Happy Thoughts for the Holidays: The Six Most Fascinating Women of the DCU

Gail Simone asked a question on her tumblr:

Who are, to you, the most FASCINATING DC female characters?

They don’t have to be heroes, or fighters, or any particular label. But which female characters do you find the most fascinating?

I answered with a quick list on my Tumblr, but I think something like this deserves a little elaboration. I came up with six off the top of my head:

Iris West II/Impulse II -- It's no secret that I love speedsters, and really Wally and Linda's daughter has had my attention since she was just a Kingdom Come Easter Egg. Now she's in continuity, as a little girl speedster with a superhero father. I want to see more of her, in any timeline.

Katma Tui/Green Lantern -- She will always be compelling to me beyond her status as a Green Lantern or her romantic entanglements for this scene:



She built a MACHINE to measure the strength of her own devotion. What kind of mind does this?

Carol Ferris/Star Sapphire -- Carol's a Silver Age love interest who dumped the hero because she got promoted above him, then developed a secret identity to woo his secret identity. And that identity is now retconned to hosting the embodiment of love, and wielding pure love as a weapon.

I don't care what they do to their costumes, or what icky issues about relationships the writers let spill into the page. That concept will always be interesting.

Queen Hippolyta -- I would be so very happy if when this WW reboot is over if they kept Hippolyta as the WWII Wonder Woman somehow, and had her alive again. First off, her dynamic with Diana is one of the things that makes Wonder Woman unique as a hero. Most major heroes seem to be orphans. Diana's mother is still alive, breathing, and used to getting her way in all matters without any questioning. Diana, on the other hand, is a deeply independent woman.

This is a woman who talked the gods themselves into letting her have a kid without going through all the annoying dating motions. This is a Head of State, and a full-working one not a figurehead, who is still a devoted mother.

I think the most sriking thing for me is that the Golden Age Wonder Woman traits--the passionate lover and fighter--that I adore so much are very prominent in Hippolyta. Not only that, Hippolyta's the one who, unlike Diana, can let those traits take her too far in battle and in romance. She's my favorite Wonder Woman supporting character, and if they wiped the cast clean of everyone but Diana and her and started over tomorrow I wouldn't really be pissed off.

Kate Kane/Batwoman -- The majority of Gotham heroes aren't just Bat-followers, they're downright Bat-worshippers at times. Whether they get along with Bruce or not, most of them seem to pin their every move on what he approves of. Catwoman, for a long time, was the only one who seemed immune to this Awe of Bat. Then they gave us Kate.

Batwoman, though, is not a follower or a worshipper of the Batman. She was inspired by him, but she's driven by a greater need to serve than emulating him./ That's what made the point when she first saw Batman in her origin tale so compelling. Someone attacks her, and she beats the crap out of him and when he's subdued she looks up to see Batman standing there and smirking at her. He'd been meaning to help her, but it was completely unnecessary and the fact surprised him enough that he had to stop and watch. He does, however, help her to put two and two together and realize that she can do the same thing--to her he's the bat that flies through the window. It's their entire relationship right now. He thinks she needs help, or needs him, but ends up watching in surprise because all she's ever needed from him was an idea.

More than any other character in the DC Universe, Kate is like Bruce. She's a perfect female counterpart. She has more than just the cosmetic similarities of a childhood tragedy and a ton of disposable wealth, she has the same reaction to that tragedy, she has the same drive, she even freaking FIGHTS like him. Think of the predatory aspect to Bruce in the Arkham Asylum game. Dick doesn't have that when he fights, Babs never had that, Helena doesn't have it and none of the younger set have it. Kate, though. Kate has it. She's like a freaking demon when she hits up the underworld. Red and black and pale as a fucking ghost, she's cultivated that manner that makes a criminal scared shitless not that she'll kill him, but that she'll wrap him in darkness and drag him to hell not if she catches him (because the second she's there he's caught) but just if she wants to. That's what keeps Bruce scary as hell without killing anyone, he just seems supernatural. Kate's got that feeling, possibly even moreso because she'll grin while she's after you.

Soranik Natu/Green Lantern -- Soranik was immediately interesting to me because from her first panel in Recharge #1 she had an obvious, unique role in the GLC. When you introduce the Chief Surgeon during a medical operation as your new Lantern, you pretty much guarantee that even if she's out on her first day with no training, and the only rookie on a mission with veterans she will still have something vitally important to add to the team.

It got better when they revealed that she did not want to be a Green Lantern. Being from Sinestro's homeworld of Korugar, she had a perfectly good reason to. By this time, Sinestro's long since been overthrown and replaced Katma Tui, and Oa's had time to make Korugarians aware that Lanterns are not MEANT to be evil. But knowing in your head and knowing in heart are two very different things, and no matter how beneficial a Green Lantern presents themselves to be Korugarians are going to be rightfully skittish and good many of them are distrustful of this organization at the root. She's got no reason to love the GLC, or admire them, and she knows joining will make her a pariah in her community. Her stated protest that the ring is "cursed" is what really intrigued me, though. She's a surgeon, and later on in the book they establish that she has a clear, logical mind, but she's still a superstitutious person to a point. Sinestro went bad. Katma Tui died across the universe from her homeworld. Bad things happen to people who wear that ring.

And of course, she swallowed her fear and took on the cursed and hated job of being a Green Lantern. Then later on, she gets romantically involved with Kyle Rayner, a guy who is 0 for 3 in surviving ex-girlfriends. She takes a cursed job, and a cursed man. I can't help but love that.

Then they make her concept better by revealing that her Dad is Sinestro. This is not just like finding out your Dad is Hitler. This is like being a German girl who was raised by the resistance and grew up DURING World War II and finding out your Dad is Hitler. It's actually rather disappointing in hindsight that they've focused on her relationship with Kyle rather than this insane bombshell of a revelation. She's the most fascinating woman in the DCU to me right now, and that's not an exaggeration.

In other positive-blogging Tumblr news, I wrote up a memorable moment for DC Women Kicking Ass. Flash Fact: the guy in the comic book store showed me that very moment to sell that book to me. Got me to buy the whole series.

Happy Yule, Everyone!

Their suits even match.

I've been really enjoying Brubaker's Captain America run, especially the inclusion of Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow. I've been really fond of reading both her and Sharon Carter through the entire thing, but it's been disappointing that despite the fact that the costumes look like a big setup for a teamup, the two women haven't really spoken two lines to each other. (Maybe in Reborn. I think that was just briefly, though.) Natasha's talked ABOUT Sharon, of course, and they sound like good friends off-panel, but Brubaker didn't take that step to ever really have the two get together and hurt bad guys for an issue or two or five or an entire series based around the concept. And the "Year of Women" sadly went by without a Sharon and Natasha story. Seems Marvel just hadn't gotten around to it... until now.

