On Hatred

A few days ago on Tumblr, Sharon Carter fans and Sharonhaters came head to head over a post on the increasingly poorly named "Comic Secrets" tumblr. Seems someone felt that Sharonhaters were falling prey to sexism, but didn't felt comfortable calling them on it and naturally they did an anonymous posting that pissed a large number of them off. Even though Tumblr has gone to great length to make it nearly impossible to have a conversation, a post claiming that Sharon Carter "gives men a reason to be sexist" and that, based on examples solely from Ed Brubaker's Captain America run, the character is inherently worthless has led to an intense fight via reblogs (across a second post, too). I'm particularly fond of how she cites Sharon's advice to kill Bucky as her being a "bitch", but claims she hates her because has no agency whatsoever.

Despite it being a glaringly irrational argument based on a single writer, it nevertheless reminded me of my recent Crystal irritation, my old Donna Troy hate, my old Jade hate, and my history of calling for the deaths of Spoiler (which ended up sucking), Jade (which also ended up sucking), and Cassie Sandsmark (which would probably end up sucking so I've stopped wishing she'd die). The entire affair has me thinking about the nature of character hate, especially in a genre like superhero comics where the storytelling is serialized across portrayals by different writers and artists. When is it really hating the character for something in their core concept and not simply being angry about the role in the story or the writer's individual view of the character? And how often is it simply based on another character? How much of a role do demographics like gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity/nationality and religion play? You can't divorce it completely, and many of us are harder on the ones with demographics in common with us. What about exposure? A character you're indifferent to can soon become hateful if you see it way too often. There's a number of characters I can't stand because they dated other characters I like, and a significant portion of the books I read were dedicated to a character I had zero interest in. Too much time of that and a lack of interest turned into disgust and misery whenever the character appeared.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that every character I read gets measured against a number of traits and values I try to cultivate in myself. (Yes, villains have these too. They just don't have a moral compass.) I find myself taking little interest in characters without those traits, and that turns to hate if I read too much of that character. There's a few character traits I despise in myself and other human beings, and I'll take a strong dislike to anyone fictional who displays them. It's simply things I don't want to read about. Sexism plays a role here. I know of some traits (such as Daddy issues) and storylines that are more palatable with a male character than with a female character to me.

But then we get into the problem of what's a character trait and what's just the writer. This is especially problematic because what's just the writer can soon become a character trait if taken on by the next writer, and the writer after that and so on. See Crystal's infidelity: the first could simply have been an accidental falling for Pietro, the second they tried to explain away as mind control, but by that point writers had gotten too attached to her and Pietro in some sort of love triangle so then there was the Black Knight infatuation, and Johnny Storm was played up again, and the next thing you know the fucking Sentry's been retconned into her past (this does make me pity her more than I hate her, though). I'd say anything transferable between writers can be argued as a character trait, with the clincher being three or more writers with no mind control/imposter plot or a majority of the character's recent appearances.

Fortunately, character traits can change and the right growth plot can turn a hated character into a tolerated or even beloved character (though I think it's safe to bet you won't see a post on this blog entitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Queen" anytime soon).

A trait that's in the core concept is tough to change, though. You can't suddenly decide that Huntress isn't a temperamental Italian woman with mob ties without making her into a completely different person, so if your problem is that Huntress is an ethnic stereotype than probably nothing is going to change your mind. There's a number of characters I can trace my hatred back to things that are inherent to their characters, and that's just the way it is. In such a case, though, I can usually tell I'm not going to like them from the description and it's not a reflection on any writer other than the one who created the dreadful waste of panel space.

Still, there's a place for reasonable dislike and hatred that takes the gender of the character into account without focusing that hatred on the femaleness of the character alone, and without extending it to real live women. You may hate a character because you object to sexism that's become inextricably entwined with them in stories, but when you throw gendered slurs at the character when ranting about them, you problem may be more rooted in sexism itself than objection to sexism. I'm not above saying "Emma's a bitch", but anyone offended by the vocabulary certainly has a point that I'm letting misogynistic attitudes creep into my rhetoric.

Now, before you accuse me of thinking myself inherently better than someone else... 5 years ago, I wrote this post. It's another thing that has me thinking about character hate. This may seem like an inappropriate subject for the holiday season, but the celebration of Yule is the expectation of dawn after a long darkness and I'm in one of those religions dedicated to personal exploration, so I can't think of a better way to spend December than wading through the depths of my hatred of female characters feeling blindly for the root cause. I believe I'll look into some individual cases in my upcoming posts. Feel free to join me.

We may need to be proactive with this guy.

Via Mizzelle, we have some intriguing news in the DC management area. Seems they've put a new person in charge of developing their franchises. Given how badly they've been doing with Wonder Woman, this could only be a good thing. Right?

I'm sure it is. Let's meet the new guy:

In his new role, Desai will develop and implement the individual franchise plans for Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Flash, MAD Magazine, Vertigo titles, and other DC properties. This will include driving wider cross-promotional support across all Time Warner divisions.

Amit Desai joined Warner Bros. in 2004. Most recently, he was responsible for Warner Home Video’s non-theatrical family and animation business. During his tenure with Warner Home Video, Desai helped grow non-theatrical family & animation revenue +45% and secured #1 studio market share position for first time in business history. Among his accomplishments, Desai is credited with the launch of new franchises such as DC Universe – a series of animated original movies inspired by DC Comics graphic novels.

Wait.. He's an animated feature exec. Didn't we recently hear something about animated execs? Let me check my archives... Ah, here it is:

We had originally planned to do sequels for Wonder Woman [but] sales started out extremely slow and then over time were eventually able to catch up to probably Justice League Frontier. The execs decided because it wasn’t able to sell quickly right away, where as Justice League was, that there wouldn’t be any more female super hero films right now. We were developing and hoping to get started on a Batgirl film based on Year One, but because of Wonder Woman’s slow sales start, that won’t be happening now.

...

Fuck.

Does anyone have his contact info?

Girl-Wonder.org Membership Drive

The old Board of Directors at Girl-wonder.org were a driven, organized, and (rare among comic fans) practical bunch that managed to convince the suits at DC Comics that a third-string sidekick girlfriend of Robin should be returned from grave and given her own solo series. Pretty fucking impressive on it's face, and they had considerably wider goals. Alas (as with my own projects) life gets in the way and you don't always have a successor available who can hit the ground running when you need to move onto a higher priority. As a result, the site's columns have been silent (I understand the forums are still active, though) and we haven't yet seen a major followup to Project: Girl Wonder. But that could change:

Girl-Wonder.org is pleased to announce that it is holding elections for the Board of Directors for its governing body, Gworg.

Gworg is an incorporated non-profit feminist organization dedicated to fostering an attentive, empowered comics fan community, to encouraging respect and high-quality character depiction, and to assisting the professional development of women working in the field of comics. Anyone who supports these aims is eligible to become a member, and all members are able to vote, stand for office, and nominate others to the Board.

Becoming a Director is an excellent opportunity to support and direct the progress of Girl-Wonder.org! Moreover, since Gworg is a registered non-profit organization, this also makes a great entry of volunteer work on your resume.

This is how it works:

1) To become an official member of Gworg, you must purchase a voting membership good for one year. There is a nominal fee of five dollars, which is waived for Girl-Wonder.org volunteers (bloggers, cartoonists, forums moderators, etc). All members are eligible to vote in elections, and to nominate themselves or others for Board positions.

2) If you want to be a Board Director, nominate yourself! You can also nominate others – don’t worry about approaching them to see if they’re interested or if they’re members, because we’ll do that.

3) We’ll make sure all nominees want to run for election and are eligible to do so.

We will be accepting new members and Board nominations from Tuesday, November 30th through Tuesday, December 21st. Elections will be announced on Tuesday, December 28th. Members will then have until Tuesday, January 4th to vote for this year’s Gworg Board of Directors.

Just a few years ago Girl-wonder.org was the most effective female-focused comics charity around, and with the right people on the board it could be again. If you have interest in superheroes, a progressive outlook, enough drive to confront a resistant industry about its ingrained attitudes towards women and spare time, I advise you to look into this. (Even if you're not into Batfandom, because heaven knows things like this need variety.)

