The other day Variety listed some actresses up for "the femme lead" in Superman, and specifically stated it wasn't Lois Lane.
It sounded suspiciously like a boneheaded idea of trying a romance story with Superman and some other woman.
This caused some angst for people who went "Wait.. That can't be right. What female character would be BIGGER than Lois Lane in this? Is she even gonna be IN it?" The only idea that made sense to me was that it might be a villainess (or they made a mistake, and it was just a female lead but not The Female Lead).
I'm gonna go ahead and do my "I was right" dance now at the newest rumors. Not only is it a villainess, but revealing the identity of the villainess these 3 actresses are up for seems to contradict some of the statements Snyder has said about the film. (Yeah, this is as big a rumor too but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than letting Lana fricking Lang lead a Superman movie.)
And the one who leaked it also went out of their way to say "Lois Lane will be in the film."
Does anyone else think this got into Variety, too many people went "NOOO" and they suddenly went "Oh shit, we gotta correct this one... but with some deniability so we won't spoil it"?
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Friday, February 04, 2011
Place your bets, folks
By way of Let's Be Friends Again comes this bit of Brightest Day:
Well, Roy Harper is back on drugs, Wonder Woman's mother died in flames, Aquaman is short a hand and according to Chris Haley, they're planning to do Eclipso vs the DCU again. (And don't get smug, Marvel, what with offing a member of the Fantastic Four and taking us to a dystopian timeline where the X-men never existed.) So now's the time to speculate on what's next in the Brightest Day Event. Is it...
1) Wonder Woman loses her friend in a very special issue.
2) A Big Time Demon calls the crummiest villains in the universe together to offer them new power.
3) The Justice League finds that having wiped the memory of an enemy was a bad idea.
4) Hal Jordan hosts Parallax and/or the Spectre again.
5) The Flash is put on trial for murder. (ETA: Oops, they just did this one.)
6) Dark Seid versus the Legion of Super-Heroes.
7) Guy Gardner goes into a coma, and comes out with the mentality of a 14-year-old boy.
8) Supergirl sprouts wings of flame.
9) The skies turn red and a mysterious white nothingness advances menacingly on our heroes.
10) This issue: Superman DIES.
Well, Roy Harper is back on drugs, Wonder Woman's mother died in flames, Aquaman is short a hand and according to Chris Haley, they're planning to do Eclipso vs the DCU again. (And don't get smug, Marvel, what with offing a member of the Fantastic Four and taking us to a dystopian timeline where the X-men never existed.) So now's the time to speculate on what's next in the Brightest Day Event. Is it...
1) Wonder Woman loses her friend in a very special issue.
2) A Big Time Demon calls the crummiest villains in the universe together to offer them new power.
3) The Justice League finds that having wiped the memory of an enemy was a bad idea.
4) Hal Jordan hosts Parallax and/or the Spectre again.
6) Dark Seid versus the Legion of Super-Heroes.
7) Guy Gardner goes into a coma, and comes out with the mentality of a 14-year-old boy.
8) Supergirl sprouts wings of flame.
9) The skies turn red and a mysterious white nothingness advances menacingly on our heroes.
10) This issue: Superman DIES.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
So far this year is a bit surreal
I returned from escorting the locksmith to find someone had left a NATO medal on my desk with a certificate. (My name is on the certificate, and it appears to be in French.)
I discovered that after seven years I could still explain the difference between Pulse Amplitude Modulation, Pulse Duration Modulation and Pulse Code Modulation. (I need a whiteboard and a flashlight, though.)
I put this thought out there, and am confident it will seep into someone's fanfiction and/or fanart soon.
I became one of those nerds who answers college assignments with nerdy stuff, despite having promised myself I wouldn't. Not only that, it was discussing the meaning of the term "canon", a word that makes me cringe.
I learned that the car that shares my last name has this slogan:
I learned that I am genuinely more radical than the sexual assault response coordinator on base. Also, I'm told by a coworker who attended an Army-sponsored women's rights meeting while deployed that I am WAY more radical than they were. (Among bloggers I'm pretty moderate, but in the military looks like I'm as far left as will enter a recruiter's office.)
I saw an officer give a briefing...
That last one was the same day I explained the modulation differences to a room with three Airmen and a smartass new NCO. I was constantly worrying that my communication skills would fail me and I'd be unable to properly answer the question, I'd look like an idiot, and they would conclude that I (and, by extension, all other women) knew nothing about the actual job and that that was why I was always filing stuff. I'm not great at getting my point across with my voice, I prefer writing it out. I actually managed it, though, and helped them out.
A few hours later, we all went to a mandatory briefing where they put on a video on drunk driving. We all shrugged, because driving drunk is widely considered to be the stupidest thing you can do while in the military. It causes the whole base to get in trouble, basically, and it is easy to avoid with the support network we've set up. Then he stressed that the next speaker was entire voluntary, and had suggested this himself. And I watched an officer, a man in leadership position walk to the front of his unit, in front of all of his subordinates, and calmly, smoothly tell everyone he'd done the stupidest thing you can do while in the military.
And I'd been nervous about forgetting modulation techniques I hadn't discussed in half a decade.
I discovered that after seven years I could still explain the difference between Pulse Amplitude Modulation, Pulse Duration Modulation and Pulse Code Modulation. (I need a whiteboard and a flashlight, though.)
I put this thought out there, and am confident it will seep into someone's fanfiction and/or fanart soon.
I became one of those nerds who answers college assignments with nerdy stuff, despite having promised myself I wouldn't. Not only that, it was discussing the meaning of the term "canon", a word that makes me cringe.
I learned that the car that shares my last name has this slogan:
I learned that I am genuinely more radical than the sexual assault response coordinator on base. Also, I'm told by a coworker who attended an Army-sponsored women's rights meeting while deployed that I am WAY more radical than they were. (Among bloggers I'm pretty moderate, but in the military looks like I'm as far left as will enter a recruiter's office.)
I saw an officer give a briefing...
That last one was the same day I explained the modulation differences to a room with three Airmen and a smartass new NCO. I was constantly worrying that my communication skills would fail me and I'd be unable to properly answer the question, I'd look like an idiot, and they would conclude that I (and, by extension, all other women) knew nothing about the actual job and that that was why I was always filing stuff. I'm not great at getting my point across with my voice, I prefer writing it out. I actually managed it, though, and helped them out.
A few hours later, we all went to a mandatory briefing where they put on a video on drunk driving. We all shrugged, because driving drunk is widely considered to be the stupidest thing you can do while in the military. It causes the whole base to get in trouble, basically, and it is easy to avoid with the support network we've set up. Then he stressed that the next speaker was entire voluntary, and had suggested this himself. And I watched an officer, a man in leadership position walk to the front of his unit, in front of all of his subordinates, and calmly, smoothly tell everyone he'd done the stupidest thing you can do while in the military.
And I'd been nervous about forgetting modulation techniques I hadn't discussed in half a decade.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Rumors
There is a bad Wonder Woman TV pilot script floating around, and pretty much everything on it sounds like a checklist of "Things that will annoy Wonder Woman fans." I feel safe in ignoring this as a prank or a journalist reading the absolute worst possible interpretation of events at the moment. Even if it's real, scripts go through a shit-ton of changes before they show up on screen.
