Earlier this week I wrote a post at the Atlantic where I talked about the game Desktop Dungeons and how its creators had discovered that, in order not to be sexist, they had to work really hard at it. The intention to be non-racist/non-sexist isn’t enough, because the default tropes used to imagine fantasy game settings and characters are racist and sexist. It takes imagination and effort to overcome that.
So Kieron Gillen and James McKelvie definitely deserve credit for the extent to which Young Avengers pushes back against decades of accumulated superhero whiteness and sexism. The team includes a gay couple (Wiccan and Hulkling), and a Hispanic child of a lesbian couple (Miss America),along with two other white guys (Marvel Boy and Kid Loki) and a white Hawkeye).
Perhaps more importantly than their numbers, the marginal characters aren’t treated as marginal or other or weird…and the decision not to treat them as marginal or other or weird is nicely linked to the supehero milieu. Hulkling is a green-skinned shapeshifter from another planet; Miss. America is a brown-skinned superhuman from another dimension. Hawkeye is sleeping with the alien Kree Marvel Boy, Wiccan is sleeping with the alien Skrull Hulkling. Amidst all the intricate incoherence of the Marvel multiverse (which Gillen and McKelvie gleefully toss about without much explanation for novices), a non-White superhero as the strongest member of the group or a gay romance as part of the proceedings hardly seems worth mentioning (except, in the later case, as a vehicle for the requisite quotient of intra-team melodrama.)
So Gillen and McKevie set the worthy goal of not being sexist, racist assholes, and they followed through with intelligence and some subtlety. Thus, the comic is good. QED.
Alas, would that it were so. Not being racist and sexist is hard work, but there are other bits of making a worthwhile piece of art too, and as regards them Young Avengers is less successful. In particular, the artist Jamie McKelvie is, even in the context of crappy mainstream super-hero art, not really any good. His figure drawing is clumsy and haphazard; his poses are stiff when they’re not default; his faces are not particularly distinguishable. But where he is really abysmal is in his layouts, which are consistently confusing and cluttered. Especially in his fight sequences, it’s often almost impossible to figure out what’s happening — and there’s no visual panache (as in say Bill Sienkiewitz) to justify the incoherence. A Chris Ware inspired page is almost laughably incompetent, with tiny figures boucning around in an ugly floorplan that manages to be at one and the same time bulbous, blocky, and boring, the whole thing ringed by uninspired mainstream action sequences, the color scheme of which contrasts garishly with the wannabe-Ware floorplan pastels. Descriptions of the action are set off in a kind of map legend and keyed to numbers because diagrams are what the latest hip comics artists are doing and McKelvie would like to be up to date and hip with all his heart. It’s sort of sweet, if you cover your eyes and don’t look.
Gillen is more competent than that; his dialogue is fun and snappy and pop-culture-aware in a way that seems, if not precisely true to teens, at least true to the sorts of things teens might read. When Kid Loki asks Ms. America why her former super-team broke up and she says, “Musical differences,” I snickered. Same when Hawkeye comments that she knew there was some world threatening catastrophe because Wiccan wasn’t answering his texts every 30 seconds. It’s not genius or anything, but it’s cute. If I can appreciate Taylor Swift, there’s no reason I can’t appreciate this too.
There’s some perhaps interesting thematic material as well, if you squint. We first meet Hulking when he’s shape-shifting in imitation of Spider-Man, hunting down bad-guys as Marvel’s most popular superhero. Later, Wiccan summons Hulking’s dead mother from another dimension…only it turns out to be a shape-shifting soul-eating demon. The other Young Avengers’ parents also end up coming back from the dead as evil glop. You could see the comic then, perhaps, as being about children turning themselves into their parents — or about the way that it’s not just parents who make their kids, but kids who make their parents. The evil parents and the clueless parents (adults can’t see the evil demon mommies) could be a version of the hippie “parents just don’t understand/anyone over 30 can’t be trusted” meme. But you could also see the bad/clueless parents as constructs or dreams — as make-believe parent kids want to/need to create in order to make their own lives. That’s underlined by the fact that the evil parents are the reason for the team coming and staying together; the threat is what makes the book diegetically possible.
Gillen doesn’t ultimately do all that much with this material though. There isn’t, for example, any real anxiety around the evil parents per se — dead moms and dads come back from the dead, but their kids don’t seem much traumatized, or even disturbed. They just trundle on through the by-the-numbers superhero battles, the only real emotional tension being the frustration caused by the fact that, based on McKelvie’s drawings, you can’t actually follow those superhero battles at all.
To some degree that’s fine; it’s a competent empty-headed superhero adventure with crappy art, and it doesn’t make much pretense to being anything else. But, inevitably, the mediocrity of the execution has implications for the treatment of gender/sexuality/race as well. McKelvie, for example, tends to draw the usual slim/hot female characters — he certainly doesn’t feel anything like Desktop Dungeons’ commitment to imagining women who don’t look they walked out of Cosmo. The full-length, blank-faced, hip-cocked, wait-let-me-stuff-this-cleavage-in-somehow Scarlet Witch is an especial low-point.