We're also doing "Captain America And the Secret Avengers" which is primarily focused on Sharon Carter and the Black Widow, both of whom are important characters in Cap's orbit. It'll give them a little more spotlight and screen time than they usually get.

We're also getting a Falcon one-shot and a one-shot with Peggy Carter (by Kathryn Immonen)



Via fyeahwomenofcap, the solicit:

CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE SECRET AVENGERS #1

Written by KELLY SUE DECONNICK

Pencils & Cover by GREG TOCCHINI

Steve Rogers’ black ops femme fatales go on the hunt for a rogue assassin! The Black Widow & Agent 13 join forces to stop an under-aged assassin from taking her revenge on a killer of a headmistress. Fierce fisticuffs, death-defying duels and good ol’ fashioned espionage ensue as everything comes to a head in the Big Apple where the gals go in guns blazin’ against…teenaged versions of themselves?!

40 PGS./One-Shot/Rated T+…$3.99

Not a big Tocchini fan (really didn't like his going out of his way to show us the downview of female breasts in his Ion run), but I will take him for this special.

I have bigger worries with Thor.

I'm going to level with you all right away, Thor was a tough sell on me from the beginning. While most of the people weighing in on the matter of Idris Elba as Heimdall--including, officially at least, the extremists themselves--refer to the characters in Thor as mere characters or even cultural icons, I'm not going to dance around it. I actually subscribe to a neo-pagan religion. Thor and Heimdall aren't just a name from old dusty poems or creations of Kirby, they're genuine spiritual figure for me. And while they are many different versions of the old myths and legends, and there's a big emphasis on discovering the essence of the Divine by parsing these different legends and seeing what has the most human truth to it, the Marvel version of Thor was a bit too far afield for me. I had the worst trouble getting past the beardless blonde Thor, even after differences like that were explained away by some generational or post-Ragnarok thing I still can't confidently repeat.

I managed to get a good jumping on point with JMS and I've read his run, some miniseries and some Silver Age reprints. I was impressed with the basic characters of Thor, Balder and the Warriors Three (who weren't in the original myths but seem like the sort of people who would have been so I love them) but had trouble getting past the treatment of the goddesses. The Asyniur (and Freya) were a really appealing part of the Norse pantheon. Fewer of their stories have survived, but this was genuinely a group of amazing goddesses that get sadly ignored at times. And in the Thor franchise, they continue to be ignored. I don't think I've seen Skadi or Freya--which is ridiculous because Freya is... Freya. It's insane to dismiss her. Valkyrie seems to be the only Valkyrie flying around.

Frigga's portrayal is what really annoys me. She's been consigned to the background and we never see her handmaidens. In the meantime her signature story, her story of motherly love that ends in the tragic death of Balder, was centered instead on Odin in the Silver Age. It's possible this has been retconned to a Frigga-centered story again but since we never see the Queen of Asgard say more than two lines I haven't seen it mentioned.

Of course there are some canonical goddesses who get speaking roles like Hela. Now, Hela as I originally saw her in my childhood reading was half-black and half-white. (Not racewise, I mean like those dudes in the original series Star Trek racial harmony episode.) Most of the sources describe a duality: half black and half white, half hag and half beautiful woman, half skeleton and half person, or half dead and half alive... either way, she's split down the middle like Two-Face and it's a damned powerful image. Even if they'd just decided black and white, they could still do the Beautiful death goddess but no... THIS was the first time I saw Hela:



I can deal with Kirby's green-clad fully-human-looking goddess (especially since she has such a cool headdress), but this shirtless shit has been the norm since JMS rebooted Thor. Every use of her, especially as a wicked plotter rather than the morally neutral indifferent Death Goddess (because comics writers hate Death Deities), makes me cringe. The Goddess of Death holds secret conspiracy meetings in her nearly nonexistant nightie. Fucking seriously. And Gillen had her running around in a draping halter top! And look what they have on her profile on their official site. (She rules one of the coldest of the 9 realms! WHERE IS THE REST OF HER SHIRT?!) It's a complete surrender of any mature examination of death in favor of Sexy, Sexy Danger.

I've allowed my recent issues to pile up due to the complete massacre of source material that occurred with the Disir. Now I'd always been under the impression they were the spirits of female ancestors who protect your bloodline and fall under the realm of Freya Vanadis, but it seems Straczynski and Gillen had other ideas. Seems they're creepy soul-eaters cursed by Odin who devour divine essence. Freya could not be reached for comment, because I still haven't seen her in any of the Thor comics. (Honestly, it is in-character for a love goddess to run around in a chainmail bikini but instead you ignore Freya and tart up Hela. I do not understand Marvel.)

That said, I have hope for the Thor franchise because I've read two volumes of Walter Simonson and his handling of Sif was nothing but pure joy. Shame JMS decided to toss her into a comatose body for several years.

My point is that eventually I managed to get away from desiring dogmatic adherence to the Eddas in favor of seeking a genuinely respectful portrayal of the gods. I do think for the most part they manage that with most of the gods and some of the criminally underused goddesses. Original characters (rather than twisting a persona into a story they aren't suited for) help a lot. There's some serious missteps, usually with the goddesses, but in general they treat them as an honorable society that's worthy of reverance and manage to capture the same personalities.

As a result, I'm actually rather optimistic about Idris Elba as Heimdall. Not just because I started laughing my ass off when I first heard (though I have been giggling about this impending freakout since April) but because they might be able to pull this off.

Don't get me wrong, I still feel that so-called Chromatic Casting ignores the real problems and probably isn't the way to make up for a history of white-washing in the film industry, but in this case I'm not exactly annoyed. We don't know the full story here and it could actually be part of the plot, (Like JMS having the Asgardians wearing mortal lives after Ragnarok.) If not, well, he's being played by an accomplished actor and so long as he doesn't get the same treatment Gillen gave the Disir I should be happy.

Of course, I might just be falling prey to some white liberal guilt, or prioritizing offense about gender over race, or maybe I just like annoying white supremacists.

Actually, it's probably just the last one. I still crack up whenever I think what their faces must've looked like.

ETA: Comics Alliance issued an apology for "where we suggested their gods were concocted by drunken medievals." Kind nice of them.

This may be the least subtle symbolism in the history of comics

...but really, who can not smile at a superheroine lifting a fridge off of her back after she's been clobbered with it and using it on the enemy? I mean, the only thing that would've made it more over-the-top is if her husband was literally in there at the time instead of just figuratively.

Phil Hester talks Wonder Woman

Newsarama:



Nrama: How do you hope to approach Wonder Woman's character?

