38blue

My brain is finally back online […as much as it ever is - RD] following a busy but amazing weekend at C2E2 2012, where I had a chance to chat with the creators of some of my favorite books - one of which hasn’t even started yet. Don’t care. I’m so excited, I’m already calling it a favorite.

That would be the new Captain Marvel series by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Every interview I’d read about this one has just made me more psyched for the direction she’s taking Carol Danvers here, and then I actually got to chat with Ms. DeConnick during a signing. She shared preview pages from both the CM series itself (art by Dexter Soy) and Avenging Spider-Man #9-10 starring Carol & Spidey and written by DeConnick (with art by Terry Dodson!), and told me about some incredible characters we’re about to meet.

You guys: Captain Marvel #2 is going to introduce the World War 2 Women’s Air Force Auxiliary equivalents of Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos!

Each of the Howlers will have an opposite number; Ms. DeConnick described the Fury character, the Dum Dum Dugan character, and the Dino Minelli a little bit, and they are wonderful. I cannot wait to meet these ladies!

I’ve already started bugging my comic shop about getting Captain Marvel onto my pull list. The instant Marvel actually solicits July’s issue, I’m there. I  may also have made it a point to stop Axel Alonso this weekend and (politely) let him know how much I’m looking forward to this book.

I also got a chance this weekend to tell Dan Slott how much I loved his She-Hulk series, and in return he told me what the next story would have been had he stayed on the book. This is all from memory and thus wildly paraphrased, but essentially:

The next story would have involved Pug’s old high school teacher losing his job for teaching Marvel Creationism. “And then the Celestials came down and split the human genome, creating the Inhumans over there, and the Eternals, and the humans. And then Odin came down from the World Tree… There are no Christian, Jewish, or Hindu gods…” So She-Hulk and her firm are helping the teacher sue for wrongful termination, and eventually they call the Watcher down as a witness. “YES, THAT IS WHAT REALLY HAPPENED…” 

Dan Slott is a great verbal storyteller (he does the funny voices and everything), so this was just brilliant to hear. Also a little sad, that we never just got to read this story. I did suggest it still could make a great one-shot or mini-series, but he says he’s “Spidey for life” these days. Ah well!

-JD

[This blog has been harsh to Dan Slott in the past. I stand by that post, because going after fans to argue with them on their own blogs is a jerk move. By all accounts, he’s done much better since then, and he was cool in person. This does not excuse his past behavior but hopefully is evidence that he is learning and growing. - RD]

The X-Men’s Schism event has only an issue to go at this point. While the philosophical nature of the Cyclops-Wolverine fight about to split Marvel’s mutants asunder and entirely redefine a classic franchise remains unclear, we know this much: they’re fighting over Jean Grey.

My personal ‘shipper proclivities aside, there’s an inherent problem here, as in many fictional m-m-f love triangles. The interests of the female character are secondary if not outright immaterial to the power struggle between the two men. It’s a demeaning trope for women and men alike, reducing men to their desires and women to objects of said desires. And the problem is only further highlighted by Marvel’s announcement yesterday that Wolverine will be opening The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning in Jason Aaron’s upcoming Wolverine & the X-Men series. X-Men editor Nick Lowe is quick to point out that Cyclops will not be happy when he learns that a school has been named for his dear departed wife; the name can’t simply be a tribute, it has to be a way for Logan to get back at Scott. In the CBR comments thread discussing the announcement, one fan puts it more colorfully, saying this is “what happens when Scott plays at being alpha male. The real dogs like Logan piss all over what they want to mark their territory.”

This is what the noble X-Men franchise has become: the story of two big squabbling dogs and the people who follow them around. Cyclops and Wolverine, once great heroes and great friends, are just animals. Yet Jean Grey is even further dehumanized - she’s territory, a school, a building that Logan can own and Scott can hate and probably eventually blow up with his eyebeams. Jean’s dead, she has no agency left in the story, but Marvel puts the battle to possess her front and center in a series that used to be about the struggle to make a hostile society recognize one’s personhood.

- JD

Grant Morrison (in)famously ended his 1988-1990 run on Animal Man with an issue involving Animal Man confronting Morrison himself. The writer explains that he is the god of Animal Man’s world; the character demands to know why the writer would put Animal Man, his wife, and his children through so many terrible tribulations. The writer explains that he’s had a rough year, his cat died, etc.

I read the story a while back, and remember enjoying it. Meta-humor usually goes over quite well with me - I’m a big Thursday Next fan, and adored Paul Cornell’s Fantastic Four: True Story - but until I read today’s “Comic Book Legends Revealed,” I’d entirely forgotten about this extremely prescient page of Morrison’s story:

“I can make you say and do anything. I can make you hate your wife and children. I can make you forget you were ever married.”

Ten years after this issue came out, Morrison started a run on New X-Men that dismantled the Cyclops - Jean Grey marriage, with Scott Summers suddenly deciding that it was all a “teenage infatuation” gone wrong.

Now, just over twenty years since Animal Man #26, Morrison heads up a Superman reboot at DC which wipes the Lois-Clark marriage out of continuity all together.

Grrr, argh.

