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.
Showing posts with label hal jordan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hal jordan. Show all posts
Saturday, July 02, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
I still say that Guardian was right about Hal.
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.
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.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
In case you've been missing the Wonder Woman ranting
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?
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?
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Happy Thoughts
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.
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.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Scarlet Twilight could have used a parallax view.
I've mentioned earlier that I consider Wanda Maximoff the Parallax of this decade. Think about it. She was a Silver Age hero who suffered a worldshattering tragedy that was resolved in her storyline but used by a new creative team as an excuse to turn the character into a crazed villain and reboot the franchise. She was made powerful to an unusable extent and the resulting madness was central to a universe-changing crossover where she attempted to rewrite reality to undo the tragedy. After this, she becomes a boogeyman in the superhero community, a name dropped to conjure the dark possibilities of a trusted friend turning into an enemy.
With Hal and Wanda we have a male character and a female character having served the same purpose for the company, written in an incredibly similar character arc but handled differently in some very unsettling ways. Take point of view, for instance.
Hal Jordan as the star of the solo Green Lantern title gets a story following his point of view when he loses his mind. We follow him (the issue after he has made peace with the Coast City destruction) on his attempts to rebuild his hometown, through his painful realization that he can't sustain the illusion, through his justification for needing to gain more power and lash out at his friends, through his wild rampage until the book is officially handed off to his successor Kyle. Then, once Hal's journey into madness has been properly documented through his eyes so we all know the flimsy reason that the hero we've all read and loved for thirty years is now the main villain of the series, and his successor has been chosen, the camera goes to another character. The momentous reveal of Hal's transformation to his shocked friends and teammates in a teambook comes only after the Fall of Hal Jordan has happened in his own book, following Hal as it happened and featuring scenes that showed his state of mind as it deteriorated.
Wanda Maximoff as a member of the Avengers teambook doesn't get this treatment. Her turn towards the dark side is told through other viewpoints, by the surrounding characters speculating about her mental state. Way back when they started this womb crazy mess in "Darker than Scarlet" her memory was erased, she spent time catatonic, and she lost her sanity for a bit. Agatha Harkness, Magneto, Quicksilver and the Wet Coast Avengers provided the exposition during this when they discussed Wanda. Wanda, having no memory of the trigger for this (thanks a bunch, Harkness) was not able to express this reasoning herself, she could just say Bad Girl things and be egged on by her father. It wasn't until after this story arc concluded that she regained her memory of the children and could express the pain she'd endured in her own words.
Avengers: Disassembled is even worse in this respect. It's a mystery. Wanda's turn is the big reveal at the climax. We don't even get to watch Wanda undergo this breakdown as other characters explain, the entire matter is a secret while we follow the others. And while one could argue that we saw it in Darker than Scarlet, the entire matter was resolved in the interim. This book retconned the resolution away, and didn't show the second breakdown in detail at all. Anything in between that dealt with Wanda's feelings about her children was erased so we have never gotten the Wanda POV to this story. (Or if we have, it was in a side-book that wasn't part of the crossover that somehow I and the other obsessive Wanda fangirls managed to miss completely) For the second time we don't get Wanda's point of view, and here we don't get to see her until she's completely gone. The surrounding characters explain EVERYTHING. Dr. Strange explains her powers, her mental state and the changed continuity (contradicting all prior statements he's made about the character and erasing the resolution of the trauma that triggered this breakdown), while Wanda is offstage. When they fight Wanda, all she says is a grim "Leave my children alone" a few times. We can pity her, and we can infer where she's coming from.... But we never get to see where's coming from.
We never get Wanda's viewpoint until House of M and even then the vast majority of the story is told through the viewpoints of Magneto, Wolverine, and Quicksilver. Out of eight issues we get Wanda's point of view in one scene of issue one (before Prof. X tries desperately to suppress it for her own good, of course), and a few scenes issue seven, most notably before she takes out 99% of her species. That's not really even one issue. We get Wolverine's viewpoint steadily for over five issues.
That, of course, is still much better than what we're getting from Children's Crusade, where everyone except Wanda tells the story of how Wanda lost her sanity. Iron Man, Magneto, Quicksilver, Wiccan, and Dr. Fucking Doom have all told us about Wanda's life and her mental state, while Wanda stands there clueless and powerless. We're coming on the halfway point and she's still a total amnesiac.
And yeah, there's an argument that this is all over being in a teambook rather than a solo book, that this is to preserve suspense and that sexism has nothing to do with this difference, but with this being such an important matter for the metaplot of the Marvel Universe, with Wanda's behavior being so vital to rebooting two major franchises.... Surely they could have spared an issue or two during one of these crossovers to spend some substantial time inside her head after the reveal? Walk through Wanda's delusions with her? Show how wanting her children back led to destroying her adopted family?
Disassembled was ridiculously massive. House of M had 5 full issues of "Getting the band together." Children's Crusade is on issue four and they just now got to giving Wanda lines. These stories are dragged out to an amazing degree, but when it comes to exploring the complex mind and emotions of a woman suddenly everyone's into compression and it's sufficient to have a man come in and give his expert opinion of "bitch crazy."
With Hal and Wanda we have a male character and a female character having served the same purpose for the company, written in an incredibly similar character arc but handled differently in some very unsettling ways. Take point of view, for instance.
Hal Jordan as the star of the solo Green Lantern title gets a story following his point of view when he loses his mind. We follow him (the issue after he has made peace with the Coast City destruction) on his attempts to rebuild his hometown, through his painful realization that he can't sustain the illusion, through his justification for needing to gain more power and lash out at his friends, through his wild rampage until the book is officially handed off to his successor Kyle. Then, once Hal's journey into madness has been properly documented through his eyes so we all know the flimsy reason that the hero we've all read and loved for thirty years is now the main villain of the series, and his successor has been chosen, the camera goes to another character. The momentous reveal of Hal's transformation to his shocked friends and teammates in a teambook comes only after the Fall of Hal Jordan has happened in his own book, following Hal as it happened and featuring scenes that showed his state of mind as it deteriorated.
