memories. Aphrodite points out that it might not work. Still, she decides that maybe it's better to have loved and lost and forgotten about it than to have loved and lost and be so miserable about it you can't love again. So she summons the Mists of Nepenthe to wipe Diana's memory.

Diana, rid of the memory, is finally able to smile. And on the very next page...

While Diana does the hero thing for the Amazons we get a couple one-page interludes about a blonde Air Force Colonel testing an experimental jet that'll reach Mach 10. We also learn that Paradise Island is partway in another dimension, which is pretty cool. Oh, and that experimental jet crashes into the ocean right next to the boat that Diana and the Queen are standing on.

So just how does Aphrodite explain this one? "There is more than one of everything and the Fates ship Steve and Diana. Enjoy the rest of the Bronze Age."

2011-03-27T20:15:00.003+02:00

And tonight the part of Lois lane will be played by... Giselle from Enchanted?

Well, it could work. (H/T Mizzelle)

On Diana Prince

2011-03-26T23:23:00.006+01:00

I complain a lot about Perez not so much pruning as taking a chainsaw to major branches on the Wonder Woman franchise tree, but there are some things I have to give him credit for, even some removals.

Well, one removal. The Secret Identity.

I know there's a school of thought that blames ditching the secret identity for losing Wonder Woman's relatability and that they need this so she can connect to ordinary humans in her supporting cast but I don't buy into it. Rucka, Messner-Loebs, and Perez all managed to have her connect with normal people as herself just fine without the secret identity. Simone was right not to bother with it much.

I say this as someone who did enjoy Heinberg's run when I read through it, I don't see why the hell he brought it back. Especially as a spy. Okay, I can see it being nostalgia for the show and the twirl (I bet he wanted real Steve too) and all but really... it's unnecessary. She has no personal ties that she needs to protect by hiding her identity, all of her friends and family are publicly connected as Wonder Woman already. The only justification I've heard is that it makes her easier to connect to for readers, but I don't think it does. We don't need glasses and a complex web of lies, we need first-person narration from her point of view and a steady supporting cast.

See, it just doesn't suit her character post-Crisis. Pre-Crisis there were some points made that Amazons didn't lie (especially in the TV series) and a lot of her major villains were based entirely around deception. It was a good, sensible thing for Perez to remake her as the most honest person on the planet, and the most honest person on the planet does not hide who she is. Hell, both times I've seen her establish the identity (Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth and the Heinberg run) it's been because Superman or Batman advised it. Because it is that out of character for her.

For Clark and Bruce, Hal, Barry, most of the rest of the JLA... a secret identity makes sense. They have backgrounds, lives, families in their off-time. They were raised in this society, and later on made the conscious decision to become a superhero, they already had stuff to protect. And it makes sense for them to court their love interests in their secret identities, because those are their real identities. Clark was Clark before Superman, Bruce was Bruce before Batman...etc...

Diana is the opposite of this, though. Her superhero identity is her real self. Her background is her superhero origin. She's a mythic hero brought to the modern era. Her family is connected to her as Wonder Woman. In the Golden Age, half of her stateside supporting cast (The Holliday girls) were connected to her as Wonder Woman. She dated Steve as Wonder Woman, even as she tried to get him into Diana Prince. Diana Prince was really just a way to have a job that could get her information on where/when she's needed most, and when Steve is in over his head.

People like to make distinctions about the differences between Batman and Superman in how they regard their secret identities, but Diana Prince was truly a front in all aspects. Fake name, fake history, fake glasses, fake personality. Wonder Woman was the real person.

Originally, Diana Prince was just another woman she bought the identity off of so she could keep an eye on Steve. In the Silver Age it was blatantly created so that she could screw with Steve's head. (Seriously, Wonder Woman #99 backup story. Makes a bet with Steve that if he can find her 3 times in 3 days she'll agree to marry him. He tricks her by marking her with some radioactive dye, so on the third day she gets her revenge by taking a job as his secretary so she'll be right under his nose without him knowing.) Even Pre-Crisis, though, it was so ridiculous it had to be Aphrodite's decree that she not reveal her identity to anyone and that she not settled down and marry until she had completed her mission.

Honestly, we are better off without it now.

However... There is one aspect of the Secret Identity that is absolutely delicious pre-Crisis, and I'm not sure any writer other than Marston consciously realized it.

