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."

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.

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.

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.

Marvel Marketing Pisses Me Off Again

Play along with me, readers, as I list the ways that the Avengers: Children's Crusade #5 solicit pisses me off. Can you guess all six?

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE #5 (of 9)
Written by ALLAN HEINBERG
Pencils & Cover by JIM CHEUNG
THE SCARLET WITCH WAR IS ON! Latveria becomes a battle-ground as Magneto battles Doctor Doom — and the Young Avengers take on the Avengers — to determine the ultimate fate of the Scarlet Witch. But the mysterious reappearance of the time-traveling Iron Lad unleashes Wanda’s reality-altering powers upon the timestream itself, changing the game, and the Marvel Universe, forever.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

To be fair, I do like some of the things Heinberg is doing (though honestly, I think everyone so pleased with the last issue just has lowered the bar so much that if Wanda's not actively murdering people they consider it a good thing) but the way Marvel is pushing--and in other places not pushing--this series and Wanda's storyline annoys the living fuck out of me. Everywhere they tell us that Wanda is "criminally insane" and responsible for a more effective genocide than her father could have dreamed of. Every indication is that if they do bring her back, they aren't going to fix any of the real problems she caused and give her a real redemption. And everywhere I look there is no foreshadowing and hell, no reference at all to this storyline in any of the surrounding books, as though there is no intention that it will change anyone's opinion on Wanda in the future.

Now we get this solicit, which contains the following implications:

Battle lineups don't include Wanda, she's just the toy being fought over. For the fifth issue of the third event in the seventh fucking year, she's just a toy being fought over. I really don't see the need for a clever meta-commentary about this for a character who was an active decisionmaker from 1964-2004, with one fucking exception in the 80s so they could retcon away those kids you brought back (apparently so they can decide her fate for her).

"Reality-altering powers" I foolishly thought we were through with this "Wanda is a Nexus Crawler" bullshit. Billy gets magic, they have always treated it as magic, and Pietro's experience with Cthon was treated as magic too. Why are not okay with the magic explanation again? What was wrong with a soft retcon? I mean, they retconned out all the previous interaction with Dr. Strange with Disassembled? Why not just fucking forget those two pages? Or we could find out that was an imposter rather than Dr. Strange? Or mind control? Why do we have to go back to the exact problem that Bendis invented to make her unusuable as a hero to begin with?

Iron Lad releashes Wanda's powers upon the timestream. See Problem 1. Once again, she doesn't get to make decisions, someone else makes them for her. At issue 5, we really should be past the sort of shit that makes No More Mutants look good.

The cover does a thing I really hate, and it's not just a Cheung thing but something that has been bugging me on and off for years. Wanda and Pietro look like they are very different ages and different levels of attractiveness. Funny how whenever an artist does that, it's always the female twin who looks hotter and younger?

April? Issue 4 was out in January. You can't even keep to a bimonthly schedule here after you put this fucking special off for over two years?

Changing the Marvel Universe forever. I know, I've been wanting this to have a confirmed effect on the rest of the line... but they found a way to tease that and annoy me too. I would not put it past them to be serious here, and using the opportunity of another Wanda appearance to implement some M-Day or One-More-Day-style change they've been aching to shove in there. Something that, like M-Day, they plan to pin on her CRAZY Nexus Crawler powers that she can't control and can never redeem herself properly for, because they want to make it permanent. So, nothing real changes about Wanda (she's still a crazy weak woman who can't control her powers and needs her male family members to care for her) but they get to use her as an excuse for whatever shitty change they can't blame on Mephisto now.

Shit. This is how Storm and Black Panther aren't going to be married anymore, isn't it?

(ETA: Okay, that last one might not be so bad, but that still won't change the first five problems with this solicit.)

Link

Found and shared this on Twitter (via) earlier today, the famous story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr convincing Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek:

“I hope you will get the story right this time, because for some reason, no one has ever gotten this story right,(laughs). I, after the first season, because my heart was still on Broadway and the performing arts part of me, the musical performing arts of me was yearning to leave. I never intended to be an actress other than in the theater. So for me, TV and movies, that was something to help me get from here to there. And so it was a shock for me to be cast in Star Trek . A shock and a joy. I was performing in England at the time of the inception of the show and my agent tracked me down in Paris and told me that they were doing a show called Star Trek, assuming that I’d know what that was. Because I’d been in and out of the country for so long.

Now I’d known Gene Rodenberry since he’d given me my first TV starring role in a show that he’d done called the ‘The Lieutenant’. And he was one of the first people of that stature that gave me encouragement. He called my agent and said can you find Nichelle, because I need her for a role in this show and wherever she is, get her back here because I want a woman head of a department on the bridge. He changed the role from a man heading communications on the bridge and he wanted a woman of color. He wanted me and I came back and got the role. So the first year went by, and I enjoyed doing the role, to me at that time it was very challenging [laughs] but I played my role to the hilt, being the head of communications and all that and by this time the show had aired and I was starting to get notice and on the side I’m singing at places and people are hearing me and calling and I’m thinking, “Oh this is my big break! I have to leave this little show and go do it! I was thinking Broadway here I come!'

The rest here.

I don't understand Marvel sometimes.

Remember 90s X-men? Remember this guy?



Joseph. He showed after Magneto was "killed" in the whole Onslaught mess, and everyone assumed it was the old man de-aged with bonus amnesia. And for a while he was on the X-men as they milked the whole distrust the stranger who strongly resembles our worst enemy for all it was worth. During this, he got romantically entangled with Rogue, and it worked nicely because it had the positives of the romance with Magneto, where a guy actually treated Rogue like a worthwhile person (fuck you and your bullshit macho entitlement attitude Gambit) without the negatives of him really being a hateful old man and the main villain of the franchise. (Though again, directed at Gambit, when your biggest romantic rival is the main villain of the franchise and that guy actually treats her BETTER than you do, you suck.)



As time went on, Joseph proved he was a genuinely noble soul and real hero in his own right, and the people who thought he was Magneto began to think Magneto could have been a good guy if only the psychic airline had lost his baggage. Then two things happened (and as 90s X-men went I'm not certain which came first): 1) Magneto came back, and 2) We met Mommy.



See, Joseph was just a clone of Magneto, created by his mad scientist ex-girlfriend in order to kill him.

Yes, that's right, Magneto has a good-guy clone-son and an evil mad scientist ex-girlfriend who wants to kill him... and Marvel is not using either of them.



It's weird, too. Astra is a really, really horrible person, but I really like her. She was apparently in the Brotherhood pre-Uncanny X-men #4, but left for ideological reasons or because Magneto wasn't screwing her or because Magneto dumped her or all three. The falling out was apparently over greed, Magneto wants to rule the world and establish his demographic as the one in power, she wants to rule the world and get rich. It was amplified by the sexual tension they had. She is incredibly fixated on how she felt about Magneto and how attractive he still is and how he either turned her down or dumped her, to the point that her preferred method of killing him is to clone him and tell the clone to call her Mommy. Because despite the fact that she knows he's a jackass and she wants to kill him, she still thinks he's one hell of a man.

