Tag Archives: DC

Supergirl vs. the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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I grew up thinking of DC and Marvel as rival teams in a vast, superpowered Olympics. Who’s stronger, Superman or Thor? Who’s faster, Quicksilver or Flash? Every spin of the comics rack was a new exhibition in their never-ending face-off.

That’s why new Supergirl show is such a game-changer. Sure, the character has been around since 1949 (though that “Supergirl” was Queen Lucy from the Latin American kingdom of Borgonia, not Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin). Melissa Benoist’s Supergirl looks perfectly fun too. I’m even happy to see CBS back in the superheroine business. They rescued Wonder Woman from cancellation in 1976, before introducing the first live-action incarnations of the very male Marvel pantheon: Spider-Man, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and, one of the most successful superhero shows ever, The Incredible Hulk. We’ll see if Supergirl survives five seasons too.
 

 
But aside from its team-switching network, it’s the show’s timeslot that throws the biggest red flag on the DC-Marvel playing field. Mondays at 8:00? That’s when the pre-Batman series Gotham airs. I would shout FOUL! But can you foul your own teammate? Supergirl and Batman, they’re both DC regulars. So it must be an off-sides penalty? One of them should be lining up Tuesdays at 9:00 to go head-to-head with Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., right?

Actually, no. Supergirl is CBS, Gotham is Fox. Neither networks cares about comic book rivalries. Their playing field is primetime. The CW airs a pair of Justice League characters too, Flash and Arrow, plus soon Atom, Hawkgirl and a few other second-stringers in their third DC-licensed show, Legends of Tomorrow. If CBS preferred any of those time slots, they’d land Supergirl there instead. Worse, Warner Brothers has a Flash film scheduled for a 2018 release—but it will be staring Ezra Miller, not CW actor Grant Gustin. If Green Arrow makes into 2019’s Justice League Part Two, Stephen Amell can expect to be benched too.

These aren’t  just facelifts. The TV and film versions of DC superheroes are different people living in different worlds. Christopher Nolan had barely completed his Batman trilogy in 2012 when Warner Brothers started their Ben Affleck reboot. Supergirl earned her pilot because of her cousin’s box office success in 2013’s Man of Steel. But that’s not the same Superman. Look at Jimmy Olsen. The difference is literally black and white. He’s played by Mehcad Brooks on TV, and Rebecca Buller in the film (okay, they changed the female Jimmy to Lana Lang, but still).

Compare that no-rules rulebook to Marvel’s team-player strategy. In addition to the Avengers, the Marvel Cinematic Universe includes five solo franchises (Ant-Man, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk), four Netflix shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Luke Cage), and two ABC shows (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter). And they’re all jigsaws pieces in a single, unified puzzle.

When the Netflix Matt Murdock talks about uptown superheroes, he doesn’t just mean Thor, Iron Man and Captain America; he means the Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans incarnations of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America. Peggy Carter began in the first Captain American film in 2011, before spun-off in her own TV show last year, and she appeared in the first scene of this summer’s Ant-Man, and she’ll appear again for her own funeral in Captain America 3 next spring.

Imagine the galaxy-sized migraines involved in keeping all those planets spinning in the same solar system. No wonder DC and Warner Brothers happily hand-over creative control for each of their independent universes. When asked about Supergirl, Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment, said “we’ve been given license and latitude to make some changes.” In other words, forget continuity, our Supergirl flies solo. That might sound less impressive—hell, it is less impressive—but orbiting inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe carries its own penalties.

Witness director Edgar Wright. The hilariously idiosyncratic British film-maker approached Marvel about Ant-Man back in 2004. The then-fledgling studio was delighted. But when production finally rolled around a decade later, the Marvel blockbuster mill wasn’t so keen on Wright’s personal take on a potential franchise. Avengers director Joss Whedon adored the script, but Marvel scrapped it, handed the rewrite pen to Paul Rudd, and subbed out Wright for the lesser known but far more malleable Peyton Reed. Granted, Reed’s miniature battle scene shot on a Thomas the Tank Engine train track was genius, but the rest of the film was by-the-Marvel-numbers.