Hester: I see her as the personification of honor in a fallen world

Why I'm Pissed Off at Paul Levitz

I and others have seen a number of comments suggesting that the anger Paul Levitz's statement engendered was based solely on a misreading of his statement, and that by drawing attention to a couple of qualifiers any reasonable person will cease to be upset at the sentiment. On the contrary, I believe that these commenters are the ones who lack understanding in this case, but that may be because none of use have chosen to spell it out directly enough for them.

So, Levit'z statement:

I’m not sure that young women are as interested in reading about superheroes. The fundamental dynamic of the superhero story has historically been more appealing to boys than to girls.

For emphasis, let me repeat the part that has pissed people off:

The fundamental dynamic of the superhero story has historically been more appealing to boys than to girls.

Now, as many of you have noticed the words "no" and "never" do not appear in conjunction with "girls" or "appeal". I have noticed that too. That is because yes, I and most everyone else I've spoken to understands that he didn't say "Superheroes will never appeal to girls, and there are no girls who read superheroes." He merely implied that we were insignificant.

Either way, the words "no" or "never" are not the irritating parts of this quote. Nor is historically, though it is actually quite infuriating because there've been arguments that historically the genre had a lot of cross-appeal that has been squandered away in the past few decades. But that's not it either.

Allow me to present the rage-inducing part of this quote to you in bold:

The fundamental dynamic of the superhero story has historically been more appealing to boys than to girls.

We can argue back on forth on what precisely constitutes the fundamental dynamic of a superhero story, but the specifics such as costumes, secret identities, heroes, superpowers, villains, individualism and so on don't matter in this discussion. Only one aspect matters to this argument, and that is this: sexism.

There's a terrible strain of sexism coded into superhero fandom and industry culture: it's evident in the way women are drawn in comparison to how men are, how women are posed in comparison to how men are, the way women are dressed in comparison to how men are, the stories women get versus the ones men get, the prominence of female characters (well, lack thereof), how female characters are marketed, how male characters that appeal significantly more to women than to men are not valued either, how homosexuality and gender issues are (not) handled, how female characters are treated for the sake of male character's stories, how powerful female characters are cut down, how female characters are reduced to their sexual relationships and sex appeal to the straight male reader, how women are dismissed as a marketable demographic, how complaints of sexism are dismissed down to what artists are chosen to go with what characters.

And there's a philosophy in the female-dominated areas of fandom that states that this sexism is there, but is not in any way fundamental to the genre. It's excess fat that can be trimmed off without any loss of substance, that in fact trimming this unhealthy fat sexism will improve the quality of the product.

When someone like Paul Levitz suggests there's something fundamental in superhero stories that women find distasteful, he pisses a great deal of us off. Because what women find distasteful is the rampant sexism so obvious from the first moment a dramatic angle is sacrificed in order to highlight a superheroine's butt or bust, and that is in no way part of the fundamental dynamic of a superhero story.

I can only speak directly for myself, of course, but I can attest that a lot of the women who are annoyed about this also subscribe to the two part theory that "sexism is rampant in superhero comics, but sexism is unnecessary to superhero comics." Maybe, yes, there's a couple who didn't see the qualifiers and are backing off, but I'm pretty sure a few more have pointed out that they're pissed off at "fundamental" in there. There's probably even some who haven't quite realized exactly what bothers them about the statement, but know that they find it spectacularly offensive. Whatever it is exactly, I'll bet they're as unlikely to be pacified by an adverb as I am.

Highlights of this week's order.

I ordered my comics this morning. It'll be a week, maybe two with the holiday, until they come in but I'm looking forward to a few things:

1) Avengers Academy #7 by Christos Gage and Mike McKone -- I am devouring this book every month, I love it. I badly want more Pietro and Finesse (out of the students, so far I'm most impressed with Finesse and Reptil), but Hank's becoming a favorite right now so I'm happy to see an issue might focus on him. I will be a little sad, though, if Hank gives up the Wasp identity to take back the Giant-man one. I liked that he was stepping into Jan's shoes, very few legacy heroes are a male character taking on a female character's identity while there are tons of female derivatives and female successors to male characters. I'd much prefer to have Jan back as Giant-woman and Hank remain in the Wasp identity.



Plus, it's the only good costume he's ever had.

2) Superman #706 by G Willow Wilson and (I believe) Eddy Barrows -- I think the walking storyline (like the WW storyline) had a good idea, but I hate the way JMS wrote Clark. I took this chance to order it and see if another writer can do a better job. Also, I've been hearing so many good things about Air but didn't find out until it was all gone. (Waiting on a trade now.) This'll be a chance to check out this writer.



3) Wynonna Earp: The Yeti Wars by Beau Smith and Enrique Villigran -- I've been waiting on a new Wynona Earp story since 2006, and finally one's arrived! I discovered this character through the Complete Wynonna Earp a few years ago and I absolutely adored it. I'm going to take the liberty of quoting my old review because I've already said what I'm looking forward to the most with this:

As a result, I actually got to read a book with a female main character who was never beated up in a sexualized manner (although yes, she was beaten up and captured a couple of times, it wasn't drawn out or handled in a worse manner than a similar situation in Warrior with Guy Gardner would be), or victimized, or made to seem the least bit weaker because she was female. I got to put aside feminist analysis of the story in favor of enjoying the action, the cheesy jokes, and yes, even the ridiculously over-the-top Nineties Art (my pet peeve about the posture was in full force for most of this trade, only the very first and very last stories -- by Luis Diaz and Manuel Vidal respectively -- had her posed like a proper fighter). It was like being a kid again.

I can't wait.

Everyone knows why I'm reading Avengers Academy anyway.

Yesterday's Talking Comics With Tim was an interview with Avengers Academy writer Christos Gage. Of course I dove in hoping for information on one of my favorites, and I wasn't disappointed:

O’Shea: With Avengers Academy–while the students are the core of the series, it’s the instructors that offer almost as much interest for me. For example, I love your use of Quicksilver. Was it your idea to have him in the cast, or how did he get added? Are there certain eras of Quicksilver history that appeal to you and fuel your approach to the character?

Gage: I asked for Quicksilver because I thought he fit in perfectly with the theme of the instructors being Avengers who have flawed, checkered pasts. Avengers Academy is meant to be a place of redemption for student and teacher alike. Just as the best counselors for people trying to stay off drugs are recovered addicts, the Avengers Academy teachers are people who’ve been down some tough roads and come back. Quicksilver was a teen villain, then a teen hero. He was raised to be a terrorist and grew to be an Avenger. My favorite point in Quicksilver history is when he first joined the Avengers…he did this incredibly heroic thing in terms of breaking from Magneto, and putting himself out there in front of a world that hates and fears mutants…but the whole time he was constantly backseat driving and second-guessing Captain America, of all people! Now that’s what I call cojones. Quicksilver is so much fun to write because he gets to say all the snarky things I want to say to people who irritate me, but don’t want to get smacked in the mouth for.