- JD

I don’t post about Superman and/or Lois Lane a lot. I love them dearly, but they’re very hard characters to write well, apparently. Superman should be Benton Fraser, but far too often we get this instead. Lois gets a lot of the “any strong, uncompromising woman is a [misogynist slur deleted]” cliche. And the relationship between them is so misunderstood and unappreciated that DC can blithely write Lois off as a “trophy wife” and wipe away the marriage altogether in their upcoming reboot.

But every so often, someone comes along who really gets them. Like this guy. Not only does he explain Lois & Clark better than I ever could, he describes one of the very best things about marriage in the process, and one of my very favorite things about having Rachael in my own life.

calamityjon:

What does Superman see in Lois Lane?

Well, let’s set aside the obvious, to begin with - that’s she’s intelligent, beautiful and driven. Lois Lane is fiery and passionate, but compassionate and big-hearted, committed to her ideals, fearless, accomplished and brave. She’s wry, witty, sarcastic and clever, she takes no guff and she doesn’t acknowledge obstacles, she’s classy, brassy, bold and ultimately kind. She is, in short, enough for any hundred men.

But, yes, let’s set those aside, because as rare and exceptional a woman as Lois Lane is, surely she’s not the only one in the world. Superman has the universe at his disposal, and you have to ask what makes Lois Lane stand out among the beauties of a thousand planets, undersea kingdoms, alternate dimensions and limitless far-flung time periods. Why, in short, with all the women in a hundred universes to catch his eye, does he fall in love with the girl who works two desks over?

The relationship between Superman and Lois Lane changes every decade or so. When I was growing up in the post-Ordinary People years of constant self-analysis, they were as often estranged as they were an item, asking all those difficult questions people in long-term relationships were expected to ask themselves. This was a far cry from the by-turns white-hot and ice-cold triangle Lois, Clark and Superman maintained in the early days of the book, or the I Love Lucy hijinx which were the notorious mainstay of Lois Lane’s own comic in the early Sixties.

Still, the relationship changed from decade to decade - even stopped dead now and again - but they never parted. It’s always writ that Lois Lane is the girl for Superman. So … why?

Imagine this: Clark Kent - shy, awkward, fragile Clark Kent - works in an office with dozens of women. There are hundreds - and probably even thousands - of women working in his office building. There are millions of women in his city, who read his column, who know him from television, who bump up against him on the subway or see him the supermarket buying eggs.

And of all these women in their dozens and thousands and millions, only one - one - has ever looked at Clark Kent - with his bad posture and lack of confidence, with his shellaced-back hair and VFW donation eyeglass frames, his ugly red tie, his orthopedic shoes, his meek demeanor - and thought to herself “HE … might be Superman.”

Don’t underestimate the power of someone seeing through the worst in you and seeing only the best. Superman, after all, only truly exists because two kind, unassuming and deeply good people found him in the wild plains of Kansas and - rather than seeing him as an alien, or a dangerous unknown, or a plastic hassle - saw a beautiful son with tremendous powers who would do only good. And so he became.

And, of course, that’s how Superman sees everyone else; even the worst of us, even his greatest enemies, he sees past their weakness and sees only the best in them (Which is, to my mind, his greatest power, although that’s perhaps for another discussion).

So, in Clark Kent - or, at least, in the Clark Kent disguise he crafted to hide his dual identity - Superman has laid out all of his weaknesses, self-doubts and fears for everyone to see. It’s as if he were saying to the world “I’m so scared of being left alone that I make lousy excuses to keep everyone at a distance. I try to always help others at my own expense, but I’m worried that others see that as spinelessness. I am reluctant to assert myself for fear of scaring people off, so I cave in,” and so on and so on, and while everyone else only sees all the failings of Clark Kent, Lois Lane still looks at him and says, no nonsense, “No, you’re Superman, we both know it.”

You may conceivably interpret this as a selfish way of looking at love, I concede, if you look at it as though I’m suggesting that you fall most strongly in love with the person who most flatters you. To my mind, though, it’s not about flattery. Rather, it’s about the power of having someone acknowledge the worst in you, but believe in you to rise above it and love you all the more strongly for it - to even despise the worst in you but love the best in you all the more fiercely. It’s about the strength you get from that.

For the sake of full disclosure, let me share this with you: I have been married, as of today, for 11 years, 9 months, 3 weeks and 2 days. I did not have to look up that number, I always know exactly how long I’ve been married. I know this because marriage has been wonderful, and I don’t want to miss a day. And it has been wonderful because of this - I am not a catch. There’s a LOT wrong with me. I am no Brad Pitt, as they say.

And yet, despite that, every now and again over the last 11 years, 9 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, I wake up in the morning to find my girl wide awake and looking at me, beaming, her eyes bright, and I come to my senses and realize that she’s not seeing my fat, bald head or dumb, cranky face, but is seeing something in me that is better than I ever expected I could be, and which gives me strength of a fashion that is essential and impossible to describe.

So imagine Clark Kent sitting there, hunched over his desk, mustard on his tie and grimly awaiting Steve Lombard dropping a firecracker under his chair, and he steals a glance at that sharp-eyed brunette he’s had the hots for forever, and he’s never told her his biggest secret but she’s giving him a look that plainly says “I bet he’s wearing the costume right now, isn’t he?”

Imagine Superman, and all his responsibilities, and the danger and pressures and the temptations, and the deep well of strength it requires to have all that power and yet to do only good for others, and imagine where it comes from: It comes from the woman he loves believing - knowing - that he has that strength, despite everything else.