In a similar vein, Gillen’s insistently shallow writing makes it hard for him to do much with his diverse cast other than have them there. As I said, part of the joy of the comic is that difference is simply treated as normal, so that green skin isn’t much different from brown skin. But while that’s refreshing, it also can feel like a cop out. Is Miss. America really even a Hispanic character, for example, when she’s an advanced human from another dimension who has never experienced prejudice? G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel deliberately explores what it would mean for a Muslim girl to gain superpowers in terms of her perception of herself and others perceptions of her. Such subtlety is utterly beyond Young Avengers.
So, basically, making art that isn’t mired in stereotypes is hard. And making art that’s good is hard. And those two things put together are even harder, not least because, to some not insignificant degree, you can’t do one without the other.
“Descriptions of the action are set off in a kind of map legend and keyed to numbers because diagrams are what the latest hip comics artists are doing and McKelvie would like to be up to date and hip with all his heart. It’s sort of sweet, if you cover your eyes and don’t look.”
Dude that could SO be the fault of Kieron Gillen – you can read a script of his for Phonogram 1 here, he specifies the layouts:
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/2067/phonogram-21-pull-shapes-script/
Unless this was a Marvel style book I don’t see how this could be Mckelvie’s faut. (It could be Marvel style, which the “cool kids” at Marvel are doing these days, but I have no idea).
I’m not going to offer a rebuttal, because I haven’t read the book lately, but I think McKelvie is a lot better than you say.
As for the story, I read the first 7 or so issues of the book, and was bitterly disappointed when I realized the entire book was going to essentially be about them fighting the Other Mother from Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, rather than just the first story arc.
Also, the melodrama of the gay couple getting together due to reality altering powers seems completely divorced from any real relationship in the real world, and is completely unrelatable, it seemed to me.
I would say that given the intense enthusiasm I’ve heard from folks about this series, it is not in fact unrelatable.
I think the incoherence of the action has to be at least substantially McKelvie’s fault. Gillen may give unclear instructions, but visual flow and coherence has to be the artist’s purview to some not inconsiderable extent. If you’re going to give them credit for making a comic successful (as I think you should),they’ve got to get some blame as well.
I think it’s touching how, after his boyfriend leave the room, the blond guy turns back into a plastic action figure. Very Calvin and Hobbes.
Okay, now you’re just being mean.
Mainstream comics art is a puzzle.
A puzzle, cloaked in an enigma, wrapped in a Spandex.
But yes, I know I am at a low point when it comes to superheroes. Perhaps it’s because I’m supposed to teach about them soon, and reading cape comics again — after decades of neglect — has turned out to be much more painful than I expected it to be.
Part of me thinks that if people could just keep that “floorplan” page in mind while reading other comics’ fight scenes — a page that really does make one think of playing playing with action figures as a kid (“And then here comes Spider-Man and POW!”) — there’s be a lot fewer superhero readers.
“I would say that given the intense enthusiasm I’ve heard from folks about this series, it is not in fact unrelatable.”
Have you seen enthusiasm about that particular plotline?
I’ve seen people on forums dissing the book, I don’t have a good sense of the Internet’s take on it as a whole. It’s certainly not a huge sales success, but what is these days?
And actually, here’s an article on the script, it shows an excerpt and suggests Gillen frequently suggests layouts, but at other times suggests a style but not the details:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=43520
I’d say if you don’t like the layouts, a good portion of the blame is the writer.
Kieron Gillan’s a very clever fellow. Did you notice? He has a quasi-mystical experience when he hears the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”. And he wears hipster glasses. Did you notice?
Most of the enthusiasm I see about this book is a very superficial enthusiasm that buys directly into the bait-y, pander-y feeling of how Gillen assembled this book — i.e. 20 somethings on the internet praising it for having Ms. America exist and the “twist” where the team in almost entirely LGB. Gillen is well aware of the fanbase that existed for YA and for his work following his (actually pretty great) Journey Into Mystery run, and he knows how to push the right buttons without doing a whole lot with that. To be honest, I find the charming lines you cited to be very trite and ungenuine, like a middle-aged guy trying to be hip for the teenybopper audience… Oh wait. ;P
Gillen and Mckelvie are very big on seeming “cool” (FFS, the arc title in #1 was “Style > Substance”, and they ride their hip cred from the mediocre Phonogram) without doing much, and I find them both much less bearable when they’re working together. Though honestly, I just find Mckelvie’s art ugly, especially with the coloring.
I was inititally interested in seeing the double-paged spread every month, but after the awkward fight scene page you show and the bit where Prodigy is introduced, I found that they were just dreary. Later on they recycle their “beyond the panel” tricks from Phonogram, for no reason relating to the story except that comics-illiterate fans will find it “medium-bending” or some such.
I didn’t want to hate this comic, but it’s such a vacuous “meh” with seemingly little thought put into it.
There is definitely pandering…but popular culture is supposed to pander. Usually superhero comics pander to the same white guys as ever. I’m all for a comic trying to pander to other people.
I just wish it was overall better.
This will sound like I’m inviting people to an ambush, but could we have a roundtable where superhero comics readers — i.e., people who love them *as* readers, and not just critics — explain what keeps bring them and their dollars back to this genre? Is it, as Noah and CWW imply, the quality of the pandering — which I guess means “the pleasures of genre” — or is there something more?
(I say “readers, not critics” because I personally am not interested in why capes might be a worthy focus for academic investigation, or why this one gem-title is really very different and very good. I want to hear about love.)