Two things here, number one that yes, that point in history is absolutely one of the best things about Quicksilver. He'll give even Steve Rogers shit. The prototype for Horrible Boss in his life is none other than MAGNETO, a man he has worked for multiple times (a man who repeatedly showed a willingness to just leave him to die even after they found out they were related, a man who actually killed him once--long after they found out they were related), but that doesn't make him grateful just to be treated like a person. He'll let anyone no matter how good (or how bad, because he was always the guy standing up to Magneto in those Silver Age X-men) know when he thinks they're going in the wrong direction or just not acknowledging him enough. I believe it leads back to sincere trust issues, but even then it really takes some nerve, and I like to read people with some nerve.

The second is the one the part I think a lot of fangirls will take issue with:

Quicksilver was a teen villain, then a teen hero. He was raised to be a terrorist and grew to be an Avenger.

I remember a panel was being passed around on Tumblr a few months back where it states that he was trained by Magneto. Thing is, I absolutely love this idea because as I said yesterday about the children of supervillains, the harder it is to break free of the parent the more heroic it is. I actually like the idea he had a few years to indoctrinate the kids and the twins still sabotaged and then left him. It shows a great deal of strength to begin with that they left this incredibly terrifying person, but when you make it that they left him after several years of training because putting the stuff into practice was too horrible it seems like a feat of Herculean strength. Not only that, every time Pietro and Wanda stood up to him it wasn't because they were shocked by the new revelation of what sort of people they'd fallen in with, it was because they still managed to hold onto their values despite being trapped in the group and cut off from the support network that taught them those values.

I do get the feeling, though, that we're witnessing a slight retcon. I think they are slowly being retconned to join Magneto at a younger age than originally intended. I like this, again, because it emphasizes the character strength it took. I used to use they'd just simplify the Maximoff's origins and have them raised by Magneto all along, but I can't help but notice that losing their mother at birth and being passed from Bova to the Franks to the Maximoffs to the streets (or rather, hillsides) to the grip of Magneto finally to a decent life in the Avengers seems to fit their attitudes somehow. They kept getting bounced from place to place and only had each other. (I would like the Citadel of Science "stasis while waiting for a proper family to adopt" explanation traded for a retcon that their mother was a time-traveling mutant, which would nicely explain why neither twin has powers even approaching their father's and truly simplify their origins--but somehow I doubt Marvel will ever realize that there's a really easy way to explain those powers right under their fucking noses.)

I'm optimistic about Gage in a way I'm not about Heinberg. After how Maximoff twins have been handled since Disassembled I really appreciate that a writer thought about their history so he could concentrate on actually portraying the sort of person the character was originally created to be. I would a hundred times prefer that to an in-depth metastory that continues the cycle of weakness to explain how the cycle started. (You can do your explanations and excuses while you're portraying the character as actively heroic, thank you.) They've been pretty much destroyed from all sides in two consecutive crossovers, and ever since then the plots, flashbacks and expositionary dialogue has only served to underscore them as a woman who couldn't handle her powers or not having the family she wanted and a man who couldn't handle losing his powers or losing the family he had. Even now when the lie storyline presents Quicksilver as someone who couldn't own up to his own deeds and had to take the easy way out, Gage's emphasis on his past as a villain and how he broke free of that mitigates the impression and really makes me expect that his coming clean will be a major revelation that's used to advance the overall story arc in AA. And while I'm waiting for that, and for Wanda to finally get repaired, it's still a relief to see at least one of them handed to a writer who recognizes the strength of will that was present in the Silver Age over the plot-induced madness.

Links

Oh yeah, two notable things. Kalinara and I started a thing this weekend, and WFA did a titanic update today.

If I am by some strange twist of fate still the first place you look for steady women in superheroics commentary, may I suggest DC Women Kicking Ass and Fantastic Fangirls? Let me to draw your attention in particular to the recent Silver Age Women post on FF, and the Lois Lane tag on DCWKA. (And another nudge for the Most Memorable Moments poll.)

And as long as I'm linking, I wish I had more reading time because I badly want to go through the entire archive of this blog. This guy contrasted All-Star Superman with JMS's Earth One to throw light on Superman and his supporting cast. Then he tore into Second Coming like nobody's business and righteously battled the problematic undertones of Kingdom Come. And that's just the stuff I've had a chance to read, that blog looks packed with persuasive and potent ponderings.

From Bond Girl to Bond Villain

Anyone who's paid too much attention to me might have realized that I adore when the children of supervillains become heroes. These characters, whether the sorts who were raised right and later found out the truth (the Maximoffs twins) or those who suffered from a dysfunctional, twisted upbringing (Cass Cain) have a particularly compelling story to them. These characters become heroes when they discovered a reservoir of moral strength that allowed them to make the most difficult decision any person in the world can make and break from their upbringing, their loved ones, and even at times their entire cultural makeup in order to make the right decision. These themes of discovering moral clarity, overcoming the fear of loneliness, and aspiration to be a better person can be repeated in some many different ways for the same character and still represent step-by-step self-improvement and true heroics. The character can be constantly moving forward without being stuck in a cycle. And while every subsequent attempt to make the right decision is just a little easier than that first break (allowing for the occasional slip-up, which lets them go through a moral crisis and find that internal strength again) they continually better themselves, their families and the planet with every step forward. These character exemplify the idea that it doesn't matter what your forebearers did, your life and your destiny is your own. They are paragons of independence, defying both nature and nurture to demonstrate that someone can calibrate their own moral compass and still have it point in the right direction. The children of supervillains can become the truest kind of heroes, agents of virtue and change and hope arising from the darkest of background and defending those ideals against the most ingrained personal interest--belonging to their own family. They have an incredibly inspirational concept.

There's another story pattern that can be incredibly compelling in this same vein, that of Reforming the Evil Love Interest. This one is compelling because not only does it have a person turn their back on their entire world, but they do it for the sake of a single other person. A lot of people love this story, and adore characters trapped in this story cycle because it ties the inspirational aspect of leaving everything you know and love for an ideal with romance because the ideal is love for another person. I find this pretty compelling too... when it's a single story and not a cycle that continually repeats itself. This brings me, of course, to a character think I should love but I very decidedly do not, Talia al Ghul.

As I said before, a lot of people like the Reforming the Evil Love Interest narrative because it's a compelling narrative, and they don't mind reading it over and over and over again. It carries with it the same courage and strength required to be a child of a supervillain who turns on their evil parent, and in many cases--such as with Talia--the two concepts are married and the inspiration to turn their back on their entire world comes from meeting one good person.