For his part, he thinks she's a greedy soulless monster who cares nothing for her own people and is sworn to kill her on sight. He has called her deluded, so she may be a stalker-bad-guy rather than an ex, but I don't trust Magneto not to have taken a lover from his early cult when a woman was so readily up for the position. I mean... he was kinda creepy around Wanda sometimes (though not as bad as Xavier with Jean) and she was underage, his daughter, and completely repulsed by him. Astra's good-looking, older, and--even now that she hates his guts--really freaking hot for him. Also, he certainly seems to hate her a lot more passionately than he hates anyone else who's left the Brotherhood.

Also, I love the way they talk. Magneto is very lofty and formal, Astra is disrespectful, flippant, rude, and colloquial. She calls Joseph "Joey", and continually makes comments about how attractive Magneto is, comes on to Nightcrawler, reduces everything to it base level and constantly mutters about the shoddy alien tech that she's stolen and is using to attack him. Oh, and when she doesn't get to kill Magneto or take over the world by taking advantage of human gratitude, she says this:



I can't believe no one wants to use this character. I mean, how many supervillains, crazed parents, or psychotic ex-girlfriend/stalker characters have this much fun playing just one of those roles? She's having the time of her life being all three, and even stops to shake her fists at the heroes at the end!

But sadly, no one seems interested in her or her poor kid. Joseph dissipated after throwing all his power into the magnetic field of the earth to fix damage his old man did, and Astra was apparently "taken care of" off-panel by Apocalypse sometime. Really, they should bring both back, Rogue deserves a better love interest and Magneto certainly deserves more enemies.



That's probably the main reason I like her. There's an ex-wife/ex-girlfriend stereotype that writers love to play with, where the hurt woman dogs the poor innocent guy all over the place. Usually, this woman is very unbalanced and the wrong was completely out of proportion with result. Basically, it's always Carrie Fisher chasing the Blues Brothers all over Chicago so she can kill both because Jake left her at the altar. He's a jerk, but she's going way overboard.

With Magneto? He's responsible for how much horrible misery? Beyond the whole genocidal maniac thing, just look at his personal life. His first wife left him because he killed a whole bunch of people in front of her. He lost his temper and crushed his own son to death once. He is the worst possible scenario of that smooth guy who gets you on his side and then reveals that underneath he is--to quote his daughter--just this horrible person. You can completely side with any woman who says "He treated me like shit and he needs to die" even if she's as objectively awful as Astra.

Maybe that's it. They don't really want that stereotype to be someone that you even slightly side with, and if the guy in question is Magneto you know he did something horrible to her. Personally, I want Marvel to make a thing of this. I want this to be a Magneto problem on multiple fronts. Because not only do we have Astra in limbo, we also have his good-natured selfless wife Magda.

Now, Magda is not established as being anything more than a baseline human, but her two children have radically different powers than their father and it wouldn't be too much for suspension of disbelief if an old lady speedster showed up some day. (Wanda's powers are established as having been fucked with by Cthon, so I'm figuring Pietro's the one displaying the natural X-gene.) Also, no stretch of the imagination to find reasons Magda might think her husband needs to be stopped or even killed for the good of planet, or at least her poor kids.

Beyond that, we have Rogue, who ends up fighting the old man a lot as part of her job description. She generally thinks nicely of him as a lover, even when she knows he's a bastard politically, but her major romantic interest talks like she's a piece of trash he found on the curb so it might be a comparison thing.

Dig even deeper to find Lorna's mother, who is human and dead but that's never stopped anyone in comics. She can show up like Carrie Fisher and launch rockets at him and it shouldn't cause too much confusion. People might not even wonder about the details until it's revealed she's Lorna's mom.



And don't get me wrong, I love Magneto, he is my favorite villain specifically because he can be portrayed so sympathetically, has moments with genuinely good intentions and will organically cross to the good side from time to time. It's just that given the qualities he has displayed as a friend, an ally, a leader, an enemy, and a father, I wouldn't be surprised if every woman he ever slept with ended up trying to kill him or at least severely inconvenience him. At the very least my Dream X-book is that three of these four women team up to attack Magneto.

With Bova as their Jarvis.

This can't be said enough.

Brian Clevinger (emphasis mine):

Power Girl, Emma Frost, Psylocke, Wonder Woman's bikini, every softcore porno cover, these are all messages saying, "This is not for you GO AWAY." They're active barriers keep women out of the club house.

Meanwhile the print industry tries to attract lady readers with all the grace of a seal solving a Rubik's Cube.

And when these half-hearted, ill-conceived projects invariably fail -- because they manage to say, "This is not for you GO AWAY," to both men ("too girly") and women ("what the gently caress is this bullshit?") -- publishers get to shrug and say, "BIFF! POW! Comics just aren't for girls I guess!" and they have an excuse to keep producing "mature" content instead of actually being mature about their content.

With Atomic Robo, we've made, quite literally, the barest minimal effort, i.e. "Hey, if there's no reason to draw this lady sexy, then how about we don't," and it's paying off like wild. Judging by our email, convention appearances, and Twitter, women make up about 20% of our readers. In this industry 5% would be pretty high, especially for a comic all about punching.

That's what's so sad about it. You don't have to try to get women readers. All you have to do is let your lady characters have some goddamn dignity. Cheesecake-y poses and panels designed to focus on them don't draw themselves. Someone makes the conscious decision to produce that specific image. Hours are spent on it. Lines are erased and re-drawn to get it "just right." You have to go out of your way to overly sexualize a character.

Or you could just, y'know, not.

Some publishers, editors, and artists will tell you they have to draw sexy ladies. Sex sells! It's what the fans want! No, it's what a sub-section of man-children the industry has spent decades culling from the mainstream has been trained to expect.

Here's the crazy thing: they can be trained to expect different things.

But no, "Boo hoo some creepy shut-ins might not buy Spider-Man" is the go-to defense of the industry. Yeah, that'd be a real shame.

Sorry if I posted a bunch of words that don't really add new ideas, I'm just continually astounded by the American mainstream print comic industry's Herculean resistance to increasing their sales.

(Via)

My History of Internet Haunts

So Magnetgirl's got a question:

The internet, it is vast and busy, and as I attempt to navigate it I wonder — how do YOU do it? I know I am not the only one out here in netspace with accounts every which where and I am curious: which do you really use, how do you use them and why do you use them that way?

Tony Stark isn’t available to explain social media to me. Can you?

I've been thinking about posting on that anyway, because my Internet habits have morphed a bit over the years. When I was a teenager, my first online outlet was ranting on message boards. I started because I'd read posts by people that made me think, and made me want to put things out there. I made a habit of it because I fit in fairly well, there was a group of people who encouraged me to post more, and it gave me a space to think through ideas, work them out with feedback, and come up with more and more ways to seem clever and have people tell me I'm clever.

After a few years meeting fans on message boards, I spent an evening searching the internet for comic character background for a series I was reading and stumbled across my first personal blogs. Just like with the message boards, I saw people who got me thinking and made me want to put those thoughts out there. I started up this blog and have been so happy with the format I always come back to it. This is a great place to just spit out my thoughts and refine them through followup posts, cross-blog interaction and the comment section.

A few years back I also kept a livejournal for non-comics thought and fandom interaction, but I found that the format was simply too safe for me. I had a false sense of security with the friends-lock, which made me think I could write anything and not expect it to go back to anyone. I found myself doing two bad things there: 1) ranting excessively about coworkers and family, and 2) complaining about other people on the internet in my cozy little spot where I could expect not to be challenged rather than confronting them directly. When the ads got to be too much and it changed hands and terms of service, a lot of my friendslist migrated to other journal services. I just deleted my journal and decided not to go with anything that locked again.