I just have two things to say, at the risk of opening old wounds:

1) When you do join, choose your officers carefully. The old Board were the founders, so they were engaged. But there's another female-focused comics industry charity that once did a great deal of work but found itself slipping into inactivity. This charity attempted to infuse itself with new life by electing for their President a popular blogger with a prize peacock personality rather than a dedication to the goals of the organization. It did not work out well. Take my advice and pick yourselves some down-to-earth people who aren't into self-promotion for your leadership.

2) If you get a position but later find that your professional, student or personal life is reaching a point that you can't fulfill that duty, don't be ashamed to step down and let someone with more time take care of things. Both Kalinara and I hesitated on that with When Fangirls Attack and we had several months without a post, nearly killing our venture. We finally faced facts and passed it on, letting it survive a few more years. The projects themselves are more important than any discomfort that results from having to give them onto another person.

Mangatron

There are so many beautiful things about JLA #6-7 (the introduction of Zauriel, numerous pithy ways to say the world is at stake, and an unrelenting stream of awesome Wonder Woman moments to name a few) but I had until recently overlooked the introduction of Mangatron. Mangatron is a giant robot. He sits on the bottom of the ocean. This is all he does. I am not normally impressed by giant robots, but I love him.

I suspect if we could ever figure out exactly why, we'd be able to mass produce comics to my taste.

Can you be prettier when you cry?

What the fuck, filmmakers?

Actually, it was the lack of acting she hated. "I remember when I was dying in Silver Surfer...The director was like, 'It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica.' He was like 'Don't do that thin with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in.'" And I'm like, But there's no connection to a human being. And then it all got me thinking: Am I not good enough? Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough? Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person? Am I not allowed to be a person in my work?

--Jessica Alba in Elle

So, I found this little nugget buried in my feeds, linked from Comic Alliance, through Moviefone, to Jessicaalba.net and I can't help but notice not one of these websites commented on the importance of this quote. Moviefone acknowledged that it was a valid complaint, but was too busy making jokes at her expense.

And you know what, sure, Jessica Alba has never displayed a lot of acting talent. She's easy to take potshots at. But she is telling us exactly where that Fantastic Four sequel went wrong, and where Catwoman and Elektra and other incredibly shitty takes on superheroines went wrong. This is where supporting characters like Lois Lane in Superman Returns went wrong too. From the start, from the very point where they decide "Let's cast that girl based on her appearance--then make sure to change her hair and eye color", and the writing when they don't give them worthwhile parts, and the directing where they say "We need your pain to be attractive so just be flat because that's prettier" -- They don't treat female characters like people. The makers of these films aren't considering those the parts of people. Even when they DO hire an oscar winner, they don't write for her or direct her like they're writing for or directing a person. They're writing for and directing pinups. They think all they need someone who looks hot on the poster and a computer can do the rest. Then when it doesn't work, they say women don't work. After they made it not work.

When you figure all the lead woman in your film can be is window dressing, and you don't pick the best actress (and instead chose the sexpot who's natural looks you're going to cover with appearance and alter with CGI anyway), and you don't write a strong part for her (because you didn't pick a good actress who can carry it, or you'd rather write the men, or you don't feel comfortable with a heroic woman), and you don't encourage the actress to give her best in the role (because strong emotions aren't pretty, because you didn't pick a good actress to begin with so why bother), and you go as far to as to cut down on the humanity of a moment in order to make it more sexually palatable, then your movie sucks. This is why your movies suck, Hollywood. Not because your lead is female, not because your actress sucks (that's actually your fault because you morons hired the sucky actress and are actively trying to make her suck more), but because you've decided your lead isn't a human being. It's not female action heroes who suck, Hollywood, it's you.

Assholes.

(And by the way, if you comment anything to the effect of "Jessica Alba is just a bad actress trying to excuse her bad acting" that makes you an idiot who missed what I'm mad about. And an asshole too.)

Update

For those of you that are following along at home, I've had a very long posting break because I was packing up and leaving Afghanistan for nice comfortable Germany. It took about a week of traveling and transient living (marked mainly by getting quickly ready to go meet planes that were either postponed or too full to accommodate the group I was with) but I'm back in Germany and waiting for them to hook up my internet again.

In the meantime, I'm getting reacquainted with my DVD collection. While I was seeking to enrich it the other day, in anticipation of ten days without home internet (and I am far too lazy to make that trip except to defend Wonder Woman from the Batfans), I ran across something interesting in the exchange.



No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is a Katma Tui action figure. In ugly post-wedding costume, but still, it's a Katma Tui action figure. YAY!

Maybe Lightning'll Strike Twice?

Like Mizzelle, I'm still processing this.

Wonder Woman is heading back to the screen but instead of flying to movie theatres, the Amazon princess is returning to television.

Warner Bros. Television is developing a modern-day reboot of the classic DC comic book heroine and is lassoing an unlikely talent to potentially write and produce the superhero project: David E. Kelley, the showrunner behind legal dramas such as “Ally McBeal,” "Boston Legal" and "The Practice."

The development comes after nearly a decade of attempts by Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver to launch a big-screen version. Actresses ranging from Angelina Jolie to Beyonce Knowles to Megan Fox have thrown their hat in the ring for the starring role at one time or another.

--The Hollywood Reporter
It'll be damned hard to recapture the charm of Lynda Carter and Kelley's responsible for the Ally MacBeal atrocity, but... Wonder Woman TV Show. The horrible deaging and new costume are probably to set the stage for this, but... Wonder Woman TV Show. They're probably going to screw up the casting, but... Wonder Woman TV Show. They're almost guaranteed to screw up her religion, but... Wonder Woman TV Show.

It could be the Smallville of the Wonder Woman mythos, but it's a Wonder Woman TV Show. I'm there.

I am not optimistic here.

WONDER WOMAN #605
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art and cover by DON KRAMER & JAY LEISTEN
1:10 Variant cover by ALEX GARNER
As Wonder Woman continues her quest to find out exactly what happened to her current reality and who is ultimately responsible, she encounters the first of the three most deadly gods known to man. Together, they comprise...the Morrigan!
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale NOVEMBER 24 * 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

WONDER WOMAN #606
Written by J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI
Art and cover by DON KRAMER & JAY LEISTEN
1:10 Variant cover by ALEX GARNER
J. Michael Straczynski’s blockbuster re-imagining of the Amazon Princess continues with a vengeance! Deep beneath the city, Diana tracks the Morrigan to their lair. And what she finds there will astonish you!

I see DC is continuing the pagan outreach efforts they started back in War of the Gods when they killed Hecate and turned her into an evil power-eating possessing entity that wished to destroy the world. Okay, maybe this isn't going to be as horrible as that. But judging by the history it probably will be. Perez started the whole mess by establishing zero respect for the stories or the religion. Rucka did really well... until he killed off Hades (after making him evil) and gave us a self-loathing Athena talking of how much better Diana was than her gods in his last issue. Simone was doing rather well until she went and killed off a Hawaiian deity. (I actually liked her Zeus, and her Athena-not-really-dying, and Achilles being a cool guy. I'm actually pretty mad that this reboot wipes away the male equivalent of the Amazons that Zeus created... I mean, yay on using Zeus as an antagonist in a way that made sense but what the fuck is up with KILLING OFF GODS? They're GODS. Yeesh.)

Why is polytheism so hard for WW writers? It's Diana's religion, and you undermine her everytime you show the old pagan gods as nothing more than a souped up group of superhumans that are morally inferior to her. You don't have to have them as perfect, and sure you can have them as antagonists but a couple rules like... I don't know... don't make deities that aren't established as villains villains just because they're death gods? Don't kill immortals off without bringing them back in the same storyline, maybe? Some of these guys have living worshippers, y'know. I appreciate that with polytheists being after Asian people, black people, women, and gay people on the "Groups to Offend" list you still take the time to disrespect us, but it's shitting on your own hero when the character's a pagan herself AND it's sending extremely icky messages about cultural superiority when Zeus kills off Pele's dad or everyone turns out to be subordinate to the god of Abraham.