There’s at least one potential reason for that all-controlling gravity. At the center of the Marvel Cinematic Universe spins a supermassive black hole named Disney. It also owns ABC, home of Carter and S.H.I.E.L.D. It was also the TV home for Superman in the 50s, Batman in the 60s, and—for a season at least—Wonder Woman in the 70s. But the Mickey Mouse subsidiary isn’t interested in promoting Warner Brothers property anymore.

The megalomaniacal one-puzzle policy has even taken root in Marvel Entertainment’s root company, Marvel Comics. Its continuity used to include thousands of free-wheeling universes. On Earth-1610, Spider-Man is black and Hispanic; on Earth-2149, superheroes are zombies; on Earth-8311, Peter Parker is a pig named Peter Porker. There was even an Earth-616, where we all read Marvel Comics, and Earth-199999, home of the Evans, Downey Jr., and Hemsworth Avengers, who apparently are completely unaware that Marvel Studios is watching and recording them.

That all changed last summer. With its mini-series Secret Wars, Marvel Comics destroyed its fifty-year-old universe, and rebooted its most beloved characters into a single, one-size-fits-all reality (All-New All-Different Marvel!), in which its writers and artists must toil in perfect, lock-step synchronization.

Meanwhile, DC is following Supergirl in the opposite direction. After their own recent, reality-transforming maxi-series Convergence, every character, storyline, and alternate world that’s ever appeared in any DC comic book is officially back on the playing field. Apparently the writers were envious of their TV and screenplay counterparts and wanted the same unfettered free-for-all. And now they got it.

So when you tune in to Supergirl Monday nights, enjoy the metaphysical implications of your viewing choice. That’s a whole new world blinking on your screen.

Can We Have a Different Conversation?

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I really don’t understand why people keep trying to tell Marvel and DC how to do business. These are wholly owned subsidiaries of major multi-national entertainment conglomerates with a poor track record of rewarding the contributions of the individual.

Marvel is owned by Disney – a company that has set industry best practices for selling product to little girls. Does anyone honestly believe that if Disney wanted Marvel to sell more product to that demographic that they would be unable to do so? Or is it more likely that Marvel represents Disney’s inroad into a male demographic?

DC just went through a major branding exercise, which is usually an expensive, complex multi-year process. Is it remotely possible that demographic targeting, genre diversity and price point optimization were not considered during the planning stages? Or is it more likely that DC specifically targeted the demographics that it wanted to target?

Not all comic book companies can be all things to all people. And it is increasingly obvious that Marvel and DC do not want to be anything but superhero publishers selling superhero comics to superhero readers through the supply chain that they have spent two plus decades optimizing to do so. And yes, this limits the amount of money they bring in from demographics outside what they consider to be their core target – straight white males.
But it’s not as if Marvel and DC are the only game in town.

It would be refreshing to see an article that started with “Marvel and DC are not producing the kinds of comics that appeal to other demographics” that went on to say “but there are other publishers that do and you should be supporting them” instead of presenting a carefully thought out argument about how Marvel and DC should completely change their business practices.
Corey Blake , for example, wrote an entire article that basically boils down to “Marvel should start acting more like Fantagraphics” without actually mentioning Fantagraphics – presumably because he still thinks that there are only two comic book publishers in existence instead of more than thirty.

If half of the energy spent tilting at the Big Two windmills was spent pointing out that there is already a pretty diverse selection of comics available for purchase, I think there would probably be more comics readers. But that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as bitching about the fact that homogenized corporate IP farms are not paying attention to other demographics, would it?