That's when I made Twitter my primary outlet on the internet. I picked the option to be entirely public, making it the exact opposite of my livejournal. Twitter back then had no delete button, and the ease and shortness of the format made me more likely to shoot my mouth off and have to immediately deal with the reaction. I like it because it is so very unsafe that way. It sharpens me in the way that livejournal dulled me.

Twitter is also good because I'm so naturally long-winded. The 140 character format forces me to shrink and streamline my thoughts. That improves my communication skills all around.

Lately I've found myself using Tumblr a lot. I started because it is simply easy to do, but it became my primary blogging method during my deployment because it loaded more easily than Twitter or Blogger on the base network. I keep with it now because it's easier.

I'm generally willing to try most social networking sites for at least a little bit and see if they offer me anything. There's a few services I keep coming back to:

Stumbleupon, which is just freaking brilliant. You load a toolbar onto your browser and pick topics you like. Then you press a button and it takes you to a random webpage you can rate or review. You can submit new websites to the pool, too. I leave this inactive for months at a time but I still come back. I love it for days when you just want to wander around the Internet aimlessly, and for just putting a website into the ether because I think people should read it.

LibraryThing: I have a lifetime membership and every book I own loaded into this. I sometimes check the boards, I sometimes review, but mostly I just use it to catalog my books.

Goodreads: I never thought I'd get into this, but it loaded well when I was deployed so I used it to keep track of my reading (previously I'd been tagging by year on LibraryThing) and put some of my thoughts on the page. My reviews still suck, but I've found it to be a useful service.

My latest playgound is GetGlue, which is a fairly unique site. It offers lists of books, authors, musicians, topics, movies and TV shows and you mark which ones you like. Then it gives you suggestions based on that, and you can like or dislike those. And more suggestions. And the option to stop on an item and write a review or just "check-in" with a thought about it. And there you interact with others. And you get little stickers as rewards. And you can become a "guru" and make suggestions and it is just so weirdly addicting.

As with all things, I can't tell how long I'll stay on it. It could be my new Twitter, or it could be like Newsvine which I loved for a few months and just got sick of.

Stuck on a moment

Girls Read Comics Too is putting together a Women of Marvel Memorable Moments poll (which is still accepting nominations until Sunday), and the list is pretty good. I want to make that clear before we go on. I like this list, I like this idea, I think you shoudl all go nominate stuff and vote.

But as with all fanlists, there's a couple in there that some fans loved but that make other fans cringe because everyone has different tastes. I'm pretty sure you all know which one I'm talking about:

NO MORE MUTANTS. Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch changed the lives of every person on the planet in House of M

What really got me was the sheer number of people suggesting it in the first post. I'm sure there's a number of Wanda-fans looking at that list and going "Oh HELL no, what's WRONG with people?"

See, House of M and Avengers: Disassembled are two of the absolute worst things to ever come out of Marvel for those of us who like Wanda. It's like Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour for Hal Jordan fans, two books that are fucking based around taking a hero we love and making her fucking crazy for no reason other than someone wants to change the franchise. Wanda Maximoff is the Parallax of the last decade (a comparison I've been on about in chat that I really must elaborate on in the future), and this is basically nominating Scarlet Twilight (No, we won't be going with Crimson or Ruby Twilight, it is going to be Scarlet Twilight) for an award while Scarlet Witch: Rebirth is experiencing shipping delays.

There is something distasteful just about seeing the storyline mentioned and driving home the point that everyone read her losing her mind, every book in the entire Marvel universe was affected, and every fan and writer has had "Womb Crazy Wanda" and the results shoved down their throats for the past six years.

And of course, the first defense of nominating this storyline is, like Zatanna in Identity Crisis (another nomination I complained endless about on Twitter) it was a major decision made by a woman that changed the world. It also underscored the sheer power the character contained, and the weight of their decisions. And in this case, perhaps because I favor the Scarlet Witch over Zatanna as a character, that might actually turn me a bit.

It is also the moment most fresh in fan minds about Wanda, being her last notable appearance prior to Children's Crusade (as an amnesiac guest star she is just a shadow of her true self, and flashback/AU appearances were far under the radar), so that has an effect.

But I don't think any of that is the real reason this sticks in our minds, the real reason it won't go away even after Children's Crusade brings her back and M-Day is undone. I think the real reason is the "I've had just about as much of this shit as I can stand" effect.

In the set of stories that would fall under the umbrella of "Scarlet Twilight" (West Coast Avengers: Darker than Scarlet, Avengers: Disassembled, House of M) Wanda has been fucked over severely from all sides. Her kids have been erased from existence, and she's been told by a demon, her fellow Avengers, and now her father and her "therapist" (Yeah, I'm sure Xavier has a degree but the bastard probably mind controlled his teachers into passing him) that not only were they not what they appeared, but they didn't exist. Her trusted Mentor Agatha Harkness has meddled with her memory. The Marvel Authority on Magic, Dr. Strange, contradicted all of his prior statements about Wanda and stated that she has no magic and it's been her freaky powers all along. The Avengers take him at his word, and do nothing to investigate whether or not her behavior was caused by an external force (such as that demon that took away her children). Captain America turns her over to a father who has a history of manipulating and using his children. Her father turns her over to the world's worst therapist. She's removed from her friends (Magneto's reaction to finding Pietro at her side implies he wasn't even allowed to visit), imprisoned, drugged and subjected to invasive telepathic therapy. The X-men, a team created to protect mutants from a society that feels they are too dangerous to live because of their powers, says that she is too dangerous to live because of her powers. Her friends in the Avengers have chosen to discuss this with them. Her father tells her brother that nothing can be done to stop it. (She was watching that.) And to top it off her sense of reality, her memory, and her powers--her very genes--are rebelling against her, tearing her in different directions and have caused her to kill several teammates--including her close friend Clint and her own husband.

Through all this, all she has left is her brother--who cannot obtain an ally to help save her life--who sacrifices his own independence (as well as his relationship to his wife and daughter--both of whom where absent in M-World) to hide her in a world. For this, for giving everything that their father could possibly want to him and finding a way to do this without destroying all their friends, her brother--bringing to life a nightmare she's had since they first met Magneto--becomes a victim of her father's violent temper.

I hate House of M and the effect it had, but I honestly can't make a case that it was Bendis hating on Wanda. She is the most sympathetic character in the story, the most put-upon woman in the universe. She has gone from having a full SUPERHERO family and friends to just having one person left in the universe who is willing to fight to save her life and sanity, and when she almost loses him... she loses it.

"No More Mutants" was a horrible moment. It was sheer rage and misery. It nearly destroyed the Marvel Universe. But unlike the previous two stories (the first of which was just cruel and the second of which made NO sense and totally ignored the resolution of the first), it was a logical continuation of her story. It was born of grief, anger, pain, abandonment, disillusionment horribly out-of-character actions by the rest of the cast, and kneeling in the blood of her twin brother after her father had beaten the life out of him.