Wanda Maximoff as a member of the Avengers teambook doesn't get this treatment. Her turn towards the dark side is told through other viewpoints, by the surrounding characters speculating about her mental state. Way back when they started this womb crazy mess in "Darker than Scarlet" her memory was erased, she spent time catatonic, and she lost her sanity for a bit. Agatha Harkness, Magneto, Quicksilver and the Wet Coast Avengers provided the exposition during this when they discussed Wanda. Wanda, having no memory of the trigger for this (thanks a bunch, Harkness) was not able to express this reasoning herself, she could just say Bad Girl things and be egged on by her father. It wasn't until after this story arc concluded that she regained her memory of the children and could express the pain she'd endured in her own words.
Avengers: Disassembled is even worse in this respect. It's a mystery. Wanda's turn is the big reveal at the climax. We don't even get to watch Wanda undergo this breakdown as other characters explain, the entire matter is a secret while we follow the others. And while one could argue that we saw it in Darker than Scarlet, the entire matter was resolved in the interim. This book retconned the resolution away, and didn't show the second breakdown in detail at all. Anything in between that dealt with Wanda's feelings about her children was erased so we have never gotten the Wanda POV to this story. (Or if we have, it was in a side-book that wasn't part of the crossover that somehow I and the other obsessive Wanda fangirls managed to miss completely) For the second time we don't get Wanda's point of view, and here we don't get to see her until she's completely gone. The surrounding characters explain EVERYTHING. Dr. Strange explains her powers, her mental state and the changed continuity (contradicting all prior statements he's made about the character and erasing the resolution of the trauma that triggered this breakdown), while Wanda is offstage. When they fight Wanda, all she says is a grim "Leave my children alone" a few times. We can pity her, and we can infer where she's coming from.... But we never get to see where's coming from.
We never get Wanda's viewpoint until House of M and even then the vast majority of the story is told through the viewpoints of Magneto, Wolverine, and Quicksilver. Out of eight issues we get Wanda's point of view in one scene of issue one (before Prof. X tries desperately to suppress it for her own good, of course), and a few scenes issue seven, most notably before she takes out 99% of her species. That's not really even one issue. We get Wolverine's viewpoint steadily for over five issues.
That, of course, is still much better than what we're getting from Children's Crusade, where everyone except Wanda tells the story of how Wanda lost her sanity. Iron Man, Magneto, Quicksilver, Wiccan, and Dr. Fucking Doom have all told us about Wanda's life and her mental state, while Wanda stands there clueless and powerless. We're coming on the halfway point and she's still a total amnesiac.
And yeah, there's an argument that this is all over being in a teambook rather than a solo book, that this is to preserve suspense and that sexism has nothing to do with this difference, but with this being such an important matter for the metaplot of the Marvel Universe, with Wanda's behavior being so vital to rebooting two major franchises.... Surely they could have spared an issue or two during one of these crossovers to spend some substantial time inside her head after the reveal? Walk through Wanda's delusions with her? Show how wanting her children back led to destroying her adopted family?
Disassembled was ridiculously massive. House of M had 5 full issues of "Getting the band together." Children's Crusade is on issue four and they just now got to giving Wanda lines. These stories are dragged out to an amazing degree, but when it comes to exploring the complex mind and emotions of a woman suddenly everyone's into compression and it's sufficient to have a man come in and give his expert opinion of "bitch crazy."
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Cry for Justice #3
I'm quite a bit behind the curve since I went overseas, and I'm only paying slight attention to the rest of the Blogosphere. That's the way my life is now. Even I couldn't miss the Cry for Justice thing, in no small part because Chris was IMing me for my righteous Hal Jordan defense.
I know, in the past couple weeks this subject has been covered ad nauseum and probably better, but I've let it stew too long.
When I first heard the complaints assumed we were witnessing a case of what I like to call "Civil War Syndrome". Basically, the phenomenon where they attempt to do a political argument between a character on the Left and a character on the Right, but really end up with a character behaving sanely and a character behaving insanely. This is because in the past decade American discourse has been skewed so absurdly towards the right on certain issues that people quoting Ronald Reagan's views on torture are considered liberal. I suspect this is because of the different ways in which both the political parties and the media handles Right-wing and Left-wing crazies in the 21st Century. The Democrats disavow and distance, the media ignores the Truthers and the wilder sides of the Anti-War movement. This is to the detriment of the Left because the general public adores the middle of the road, and a little exposure to crazy goes a long way in making your slightly left-of-center view palatable. On the Right, the Republicans embrace and pander, and the media spotlights the Calhoun Club. This is to the detriment of the Right because the reasonable viewpoints that are just slightly right of center are glossed over, and never discussed as the centrists and the leftists can only see the dark cloud of madness devouring the landscape and defend themselves accordingly. And so a proper compromise is never reached.
But that's just me doing my periodic tangent into my Personal Grand Unified Theory of Fiction, the Media and Politics, as required by Paragraph 2(c) subsection 7 of the Universal Blogger's Code.
How does this translate to Civil War and Cry for Justice? Well, the writer of a story looks at an issue in the media and marks down what the conservative character would do and say, and what the liberal character would do and say. This way, the writer can have a big relevant story.
This is my Grand Theory of how we get the behavior of Tony "We can totally circumvent the justice system and still be good guys" Stark in Civil War, and more recently Oliver "Are you sure you wanna do this horrible thing? Okie-dokie, Hal" Queen in Cry for Justice.
When I initially heard of the torture sequence in Cry for Justice, I assumed this was how Robinson placed Hal Fucking Jordan--the guy who was basically the conscience of the Green Lantern Corps up until Emerald Twilight Which Was Recently Proven to Be Not His Fault--in the position of defending the torture of a suspect.
Being quite a fan of the O'Neill/Adams run, I had some expectations about the scene. I pictured Oliver Queen pitching a fit and Hal having a grief-induced breakdown. I expected that Oliver Queen would be proven right in the end when, as Mr. Sims informed me on the dark day this issue was released, the suspect was revealed not to be the person they intended to torture after all.
I was outraged and angry that my favorite character would be put in the position of rolling back on his principles to make such an obvious point as "torture is bad" simply because once again the O'Neill/Adams run had been misunderstood, and Hal was needed to play the conservative character when there were plenty of other characters who would canonically be in favor of beating/scaring information out of a prisoner. Didn't this man understand that there are certain characters that you just don't do that with? I was fired up and ready to rant but stopped myself until I'd had a chance to read the whole cursed issue, even thought I had already completely made up my mind about just how James Robinson had fucked up the character.