Superman is totally a love story.

I'll tumblr for ya: A website asked me about the meaning behind that JL in drag thing I...

THIS.

coelasquid:

A website asked me about the meaning behind that JL in drag thing I did because it’s making the rounds quite a bit, here’s what I sent them;

If you’ve got any specific questions I’d be glad to answer them, as far as the Wonder Woman thing, though… well, pants or no pants first, I really don’t…

I’d kibbutz about giving Superman a “weightlifter’s build” - personally I prefer a slim, nerdy Christopher Reeve Superman, since Clark Kent makes more sense that way and it’s not like Superman’s strength comes from pure muscle mass. But that’s a personal quibble, and that aside I agree with every line in this post 110%.

Except for the critique of Emma Frost, which I agree with 760%. Can I do that?

Artist Phil Noto (Wolverine & Jubilee, Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom) shares daily art on his tumblr. Recently, he’s posted several wonderful period pieces, snapshots of early Marvel characters that look as if they’ve been pulled from someone’s scrapbook. I’ve spotted these three so far:

If I were Marvel, I’d be hiring Noto yesterday to draw a retro miniseries set in the 1960s, in the vein of Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier for DC.

Last week, I posted this Open Letter to Marvel’s Senior VP of Publishing Tom Brevoort about the publisher’s treatment of female characters. I also e-mailed a copy to Mr. Brevoort directly, and this afternoon I received this response:

Thanks for writing. I can tell that this is an issue that you feel
strongly about. I don’t agree with a great deal of your analysis about
how and why we showcase the characters we feature, but I’m not going to
debate you at length about it—there wouldn’t be much point to that. I
will tell you that you’re off-base about why I had Jeanine Schaefer
speak to this point in a column in which I was bringing in as many other
editorial voices as I could.

I do have to echo what Jeanine said, though: in order for us to do
series with female leads (whether solo books or not), those titles need
to perform at a profitable sales level. It’s funny, over the past few
weeks I’ve received communications like yours concerning characters of
color, and LGBT characters as well—and the answer in all of these cases
is exactly the same. We try to feature as wide a range of characters as
possible, characterized as interesting and relatable human beings to the
best of our abilities, in as many titles as possible. But we’re first
and foremost a business, and that does mean that the audience in
aggregate tells us what they do and do not support. At the end of the
day, Marvel is a business, and we can only continue doing what we do if
we’re commercial in our efforts as well as conscientious. That doesn’t
mean we’re not going to continue to feature female, or African-American,
or gay, or choose-your-own-demographic characters in the days and months
ahead—it simply means that those characters and titles must operate
under the same parameters as everything else we do.

Tom B

(Emphasis mine.)

There’s not a lot of engagement here; Brevoort basically blames everything on the market and washes his hands of it. I wish I could be surprised, but I’m not. One fantastic quote about the importance of diversity isn’t nearly enough to outweigh what I see every week in Marvel’s actual output.

Still, I’m disappointed by how casually Mr. Brevoort shrugs off passing the buck to Ms. Schaefer. Just because “other editorial voices” were being brought into that column to talk about their own specific books does NOT make “female characters” a specialist topic. It’s way past time that men like Mr. Brevoort stopped lumping an entire half of the human race together as a special minority interest.

I WAS genuinely surprised by the bolded section, though. I did not expect Tom B to turn around and admit that Marvel is getting grief of late not just about their treatment of women, but of LGBT characters and people of color as well. Not surprised that it’s happening, because Marvel’s been doing quite poorly in those areas as well, but I’m surprised that Mr. Brevoort somehow thought it would help his case to admit that. I think it’s significant that apparently these complaints have been on the rise over the last few weeks in particular, suggesting to me that Marvel is suffering somewhat from comparison to their Distinguished Competitor. I have a laundry list of issues with the DC reboot, but I do appreciate the diverse cast of women, non-white, and LGBT characters leading their own books and teams in the new line-up.

-JD

I’ve been thinking lately about the “Architects,” the five writers and five artists promoted as the key creators shaping the entire Marvel Universe. And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that they represent everything that is wrong with today’s superhero comics.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these guys do incredible work. Some have done incredible work for a very long time indeed. However, you can’t say that these guys and their work matter the most without concluding that everyone else matters less. As cute as it might be to call Marvel “The House of Ideas” or even “The House that Stan and Jack Built,” the Marvel Universe should not be reducible to one superstructure, one blueprint.

When Stan Lee created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, etc., he did not set out to tell one giant story, but dozens of stories with different plots, characters, and details that happened to overlap. The work rewarded crossover interest without requiring it. That was the real revolution in the Mighty Marvel Age of Storytelling. It felt organic. The best of the creators who followed, like Chris Claremont and Walt Simonson, did the same. They staked out their corners and told wonderful stories about characters who happened to occasionally run into other characters, and readers delighted in those rare crossovers.

It’s the difference between “Matt Murdoch happens to be Peter Parker’s lawyer” vs. “Captain America’s enemy happens to unleash Thors’ dad’s secret adversary who turns Hulk and the Thing into slave monsters” (the basic plot of the first four issues of Fear Itself). Marvel used to tell stories about characters. Now they’re just in the business of selling the Marvel Universe.