Everyone knows the Superman symbolism, how he's the ignored geek who is secretly hiding that he's the godlike hero the female lead truly wants. That's the pattern Diana Prince is set after, she's the meek mild doormat who is secretly the powerful and alluring woman he loves. Except... as Diana is a woman, there's a twist.

Growing up girls got (and probably still get in a lot of places) told that they had to carefully protect a guy's ego if they wanted to be attractive. That meant not outshining him in any way. According to conventional wisdom you had to downplay your intelligence, because guys didn't like smart girls. You couldn't be better than him at sports or games, even if you were. Because according to conventional wisdom, guys liked meek doormats and are turned off by successful women. (This is reinforced every time you see the trope where a guy's masculinity is threatened by the successful woman he's romantically involved with, by the way.)

Steve Trevor does not simply defy this conventional wisdom. He shoots it in the face and kicks it into the gutter before lighting it on fire.

Steve's original concept is war hero. (He's already got enough fame for his presumed death and later his recovery to be covered in the newspaper back in the Golden Age.) That's his job, to uncover espionage and save people's lives. It's instinctive for him to protect others. Most of the trouble he gets into is because he's trying to save someone who's in danger, or stop spies.

Wonder Woman protects him. And she not only protects him once or twice, she saves his butt nearly every time they meet. She defeats the bad guy he was after nearly every time. She even flies a cooler plane than he ever did. The second she arrives on the scene, he knows he's in a supporting role. She is responsible for saving the day and he is the first person to declare this when the dust settles. He is the first person to embrace it and set himself up as Iolus to her Hercules. And rather than find this unattractive or threatening, he finds it turns him on.

Steve Trevor's girlfriend is not only better than him at one thing like tennis or video games. She is better at his job in every conceivable way, and that is the hottest thing he can imagine.

And when the dust settles and Wonder Woman's disappeared, there's another girl around. A girl who is attracted to him, who constantly asks him out. A girl of normal strength and speed. A girl he never sees perform heroic feats. A girl who works for him and is pretty much a doormat for him. A girl who keeps her body covered and doesn't speak up much. A girl who pretty much fits the conventional wisdom of what men prefer in female behavior.

Even though this girl is absolutely identical to his girlfriend except for glasses and wearing more clothing (and even though General Darnell and other supporting cast members can tell she's nerd-hot), she is the least attractive woman imaginable to him. Really, she may as well be his little sister. He's nice enough to her at times, treats her like a work buddy, but when she comes on to him he makes it harshly clear he isn't interested and talks about his girlfriend.

Diana herself thought it meant that Steve was superficial, and only looking at appearances or only attracted to fame. That's why she got angry in the Kanigher run and played secret identity games. That, of course, ignores the fact that she is still freaking hot as Diana Prince. She even has the same hairstyle while Andru's drawing. She doesn't change appearance beyond putting on a pair of stylish frames and a flatteringly cut uniform. Steve is not attracted to hair and face so much as bending steel girders and saving his life. One of the few good moments O'Neil had was when she--as Diana Prince--saved him from being framed for murder. Steve thinks on this, and says to Wonder Woman that he may have been underestimating Diana and that maybe he should get to know her better. He's turned on by heroism, and prior to this Diana had always avoided that in her secret identity.

Wonder Woman's pre-Crisis secret identity served one purpose. It enforced the moral that if women hide their strengths and talents they are actually less attractive to men. That if you allow a man to treat you as a doormat, he will. But if you show yourself being excellent, and let yourself shine, he'll be the one pushing for a commitment.

It's a good moral for pre-Crisis Wonder Woman. And really, I wouldn't mind if when they get her steady love interest back they dust off the secret identity for one story, just to demonstrate that she has no chance in hell of attracting his attention if she hides her best qualities. But I don't think it's a necessary aspect to the character. She seems rootless because the writers keep dumping the supporting cast, not because she's not lying to them enough.

Steve Trevor WILL be on TV again.

2011-03-25T22:40:00.007+01:00

Okay, so they have finally cast Steve Trevor and IMDB was wrong. It's actually this guy:

Justin Bruening

A simple image search reveals no nude cowboy photo shoot, so I am rather disappointed.

Still, he's pretty cute at least. I haven't seen him on All My Children or Knight Rider, but I'm getting used to his appearance. He's a bit bulkier than I'd expected. I do have some worries, though.

One is that the first picture I saw of him, on DCWKA, was this:

My second reaction was that he resembles David Boreanez. As we all know, Boreanez voiced Hal Jordan in New Frontier and I have this horrible nightmare that the 21st Century Steve Trevor concept is "Wonder Woman dates a blonde Hal Jordan."