Then I read the issue in question. And was shocked into silence.
It appeared, on first and second reading, that Robinson was condoning the use of torture on a suspect. And I'm still not quite sure what to say about that.
I can say that the sequence takes place with three characters acting so far out of character they might be their Crime Syndicate counterparts. Hal Jordan, who has the role of stopping this sort of thing when it occurs in the Green Lantern Corps is observing as Ray Palmer, who is aware of this technique being used to murder one of his dearest friends, is inside what is apparently the head of Prometheus, tap-dancing.
Oliver Queen, who has the role of stopping this sort of thing anytime it happens anywhere, was timidly asking Hal if this qualified as torture. The Real Oliver Queen would be standing between Ray and the Prisoner making comparisons to Hitler, but this person wearing Green Arrow's beard and costume was standing slightly behind Hal was asking ever so quietly if they should consider human rights.
And the torture itself. It was a "clean" torture. You're supposed to read this and think it's not so bad thing. This is not watching them argue about getting their hands dirty with something that gets relegated in drama to the
basements of Nazi criminals. This is something that is designed to say to people "See, this causing pain to other people to get them to talk? That's not bad, that's not really evil. It's not even a risk to his life." Just a little headache. Using the same technique that killed Sue Dibny.
And, even though it turned out to be Clayface rather than Prometheus, the torture worked. The guy spilled his guts and gave them information.
I was angry before I read it because Hal Jordan is what you'd call a "High Road" character. I thought that he was being dragged through the mud to present a conservative foil to a moral rant. But no, this doesn't seem like that at all. This seems like the writer thought it was a perfectly okay way to have them go about. Edgy.
And yeah, this worked for the Shade, but you know what? Not every character is the fucking Shade and they shouldn't be.
I know, in the past couple weeks this subject has been covered ad nauseum and probably better, but I've let it stew too long.
When I first heard the complaints assumed we were witnessing a case of what I like to call "Civil War Syndrome". Basically, the phenomenon where they attempt to do a political argument between a character on the Left and a character on the Right, but really end up with a character behaving sanely and a character behaving insanely. This is because in the past decade American discourse has been skewed so absurdly towards the right on certain issues that people quoting Ronald Reagan's views on torture are considered liberal. I suspect this is because of the different ways in which both the political parties and the media handles Right-wing and Left-wing crazies in the 21st Century. The Democrats disavow and distance, the media ignores the Truthers and the wilder sides of the Anti-War movement. This is to the detriment of the Left because the general public adores the middle of the road, and a little exposure to crazy goes a long way in making your slightly left-of-center view palatable. On the Right, the Republicans embrace and pander, and the media spotlights the Calhoun Club. This is to the detriment of the Right because the reasonable viewpoints that are just slightly right of center are glossed over, and never discussed as the centrists and the leftists can only see the dark cloud of madness devouring the landscape and defend themselves accordingly. And so a proper compromise is never reached.
But that's just me doing my periodic tangent into my Personal Grand Unified Theory of Fiction, the Media and Politics, as required by Paragraph 2(c) subsection 7 of the Universal Blogger's Code.
How does this translate to Civil War and Cry for Justice? Well, the writer of a story looks at an issue in the media and marks down what the conservative character would do and say, and what the liberal character would do and say. This way, the writer can have a big relevant story.
This is my Grand Theory of how we get the behavior of Tony "We can totally circumvent the justice system and still be good guys" Stark in Civil War, and more recently Oliver "Are you sure you wanna do this horrible thing? Okie-dokie, Hal" Queen in Cry for Justice.
When I initially heard of the torture sequence in Cry for Justice, I assumed this was how Robinson placed Hal Fucking Jordan--the guy who was basically the conscience of the Green Lantern Corps up until Emerald Twilight Which Was Recently Proven to Be Not His Fault--in the position of defending the torture of a suspect.
Being quite a fan of the O'Neill/Adams run, I had some expectations about the scene. I pictured Oliver Queen pitching a fit and Hal having a grief-induced breakdown. I expected that Oliver Queen would be proven right in the end when, as Mr. Sims informed me on the dark day this issue was released, the suspect was revealed not to be the person they intended to torture after all.
I was outraged and angry that my favorite character would be put in the position of rolling back on his principles to make such an obvious point as "torture is bad" simply because once again the O'Neill/Adams run had been misunderstood, and Hal was needed to play the conservative character when there were plenty of other characters who would canonically be in favor of beating/scaring information out of a prisoner. Didn't this man understand that there are certain characters that you just don't do that with? I was fired up and ready to rant but stopped myself until I'd had a chance to read the whole cursed issue, even thought I had already completely made up my mind about just how James Robinson had fucked up the character.
Then I read the issue in question. And was shocked into silence.
It appeared, on first and second reading, that Robinson was condoning the use of torture on a suspect. And I'm still not quite sure what to say about that.
I can say that the sequence takes place with three characters acting so far out of character they might be their Crime Syndicate counterparts. Hal Jordan, who has the role of stopping this sort of thing when it occurs in the Green Lantern Corps is observing as Ray Palmer, who is aware of this technique being used to murder one of his dearest friends, is inside what is apparently the head of Prometheus, tap-dancing.
Oliver Queen, who has the role of stopping this sort of thing anytime it happens anywhere, was timidly asking Hal if this qualified as torture. The Real Oliver Queen would be standing between Ray and the Prisoner making comparisons to Hitler, but this person wearing Green Arrow's beard and costume was standing slightly behind Hal was asking ever so quietly if they should consider human rights.
And the torture itself. It was a "clean" torture. You're supposed to read this and think it's not so bad thing. This is not watching them argue about getting their hands dirty with something that gets relegated in drama to the
basements of Nazi criminals. This is something that is designed to say to people "See, this causing pain to other people to get them to talk? That's not bad, that's not really evil. It's not even a risk to his life." Just a little headache. Using the same technique that killed Sue Dibny.
And, even though it turned out to be Clayface rather than Prometheus, the torture worked. The guy spilled his guts and gave them information.
I was angry before I read it because Hal Jordan is what you'd call a "High Road" character. I thought that he was being dragged through the mud to present a conservative foil to a moral rant. But no, this doesn't seem like that at all. This seems like the writer thought it was a perfectly okay way to have them go about. Edgy.