It was not a heroic moment, though you could argue that after her experience with her own powers she honestly thought everyone would be better off. It was more of a "Fuck you, I'm leaving" to her father, to the hypocritical X-men, to the New Avengers, to the world, and to whatever cruel deity had given her those awful powers. It was Wanda, after being jerked around by EVERYONE for two crossovers, finally putting her foot down.

It was not a heroic moment. It was not a positive moment. It was, however, a powerful moment.

And while we're all betting on the Phoenix as the final winner, I have to wonder what it means if it wins. Because this moment is the one that classifies the Scarlet Witch as her father's daughter. It is a very Magneto thing to react to being hurt and betrayed by taking it out on an entire species. It is a very Magneto thing to think you are doing good when you act that way. It is a very Magneto action, the sort of action that allows him to be a compelling villain that can be allied with heroes from time to time. But... it is not an action that you can attributed to someone and classify them as a hero. It's defining moment of villainy and in order to use the Scarlet Witch as a hero it will need to be undone somehow. The effects will need to be reversed, and it will likely be attributed to lingering mind control (though sadly not hair-graying mind control because that would have looked pretty cool).

At least, I sincerely hope it will be undone. I liked the X-books better with the expansive attitude of the Morrison era, and the optimism of the 90s or the Silver Age. I don't like this dying race angle. I don't like it all being Wanda's fault. I don't like Wanda as a villain, or in limbo. And honestly? I hope next time we do a poll like this it doesn't even pass the agency rule.

If you want a character back, there's really only one way to do it...

They've got a petition up on Tumblr, and I would sign but it's married to Facebook and I don't like to give profile rights to anything I suggest you sign now that it's not Facebook, but that you also send in a letter.

I don't really believe that a petition has an effect. Fan petitions are the bare minimum effort for fans online, and everyone knows it. I think the only thing that has effect when you DON'T have the option to vote with your dollars (such in the case where there character is not appearing regularly and the few places she does appear aren't advertised--and any loss of revenue to the current Batgirl probably wouldn't be attributed to the change without massive feedback to that effect) is the mail.

To this end, DC has given us an opportunity by opening the letter columns:

To submit a letter go to:

www.dcletterspage.com

Letters may be sent by regular mail to this address:
Letters to the Editor
DC Comics
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Please include your full name, and address, for confirmation purposes. Letters should be no longer than 500 words and should not include attachments.
Letters may be edited for length or clarity and may be published in any medium. Letters become the property of DC Comics.

Unpublished letters will not be returned or acknowledged. Published letters may identify the writer by first name, hometown, state or country.

Imagine how strong a message it would be if next month's columns were filled with requests to see Cass Cain?

Now I don't have the time, energy or money to organize a planned letter campaign like Girl-wonder.org did, but until we find someone who does the best thing to do is to flood them with Cass Cain letters. Come on, take a few minutes and write out why you like Cass Cain and would read a book starring her again. Send an email, send a postcard, send a short note, send a long note. Then read the lettercolumns next month... and answer back if the answer isn't "You will see her here."

Now, I wasn't going to mention it because I figured I implied we'd want to send publishable letters in, but there is a certain decorum needed. I understand not wanting to but we should keep it positive, y'know?

As annoying as it is, it's also worth noting that Gail Simone recently said that tone is important when sending letters about Cass.

I know we have every right to be snarky and rude at this point, but she said sending a bunch of "FUCK YOU. BRING BACK CASS!" messages is only going to make editors think that they'll get screamed at no matter what, and make it less likely for her to ever come out of limbo.

So stick with what you like about her and, more importantly, that you would pay to see her back.

Especially write in if you're not reading Batgirl, and let them know you're not really feeling this other book but you'd try one with Cass Cain.

I have another Tumblr.

Rachel and I got together to start a really specialized Tumblr: A Nice Cup of Comics.

We accept submissions.

Go Vote

DCWKA has the final Memorable Moments poll up, voting is open until noon (I'd assume EST) Tuesday. Here are the contenders:

VOTE HERE. As a reminder, this list was developed out of a series of ballots consisting of 130 moments submitted by readers and participants in comics forums and sites. Those moment were voted on in a series of ballots. The winners in pollwere named as the 30 nominees. The only caveat for the moment is that the female character(s) had to have agency.

1. Wonder Woman beheading Medusa in Wonder Woman #210


2. Lois Lane and Wonder spend the day together in Wonder Woman #170


3. Lois Lane makes her debut in Action Comics #1


4. Stephanie Brown becomes Robin in Robin #126


5. Kate Kane resigns West Point because of DADT in Detective Comics #859


6. Huntress/Helena Wayne makes her debut in Secret Origins of Super-Heroes #17


7. Black Canary and past and current BoP operatives stare down Katrina Armstrong in Birds of Prey #106


8. Wonder Woman tells Superman, “there’s the door, Spaceman” in the New Frontier


9. Supergirl gives up her life to save the world in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7


10. Shiva and Cass fight in Batgirl #25


11. Stephanie Browns slaps Batman in Bruce Wayne the Road Home: Batgirl #1


12. Barbara Gordon/Oracle and Dinah Lance/Black Canary meet in-person for the first time in Birds of Prey #21


13. Renee Montoya realizes she’s going to become the next Question in 52 #42.


14. Batgirl/Barbara Gordon makes her first appearance and saves Bruce Wayne in Detective Comics #359


15. Lois Lane risks her life to save a soldier in Adventures of Superman #6311


16. Barbara Gordon becomes Oracle in the Batman Chronicles #5


17. Diana, after killing Ares with an axe, punches Zeus in Wonder Woman #33


18. Zatanna mindwipes Dr. Light and then Batman in Identity Crisis


19. Helena Bertinelli, the Huntress, stands her ground against the Joker in Detective Comics #741


20. Lois Lane refuses to believe Superman is dead in All-Star Superman


21. Batgirl tells Batman not to talk down to her in Secret Origins #20


22. Cassandra Cain saves Jim Gordon’s life in Batman #567


23. Wonder Woman puts her foot down with Batman in The Hiketeia


24. Wonder Woman wins the contest to go to “mans world.” in All-Star Comics #8


25. Barda Free stops a tank in Justice League International Annual #4


26. Wonder Woman snaps Max Lord’s neck in Wonder Woman #219


27. Barbara Gordon/Oracle hires Dinah Lance/Black Canary as her operative in the first one-shot of Birds of Prey


28. Amanda Waller fights Granny Goodness in Suicide Squad #34


29. Wonder Woman sacrifices the restoration of her eyesight for the life of Martin Garibaldi in Wonder Woman


30. Oracle defeats Braniac in Birds of Prey #73

Cain

So Kalinara and I have this thing. There will be a position that I plant myself in, something that I say there is no way in Hell that I will ever accept this, and she starts to see it as a creativity challenge to get me to budge. In this case, it was my last post.

And once again, Kalinara wins by coming up with an idea that I would read the living shit out of:

Picture it: Green Arrow's in like China. Or Brazil. Some place cool like that and gets into a fight. And then suddenly, the old woman in the corner throws off her hat and it's Cassandra Cain! She'd be there for her own reasons of course, and Green Arrow could decide to help or not. But either way, awesome fight scenes commence!

She could be DC's answer to Daughters of the Dragon. She wouldn't even need a codename. She could just be "Cain." It's snappy. And could totally be used for Kung-Fu/Kung-Fu the Legend Continues type homages.