I know it seems irrational, but... the animated movie guy was basically Hal Jordan, and it's not unheard of for writers to consider careers part of the characterization. Steve's a pilot to get him onto the island, so it's not a stretch for them to just characterize him as a pilot and use Top Gun as their reference again.

Never mind that his character concept is actually "soldier", and he's an intel officer who only ever uses his piloting skills for the purposes of the plot. (It wouldn't be farfetched if he was grounded because of his injuries when he crashed on the island, and--unlike Hal--wasn't bothered by not getitng to fly again because being in love is a hundred times greater thrill for him than flying a jet--but that's just a dream characterization.) Never mind that he'd work much better as the Anti-Hal, because there's no way in the deeper coldest chasm of Tartarus that Wonder Woman would date someone like Hal Jordan. Never mind that, personality-wise, he should be someone that it makes sense she like.

But I digress, that's just me panicking. On the bright side, many of the commenters on DCWKA have stated that he can't act so it's possible he won't be able to get "asshole" across, or they're just going for the easy combo of big, sweet and dumb from the Golden Age.

And anyway in the TV show his job isn't military pilot. It's... civilian lawyer, which brings me to my second problem and my first thought which was "He's a baby!"

Now, the rumor is that Steve in this is an Army vet who crashed on the island, had an affair with Diana, and later became a lawyer working for the Department of Justice. The assumption is that he's basically the same as we've seen, just after he got out he becomes a lawyer.

This means that he had to go through pilot's training and college in order to be an officer. THEN he had to serve out his commitment to the military. THEN he had to do law school and become a lawyer.

That's... That's a lot of years between High School and the present there. A lot more than this Justin Breuning guy looks like he has.

I can see them pulling it... maybe... if they decide he was JAG (more on why a JAG officer might actually be a suitable love interest for post-Crisis Diana later) and make up some contrived reason he was on a plane going over Themiscyra and was the only one to wash up. That gives us just law school and a service commitment that might've gotten cut short for injuries he got in combat, in the crash, or in the dangerous occupation of "Love Interest."

But... I know how old military officers tend to be, and he's pretty boyish looking for someone in the Major rank range. That's a Lt. face if I ever saw one.

This age thing might be a bit much for my suspension of disbelief.

About damned time.

2011-03-19T23:55:00.002+01:00

DC Women Kicking Ass:

At C2E2 today DC announced Cassandra Cain will be featured in the mini-series Gates of Gotham, appearing in the first issue. This is apparently the project that prevented her from appearing in the Birds of Prey.

Still sounds like a side character, but appearing in another book is an improvement at least. They'd better have a payoff for all the ignoring her.

The Costume

2011-03-18T22:12:00.007+01:00

The new live-action costume:
Before we get into the complaining, I'm going to let you all know I was relieved when I saw it. It is not the revised Lee costume. It is not some ultramodern non-superhero thing. After years of "No tights, no flights" on Smallville and the general shame people engage in in comic book adaptations someone's got the guts to go and say "Look, we're going to try and do a superhero here."

But, since the vast majority of fandom is complaining, I'm going to address it at one by one so you know it's pointless to try and reason me out of my good mood. (Why yes, I did get to solder a connector today. That always puts me in a sunny mood, complaining about ops tearing up the equipment included.)

It's shiny, but I prefer Wonder Woman bright so I'm not bothered by it seeming vinyl/plasticky. (Also, I don't think it'll shine so much while she's punching bad guys in a dimly lit alley set as it does under these publicity lights.) We have Clark Kent running around in all black with an S spray-painted on his T-shirt so I'm just plain glad not to see them try and pull some sort of dark serious shit like that with her.

I am not bothered by the lack of star-spangled panties. I have been whining for years for solid blue pants, and now I have them, I like them. I don't subscribe to the "making her less patriotic" conspiracy theory because well... She's of the royal family for another country. Besides, they brought back Steve Trevor (granted, as ex-military but probably still a veteran and he works for the DOJ now) so we know she loves the troops.

I also like the bright blue. I'm sorry, Wonder Woman should not wear black. And really, there's no need to darken her with Navy Blue either.

I like the boots, yes the heels. Yes, heels are impractical, but these are pretty solid heels and Diana is nigh invulnerable so she's in that list of superheroines that can pull this off. (Batgirl and Batwoman look fucking stupid in heels, but Wonder Woman and Power Girl aren't going to suffer from having them.)