And yeah, this worked for the Shade, but you know what? Not every character is the fucking Shade and they shouldn't be.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
I made something pretty!
Horrified that the next Star Sapphire figure is going to be in that hideous costume, I searched about online and found the classic Star Sapphire action figure (which had ugly earrings, but those were a lot easier to cut off and paint over than fixing that dreadful costume).
When I took her out of the box the other night, I realized she was the same size as my Parallax/Hal figure. Then I noticed that one of her hands was outstretched, with the fingers spread like she was reaching for someone. And one of Hal's hands was open so that it could hold something, and that it fit perfectly to Carol's wrist.
About that time "Written in the Stars" from the Aida cast album hit my playlist. I got inspired.
I had to make a shadowbox. After testing out about five different background ideas, I settled on a picture from an old calender. For some reason, during the entire process my playlist was queuing up love songs. when I finally finished the whole thing (which involved searching for pieces from the base, and a lot more time that I thought it would) I was listening to a cover of "I Want You to Want Me."
Weird. Anyway, pictures:
And for some reason I'm fond of this one that didn't come out very well. It's kind of spooky and cool.
What do you think? Are they not just made for each other?
When I took her out of the box the other night, I realized she was the same size as my Parallax/Hal figure. Then I noticed that one of her hands was outstretched, with the fingers spread like she was reaching for someone. And one of Hal's hands was open so that it could hold something, and that it fit perfectly to Carol's wrist.
About that time "Written in the Stars" from the Aida cast album hit my playlist. I got inspired.
I had to make a shadowbox. After testing out about five different background ideas, I settled on a picture from an old calender. For some reason, during the entire process my playlist was queuing up love songs. when I finally finished the whole thing (which involved searching for pieces from the base, and a lot more time that I thought it would) I was listening to a cover of "I Want You to Want Me."
Weird. Anyway, pictures:
And for some reason I'm fond of this one that didn't come out very well. It's kind of spooky and cool.
What do you think? Are they not just made for each other?
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Green Lantern #29
First off, I enjoyed it. I like to read an origin retelling every once in a while.
However, there were a few USAF fumbles. Not the least of which is that there is no way in hell he could steal a jet and go for a joyride. If a jet gets turned on, and it's not scheduled to fly, it's a hijacking. It's a pretty big fucking security violation. In order to do this, Hal would have to be a close enough friend to the ground maintainers, the air traffic controllers, the military police (and possibly a few more groups);to be able to convince them all to let him do this the morning after he decided to get discharged.
Yeah, good luck with that.
(And no, he hadn't pulled strings with a buddy in plans and scheduling because then he wouldn't have taken an unauthorized joyride, he'd have taken a normal scheduled flight.)
Not just that, I can fucking guarantee that if a pilot hijacked an experimental fighter jet and then punched his commanding officer in the face, he wouldn't be at his mother's hospital room without an armed escort. But I can ignore that one, since the writer wisely didn't let us know how much time had elapsed between the punch and the hospital scene.
Still, no fucking way on the "unauthorized joyride". You overplayed your hand there, Johns.
Otherwise, it was a fine issue. I'm especially fond of Jim Jordan. I hope that character stays in the supporting cast for a while.
However, there were a few USAF fumbles. Not the least of which is that there is no way in hell he could steal a jet and go for a joyride. If a jet gets turned on, and it's not scheduled to fly, it's a hijacking. It's a pretty big fucking security violation. In order to do this, Hal would have to be a close enough friend to the ground maintainers, the air traffic controllers, the military police (and possibly a few more groups);to be able to convince them all to let him do this the morning after he decided to get discharged.
Yeah, good luck with that.
(And no, he hadn't pulled strings with a buddy in plans and scheduling because then he wouldn't have taken an unauthorized joyride, he'd have taken a normal scheduled flight.)
Not just that, I can fucking guarantee that if a pilot hijacked an experimental fighter jet and then punched his commanding officer in the face, he wouldn't be at his mother's hospital room without an armed escort. But I can ignore that one, since the writer wisely didn't let us know how much time had elapsed between the punch and the hospital scene.
Still, no fucking way on the "unauthorized joyride". You overplayed your hand there, Johns.
Otherwise, it was a fine issue. I'm especially fond of Jim Jordan. I hope that character stays in the supporting cast for a while.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Yes, another video.
But I needed one to illustrate my suggestion because I'm not sure everyone who reads this blog also watches Comedy Central and this guy just looks and sounds perfect.
Rob Riggle as Hal Jordan.
Who else can see it?
Yeah, that probably says a lot about what I think of Hal.
Rob Riggle as Hal Jordan.
Who else can see it?
Yeah, that probably says a lot about what I think of Hal.
Monday, June 11, 2007
From Showcase #22
(Yes, that woman was the main love interest.)
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Green Lantern #19-20 Spoilers
(I'll pick up #18 over Reis and Acuna's pink slips, dammit.)
Yeah, I picked it up. Rachelle and Sally kept blogging the storyline and I had to check it out.
I should really fucking hate this storyline.
I don't.
I hate aspects of the storyline. I still hate the fucking costume. I fucking hate Acuna's art. I really fucking hate the emotional divide between the Zamarons and the Guardians, they get to study love rather than willpower*? Yuck! How fucking stereotypical can you be?
The most irritating part was the Dela Pharon retcon. The original story with Dela (Star Sapphire III) in Green Lantern #41 had a new Star Sapphire pretending to be Carol and trying to trick Hal into marriage. This was part of her usurping Carol as the Zamaron Queen. As well as defeating Carol in battle, she felt a need to steal Carol's position, identity, and boyfriend. It was an interesting story that played up the Zamaron role-reversal by making Hal the "bride" in an old plot. The story itself was about Carol.
By making the Star Sapphire parasite attracted to Hal, he destroyed that story and made the whole thing about Hal.
That wasn't the only point in the whole storyline that made me want to throw things at Johns, but its the part I find hardest to forgive.
But...
It fits in with Hal's character and Carol's character, and restores Carol to her proper place in the franchise. Carol's back to flying airplanes herself. There was an appearance by Tom. It adds the Zamarons into the franchise plotline, which they need to be into, and in the end they aren't so obsessed with love/lust anymore. (It also conveniently changes their appearance back to that of female Maltusians, rather than white human women).