Except that Talia doesn't really DO that until what... five or six years ago? And she was created in the 70s? Her typical behavior pattern was that she'd act against her father to save Batman, but afterwards she'd return to the old man. Repeat over and over and over again. He's her father, he loved her, she loved him, and on some level she felt that his actions were to be excused. In fact, for loyalty to her father, she would commit any number of murders, thefts and even betrayals (short of directly causing his death) of her "beloved" Batman. As I've said, I really enjoy when a supervillain's kid turns on them, and it requires a tremendous amount of moral fortitude to do so, and proves to be the ultimate act of independence. But Talia never really turned on her father for the principle of it, she only occasionally got in his or his allies' way to prevent them from getting rid of Bruce. For it to be a true test of courage and strength, it pretty much has to be a one time thing. You go against your parent knowing you can't go back, you can't waiver between two people all the time. You are on your own from that point on, and what you just did is worth being on your own. You don't just save the life of the guy you wanna fuck and then go back to live comfortably with Daddy, performing atrocities in his name when they don't affect someone you personally care about. That doesn't make you a hero, or even an antihero. It just means you're a villain with the hots for the hero.

I don't like Talia. A long time ago (after a while of kind of liking her figuring eventually they'd lay this story cycle to rest) I realized she just wasn't a really admirable person. After I learned that, every time I saw her I knew exactly what the story was going to be and I simply didn't like the al Ghul family league of assassins/eco-terrorism/melodramatic love drama elements enough to sit through the same theme of potential reformation from what was actually a rather self-interested motive (she wanted Bruce, but didn't seem to give a shit about anyone else's life) followed by choosing the safe route of home and family to the unexplored and potentially difficult life of morality that I prefer my heroes adhere to. After so many times watching this, I really grew to hate the character on sight. Eventually she went against him, but not in a way that changed my assessment of her personality. It's telling that it wasn't until after her father tried to match her with a guy she didn't want that she got sick of his shit and tried to be a good guy for a while. Kudos for being her own woman there, but it's not really the heroic selflessness of a principled stand against the head of an organization that destroys lives every day--especially after you've spent years witnessing firsthand the misery he creates but kept bypassing the opportunity to tell him to fuck off and become a real hero. It's more the heroic selfishness of leaving a situation that's simply not good for you personally, having stayed in a situation that hurt other people until things went from comfortable to frightening. I think she's a very selfish person, in matters of love and ethics, and that's not a good thing for a hero or even an antihero.

And yes, I know there are those of you who say that every character can be redeemed, and every character has potential and with Talia... you're absolutely right.

Something happened in the last decade to this character. They killed off her father. The put her in charge of the family business. They introduced her son, and detailed the horrific lengths she went to to continue the family line with the man she'd personally chosen.

They broke the cycle.

They made her an official full villain.

I fucking love it, especially when Grant Morrison writes her because he doesn't mince the melodrama. He doesn't bother with the "I love you, but alas we are on other sides of the law" narrative that bores me to tears. This is a woman from a twisted family with a very twisted sense of what constitutes a family. She considers Batman her husband, and so will act to keep him alive and safe, but she is not a good guy at all. She will protect and nurture her son, and when he leaves her (as she NEVER left her father) she attempts to manipulate him back by threatening to disown and replace him. ("Why can't you just love me for me?" "It's not me" and it wasn't her father either. She's withholding her approval until he proves his loyalty just as he probably did to her and created the behavior pattern where she constantly returns to his side at the end of the story.) She will, in all likelihood, make him very miserable for the next few years trying to get him to return to her side of the family.

And so many people say they despise Morrison's version of the character, that she's not even a character but I don't see that at all. She's not one-dimensional, she's just as complex especially when it comes to her interpersonal relationships--she's just free of all the bullshit that makes me hate her. He's completely broken the cycle on this character, and she's gone from Bond Girl to full-fledged Bond Villain. I'm actually happy for her, it's quite a promotion.

As for the real thorn in fandom's side, Batman's statement that he was drugged when Damien was conceived? In a genre where 95% of female characters but just maybe 2% of male characters have been sexually harassed, threatened or assaulted... the biggest macho fanboy fantasy character in history has a sexual assault in his backstory and it hasn't hurt his standing in the slightest. It's still the male hero way, like Starman and Green Arrow, without the same lurid graphic depiction of sexualized violence that accompanies flashbacks of female characters. I think the imbalance there makes this far less offensive to me than if we'd had Oracle drop this memory. Don't get me wrong, Batman's wistful reaction is beyond fucked up and one of the things that Morrison annoyed me with, but I don't feel Talia is the character who suffers from this. She's a Bad Guy, after all, and I've never found her someone to sympathize with. I understand it really pisses off those of you who feel she should be a sympathetic hero, but I don't feel this character works as a hero or even a protagonist. Her heroism works on whether one person (or two, now that Damian's around) is in direct danger or not. If he is, she'll be a good guy, if not she's just her father's daughter. I do love her as a cold, corrupt villainess, though. Like I said, she strikes me as a very selfish person and that's a good thing for a villain.

My feelings on Talia are particularly worrisome for two reasons, though:

1) She is a character type I can only think of seeing in women. She's the chief henchwoman who falls for the hero character type, most often associated with spy thrillers like James Bond. It's a bit hard to untangle such a judgment from innate feelings about gender, and I'm having trouble thinking of a male character who boils down to the same concept for the "gender swap test" of prejudiced attitudes.

2) She is one of very few Middle Eastern women in comics, and the family politics and her position as a good guy or a bad guy are tied up with how the Western World views Arabic women. (Man, it does not help that her father was a terrorist but he's not religiously motivated at least.) It may be better that she stayed to run the family business and didn't just leave being an accessory to her father to try and become an accessory to Batman, or it may simply be another example of the Dragon Lady of the East archetype, particularly with her villainy so wrapped up in her family. I'm not really sure on this part. Though please don't try to defend the character based on cultural pressure to stay loyal to her father and family, because cultural pressure is something that makes a moral decision to value life more difficult, and therefore makes choosing to save lives so heroic.