Yet the more inter-connected the modern Marvel U becomes, the less cohesion it maintains. Stan famously kicked Iron Man and Thor off the Avengers because they were getting too busy in their single solo books. Now Wolverine and Spider-man star in a dozen titles apiece and they’re still members of all the popular teams.

Of course, DC is no better. They’re heading into yet another massive reboot„ trying to sell readers and retailers and a new and improved DCU and grouping titles into odd subheadings like “DC Edge” and “DC Dark.” Why not just slap “Gotta Catch ‘Em All!” on the covers and be done with it? [That… is not a bad idea. I might care about DC if they did. - RD] DC’s track record with this kind of interconnectivity is even worse than Marvel’s. This is at least their fourth line-wide continuity reboot, and each one promised to make DC’s books more streamlined and more accessible. Instead, each time, the stories got more complicated and the readers more confused. [John’s handwritten text for this post says, “Each fix made the canon more baroque,” and I can’t endorse that kind of language on this blog. But I lol’ed for real. - RD]

Still, they keep trying. I don’t believe the industry’s sales figures have fallen so far in the last 20 years because the fans needed more structure in their comics. I think a lot more of them are like me, increasingly frustrated by a couple of publishers that don’t want to sell us one title or character if we’re not buying five. 

The superstructures Marvel and DC are attempting to construct seem to collapse under their own weight. Clearly these Architects aren’t doing a very good job. Perhaps it is time to fire them and let them get back to being storytellers instead.

Dear Mr. Brevoort,

I’ve been a Marvel fan for as long as I can remember. Many of my fondest memories of childhood involve reading your comics, watching the cartoons, or role-playing your characters with my brother, my sister, and my friends. Yet these days I find my enjoyment of your publications rapidly diminishing. I grow increasingly frustrated with modern Marvel’s exclusionary focus on straight, white, male characters - and I am saying this as a straight white male myself - and increasingly disgusted by Marvel’s treatment of women in particular.

My wife and I are both great fans of the original She-Hulk, Jennifer Walters. Yesterday I stumbled upon a copy of last year’s “She-Hulk: Sensational” 30th anniversary celebration, which I had somehow missed on its original release. I saw the lead story was by Peter David, one of my favorite writers, and I assumed I was in for a special treat. Instead the book made me furious. Rather than showing off She-Hulk’s strength, grace, or humor, the cover showed an embarrassed Jen wearing clothes several sizes too small. Mr. David’s story was full of the wit I’ve come to expect from his work, but there was a lot of anger in it as well, with She-Hulk herself expressing frustration that “there simply aren’t enough people interested” to keep her around for an extended period, and that “others who have been around this long have done so much more.” I understand that anger; I feel it myself as a fan of Jen and of Marvel’s superheroines in general. I applaud Peter David’s audacity in writing this story, which is a clear reflection of how fans like myself see this amazing character. However, I am dismayed as well that Marvel has so blatantly disregarded what should have been one of its powerhouses for the past three decades, and that even in her celebration issue, there is little more to say than that she should have been able to do more.

This special tribute issue only got worse as it went on. She-Hulk isn’t just one of Marvel’s strongest heroines, she’s one of the smartest as well, yet Brian Reed’s “Ladies’ Night” relegated her to the role of dumb muscle in a team-up with Ms. Marvel and Spider-Woman. At one point She-Hulk attacked Ms. Marvel, a friend and colleague, for the flimsiest of reasons. Finally the issue offered a reprint of “Sensational She-Hulk #40,” an issue that opens with five pages of She-Hulk jumping rope in a bikini while admitting that it has nothing to do with the story. Everything about the issue served to drive home how little Marvel understands or cares for She-Hulk and all of your other female characters.

Marvel wasn’t always this way. There was a time when your company was an industry leader in diversity. I’ve recently been enjoying several series from the 1980s, thanks to the Classic line of trade paperback reprints, and have found the writing, art, and characterization a jarring revelation of just how far Marvel has fallen since. With “Power Pack,” Louise Simonson and June Brigman created an entirely new superhero family, half girls and half boys. Chris Claremont’s original run on “New Mutants” introduced a teen team where the girls outnumbered the boys, and even as the line-up began to change and expand more than half the characters remained non-white. These characters were drawn without the aggressively sexualized body types and costumes forced on nearly every female character in your comics today. Children and teenagers actually looked like children and teenagers. By contrast, my wife was recently reading a comic starring Lyra, the “All-New Savage She-Hulk,” and was shocked when I told her that the character was in her teens; nothing in the art or the character’s clothing had offered any clue to that crucial detail.

I am now convinced that modern Marvel has little interest in producing or promoting comics about or for anyone but straight white men. You’ve trained your readers to pay attention to the stories you most wish to promote, the ongoing series of giant crossovers carefully designed by your “Architects,” yet you never seem to put a female character at the center of one of these events - unless of course she is crazy, evil, or a Skrull. Women are dressed and posed to show off exaggerated sexual attributes in defiance of gravity, taste, and the logical reality of their physically demanding line of work. Chests and buttocks are thrust simultaneously and impossibly into frame at every available opportunity. In a visual medium like comics, even the best writing can be destroyed by bad art. Even great art won’t get a chance to impress when it’s hidden behind a cover by the likes of Greg Land or Greg Horn, which looks as if its been traced from a lingerie catalog or an issue of “Playboy.” Women are objectified for the straight male gaze, and you don’t need me to tell you this. You stack the deck against your female characters, yet every time a book starring a female superhero fails to sell it is shrugged off with the suggestion that people just don’t want to read about women in superhero comics. No one at Marvel or your Distinguished Competition ever seems to think that you need to present these characters differently.