I think it's just that we've seen so much horrible shit in her comic and horrible idiocy suggested by Hollywood about her that we'll believe anything as long as it's bad enough. I expect heavy drinking on premier night, but I'm not breaking out the whiskey yet.
I think it's just that we've seen so much horrible shit in her comic and horrible idiocy suggested by Hollywood about her that we'll believe anything as long as it's bad enough. I expect heavy drinking on premier night, but I'm not breaking out the whiskey yet.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
As long as I'm wishing for things...
I've realized recently that if Marvel were to write a comic just for me it would be an ongoing series starring Magneto and focusing on how he relates to his family. You could set stories where he's a good guy and a bad guy, because he certainly switches, is horrifying or sympathetic, and where he fights the X-men or helps them, but the main draw for me would be a promise of seeing the family ("the family" is to be referred to with Ron Howard's voice because I've watched too much Arrested Development). ALL of his children and grandchildren (even Luna now that she's got funky mind powers) qualify as super-heroes, and he is a Big Time super-villain. If you do not find that interesting, I don't understand you.
Right now in Children's Crusade, the main thing that keeps me picking it up (other than desperate hope that Wanda will do something) is watching Tommy, Pietro, and Magneto all try to out-smartass each other. (Billy and Wanda should join in once they've finished laying out the exposition.)
Marvel could easily pick this up after this series ends, and we'll have two sets of twins plus Grandpa. You already have some serious dramatic potential there, with the two sets of twins trying to become a full family again, and Magneto trying to be an X-man still. While he's trying to do the hero thing, he's also trying to rebuild those bridges now that he's got a couple of stepping stones put down again.
Bring Lorna back from space with the boyfriend, and you have another set of characters to enfold into the family. Polaris and Magneto is already a compelling interaction, Polaris plus the twins (and new twins) after House of M is so fascinating to me that I can't understand why Marvel wants to let this lie.
And while Magneto would be the central character, this would be an excuse to showcase how the family interacts with each other. We could get my Pietro-Lorna teamup here, Wanda and Lorna doing sister stuff (and fighting evil), Wanda and her children, Lorna and her niece and nephews...etc...
Along the way, natural storylines would bring in Crystal and Luna, Hulkling, the Kaplan family, the Shepherd family, Rogue and Professor X for an issue or a few arcs. Tommy could get a little robot girlfriend. Magneto could try to manipulate Pietro into dating a human or mutant woman. (I think he'd leave Wanda alone since even down to the basic "I make bad things happen" power she's not someone wise to mess with, and she's already had two mutant children.) Ideally they'd find excuses to bring back the old Vision (not the dumb emotionless one, or the admittedly nice baby one, but the Vision who married Wanda), Astra, Joseph, and--for me the Holy Grail of potential Magneto stories--Magda.
Marvel, I promise you that unless you put an absolutely DIRE creative team on it I would buy the hell out of this.
Right now in Children's Crusade, the main thing that keeps me picking it up (other than desperate hope that Wanda will do something) is watching Tommy, Pietro, and Magneto all try to out-smartass each other. (Billy and Wanda should join in once they've finished laying out the exposition.)
Marvel could easily pick this up after this series ends, and we'll have two sets of twins plus Grandpa. You already have some serious dramatic potential there, with the two sets of twins trying to become a full family again, and Magneto trying to be an X-man still. While he's trying to do the hero thing, he's also trying to rebuild those bridges now that he's got a couple of stepping stones put down again.
Bring Lorna back from space with the boyfriend, and you have another set of characters to enfold into the family. Polaris and Magneto is already a compelling interaction, Polaris plus the twins (and new twins) after House of M is so fascinating to me that I can't understand why Marvel wants to let this lie.
And while Magneto would be the central character, this would be an excuse to showcase how the family interacts with each other. We could get my Pietro-Lorna teamup here, Wanda and Lorna doing sister stuff (and fighting evil), Wanda and her children, Lorna and her niece and nephews...etc...
Along the way, natural storylines would bring in Crystal and Luna, Hulkling, the Kaplan family, the Shepherd family, Rogue and Professor X for an issue or a few arcs. Tommy could get a little robot girlfriend. Magneto could try to manipulate Pietro into dating a human or mutant woman. (I think he'd leave Wanda alone since even down to the basic "I make bad things happen" power she's not someone wise to mess with, and she's already had two mutant children.) Ideally they'd find excuses to bring back the old Vision (not the dumb emotionless one, or the admittedly nice baby one, but the Vision who married Wanda), Astra, Joseph, and--for me the Holy Grail of potential Magneto stories--Magda.
Marvel, I promise you that unless you put an absolutely DIRE creative team on it I would buy the hell out of this.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Today's Grant Morrison's birthday, so I will blog on his writing.
Now, if you've looked at any other post on this blog you can probably tell that I am a HUGE fan of Grant Morrison and multi-level narrative themes. I have a ridiculously short attention span, so the pacing and the denseness of his stories really appeals to me, as well as the fact that I can read them any number of times and see new things each time. I adore wall to wall weird and screwing with the timing in a story. I'll often let his books pile up issue by issue on my table until I get an entire storyline and can read it all in one burst, then reread it.
Favorites of mine? I read trades of the Invisibles and Doom Patrol like I was addicted. I will never ever get tired of Flex Mentallo or Kill Your Boyfriend. Right now his Batman stuff is the only DC I'm reading regularly. I got into DC as a teenager with his JLA and have been unable to look at the X-men franchise the same since he left the book. Seven Soldiers is just a treasure trove, and contains two of the three best superhero miniseries I have ever read.
He's actually responsible for getting me to enjoy Wonder Woman, Superman, and Jean Grey. Not because I think he was someone who finally found a new use for those characters, but because they really shined under his compressed style. At his pacing, he has to really dig into a character and find a way to get across their core and their overarcing lessons at that speed. There's a lot of room for error there, there are some characters I don't really like how he handles them and others I ONLY like when he writes them but sometimes he presents them at an angle that enriches other portrayals for me. With those three characters, they clicked for me under Morrison. After reading his JLA, I suddenly found myself interested in and just enjoying appearances by Superman and Wonder Woman, two characters I'd previously written off. And his Jean Grey in New X-men actually got me to look back at previous issues that had her in them with fresh eyes. She's one of my favorites now, and I'm super-pissed they left her dead at the end of his run. (Not that he killed her, though. The story was too enjoyable and I think the existence of Future Jean made it all the more temporary.)
The three favorite superhero miniseries I've ever read were written by this guy: Seven Soldiers: The Bulleteer (compelling themes about the youth/beauty standard for women and the sexualization of superheroines, plus the refrigerator fight), Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight (coming of age story with Mabinogion King Arthur and super-science setting), and Flex Mentallo (which remains the most quotable love letter to superhero stories I've ever seen.) If you've ever taken a recommendation from me on anything, take my recommendation of those three stories.
Favorites of mine? I read trades of the Invisibles and Doom Patrol like I was addicted. I will never ever get tired of Flex Mentallo or Kill Your Boyfriend. Right now his Batman stuff is the only DC I'm reading regularly. I got into DC as a teenager with his JLA and have been unable to look at the X-men franchise the same since he left the book. Seven Soldiers is just a treasure trove, and contains two of the three best superhero miniseries I have ever read.