The story is problematic, but moves towards a much better status quo. (Eventually this parasite crap will need to be retconned out, though.)
And the ending left me with a little smile. Cheered me out of a pissy mood. I'm back to reading the GL mainbook again.
Hopefully Acuna'll be gone next issue.
*Anyone wanna take bets on the Controllers' specialty?
Yeah, I picked it up. Rachelle and Sally kept blogging the storyline and I had to check it out.
I should really fucking hate this storyline.
I don't.
I hate aspects of the storyline. I still hate the fucking costume. I fucking hate Acuna's art. I really fucking hate the emotional divide between the Zamarons and the Guardians, they get to study love rather than willpower*? Yuck! How fucking stereotypical can you be?
The most irritating part was the Dela Pharon retcon. The original story with Dela (Star Sapphire III) in Green Lantern #41 had a new Star Sapphire pretending to be Carol and trying to trick Hal into marriage. This was part of her usurping Carol as the Zamaron Queen. As well as defeating Carol in battle, she felt a need to steal Carol's position, identity, and boyfriend. It was an interesting story that played up the Zamaron role-reversal by making Hal the "bride" in an old plot. The story itself was about Carol.
By making the Star Sapphire parasite attracted to Hal, he destroyed that story and made the whole thing about Hal.
That wasn't the only point in the whole storyline that made me want to throw things at Johns, but its the part I find hardest to forgive.
But...
It fits in with Hal's character and Carol's character, and restores Carol to her proper place in the franchise. Carol's back to flying airplanes herself. There was an appearance by Tom. It adds the Zamarons into the franchise plotline, which they need to be into, and in the end they aren't so obsessed with love/lust anymore. (It also conveniently changes their appearance back to that of female Maltusians, rather than white human women).
The story is problematic, but moves towards a much better status quo. (Eventually this parasite crap will need to be retconned out, though.)
And the ending left me with a little smile. Cheered me out of a pissy mood. I'm back to reading the GL mainbook again.
Hopefully Acuna'll be gone next issue.
*Anyone wanna take bets on the Controllers' specialty?
Friday, April 27, 2007
After a post in which really only the Anonymous commenters agree with me, and I don't feel inclined to change my opinion, I like to post something lazy, mindless and frivolous. So, fill in the blanks (original image courtesy of Sally):
If you must insist on substance, I have apleasantly short post long essay up on censorship on Blog@Newsarama. There are no pictures with it.
If you must insist on substance, I have a
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Geoff Johns, I could never stay mad at you...
Teen Titans spoilers.
He's getting mixed reactions, but I have to say that between that and the Batgirl revelation in that issue my anger at the POW storyline in Green Lantern has disappeared.
Which is weird because I'm a huge Green Lantern fan that's only marginally interested in the Gotham characters.
He's getting mixed reactions, but I have to say that between that and the Batgirl revelation in that issue my anger at the POW storyline in Green Lantern has disappeared.
Which is weird because I'm a huge Green Lantern fan that's only marginally interested in the Gotham characters.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
I Can't Believe I Did This
That image was so hideous it put me off blogging for three days. (Well, I had other issues, but it certainly didn't help my enthusiasm).
The store didn't get most of the comics on Wednesday, so I had to go in today to get mine. While I was there, I did the unthinkable.
I crossed Green Lantern off my pull list.
Don't panic, I'm still me. I'm fine with getting Green Lantern Corps and Ion (loving them both so far), but I just can't muster any enthusiasm for the main book right now. I'd still be getting it if either the POW storyline had never happened, or the artist had the slightest idea about what looked good on a character.
See, it's not even so much the sexism with Arisia and Star Sapphire as it is the sheer ugliness of the two costumes. Add that ugliness to the fact that they make my favorite title something I can't carry in public without hiding the cover. Then add in the sexism of no male character having been drawn in a comparable monstrosity. It's totally soured me on the art.
The writing is annoying me because of the POW storyline, and also because John Stewart is completely absent. They keep promising, but he never actually shows up.
I might pick it up again when the Star Sapphire storyline is over, not sure though. I'm not sure I'd be willing to read a resurrection storyline with Katma Tui right now. Can you imagine what sort of costume that stupid artist would put her in?
The store didn't get most of the comics on Wednesday, so I had to go in today to get mine. While I was there, I did the unthinkable.
I crossed Green Lantern off my pull list.
Don't panic, I'm still me. I'm fine with getting Green Lantern Corps and Ion (loving them both so far), but I just can't muster any enthusiasm for the main book right now. I'd still be getting it if either the POW storyline had never happened, or the artist had the slightest idea about what looked good on a character.
See, it's not even so much the sexism with Arisia and Star Sapphire as it is the sheer ugliness of the two costumes. Add that ugliness to the fact that they make my favorite title something I can't carry in public without hiding the cover. Then add in the sexism of no male character having been drawn in a comparable monstrosity. It's totally soured me on the art.
The writing is annoying me because of the POW storyline, and also because John Stewart is completely absent. They keep promising, but he never actually shows up.
I might pick it up again when the Star Sapphire storyline is over, not sure though. I'm not sure I'd be willing to read a resurrection storyline with Katma Tui right now. Can you imagine what sort of costume that stupid artist would put her in?
Sunday, December 03, 2006
To the Writer of Green Lantern, Volume Four,
Today for the second time in a year, I reconsidered buying Green Lantern when I saw it in my pile. You must understand that, in addition to being reasonably fond of Kyle Rayner, I have been a huge Hal Jordan fan since I was a teenager. Since "Rebirth," I've been utterly obsessed with this franchise. I buy everything "Green Lantern" that DC puts out. I went through ten of the little mystery box figurines to find the Hal Jordan/Abin Sur statue. I bought every Green Lantern back issue in the Oklahoma City area, and then raided Tulsa. I read every issue that comes out and features a Green Lantern character. I feel more affection for the writers of the two spinoffs than I do for several blood relatives. I should not think twice about buying an issue of the main title. I should not even have to think about buying an issue of the main title. It should be automatic. Like breathing. I should be paying direct deposit to the comic book store, and I should be reading it in the car before I leave the parking lot in order to gain exposure to that sweet, sweet superhero space drama.