If someone wanted to write about why they love superhero comics, I’d totally be up for that.
Did you like Astro City Peter? I think you said you were going to read that. I rather enjoy those books; not genius or anything, but fun and thoughtful. The new Ms. Marvel is quite good too (though the art still kind of sucks.)
I get that popular culture panders, and I’m all for any futile attempt that makes an attempt to expand the audience before it inevitably flops andgets replaced with another Wolverine ongoing, but there’s not a whole lot of deep thinking and serious work in the pandering with more diversity; Young Avengers and Captain Marvel are ok mediocre superhero comics, but that’s all they are; They just cut out a woman or a non-straight non-white character and pastes it over a run of the mill comic, with some trite dialogue refuting some sexist/racist/old person/weirdo thrown in. They could be a lot more, but they’re just sprucing up the ecch comics for the New York Times and Advocate and Ms. exclusives about how totally progressive Marvel.
I know at this point I’m just sort of being grumpy old person, and Marvel is not going to change because I am a grumpy old person, but it’s nice to wish for better comics.
I disagree about Ms. Marvel. I’m hoping to write about it soon; I think it’s really quite smart in its use and reworking of superhero tropes. Hoping to write about it next week.
The art is actually the baffling part to me in superhero comics. I can understand why someone would enjoy the genre default; I can see why someone would enjoy this comic, for example. The plot bops along, things blow up, there’s witty hip dialogue, it panders to its demographis. It’s not out of line with big dumb action movies in terms of presentation or goals.
But why does the art have to be so bad? Maybe it’s because the money;work for hire incetives just aren’t good enough and folks with actual talent end up doing something else? I guess that makes sense. But the fact that superhero comics fans don’t seem to notice that the visuals are egregiously, embarassingly bad; I don’t know.
I said Captain Marvel, not Ms. Ms is looking all right, but I’m really not liking the art so much. I’m waiting for its first arc to conclude before I say much aside from “well, this certainly is a comic”.
The assembly line system is part of it, because it sort of values all pencillers/inkers/etc. as interchangable as long as they get to the deadlines. Art that you don’t like is part of meeting deadlines, trust me, but a lot of the styles cultivated in superhero comics are charmlessly bad too.
I mean, I guess nowadays, the thought process it, “It’s better than Rob Liefeld”. Which is usually true.
Ah…sorry. Can’t keep all the marvels straight…
It’s okay, neiher can Marvel. ;P
I think CWW nailed the recent Captain Marvel. I read 5 or so issues of it. I thought basically the female writer wanted to write the female characters as stereotypically masculine “tough guy” characters (Aside from joking about her hair I guess?) and I didn’t really see the appeal, considering these days I have no particular inherent interest in the male writers at Marvel writing stereotypically masculine “tough guy” Marvel heroes either.
It just seemed another Marvel book. I guess maybe it’s fine if you’re into that sort of thing.
Ms. Marvel sounds interesting. I’ll have to check it out.
Damn. So much negativity. I was disappointed with this series because as has been mentioned not enough was done the whole parents/teen plot/metaphor. The conclusion in the final issues didn’t even make a lot of sense and just seemed like an excuse to make every kid hero in Marvel show up for a not very well choreographed punch-up. However, I did like the bit where Hawkeye (Kate) is worried that turning 21 is going to make her into an adult and then not be able to see Mother and the problem either – but it quickly is dismissed – what determines who is an adult these days anyway? How many 21-year olds are “adults”? I little nod to the liminality of subject positions.
But I did love the layouts – the use of texting bubbles and “YAmbler” (Young Avengers Tumblr) and he use of an Instagram layout to do a montage of time passing – I think this is on the mark for who this comic is for, and based on my own passing observation of fandom for this book in tumblr, it works and I think that is great.
It seems (and this totally not based on any kind of empirical evidence, just anecdotal) that this comic appeals to and is actually read by a lot of young folks and younger kids of color and queer folk – and for its flaws, I am glad that there is a comic that they can feel is for them – since for decades we’ve been making do with re-appropriating white/straight heroes or what-have-you.
The dialogue is also snappy and fun and overall it has a good balance of light superhero story and overwrought teen drama.
Anyway, for me, the page that Noah included of Noh’Varr’s fight scene with the key was fantastic and I really liked it.
Oh and Peter, if you can’t muster any enthusiasm for superhero comics before you’ve even started (I can understand getting tired if you teach it semester after semester), I think maybe you shouldn’t be teaching them.
I bet Peter feels that way himself!
I don’t think teachers should only teach things they’re enthusiastic about, though, any more than critics should only write about things they love. I am a positive supporter of negativity, damn it.
“Anyway, for me, the page that Noah included of Noh’Varr’s fight scene with the key was fantastic and I really liked it.”
Really? Good lord…even the vomitous color contrast?
Not to follow a tangent – but “enthusiastic about” is not the same as not critical of. . I am enthusiastic about superhero comics but can be (and am) damn critical of them very frequently. Anyway, my comment should have read: “if you can’t muster any enthusiasm for [teaching] superhero comics.” His feelings on the comics themselves can vary – kind of like when I teach lit theory I love the unit of Freud despite thinking Freud is a fraud, it is a lot of fun to teach/talk about.