In your most recent “Talk to the Hat” column at Comic Book Resources, a fan asked what happened to all of Marvel’s female-lead books just a year after the “Women of Marvel” celebration. Rather than answering the question yourself, Mr. Brevoort, you said that a question about women required a “specialist consultant,” and turned it over to Jeanine Schaefer. Because superheroines aren’t important enough to Marvel’s line for the the Senior Vice President of Publishing to talk about. Because women are not the same as other Marvel characters. Ms. Schaefer’s answer highlighted the new Ghost Rider, even though thus far the promotion of that book, including the .1 preview issue, has focused not on a new, strong superheroine in Marvel’s pantheon, but on the original (white male) Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze. Ms Schaefer mentioned Misty Knight - a woman who spent the first storyline of “Heroes for Hire” as a puppet controlled by a man until two men could rescue her - and the women of the X-Men - once some of Marvel’s strongest characters, but these days consistently playing secondary roles in stories driven by Cyclops and Wolverine. And then she encouraged readers interested in great female characters to check out Marvel’s new relaunched CrossGen line, which has nothing to do with the question about current in continuity characters.

Ms. Schaefer went so far as to tell readers, “Honestly… if you guys don’t buy these books when we put them out, whether they’re in continuity or a new line like CrossGen, we don’t get much support to do more books like them.” Let me be clear that when she says “books like them,” Ms. Schaefer is referring to books with significant female characters, not just female solo books. This is the ugly truth of Marvel women: they and their fans are perceived to be a monolithic Female presence, and fans must support them all to have a chance to see more of them. Fans of Marvel’s superheroines are essentially being told that they have only themselves to blame when more books starring women fail to appear, regardless of how the female characters are written, drawn, marketed, and generally treated like second-class citizens in the Marvel Universe.

There’s good evidence that as much as 25% of comic fans are women who buy movie tickets and merchandise as well as the comics themselves. But even if this were not the case, the superhero genre is supposed to showcase the ideal to which humanity can aspire. Marvel has built its particular reputation on the relatability of its characters. For all their extraordinary abilities and struggles, Marvel’s heroes have always felt down to earth, like ourselves and the people we know. In portraying a world in which the biggest stories revolve around straight white men, in which every woman is drawn and posed exclusively for the sexual appreciation of a straight male, you betray the ideals on which the genre and the best of Marvel’s past work was founded. Even if you believe the majority of your customers to be straight white guys, no one lives in a vacuum. The world we encounter every day is full of all sorts of strong, talented women who matter, even to us straight white dudes. They’re our family, our colleagues, our friends and our partners. For Marvel’s extraordinary characters to be presented as any less diverse is a disservice to everyone, regardless of their gender, color, or sexual orientation.

Once, superhero comics presented reality in bright, bold hues we mere mortals could only dream about. Today they’re becoming a pale shadow of the world all around us. At this point, Peter David’s wonderful “X-Factor” is about the only thing keeping me from turning my back on modern Marvel all together. A universe I have loved so dearly now makes me angry more often than it makes me smile. I’m not sure how long those remaining joys can justify spending money to support a company that frequently displays so little regard for more than half our human race.

Sincerely,

John Derrick

I’ve been thinking about this whole Schism promotional business. It’s like, “read this big story that leads to the next big story!” In various interviews, writers and editors have talked a lot about how they plan each big X-crossover (or Avengers crossover) with the next two or three big event stories in mind. For me, that whole approach is getting pretty tiresome. I feel like the scaffolding is starting to show. Rather than the characters progressing organically, reacting to the events in their lives, too often they feel like pieces being moved around the chessboard. Each big story is just getting them in position for the next.

But then there’s Peter David’s X-Factor.

David is the master of the A Plot/B & C Subplot structure. As A resolves, B or C becomes the main plot for the next story, while new subplots arise, feeding into the stories after that. Each story really does lead to the next, but in a way that feels natural. I’m excited to get to the next story, to see how B & C turn out, because David piqued my interest during the previous A plot, not because the A plot turned out to be just set up for what came after.

It also helps, of course, that X-Factor is one title by one author, with the ability to follow new story-paths that arise on the fly. Shatterstar was originally written in as a one-story guest star, but his finally-canon relationship with Rictor proved too awesome, so David kept him around, and he became one of the best parts of an already amazing book. I suspect David has more freedom to do things like this than the writers of the central X-Men books because he’s not stuck on the Big Event Story rail line, having to make sure his plots and characters meet each scheduled crossover stop 4-6 months down the line. His X-Factor might intersect with some of the big events, but his characters don’t have to walk away Changed Forever just to set up the next big story that Changes Everything.

Should Marvel be looking to return Uncanny X-Men to more of an X-Factor model, letting one writer drive the series organically, rather than building everything around an endless string of big events? Isn’t that the approach they recently took with Spider-Man, when they made Dan Slott the single writer on Amazing? Tom Brevoort more or less said so himself.