Cass Cain as your wandering martial artist do-gooder, a mix of Jonah Hex and Richard Dragon. I would fucking love that. Hell, I think it's infinitely better suited to getting her on TV than the Batgirl gig. An A-Team (with wacky supporting cast!) or Kung Fu: The Legend Continues style setup where the drifting hero rolls into town, finds the trouble, beats the crap out of it and then moves on.

Thing is, in order for it to work, DC would have to fucking commit to taking her BEYOND the Batbooks. They'd have to launch it out of a guest shot in something like Green Arrow, let it go at least a year before she hits Gotham again (but they totally need flashbacks to Oracle's tutelage as well as her relationships with Bruce and her parents) have her guest star in high profile books like Superman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, and make her prominent in your crossovers. Make her a DC UNIVERSE character, not just a Batcharacter.

And after she's built herself a brand, a supporting cast and has an identity that's not dependent on being a Bat, that's not a supprtimg cast member, that's got ties beyond Gotham... Then you can have her buddy-cop team up with Steph-Batgirl because she won't have her place in the DCU dependent on the musical identities played by the Batfamily anymore.

I certainly don't trust DC to do this right at this point, but if they are married to Steph-Batgirl then Cass would have a better chance this way than as the back-up Batgirl. If they tried this angle, I'd read it. And if they put some effort into it and really tried to build in what they have rather than just letting her pop up as an ex-Batgirl now and then... I'd cheer it.

But she can't be Lady Shiva. That's her mom's name. Richard Dragon, Misty Knight and Colleen Wing all use their own names. Cassandra Cain is full of mystery and symbolism, it's perfect for this sort of character, and in this case a play off of Kathy Kane becomes a reference to Kwai Chang Caine.

The Trouble With Two Batgirls

Okay, as I have gone off very emotionally on this on Twitter, Tumblr, and--in the meanest thing I've ever sent to someone personally--over email, I may as well bring the rational point that just barely got brushed onto for my blog.

The big problem of a dual Batgirl setup is John Stewart Syndrome.

Notice how, when Hal came back they promised they had BIG PLANS for each of the Lanterns... And Kyle and Guy got a mini, and Hal and John would get the JLA. And Kyle and Guy got great interaction in the mini.. And he got one storyline, then Hal was the lantern for the last storyline of JLA... which was rebooted as Justice League with Hal?

And then, Kyle got a maziseries and Guy led the Corpsbook and Hal led the corebook but John pretty much disappeared?

Then after the Sinestro corps War where Kyle and Guy shared the spotlight with Soranik, and Hal got the corebook, and John got his paperwork again?

This is not because John Stewart is a bad character. On the contrary, he's a fucking great character. He has been strong since his first appearance, and distinctive as a thinker/activist from Hal and Guy and now Kyle.

But John, despite having been given the mainstream paly with the cartoon most recently (and Hal is now getting the movie), is almost never used. Even now in GLC he's basically a bondage king while Kyle and Soranik lead the mainplot. He is constantly, despite the promises and attempts to the contrary, downplayed for other Lanterns.

This is what would most likely happen in the event of two Batgirls. Endless frustration as Cass is pushed to the side for Steph. I can be an optimist, and a pessimist, but here I am being a realist. It's cynical, and it's a wrong in itself that should be fought but this is the most realistic result of a campaign for two Batgirls rather than a campaign for the return of Cass to Batgirl.

So yeah, gonna resist this suggestion, guys. It's a lovely thought and I'm sure you have the best at heart, but it is not a good option.

Argent

There's a really weird phenomenon with me and DC comics. Of all the corners of this universe, there is one that I simply cannot get into. No matter how many times I try the franchise, no matter who they put on it as writer, no matter who's on the roster, no matter what era I pick up... I simply cannot get interested in Teen Titans.

I know I'm about to get comments asking exactly why, and to be honest it's a mystery to me. It's not an aversion, or a hatred, or disappointment... it's just apathy. As a franchise, it just doesn't offer enough to engage me. Somehow they take characters like Bart Allen and Jaime Reyes that I can't imagine not wanting to read and put them in Teen Titans and all of the life and joy seems to drain out of them. Honestly, I probably can't bring myself to care if they get killed during their time on the team, that's how much interest the book holds for me.

When the characters leave, I pick up their stories again and be interested, but there's just this big hole in continuity that I just can't get into. It is the weirdest thing. I've checked out different writers and different time periods, some of the Haney, the Wolfman, the Jurgens, the Grayson, the Johns run and so on... The whole franchise just seems like this nexus of All Boring Things to me, where characters I love just lose their spark and the franchise-specific characters like Raven are about as intriguing as a wet dishrag. There is one exception, though, from the Jurgens and Grayson runs: Argent.

Toni's a rich girl with a kind nature underneath a spoiled demeanor. Not a terribly original concept, I know, but I liked her. She has silver skin, dark hair, a high-fashion style costume (I like to ignore that rainbow thing), and silver energy powers.

Basically, she's a baby Silver Lantern. Of course I love that. I tend to pick up Teen Titans or Titans when it promises an Argent appearance, and while I continue to like her, I almost always find the book not worth continuing. So I've missed most of her story. I was surprised when I looked her up (to make sure they hadn't killed her on me) to find that she had a storyline centering on finding out her father was involved in a criminal enterprise. I mean, who ever heard of a character named Monetti having a corrupt father? That's so incredibly original, fucking DC. (God, I would love for one female Italian-American character in comics who does not have a crook for a Dad. Can I please have just that one nice thing?)

Odious stereotyping aside, it doesn't overcome her character enough to kill my joy at a baby Silver Lantern with internalized powers (especially one of my gender and ethnicity). She's still the star of the Teen Titans story I remember the most, which was a two or three page story in Titans: Secret Files before she developed powers. She and her parents were in a mall food court, ducked under a table while the Teen Titans battled a villain. The entire story was just images of her reacting to off-panel action, which I normally hate, but I liked it. She was a cute little girl, and the experience seemed to be what planted the seed of superheroism in her heart. I'm disappointed no one ever explored her real potential, but at least they haven't killed her yet.

And by rambling about her on Twitter I was reminded that she appeared in "Rock of Ages" so I'm off to find my trade of that. I think she dies, but it's a one-storyline dystopian future and she gets some panel time in a JLA comic out of it.

Addendum to the last post, and a note on advertising

CBR is revealing more teasers of the characters we won't see in Age of X, because they're DEAD! I thought there was some merit in reading it because Jean's supposed to be around, but the blue-bordered image on top here has euthanized my dwindling interest. I know we can see that character in the regular universe, but for some reason a timeline without... it is just not terribly appealing? I don't specifically seek out a book for that character, but I enjoy the thought that this character is alive in SOME capacity and I hadn't realized just how much until now.

I'm sure for some of you this is riveting stuff. I like the characters they've confirmed too. There have been times that I would pick up a comic book to read solely based on Magneto's presence. He's great as an antagonist and a protagonist. I just find it so very weird how the more I see the advertising for this the less likely I am to buy it. Normally I am extremely susceptible to hype. Right now, I may be one of the few people on the internet not mocking the Fear Itself teasers, because they actually have me interested in the story.