It’s easier to bemoan what could be than it is to celebrate what is because no real action is needed. “I tried to tell them what to do and they chose not to listen. What are you going to do?” Buy comics from someone else maybe?
A very common phrase that I have seen from some very smart people is “they’re leaving money on the table.” Presumably “they” are Marvel and DC, but “they” could very easily refer to anyone publishing comics that has not put together a comprehensive marketing campaign designed to combat the idea that comics is only superheroes aimed at straight white men.

Where most people see a problem on the part of Marvel and DC, I see opportunities for smaller, more agile publishers to sweep in and cater to these demographics who are clamoring for more diversity. After all, these comics already exist and I think it’s time to change the conversation.
 

DC Comics Batwoman

J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman, the writers of Batwoman, just left the title after DC editorial refused to allow the character to marry her female fiance.


 

Comics I Like Despite Themselves

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As I contemplate what to write for Hooded Utilitarian every month, I find certain images float into my head on a regular basis. These are the comics I grew up with, and the comics I loved, despite the fact that the art quite often was cringeworthy, the writing was often excruciating and even the concepts were frequently embarrassing to consider. Nonetheless, these are the comics I think about the most. These were comics I bought with my meager allowance, off the spinner rack at the local newstand and everything, just like any stereotypical 70s comic reader. Frequently, even when I was collecting them, I thought they were trash, and it was my love of awful things that kept sending me back to buy these truly dreadful stories, until the comics companies killed them out of pity. Some of these are actually quite good, but that wasn’t why I liked them. ^_^

 

The Defenders – I liked this series because they were total losers as a group. “B”-team doesn’t cut it. Individually, they were only partially effective as superheroes, as a team, they were a joke…which was mostly the plot of the series, in between some personality switching, possession and, of course, fighting.

The key to enjoying the Defenders was to realize that each and every one of the individual members was significantly broken in some way and when they joined together to fight as a team, those problems were magnified, rather than minimized. In my memory, more of the story was taken up with them arguing with one another than ever effectively handling any problem they faced.

The Defenders became the home for all drop-out dysfunctional heroes who found it hard to play well with others, or who had argued with their real team and needed somewhere to go on a sulk.

My favorite character was Valkyrie (oh gosh, I’m sure that’s a total shock) but not because she was just a female warrior. She was a female warrior from Norse Mythology – that totally did it for me. In an early expression of cluelessness about feminism (that has now become so extreme that comics journalism is replete with articles and commentary on it) Val couldn’t hit other women, but happily beat the crap out of male chauvinists, which were, not all that surprisingly, all males, since obviously feminism=man-hating. To be fair, most of the men Val dealt with were pretty chavinist, and all the men were clueless. This does not appear to have changed much in recent years.

 

In high school, I discovered another deep love for a crappy comic. This time it was a retro look at the days when we were the good guys and the Nazis were the bad guys. The Invaders represented the Allies (well, the Allied countries and Submariner, because apparently the Nazis had it out for Atlantis too.)

I had this cover inside my high school locker. You’re probably assuming it’s because I found the idea of a leather-clad, giant female warrior physically attractive, but actually you’d be wrong.

My love for this cover has nothing to to with Krieger Frau herself, or the defeat of her and Master Man by the Invaders. My love of this cover has everything to do with a massive multi-media cross-over fanfic I wrote for about three years with a friend in high school. Krieger Frau just happens to looks a lot like the main bad guy in that fanfic. When I look at this cover, I see Snap Bar.

Nonetheless, there was joy to be found in the morality play that was a  look at the “good old days” of World War II. There is a freedom in knowing that we were right, and someone else was wrong and there were no questions about the ethics of clobbering bad guys.

 

One of my prize possessions is a truly awful short-lived series by DC that was supposed to tell the Beowulf story, Beowulf Dragon Slayer. It didn’t. It strapped Beowulf into an uncomfortable-looking Michelin Man-esque costume, made of belts, and tortured a simple story beyond its own ability to tolerate. Many years later, I brought this series into my graduate class on Beowulf, and laughed while my classmates boggled that someone could get it so wrong.