Hi Osvaldo,
Regarding the class, you may be right, but too late for that now. Perhaps I can teach out of my disappointment. And if there’s anything graduate school taught me, hate is as potent an analytical emotion as love.
By the way, though, I noticed that your own love of this book is kept at arm’s length. You mainly say it is good because it is good for others (“on the mark for who this comic is for”). But then why would you spend time and money on a book that, at best, is a mix of the “light” and the “overwrought”? Are you the person this comic is for?
Heh. You say “vomitous.” I say, that contrast is part of what makes it work.
Thanks, Noah. Perhaps it is pre-show jitters, but this superhero class is feeling like a good idea gone bad. But as you suggest, I can work through and with the negativity, maybe turning the critical lens back on myself.
> Are you the person this comic is for?
Indirectly, yes. In that, as someone who likes and studies comics, and who as a Latino kid who LOVED comics, but struggled to find myself in them, I enjoyed reading it – looked forward to getting its issues before my eventual disappoint – and like to be able to talk intelligently about it with the folks who I feel like it may more directly be for. So my engagement with the series is 1 part critical interest in the changing (or not changing) representation of subaltern figures and 1 part (critical) nostalgia.
I really need to proofread my comments before hitting submit. :/
I wanted to like it. The fact that there are good aspects is sort of what makes it frustrating; Red Hood or whatever is so utterly bereft of any and all value that you can kind of enjoy spitting on it. This, there’s clearly some intelligence at work and their hearts are in the right place; they’re just not quite smart or talented enough to actually make the thing worthwhile.
And Peter, you saw I emailed you about your class, yes? Not always sure what you’re email status is….
I didn’t see it, but I’ve been sick for the past four days. I’ll check the email backlog when I get home. Sorry
“could we have a roundtable where superhero comics readers — i.e., people who love them *as* readers, and not just critics — explain what keeps bring them and their dollars back to this genre?”
How about some discussion from Noah and others about what motivates them to write about this stuff? What shining examples of the teenage superhero team comic are we holding this effort against? Also, that’s the most covered up I’ve ever seen the Scarlet Witch, so objecting to her cleavage takes PC to the level of walking around a cocktail party pinning napkins over ladies’ bosoms.
Actually, I think there’s a significant difference between actually violating women’s privacy and pointing out that the Scarlet Witch’s pose and appearance seems fairly default idiotic comic book cheesecake (albeit somewhat more covered up.) I presume you’re just being hyperbolic, though.
I wrote about this because a bunch of folks recommended it to me as being interesting because of its diversity, so I thought I’d check it out. I’m interested in superhero comics more broadly for nostalgic reasons, mostly, and because I have a comics blog.
Defending this comic while whining about PC also seems a bit obtuse. The comic is all about being sensitive to issues of diversity, which I think is a point in its favor.
I just meant that you’re taking a laudable concern over the representation of women in these comics to the level of quarreling with wardrobe choices that self-respecting women regularly make, in other words do you object to cleavage-baring in real life too? You may amend my example to “asking women to place napkins over their bosoms” as I didn’t intend to suggest you were a grouper.
Yeah; you’re not really getting my point. The point isn’t what she’s wearing or isn’t. The point is she’s represented in a very default, stereotypical comic book way, which is also the default way that women are represented to mean “hot”. So, hip cocked, gaze vacant, body slim with big exposed chest. Moreover, that’s the signal for “hot woman” throughout the comic, and all the major protagonists fit it. It’s unimaginative and, yes, sexist.
You could read the linked article about Desktop Dungeons, maybe? Those folks are making a deliberate and concerted effort to get away from this kind of unimaginative representation of women. They explain pretty well why that default reprsentation is unimaginative and why it’s sexist, I think.
Noah, I think that Max’s point can’t be swept away quite so categorically. We see what we see, but I think he is suggesting is that re-thinking and re-conceiving the representations of superhero women (while still deciding that we need to have superheros) can be measured relatively, not absolutely. Relative to pretty much anything else out there, that Witch pic is some pretty tame cheesecake. Moreover, relative to the pages of beefcake that we are treated to, the standard male gaze is kept at a fairly safe distance here. There’s a lot of sexism to see, but it only becomes obvious if one ignores much of what (Max says) surrounds it. Taken in its context — a silly, hypersexist context — it does show some movement away from center.
(And it doesn’t help that *all* this artist’s faces look vacant. Check out the boys in the first image.)
Now I’m not saying that male and female objectification is all of a piece. In this sense, your chosen context matters too: the “hot” female stereotype hurts more than the “hot” male stereotype. We should care more about it. But given that we want to market stories of sexy post-teens having sex sexily (and fighting aliens), I’m not sure where your suggestion would lead us. A bevy of intentionally less-than-hot girls (stereotypically speaking) in a world of uber-hot boys?
I think that TV show is called “Supernatural.”
See, the guys have at least somewhat different body types though, I think. Loki doesn’t look like Hulking. There’s at least somewhat more variation. And…yeah, standard issue fetishized women are more prevalent and more standardized than guys.
I mean, I didn’t say this was the most sexist comic I’ve ever seen or anything. I said that the crappy, unimaginative art and the lazy use of stereotype means that the representation of women cuts against the book’s obvious efforts to work towards diversity. I’ll stand by that.