Before I get in exactly why, let's look at the character you're writing.
Hal Jordan. He has spent maybe five years (in continuity, maybe one?) as the Spectre. Prior to that, he spent maybe six years (no idea how much that is in continuity right now) as an insane cosmic crossover supervillain. During the 70s and the 80s, he was the Poster Boy for White Liberal Guilt. He has, since conception as a character, been utterly incapable of sustaining a meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex. His first serious girlfriend, the love of his life, had her brain taken over by aliens and he was forced to fight her. She is now married to someone else. Another major girlfriend was transported to an alien world along with her entire town because Hal visited there. He is a character who has been shown, in your own series, to believe that being married with children is an ideal existence for his best friend, but engages in an endless series of one night stands; the combination of which indicates emotional instability and denial as opposed to the healthy unfettered expression of sexuality displayed by, say, Queen Hippolyta. His parents are dead, he watched his father die in front of his eyes flying a jet -- the very career field Hal entered. His older brother and his older brother's family are dead. Since you've gotten your hands on him, the insanity became ten years of intense mind control (a convenient way to remove culpability while retaining an emotional illusion of responsibility), his mother's death occurred while she was angry at him, only six people in the Green Lantern Corps trust him, everyone on Earth thinks he is a criminal, and the Guardians are using him as a "how not to behave" example.
Somehow, this was not enough misery for you to play with, so you added the POW storyline.
I am certainly not saying that there is no place for such a situation in the entire franchise. I initially, and mistakenly, thought my gut reaction was an objection to all instances of grafting historical horrors into the background of a fictional character as a sign of disrespect for the subject matter. This simply isn't true. I watched Hogan's Heroes for years and laughed my ass off. Maus was fucking brilliant and threw mice into concentration camps. I've watched that movie with Owen Wilson in Bosnia repeatedly. I've roleplayed with this in the character backstory.
No, the problem isn't the idea itself. The problem is in the execution. After five issues this does not strike me as a well-crafted way to weave real-life political themes into the overall theme of a speculative fiction storyline, and use the outer limits of the imagination to comment on the reality of the human situation. It strikes me as a quick and easy way to tug at heartstrings of your audience and create sympathy for a character that should already have the audience's sympathy. It strikes me as a way to use current events as shorthand to the very real anxieties and concerns of the very real people reading the book. You're showing flashbacks and buddies suggesting they get therapy. You quoted John McCain and set it in the real war-torn region Chechnya instead of a fictional DC construct. You used this setting to introduce a damsel in distress and drive the higher plot. It's a way to skip the work of presenting an carefully plotted, well-crafted sympathetic tragedy, the fallout of the tragedy, and the internal and external conflict involved by playing on preset reactions to the trappings of a real-life situation that most of your readers are familiar with. This way, you can introduce the subject with a few flashbacks, quotes, and angsty narrative captions to milk the emotional resonance for all its worth as you complicate the hero's life.
It's basically a cheap shock tactic, the same problem most writers have when using rape. It's dramatic shorthand and not an explorable drama on its own. A throwaway theme. It's all about Angst.
Now let me tell you, as a former teenage Goth I know a thing or two about Angst. From years of experience brooding in the back of the classroom, wearing black, playing Vampire: The Masquerade and writing gawd-awful poetry I can attest that you do not need to flirt with Reality to achieve Angst. This infatuation with real life, realism and Reality that has infected you and your peers is worrying to say the least. I know Reality is attractive, but beneath that sly smile beats the heart of a predator. I would think that anyone who reads comics would know that the true nature of Reality is that of a ravenous beast which devours the creative and idealistic soul. I can't imagine what would entice you to bring such a creature into a comic book. Is it drugs? Do you need some?
As a matter of necessity, I would advise avoiding Reality at all costs. Reality is no good for you. Reality plies you with alcohol. Reality makes you pick up the check. Reality does not pay for gas or the hotel room. Reality does not call back the next morning. Reality is cruel. Reality is vindictive. Reality is jealous and clingy, but expects to be able to run around at all hours of the night with heaven-knows-who. I know, I've flirted with Reality myself (Reality's bisexual, by the way) and it was nothing but too much trouble for not even a quality heartbreak. Surely, there's a better way to achieve Angst than by associating yourself with Reality.
But I digress (all the time, now that I think about it, and no one seems to mind). My point is that there are ways of getting a reaction out of your reader, and they define the quality of your writing. I am not the only reader paying for cheap thrills, an emotional roller-coaster to ride every month. But there are cheap thrills to make a story engaging and fun, and there are cheap shocks to get a quick gut reaction from your audience. Cheap thrills pretend to be nothing other than that. Cheap shocks feign the sort of in-depth literary writing that garners praise for creating emotion reactions when they are actually just playing on emotional reactions that the majority of readers would have. Cheap thrills can be low or high quality writing, and they can be intensely imaginative. Cheap shocks are always low quality writing, and they betray a lack of imagination. The Green Lantern franchise, with a massively long history, and a massively large, weird cosmic background is fertile ground for the imagination. The test of a writer's skill is the same as in all speculative fiction, by how they draw the reader into temporarily believing an outrageous situation. The writer can focus on applying plausibility to the basic personality of the main character, and use that plausibility as anchor to a wonderful, imaginative and insightful story, or they can fake imagination and insight by throwing a few realistic elements on the surface, leading to a regularly mediocre, often infuriating, and sometimes offensive story.
Sincerely,
A fan who will be re-reading back issues.
Before I get in exactly why, let's look at the character you're writing.
Hal Jordan. He has spent maybe five years (in continuity, maybe one?) as the Spectre. Prior to that, he spent maybe six years (no idea how much that is in continuity right now) as an insane cosmic crossover supervillain. During the 70s and the 80s, he was the Poster Boy for White Liberal Guilt. He has, since conception as a character, been utterly incapable of sustaining a meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex. His first serious girlfriend, the love of his life, had her brain taken over by aliens and he was forced to fight her. She is now married to someone else. Another major girlfriend was transported to an alien world along with her entire town because Hal visited there. He is a character who has been shown, in your own series, to believe that being married with children is an ideal existence for his best friend, but engages in an endless series of one night stands; the combination of which indicates emotional instability and denial as opposed to the healthy unfettered expression of sexuality displayed by, say, Queen Hippolyta. His parents are dead, he watched his father die in front of his eyes flying a jet -- the very career field Hal entered. His older brother and his older brother's family are dead. Since you've gotten your hands on him, the insanity became ten years of intense mind control (a convenient way to remove culpability while retaining an emotional illusion of responsibility), his mother's death occurred while she was angry at him, only six people in the Green Lantern Corps trust him, everyone on Earth thinks he is a criminal, and the Guardians are using him as a "how not to behave" example.