Also, they contribute to the cowboy feel. So do the gold stars on the side. I think it's the lasso, but I always kinda liked a little cowboy imagery mixed in with her Greek mythology and modern knight stuff.

The bustier? Well, it's pretty much her classic costume with pants. I can live without straps, as I have for many years now.

Yay on the tiara and bracelets.

What don't I like?

The girdle, the girdle, the awkward looking girdle. I hate that they put a half-logo on the girdle, it looks weird. Also not thrilled about the little WWs topping the boots.

She's wearing quite a bit of makeup here. I think that's actually the MAC lipgloss shade I have (named Wonder Woman).

Her boobs look... unsecure.

More TV Wonder Woman thoughts.

2011-03-15T23:17:00.003+01:00

IMDB has Brett Tucker's role named.

I'm still a bit cautious, because IMDB does make mistakes, but I'm now trying to picture that gorgeous man in service dress. I understand the character's ex-Army, working as a laywer (*sigh* No handsome hats for lawyers) but there's lots of flashbacks in the leaked script. I really wish for an adaptation where he's Navy or Marines, because those two services have such stunning male uniforms.

I really like the cast they've set up for this. A bit heaving on the masculine side for a Wonder Woman revival, but a pretty nice spread. I know it's likely to be the Smallville for Wonder Woman if it catches on, full of relationship plotlines, in-jokes and everyone not being quite like they are in the comics. Diana will probably be as not-quite-our-hero as Welling's Clark. There's going to be some complete absurdity to it, no doubt.

Still, if it catches on, it's a Wonder Woman series. It's a Wonder Woman revival. It's a chance to see these actors weekly. It's a push for maybe another movie, and possibly a second comics. It's at least getting her origin story out there, and back into the cultural consciousness. And they'll have something they can mock every week on Comic Alliance now that Smallville is going away.

I want this to succeed, and I'm cautiously optimistic about it.

In the meantime, I went ahead and checked out the commentary for the old Lynda Carter Wonder Woman pilot. (It's on the first season DVD.) It's Lynda Carter and Douglas S. Cramer reminiscing. And it has Carter ogling Lyle Waggoner, which just made my day.

Wonder Woman's voice saying "Everyone was so helpf--LOOK AT HIS MUSCLES! WOW!" has to be the best thing I've ever heard in a DVD commentary.

Anything to look forward to in June?

2011-03-14T22:27:00.006+01:00

DC's got their June solicits up and the teasers on Flashpoint are slim. However, not sure that "FLASH FACT! If she can’t have the world – no one will!" under Wonder Woman and the Furies #1 makes me hopeful. I'll still try the first issue, but I'm kinda sick of them making Diana the overly aggressive warmonger in dystopian timelines.

On the other hand, the single most anticipated Wonder Woman issue of the year will come out the same month:

WONDER WOMAN #612
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI and PHIL HESTER
Art and cover by DON KRAMER and WAYNE FAUCHER
1:10 Variant cover by ALEX GARNER
This is the one you’ve waited for! The year-long “Odyssey” storyline comes to an earth-shattering conclusion! Can Diana defeat the powerful forces that destroyed her entire reality? And even if she wins, she could still lose everything!
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale JUNE 29 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Yes, that's the light at the end of the tunnel. That is the END of the JMS plotted timefuck. I can't say what fresh hell awaits us in issue #613, but at least it won't be from the mind of the guy who did Superman: Earth One.

That cover's a variant, so I don't know if it means anything but it beats any Wonder Woman cover since the Dodsons were on art.

And there's a Showcase Presents for the old "Trial of the Flash" storyline. Carmin Infantino days.

Aside from that, I'm intrigued by this:

STATIC SHOCK SPECIAL #1
Written by FELICIA D. HENDERSON
Art by DENYS COWAN, PRENTIS ROLLINS and others
Cover by DEREC DONOVAN
A special one-shot paying homage to Dwayne McDuffie and the world of Milestone Media, with tribute material from Milestone co-founder Denys Cowan and other Milestone alumni.
One-shot • No ads • On sale JUNE 1 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Having our cake and eating it too.

2011-03-13T20:13:00.006+01:00

I've been watching the second season of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman show, and I can't help but think that Lyle Waggoner's not really a love interest in this. He's her closer friend and coworker, but really they seem to have lost their romantic chemistry from the setting change.