Anyway, here's the rundown:

Talia al Ghul
Also Known As: The Cause of Shirtless Batman Fighting
First Encountered (By Me): Batman: the Animated Series
Franchise: Batman
Core Concept: Evil Love Interest
Writer Responsible For My Distaste: Every writer that has ever tried to pass her off as "not really a villain, but a tragic woman torn between loyalties"
Character I Want To Read That She's Attached To: Batman (and I don't really like to see her Dad pop up either when I'm reading Batman)

Best Character Trait: Brave
Worst Character Trait: Selfish

Similar Characters That I Like: Like I said, I adore the children of supervillains who break away from their parents Cassandra Cain in particular showed a moral strength and an empathy for the rest of mankind that's unheard of in her life up to that point when she ran away from her father after her first kill. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are recurring favorites of mine because of their constant struggle against their father--especially in the face of prejudice from the rest of the world. Damian Wayne is stuck-up little jerk, but he chose his father's more difficult path over the easy villainy of his mother and grandfather. But the thing is, these characters took the high road as soon as the exit presented itself, they didn't continue along Bad Guy Highway past exit after exit until they could actually SEE the dead end. These are characters marked early on to be heroes, and their family ties make them more compelling as a result.

Catwoman may be my favorite example of the "Reform the Evil Love Interest" thing, but it may be because she's not particularly evil or even selfish. She just doesn't feel confined to society's rules, whereas Talia's lawbreaking comes from conforming to her family.
I do recall another similarity, though, back in Devin Grayson's Catwoman run. Selina is approached during the story by a teenaged boy and an adult man. She spends much of the story thinking about family, and ends up arranging for both the man and the boy to be sent to prison (I forget which one she framed, or if it was both) and declaring that she wants a family, but on her terms. The issue ends with her peeking in on her new family in their prison cell. It was dark and humorous (and there was something in both the man and the boy's behavior that makes you side with Selina, but I forget exactly what it was), and it does remind me of Talia's possessiveness of both Bruce and Damian. She wants the family on her terms, so she's basically decided that Bruce is her husband.

Could I ever like Talia? Not as a good guy. She's aces as a psychopath, though.

The Long Pants of Evil

"Hero goes evil storylines" are fairly common in comics. Everyone has one or two, and they're okay provided they don't seep into the collective consciousness of the potential creator's pool as genuine characterization. That's usually not a problem provided it's acknowledged in the narrative as strange behavior, confined to a single storyline in a single book and not spread out over two company-wide crossovers, five writers and eight years... *Ahem*. Not that I mean anybody specific or their twin brother.

Still, even if a writer keeps it in the series, wraps it up at the end and explains it away neatly as the plot of such-and-such-villain there's still some seriously irritating trends with "Hero goes evil storylines", and no small concern is the tendency of artists to take advantage of an excuse to "slut up" an otherwise sensibly dressed female character and dress her in a ridiculously sexualized skimpy and cutaway costume. Off the top of my head I can remember this shit happening to the Invisible Woman, Linda Danvers Supergirl (admittedly those vented jeans looked pretty stylish and I liked the jacket a lot), Kara Zor-el Supergirl (which took some doing in comparison to the outfit they'd had her in before), Mary Marvel, the female heroes in Final Crisis who'd been converted to Female Furies (I don't remember if Wonder Woman was attached to that or not, but I liked that her anti-life version was just her normal look with a really ugly beastmask), Jade, and Polaris (really, anyone who's been possessed by Malice).

Strangely, most (but not all) possessed men prefer adding armor, new capes and dark masks to discarding unnecessary articles of clothing. I'm sure there's some complex analysis in the way male and female sexuality are differently repressed, but I suspect that the high incidence in mind control/possession storylines on female characters dressing like strippers over male characters exploring deeply repressed homosexual urges invalidates it.

Anyway, there are a couple female heroes that get to put more clothes on whenever they get a "Suddenly a Bad Girl" plot and interestingly enough they're both from Silver Age X-Men. They go from minidresses and swimsuits to full body suits.

Of course, everyone's familiar with Jean Grey's iconic "Dark Phoenix" look. Only an idiot would mess with the sincere "oh shit" reaction characters get from seeing Jean (or any of the Xerox Jeans in the Marvel Universe) decked out in red and gold. Interestingly enough, of course, after the first sash and leggings costume she never went back to the minidress. That's the power of proper fashion.

Even by Silver Age standards (where she started as a villainess but not an Evil Villainess), Wanda Maximoff always dressed a little skimpy with some pink nylon at best. She's usually in a red one-piece with pink nylons, but she ran around in a loincloth and a halter top in the 90s. But when she goes bad, she pulls out the winterwear. Check out Darker than Scarlet's look. She's got full sleeves, a more covering cloak and long pants.



Avengers Disassembled: Draping her cloak around her.



Later on, when injured she appears to have changed from nylons to pants but that may just be her thigh-high boots. They caught her by surprise in this one, though.





House of M: A long baggy gown. (The Civil War mini also has her in a long gown, in drastic contrast to Lorna's dayclothes.)



Children's Crusade: Medieval Chic.



She's more well-meaning and misguided in House of M, and I suspect that's what Heinberg's going for with this Doom thing so maybe in addition to the Long Pants of Evil we have the Long Skirt of Delusion. Either way, if she's wearing more than the Nylons of Virtue we're in trouble.

The most interesting, though, is the Possessed by Elder God Chthon outfit from Nights of Wundagore:



This isn't interesting because it's unlike Wanda, in fact it probably sets the trend of off-the-shoulder cape, mild cleavage (especially compared to her good girl look) and of course the Long Pants of Evil that come with all of her bad girl outfits. What makes it really interesting is Chthon as an entity is not opposed to showing extra skin. How do we know? Check out Possessed By Chthon Quicksilver:



Granted, he is also wearing long pants. That might be the thing.

This is without even getting into how the Vision's presence could've averted the whole thing.

I was going through my LibraryThing where I came across something that got old irritations going:



Avengers West Coast Visionaries: John Byrne, Vol 2: Darker Than Scarlet (Prelude to House of M)

I normally adore long, unwieldy titles, but this did not bring me joy. No, it did not.

Prelude to House of M. Who do they think they're fooling?

I don't know if that was a fan or if Marvel retitled it (I've heard they did re-release it), but we all know no one planned this far in advance. We know that the whole shitty Darker Than Scarlet storyline was just to get rid of the husband and kids so they could use Wanda as a sexpot again. It was just a really stupid story that left a really stupid open end that Bendis thought he was oh so clever in catching, even though he missed the storyline afterwards where the whole crazy thing was settled and the children were too. Really it wouldn't piss me off so much that he'd used it as an excuse to break up the Avengers if he'd closed up the loophole at the end but no... He had to leave Wanda crazy so he could do House of M.