In highlighting the Scarlet Witch, Noah’s chosen what he considers the worst page in the book (I think) and it doesn’t feature any of the actual regular female character in the book, just a Scarlet Witch cameo. It comes off perhaps as a bit unfair…
No; I think the chris ware page is the worst page in the book. The Scarlet Witch is fairly pedestrian shittiness as far as this comic goes, I’d say.
Also, as is generally the case, not necessarily trying to be fair here. I’m talking about what struck me in the book, not creating some sort of objective brief.
You called the Scarlet Witch page an especially low point in your article, which doesn’t to me mean the same thing as pedestrian shitiness.
Well, fair enough. I picked out the pages that jumped out at me as especially annoying for whatever reason, I guess. Though, as Peter pointed out, the page of the two boys kissing really seems every bit as awful in its own way as the Scarlet Witch one. And any of the action sequences could have been picked out as dreadful.
It’s kind of a series of low points, maybe. Which cause me to vacillate between feeling the Scarlet Witch one is especially awful, since it struck me, and thinking back on the rest of it and going, yeah, this is all crap.
I have one hilarious thing to add — I showed someone the Noh-Varr pseudo-Chris Ware doublepage spread and they said, “It’s just Family Circus”. I bust out laughing.
Hah! That’s awesome.
The real joke is that the Family Circus is infinitely more visually accomplished than this crap.
“The art is actually the baffling part to me in superhero comics. […]
But why does the art have to be so bad? Maybe it’s because the money;work for hire incetives just aren’t good enough and folks with actual talent end up doing something else? I guess that makes sense. But the fact that superhero comics fans don’t seem to notice that the visuals are egregiously, embarassingly bad; I don’t know.”
I assume you’re talking about the genre in general here, not YA specifically; I mean, I don’t much care for McKelvie either, but, by comparison with most (contemporary) superhero art, he looks like…well, if not Pablo Picasso, then at least Thomas Kinkade.
I did read the D&D article. I thought the designers’ lamentations over hints of eyeliner creeping into their drawings reflected a very Puritan concept of feminism that doesn’t suit many real women (but they have one woman on their team! Huzzah!) and the problem of how to portray pseudo-medieval warriors enduring harsh conditions in the field seems more a question of realism akin to whether the cast of Lost should have resembled real castaways with no access to beauty products, or how many players would enjoy a Historically Accurate Middle Ages role playing game. Don’t get me wrong, I like to be persuaded by my fantasy, and metal bikinis throw me out of the story. The danger is more credible if career warriors are attempting to dress for it. But eliminating gendered concepts of attractiveness means you might as well take on the practice of casting improbably attractive people of both genders in all media. I don’t see any stunted, half-starved characters with large sores in that character gallery.
See the thing where you say, “they didn’t bother to do this, therefore they shouldn’t have bothered with anything”? I think that’s kind of bullshit.
They have women of all different ages and of a variety of appearances, and don’t rely on default fantasy stereotypes. They talk about the fact that it wasn’t perfect; they didn’t really include racial diversity, and sure, they could have even a broader representation. I don’t see it as “puritan” to try to include a broader range of female appearances.
I don’t see where I said that. I see the part where I said I don’t care for metal bikinis, meaning I’m not advocating an all-or-nothing approach. It’s rejecting the use of makeup that strikes me as Puritan, and the question of how much primping is done on the battlefield is one of realism. Since absolute realism demands a famine, plagues and rapine role-playing game, I’m suggesting a balancing act of realism and idealism which is the fantasy genre, and I think excluding gendered ideals of beauty from that playground is rather severe and a naive concept of feminism.
They’re not excluding gendered ideals of beauty, I don’t think. Unless you’re only concept of “beauty” is hot chicks in bikinis.
There are various kinds of feminisms. I don’t think it’s unfeminist for folks to wear cosmetics, if that’s what you’re saying. But I think trying to imagine characters who don’t fit into stereotypes of what women are supposed to look like is absolutely a feminist project. I think the realism/idealism thing is a red herring. They’re not trying for realism. They’ve got goblins, you know? They’re actually trying for a different kind of idealism; one in which gendered stereotypes don’t determine how we imagine.
Their designs seems cute and entertaining and imaginative. I don’t really get why it’s threatening (which is what I get from you when you say “Puritan”) to have a bunch of female character designs that don’t look like the standard fantasy cheesecake.
You’re saying it’s Puritan. But they’re not running around censoring other people, I’m pretty sure. They decided to try to make their own art, stretching their imaginations to include female characters who aren’t determined by stereotypical ideas of beauty. Making new art isn’t Puritan. Arguing that folks are unfeminist for trying to imagine differently, or suggesting that they shouldn’t create this kind of art because it doesn’t fit your idea of what fantasy art should be, seems like it actually edges more towards a kind of fan Puritanism to me.
I should maybe add…I don’t know that Puritanism is necessarily a useful lens here in any direction. I don’t think there’s anything especially wrong with objecting to art or talking about why it works or doesn’t, which seems like what the DD folks were doing, and what you’re doing as well. Also, Puritanism is supposed to have connotations of philistinism, which I think is mixed up. There were lots of great Puritan artists (like Milton.) I think it’s a charge which tends to obscure more than it illuminates, basically.