This series really stands out for the inexplicable use of sentences written backwards as magical spells by the scop (who, in this series is a Druid-like wizard rather than a story-teller.) “Happy Birthday Caroline” becomes a  Lovecraftian incantation “Enilorac Yadhtrib Yppah!” Surely I wasn’t the only one to notice?

There were so many things wrong with this series, on every level – indifferent art,  incomprehensible story, that my reaction of loving it for its awfulness seems completely appropriate.

 

As I say, I love my awful comics. But there was one, finally, that I had to genuinely say was the absolute worst comic I ever read. It was killed at 13 issues, for which I was immensely thankful. Even I don’t know why it was created, except as a pathetic way to recreate the popularity of Spiderman, using all the wrong elements. Spiderman, you may remember, was a nebbish. He was a freelance photographer and a college student. He was a skinny, dorky guy. When the spider bit him, he did not suddenly become cool and suave – he was now a super-powered dorky guy. He cracked jokes to cover the fact that he was terrified. He now goes from dorky kid to cool dude in a matter of weeks, but that transformation took decades. In the 80s, he was still a dorky guy, a milquetoast by day, joke-cracking half-competent superhero in his free time.

So Marvel, cognizant that this kind of character had a readership, decided to try again. They created The Man Called Nova. I know they rebooted Nova in the 2000s, but they really laid the dorky loser on with a trowel the first time around. If you have never read the original Nova, and want to see how bad a comic can be, see if you can find a copy and read this.

The main character, Richard Ryder, has all the awkwardness of Peter Parker, without any of his sincerity or charm. He’s supposed to a science student (I might be wrong in remembering it as physics) but shows no understanding of anything. The premise is similar to that of The Greatest American Hero, except that instead of losing the instruction booklet, Richard is given his suit by an alien and has to get used to the thing. The first several issues follow him picking fights with street punks. When he first encounters super-powered villians, he fails spectacularly. Maybe it was just the time and place, but when Nova wrapped up, I set it aside with a sense of relief.

 

The one truly awful storyline that I adore with all my being from my American comics collecting days was when the ancient Egyptian gods kidnap and brainwash Odin into thinking he’s Osiris, in order to defeat Set. This storyline hit me in my weakest of weak spots – mythology as a hook. Could there really ever be anything sexier than Horus and Thor fighting on a pyramid, in order for Thor to retrieve his father? Yes, yes there could. There is a sequence mid-arc, where Horus and Thor fight together, on a giant causeway in space, against hordes of skeletons sent by Set, god of death (do not attempt to correct Marvel, they do not care about accuracy) while Jane beseeches Odin/Osiris to help his son.

Horus and Set fight one-on-one, while Thor protects Isis and Jane. Ultimately it is the human, Jane Foster, who awakens Odin from his trance, and so Horus is able to cast Set into the abyss of space and rescue his father, thus returning balance to the universe.

Now this is what comic books are all about.

Adding Incompetence to Insult

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This originally appeared on Comixology.
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I’ve been following the When Fangirls Attack linkblog (Update: sadly largely defunct now.) recently. Among other things, it’s a good way to find out what moronic cheesecake schlock the big two have served up this week. I think there have been at least three prime slices of said cheesecake since I’ve been following the blog with some regularity, namely:


Cover of Blackest Night.

 


Cover of Marvel Divas

 


JLA: Cry for Justice

And, what the hell, here’s a blast from the past or two as well.

 

 

The thing is, I have no problem with cheesecake. I even like cheesecake. Anita the Swedish Nymphet? Japanese Vogue? Michael Manning’s fetish porn? Sure; I vote for all of those. Or for the classic pin-up art of Dan DeCarlo:

 
Or Jack Cole:
 

 
Or even Larry Elmore’s trashy fantasy illustration:
 

 
Yet, despite my general appreciation for the form (in various senses), I find super-heroine cheesecake irritating and often borderline offensive. Why is that?