I've actually been wanting to see Wonder Woman venture into Celtic territory (I've wanted to see her interact with Scathach since I read her part of the Cuchullain cycle), but DC (and Marvel, don't think I'm not pissed off everytime I see Tarted Up and Evil Hela) has a really terrible record here. In all likelihood, this will turn into some lovefest for a higher single surpreme being (identified with the aforementioned Abrahamaic Sky Daddy) over all these gods, and then I'm going to have to find a way to be annoying. Forget constructive activism, I'm all for soothing my unrest by passing it on to other people. (Or just being annoying until they realize "Hey, there's people out there this might bug.") Maybe I can put together some Witch Tracts and hand them to the creators at conventions. Kalinara and I have come up with a few provisional titles:

"Just What Is This Halloween Thing About Anyway?"
"Have you experienced the Divine Light of Eos?"
"Tarot Cards and Ouija Boards: Not Necessarily To Summon Satan, Unless That Will Make You Go Away"
"Hekate: Not Just for the Wicked!"
"How the Morrigan Can Help YOU Accept the Harshness of Nature!"
"The Safe Great Rite"
"You Are NOT Going to Hell, Unless You Are a Pacifist Asatru and Spell It With One L"
"Cups, Swords and Rods: A Pagan's Guide to Feng Shui"
"Cups, Swords and Rods: A Pagan's Guide to Divination"
"Cups, Swords and Rods: A Pagan's Guide to Sex"
"Ragnarok: What You Need to Know About The Last Battle"
"Respect for Animal Sacrifice (Or Do You Want to be Like PETA?)"
"The Joy of Set" (This would need a guest writer.)
"The Threefold Rule and Why It Doesn't Necessarily Mean I'm a Pushover"
"Hindus: How Not To Piss Them Off" (Inside is just a single panel "Stop treating their gods like fictional characters")
"Valhalla: What Awaits You If You Fight That Mugger Rather Than Just Giving Him Your Wallet"
"Sabbat Etiquette"
"The Good and Bad of the Universe and the Divinity in Both"
"Night Gods: Not Such Bad Guys After All"
"Your Guide to Death Deities"
"That Blood Is Totally Symbolic"
"Drawing Down the Moon and Why It's Not Going to Destroy the World"
"Polytheism: The Mother of All Big Tent Parties"
"Aphrodite: She Can Get You Laid"
"No, I Did Not Curse You."
"Please Don't Pray For Me. It Kinda Fucks With My Life."
"What Not To Wear When Skyclad"

Come to think of it, if you toss out the joke proselytizing some of those might make for useful informational packets for landlords, bosses, and missionaries. I always feel bad when I have nothing to give in exchange for that Watchtower magazine.

On the 2010 Kim Yale Award Nominees

I've been watching the Lulu Awards scandal with some dismay. Now, I've never seen eye to eye with Valerie D'Orazio, but really I'm disgusted by the treatment she's receiving from the older members over this one. As uncharacteristic as it is of me, I think we should give her some sympathy for an honest mistake. Let's face it, Von Allen could very well have been a woman's name. Clearly both the nominator and the President thought so. Pushing this matter just makes harder for her to admit it and apologize properly to Mr. Allen.

Look, what's done is done. Give it a pass this year and have the voters determine if he wins. Next year's officers can discuss setting up another award for female creators, or rewrite the rules to specify only female nominees for the Kim Yale Award and have a different one for good portrayals of female characters by any gender. Surely we can forgive her this one bit of provincialism in light of everything she's been through so that we can go back to promoting female professionals and readership. Okay?

Am I being paranoid here?

Found on dcwomenkickingass:



Now, you all know I fucking love Green Lantern, and I love the Flash. But something's off lately. Early this century, it was all about the Big Three: Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. They were there for everything. But for some reason, there's been a rise of Green Lantern and a quiet shuffling to the back of Wonder Woman. More and more I'm seeing promo images with Hal rather than Diana in it, and it's starting to weird me out. Not to mention there are now three Green Lantern books while there's only ever one Wonder Woman book, and he's getting a live-action movie and a sequel to his animated but her sequel was canned and her live-action movie is perenially in development hell.

And now we have the Flash on there, and no Wonder Woman. Is this because of the costume shakeup? Or are they just giving up on even pretense now?

Something just seems terribly, terribly off lately. Maybe we should break out the stationary and pens and remind them we're interested.

No, seriously, how do you just not get a character like that?

Batman: The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul by Grant Morrison

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I hate to be this person, but honestly I only liked a few parts of this story, and those were the ones written by Morrison. Dini's parts were passable, the stuff by Milligan was irritating, and the stuff by Nicieza was infuriating. I really like Damian, he's the latest in a line of heroes descended from villains who inherited a really terrible demeanor from their villain progenitor (Pietro Maxioff, Soranik Natu), and the one closest to being an actual villain. Fortunately, his homicidal tendencies aren't compulsive, they're learned from a twisted upbringing, and at only 10 years old he's been brought into the Batfamily just in time to cut his budding villainy off at the pass. (Though do you notice, the male Robins are getting steadily darker? Dick was lighthearted, Jason was an angsty streetkid before he died, Tim is constantly in danger of turning into Bruce, and Damian is Bruce distilled, concentrated, and mixed with the morals learned in the League of Assassins).



I'll give Milligan some credit for softening Damian up in a sensible way. He's a brat, but he's going through a tough time in here. He irritated me by arranging the plot so he could manufacture some unnecessary fight scenes between Tim and Damian and make Tim into the aggressor this time around, rather than having Tim as a calm, skeptical helper. Tim thinks with his brain not his feet. Still, neither boy comes off really terrible.



No, the person who comes off bad in this is NIGHTWING, and that's by his internal monologue. He comes to the house thinking to himself that Damian's not worth fighting a few hundred ninjas to save because "no one likes" him.



What. The. Fuck.



Okay, the kid's psychotic, but he's TEN YEARS OLD. Come ON.



And second, this is DICK GRAYSON. Since when does he think about how likable someone is before he saves their ass? He's been a superhero since HE was ten years old. Yes, it's nice that he likes Tim and thinks of him as a brother, but it is NOT in character for Dick to having second thoughts about saving a ten year old boy, even if it is one who's cut off someone's head in the past. He shouldn't have to tell himself he's doing this for Tim, and wonder why he should do anything for Damian--he should just know that he's doing this because he's Dick Grayson and that's the sort of person he is.



And there's later in the book, when he sees Damian in his baby Robin with the hooded white cloak costume, and thinks that he needs to smack the kid later. Also not in character. Maybe if he'd heard Damian being arrogant and made a joke about how that meant he was okay, that'd be a bit more Grayson. Maybe if earlier he hadn't been questioning whether or not this ten year old kid is worth fighting ninjas over, it wouldn't have seemed so... dickish? Either way, it pissed me off too. This is not Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson wouldn't think twice about helping someone no matter how awful they are--ESPECIALLY against a big bad like Ra's Al Ghul. Batman raised him better than that.



Also, Talia went into simpering love interest mode way too often. I can take Talia as a cold-hearted villainess, or a protective she-bear mother, or both (that latest Batman and Robin appearance? I want to see the actual confrontation, because as much as she wanted to manipulate the kid back to her side I don't believe for a second she's dropped the protective mother aspect and wll let anyone kill her son. She was preying on his jealous nature) but this simpering love interest shit? Some of these conversations between her and Batman made no sense. It was like a bad romance movie, where the heroine is contractually obligated to accuse the hero of denying his emotions when he is focusing on solving the real problem. She was good in a fight, and as a maternal figure, but when they tried to play up her romantic side she looked just plain nonsensical.



Dreadful book. Skip it and just be happy with the exposition dialogue or flashbacks if this stuff ever comes up.



And I advise you never to read Nicieza's Dick Grayson. Ever.



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Tomorrow (Saturday) is International Read Comics in Public Day

DCWKA over on Tumblr is organizing some women's visibility raising during this event.

I’ve been writing a lot recently about ways to increase the ranks of female comic readers. Each post, I’ve given suggestions on what the average person can do. And here’s another opportunity. This Saturday, if you are a woman who reads comics take your love to the street and show it off by participating in this event. But I had a thought, what if we showed off lots of images of women reading comics in public? I have grown so tired of hearing “I don’t care if women read comics” over and over, most recently in response to an article that Kelly Thompson did about Ben Caldwell’s Wonder Woman. Here’s the opportunity to show why people, if not the size of the ranks, the passion. Let’s show them a reason they should care.