Somehow, this was not enough misery for you to play with, so you added the POW storyline.
I am certainly not saying that there is no place for such a situation in the entire franchise. I initially, and mistakenly, thought my gut reaction was an objection to all instances of grafting historical horrors into the background of a fictional character as a sign of disrespect for the subject matter. This simply isn't true. I watched Hogan's Heroes for years and laughed my ass off. Maus was fucking brilliant and threw mice into concentration camps. I've watched that movie with Owen Wilson in Bosnia repeatedly. I've roleplayed with this in the character backstory.
No, the problem isn't the idea itself. The problem is in the execution. After five issues this does not strike me as a well-crafted way to weave real-life political themes into the overall theme of a speculative fiction storyline, and use the outer limits of the imagination to comment on the reality of the human situation. It strikes me as a quick and easy way to tug at heartstrings of your audience and create sympathy for a character that should already have the audience's sympathy. It strikes me as a way to use current events as shorthand to the very real anxieties and concerns of the very real people reading the book. You're showing flashbacks and buddies suggesting they get therapy. You quoted John McCain and set it in the real war-torn region Chechnya instead of a fictional DC construct. You used this setting to introduce a damsel in distress and drive the higher plot. It's a way to skip the work of presenting an carefully plotted, well-crafted sympathetic tragedy, the fallout of the tragedy, and the internal and external conflict involved by playing on preset reactions to the trappings of a real-life situation that most of your readers are familiar with. This way, you can introduce the subject with a few flashbacks, quotes, and angsty narrative captions to milk the emotional resonance for all its worth as you complicate the hero's life.
It's basically a cheap shock tactic, the same problem most writers have when using rape. It's dramatic shorthand and not an explorable drama on its own. A throwaway theme. It's all about Angst.
Now let me tell you, as a former teenage Goth I know a thing or two about Angst. From years of experience brooding in the back of the classroom, wearing black, playing Vampire: The Masquerade and writing gawd-awful poetry I can attest that you do not need to flirt with Reality to achieve Angst. This infatuation with real life, realism and Reality that has infected you and your peers is worrying to say the least. I know Reality is attractive, but beneath that sly smile beats the heart of a predator. I would think that anyone who reads comics would know that the true nature of Reality is that of a ravenous beast which devours the creative and idealistic soul. I can't imagine what would entice you to bring such a creature into a comic book. Is it drugs? Do you need some?
As a matter of necessity, I would advise avoiding Reality at all costs. Reality is no good for you. Reality plies you with alcohol. Reality makes you pick up the check. Reality does not pay for gas or the hotel room. Reality does not call back the next morning. Reality is cruel. Reality is vindictive. Reality is jealous and clingy, but expects to be able to run around at all hours of the night with heaven-knows-who. I know, I've flirted with Reality myself (Reality's bisexual, by the way) and it was nothing but too much trouble for not even a quality heartbreak. Surely, there's a better way to achieve Angst than by associating yourself with Reality.
But I digress (all the time, now that I think about it, and no one seems to mind). My point is that there are ways of getting a reaction out of your reader, and they define the quality of your writing. I am not the only reader paying for cheap thrills, an emotional roller-coaster to ride every month. But there are cheap thrills to make a story engaging and fun, and there are cheap shocks to get a quick gut reaction from your audience. Cheap thrills pretend to be nothing other than that. Cheap shocks feign the sort of in-depth literary writing that garners praise for creating emotion reactions when they are actually just playing on emotional reactions that the majority of readers would have. Cheap thrills can be low or high quality writing, and they can be intensely imaginative. Cheap shocks are always low quality writing, and they betray a lack of imagination. The Green Lantern franchise, with a massively long history, and a massively large, weird cosmic background is fertile ground for the imagination. The test of a writer's skill is the same as in all speculative fiction, by how they draw the reader into temporarily believing an outrageous situation. The writer can focus on applying plausibility to the basic personality of the main character, and use that plausibility as anchor to a wonderful, imaginative and insightful story, or they can fake imagination and insight by throwing a few realistic elements on the surface, leading to a regularly mediocre, often infuriating, and sometimes offensive story.
Sincerely,
A fan who will be re-reading back issues.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Green Lantern #15
Nothing here to break up my foul mood. Expect the creator bashing stick to remain readily available this month, because if I can't enjoy Green Lantern it's a bad sign for everything else I read.
Ivan Reis should not be allowed to design female costumes anymore. Granted, at least this one is pretty, but still disturbingly indecent and impractical, and completely impossible to wear as a convention costume. Someone needs to get that artist a date.
I liked parts of this issue, but I still hate Geoff Johns for that storyline that's popped up in issue #10, issue #14, and this one. You'll probably hear a lot more about it because its irritating the shit out of me.
Ivan Reis should not be allowed to design female costumes anymore. Granted, at least this one is pretty, but still disturbingly indecent and impractical, and completely impossible to wear as a convention costume. Someone needs to get that artist a date.
I liked parts of this issue, but I still hate Geoff Johns for that storyline that's popped up in issue #10, issue #14, and this one. You'll probably hear a lot more about it because its irritating the shit out of me.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Escapism
Trying to get back into comics after nearly a month of being absolutely obsessed with real-world events. I've been reading comics and writing my NaNoWriMo for that.
Green Lantern #14 didn't help much. It depressed the hell out of me, reminding me of more than a few disillusioning things in the news lately. I was writing things making fun of current events to take my mind off of a lot of these things. I didn't warm this plotline in Green Lantern #10 and its still not for me.
Fortunately, I found my missing Daredevil issue, so maybe I can get into that instead.
Edit: The last page of Daredevil #86 -- Yeah, that cheered me up.
Green Lantern #14 didn't help much. It depressed the hell out of me, reminding me of more than a few disillusioning things in the news lately. I was writing things making fun of current events to take my mind off of a lot of these things. I didn't warm this plotline in Green Lantern #10 and its still not for me.