He's actually responsible for getting me to enjoy Wonder Woman, Superman, and Jean Grey. Not because I think he was someone who finally found a new use for those characters, but because they really shined under his compressed style. At his pacing, he has to really dig into a character and find a way to get across their core and their overarcing lessons at that speed. There's a lot of room for error there, there are some characters I don't really like how he handles them and others I ONLY like when he writes them but sometimes he presents them at an angle that enriches other portrayals for me. With those three characters, they clicked for me under Morrison. After reading his JLA, I suddenly found myself interested in and just enjoying appearances by Superman and Wonder Woman, two characters I'd previously written off. And his Jean Grey in New X-men actually got me to look back at previous issues that had her in them with fresh eyes. She's one of my favorites now, and I'm super-pissed they left her dead at the end of his run. (Not that he killed her, though. The story was too enjoyable and I think the existence of Future Jean made it all the more temporary.)
The three favorite superhero miniseries I've ever read were written by this guy: Seven Soldiers: The Bulleteer (compelling themes about the youth/beauty standard for women and the sexualization of superheroines, plus the refrigerator fight), Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight (coming of age story with Mabinogion King Arthur and super-science setting), and Flex Mentallo (which remains the most quotable love letter to superhero stories I've ever seen.) If you've ever taken a recommendation from me on anything, take my recommendation of those three stories.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
I'm still complaining about this one.
Even today, I can't get over the number of people who want to see Wonder Woman end up with Superman or Batman. I mean, I can handle a little flirting, a story with a date now and then, but I think that pushing either one as the major romance in her life minimizes Wonder Woman as an independent character. It reduces her to a prize for one of the DCU's great Alpha Males, and hurts her standing as a franchise. She becomes an accessory to one of them.
So it really irks me, not just to see so many fans who love this, but to see how often it seeps into the comics and their media tie-ins. In particular, it pisses me off when it becomes a focus in her own book, as her crush on Superman in the Perez run or even Rucka pulling that shit with Batman in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman. She is her own character, she deserves her own love interest but writers can't seem to get them to stick.
And this is DC's fault, because they aged and married off the guy who was meant to be her Lois Lane. Rather than rehabilitate him like they did Lois, and modernize him for the new era it seems they decided just not to use him anymore. The logic was that it was sexist for her to fall for the first man she ever saw. So they made the first man she ever saw into a fatherly mentor, and decided it would be better if her first romantic interest in a man was to be attracted to Superman. Because being attracted to a man that DC will never allow her to outshine is somehow less sexist than the original dynamic of her being attracted to a normal man who is equally turned on by her saving his ass all the time.
It's the dumbest thing they did when they rebooted Wonder Woman, and potentially the dumbest thing they've done in her history. (Even when they killed him off it was better because he had still existed, and they could always bring him back.) They simply haven't been able to recover. Every love interest they've introduced (Micah, Michael, Rama, Trevor, Io, Nemesis) that survives the writer who introduced them gets ignored by the next writer. None of them seem to take. In the meantime, tons of fans argue over whether Batman or Superman suit her better because so few people have seen that she was originally created with a love interest as part of her supporting cast.
Honestly, if they can get anything out of this Flashpoint and JMS reboot shit, it should be that they can bring back Steve Trevor revamped to suit her modern trappings, as a viable love interest. He lasted 45 years, after all. No one else can seem to stick around beyond the next writer.
So it really irks me, not just to see so many fans who love this, but to see how often it seeps into the comics and their media tie-ins. In particular, it pisses me off when it becomes a focus in her own book, as her crush on Superman in the Perez run or even Rucka pulling that shit with Batman in Blackest Night: Wonder Woman. She is her own character, she deserves her own love interest but writers can't seem to get them to stick.
And this is DC's fault, because they aged and married off the guy who was meant to be her Lois Lane. Rather than rehabilitate him like they did Lois, and modernize him for the new era it seems they decided just not to use him anymore. The logic was that it was sexist for her to fall for the first man she ever saw. So they made the first man she ever saw into a fatherly mentor, and decided it would be better if her first romantic interest in a man was to be attracted to Superman. Because being attracted to a man that DC will never allow her to outshine is somehow less sexist than the original dynamic of her being attracted to a normal man who is equally turned on by her saving his ass all the time.
It's the dumbest thing they did when they rebooted Wonder Woman, and potentially the dumbest thing they've done in her history. (Even when they killed him off it was better because he had still existed, and they could always bring him back.) They simply haven't been able to recover. Every love interest they've introduced (Micah, Michael, Rama, Trevor, Io, Nemesis) that survives the writer who introduced them gets ignored by the next writer. None of them seem to take. In the meantime, tons of fans argue over whether Batman or Superman suit her better because so few people have seen that she was originally created with a love interest as part of her supporting cast.
Honestly, if they can get anything out of this Flashpoint and JMS reboot shit, it should be that they can bring back Steve Trevor revamped to suit her modern trappings, as a viable love interest. He lasted 45 years, after all. No one else can seem to stick around beyond the next writer.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
He has no right to look this good.
I'd briefly considered ordering the Age of X: Alpha book this week simply because the Magneto costume design is so beautiful looking, and I am a sucker for Magneto. Still, the initial marketing campaign was very off-putting so instead O decided to slot that money towards a Chaykin-written Magneto one-shot. It is currently in the mail, but in the meantime @#$% Yeah Magneto has started posted some of the artwork and already I'm feeling good about my purchase. Check out this splash:
That is Magneto rocking the suit and trenchcoat look after he clears customs with a stolen identity. I'm told this is set when he first gets to the US, after the falling out with Xavier. Now, if I remember my X-men timing properly means that right now Xavier is scoping out Scott so it's within the past fifteen years. Magneto was a teenager in WWII, so he's coming up on 90 right now. That gorgeous man in that picture is around 75 years old.
Not only that, there's panels of him on a date with a much younger woman. I like this, because I'm particularly enamored of Magneto in a romantic setting. My reasons for this are complicated, though.
You know those terrible romance novels where there's an infamous bad guy who is a perfect gentleman to the heroine, so she falls for him? Not really the bodice rippers, mind you, but one of those where the guy treats her like fine porcelain but engages in violent behavior against every other character. It's this weird safe fantasy in love stories where the heroine is special enough that she is immune to the man's violent tendencies or he's somehow redeemed because sexism/chivalry keeps him from acting violently towards a woman.
Magneto romance stories use that setup, but his history acknowledges how completely removed from reality this feeling of safety is. Yeah, there's people like Rogue that he ended it with a bittersweet parting (I remember one where he told his life story in pillow talk to some girl he picked up on the beach and far as I know he just left, betcha this girl in this one-shot ends up okay too) but this guy has had some very bad breakups. Magda wisely realized that someone with that much power who is prone to paranoia and fits of rage is bound to lose it and hurt a loved one (like, y'know, their son) so she left. She leaves the children because she expects him to be so mad he'll kill her and take them. It's heavily implied that Lorna's mother was killed in a plane crash caused by Magneto. He attacks Astra on sight. Hell, even that bromance he had with Xavier ended on a really sour note.
And because they've done this, they've established that he is a bad guy who does bad things even to people he loves, they have a lot of flexibility when it comes to Magneto stories. They can explore his soft side and humanize him without erasing or trivializing his violent side because Magneto is such a huge, established and well-known villain that there's no point in trying to explain away his past or sweep it under the rug. It's there, and the writer has to accept that this is Magneto and he's been a pretty awful person. In the meantime, he's had enough softening and humanizing stories by this point that they don't come off as weird or insincere. Sure Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 was probably weird when it first came out, but by now we all know just how complex this guy is. He can be the grand world-threatening villain without losing our sympathy, and he can be the melancholy, remorseful father without losing his threatening presence.