To facilitate this I have created a Tumblr “Women Read Comics in Public”. Help me fill it with images of women reading comics from this Saturday’s event. What do to do? Grab a comic, go somewhere public on Saturday, take a picture of you reading it and send it to me. If you’re not a woman send me a picture of your girlfriend, sister, wife, mom, daughter, or co-worker reading. If you want privacy hold the comic in front of your face. You can send me the pictures by using the submit button on the blog, over Twitter or email it to dcwomenkickingass@yahoo.com. If you think it’s a good idea, let others know! Twitter, blog, reblog and post in forums. And hope for good weather!

My sister is bugging to do this one, but with my current location it might be a bit problematic. (Even moreso with the connection stuff over here--uploading pictures is damned near impossible.) My boss has a camera, though, so we'll see if we can get something tomorrow. If I do, I'll link it here.

Those of you with the easier spots, I encourage you to go about this--if you're shy you can cover half your face with the comic.

In the meantime, I haven't forgotten this blog even though Tumblr reposts and responses are much easier to pull off. I've been getting my comics, and also doing some reviews on Goodreads, but I wanted to say any indepth stuff on Morrison's Batman for the blog. Just takes a bit to write out and load stuff for here. I might have another Quicksilver rant in store for you, though.

What's in a Name When Your Characterization Sucks?

Everytime I go off about Perez's Wonder Woman run, I get somebody who asks me if at least I like that he tied Wonder Woman so closely to Greek Mythology. The problem with that is I'm not sure he did. Wonder Woman's story was ALWAYS that she was a princess of the Amazons. She was always patronized by the gods, it was just that Marston mixed up the names. Still, I remember the first Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman story I ever read. I borrowed a reprint of her Silver Age origin from my sister, who had been rolling her eyes at it. "Oh, it's terrible," she said, "the Amazons are all 'oh, the men have died in the wars, what'll we do?'" but I still read it. I really liked some parts of it. (Yeah, there's some 60s sexism, but I'll address that some other time.)

Most vividly, I remember the scene where Diana gets her powers. It's very like the start of Sleeping Beauty. The goddesses appear and bestow their gifts, and then the gods come in. There's a spirit of playful competition (with a little sexism from Hercules). Mercury/Hermes in particular stuck out at me, because I remember him being identified by Hipployta and then grinning at the baby. While he's looking at the little princess, his hat slips off. The newborn catches it.



Mercury/Hermes/Argeiophantes/Thoth/Eriounios/Whatever-you-call-him, who knew what he was giving her all along, feigns surprise and smiles with that soft expression you get when talking in front of a baby. "Why, look at that, she's faster than me! That'll be my gift to her." Even the crude still image in this panel gave me the impression of winking when I first read it. There's a life to this character, even though he's only there for a panel or two. I forgot which name the Queen called him by until I tracked this down, but I clearly remembered the smiling man and the playful way he announced his gift to the princess.



Even if she was calling him Mercury in the script, this was definitely Hermes from the Greek stories and you could tell right away. That story about Apollo's cattle? You could see it having happened with this guy. The sheer cheekiness of boring the Spirit of Watchfulness death, and then defending himself in court on the premise that a dull story isn't a murder weapon? You could see it with this guy. Finding joy in a child with such a startling appearance that the kid's own mother ran off? Yeah, this is that guy. He's playing with the baby. That quality with Hermes that made him a popular god, this overconfident (but not insultingly arrogant) and easygoing sense of humor, was in that little panel long before Perez took over the reboot duties.

The names weren't all right, but the Greek gods were sure as hell in the Silver Age stories.

(Side-note, I can't help but notice on the reread that Aphrodite and Athena give her powers vaguely equal to their own, but Mercury and Hercules give her powers specifically GREATER than theirs.)

Hermes has been a favorite since childhood, so naturally I tracked down the Perez issues where he was active. For a long time, I thought I was just annoyed they offed him for so long. But gods die and come back all the time. There's an argument that Persephone does it every year (you think you just fall into the Underworld and become the Queen of Death? No, there's some major mystical transformation going on there.) I'm not sure I'm even mad he was tricked. This happens to Trickster. No, it's all in the way the plot went down.

His storyline is as follows: Hermes is the only male present at Diana's birth. During the early issues he's shown being moody and sullen on Olympus. He directly intervenes in Diana's first encounter with Circe because he thinks it's unfair she wasn't warned about her. (This is weird, because no one had a problem with him tipping off Odysseus.) So far, so good right? The god who was closest to mortals is depressed that the Pantheon is drifting away from the mortal world. The helper of heroes is unhappy he didn't get to perform that role for the current Champion of Athena. The god of messengers is irritated he wasn't allowed to deliver a vital message. So far, he's lost his sense of humor but he's still Hermes. Possibly the solemn underworld aspect of Hermes--who spent his time back and forth between the worlds, was present at the moment of death for mortals, was tied to the Eleusinian Mysteries by bloodline and by carting his sister to hell and back every year, lost a mortal wife to suicide, had a summer house by a river in the underworld, and dated Gothic Lolita Hekate (rumor has it they had a tryst on a lakeside in Thessaly under the night sky where the moon and even the Pleiades could see)--but still arguably Hermes.

That goes away right after this. When we next meet this character, he manifests on Earth and directly announces himself as a god in order to rekindle his dead cult. He throws power around, healing and creating stuff, until he follows a cry for help and finds himself tricked by Phobos and Deimos (Yes. Phobos and Deimos. The DCU version of Phobos and Deimos), who steal the wand and a good portion of his power. Yes, that's right. He was actually tricked by the squabbling children of Ares. Hermes. The Wily One, the Watchful One, the Protector of Property, the Trickster, the Traveler... This guy who's job it was to go to new territories on diplomatic missions, and travel the mortal world incognito to check on their hospitality and pick up the dead... approaches an unfamiliar people in the stupidest way possible, puts himself in a vulnerable position, and gets punked by two members of Ares brood that even in the DC Universe are characterized by more malice and bloodthirst than sense.

I don't know who this guy Perez wrote was, but he wouldn't have lasted a day in Ancient Greece doing the Herald of the Gods job. I mean, seriously? Does anyone think the world of Greek Myth was less formidable than the DC Universe? When Hermes was born, the Gigantes were roaming around (so were a lot of Titans), Echidna's brood was active, and no small number of spirits and nature creatures were attacking even gods. Hermes was an Olympian, but the title alone and his father's reputation didn't protect him from that stuff. Not only that, ancient greeks weren't a bunch of fucking morons just because they were polytheists. They had skeptics, philosophers, and zealots who might just see magic as evidence of evil rather than evidence of the divine. And Hermes of all the Olympians was the one who spent most of his time wandering the earthly plane, dealing with skeptical humans and fending off any enemies of Zeus that might want to prey on one of the younger Olympians. Hermes got his fame for being clever enough to deal with this crap without an outright show of brute force when it came to monsters, and he spent most of his time among mortals being invisible or incognito. Yes, he tried to brazen his way in somewhere as a god among mortals once or twice such as when he was wooing Herse, but notice in those cases ended up with more trouble than he wanted to deal with ("Where'd that statue of my sister come from?"). That's why when you read Aesop he's always sneaking around pretending to be a mortal. That's why he never announced himself to Odysseus or Aeneas and just let them draw conclusions about who was helping them. He was smart enough to expect a little resistance to the "I'm a god" announcement, and had enough of a sense of humor not to have to announce it. At the very least, in an unfamiliar city, he'd do a little scouting around as a mortal first.

Hell, he's the god of communication and persuasion. Surely he'd have come up with a better plan to spread worship than announcing to a hostile world that the son of Zeus is standing Right There, and being extra careless. Surely he'd have done something a little more crafty than just telling everyone who he is and expecting them to believe him, when even in ancient times he'd have gotten more responses along the lines of "....Riiiiight."

The guy can't be this stupid and not have been a cautionary tale by now.