I know exactly what they're doing, they're slowly rolling out the timeline to the start of the crossover, but... they're doing it by way of body count. "See, without the X-men all these characters you love to read would be DEAD!" Right now, Kalinara is telling me she's sure that last one is a trick and if she's right we'll find out fairly quickly on Tumblr and Twitter. Then my interest will likely reawaken and I can go back, reorder and I'll buy her yet another ice cream at the next convention. In the meantime, I really don't see how a bunch of teasers telling me that my favorite characters will not be appearing in this crossover is supposed to peak my interest.

I'd call this a step down from "One of these mutants will DIE" because well... if I like that mutant, I at least get to read a little of him before he dies and we all know this death thing doesn't last in genre fiction anyway. "One of these mutants will DIE" tells me "These mutants will be in it. Read it if you like them."

This crossover is going by "This world is so horrible that these mutants didn't even survive" advertising, which is telling me the opposite. And there just doesn't seem to be enough teased about what IS left and what exactly is going on to counteract that.

Disappointed before the first issue ships

CBR has a feature up teasing Age of X by showing the files of Henry Gyrich in the alternate universe, profiling several of our heroes. What really strikes me are the relations listings, and how many characters which are not being used by the X-office and haven't been used by the X-office for years are also missing and dead in this X-men alternate universe. (And I'm going to mention specifics soon, so consider this your spoiler warning.)

And it takes me back to how when Janet Van Dyne was taken off the board in the 616 universe, the Ultimate version of the Wasp was killed in Ultimatum. How when Wanda went crazy in Disassembled it was closely followed by Wanda getting killed in Ultimates.

It's very weird to me, because an alternate timeline storyline is a great opportunity to play with characters you don't normally get to play with, to have dead people alive and inactive people active, and make villains into good guys and bystanders into heroes. It's a really cool playground, but time and time again Marvel seems to decide that when something happens in the 616 universe it is reverberated across the multiverse! Hell, in "Ghost Box" Beast outright states that this is the case with M-Day, meaning that we aren't going to get to see an alternate timeline where mutants are the majority except for House of M flashbacks.

I know there's writers who get it, and we had a lot of variety in Hickman's Fantastic Four excursions and that Exiles is all over the fucking place, but it seems to me like ongoing things like the Ultimate Universe and large scale events like Age of X are squandering huge opportunities by having the same cast in a different setting. Don't get me wrong, Magneto, Rogue and Cyclops are awesome but we can read them together ALL THE TIME right now. We can't really read Cyclops and Havok at the moment because Havok is lost in space. We can only read Magneto and the twins in a single bimonthly series now, otherwise we haven't seen them since House of M. We can't read Rogue and Destiny now, ever, because they killed her off so damned long ago and she's just not a character who gets resurrected.

And these are things that would be fresh and unusual because we haven't seen them in the regular universe for so long. I still maintain that one of the greatest X-crossovers in history is Age of Apocalypse, partially because the only character who absolutely had to be absent was Xavier. With that rule in place, we got a lot of odd relationship stuff that we simply could never see the way 616 was set up. We had Nightcrawler and Mystique as a bickering mother-and-son team. We had Magneto as a loving husband and father, with a supportive relationship with his son (I am a bit irked they killed off Wanda in this crossover). We had Rogue as a mother and stepmother. We had Quicksilver and Storm in a romance. We had Cyclops and Havok raised together by Sinister. We had one-off death Blink alive and active, which actually led to the creation of the freaking Marvel Multiverse by being so popular she launched a series based on traveling through alternate universes!

It was a dystopian setting, but it was expansive and varied. Age of X so far strikes me as based on the same scarcity mentality that is driving the mutant plotlines in the regular universe. There was a "Decimination" and now the vast majority of mutants are dead rather than depowered, so it's a worse place where all the same characters are active. I like Mike Carey, but... it seems so small.

If anyone's curious as to what my voice sounds like, I was a guest on the 3 Chicks Review Comics special Best of 2010 episode. Go listen to the 3 great regular reviewers and learn why I stick to typing out my thoughts. (Kelly has the covers up on CSBG)

First Rant of the Year (That didn't take long)

So this stuff was up on Tumblr...



Yeah, Marvel... We need to have a talk. This thing with Wanda, I know I've complained before but you are seriously out of your heads with this. Right now you are selling a maxiseries to her fans based on the idea of her CHILDREN finding her and getting her back to regular operation but everywhere but INSIDE THAT MAXISERIES you continue to push the idea that she hallucinated her children and lost her sanity. With zero textual clues to suggest that the characters are wrong in this assumption.

Don't get me wrong. I understand that you have to establish certain things in the regular universe in order to set up the premise, which is that everyone but Wanda, Magneto, and Billy think that the kids were just a manifestation of her mental illnessand out of control powers. I understand that this sets up drama.

The problem is that you're dragging this shit out so long, and fixing it completely underground. Disassembled interrupted half of your line and REBOOTED entire franchises. House of M took over the ENTIRE Marvel line and rebooted the OTHER half of your line! And since then, for at least SIX years every MENTION of Wanda has come with a nod to her being tragically insane and everything short of ominous music. You have spent SIX years and your two highest profile crossovers pounding ALL of your readers over the head with the idea that Wanda is BABY CRAZY.

Then, you offer us an option to fix her in Avengers: Children's Crusade.... A special that is entirely self-contained and not reflected in any of the other books published right now. A narrative thread that we have to go out of our way to find (again, there are NO textual clues outside of Children's Crusade and it's single sad prelude that the Avengers are wrong to assume Wanda's irredeemably insane), is being shipped ever OTHER month, and will last 9 issues that will total up to an 18 month storyline. The book itself is oddly out of time, and does not reflect any of the other developments in recent years despite using characters like Steve Rogers--who appears in half the books you publish--without reflecting their current in-story status, and PROMINENTLY featuring characters like Quicksilver and Magneto who are right now appearing in other books with no nod to the emotional build-up to this story (Magneto's heavy concerns involving his children, Pietro's conclusions that these are his nephews) or the fallout from its conclusion.

This, I believe, would be okay if you had made it as high profile an event as the TWO events in which you destroyed Wanda's image as hero, or did not insist on decompressing the living fuck out of this maxiseries along with dragging it out over 18 months WHILE you continued to use those 18 months to push the narrative of Baby Crazy Wanda.

Y'know, your distinguished competition had this problem with a Silver Age character once. They made Hal Jordan crazy evil and stuck to it for ten years and do you know what happened when they changed their minds? They built up to it. We saw Hal EVERYWHERE and we had foreshadowing all over the fucking place that he was coming back and that it wasn't his fault. After the build up they made him good again in a high profile miniseries... that had a compact six-issue storyline, shipped monthly, and led to the reboot of a franchise. And after that mini? We saw Hal everywhere again rebuilding all those bridges his time under mind control had burnt.

See, after you've dedicated so much time and energy to forcing a heroic character into the role of villain, and have enthusiastically sold the character that way to the readers for an extended period of time... You get a lot of readers and future writers who think that character is a villain. If you want to FIX that, you need to make their redemption a Big Fucking Deal, and make it easily seen by all those readers who gave been eating the shit you've been selling for the last six or ten years rather than just the die-hard holdouts who have been waiting for this since you made her nuts. Otherwise, you'll have a lot of confusion and you risk the right dumbass writer connecting with the right dumbass editor a year or two down the road and having this exchange:

"Hey, wasn't she a bad guy?"
"She's been good since that.. Damn, I forget the name if the mini but it was mind control I think."
"I only know how to write her bad. Let's soft retcon it and use her as a villain."