See, the second season is set in the 70s, when Steve Trevor Jr is on a plane that wanders into Paradise Island airspace during a hijacking attempt. Diana goes on, sees that everyone is unconscious and there's a guy on there who looks exactly like Steve Trevor. And she knows several decades have passed and this is impossible. It turns out to be his son, and her Steve has recently died of old age. As she can assess there's an obvious danger to the guy, she asks to go back.

We have a different Hippolyta, a redhead this time, and she's the best one yet. She wants to deny it, but they put it to a council vote and Diana just has to face one challenger in Bullets & Bracelets before she's off to Man's World again.

Now, from the start it looks like they want to continue the same character dynamic, but it doesn't work. They changed his character. She was in love with his father, not him. He was raised on stories about her, and of course he geeks out when he sees her. At the end of the show they even do the thing where Diana misspeaks and says "Well, I'm sure she came back for you--I mean us" when speculating about Wonder Woman's motives. (This was common in the first season. We'd see him get this modest/embarrassed look after she made those slips, because it was obvious to everyone from FDR to General Blankenship's dry cleaner that the most beautiful woman in the country had a crush on him.)

Jessica Walter (I don't know her character's name but fuck it, it's Jessica Walter) picks up on Diana Prince's looking at him and they even try using an imposter Steve against her. (Who comes onto Diana Prince and chases her across the apartment until she locks herself in the bedroom, changes to Wonder Woman, and comes around the building to

After the first episode, though, they seem to put this aside and it's just a professional relationship. I don't know if that was the actors being unable to adjust the character change, or the writers just discarding it. Either way, it didn't work and I think it's because it wasn't really her Steve. She wasn't following him around because she loved him so much as she was protective of the kid of a guy she loved. I'm only about halfway through the season, but they seem to have settled into close platonic friends. He's a pretty important part of the series as her boss, closest friend and most influential ally, (and he still admires the hell out of Wonder Woman) but I do not see these two dating even casually.

When he gets promoted to being her boss he gets moved off the frontlines, so they cool a bit further. She has solo adventures and when they want to pair her up they come up with a brand new male character for each episode. It's really close to the Rooster Roulette we've seen post-Crisis. I think this was more because they realized Lynda Carter could carry the show all by herself. (Either that or Waggoner was sick of being tied up every episode.)

Funny thing, though, I think this demonstrates a way to keep older Steve and bring back a love interest Steve. Steve Trevor will be a different character according to the period of time he was raised in, he'll default to that generation's healthiest expression masculinity combined with a progressive view (and genuine like and respect for) of women. That's different for a guy in the Army in the 40s and a guy in a spy service in the 70s even if they are played by the same actor. That's going to be different for a guy born in the 40s and a guy born in the 80s. It's not a bad shot on either version of the character, it's just natural.

So, why not go the way of the TV show and introduce a younger character of the same name? They could retcon the first couple Perez stories a little (to add that Steve was married before) or a lot (to substitute the younger Steve for the one who crashed on the island) if they like. They can write out the backstory of the mother and what happened to her. Because Diana never had romantic tension with older Steve, they'd be free to explore the younger version as a love interest. And they can go into the future with the family, because old Steve would undoubtedly have dad angst and Etta would have to deal with a stepson who is very close to her own age.

Of course, then there's always the problem of where has this guy been all these years. For that, I have a convenient plotmaking chart. Just fill in the blanks from the appropriate column:

Steve Trevor Sr's (Column A) of the same name has been (Column B) for many years due to the machinations of (Column C), who took him (Column D). Diana must fix this.

Click to enlarge

And I've also made one for any future storylines they might need. With decompression, this should last them another 600 issues.

Click to enlarge

Wonder Woman Casting: Now With Extra Blondes

2011-03-12T23:29:00.008+01:00

They cast another actor in Wonder Woman, Brett Tucker. The initial announcement doesn't name the character.

However DCWKA points out that the actor looks very much like one of the major parts.

How much? Well, let's put Brett Tucker next to a similarly angled drawing by Andru and Esposito from Wonder Woman #129:

What do you think, guys, a face worth leaving Paradise for?

(Via DCWKA, and here's the profile Mizzelle dug up.)

P.S. A Google Image search of this actor's name reveals him lying naked in an outdoor bathtub, wearing a cowboy hat. I will be devastated if he doesn't turn out to be Steve Trevor.