I know exactly the point of the story, that the gods have lost touch with the modern world and are expecting humans not to have changed. The whole point of using Hermes is that he's the only god close enough to humanity to try and reach out and keep the connection open. He's the communication god, the messenger, the herald and the peacekeeper. He'd want to keep the connection alive. And I see that the point was that the Greek Gods were filled with Hubris and didn't know as much as they thought they still. Still, this was totally the wrong god for this moral. For fuck's sake, the most consistent trait of Hermes among all the stories is that he's not a fucking moron. He's a social god, and even at best a con artist. His experience is in dealing with different peoples and carrying messages in the most effective way. He's a suave character, a smooth operator. He's not a naive, blunt buffoon. He'd do a little reconnaissance, and come up with a clever way to approach a strange culture. Then if he fails, at least he failed on the terms that suit the god's realm and was respectibly outmatched. But this guy in the Perez run was deservedly beaten for ridiculous amounts of pride and stupidity.

After this, he spends some time as barely more powerful than a mortal, and ends up dead when Circe eats all his power. Because Circe is in league with Hekate, who just has to be evil even though in her actual mythological appearances she's a good guy who helps against the Titans, helps Demeter look for Persephone, and supports the Olympian Order in the Underworld. She's the goddess of witches, she skeered mortals (except they ALL scared mortals, didn't Socrates get executed because someone was worried about pissing off Hermes?), she had a dark moon aspect so she's a bad guy who gave Circe a shit ton of power to cause a lot of trouble. And kill one of the few deities that Hekate's romantically linked to in the source material. It's as simplistic as making Hades evil, and even less supported. But why I hate War of the Gods could fill a book, and the poor writer was rushed by editorial doesn't make the first five chapters.

I know my Trickster stories, mind you. And I know from Coyote and Loki that the Trickster gets tricked when he's full of himself, and that often it looks stupid. (I can't think of a point where Hermes was tricked, but Hermes was constrained by his official role as the Agent of Zeus, a keeper of the status quo, so maybe he just never had to get cut down to size in his stories. This was a smart move on his father's part, because it kept their resident Trickster figure from running wild all over the epic landscape.) But here's the thing with that. They bounce back and continue to be clever in their other dealings. Getting tricked is a minor setback, and they learn a lesson and keep causing trouble. Perez's version of Hermes was devoid of his Trickster aspect. He never told jokes, he never outsmarted an enemy, I can't even remember a single instance where Perez's Hermes acted in an indirect manner without chafing about it. He confronted all of his problems head on, which is a respectable character trait but not one that applies to the Herald of Olympus. The charm of Hermes is his lateral thinking, his creative way of dealing with people and monsters, his Trickster side, and we never once saw that charm in Wonder Woman, Volume 2.

"Hey baby, ever make it with a fish?"

-- Kalinara's Zeus impression

Of course, when your main character is the spirit of Truth I imagine it's tough to have a patron be a Trickster. Then again, Zeus in his worst behavior has a major Trickster aspect. An aspect that Perez chucked out the window when using Zeus as an antagonist in his "Challenge of the Gods" storyline. Zeus makes no attempt to hide his intentions from the other gods or the Amazons (only Diana, in her naivete doesn't realize he's out to screw her) when in the source material he tends to move as secretly as possible. He's never this blatant. And he doesn't just go "Sleep with me or fight a bunch of monsters." He, as Kalinara pointed out in chat, will just raise his eyebrows at "No", go away, and then come back as a fish. But no, he's blatant. He announces he's going to visit Diana personally, and everyone but poor naive Diana knows that means he wants to screw her over. Everyone knows what he's up to, including Hera (who is apparently made more sympathetic by putting up with this shit), and he doesn't try to hide or cover it up. And when refused, he decrees some stupid punishment (that could easily have been brought about by Hera being pissed off, as it would have been in the source material) rather than come up with some complicated scheme enlisting that son of his that's a friend of Diana. This storyline totally and unnecessarily bypassed the built-in conflict made possible by the identities of these three gods in favor of a totally different character dynamic than seen in any of the Hellenic stories.

But yeah, I guess I can see where making Hera a bad guy would be bad. It's not like women with husbands who cheat on them and abuse them in real life blame people other than their husbands, after all. And it's not like a writer can have compassion for misplaced rage, especially when someone is wronged repeatedly throughout her life and can't do a thing about it. No, that's not something that happens to modern women. Empathizing with a woman who lashes out incorrectly at other women and helping her redirect her rage and power at something constructive isn't suitable for a Wonder Woman story, and having Hera act like Hera isn't close enough to Greek Mythology. The gods have to be called by authentic Greek names, and act completely different than they ever have order to be close to Greek Mythology.

So no, I don't credit Perez's reboot with closely tying Wonder Woman to Greek Mythology. If anything, it lost the spirit of the gods in this zeal to get all the names and places (which is fucking absurd, these deities could use a different name each mention in all 600 issues and not run out of their Ancient World names) to align correctly. Oh, and he put them all in Hellenic costumes. Because that sure helped.

The All-New, All-Different Wonder Woman

I'm going to have to let Wonder Woman #601 settle in for a bit. It's very clearly a temporary thing now. The timeline is just plain wrong. The Amazons shouldn't be hiding. The bare-chested man with the lightning should not be in power. Aphrodite withdrew her protection for some unknown reason. Hippolyta should never have died. Diana needs to learn a lesson about mercy and forgiveness. We know from Wonder Woman #600 that someone--presumably the gods--intends to teach the world to appreciate Wonder Woman, so Aphrodite might not have been angry when she did it. On the other hand, there are those dreams of fire and Diana's old costume. Maybe Diana herself did something that set this off. Either way, this is seriously an Age of Apocalypse-style storyline.

The thing with Age of Apocalypse, though, was that you knew certain things about the characters were WRONG. Cyclops should not be working for Mr. Sinister. Havok's jealousy should not go that far. Jean should not be with Logan. Pietro's sister should not be dead, and he most certainly shouldn't be the calm one in the family. (Though man, I adored the AoA Pietro. Maybe they can have him show up and kick Ultimate Pietro's ass. Who knows what using time powers at the end of that universe could cause?) So, of course, by the end of the story many of these things worked out (Jean and Cyclops), and others led to a tragic destruction (Havok gets it easy in the normal continuity compared to his brother and girlfriend anyway), and other items seeped into the regular continuity because they found a way to fit them and capture a twinge or potential (Blink) or just some of that wrongness. (Dark Beast!)

I'm certain that the Amazons away from Themiscyra, and Hippolyta's death are WRONG and are the things that need to be rectified to get the old timeline back. The Lightning Man will also need to be defeated, but he'll seep into regular continuity somehow. Even if he's just a manifestation of Ares or Zeus and can't show up as a bad guy on his own, we'll see some echo of him in the future.

What worries me with this writer is Diana's bloodlust after the Oracle shows her mother's death. Rage would be a natural reaction, but we know that Diana at heart is a forgiving person, and she can't bring herself to murder in revenge. This was a theme of Simone's entire run, after all. This new Diana is set up so that you can see her attempting it. That's the Wrong part of our alternate Diana. Now, the ideal story of this sort of lost timeline thing has the hero attempt the Wrong Action, only to have an epiphany (it might be externally prompted or just something deep inside them) at the critical moment and finding the Right Action instead. From what I've seen of JMS using Superman as his moral issues mouthpiece? I'm not sure I trust him to realize what the Right Action is in the end. I'm worried he'll go for what he thinks makes Diana more formiddable or interesting and finagle some way to keep it past the righting of the timeline. But we'll see. I will say, having a Diana from this alternate timeline deal with the results of all of Vol 2 and 3 without remembering exactly what went on could be fun for a storyline or two, but it's not really a good status quo for Wonder Woman.

I wasn't terribly impressed with this issue, and I was rather disappointed not to get a glimpse of the gods and what they are up to (I've been incredibly disappointed for years not to see Hermes in action again, but I'm pleased that Aphrodite is the goddess who brought this about--she's been HORRIBLY underused since CoIE. I suspect an inability to deal with Trickster good guys, because Aphrodite is arguably a Trickster figure too. TY NF Houck for this insight), but it wasn't soulsearingly awful. It wasn't even Byrne awful. The pacing just seems rather slow, and his Diana doesn't really interest me yet. She seems weak, and ineffective, and even though she's driving much of the plot with her actions she seems like a pawn being battered about by the Fates. Hippolyta seemed a hundred times more impressive in death than Diana does in this entire issue. Things can change, though.