House of M wasn't a great story idea. It certainly didn't justify leaving the Scarlet Witch in that state. I don't COMPLETELY hate it (I think Pietro and Wanda are the most sympathetic characters in the mess, followed by Magneto and poor innocent Lorna) because it had nice art and issue 7 was heartfelt, but it was really just 5 issues of getting the band together framed by domestic violence and the X-men being hypocrites. This was never anything more substantial than a way to off the mutants and undo the really awesome stuff Grant Morrison did with mutant culture. It also provided a convenient excuse to completely divorce the X-men from the high ground by having them throw aside everything they've ever fought by suggesting they kill a mutant--who hasn't done anything to THEM--for being too powerful. Honestly, one of the reasons I fucking hate House of M is it has made most of the X-men entirely unreadable to me. (I still give Cyclops a pass for a lot of horrible shit because he was the only dude on that side to say "Wait.." but nobody listens to Cyclops when he doesn't want to murder people) They're a bunch of fucking hypocrites, and will be as long as no one points out that they pretty much caused M-Day by reacting to Wanda exactly as nonpowered humans react to them. There wasn't a single mutant at that fucking meeeting that hasn't lost complete control of their powers at some point in their careers. Professor Xavier ALSO took out the Avengers when he did, and no one--not even Pietro who was for having the government put him under guard--suggested he get executed.

I honestly can sympathize with the Avengers in that series. None of them except Wolverine pushed to kill her. They didn't want Magneto to take her away, they had to bargain to try and get her back. No one could really trust that Pietro wasn't going to freak out the second they tried to explain this, so of course they didn't tell him. I can get through House of M and still like the Avengers, and I even suspect this was on purpose. After all, didn't things end for the Avengers with getting Hawkeye back to life? They got a little reward it seems.

Of course, their actions, going along with the X-men to do a full assault on Magneto and distract him while Dr. Strange snuck in to see Wanda (because... this wouldn't make anyone tighten security around the most important person in the universe to the perpetrator/the only family member the deluded and ridiculously powerful party guests would believe couldn't defend herself?) were pretty stupid, but I think the Avengers overall handled it better. No one wanted to kill her and the Wasp wanted to ask Wanda for her input.

But oh god, the X-men. Every time I look at it I can't help but think they deserved to get slammed on for taking that position in the beginning. Before the beginning, even. Professor Xavier was entrusted to treat a woman who was said to be losing touch with reality. When confronted with memories of her giving birth--an event that even after Darker than Scarlet did happen was still something that happened OUTSIDE of her head--he decides to tell her that the children never existed and to forget that memory. Which is bullshit. The children did exist, they just were a trick from an external force. They weren't a delusion only Wanda saw. They weren't a delusion she caused everyone else to see by telepathy. They were a fucking trick by a fucking demon. All the events happened. The children weren't a result of her breakdown, her breakdown was a result of the children turning out to be a big trick. And as the trigger for her original breakdown was that Agatha Harkness fucked with her memory (and to Byrne's credit, the entire WCA team thought that was stupid and her father and brother knew nothing about it until after she freaked out), naturally the solution to a relapse is to fuck with her memory again. Professor Xavier can only have made her WORSE with his "therapy", but he gets none of the blame for House of M nor for supporting the option of killing her. ("I don't know what else to do, Scott" my ass.) He really should have been the one saying "Now, Emma" in the damned X-meetings, but instead he was breaking the idea gently to Magneto.

Hell, Emma actually prevented the peaceful resolution of House of M by stopping them from recruiting Captain America. Despite the fact that he's probably the only person in the group who could have talked down Wanda (and, after the reveal, Pietro), Emma vetoed him because he was too old. So in the big fight scene, when they find out who's idea this all is and they need someone with a clear head around to take control, Steve Rogers is not there. Instead we have a bunch of idiots who let the person who knows the least about any of the players--someone those jackasses really should have been looking after in case she might decide to get hurt or do something really stupid--decides to activate Magneto, the biggest most violent temper on the board. All change of a peaceful resolution disappears, and the mutants of the universe get fucked over because they didn't have Jean Grey at the meeting telling them they were a bunch of assholes for coming up with this.

That said, I did notice that Dr. Doom came out okay during the whole mess. So maybe they did mean to fix Wanda and blame Doom for both her breakdown and Pietro's really bad idea (Seriously, he was helping her focus her powers and unless he was under the same mindfuck I don't see how they'll explain how he let Reed Richards and Sue Storm are dead while Dr. Doom is still in power slip by), or maybe it was a really fucking big oversight and Heinberg caught it. It doesn't solve my problem with X-men, but it does make me optimistic for the Maximoff twins.

There will be no Young Justice review from me.

Tonight I was planning to watch Young Justice and get around to my Late to the Party review (as well as read the reviews by friends I've been putting off) but it was too fucking boring. I made it about 7 1/2 minutes into the pilot. The fight scenes were dull as dirt, the villains were uninteresting, the mystery was unable to overcome the overwhelming spirit of banality that welled up from the script. None of the characters had the charm or energy of their four-color counterparts. Robin was dull with bad hair, Kid Flash was dull and stupid, Aqualad was dull and brooding, and Speedy was an asshole who made me wonder why the fuck they didn't just go with Mia.

And I don't even like Mia.

Every second spent with that on my television screen seemed like a waste of my life, so instead I've decided to post the following picture of myself and an old acquaintance:



I forget which one I am.


Image scanned from Changeling: The Dreaming Second Edition (ETA: Artist is Rebecca Guay, who also did the beautiful Green Lantern: 1001 Emerald Nights Elseworlds--Thanks for the ID, Rachel!) which is full-color, fun to play, and has fucking gorgeous art.

Letter to the Editor

Bob Harras
c/o DC Comics
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Forwarding Service Requested

Dear Mr. Harras,

I recently read an interview with the former publisher of DC Comics that said he felt that women were not interested in superheroes. This sounded strange to me, as I have been reading Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman comics since I was 14, and your competitor's X-men comics since I was 12. During his tenure there were a number of complaints by female fans that seemed to be either ignored or answered in a way that seemed strange (Supergirl is brought back but aimed for male readers, Batman supporting character Stephanie Brown is returned after female fans complain only to replace another popular female character as Batgirl) and a number of opportunities to position franchises as female-friendly were missed (Wonder Woman has no kid-friendly book for younger female readers, Green Lantern's female characters are overwhelmingly sexualized and left dead longer than male counterparts) and both problems may be traced back to that idea that marketing to women won't produce worthwhile results.

I am writing to you to say that I hope this philosophy has been discontinued at DC. There are many female readers spending their money right now, and many more who would if they didn't feel unwelcome at the table. Television and book properties that involve superpowered characters have had massive female audiences (For example: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, the various X-men cartoons and movies, Xena: Warrior Princess, Dr. Who, Supernatural, Fringe, Smallville, Stargate, Harry Potter, or Heroes...)

I've heard it argued that women will not appreciate tightly woven multi-decade continuity or complex fantastical plots, but a mere hour viewing General Hospital should dispel that argument. The genre-loving book and television female audience are only kept from comic books by the industry's reluctance to seek them out.

Please consider that both halves of the population are potential customers and do not act to further alienate the women who do read the books as the previous management has.