Ultimately, this what makes him such a compelling villain. His origin and subsequent actions, all of the alternate universes where he's a good guy, all the side-switching, his love life and his attitude towards his children all mean he has our sympathy. Not only that, we can relate to him. We can see ourselves in the shoes of this guy who just randomly has all of this power and ability but has given into his rage and pessimism to end up being exactly the kind of person who caused all of his pain. We can see him as a cautionary tale, someone to pity, someone to root for and someone to fear.
And we can look at a splash page like that, of him full of hope and cheer having stolen his friend's identity and illegally entered the country, and know that he's going to become a major supervillain but still smile at how happy and roguish he is, and how great he looks in the suit.
That is Magneto rocking the suit and trenchcoat look after he clears customs with a stolen identity. I'm told this is set when he first gets to the US, after the falling out with Xavier. Now, if I remember my X-men timing properly means that right now Xavier is scoping out Scott so it's within the past fifteen years. Magneto was a teenager in WWII, so he's coming up on 90 right now. That gorgeous man in that picture is around 75 years old.
Not only that, there's panels of him on a date with a much younger woman. I like this, because I'm particularly enamored of Magneto in a romantic setting. My reasons for this are complicated, though.
You know those terrible romance novels where there's an infamous bad guy who is a perfect gentleman to the heroine, so she falls for him? Not really the bodice rippers, mind you, but one of those where the guy treats her like fine porcelain but engages in violent behavior against every other character. It's this weird safe fantasy in love stories where the heroine is special enough that she is immune to the man's violent tendencies or he's somehow redeemed because sexism/chivalry keeps him from acting violently towards a woman.
Magneto romance stories use that setup, but his history acknowledges how completely removed from reality this feeling of safety is. Yeah, there's people like Rogue that he ended it with a bittersweet parting (I remember one where he told his life story in pillow talk to some girl he picked up on the beach and far as I know he just left, betcha this girl in this one-shot ends up okay too) but this guy has had some very bad breakups. Magda wisely realized that someone with that much power who is prone to paranoia and fits of rage is bound to lose it and hurt a loved one (like, y'know, their son) so she left. She leaves the children because she expects him to be so mad he'll kill her and take them. It's heavily implied that Lorna's mother was killed in a plane crash caused by Magneto. He attacks Astra on sight. Hell, even that bromance he had with Xavier ended on a really sour note.
And because they've done this, they've established that he is a bad guy who does bad things even to people he loves, they have a lot of flexibility when it comes to Magneto stories. They can explore his soft side and humanize him without erasing or trivializing his violent side because Magneto is such a huge, established and well-known villain that there's no point in trying to explain away his past or sweep it under the rug. It's there, and the writer has to accept that this is Magneto and he's been a pretty awful person. In the meantime, he's had enough softening and humanizing stories by this point that they don't come off as weird or insincere. Sure Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4 was probably weird when it first came out, but by now we all know just how complex this guy is. He can be the grand world-threatening villain without losing our sympathy, and he can be the melancholy, remorseful father without losing his threatening presence.
Ultimately, this what makes him such a compelling villain. His origin and subsequent actions, all of the alternate universes where he's a good guy, all the side-switching, his love life and his attitude towards his children all mean he has our sympathy. Not only that, we can relate to him. We can see ourselves in the shoes of this guy who just randomly has all of this power and ability but has given into his rage and pessimism to end up being exactly the kind of person who caused all of his pain. We can see him as a cautionary tale, someone to pity, someone to root for and someone to fear.
And we can look at a splash page like that, of him full of hope and cheer having stolen his friend's identity and illegally entered the country, and know that he's going to become a major supervillain but still smile at how happy and roguish he is, and how great he looks in the suit.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Team-up I'd Like to See
Polaris and Quicksilver
Right now, Mike Carey's hinting that there'll be Polaris and Magneto interaction this year and I do want to read that but I've seen those two together already. I really want to see her interacting with the twins, especially after House of M. That sort of story should completely change their dynamic.
Of course, the big character dynamic with the twins was set up in a lackluster way by Chuck Austen in Uncanny X-men. Prior to that, I don't remember her really dealing with Wanda (I'm trying to put together the issues of Exiles where AU Wanda and Lorna were together) but she's had a lot of contact with Pietro. They were on X-Factor together, and later they both worked in Genosha for Magneto. Sadly, I think he left before she found out they were related because Austen has her dropping the news on them after her initial post-Genosha breakdown, during the build-up to that dreadful Wedding storyline that I hope Wanda wipes from reality in Avengers: Children's Crusade #5. It bugs me a bit that we didn't see a significant team-up between Pietro and Lorna during that.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the sisters together, but Pietro and Lorna were on a superhero team together before they found out they were related. They worked closely for a while, and I want to see how this discovery affected this. Not only that, Quicksilver is an extremely family-oriented character, and Polaris has a running plot about trying to discover her true self. These characters should want to have a relationship and talk about this revelation, how it's affected them, and just generally about the family.
Lorna is the innocent member of the family in the House of M family fight fall-out, but she was also pulled into the family substantially for the first time by the twins during this. Having been present at the climax in HoM#7 she should remember Wandaworld, her father's fit, and have some words for both the twins and Magneto. That's a mess of emotions on her end. There's huge dramatic potential here and honestly, the best time to do it is during this period between Secret Invasion and Children's Crusade while Pietro is sane but miserably alone and disconnected from his family. (When Wanda gets back, Pietro won't be nearly so starved for sisterly approval.)
Sadly, Brevoort's formspring answers suggest there is no interest in developing this in the Avengers books, and the X-books for years have focused on Magneto and Polaris over her relationship with either twin. I have my fingers crossed Peter David will do something in X-Factor, though.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
I for one can't wait for Amazon Princess Blush
On Youtube, Temptalia has a two-part review of the Wonder Woman MAC cosmetics line packaging. (Via Lulubonza)
This stuff has been all over Tumblr and honestly I keep getting more excited for it. Using Wonder Woman to sell makeup is actually a really great idea and I am shocked that we don't see this more often.
I know, I know, I should be on about false patriarchal beauty shit but I'm not really anti-makeup. It's like fashion, the industry is problematic and the pressure to conform is ridiculous but for a lot of women this is an art form. We wear our creativity.
Besides that, one of the big problems we have with getting a decent Wonder Woman story is the assumption that she is a character made to appeal to the men, a part of a boy's genre in a boy's medium that should be packaged and marketed for the straight male gaze above all else. This idea is what makes people cringe at the idea of a kid-friendly Wonder Woman cartoon for little girls, or cutting down on the horrible sexualization in her art, or just really putting some effort into a female-friendly take on Wonder Woman.
Cosmetics and fashion are forms of self-expression overwhelmingly dominated by and marketed to women. Wonder Woman being used to sell cosmetics is THE concession in the "Who does Wonder Woman appeal to?" argument. This is DC admitting that Wonder Woman is character designed to appeal to women. I want some of this makeup, but if I don't manage to get any of the limited items I can take some solace in that it sold that much better than expected, and that we have such a successful example of the Wonder Woman brings in women's money rule to throw at DC.