“Also, that’s the most covered up I’ve ever seen the Scarlet Witch”
You’ve never seen her in her original costume? The one that shows absolutely no skin aside from her face? The one she wore for the most of her existence?
“The new Ms. Marvel is quite good too (though the art still kind of sucks.)”
I’ve seen some of it and while it’s not amazing or anything, I certainly think it’s much better than Mckelvie’s art. It’s atleast more nice to look at and characters look less bland.
May I ask what are your favorite artists?
Also, have you read Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan? That book has very similar premise, is also very diverse and not sexist (it even has a FAT WOMAN as one of the main characters and no mean spirited fat jokes), very realistic teenagers (atleast in my opinion as a recently former teen myself) and it takes evil parents metaphor much further. And while the whole “who’s the traitor” reveal was pretty obvious there are some truly great twists (as in both suprising and sense making). I haven’t read it in years so maybe it doesn’t hold up that well though.
If you’re asking me about favorite superhero artists, I like Jim Aparo a lot; very fond of Steve Bissette and Berni Wrightson. I like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko for the most part. Love Bill Sienkiewitz.
Harry Peter!
And about Runaways, I just realised it had the same artist as Ms. Marvel so you proapbly won’t enjoy the art.
How do you feel about about David Lopez and Darwyn Cooke?
Don’t know that I’ve seen David Lopez’s work. I like Darwyn Cook okay; he doesn’t blow me away or anything but it’s pleasant enough to look at.
Runaways starts out very strong, but kinda devolves into “Some random stuff the writer saw on Buffy… but in the Marvel Universe!” But I don’t like Buffy much… for others the Buffy aspect may be a feature, not a fault. The art is great and artist Adrian Alphona is great.
Adrian Alphona was good in Runaways because he had an inker; I feel like in the last couple years he transitioned to digital-only with no inking and now it looks like the crap in Ms. Marvel and Uncanny X-Force. Plus, the colorist was a bit crisper, whereas MM’s is sort of atmospheric and fluffy.
BKV’s stuff on Runaways (he’s best known for Y: The Last Man and Saga, BTW) was pretty good — it really went downhill when Joss Whedon came on, though.
David Lopez is what I would deem “servicable”, personally.
Here’s the concept art for the Scarlet Witch for the Avengers movie sequel:
http://movies.cosmicbooknews.com/content/avengers2scarletwitchjpg
For the most part I vastly prefer the design for the women’s outfitting in the movies over the ones in the comics.
That does seem like a definite improvement.
Having finally read the first issue of Ms. Marvel, I feel the need to defend Adrian Alphona. Out of patriotic duty, of course, but also because I consider myself a pretty big fan of his Runaways work. He’s very much more a cartoonist than anything having to do with conventional (read: 90’s and late 80’s influenced) superhero comic book art. I’m looking at his character design, body language, facial expressions, camera angles – all of which I thinks he excels at as a comic book artist and which most superhero artists could stand to improve on considerably. He’s admittedly not very experimental when it comes to panel layout, but as this article points out, sometimes such experimentation is not always welcome.
It’s true his recent work is pretty different from the art in Runaways, and while I didn’t like the Uncanny X-Force art very much (though it was better than the story IMO), but I like it here. It’s looser and less tidy to be sure, but I don’t know how much of this is attributable to his not being paired with Craig Yeung’s neat inks and Christina Strain’s tight colours, and how much of it is due to his not giving a f*ck in his older age. Now, would I have Alphona illustrate a run on Detective Comics? Probably not. But it seems to me that the first order of introducing a teenage Muslim version of a superfluous character was to make her relatable and seem genuine, and a lesser artist would in no way have conveyed that visually with half as much skill as Alphona.
I think his art is okay. I like the cartoonishness of his approach, and it fits especially well with the heroes bendy stretchy powers. I wish he were willing to move either farther away from superhero naturalist default; he’s someone who I feel like could do art I like in another setting (the crappy coloring doesn’t help either.)
Christ, I hate Jamie McKelvie’s art with an almost psychotic fervor. That “Chris Ware” inspired layout?!?!? VOM. He should stck to drawing reprehensible hipster music-lovers, and he doesn’t even do that very well.
I felt the art for Phonogram volume 2 was lovely.
The Phonogram art was… not too bad, and it had better motion than YA did, but it felt too sterile for what the book was supposed to be — Also, I’m really NOT a fan of his faces. I went into Phonogram primarily interested in seeing how they represented sound and music in comics, and it really didn’t feel so interesting or revolutionary in representing it, even though friends were saying it was. It didn’t help that Seth Bingo was aggravating to read.
I liked it better than YA, though. The coloring just shoots his art in the action-figure foot.
mywa, I understand why you like his art, but mostly, I see his recent stuff and it just makes me sad, for the lack of care for line value and strength. It DOES have a great motion to it, but it’s in spite of the messy, uninteresting lines. The motion was all ready in his work — But his recent stuff has made it floppier. I’m holding a lot of it against the colorist, to be honest, as I often end up doing when assessing cape art now — So much of it is just dreadful. The only colorists I’m really big on are Hollingsworth (Hawkeye, but his coloring doesn’t work as well in less stylized work), Bellaire (She was on Captain Marvel and Immonen’s Sif comic), and whoever’s doing Chiang’s art in the modern Wonder Woman.