The overarcing mystery of just what caused this is still intriguing, the plot itself is not the worst thing I've said, and there's the promise of our old Diana back soon. The problems of the pacing and Wonder Woman herself being less of a wonder will be difficult to overcome. She's more flat and boring here than she has ever seemed to me, and I started collecting her series back during the much-maligned Byrne days. Hopefully the point is to bring her into herself, but she's still supposed to be able to grab you from early on. The only reason I'm reading the next issue is that I know Diana from before and want to see what happened to change everything. That's not exactly a good recipe for new readers.

Really?

I'm not against hooking up at cons, and certainly some of the advice in this article is warranted. Still, I had to stop and read #9 on this list twice before I believed it.

9) Stalk the Smaller Panels

If you want the chance to talk to a member of the opposite sex, sitting in Hall H all day isn't going to help you (although standing in line for it gives you plenty of opportunity to start conversation). Go over the panel schedule again and look for something that interests you that involves few or no celebrities. Something that promotes discussion is a plus. You'll likely be able to get a good look around a room like that and if someone strikes your fancy, wait until the panel is over and ask them what they thought of the topic. Might I suggest the "Geek Girls Exist" or "Where Are the Action Chicks?" panels? I'm slightly biased seeing as how I'm on both, but they really are a good start.

Ignore the unfortunate choice of words in the header and check out the last two sentences.

Might I suggest the "Geek Girls Exist" or "Where Are the Action Chicks?" panels? I'm slightly biased seeing as how I'm on both, but they really are a good start.

Please, please tell me this is not suggesting that straight men attend the panels on lack of female visibility in genre fiction and in fandom in order to pick up chicks.

Please, please, please tell me that this is not suggesting women attend the panels on the lack of female visibility in genre fiction and in fandom to get picked up.

I know, I know... that was a plug for the writer's panel. But you know what? If she's on those panels she should know what she just implied and why it isn't funny in the least.

I mean, seriously. Do I even have to go into what's wrong with that? Do I even have to go into that a good half of the problem of being a girl in a geek-space is that a number of men look at you as someone they can fuck without having to fake "normal"? That not a year goes by without a horrifying story of sexual harassment at a comic convention? That geek women considered unattractive are often disregarded completely because their sex appeal is more important to their male counterparts than what they can add to the conversation? That women in genre fiction are disproportionately sex objects and limited as a result? That women are considered someone the audience needs to "want" rather than "Want to be" and that that is why there are so few high profile genre heroines?

Do I have to say that suggesting the place where you discuss these problems is a great place to troll for a fuck severely undermines the discussion?

Really? After all this time do I still have to go into that? To someone considered knowledgable enough to be on panels about female visibility? Jeez.

You know what? Go to conventions. Have fun. Get laid if you can. Take care of your hygiene. Go to the stuff that interests you, and strike up conversations with anyone you can. Be honest, don't take things personally. Remember a lot of people are not there for sex, so a rejection is not really about you. It's about the situation and tastes of the person who is doing the turning down. If you should happen to meet someone who wants the same thing, at the right time, then practice safe sex and don't feel bad about it.

But above all else, you must remember one thing: Treat people like people. Men are human beings. Women are human beings. They are people. Not things. Not notches in the headboard. Not decorations for your amusement. Not toys for your pleasure. People.

There's nothing wrong with wanting or looking to have sex, but I'm not giving that advice because it will get you sex. Honestly, if you follow my advice in order to obtain sex you are an unequivocally terrible person. You should treat people properly simply because they are human beings and that is the only way to be a decent human being yourself.

Caring For Your Wonder Woman Garden

I'm going to say flat out, this isn't a bad costume. It's not an exceptional costume, but it's not bad. I really do wish they'd at least kept with red and blue as the color scheme. There's no reason to do anything but give her blue, starless pants and the same top. Still, I'm not adverse to leather jackets like many fans seem to be, and I like that the bracelets match the crown, belt and lasso now. I don't like color mismatch. I'll be pretending those pants are dark blue from now on, though. I don't think this is staying, the whole matter has a Superman Blue vibe to it, but as a variant costume Jim Lee did a decent job here. Much better than Deodato did back during the 90s. And the New York Times article promises a movie in return for some messing with the costume, so I think it's a small price to pay. But then, I took the white suit era as a way to prove she was as badass as Batman, so what do I know?

(Disclaimer: I won't be able to read Wonder Woman #600 for a week or two due to shipping, so it may turn out to be the most awesome thing on the face of awesome. If such is the case, these complaints still apply (because it won't make Superman #700 good) but I retract my trepidation.)

I'm still leery of this new writer. I have fond memories of Rising Stars and Midnight Nation. I met a boy in the day room the month after I left basic who had the whole run of both up until that point and spent a pleasant evening reading comics. I kept with both until they ended. I liked his Thor okay, too. I was a bit irked that Sif was sidelined, but he had some decent intrigue and some good exchanges on in there. But his Spider-man was more full of bad ideas than good ("One More Day", for example, was a fucking horrible idea, but not as horrible an idea as the Spider-Totem), and the preview of Superman #700?

The preview for Superman #700 and the stated story idea for the next 13 issues is utterly horrifying. Superman's confronted by a woman for not saving her husband, so he responds by shutting down and moping and therefore not having anyone get saved? How many people died while Superman leaned his ass against that fucking tree waiting for the Flash? Who the fuck is this useless asshole? Where is Superman? Where is the guy who responds to failure by going into Samaritan mode and overworking himself? Where's the guy who fixes this by getting a fucking time machine, going back to help the man, and accidentally screwing up the space time continuum so he can save a life? I mean, we could be dealing with the fallout from using a fucking time machine for the next 13 issues rather than walking across country. All right, that's a little Silver Age (but aren't we in a period of Silver Age Nostalgia, DC, huh? Can you tell us some Silver Age STORIES rather than just killing off all the Asian people for it?), but my point is Superman doesn't react to feeling helpless by doing less, he reacts by doing more. The lessen he has to be reminded of time and time again is that he can't do everything. Superman's danger is supposed to be doing too much, not too little, you dumbasses. Get off your asses and get us a time machine story, you lazy fucks.

If JMS can't get the idea down that Superman is an active character, I don't know how I can expect him to make Wonder Woman an active character, and there are some items in his plan that worry me.

1) Hippolyta is dead, and that is never good.

2) The plot doesn't sound terribly innovative.

She doesn't really remember any of it, because in this timeline, it never happened, so there's nothing to remember. However, she does keep getting brief flashes of images that we will recognize as being from the Wonder Woman timeline that we know.

In a way, the person she's become is searching for the person she was ... and maybe she'll find that person, maybe she won't, and maybe they'll meet somewhere in-between.

As it stands now, Diana was taken from Paradise Island 18 years ago, when she was a child. The island was under a massive assault, and Hippolyta wanted to be sure that her daughter survived. The queen led the final defense of Paradise Island, but in the end was defeated. She and most of the other Amazons were killed, with some taken prisoner while the rest escaped to the four winds.

So Diana's task now is to a) find out where, how and why the timeline was changed, b) who did it, c) if it can be undone, and d) stay ahead of the forces trying to kill her while e) helping as many of the surviving Amazons stay alive as possible, since they too are still being hunted.

Later...

She knows her background, having been told about it over the years, but remembers very little of it herself. She knows that they're all relying on her to put it all back the way it was, that one day the Princess will return to restore Paradise Island to its former greatness, and that's a huge responsibility for her. Sometimes she chafes against it.

Also, by virtue of being raised off the Island, and other factors involving the timeline shift, she doesn't have her full range of powers. She's nearly but not entirely invulnerable, can't fly (yet), and the lasso was taken from her mother after her death defending Paradise Island. So one by one, she has to pick up these skills or powers, allowing us to examine them more closely, and give them proper weight, rather than taking them for granted.