Besides, check out the names of the items.
This stuff has been all over Tumblr and honestly I keep getting more excited for it. Using Wonder Woman to sell makeup is actually a really great idea and I am shocked that we don't see this more often.
I know, I know, I should be on about false patriarchal beauty shit but I'm not really anti-makeup. It's like fashion, the industry is problematic and the pressure to conform is ridiculous but for a lot of women this is an art form. We wear our creativity.
Besides that, one of the big problems we have with getting a decent Wonder Woman story is the assumption that she is a character made to appeal to the men, a part of a boy's genre in a boy's medium that should be packaged and marketed for the straight male gaze above all else. This idea is what makes people cringe at the idea of a kid-friendly Wonder Woman cartoon for little girls, or cutting down on the horrible sexualization in her art, or just really putting some effort into a female-friendly take on Wonder Woman.
Cosmetics and fashion are forms of self-expression overwhelmingly dominated by and marketed to women. Wonder Woman being used to sell cosmetics is THE concession in the "Who does Wonder Woman appeal to?" argument. This is DC admitting that Wonder Woman is character designed to appeal to women. I want some of this makeup, but if I don't manage to get any of the limited items I can take some solace in that it sold that much better than expected, and that we have such a successful example of the Wonder Woman brings in women's money rule to throw at DC.
Besides, check out the names of the items.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sidebar Addition: The Paper Mirror
The other link I added to my sidebar besides the infamous Rule is a piece by Cathy Leamy called the Paper Mirror. That this is so unknown and unreferenced is absolutely criminally. I'm not sure where she got the title, but I really think the phrase "Paper Mirror" should be in regular use when we discuss diversity in comics. It describes exactly what many of us have been trying to say in letters and message board conversations and thirteen-paragraph blogposts.
Sidebar Addition: The Rule
Over at the top of my sidebar I added a link to the Rule from Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For. The Bechdel Test is downright mainstream by now, and I see tons of people explain and use it as a conversation opener without ever linking this comic.
Go read it if you never have. I'll wait.
I'm always a bit irritated to see people use the test without linking the comic, not because I feel credit isn't properly given--the cartoonist's name is the test name--but because it's a weaker way to get the point across. See, as good a conversation starter as the Bechdel Test might be, it pales in comparison to the comic itself. The comic itself is not effective because it sets down some sort of litmus test or even a way to analyze movies for the futures. It's effective because it puts forth in a simple punchline Hollywood's pathetic limitations when it comes to women. You react just like the characters. You laugh at the joke, then you sigh because it's true. No blog post with bullet points can get this kind of disappointment across as well as the second to the last panel.
Go read it if you never have. I'll wait.
I'm always a bit irritated to see people use the test without linking the comic, not because I feel credit isn't properly given--the cartoonist's name is the test name--but because it's a weaker way to get the point across. See, as good a conversation starter as the Bechdel Test might be, it pales in comparison to the comic itself. The comic itself is not effective because it sets down some sort of litmus test or even a way to analyze movies for the futures. It's effective because it puts forth in a simple punchline Hollywood's pathetic limitations when it comes to women. You react just like the characters. You laugh at the joke, then you sigh because it's true. No blog post with bullet points can get this kind of disappointment across as well as the second to the last panel.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
More Poor Marketing
Young Justice preview clip from DC Women Kicking Ass.
While I didn't take to the boys in the pilot, I had some hope I'd like Miss Martian. Sadly, I haven't had a chance to see the second episode and from it's promo added to this one I'm not sure why. I mean, look at this. They are on a "stealth mission." Martians have telepathy, invisibility, intangibility, and shapeshifting. They are sneak-machines. Miss Martian has all of these cool powers she can use in a scene like this.
They decide, instead of showing us how cool her abilities are, to take a second to tell us she likes Superboy's ears. In the last promo, Kid Flash talked about how attractive she was. This is clearly the most interesting part of the character to the writers. When given thirty seconds to showcase their team, they decide twice to focus on Miss Martian's romantic aspect. I've seen one image of her flying and maybe having blown something up, and that is only after they spent more time having Kid Flash talk about how hot she is.
So, with all the powers that a Martian has, which is everything Superman has plus telepathy and shapshifting... the coolest thing they think Miss Martian does is crush on Superboy.
This promo, and the other one, send a pretty clear message that this character is boring as shit and I shouldn't a half hour on the off chance that I might like her.
"But Raaaaagnell! You shouldn't judge a TV show by it's advertising!" Well, why the fuck not? This is what THEY think is the most enticing footage from the next episode, why should I assume there's anything different in the rest?
While I didn't take to the boys in the pilot, I had some hope I'd like Miss Martian. Sadly, I haven't had a chance to see the second episode and from it's promo added to this one I'm not sure why. I mean, look at this. They are on a "stealth mission." Martians have telepathy, invisibility, intangibility, and shapeshifting. They are sneak-machines. Miss Martian has all of these cool powers she can use in a scene like this.
They decide, instead of showing us how cool her abilities are, to take a second to tell us she likes Superboy's ears. In the last promo, Kid Flash talked about how attractive she was. This is clearly the most interesting part of the character to the writers. When given thirty seconds to showcase their team, they decide twice to focus on Miss Martian's romantic aspect. I've seen one image of her flying and maybe having blown something up, and that is only after they spent more time having Kid Flash talk about how hot she is.
So, with all the powers that a Martian has, which is everything Superman has plus telepathy and shapshifting... the coolest thing they think Miss Martian does is crush on Superboy.
This promo, and the other one, send a pretty clear message that this character is boring as shit and I shouldn't a half hour on the off chance that I might like her.
"But Raaaaagnell! You shouldn't judge a TV show by it's advertising!" Well, why the fuck not? This is what THEY think is the most enticing footage from the next episode, why should I assume there's anything different in the rest?
Monday, January 24, 2011
Link: Most Memorable Moments of Marvel Women Semifinals List
I owe you guys a "How a return to magic-based powers can actually save the Scarlet Witch as a hero" post, but it's getting late in my timezone. Instead, go read the list of Most Memorable Moments of Marvel Women at Girls Read Comics Too, and let them know if you want to do a writeup. Some nice ones made it, too. Jan walking out on Hank when he hits her, Storm beating Callisto, Valkyrie's "I do NOT hate men, Sub-mariner, I merely KNOW I’m as GOOD as they are", Jean Grey in Dark Phoenix Saga and so on.
No Wanda, but on the bright side that means no "No more mutants."
Also, I don't mean to brag but--Wait, yes I do. Two of those are ones I suggested, the Jan Van Dyne and Valkyrie moments.
No Wanda, but on the bright side that means no "No more mutants."
Also, I don't mean to brag but--Wait, yes I do. Two of those are ones I suggested, the Jan Van Dyne and Valkyrie moments.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Defending Quicksilver (Hang on, this is a long one)
I've been meaning to blog for a while on Quicksilver's mental breakdown, mainly to answer fans who think that there's no fixing House of M, Son of M, and Silent War without a Skrull or possession explanation. Really, there's a number of points in the storyline that a writer can seize on and use to exonerate him without pulling in a new mind-controlling villain into the mix or saying it was an imposter. I don't know if Bendis or Hine put them in there on purpose, but they're there and I think Peter David at least saw a couple.