Thank you,
Lisa Fortuner

I dashed this off tonight after reading DC Women Kicking Ass and Ladies Making Comics quote Paul Levitz:

I’m not sure that young women are as interested in reading about superheroes. The fundamental dynamic of the superhero story has historically been more appealing to boys than to girls.

Levitz isn't the Publisher anymore, but I still felt a need to send a message to DC so I wrote to the EIC. I'm going to send it out with my winter cards tomorrow. I strongly believe that physical letters are the way to go, because too often e-mails are considered to be spam and just more noise from the Internet. Girl-wonder.org ran an extremely successful campaign based on physical letters, postcards, and directly asking the panels at conventions about Spoiler. My own physical letters to DC have always been answered, even if it was with a form. They are concrete items with substance, and can't be ignored like a cyberspace communication. I advise anyone interested in saying something about this to go with a letter with a real stamp rather than an email.

Strangely, though, the hardest thing to do was find the physical address. DC's website only offers e-mail contact. I know that there's been an reorg over there, and that people are being relocated and old addresses may not be good. The 1700 Broadway address is in the fine print at the bottom of the DC Nation column in my most recent DC book, so I'm going with that. I'm actually a little suspicious about how hard this was to find.

ETA: Addendum

Sanity in the Weird World of New X-Men

Yesterday:

I haven't been that keen on Morrison writing Wonder Woman though -mostly because the women that I'm familiar with Morrison writing as lead characters are all written as psychological cases (Crazy Jane, Ragged Robin, Boy, Emma Frost and Jean Grey are all the ones that come immediately to mind) and for me, Wonder Woman should be as far from that as possible. I suppose that just because I can't think of a woman he hasn't written that way it doesn't mean that he can't write a woman that way, but I'd like to see it first I guess.

I think what's killing me about this comment is that I'm not sure what he means by "psychological case." You'd think he means someone who has a severe mental health issue, but there's the inclusion of Jean and Emma. Back in New X-men Morrison certainly delved deep into their psyches, but the major psychological issues on the team belonged to Scott and Professor X. Emma and Jean were having a relatively normal conflict, the sort of thing that might happen between two mental health professionals: one woman was unable to effectively counsel her husband while he had a psychological breakdown because she was far too close to him, and the other woman was taking advantage of that psychological breakdown to begin an affair. The confrontation issue--when Jean came home and locked Scott out of the room while she took Emma on a tour of her issues--wasn't the same as delving into Crazy Jane's past or the 'Nuff Said issue where they entered Professor Xavier's mind--and both women displayed the mental health needed to survive on his battered psychic landscape without falling prey to the dangers there--and saw just how messed up he was.

Even at her coldest in Morrison's run Emma is not portrayed as a complete sociopath, instead she's a woman who is willing to cause a great deal of social trouble. Morrison did examine her mental health by giving her secondary mutation that would cushion her psyche from an extremely traumatic experience, as well as be a metaphor for her way of dealing with people socially--which is basically what someone of Emma's personality type does, they act cold and cruel to prevent others from getting close enough to hurt them--and he had Jean take her back into her past to remember exactly why she's unable to let people get close to her. Super-powers aside, Emma wasn't a "psychological case" as in a woman unable to function because of her mental illnesses, she was a normal woman behaving in normal human ways that are often hurtful. You could say a lot about Emma Frost, but you can't say Morrison portrayed her as insane. (Whedon did, though.) She was affected by the tragedies she witnessed (cold as Emma acted, there were several points that the hell she went through in Genosha was evident, and it was her strength of will keeping her together and not a lack of heart), and she was formed by the household where she was raised. She was perfectly healthy and functional, she just had issues like people have issues.

Jean was even saner. Surely everyone has at least seen a loved one grow into a different person because they become stronger. Sometimes it's a bit hard to deal with, especially when that loved one doesn't realize they're acting any differently. Jean had the power of the Phoenix again, and it frightened the hell out of many of the other characters. She was perfectly in control of it and didn't see the problem, didn't fully comprehend just how strange that seemed to the others, and at this high point in her self-esteem was further away from her husband's misery than ever. This situation is a really good metaphor for when someone suddenly discovers a talent or started experiencing success or just gets her life on perfect course while her husband is feeling lower than ever. There's a major disconnect in her perception of herself, and the perception others have of her, but she doesn't pick it up. This is actually even more compelling because Jean's one of the more perceptive telepaths in the Marvel Universe and she does know people are uncomfortable, but because she's at a high point in her life and because--unlike Professor Xavier and Emma Frost who seem to just invade whoever's psyche they want--she respects people's privacy and doesn't pry into their thoughts she doesn't realize just how removed she is from them at that point. The affair hit her like a foul ball in the back of the head while signaling the hot dog guy. She attacked, and as some women do verbally, telepathically zeroed in on the weak spots of her opponent and let her have it.

I notice this is a thing Morrison likes to do when he writes a solo book. He likes to explore the character's emotions and personality, but he doesn't do it like other writers do. The in-thing with Bendis, Millar, Winick, Johns and a few other popular writers seems to be to have characters explore their emotions by sitting, brooding, and talking it out with other characters. The psychological problems of the heroes are spelled out, stated explicitly by other characters, the narration, or the character themselves. Disturbingly often the writer finds a way to have someone assure the hero they area normal for having these issues and spell out the tie to your real life. Morrison rarely says anything flat out and takes full advantage of the medium and genre to explore the character's psyche through conventions, powers, events, and even staging. Bulleteer may be the most I've seen one of his heroes brood. She has doubts about her place in the universe after gaining superpowers and finding out her husband was actually an asshole, and she comes to terms with them by acting as a superhero, observing the weirdness of the universe and how others deal with it, and then verbalizing the theme of the book in a multi-stage fight that utilized a refrigerator and a car engine. Batman--who legitimately can be described as a psychological case under most writers--creates an entire other personality that leads back to the greatest tragedy of his life, and Morrison explains it sparingly with flashbacks. Shining Knight experiences a coming of age tale that literally involves fighting the perversion of everything she held dear as a child. And the underlying theme to all of these stories is that the extraordinary--the problems of the superheroes--are not abnormal psychology but are metaphors for the mental experience of your average human being.

Now, if what the commenter means is "psychological case" as in "case-study of human psychology" as opposed to someone who should be committed to a therapist's care, then yes Morrison writes most of his female (and male) leads that way. In this case I completely fail to see what's wrong with an in-depth examination of what makes Wonder Woman tick amidst her fighting beings from the future, the past, another universe or beyond the multiverse.

If he means the latter, I'm not sure what version of New X-men he read but it's not on my shelf.

What Happened To Primaid?

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

Huntress

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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