The basic story of Diana not knowing who she is, and saving the Pantheon and her world and rediscovering herself along the way so that she can be perceived as more relatable to readers sounds an awful lot like Walt Simonson's story (Wonder Woman Vol 2 #189-194). Walt Simonson is best know for writing a much better run of Thor than JMS did, and actually making use of the kickass warrior woman love interest Sif rather than trapping her in a dying body for most of his run. The difference being that Simonson's story was temporary, and was not a complete reboot of the character which brings me to the last problem:

3. That fucking weed-whacker.

Finally, there's the problem of her being overwhelmed by her mythology and her supporting characters. When writers don't know what to do with a character, they build up the supporting cast and universe to kind of hide that fact. After a while, you can no longer see the character for the underbrush. When that happens, you need to bring out the weed-whacker to clear some of that away so you can focus on the main character.

Yeah, this would be a great point... were it not applied to Wonder Woman.

Because after Crisis on Infinite Earths Wonder Woman was the only one of the major characters who had her pre-crisis mythos leveled by her writer. Her secret identity was thrown away, her weakness was thrown away, her powers were changed, her WWII ties were incinerated. The peaceful, loving, shy Amazons who trained to physical perfection and followed Aphrodite's path of love were done away with and replaced with the reincarnated victims of male violence, who followed five goddesses but primarily the virgin goddess Artemis (later emphasis has moved to the virgin goddess Athena), and left the world of men for Themiscyra are being traumatized by the mass rape of the entire nation by Hercules and his men. Diana was born a mere 19 years before she left for Man's World, and is thus the only one who was never hurt by a man. (Yes, that's right, every Amazon except for Diana herself has rape in her backstory, and is a reincarnated murder victim. Now THAT'S the background we all want for a Symbol of a Female Power.) Diana's love interest, the original reason for her coming to man's world, was aged and turned into a father figure. (Her real father figure Hermes, the only male deity who granted her powers at birth now that Hercules has been turned into a rapist villian, propositioned her later in this run because that's precisely what we want in a story about Men Accepting Women as More Than Just Sex Objects.) He got married off to the comic relief while Diana developed a crush on the unattainable Superman, because he's the Football Captain to her Head Cheerleader status. Rather than leaving the homeland because she fell in love, she put in for Hippolyta's diplomatic mission on Athena's orders--defying her mother's wishes at the time. The love story at the core of her origin was replaced with a muddled mixture of rebellion and obediance to maternal figures. Oh, and her bright and energetic deities (Aphrodite/Venus pre-Crisis had a wickedly naughty sense of humor that came out in Diana's weaknesses, that were of course wiped away because a curse where you can't allow yourself to be bound by a man or to view a man in your super-secret island clubhouse is more harmfully sexist than raping all the Amazons) are replaced by the stiffest, most wooden creations in all of DC Comics. The script just sucked the life out of them, figuratively and literally in the case of poor Hermes (a deity who was allowed to remain dead until Rucka's run, which is fucking irritating because he's supposed to be the most fun and closest to humans of the Big Twelve/Thirteen If You Count Hestia At The Fire Which I Do). By the time they were finished with the machete and the plow, Wonder Woman had traded in the childish, subtle misogynistic themes in favor of new, improved, violent, Not For Kids Anymore misogynistic themes!

Needless to say, I have a lot of problems with the Perez run. But it was a run, it had an origin story, and it sure as hell cleared a lot of brush away and built a new world around Diana.

Which William Messner-Loeb decided to take a weed-whacker to in the 90s, by introducing a new supporting cast and retconing some of what I told you into worse shit (Hippolyta was domestically abused by Hercules and betrayed the rest of the Amazon Nation to him. Oh, and she stripped Diana of her WW title so that she could set some other girl up to die in her place because THAT is how we like our Symbols of Motherly Love).

And then John Byrne decided to take weed-whacker and a FUCKING CHAINSAW to THAT by moving her to a new city, with an all-new supporting cast...

...that was quickly discarded when Eric Luke choose to take a weed-whacker to Wonder Woman again.

Phil Jiminez built on what was there before and tried to reconcile the supporting casts, as did Greg Rucka, but by the time Rucka's really gotten going wouldn't you know it's time to trim the hedges again with Infinite Crisis and Heinberg's Lawnmaster 5000Pro weed-whacker Plus! Next door, Superman has a flourishing patch of grass and Batman's vegetable garden is winning prizes but Wonder Woman's property is a dirt lot with a few patches of green but still... they took the weed-whacker to it. And when Heinberg, who actually planted a few flowers, ran out gas they brought in the Amazons Attack Landscaping Team to get that last patch of green.

And now, after Gail Simone's leaving the garden with more green than she found in it, we hear CHUCHU-CHAAAAAUUUG-CHUGCHUGCHUGCHUG as J Michael Straczynski makes his way to the poor, beleaguered lawn. (Meanwhile, the poisonous tree of Amazon violence and victimhood twists upward in the center of the yard, without having lost so much as a pine needle.)

I appreciate the need for proper lawn care, and there is a lot about Wonder Woman's origin that I would dearly love to see retconned away (the rape backstory to each and every single Amazon, the loss of her central love interest, anything WML did to Hippolyta), but dammit DC, Wonder Woman has seen enough of the fucking weed-whacker already.

I give every Wonder Woman writer a chance and again, there are some things I dearly wish would be retconned out. I'll give JMS a chance here, and I may even like it. But his attitude doesn't really give me hope here. Still, if he brings back Steve or gets rid of the Hercules rape or the reincarnated victims of violence idea, it will be worth another destructive run.

That's all we really need to know.

Disney Dads

I've been watching a lot of Disney princess movies lately, and I know we've all complained about their view of motherhood and femininity but I can't help but notice they started off pretty rocky in the way of fathers too.

I mean, in Snow White the father isn't really seen, but he has a lasting negative effect. We know that he was basically a nice guy, but he married a really horrible lady. Basically, his bad taste in women nearly kills his daughter. Granted, this might not be his fault (the woman has eerie magic powers and may have killed him after marrying him), but it still reflects rather badly on him. The Prince's father is probably still alive, but can't be bothered to teach his son proper courtship behaviors so we can assume he's not just a man of poor taste but a dick like his son, and that his wife is either equally dickish (seriously, someone should have told the brat not to just sneak up on pre-teen girls) or deceased.



Cinderella's father has the same lasting negative effect, though not quite as bad because his bad choice of a second wife doesn't try to actually kill his daughter until the third movie. We know him better too, because he gets a mention in the prologue. We know that he is kind, and loving, and oblivious because anyone with half a brain can see that Lady Tremaine is spiteful, manipulative, short-sighted and selfish. We know even the Couch Potato Prince thinks she's a chore because he yawns and rolls his eyes at her name during the ball--don't tell me that's the appearance of the stepsisters, they CAN'T possibly be the ugliest girls he's met, and she needs magic to fool him into accepting her less-awful redheaded daughter in the third movie. But Cinderella's father was probably where she got the idea that the cat and the dog could learn to get along, because he went ahead and married a woman of James Bond Villain Level Wickedness and thought she'd be okay to leave the daughter and fortune with. However, his daughter saves the entire kingdom in the third movie by preventing that horrible woman from taking political power and pissing the national treasury away on herself and her daughters so I suppose we can forgive him.

Cinderella's father may be a nonentity, but we see a great deal of the Couch Potato Prince's father. He is clearly meant to be a comical cartoon of an aging king, but when you actually think about his behavior he is a truly horrifying concept. He's the absolute ruler of the country, temperamental and obsessed with breeding his son over finding a reasonable woman to help run the kingdom. The King has gotten to the point with his son that he sees the boy as clinging to bachelorhood to spite him, his paranoia is so bad that he physically attacks the poor beleaguered Duke and accuses him of "being in league with the Prince.". (Because how dare anyone take some time to think over their prospects when choosing a lifelong companion). It's this guy who arranges it so that Cinderella and the Prince spends the entire evening isolated in mood lighting, which is actually rather fucking creepy. He repeatedly threatens the Duke with execution if the Prince's romance falls through. The Duke is so terrified of this guy that he sends the palace guard after Cinderella when she tries to make her curfew. There is a horse chase because the only girl the Prince'll talk to is getting away, and no one stops to comment on how fucked up that is. And when the Duke informs him that the girl has escaped (actual quote: "she got away"), this guy looks with naked glee upon the half-baked idea of sending the stupid shoe around the Kingdom to be tried on by every girl rather than sending the lazy-ass Prince around to look at every girl's face. The Duke points out it can fit any number of girls, and the King responds "He's given his word, that's his problem." He has no interest in making his son even comfortable, let alone happy, he just wants to find a mare that his prized stallion won't turn his nose up at and the Prince has stupidly made a promise that means he has to settle for whoever gets brought to the pen. Listen to the royal proclamation the Duke reads next time you watch, it allows the girl to back out but not the Prince. You really believe, watching this, that if Anastasia or Drizella fit the slipper that poor Prince is going down the aisle with them, wishing he'd gone around on his own rather than left it up to a shoe and his father's lackey. Unless there is something extra creepy going around where the Prince isn't allowed to leave the palace grounds until his honeymoon, which I wouldn't put past the old man.