I think there are a couple of reasons. In the first place, super-heroines are, you know, heroes. They’re supposed to have stuff to do, crime to fight, justice to uphold, and so forth. For Dan DeCarlo and Jack Cole, the woman are just there to stare at; they’re hot, hot hot. That’s the whole raison d’etre; there’s no effort to pretend that you care what these women think, or how they act, or whether they defeat the villain without falling out of their tops and being exposed to the vastness of space.

I guess there’s a school of thought which would argue that turning women into objects like this is bad. And (despite the strong demurral of a couple of my lesbian friends) I do think there’s something to that. But, on the other hand, if you’re going to have pictures of sexy women, and the pictures of sexy women are why you’re there, maybe it makes more sense to just admit that, and not disingenuously pretend that you’re interested in what’s going on in their heads. If you make it simply about visual stimulation, it’s simply about visual stimulation, and doesn’t have to have anything to do (or at least, not much to do) with real women. Once you start pretending that you’re talking about a smart, motivated, principled adventurer, on the other hand, you end up implying that said smart, motivated, principled, adventurer has an uncontrollable compulsion to dress like a space-tart on crack. Which is, it seems to me, insulting.

The second thing is that, if you must make your adventurer into a fetish object, it seems like the least you could do is make her tough. That outfit that Larry Elmore’s fantasy warrior is wearing above is clearly ridiculous, and not a whole lot more practical than Star Sapphire’s get-up. But, at the same time, Elmore’s warrior looks badass. She’s got a giant sword and she looks thoroughly pissed off. She’d cheerfully castrate you without a second thought. And that’s the way to go: if you’re going to do action-hero cheesecake, then bring on the masochism: get off both on how hot the action hero is, and on how thoroughly she can beat you black and blue. It’s feministsploitation; not feminism exactly, but a fetishization of feminism, and it makes some sense at least to the degree that the fetish clothing and the putative power of the character are coherently working together, both in that the power makes the character more sexy and in that that the clothing adds (not necessarily logically, but still) to the sense of the character’s potency.

This sometimes works for super-heroine cheesecake too (Frank Miller’s Catwoman is an example). But more often, you get images like those above, where Star Sapphire’s costume makes her look vulnerable, not tough…or the Marvel Divas cover, where everybody but Hellcat is making with the bedroom eyes, and the only threat is that Black Cat’s costume may pinch so tightly that she actually pops apart at the waist, causing everything from the torso up to go swooshing about like a deflating balloon.

Which brings us to the last and perhaps most important point. Super-heroine cheesecake is often offensive just because it’s so thoroughly incompetent. Star Sapphire’s costume, for example, goes right past sexy and on into ludicrous. For the Marvel Divas cover, the artist couldn’t even come up with more than one body type – and he can’t even draw the one he’s got. As I already intimated, Black Cat’s top and bottom look horribly mismatched; similarly, Hellcat seems to have borrowed her breasts from Giant Girl. All of them look like toys, not people. And that Justice League cover starring Supergirl’s chest…why would you even do that? How is it sexy to have a disembodied bosom flapping about your foreground? And as if that’s not bad enough, as Katie Moody says in comments on the Beat; the artist seems to have accidentally left out our heroine’s ribcage. Or maybe it’s deliberate; did Supergirl lose her skeletal structure during one of the post-Crisis reboots? I must admit I haven’t been following the continuity that closely….

In any case, the point is, you look at drawings by DeCarlo or Jack Cole or yes, even Larry Elmore and they get the proportions minimally right (Elmore’s barbarian’s breasts are big, but not that big); they select flattering clothes (DeCarlo’s dress with its va-va-voom horizontal stripes); they take the time to figure out fluid poses (Cole’s sophisticated lady arranged in classic curves upon the couch.) In short, the artists seem to care about women enough to have looked at one or two of them at some point.