In the first place, the already accepted explanation for his complete breakdown is a pretty fucking good one. In House of M he's portrayed as a good but extremely foolish man. Bendis is actually sympathetic to the twins. He makes Pietro play the villain not by setting things up to get everything he wants (like he could), but by setting up a place to hide his sister and sacrificing his own happiness. He gives his father the benefit of the doubt and convinces his sister that Magneto could be a good guy if he had nothing to be afraid of. He gives up his own independance and becomes the obediant, adoring son his father has always demanded. The end result? The old man crushes him to death, he gets resurrected by Wanda (which, judging by Hawkeye's odd behavior afterwards, probably has a temporary effect on the brain chemistry) and awakens the next day to discover that his sister has left him, taken his power, and taken the powers of 99% of his species.
Thing is, I have run into fans that don't think this is enough. That's okay, because there's quite a bit more going on here.
I actually like the first issue of Son of M, because they play this up really well. He's dejected, miserable, powerless, blames himself for M-Day, and when he finally looks past himself to realize just how much harm he did when he was trying to help he finds it so painful he throws himself off a building. Hine really manages to put forward just how depression he's in at the beginning, so when Spider-man's tirade puts him over the edge to self-harm it doesn't seem out of nowhere or a sudden attempt to get sympathy for the character. It seems like this is a person who is that depressed, albeit because of his own actions.
Hine paints a sympathetic portrait of a man becoming a monster, but he doesn't ever call back to the fact that Pietro's a good man. He just has the events unfold and gives us Pietro's view of himself and others during this time. That's actually what ends up ringing false. Pietro is believable in a sickening way when you've been reading him up to this point, but if Son of M #1 was your first exposure to the character you'd think he was always self-centered and short-sighted rather than suffering from an incapacitating bout of depression and that this was him finally getting the results his actions were going to lead to. Crystal's statements, and part of why I hate her so badly in this, suggest that he always had a selfish dark streak and that that was what dissolved the marriage and none of her actions or even her awful uncle screwing them both over. She's an ex-wife who's bad egg of a husband has returned looking for her, and she's strong to tell him off. We're supposed to empathize with her as the virtuous partner. Luna comes off as innocently not knowing how bad her father is. Because we've read Quicksilver, we know he was a real good guy and a good father and husband who tried his best but Hine never lets us see the man Pietro was before M-Day. /He doesn't explain how a good man like Quicksilver be responsible for House of M--leading us to conclude that Pietro was a bad man (or that he has been retconned to be a bad man all along)--or explain how a good man would be driven to stealing those crystals, leading us to conclude that Pietro's nature is supposed to be a selfish bad man being revealed for once because he's lost his power.
It's really skillfully done, the mood and the pacing and the voice all support the story and character, but there is absolutely nothing even acknowledging that he hasn't always been selfish and ruthless. We have to add that ourselves as readers. There are, however, a couple of things in House of M and Son of M together that hint that he's losing it for an external reason.
There's the mood in the first issue of Son of M. There is a great cover where the artist shows everyone as moving superfast while Pietro's standing still, but inside there's a different problem. Pietro's not upset everyone else is moving fast. He's upset that he is moving slow. We know from years of characterization that Quicksilver's powers aren't just running, that he actually perceives and thinks at a greater speed than anyone else. That's why he has a patience problem. He has time to get bored in between words. If he lost all of his powers, everyone else would seem faster like on the cover. He wouldn't be able to keep up with conversations or events, everything would confuse him because it would just be going at a much greater pace than he's used to. Instead, he understands everything that's going on around him, and he perceives himself as going at a snail's pace. He doesn't see other people as going faster, he even asks how they can stand being so slow!
Whether through a stroke of brilliance or a major mistake on Hine's part (*it seems natural to paint someone as being constantly aware of their lost power but really, if he is used to having 5 times as long to process everything, he shouldn't be able to hold a conversation or react at the just slightly too slow speed he's shown reacting at), Pietro's powers are only halfway gone. FYMaximoffs on Tumblr speculated that he hadn't really lost his powers in M-Day, and was just suppressing them out of guilt. Myself, I'd been thinking that Wanda really wanted to depower her brother (thinking it would help him because as much as he loves his powers he's had a lot of social difficulties from them) but messed it up and only got it partly right, fucking his head over even more. The idea he did it himself from the trauma makes more sense, and I prefer it a lot. Whatever caused it, his powers are partially there and causing him to lose his sanity. He's lost his family and he knows it's his fault. He has only one skill, being a superhero, and he can't perform that job anymore. Then Spider-man comes along and tells him (I am not exaggerating) he has no reason to live.
Once he gets to Attilan? Hine actually establishes that someone up there fucks with his mind. This story actually excuses him for his idea to steal the Mists. The Inhumans punish the bad guy and ignore that his brain was fucked with for the umpteenth time when talking about how horrible Pietro is (like they do whenever Maximus fucked with his head, I hate the Inhumans so much), of course, but the writer does put it in there.
And this wasn't Maximus. There is yet another psychic who thinks Pietro's mind is his to mess with so he can achieve his own goals--really, why have we not had a story where someone addresses that psychics (Professor X, Moondragon, Maximus, and now this Videmus dude) don't seem to care about Quicksilver's sanity or rights? Is it the high-speed brain, does it come off as a buzzing that annoys them and they have to stick their hands in there and stop it? Marvel needs an alternate universe where there are no telepaths and as a result all of Magneto's children (and a number of other characters) are in fine mental health. And Magneto needs to see it so he can stop taking his kids to Charles Xavier rather than real therapy.
*Ahem* Back to the original subject, Secret Invasion also establishes a Skrull presence in Attilan. As a result, I look at this and see even more people manipulating Quicksilver in addition to the rogue telepath he connected minds with, the brain moving too fast thing, the depression, the trauma of having been killed by his own father and been brought back to life by a woman with the power to make things go horribly wrong, and then the mental stress of either having a witch use him as a power familiar to focus a spell that changed reality/history and then one that changed the whole multiverse or having to help mentally guild an ultra-powerful reality warping emotionally unbalanced mutant in creating a coherent reality. (Oh, did I mention that I think the Scarlet Witch basically used him as her cat when she cast the House of M and M-Day spells? Well... more on that in the "Ways a clever writer could save Wanda" post I'll probably get to before the next issue of Children's Crusade.)
So that takes care of everything from M-Day to the to the Terrigen Mists. He was losing his sanity and getting desperate, so he tries what he can to get his powers back. What he can try is to expose himself to a dangerous chemical that warps his physical body, has undocumented effects on the human/mutant mind, does nothing to solve his problem of his brain moving faster than his body, and triggers a power that has an even greater detriment to his sanity: Time Travel. Pietro's very first use of time travel is to meet his horrible future self, a future self who tricks him into murdering someone and exposing himself to that drug more. From this point on, he takes it more and more and gets worse and worse until he gets thrown into detox for the Quick and the Dead, goes through withdrawal and his natural powers come back completely. It's pretty obvious that all of his actions from that point onwards were to be attributed to the Mists. I'd argue that the actions leading up to it can be excused as temporary insanity, too, because of the trauma in House of M #7 and the disconnect between his perceptions and his actions.
This brings us to House of M. Nothing can save the character from that, right? Well... Maybe Magneto can.