To be honest, I wouldn’t have anyone who isn’t a Reis/Lee amalgam imitator draw Detective comics. Drawing Batman just kills your career momentum when you’re not a big-BIG name, because absolutely nobody’s reading Detective for the art.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t have anyone who isn’t a Reis/Lee amalgam imitator draw Detective comics…because absolutely nobody’s reading Detective for the art. ”
Bingo.
“Gillen is well aware of the fanbase that existed for YA and for his work following his (actually pretty great) Journey Into Mystery run”
I’m very amused by this statement as the pre-Gillen YA readership and quite a nice chunk out of the JiM readership actually hated every single thing Gillen and McKelvie did with their run, mostly for the reasons brought up in the article but not just. At least on tumblr, this is true, ironic given “Yamblr”.
This was an excellent read. It was refreshing to hear criticism that wasn’t just blind praise of the book but was also willing to point out its downsides. I’m curious though, you mentioned America’s background, does that mean you finished the book? If so I’d love to hear your views on how David was portrayed as a bisexual person of color and his antagonistic role in the romantic triangle, as well as how the run handled Billy’s depression and suicide attempts. I think it really does tie in to a lot of what you said, as comments such as “your wiki needs an update” regarding someone’s sexuality is a prime example of how this run deals with matters of representation while treating it as it would its “normative” characters, by being color-blind and sexual orientation blind, which as you pointed out rather misses the point.
I didn’t finish the run; just read the first book. America’s race and her two moms both show up in the first arc, though they aren’t discussed much.
Ah. I suppose I should’ve figured as much. They don’t really add all that much about that matter later on so it’s easy to get confused, I suppose. Thanks anyway, and again, great read.
Thanks!
David’s bisexuality seemed like another annoying missed opportunity to me, in that it results from his mutant power* rather than him being, y’know… a person.
*he telepathically absorbs knowledge and experience, and this has broadened his sexual horizons, we are told
“Is Miss. America really even a Hispanic character, for example, when she’s an advanced human from another dimension who has never experienced prejudice?” This seems like a bit of a stretch – I suppose it’s reasonable to infer from her backstory that America’s never experienced prejudice, but to say that makes her less Hispanic kind of implies that when portraying diversity you always have to mention oppression.
That’s a fair point. I think there is something of a question of what it means to have a diverse character who is severed from their recognizable history. It just starts to feel like tokenism I guess. And tokenism is better than nothing, but it does seem a little limited.
I agree ethnic representations shouldn’t necessarily have prejudice tied into it, but take a look at America’s back-story again in issue 14. Sure the ladies are all ethnically diverse (not body-type wise, heaven forbids THAT) but we know squat about any cultural differences between them. They all seem to have the same customs and they all have the same deity they worship. And that’s where America being a Hispanic lady loses its meaning beyond visual tokenism. It’s not that she was never prejudiced against that lowers her representative value, it’s that her ethnic representation begins and ends with her looks and some knowledge of the Spanish language, two things that were carried over, aren’t actually Gillen and McKelvie’s to take credit for, and in fact were trivialized by them because as far as we know America has no knowledge of what it means to be a Hispanic lady in our world. It’s taking the “treat all your characters the same way” to an extreme that might not be helpful.
Yes! Thank you; that’s what I was trying to say.
KyonKyon – Good answer! I’d forgotten the extent to which America’s history is explored later on, you’re absolutely right about those shortcomings.
Kind of chafing that Noah had it figured out despite having read fewer issues than me…
James – sometimes knowing more makes you miss out on stuff as you have more to pay attention to :)
To go back to what you brought up about David, the interpretation you brought up I assume is from the author’s notes which shouldn’t hold any weight for the canon. In the author’s notes America was confirmed to be a lesbian but as far as the canon’s concerned she actually reads more as a heteroromantic (sporting THREE male-centered story lines, a past relationship with a guy and Billy being “the man who meant everything to me”) asexual (disgusted with shows of sexual contact with/between men while never showing any interest in women) than a lesbian.
David’s explanation about his powers can actually read as him absorbing his very sexuality from other people. It’d be one thing if he saw what other people experienced and realized he liked it too (even though that’s NEVER how his powers worked in the past), that’d be acceptable in my book as it’s still him reaching his own conclusions. But going by the text itself he absorbed EVERYTHING from people. EVERYTHING. It’s not even that his sexuality didn’t come from him being a person (fun fact – no other character needed an ‘explanation’ for their sexuality, David is alone in this), it’s arguably not even his own.
That interpretation was just based on what I remembered from the text, not author’s notes (and probably just phrased badly). I recall it was deliberately vague so as to leave open the possibility that he COULD have come to it naturally, but in my mind once you’ve brought the mutant power into it how could it be anything else? Your reading is in line with what I thought.
Yeah, tying it to his powers specifically was one of Gillen’s biggest mistakes imo. And it would’ve been so easy to avoid, you know? Because David’s just been through so much. Being an X-Kid always was rough but then there was the Decimation and David lost his powers, lost many friends, was almost forced off the X-men, stayed with the X-Men when they moved to Utopia and became a sort of a terrorist nation, Hope as the mutant Messiah, Schism happened which was the X-Men’s variation of Civil War, Avengers vs. X-Men… he obviously thought things over enough to know he wanted to leave and got that shitty job where he met Tommy, why couldn’t he have thought his life over to reach that realization then? His powers got messed up by the Scarlet Witch? Have that be a time of insight and personal revelations. Tie it to the incident, to the personal trauma, if you may, not his actual powers, because that takes away from the “who” David is and ties it to the “what” and that’s never good for any character unless you heap on the insight elsewhere.