Not that I’d argue that good art can’t be sexist; craft and talent aren’t everything, or even necessarily all that much, in these matters. But they are something. Even if you’re pandering, doing a professional job of it implies a certain minimal level of respect not only towards your audience, but towards your subject as well. You look at super-heroine cheesecake, and you get a sense of a boys’ locker-room cluelessness so intense that it is indistinguishable from disdain. Honest sensuality in these circumstances would be a relief. Sexism may be bad, but incompetent sexism is just intolerable.

Jon? What Are You Doing Back There?

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I’m not the first to have noticed this,, but I happened to see Adam Hughes promo cover for Before Watchmen and….

Given Jon’s usual free-swinging ways, the position of his hands, and Laurie’s distracted expression, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that we’re being treated to a scene from the action here.

Charitably, one could consider this a friendly Lost Girls tribute. Less charitably, one could surmise that it’s a smug thumb (or something) in the eye to Alan Moore, telling him right out what DC and its new creators plan to do to his characters. Least charitably, it points simply to the usual level of utter mainstream comics cluelessness. DC’s disinterest in women is apparently so extreme that they can’t even be bothered to look at their flaccid cheesecake before they slap it up there on their marketing campaign for all the world to see.

Can’t Get No Worse

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I have bought zero (0) DC comics in the last…um…well I’m not sure how long. (Unless you count Tiny Titans. Does that count?)

Anyway, the point is, I haven’t read any of the new reboot titles. Nonetheless, I surf the internets, and the new (new!) issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws appears to have really gone above and beyond and then through the basement and into the pig trough in its pursuit of the absolute, uncontested, nadir of idiotic giggling fanboy “I have never seen a woman but occasionally I wipe my dick with my four-colored friends” sexism.

But the one glimmer of goodness here is that DC’s idiocy has prompted a good bit of entertaining blogosphere commentary. For example, this from Graeme McMillan at Newsarama.

That’s right, fanboys! You liked it when Starfire wanted to jump into bed with Robin way back when they were in the New Teen Titans together? Well now she’s a sex-hungry warrior bimbo who not only can’t remember her ex-boyfriend, but can’t tell men apart so she’ll sleep with them all! That’s, uh, definitely the reboot that some people were potentially wanting to see! Maybe! Possibly.

Kickpuncher over at fempop is even more amusing.

Scott Lobdell gives his audience, his industry, possibly his entire gender the finger and says “Oh no, you motherfuckers. That’s not your fantasy. Your fantasy is a woman that will literally have sex with you just for existing. No woman with any standards, no matter how low, no matter how forgiving, could possibly be attracted to you, so here’s your new sex object—a brain-damaged goldfish with a rack. And you’re such a scared little boy, so afraid of commitment in even your own pathetic fantasies, that you’ll run away from a ‘clinger’ even if she’s as gorgeous, charming, and supportive as the woman Starfire used to be. You can’t bear even that slight chance that she’ll make you move out of your parents’ basement, get a real job, and make something of yourself. So I’ll cater to that too! Not only doesn’t she want a relationship, she won’t even remember you! That’s what you want in the end, isn’t it? A vagina-shaped goldfish! Look upon your lust, ye nerdy, and despair.”

Laura Hudson at Comics Alliance is more sober.

Most of all, what I keep coming back to is that superhero comics are nothing if not aspirational. They are full of heroes that inspire us to be better, to think more things are possible, to imagine a world where we can become something amazing. But this is what comics like this tell me about myself, as a lady: They tell me that I can be beautiful and powerful, but only if I wear as few clothes as possible. They tell me that I can have exciting adventures, as long as I have enormous breasts that I constantly contort to display to the people around me. They tell me I can be sexually adventurous and pursue my physical desires, as long as I do it in ways that feel inauthentic and contrived to appeal to men and kind of creep me out. When I look at these images, that is what I hear, and I don’t think I even realized how much until this week.