I think so, although that was not actually the original thesis of this post. All I set out to say was, “X-Factor is awesome, and here’s why.” Hats off to Jamie, Layla, Terry, Monet, Rictor, Shatterstar, Guido, Rahne, Darwin, Longshot, and of course Peter.

- JD

Also posted on the Marvel Forum.

The failure of superhero comics with non-traditional leads seems to have become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 Rachael and I have been greatly enjoying Paul Tobin’s new Spider-Girl series. After reading the first issue, Rachael wanted to subscribe - her first ever comics subscription - but Marvel did not list Spider-Girl on their subscriptions page, and when I e-mailed them I was told that Spider-Girl is not a subscriptions title at this time. The new Venom series, on the other hand, is already listed for subscription, and the first issue hasn’t even hit the stands.

 I think this says something about Marvel’s faith in the long-term prospects for Spider-Girl, and probably for any title with a female lead.

This is the vicious cycle that the major superhero publishers seem to be stuck in these days. Comics starring anyone other than white guys have not sold well in the past, so publishers don’t expect them to do well in the future. This lowers reader expectations as well, making people even more hesitant to buy the books, and chance falling for a character who will vanish back into obscurity in six months or become fodder for the next big crossover event.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s nothing inherent in the superhero genre that makes these stories less appealing to women and minorities, as evidenced by the across-the-spectrum success of movies like Iron Man and the Dark Knight. Heck, even Twilight borrows obviously from the X-Men. (Anyone for a game of mutant vampire ball?) Cheesecake art full of gravity- and anatomy-defying poses designed to show off butts and boobs simultaneously? Not actually a requirement of superhero comics; bad artists just make it seem like it sometimes. Ham-handed writing reinforcing every man-obsessed catty-rowr! feminine stereotype? Not the only way to write a story about superhero women. No, really. Marvel Her-oes was fantastic [eh, I’ll give it “pretty good” - RD], despite the terrible name.

Which brings us neatly to the next problem with stories featuring non-traditional superheroes. No one seems to know how to package or market them. Writer Grace Randolph described Her-oes as “along the lines of Ultimate Spider-Man, but with female characters,” and that’s exactly how it reads. So why not give it a title that might actually appeal to Ultimate Spidey fans? “Marvel High,” perhaps? Because someone has made two highly dubious assumptions: one, that a book about mostly female characters will appeal exclusively to female readers, and two, that women and girls will be most interested in a book clearly aimed at them exclusively. I can personally attest that number one is complete bollocks. (No, I’m not British, I just watch a lot of their TV.) I’m reasonably certain the same is true of number two.

We don’t need ghettoized series for non-traditional characters and readers. I‘ve been getting Rachael excited about Marvel by sharing mainstream books that do a great job of highlighting women and other non-traditional characters: series like Peter David’s X-Factor, Power Pack, Young Avengers, Runaways, The Order, and Captain Britain & MI:13. Sadly, many of these books have already been cancelled. These stories and characters are a fantastic resource for expanding the reader base and they should be treated as such.

So here’s my suggestion to Marvel and DC: in the same way that the Marvel Adventures books are aimed primarily at introducing a younger readership to Marvel characters and storytelling and thus held to lower sales standards, why not approach books featuring non-straight, non-white, and female characters as gateways bringing new readers into superhero comics as a whole?

Rather than canceling books like She-Hulk or Spider-Girl when they drop below 20,000 issues per month, expecting them to compete on the same level as established characters like Spider-Man or the Avengers, give them more time to find a new audience. Collect them into trades and offer complete stories in digital collections, perhaps at an introductory price. Maybe even skip the individual issues entirely and offer these series in trades from the start. Brian Michael Bendis is trying this route with his creator-owned Takio series starting next month, about two young sister-superheroes; I’m excited to see how that works out. Comic shops have not always been the most welcoming environment for new readers, particularly women, so a focus on trades in bookstores might be the best way to go.

Diversity is important, both on the page and in the readership. Diversity means better, truer, more original stories, and a fanbase that can thrive as America’s demographics evolve. I believe that with some deliberate effort, even sales figures will reflect this. First, though, some time and attention will be required to convince the largely straight, white, and male traditional audience that diverse characters are just as exciting and relevant to their lives and interests as characters more like them on the surface, and to convince non-traditional readers (everyone else) that superhero comics can and will tell stories for and about them as well.

- JD

Every so often, a prominent comics creator steps up on the soapbox to tell other writers and artists in the field that it’s time to abandon the big company owned superheroes, to break the Marvel-DC monopoly and give independent comics the attention they deserve. Invincible and The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman drew a lot of attention to this idea several years back, and now Goon creator Eric Powell has reignited the discussion with a vitriolic video insisting that comic creators need to give up the superhero genre altogether for the good of the medium.

Powell’s video has since been taken down, but I won’t even link to discussions of the content, as Powell makes extensive and deplorable use of rape “humor.” But the basic argument goes something like this: the vast majority of comics sold in the U.S. today are still superhero comics, superheroics is a kiddie genre, and as artists we need to grow up and move on to allow the medium to truly grow.