Or:

"Hey, as a kid I read this cool story where she went nuts. Anyone ever resolve it?"
"... I don't remember, I think she jyst came back to the team."
"Okay I got this idea... We'll call it AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED..."

And even if that seems too farfetched or just like something that happens anyway, you still have characterization creep. Your writers, editors and artists have been not only pushing this shit but they've been consuming it themselves. Future writers, editors and artists are consuming it. Even if they are ASSIGNED Wanda as a hero, they still have the impression of a weak-willed passive woman who cannot tell reality from fantasy. These traits will overtake her as they write, because you have been pushing them endlessly and this is the image they have of her now. This is just like Hal Jordan's inability to feel fear, Quicksilver's mental instability, and Crystal's wandering eye... All flaws never in their original concepts that now serve to completely define those characters to the point of pushing away their relatability unless the writer works their ass off at researching and restoring the original personality. With every reference to Wanda's insanity you are CONTINUING to destroy your second female mutant character and your second female Avenger--one of your few female characters with a solid profeminist Silver Age foundation. This is not only irritating, it is MIND-BOGGLING to me that you'd do this.

There's really only one way you can save her. When Wanda gets back, she needs to be directly involved in rebuilding everything she destroyed (Bringing Hawkeye back was a good idea, but you are really going to need to overturn M-Day through HER actions) and she's going to need to make those Hal Jordan style pop-ins where she teams up with everyone in the Marvel Universe and defends herself against their grievances. If you leave M-Day in effect, if you just have people drop the grumbling without actually interacting with Wanda, all this shit is going to remain and Scarlet Twilight II is just around the horizon.

Also, that quote of hers bugs me on two levels. Continuity-wise that's a Lee quote, long before they ever found Bova and got the story of their birth. That story's set up so that Wanda has to be the older one, that's why Cthon would infuse her with power. (Unless you're planning something odd with Pietro and Oshtur.) Personality-wise, unless she's drugged out of her gourd like in House of M she knows better than to defer to anything Pietro says. That is hardly a quote indicative of her personality, and I'm a bit annoyed at your Polaris one too. It's awfully generic.

That said, the Quicksilver profile is very compassionate look at his actions and leaves open the option that Steve doubts Pietro's Skrull story. A previous one suggested Steve couldn't tell there was lying involved, this one may well have been after Pietro came clean and the "skrull interference" would be the Skrull that was in Attilan during Son of M. That one made me wince, because a) Captain America should be able to tell when someone as neurotic as Quicksilver is lying to him, b) Steve should know Pietro well enough to tell, and c) I was a little worried someone would have Steve on the less likely to forgive side of this one. It gives me some hope we'll see a little interaction between those two characters again, at least.

Memory Lane, April 1998

I remember this fifth week event from when I was a kid. This was actually the first solo Lois story I ever read. (It was also the only of these one-shots with a female creative team.)

I can't say much for the event name (or some of the stories, why the fuck was Donna in a church?), but the cover theme was pretty good. The unobtrusive banner at the top identified the event, and each set had an image of the star in a pose indicative of her concept and/or role in the story. So we have Secret against a black background, obscured by shadows. Lois Lane sneaking around in spy-clothing with a camera rather than a gun. Tomorrow Woman's circuitry overlaid in the darkness. They're not astoundingly good, but they did catch my eye back in the day.



I wish DC would resurrect this idea. It's such a simple event, just pick an underused female character from each of the major franchises (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Justice Society, Justice League) and give her a solo spotlight. Something like Marvel did this year with their Women of Marvel one-shots. It could shine a little light on supporting characters and neglected superheroines again, if just for the fifth week in a month. I mean, they revisited the Tangent universe, why not this?

Or I wouldn't mind another flashback Tomorrow Woman story. Even for a one-issue wonder, she had some charm to her and was an interesting pick for the JLA franchise.

2011

Last year was reasonably uneventful. The first half of the year was dominated by work, testing for promotion (no one in the office made it) and preparing to go to Afghanistan. Then, Afghanistan. I read a lot while there. A lot of old genre fiction I found on sites like Munseys, trades I ordered online, digital comics and religious materials. I started a Goodreads there, since the website was accessible, if anyone'sinterested in my books and thoughts about them most of what I read it on it. Didn't count most of the digital short fiction though, so there is a lot of REHoward, Leigh Brackett and PK Dick that's listed that I really enjoyed.

In the few months since I got back I've been blogging more often, which translates to writing more often which is a fairly good thing. I'm not much for New Year's resolutions, I tend to make mine at the end of the year. One was to post every day in December, and that worked out nicely. Sadly, I did not enter the new year with a clean house, my comic book backlog all read, the laundry all done and the dishes all done... But I had some decent food New Year's and a snow day on the solstice so all in all it was a pretty good month.

I do have some left over items. I still need to read some items that I wasn't in the mood for last month (I hate to force myself to read or watch anything, it makes me uncharitable towards the work and often leads to not enjoying something I normally would), and finish a few books. So I'm going to give myself an entire year for these:

The Kalevala (English translation)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Wiccan Mystic: Exploring a Magickal Spiritual Path (Almost halfway done with this)
Guardian of the Dead
Wynonna Earp: The Yeti Wars
Lorelei of the Red Mist
The Supergirls
Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors
Trickster Makes the World
Beyond Good and Evil (I have been a third of the way through this for a long time)
Legend of the King
No Good From a Corpse

Plus a bazillion superhero comics and anything else that catches my eye.

No promises, though. I have a criminally short attention span.

Happy New Year

This was my personal favorite cover from 2010. It's got 3 of my favorites and that fairy tale motif I love. I know some people don't like it because Wanda's in the wicked witch role in the back, but part of the appeal for me with Wanda is that she's the Fairy Tale Witch as a good guy. Since I was a kid I've had a fascination with the Witch archetype on either side of the moral divide, but especially as good guys. (And as cover artist Jill Thompson also created Scary Godmother, it's safe to say I'm not alone in that fascination.) For some reason, I just want it to turn out to be a misunderstanding, and for the fairy tale heroine to get trained as a witch after befriending her. Wanda's history is that of a fairy tale heroine (she and Pietro are very Hansel and Gretel and the Brother and the Sister to me) and her powers are that of a fairy tale witch. She's ideal for exploring feminine roles in fairy tales, as well as the overlap between folklore and modern superheroes.

Recommended Reading and Food for Thought on Silver Age Nostalgia

David's got a post up today on race and comics that's damned good reading.

Lately, I've been trying to put to words my problem with the assumption that "Silver Age Nostalgia" is what's wrong with comics (and I'll probably continue to), and a few paragraphs from that post really resonated there:

I don’t think that DC is working of nostalgia at all, especially not for the Silver Age. The Silver Age, running from the ’50s up to the early ’70s at the latest, was a time when superhero comics turned soft and transient. Characters changed shape, gimmick, and styles issue to issue. The Silver Age is generally viewed online as being wacky and out-there, super weird and goofy. It isn’t known for Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, and Ray Palmer so much as for that time Superman had an ant head and Jimmy Olsen married a gorilla. Jordan, Allen, and Palmer date from those times, yes, but they aren’t emblematic of those times.