And I’m tired. I’m so, so tired of hearing those messages from comics because they aren’t the dreams or the escapist fantasies or the aspirations that I want to have. They don’t make me feel joyful or powerful or excited. They make me feel so goddamn sad that I want to cry, because I have devoted my entire life to comics, and when I read superhero books like these I realize that most of the time, they don’t give a sh*t about me.

I have been doing this for a long time, now. I have lived in the neighborhood of superhero comics for a long time. And frankly, if this is how they think it’s ok to treat me when I walk down the street in a place that I thought belonged to me just as much as anyone else who lives here, then I’m not sure I want to live here anymore.

I think Laura’s got the right idea…but I hope she moves quickly through grief and on into indifference. Because nobody should be crying over contemporary mainstream superhero comics.

And the reason nobody should cry is because Laura’s absolutely right. Mainstream comics don’t give a shit about her. Criticizing DC is worthwhile because pointing out sexism is worthwhile and good writing is worthwhile and most of all because these morons deserve to be insulted. But hoping that Dan Didio is going to give a fuck about feminist complaints is like hoping that the coal industry will, after serious discussion, suddenly decide that solar energy is the future. You can teach an old dog new tricks, maybe, but you can’t turn an old dog into a penguin.

I’ve said this before more or less (most recently here) but maybe it bears repeating. Superhero comics are a tiny, niche market. Within that market, women are a tiny minority (10% at best, from the figures I’ve been able to find.) The audience for superhero comics is the small rump of 30-year-old plus men who have been reading superhero comics for 20-plus years and still want to read about the child-oriented characters of their youth — only, you know, in a kind of skeevy, adult way.

Now, maybe you read superhero comics, and that doesn’t describe what you want from them. Which is cool — but it’s worth realizing that you are in the minority (among superhero comics readers. You’re among the vast, vast majority in terms of the rest of the world, obviously.)

If the reboot makes anything clear, it’s that the core audience remains the core audience. It’s not going anywhere. This is what mainstream superhero comics are.

The point being, the best possible outcome here is not that DC starts writing better stories. It isn’t that they become more diverse. It isn’t that they hire more female creators. The best possible (note I said “possible”) outcome is that these shitheads finally, finally go out of business.

And if they do, you know what? It won’t be the end of comics, because there are lots and lots of comics. It won’t be the end of superheroes, because they’ll go on in other mediums…and, for that matter, there are lots of superhero comics not by the big two (many of them made in Japan). It won’t even be the end of your favorite characters, I wouldn’t think — there’ll still be back issues. If you love Starfire you can reread those old Teen Titans comics, which certainly had their problems…but at least Marv Wolfman seemed to care about Starfire the way creators care about their characters, rather than the way fanboys care about the fetish object they’ve been wanking to for decades.

And if you must, must, must have new Starfire content…well, write it yourself. Your fan fiction isn’t going to be any worse, and certainly won’t be any less “valid”, than the crappy corporate fan fiction DC is churning out. DC doesn’t own your characters, they don’t own your dreams, and they don’t own your aspirations. What they do own is some copyrights, and no doubt those will only be removed with force from their cold, dead corporate hands. Which is all the more reason to wish those cold corporate hands extinct. Maybe, if we’re very lucky, this reboot will be looked back upon not as another failed, stupid, embarrassing detour, but as the beginning of the end.

Snap Judgments: Five DC Reboots

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The comics blogosphere can’t stop talking about the DC Comics reboot in September. Some bloggers are cheering. Others are jeering. But anyone can offer a general impression. A true comics blogger explains why something sucks, and then explains how everything would be better if said blogger was in charge.

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Action Comics #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Rags Morales and Rick Bryant

Pros
Grant Morrison has written great superhero comics.
And lots of people seem to really like Morrison’s All-Star Superman.

Cons
The unbearable Modern Myth/Super Jesus/Underwear Messiah garbage.
And All-Star Superman was incredibly overrated.