They soften up the King a bit for the third movie, so they can make a plot point of the King being nice to Anastasia and they can make a plot point of the Prince trying to back out and needing mind control rather than just his father's tyranny. Of course, the King took a good long look at the girl at the ball and she didn't have Marvel Girl red hair, so he should've known something was up when he son said that Anastasia was the girl he danced with, but the old man only wants grandkids. None of this changes his worst traits anyway, so he remains an utterly terrifying head of state and family.

As with most Disney princess tropes, the father figures were polished enough to give a positive impression by Sleeping Beauty. They actually aren't bad rulers, to start. Aurora's father, King Stefan, issues the supremely assholish order to burn every spinning wheel in the kingdom and torpedo the textile industry in his Kingdom (I suspect Hubert did so as well in solidarity, which is why Prince Philip runs around in coarse homespun clothes like a peasant. Fine thread would be so expensive to import even the prince saves that clothing for formal occasions), but there isn't any open rebellion over this matter (though I'd wager if it was men's work that got fucked over there may have been). Not only that, unlike the other two stories it gets to be outright stated on several occasions that his subjects generally like Stefan and his family.



His dumbest political decision (that we've seen) stems from being a protective parent, but Stefan gets his biggest father points when he nearly gets into a drunken fight with Hubert because he suggests he might let Aurora back out of the marriage if it bothers her. Unlike a number of the idiotic excuses for paternal authority that precede and follow him, Stefan is actually considerate of his daughter's feelings. He understands that she's going to need to adjust quite a bit to palace life after being raised in seclusion. He's a pretty good father, despite being a bit foolish.

The other Sleeping Beauty Dad, King Hubert, is an update of the short King with an even shorter fuse that has somehow managed to produce a son of ungodly hotness. (Flora's been generous to male royal children with that beauty gift). He has his temper tantrums and that preoccupation with breeding his son as soon as possible, but he has some things going for him that the King in Cinderella simply doesn't have. For starters, his default mood is jovial and not combative. And even though he gets combative, there is no lackey terrified of Hubert like the Duke is of the King in Cinderella. The only character of lower station Hubert interacts with is a palace minstrel who isn't afraid to steal wine from both Kings before falling into a drunken stupor under the table. This sort of thing really makes it harder to see either king as a tyrant despite the stupid spinning wheel law.

The big thing that softens Hubert is how he interacts with Philip. As Philip hasn't shown any objection to the arranged marriage, they don't start the story out with a strange in-family power struggle. Philip meeting Rose/Aurora in the woods is the first bump in this plan, and naturally Hubert has a bit of a blustering tirade and tries to order his son to stop it. But either Hubert's a pushover or Philip is so independent-minded that he doesn't take his father's opinion into account even to rebel against it. This isn't so much a fight as Philip informing his father of his decision and then riding off while Hubert talks to the air. Really, in the end this is Philip's life and Hubert has to respect that. If Hubert erred, it was possibly on the side of overly lenient when the kid was younger. Considering he is a man of frightening political power and sudden displays of temper, I don't think it's bad that he's overly lenient. Perhaps a bit of a weakness, but his parenting style managed to produce the Prince that actually fought a dragon.




The Dad in the latest movie, the Princess and the Frog, was better than any of the four by leaps and bounds without even taking into account that he doesn't have the intimidating political power or the drawback of playing comic relief. Tiana's father is kind, hardworking, loving, cheerful, optimistic, gentle, and wise so naturally he passes away before the opening song. But in the prologue he's firmly established as the source of all Tiana's good character traits, and the inspiration for all her goals, simply by including a conversation rather than just a narrator saying he was kind and good. And in that conversation he gives the Best Advice in the History of Disney. There's a Hallmark Disney display with the little blocks of movie quotes on it next to the greeting cards at the store, and this advice is so good that I look for it every time I pass it. This is the Disney quote I want hanging on my wall.

"Yes, you wish and you dream with all your little heart. But you remember, Tiana, that old star can only take you part of the way. You got to help it along with some hard work of your own and then--yeah, you can do anything you set your mind to."

While this may seem an odd sentiment from a Disney corporation after years of pink princess follow your dreams marketing, and iconic movie songs such as "When you wish upon a star" and "A dream is a wish your heart makes," it's actually not that out of place. Because even though Disney marketing pushes the dream and it'll happen bullshit across the river, up the mountain, and over the cliff, and we fret endlessly about the effect this sentiment of passive wishing for things to happen is having on our children, particularly the little girls, the storytelling division of Disney has long known that this sort of thing makes for an ultimately dull movie.

Watch some of these movies, even the ones with the sappy songs driving home the dubious value of hope and wishes, and you'll find that someone has had to have some sort of skill, sense, or drive to move towards the happy ending. In these movies, Happily Ever After doesn't just happen. The heroes go through pure hell because of their own shortsighted actions before they get their wish (Pinocchio, the Little Mermaid), or someone who isn't the title character works their ass off (the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, the mice in Cinderella), or there's some horrible journey of self-discovery to endure (Mulan, the Princess and the Frog), or at the very least the main character needs to use their skills and brains to stay alive (Aladdin's got to use his wit, Snow White has to become a maid to seven bachelors, even Cinderella has to at least have the sense to keep the second freaking shoe!) in order to survive the machinations of the villain. Tiana's father just seems to be the first character to memorably voice this information (I haven't watched all the movies, so someone else may have said this but not memorably), and he's reinforced by none other than the heroine's dreamsong ("Almost There"). The song that not only supports the idea that work and struggle is necessary to achieve the dream, but that CELEBRATES it. James has instilled his daughter with such a work ethic that she's outright proud that she achieving her goal by the sweat of her brow rather than the sparkles of her fairy godmother's magic wand.

Everyone's always down on magic in fairy tales, and yeah there are certainly folktales where things just fall into place for no good reason, but in the majority of these stories--even Disnified--magic isn't a real substitute for work and skill. It was never supposed to be. Magic instead represents opportunity, and our heroes are the ones who seize opportunity and use it to achieve their dreams. But in order to make the most of that opportunity, or to even get to the point of using that opportunity, the hero or heroine has to have some sort or work ethic, talent, or skill. Her or she has to be likable/honest enough for the audience to accept them getting the opportunity (this is why Aladdin had to give away bread to children early in his movie), have spent enough of their life working that the audience figures they deserve a break (Cinderella can have a fairy godmother appear out of fucking nowhere because she worked her ass off to survive up until that point) and he or she has to be clever or brave or just good enough to take advantage of the opportunity (which can be in big things like fighting a dragon to little things like putting the comic relief you met to work as hired muscle/intimidation).

And for finally verbalizing that rule, and making it part of the moral of the story (In the Princess and the Frog, Tiana knows the value of work but needs to seize love and the opportunities presented before her in the form of a magic curse and the people she meets while under it, and Naveen needs to learn self-discipline and hard work), James may indeed be the best among Disney Dads. And that may seem like faint praise in a club that now includes Magneto but... ummm...

Happy Father's Day

(And here's one more picture of King Hubert and Prince Philip.)

There is a reason behind it all.

It's so hard for me to be on the other side because it's not our intention. There is a reason behind it all. We don't see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters. We have the Great Ten out there and I have counter statistics, but I won't get into that. It's not how we perceived it. We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters.

--DC Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler

In other news, though it was never DC's intention, all of the books on my pull-list this week (and last week) are Marvel.