In House of M #1 Magneto finds Pietro at his sister's bedside and demands to know why he's there. That little question is glossed over but it is the oddest thing for Magneto to say. This is Quicksilver of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch here. Also known as Pietro "Is my sister going to be alright?" Maximoff. Now, I didn't read Excalibur but if Wanda is ill, why wouldn't he be there? We know as teenagers she used to get sick when she used her powers too much, and he used to take care of her during that. He's been playing nursemaid for her at least since they were 13. The thing to question here is that he hasn't been at her side constantly, rearranging the bedding, bringing her water and chicken soup, reading to her, doing anything that can possibly be done to care for a sick person. The only explanation for that question is that Magneto's already made it clear that he's not supposed to be there, probably to prevent Wanda from accidentally hurting him.
But Pietro's in the room in House of M #1, and this can't be the first time he's been there. And maybe... it's not the first time Pietro's tried to help Wanda control that power. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time he's applied his will to a mystical situation to try and help her (see "Nights of Wundagore", which is either magic or a result of Wanda's power by the Bendis retcon so it applies either way) and they probably couldn't have created a world so intense without having practiced first. Maybe whatever caused Wanda to lose her sanity got passed onto Pietro and amped up the stress level, leading to his own actions in that miniseries. If they go by that hateful idea that those powers cost Wanda her sanity, can you imagine what they did to the guy who's not built to have them? If it's just magic getting out of hand it makes even more sense that he was affected. And if she's being possessed or affected by some external source then that's probably been passed on to him by the opening of the miniseries too.
My point is, for a clever writer (or even just one with eyes) there's no reason to completely retcon out the past few years to save Quicksilver as a heroic character. His actions in Son of M were terrible, but there was major external interference causing it. Any combination of the items I mentioned above could be explored in a scene where someone questions Quicksilver's return to the Avengers and you can use him cleanly afterwards.
Crystal, on the other hand, would benefit greatly from all of us forgetting this miniseries ever happened.
In the first place, the already accepted explanation for his complete breakdown is a pretty fucking good one. In House of M he's portrayed as a good but extremely foolish man. Bendis is actually sympathetic to the twins. He makes Pietro play the villain not by setting things up to get everything he wants (like he could), but by setting up a place to hide his sister and sacrificing his own happiness. He gives his father the benefit of the doubt and convinces his sister that Magneto could be a good guy if he had nothing to be afraid of. He gives up his own independance and becomes the obediant, adoring son his father has always demanded. The end result? The old man crushes him to death, he gets resurrected by Wanda (which, judging by Hawkeye's odd behavior afterwards, probably has a temporary effect on the brain chemistry) and awakens the next day to discover that his sister has left him, taken his power, and taken the powers of 99% of his species.
Thing is, I have run into fans that don't think this is enough. That's okay, because there's quite a bit more going on here.
I actually like the first issue of Son of M, because they play this up really well. He's dejected, miserable, powerless, blames himself for M-Day, and when he finally looks past himself to realize just how much harm he did when he was trying to help he finds it so painful he throws himself off a building. Hine really manages to put forward just how depression he's in at the beginning, so when Spider-man's tirade puts him over the edge to self-harm it doesn't seem out of nowhere or a sudden attempt to get sympathy for the character. It seems like this is a person who is that depressed, albeit because of his own actions.
Hine paints a sympathetic portrait of a man becoming a monster, but he doesn't ever call back to the fact that Pietro's a good man. He just has the events unfold and gives us Pietro's view of himself and others during this time. That's actually what ends up ringing false. Pietro is believable in a sickening way when you've been reading him up to this point, but if Son of M #1 was your first exposure to the character you'd think he was always self-centered and short-sighted rather than suffering from an incapacitating bout of depression and that this was him finally getting the results his actions were going to lead to. Crystal's statements, and part of why I hate her so badly in this, suggest that he always had a selfish dark streak and that that was what dissolved the marriage and none of her actions or even her awful uncle screwing them both over. She's an ex-wife who's bad egg of a husband has returned looking for her, and she's strong to tell him off. We're supposed to empathize with her as the virtuous partner. Luna comes off as innocently not knowing how bad her father is. Because we've read Quicksilver, we know he was a real good guy and a good father and husband who tried his best but Hine never lets us see the man Pietro was before M-Day. /He doesn't explain how a good man like Quicksilver be responsible for House of M--leading us to conclude that Pietro was a bad man (or that he has been retconned to be a bad man all along)--or explain how a good man would be driven to stealing those crystals, leading us to conclude that Pietro's nature is supposed to be a selfish bad man being revealed for once because he's lost his power.
It's really skillfully done, the mood and the pacing and the voice all support the story and character, but there is absolutely nothing even acknowledging that he hasn't always been selfish and ruthless. We have to add that ourselves as readers. There are, however, a couple of things in House of M and Son of M together that hint that he's losing it for an external reason.
There's the mood in the first issue of Son of M. There is a great cover where the artist shows everyone as moving superfast while Pietro's standing still, but inside there's a different problem. Pietro's not upset everyone else is moving fast. He's upset that he is moving slow. We know from years of characterization that Quicksilver's powers aren't just running, that he actually perceives and thinks at a greater speed than anyone else. That's why he has a patience problem. He has time to get bored in between words. If he lost all of his powers, everyone else would seem faster like on the cover. He wouldn't be able to keep up with conversations or events, everything would confuse him because it would just be going at a much greater pace than he's used to. Instead, he understands everything that's going on around him, and he perceives himself as going at a snail's pace. He doesn't see other people as going faster, he even asks how they can stand being so slow!
Whether through a stroke of brilliance or a major mistake on Hine's part (*it seems natural to paint someone as being constantly aware of their lost power but really, if he is used to having 5 times as long to process everything, he shouldn't be able to hold a conversation or react at the just slightly too slow speed he's shown reacting at), Pietro's powers are only halfway gone. FYMaximoffs on Tumblr speculated that he hadn't really lost his powers in M-Day, and was just suppressing them out of guilt. Myself, I'd been thinking that Wanda really wanted to depower her brother (thinking it would help him because as much as he loves his powers he's had a lot of social difficulties from them) but messed it up and only got it partly right, fucking his head over even more. The idea he did it himself from the trauma makes more sense, and I prefer it a lot. Whatever caused it, his powers are partially there and causing him to lose his sanity. He's lost his family and he knows it's his fault. He has only one skill, being a superhero, and he can't perform that job anymore. Then Spider-man comes along and tells him (I am not exaggerating) he has no reason to live.
Once he gets to Attilan? Hine actually establishes that someone up there fucks with his mind. This story actually excuses him for his idea to steal the Mists. The Inhumans punish the bad guy and ignore that his brain was fucked with for the umpteenth time when talking about how horrible Pietro is (like they do whenever Maximus fucked with his head, I hate the Inhumans so much), of course, but the writer does put it in there.
And this wasn't Maximus. There is yet another psychic who thinks Pietro's mind is his to mess with so he can achieve his own goals--really, why have we not had a story where someone addresses that psychics (Professor X, Moondragon, Maximus, and now this Videmus dude) don't seem to care about Quicksilver's sanity or rights? Is it the high-speed brain, does it come off as a buzzing that annoys them and they have to stick their hands in there and stop it? Marvel needs an alternate universe where there are no telepaths and as a result all of Magneto's children (and a number of other characters) are in fine mental health. And Magneto needs to see it so he can stop taking his kids to Charles Xavier rather than real therapy.