Fortunately, I found my missing Daredevil issue, so maybe I can get into that instead.
Edit: The last page of Daredevil #86 -- Yeah, that cheered me up.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Go read.
While I was probably damaging Geoff Johns approval ranting a bit more than I intended with my last post, Kalinara was making up for it by dispelling an annoying myth about Johns' Green Lantern.
And I'd like to take this occasion to point out again, that I can't understand why any Green Lantern fan would scoff at a bug-shaped, mind-controlling, yellow, parasitic, fear-inducing, monster (from OUTER SPAAAAACE!!). It's every possible weakness, rolled together and put into in a crunchy grasshopper shell.
I say this nice thing today because I sent him a message about the quote we were discussing earlier, and I may very well be too angry to say anything nice tomorrow.
And I'd like to take this occasion to point out again, that I can't understand why any Green Lantern fan would scoff at a bug-shaped, mind-controlling, yellow, parasitic, fear-inducing, monster (from OUTER SPAAAAACE!!). It's every possible weakness, rolled together and put into in a crunchy grasshopper shell.
I say this nice thing today because I sent him a message about the quote we were discussing earlier, and I may very well be too angry to say anything nice tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Action Comics #843 Realizations
This comic taught me something very important about the Phantom Lady.
She is made entirely of plastic.
Shiny, shiny plastic.
I wouldn't have been looking at it if not for Kalinara's post (my problem with Phantom Lady is not her cup size or the lighting, but the hideous and improbable pose she struck in the Brave New World Preview Art -- Yes, there is something for everyone to hate in that picture!), but there it is, the explanation for all of our woes. Plastic. As a plot point.
The Wizard: Basic Training scans don't completely shoot down this theory. I saw them in the magazine when I was a teenager and tried to learn to draw from them. They've been drawing off that advice for years and while they've produced some truly, truly awful parodies of the female form, there's rarely been something quite this bad.
And it's hard to believe that this is owed entirely to lack of talent of the designer, because the above image was drawn by an artist with a different style and a different inker, in a different book.
As much as we may hate to admit it, Phantom Lady could very, very easily be on purpose.
The option is intriguing. Not nearly intriguing enough for me to pick up Freedom Fighters and brave Acuna's faux-to-realistic art, but intriguing nonetheless. The whole senator's daughter thing could just be a good cover, and she's actually a plastic android built by Ivo, Morrow, or Magnus, and therefore sentient. That would be pretty cool.
Shame it doesn't make for pretty art.
Speaking of pretty, though, on the very same page of the very issue, we see Green Lantern:
I am not imagining this.
That character is posed so that we see both his butt and his face.
I'm prepared to throw out all previous theories. This can't be some attempt at equal objectification. There's no way its actually a running in-joke at DC over the last 45 years. And there is absolutely no chance that this is an accident.
Hal Jordan is purposefully trying to moon us.
He is consciously aware that he is being read, and he's been mooning us. There's no other explanation. And whoever told him, told the other Lanterns. They know too, that is how they always position themselves in such a way as to display their rumps. Collectively, the Green Lantern Corps has been breaking the Fourth Wall just to show us their hindquarters.
I'm sorry to end this post on such an abrupt and awe-inspiring revelation, but I think I need to sit down after this one.
She is made entirely of plastic.
Shiny, shiny plastic.
I wouldn't have been looking at it if not for Kalinara's post (my problem with Phantom Lady is not her cup size or the lighting, but the hideous and improbable pose she struck in the Brave New World Preview Art -- Yes, there is something for everyone to hate in that picture!), but there it is, the explanation for all of our woes. Plastic. As a plot point.
The Wizard: Basic Training scans don't completely shoot down this theory. I saw them in the magazine when I was a teenager and tried to learn to draw from them. They've been drawing off that advice for years and while they've produced some truly, truly awful parodies of the female form, there's rarely been something quite this bad.
And it's hard to believe that this is owed entirely to lack of talent of the designer, because the above image was drawn by an artist with a different style and a different inker, in a different book.
As much as we may hate to admit it, Phantom Lady could very, very easily be on purpose.
The option is intriguing. Not nearly intriguing enough for me to pick up Freedom Fighters and brave Acuna's faux-to-realistic art, but intriguing nonetheless. The whole senator's daughter thing could just be a good cover, and she's actually a plastic android built by Ivo, Morrow, or Magnus, and therefore sentient. That would be pretty cool.
Shame it doesn't make for pretty art.
Speaking of pretty, though, on the very same page of the very issue, we see Green Lantern:
I am not imagining this.
That character is posed so that we see both his butt and his face.
I'm prepared to throw out all previous theories. This can't be some attempt at equal objectification. There's no way its actually a running in-joke at DC over the last 45 years. And there is absolutely no chance that this is an accident.
Hal Jordan is purposefully trying to moon us.
He is consciously aware that he is being read, and he's been mooning us. There's no other explanation. And whoever told him, told the other Lanterns. They know too, that is how they always position themselves in such a way as to display their rumps. Collectively, the Green Lantern Corps has been breaking the Fourth Wall just to show us their hindquarters.
I'm sorry to end this post on such an abrupt and awe-inspiring revelation, but I think I need to sit down after this one.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Assistance Required
I'm sure I've mentioned before that my favorite Volume III Green Lantern storyline was "Emerald Knights" where a time-traveling Kyle ended up bringing a past version of Hal home with him. I read it when I was a teenager (it's where I elarned to love Hal), so I had to buy the trade paperback after I got out on my own. I thought I had the entire crossover, but it seems I've missed at least one issue.
Sally tells me she found it on Scans_Daily.
I have all of the tie-ins from Green Lantern and Green Arrow. This scene does not occur in either book. If anyone recognizesd the above scene and can point me to the entire story, I'd greatly appreciate it.
I'd also appreciate any other tie-ins from that storyline that I may have missed.
Thank you.
Sally tells me she found it on Scans_Daily.
I have all of the tie-ins from Green Lantern and Green Arrow. This scene does not occur in either book. If anyone recognizesd the above scene and can point me to the entire story, I'd greatly appreciate it.
I'd also appreciate any other tie-ins from that storyline that I may have missed.
Thank you.
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