Superhero comics are a genre I deeply love. I love the sheer imaginative scope of them, the way they incorporate magic and zany speculative science and everything in between. (This would also be a big reason that Doctor Who is my all-time favorite television show, and a large part of my love for Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels as well.) I love the tonal extremes, not just in the genre as a whole but even within shared universes-that a sweet comedy of self-discovery like Dan Slott’s She-Hulk can share supporting characters with Brian Michael Bendis’ post-traumatic detective series Alias. I love the idealism, the morality play aspect of it all. Put on some tights and save the world! (But does that mean you can change the world?) This is why I take such exception to creators like Powell shrugging them off as kids’ stuff.

More than a half dozen titles in the “Pop Culture & Philosophy” anthology series are devoted to superhero (and villain) characters, because from the start, the genre has been grappling with the big questions: power and responsibility, life and death, even rebirth. Fans love to make fun of superhero comics for the constant resurrection of dead characters, but done right, such stories are powerful metaphors for homecomings, second chances, and personal reinvention. “Death’s revolving door” was a good enough device for Shakespeare; see Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, Sebastian in Twelfth Night and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale.

If you think all the great questions have already been asked and answered as best this genre can, then I challenge you to go out right now and pick up Peter David’s current X-Factor series. (I would of course challenge anyone to do that anyway. Because it’s awesome.) At the heart of that book are two characters. Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man, can split himself into a hundred people, do anything he wants, and thus has a hard time figuring out if anything is worth doing at all. Layla Miller, meanwhile, “knows stuff.” She’s both the living embodiment of chaos theory (she stages a rescue by ordering four exquisitely timed pizzas) and the poster child for the free will vs. predestination debate. If you were to stumble upon Sartre and Hegel drunk at Comic-Con, this is the book they’d be arguing about.

Kids’ stuff? Sure, superheroes can be, and that’s wonderful in its own right. (I adore the various Power Pack miniseries about four young super-powered siblings.) But to argue that’s all superhero comics can be means either you haven’t read the right ones yet, or the genre is simply not for you. And that’s fine. Just don’t tell me I’m a clear case of arrested development (or worse) for seeing things you don’t.

I love comics, not just superheroes, and I want everyone to be able to understand the particular alchemical joy that can only be found in the perfect juxtaposition of words and pictures. That means letting every type of reader find the type of comic that sings in their particular soul. Superhero tales are just one particular genre that works for me, and I don’t see myself outgrowing them.

I do believe more could be done to welcome new readers to the superhero genre specifically. Judging from their output, there’s a tendency among too many superhero creators, especially at Marvel & DC, to cater to a very narrow traditional audience. I feel like they’re assuming that superhero stories will naturally hold the most appeal for straight white men, and if we want to attract anyone else to the medium, “Well, that’s what the independents are for, right?” Maybe that’s where some of the vitriol on the part of creators like Powell comes from: the feeling that there are entire demographics of new readers that superhero comics have no apparent interest in tapping into.

But getting people who are not straight, white, and/or men to read comics does not require marginalizing superhero comics. I believe a concerted effort from the genre itself to be more inclusive would be just as effective, if not more so.

More on that in my next blog.

- JD

I’m pretty sure this post will be unlike every other post out there right now talking about Fantastic Four #587, the supposedly penultimate issue of the series, featuring the death of a major character. I will not reveal the death here, for the two of you out there who have managed not to be spoiled by every major news outlet everywhere and for whom the story might still offer slightly more emotional impact than a Marvel Hostess Fruit Pies ad. I’m not here to talk about that event at all, in fact.

This issue cheesed me off for an entirely different reason: its (non-lethal) treatment of Sue Storm in a particular scene.

(MINOR SPOILER TO FOLLOW)

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So at one point in the issue, Sue Storm is hanging out with Namor: fish-king, current X-Man, ambiguous super hero/villain guy. Namor makes some unreasonable demand during a diplomatic dispute with some other fishies. Sue’s all, whatevs Spongebob, and starts to turn away to get on with grown-up diplomatic things.

And Namor roughly grabs her arm and starts shouting in her face, “Woman, you do not turn away from [me]!”

Sue hauls off and belts Namor in the face, sending him sprawling to the ground. Two pages later he’s licking her boots (not literally, because ew) and calling her magnificent.

It bothers me a lot that Namor would use the word “woman” in this fashion. The use of the word in that context is othering and dehumanizing. He’s not saying, “Sue, you specific person that has angered me, don’t turn away because we’re not done fighting as equals.” He is saying, “You woman, how dare you disrespect me, a man, to whom you should automatically be subservient.” No one would use “man” in that way, and other familiar names - dude, guy, buddy - are identifiers of equality and/or friendship that show frustration, but not superiority. In retrospect, Sue punching him almost makes it worse, because if it were a man who hauled off and punched Namor, it would be the start of a big fight. This highlights the inequality.

Is it out of character? Not really. Namor has always been arrogant. He’s often been violent. And where it comes to women, especially blondes, and double-especially Susan Storm, he’s always been creepy and objectifying. The problem is that no one calls him out on that last part. He gets called out on the arrogance and the violence plenty, but no one ever tells him, “You will not talk to women as if they’re trash or treasure and nothing in between. They’re people, just the same as men-folk and fish-men-folk.” If you ask a comics fan for Namor’s flaw, nine times out of ten they’re going to say, “Uppityness,” not misogyny.