Kieron Gillian pointed out to me on social media that there’s a line in the first volume saying that America has been on her own since she was like 10 or so. He argued that that’s a sign of marginalization/oppression that I missed.
I’ve just read over issue 1 again and I didn’t see anything of that sort? Did he give you a specific panel? Otherwise I can only imagine he’s talking about her background which left her in our Multiverse actually at the age of 7, going by her age in Vengeance. In which case until I know what quote he was referring to and am disproen, I’ve lost a bit more respect towards the man.
America’s background, being an orphan who ran away from home after she lost her mothers, is all the justification needed for her to have been on her own since. Unless explicitly stated that the reason she was alone all this time is her race, that’s left strictly in the realm of… domestic/social representation, shall we call it? Similar to how Cassie and Tommy were different representations of children from divorced homes. It’s the story of America’s family which led her there, not her race. Opposite, Tommy is a white male who as far as we know is cishet and he’s had some pretty bad breaks in that field, so race doesn’t have to play a part in this. In fact, saying that it does without actually showing it unfold, the very assumption that “oh she was alone and she’s Hispanic so that must be why” is the very thing James called you out on in his first comment, Noah. About how stories of ethnic representation, or representation of marginalized groups in general, comes hand in hand with oppression and how we instantly assume that oppression comes from these characters belonging to minorities in the West. But America could’ve had the exact same story had she been white and blue eyed. Hell, Cassie herself was about to go down a similar path, only she found the Young Avengers first.
So really, what quote did he refer you to?
Well, here’s his comment:
https://twitter.com/kierongillen/status/484268770773725184
I didn’t notice it while reading, so don’t know exactly where it is in the text.
He was quite gracious about the piece I thought.
It’s in issue 4, the first time her mothers show up. And if that’s what he meant, I stand by my previous stance – this is bullshit as far as claiming America’s been subjected to ethnic prejudice is concerned. All we’re told in that panel is that since coming to our universe ten years ago, America hasn’t been to school. Would it have been different if she looked like, say, Cassie? White, blonde and blue-eyed? Would that mean someone necessarily would’ve taken in this girl who obviously has a fighting spirit, is an orphan away from home, is super-powered and NOT used to having men around (she comes from an all-women society where the only man they knew of was Billy who’s basically their god and will create the realm in the future)?
America hardly has to be of Hispanic origin for her to have been left on her own and if Gillen doesn’t realize that I’m afraid he doesn’t get the background he himself gave her and it saddens me if he thinks that given this background America’s race is the only thing that would mean she was left alone or to be precise – out of school, going by the panel he referred you to. Furthermore, as revealed in issue 14, America came to our world to be a hero like her moms, and like Billy who she looked up to. We see her in Vengeance being a super-hero on the run out of a CHOICE. Saying now that it’s because no one bothered to take her to school is… unsettling.
Does it make sense she was prejudiced against during this time? Of course it does, unfortunately. But he’s making quite the humongous logical leap to say that’s necessarily why she was on her own for so long.
I feel like the goalposts may have moved somewhat. I read the tweet as merely an answer to “as far as we know America has no knowledge of what it means to be a Hispanic lady in our world”* – if she’s been in “our world” for a decade, then it’s fair to say she has some idea.
*not to say that Gillen was reacting to this exact quote – it’s just the neatest expression of the idea
I’m know it was accidental Noah, but “Kieron Gillian” made me laugh.
Aw, crap. Spelling is not my strong suit.
And I think that is actually what he meant; i.e., that she’d been living in our world for a long time and so knew what it meant to be Hispanic. I think I misunderstood him initially.
James, that’s like saying Teddy has an idea of what it’s like to be a non-straight guy (I’m careful with saying he’s gay since we don’t know he’s NOT into other genders, just that he’s so far only shown interest in guys). It wouldn’t be an unfair assumption but saying he in fact has never been directly on the receiving end of such treatment is as legitimate a statement as saying that he has given the canon material. Meanwhile Billy’s the one with the back-story surrounding his sexuality, the coming-out to his family scene, and while for comic relief, a proper coming-out scene in their Dark Reign mini where he states his orientation in no uncertain terms.
America in particular is a fascinating case when it comes to representation and Noah brought it up in the original article. Can we really judge a woman who comes from an all-woman society, where same-sex relationships are the norm, where people of various ethnic origins coexist to the point the world is referred to as a Utopia, by our standards? Especially when the character in question is known to apply violence and use her super-powers at the drop of a hat.
Sure, it’s very easy to say “it’s been ten years, of course she’s been through it” and it’s very hard to properly rebut. But especially given the background Gillen gave her it would’ve been nice to see some glimpses of it, instead of an origin story that has everything OPPOSITE to it, is where I stand.
That IS better than saying “her not having gone to school for 10 years is proof she’s been prejudiced against”, though. Unless he was referring to the time-span portion of that line, in which case it’s quite the roundabout way to go about it.