*Ahem* Back to the original subject, Secret Invasion also establishes a Skrull presence in Attilan. As a result, I look at this and see even more people manipulating Quicksilver in addition to the rogue telepath he connected minds with, the brain moving too fast thing, the depression, the trauma of having been killed by his own father and been brought back to life by a woman with the power to make things go horribly wrong, and then the mental stress of either having a witch use him as a power familiar to focus a spell that changed reality/history and then one that changed the whole multiverse or having to help mentally guild an ultra-powerful reality warping emotionally unbalanced mutant in creating a coherent reality. (Oh, did I mention that I think the Scarlet Witch basically used him as her cat when she cast the House of M and M-Day spells? Well... more on that in the "Ways a clever writer could save Wanda" post I'll probably get to before the next issue of Children's Crusade.)
So that takes care of everything from M-Day to the to the Terrigen Mists. He was losing his sanity and getting desperate, so he tries what he can to get his powers back. What he can try is to expose himself to a dangerous chemical that warps his physical body, has undocumented effects on the human/mutant mind, does nothing to solve his problem of his brain moving faster than his body, and triggers a power that has an even greater detriment to his sanity: Time Travel. Pietro's very first use of time travel is to meet his horrible future self, a future self who tricks him into murdering someone and exposing himself to that drug more. From this point on, he takes it more and more and gets worse and worse until he gets thrown into detox for the Quick and the Dead, goes through withdrawal and his natural powers come back completely. It's pretty obvious that all of his actions from that point onwards were to be attributed to the Mists. I'd argue that the actions leading up to it can be excused as temporary insanity, too, because of the trauma in House of M #7 and the disconnect between his perceptions and his actions.
This brings us to House of M. Nothing can save the character from that, right? Well... Maybe Magneto can.
In House of M #1 Magneto finds Pietro at his sister's bedside and demands to know why he's there. That little question is glossed over but it is the oddest thing for Magneto to say. This is Quicksilver of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch here. Also known as Pietro "Is my sister going to be alright?" Maximoff. Now, I didn't read Excalibur but if Wanda is ill, why wouldn't he be there? We know as teenagers she used to get sick when she used her powers too much, and he used to take care of her during that. He's been playing nursemaid for her at least since they were 13. The thing to question here is that he hasn't been at her side constantly, rearranging the bedding, bringing her water and chicken soup, reading to her, doing anything that can possibly be done to care for a sick person. The only explanation for that question is that Magneto's already made it clear that he's not supposed to be there, probably to prevent Wanda from accidentally hurting him.
But Pietro's in the room in House of M #1, and this can't be the first time he's been there. And maybe... it's not the first time Pietro's tried to help Wanda control that power. I mean, it wouldn't be the first time he's applied his will to a mystical situation to try and help her (see "Nights of Wundagore", which is either magic or a result of Wanda's power by the Bendis retcon so it applies either way) and they probably couldn't have created a world so intense without having practiced first. Maybe whatever caused Wanda to lose her sanity got passed onto Pietro and amped up the stress level, leading to his own actions in that miniseries. If they go by that hateful idea that those powers cost Wanda her sanity, can you imagine what they did to the guy who's not built to have them? If it's just magic getting out of hand it makes even more sense that he was affected. And if she's being possessed or affected by some external source then that's probably been passed on to him by the opening of the miniseries too.
My point is, for a clever writer (or even just one with eyes) there's no reason to completely retcon out the past few years to save Quicksilver as a heroic character. His actions in Son of M were terrible, but there was major external interference causing it. Any combination of the items I mentioned above could be explored in a scene where someone questions Quicksilver's return to the Avengers and you can use him cleanly afterwards.
Crystal, on the other hand, would benefit greatly from all of us forgetting this miniseries ever happened.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Women in Comics Wiki
Ladies Making Comics just set up a new project we can all participate in:
I went on a long strange trip last night. A niggle of an idea about a special, irregular feature on women of the Golden Age of Comics has ballooned into a full-fledged wiki focused entire on women of all comics forms (comic books, newspaper strips, webcomics, manga) throughout history. It’s extremely bare-bones right now, but I hope with your (and the rest of the internet’s) help, it can be ground zero for all information about women in comics.
I’ve already done one page, Kathryn Immonen’s, to get a feel for the format. Go add your own!
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."
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Happy Birthday, Dad
In honor of my father's birthday, I once again present my favorite superhero cop, Jim Hammond the original Human Torch. Here is Jim's first week on the job as recounted by Roy Thomas and Rich Buckler.
Yeah... That guy didn't really cause him much more trouble after that.
Yeah... That guy didn't really cause him much more trouble after that.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Daughters of the Dragon: Samurai Bullets
I finally picked up Daughters of the Dragon: Samurai Bullets by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Khari Evans. I have had this mini for a very long time but been unable to motivate myself to read it. I'd initially skipped the book based on the preview art, but people with trustworthy tastes kept recommending it so I picked it up. The problem was that each time I went to read it I found myself flipping open to a page of particularly egregious cheesecake. An unnecessary buttshot, and unnecessary cleavage focus... No crime so severe as what Benes has committed against a narrative, but still enough to make me sigh and put it aside. The faces were still distinctive and expressive, though, so I didn't completely write off Khari Evans, I just waited until I was in a receptive mood.
When I finally did get into it, I was glad I gave it a chance. The writing is FANTASTIC. The characters were so lively and likable, the pacing was perfect, the dialogue funny. I've read Misty Knight guesting in a few other things, and been fond of her for a while but this was the first time I'd seen the team together and Colleen was instantly a favorite. She's bright and cheerful and perceptive and energetic. Everything I love in a character.
The plot was engaging, helped along by the pacing. They knew just when to break it up for a humor breather, and when to open with an action scene and--most importantly for this sort of story--to end on a high note. Those last few pages of issue six were pure joy.
And when it came down to it? I even liked the artist. He does incredible expressions and hair and knows how to setup a page so the story flows, and a fight you can follow. There were a lot of butt and boob shot, but the posing and body language primarily got across their personalities and moods. The characters were distinctive, not all drawings of the same woman in different poses. The facial expressions were focused on conveying emotion rather than attractiveness. And as the story went on the T&A seemed to lessen so maybe he working on it.
I do understand that the art is referencing a style of movies and fashion, but I do think the sexualization went beyond style to the point we had a packaging problem for the story. I know back when this first came out I wasn't the only one looking at the preview art and shuddering at nipples visible through every outfit, not a bra in sight, butt shots, thong underwear, lingering cleavage downshots, cutaway fashion, faulty zippers and so on even in fight scenes. This stuff is a dealbreaker for some people, and I'd bet for more people than would rate the same touches as making it a must-buy. I know if I hadn't heard good reviews I'd never have bothered.
That's pretty terrible when you think about it, because you know that feminist comic series so many of us are asking for? The one with an unqualified passing of the Bechdel test, with female heroes and female villains, with women who have well-deserved badass reputations, with friendship between women and a optimistic ending? That almost nonexistent superhero story for women? Yeah... If that's something you want, this would be a good place to look.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Marvel Women Most Memorable Moments
Girls Read Comics Too has the first couple polls up. They feature instances of women doing stuff rather than being powerless and clueless while heir fathers and sons fight to save them for coming on five issues now.
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