Odds That It Will Suck
High. In his 70+ year history, Superman has starred in about 5 good comics. The rest are about why the world “needs” Superman and his crappy merchandise.

How I Would Make It Better
Superman is an escapist fantasy about male potency, which is why Action Comics should be an adult comic. Every issue should be 22 pages of hardcore sex where Superman fucks his way through Lois, Lana, Lex, Jimmy Olsen, Martha Kent, Krypto, and consequently saves the world. Superman isn’t Jesus Christ. He’s Ron Jeremy-meets-Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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Wonder Woman #1
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Cliff Chiang

Pros
Azzarello has written some good (crime) comics.
I like Cliff Chiang’s artwork, if for no other reason than it doesn’t look like everyone else’s artwork.
The new costume is a slight improvement over the last new costume.

Cons
Azzarello has written some terrible (superhero) comics.

Odds That It Will Suck
Super high. When it comes to crappy comics, Wonder Woman has an even worse track record than Superman. Nobody at DC knows what to do with this character.

How I Would Make It Better
I’m tempted to just write “make it porn” for each these. But in all seriousness, the only way that Wonder Woman would ever be good again is if William Marston came back from the grave. The next best alternative would be to find a writer who has a similar personality to Marston: feminist, polygamist, BDSM enthusiast, lesbian fetishist, furry, all-around pervert and political visionary, etc.

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Teen Titans #1
Written by Scott Lobdell
Art by Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund

Pros
Lobdell has experience writing teen superheros, going back to Generation X.

Cons
Generation X was actually kinda boring.
Superboy is not and will never be badass, no matter how many ‘tats he has.

Odds That It Will Suck
Very high. Teen Titans was tolerable for about 3 years in the early 1980s. Everything before and after was a miserable failure.

How I Would Make It Better
The core problem with Teen Titans is that it’s never been about teenagers, but rather what adult writers want teenagers to be. Superboy, Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash – these kids revere their elders and try to emulate them. Fuck that noise. Adults don’t deserve reverence. Plus, teenagers don’t want to read about obedient, law-abiding teens, and adults reliving their youth don’t want to read about obedient, law-abiding teens. They both want sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll (or substitute in hip hop). The Titans shouldn’t be fighting crime, they should be fighting for the right to party, and generally reminding adults how much they suck.

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Batgirl #1
Written by Gail Simone
Art by Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes (cover by Adam Hughes)

Pros
Having a writer with an actual sense of humor never hurts.

Cons
Barbara Gordon can now walk again, which means DC eliminated one of the tiny handful of disabled heroes.
That Adam Hughes cover freaks me out. She keeps smiling at me with her cold, dead eyes…

Odds That It Will Suck
Medium. Batgirl is a fairly straightforward character who stars in straightforward adventures. No history of greatness, but no history of terribleness either.

How I Would Make It Better
Comics starring solo heroes often tend to be a dreary reads because the protagonist rarely has anyone to interact with. This leads to page after page of mind-numbing narration just so the writer can justify their wage. This book needs a big supporting cast, preferably other superheroines who accompany Batgirl on her adventures. So it would essentially be Birds of Prey with Batgirl. And like Birds of Prey, there should be plenty of lesbian subtext, because lesbian subtext improves everything.

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Swamp Thing #1
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Yanick Paquette

Pros
I’m drawing a blank here…

Cons
Mediocre writer, mediocre artist, a character who is ill-served by being dragged back into mainstream superhero comics.

Odds That It Will Suck
Certainty. Alan Moore is a tough act to follow. And outside of Moore’s run, Swamp Thing doesn’t have a rich history to draw from.

How I Would Make It Better
Well, I probably wouldn’t make it at all. But if I had to, I’d shamelessly rip off the best parts of Moore’s run. At minimum, the comic should have purple prose, leftist politics, and psychedelic yam sex.