Please note, I’m not saying Namor shouldn’t be flawed or arrogant. I just don’t want to see his arrogance specifically written as misogyny unless other characters are going to recognize that issue with equal specificity. He grabs Sue, she punches him, but the way he uses the word “woman!” goes unremarked. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that treats misogyny as just something that happens, a way in which men behave sometimes, even otherwise often (okay, sometimes) heroic and admirable men.

This is unfortunately true. This is something that happens. This is a way men, even good men, often behave, often without even recognizing the fact. It is realistic, no doubt. And I’m pretty sure that’s the justification Fantastic Four writer Jonathan Hickman would give for this characterization-especially as he played the realism card defensively in the series letter column once already, when readers tried to point out the problem in Valeria Richards called her brother “retard.”

Marvel’s editors and many of their fans seem to have no problem with writers pursuing such “realism,” despite the women, the handicapped, etc. who get marginalized in the process. Hickman is a popular and successful writer, recently named by Marvel as one of their “Architects,” the guys assigned to write key storylines shaping the Marvel universe as a whole, and turning out what Marvel talent scout C.B. Cebulski proclaims “some of the best Marvel stories ever.”

Such proclamations, and the sales figures achieved by writers like Hickman, make me feel quite out of step with current comics readers and publishers. There are a lot of comics out there that do a great job of featuring and respecting strong non-traditional characters: women, non-whites, gay heroes, etc. But with a few exceptions, these series frequently languish on the lower end of the sales charts (X-Factor, the new Spider-Girl series) or get cancelled altogether (Captain Britain & MI: 13, Agents of Atlas, Runaways).

When I try to point out problematic treatments of women and minorities on comic book message boards, I’m frequently told that I expect too much, or that I’m taking things too seriously. That superheroes have always been a boys’ genre, and always will be, and you can’t argue with popularity, and things have gotten a little better since the old days, and isn’t that enough? These are the things I’m told as a man; on some boards I see much worse things said to the women who post, Rachael included, and not so politely.

Still, with editors and writers and fans and sales all stacked against me, there have been times I started to wonder: am I a ridiculous Pollyanna for wanting better behavior in comics, for believing that comics and respect are not mutually exclusive?

This angers me. The injustice seems clear, that so often the same books that fail to treat people are successful, and so often the ones that get it right are not.

It makes me ashamed. Am I just being petty, whinging because some of my favorite books have been cancelled, while anything starring Wolverine can run forever?

I quickly decide that no, I really am angry about the content. The popularity differential just adds to the frustration, because it’s all part of the same problem: we live in a culture that doesn’t recognize how often it still belittles so many kinds of human beings. That thinks sexism and racism and all the other -isms have been conquered, and we’re all equal at last, when the problems have just dropped under the surface.

Then I feel ashamed again, because I’m so self-righteous, and who wants to put up with that? And I wonder if it’s wrong of me to tell other writers that there’s something wrong with expressing the world as they see it.

But the problem with such realism is that reality and fiction are not the sharply separated concepts that writers like Hickman suggest them to be. Ideas are viral, and every idea we encounter shapes our understanding of the world-of what is right, of what is normal, of what could be better and what never will be. Whether the ideas are presented ostensibly as truth or as fiction, everything we encounter shapes our view of acceptable behavior. We’re all aware enough on some level to know that even fiction is written by somebody, and that no matter how many purple aliens they did or did not include in their story, they were basing the words they put down on something they’d seen or read in the world, on some idea of what is true or what should be true or what might be interesting if it were true. So we mimic what we see and hear and read, with or without noticing we’re doing it, and with generally little regard for whether we’re mimicking someone real or imagined.

As writers of fiction we therefore have a responsibility to be aware of the ideas we reinforce with our creations. It may be realistic to show a jerk acting like a jerk, to show them belittling people based on their gender, or their race, sexuality, religion, lack of religion, age, shape, gender display, physical ability, mental ability, or a host of other traits. But it’s just as realistic to show more aware people calling jerks out on this behavior, making clear to them and the reader that it is NOT okay. Showing the jerk behavior without the rebuttal just normalizes douchebaggery.

I want more than that. Especially from my superhero comics, which are largely about ideals. I’m a kid who grew up on “Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends” and X-Men comics, and I’m sure they played a role in helping me figure out what I believed about life and love and being a good person. These characters matter. The creators WANT them to matter, or they wouldn’t devote their lives to telling their stories.

But when a character acts like a total jerkstore and no one around them says a thing, we’re told that it’s just “showing real life,” and we shouldn’t think about it too hard. Jonathan Hickman writes characters who belittle women and the mentally handicapped, and when readers write in to tell him such treatment hurts them and belittles people they care about - one reader who complained about the use of “retard” was a Special Ed teacher - Hickman does not apologize or promise to do better in future, he just says, “I’m writing people as they are.” No, sir. You’re writing some people as they are, and failing to show why they should be an exception and not the rule.

So y’know what? I’m not asking too much. I know this because I’ve read plenty of comics that got it right, that showed complex, flawed characters who did not have to belittle entire classes of people, or got called out when they did so. I’ve read plenty of interviews with writers who care about such things. I’ve read plenty of blogs from readers who want what I want.

I want comics to be better. Not just better than crap, or better than kinda okay. I want them to be better than the world, because I really believe they can help make the world better. And I will not be ashamed.

- JD