If you skip across the street to Marvel, there’s an interesting parallel. Over the past ten years, several characters from the ’70s have made a return. They haven’t replaced anyone, but Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Werewolf by Night, Moon Knight, Spider-Woman, Nova, Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, Shang-Chi, and even Howard the Duck have made returns, no matter how completely unmarketable they may be. Does that count as nostalgia for the ’70s?

I don’t think that either situation counts as nostalgia. There is certainly someone’s fond memories of a character involved in the process, but nostalgia is a yearning for, and sometimes emulation of, the past. Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown is a love letter to blaxploitation films. The casting of Pam Grier, the soundtrack, and all the overt references to blaxploitation is proof positive.

If you look at Bendis’s Cage or Geoff Johns’s Hal Jordan, and I mean really look at them, you’d see how they aren’t really fueled by nostalgia at all. The stories aren’t even remotely the same. They star the same characters, sure, but casting Pam Grier alone does not a blaxploitation movie make. Johns’s Green Lantern is deadly serious and never boring. The goofy ring structures, the giant boxing gloves and baseball bats, have largely given way to airplanes and detailed rifles. It’s realistic, rather than whimsical. His Flash comes a little closer to emulating the Silver Age style, but even then, he’s taking one part of the past (the Flash Facts/science) and applying it to something new (giving us stories that let Francis Manapul show us how cool superspeed is). The characters are old. The stories aren’t.

I've been all about that when I'm complaining. The "Silver Age Nostalgia" is all cosmetic, and some of the best stuff out has been a revival of the spirit of the Silver Age, while some of the worst shit is just the Silver Age characters written in a modern age story.

I know I have more to say about that when it percolates a bit, but that's a tangent that doesn't even touch on a fraction of David's post.

Amendment to the Last Post

Yeah, I know there are comics fans who like Roy Harper. I don't particularly care either way about him, but here's the big thing: Nothing is more infuriating about Young Justice to me than using Roy. It's not because I absolutely hate Roy, or because I'm a fan of Mia (I really don't like Mia at all). It's because all the promos and the plot hints point to the idea that Roy Harper will leave the team and be replaced by a girl.

Roy Harper is the sidekick character who is the most easily replaced by a female character from the outset. There have been two Arrowettes and there is CURRENTLY one female Speedy.

Speedy is not an iconic character. Roy Harper fans are already knee-deep in comics culture. He's no more notable than Aqualad, who was judged unknown enough that they could swap him out for diversity. I actually think it was a good idea to swap out Aqualad, and would have been a better idea to swap out both Speedy and Aqualad.

Instead, because a conscious choice was made to start this cartoon series as a boy's club, we have Roy from the outset. And he is a jerk. And he is going to be replaced down the line, but because of Tradition we need to start out with a boy's club and women are not important enough to bring in at the start.

You know how the Tradition of starting with none or just one female character on teambooks started? Because they didn't think it was important to have women on the team at first. So in the Golden Age it took them 5 issues from the formation of the Justice Society to even have a backup of Wonder Woman. (Red Tornado was in the first issue, but she was laughed at by the boys and didn't formally join.) In the Silver Age, every team started with one girl (Wonder Woman in Justice League, Jean in X-men, Sue in Fantastic 4, Jan in Avengers) and it often took several issues to give her a good part (Okay, Jan was pretty cool from the outset but Wanda took the prize when she came in; poor Sue took forever to get some real cool moments) and years to add a second girl (Polaris was introduced in issue 50, I think, of Uncanny). Young Justice itself, as late as the 90s, took 4 issues to add girls even though it was launched as part of the Grrlfrenzy event.

This is not because it is good, or right, or "organic" for things to start out all-men and then add girls later. This is because the creators made a mistake early on, and acted to correct it later. The Boy's Club was a BAD thing, and they were trying to undo it. NOW we know better. We can start things on the right path. Continuing this silliness and calling it "Tradition" is wrong-headed and totally misses the point of expanding female roles as time went on.

And saying you're trying to lure boys in and "reeducate them" "organically" is bullshit.

New Young Justice Trailer.

After being bored out of my skull by the premiere, I briefly considered checking in on the next few episodes of Young Justice in case the new characters are interesting and they manage to hammer out the kinks.

That might not work out for me now.



(Via DCWKA)

Let's see, still no Miss Martian. To the Creators of Young Justice: I'm sure you consider yourselves progressive for including a physical powerhouse female character, but this is the 21st Century and we would like someone who speaks, and says something of substance when they do. Now, this is difficult if you haven't ever stopped to listen to a girl speak before but I have a solution until you can find a writer who has. Just think of what a boy would say, and have someone with a higher voice say it. It'll be a little rough, and probably not sound entirely right but it'll be a start while you do some research.

Not that the rest of this is doing very well. Prior to this preview I really only hated Speedy because he was a jerk, everyone else was just boring. In less than two minutes, Kid Flash has been promoted to hateful. You might have gotten away with the hormone-driven teenaged boy shit if the girl had been seen enough to counteract the idea that she's little more than a sex object, but she's not so you don't. He's a jerk. Also, the other boys are jerks because they didn't even roll their eyes at him. And I don't care that a villain prevented that, because who wrote the fucking villain?

Robin's been promoted to irritating. That giggle is stupid. He's like a video game character. A+LEFT to hide in the shadows, B to snicker. It's annoying as fuck, and Dick Grayson shouldn't annoy me until he's Nightwing and being overtaken by angst.

Aqualad... is actually okay in this... possibly because he doesn't have enough lines to piss me off. He's doing a little better than Miss Martian in that he actually gets to fight, though.

And Speedy's still here, oh joy. Oh seriously, why the fuck is Roy hanging out here? Is Tradition really that fucking important? We ALL see Artemis in all the fucking promos, we know that very soon the archer is going to be a girl and this asshole will be gone. Why are we watching him? Why does he need to be here in the first three episodes? Is anyone REALLY going to say "Where's Speedy?" FUCK NO! He's just as worthless as the original Aqualad, and the only reason Roy didn't get switched out from the start like Garth did is because someone on that writing staff inexplicably adores Green Arrow. No one outside of comics fandom gives a shit about Speedy, and this jackass we see on screen isn't going to change that! You could have used any reckless teen archer there! You guys just badly wanted to use Roy when Mia or Cissie would've done fine, and now you're doing some stupid story about him leaving or dying because it's "traditional" when you could have started out with this Artemis character in the opening instead. If you're gonna kill him off tragically, you could have done it in the first ten minutes of the pilot, and had room for the girls you left out.

Look, I'm a Silver Age nostalgia fan. I love the Silver Age, I read the old comics, I actually feel a lot of my favorite characters could do with a revival of their Silver Age personalities and elements... and I can't fucking stand what you've put on screen. You have the perfect place to play with the mythos here--a cartoon series where you can streamline major comics stories and can blend the best of the Silver Age, the 90s comics, and whatever new stuff you want to throw in--but you INSISTED on launching this with Roy Harper, Dick Grayson, and Wally West because it's traditional? Stop treating childhood wonder like something you can recreate with a fucking checklist!

Fucking nerds, I swear.


ETA: Addendum.