Iron Man

Look, I realize this is really late in the game, but if you haven't watched the Iron Man trailer you should give it a go. I've said it before, but leaving aside the differences in careers Robert Downey Jr. IS Tony Stark. Link.

Schnicked

I wonder, is that title past tense? Anyway, Marvel released a teaser image for their X-Men mega crossover "Messiah Complex" a while ago. Ominously, it's titled X-Men - Disassembled. That'll scare the pants off any comic nerds who still refuse to refer to Luke Cage's team as "Avengers". Link.

Blog Post...of Gor!

Karen's got a good post up about an upcoming omnibus collection from Dark Horse. Admittedly, the thing that made me link to this post is the presence of the word "gynocracy", which I think is fantastic.

Time For Accountability

The Justice Leaguers are supposed to be role models for the children! Well, not the vigilantism thing, but the public service!

Once More To The Well!

Ok, I really do need to find a few things to post about not related to comics and sexism, but what can I say, this stuff is hot right now.

So we've been talking about Heroes for Hire for a few days now, so let's tie it in with the Mary Jane statuette we talked about earlier. Here's a much better column from the other side than you'll find in any of the postings on the various message boards where this is discussed. At least, it's better in that it's not filled with bile, complete ignorance, and raises some interesting counter-arguments. Of course, it is rather dismissive of people who might dislike the statuette.

I think it's important to keep things in perspective though. Too often I find liberal arguments, whether they are about national politics or discussions about comic books, lumped together as if there is only one level of outrage or dislike that a liberal can feel. We're either in favor of something, ambivalent, or insanely, irrationally pissed off. Are both the H4H cover and the Mary Jane statuette in bad taste? Of course they are. Am I as upset by the Mary Jane statuette as I am about the H4H cover? No.

The Mary Jane statue is immature fanservice. It's cheesecake, yes, and invokes certain styles of the past, but that doesn't mean we should just accept it as totally awesome and give it a pass. It takes a strong female character and reduces her to a passive, submissive, sexy object for Spiderman, and the viewer's, pleasure. To me, it's eye-rolling sexism; a symptom of the way many men still think they need to view women. It's juvenile and should be addressed both by fans discussing it and within the company, but it's not something that I get outraged about. I should note, however, that I do get rather frustrated with the discussions *about* things like the statuette when people deny that there's anything even the slightest big sexist about it.

The H4H cover, on the other hand, deserved every bit of outrage it got. It isn't just a bit of juvenile arousal, it's an attempt to sell books by sexyfying rape. These two examples of sexism are not the same, and they shouldn't be treated as such, but neither is worthy of being blithely dismissed as "fangirl entitlement". People who are such things get the Bingo.

On the other hand, Steven Grant writes a column over at Comic Book Resources and has a much better post over at Publisher's Weekly about this stuff and more.

When On A Roll...

Here's another in what's becoming a long line of posts about sexism in comics. Well, I don't really have a lot to add to this column. It's just one of those things that hits you (well, it hit me!) on the head, forcing an "Oh yeah, I guess there really *aren't* a lot of female science heroes in mainstream comics!" Now, the column doesn't mention this, but it's important to note that mainstream comics aren't without examples of women who are scientists, though those examples are certainly few. But those few women who are written with a firm grasp on hard sciences almost never (I certainly can't think of an example) apply those skills to heroic pursuits as their male counterparts do.

More On The Heroes For Hire #13 Cover

You know, part of me thinks I should just complete the registration process for the Newarama boards so I can post these posts in the relevant topics, but hey, not doing so keeps me posting things here and as a bonus I don't have to deal with a million fanboys that just don't get or care about why something in their books could be offensive.

Anyway, in the recent "New Joe Fridays" Joe Quesada addressed the Heroes for Hire #13 cover for a second time. This time he does go out of his way to appologize to the people who were offended by the image, which I suppose is a nice thing to do. I'm suspicious of the contention that he had no idea that the concept of "tentacle rape" existed, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt there.

Then he launches into an explanation of why a publisher shouldn't bow to pressure from offended fans to change something offensive because it's a slippery slope. As much as I like Joe, his argument really doesn't apply here and almost makes the apology feel like a non-apology apology. Ok, so he's sorry that people were offended, but this is what happens when you let women become leading heroes. Whaaa?

He lists as three examples the death of Freedom Ring, a gay character, in Marvel Teamup, the death of Bill Foster ("Black Goliath") in Civil War, and the torture of some gay characters in the Runaways/Young Avengers crossover. The only story of those that I've read is the death of Bill Foster, though I've read Freedom Ring's Wikipedia page, so I have an idea what happened there. Joe's argument is that if you have more inclusion of minority characters in superheroing books those heroes are going to be placed in dangerous circumstances.

Ok, that's fine. Give me a gay Spiderman guest star and I'm willing to accept that he might get punched by The Vulture or something. Fair enough. And indeed the death of Bill Foster, and as far as I know the death of Freedom Ring, were just perilous situations that come with the trade. Clor coulda zapped anybody with a big ass lighting bolt and it just so happened Mr. Foster was thirty feet tall at the time. Bill Foster's death had nothing to do with his race and his death was an important part of the story. Hell, you could have done a death where his race was a central factor and still have the death be and important part of the story you were telling. Of course, if the story was all about how Marvel thinks the Klan is right or something, people would be rightly offended and rightly so.

The Heroes for Hire cover is different. This isn't a depiction of "heroes in danger." This is a depiction of *women* in danger. I challenge anyone to find a picture from either a cover or an interior of a comic that shows a male character being attacked by the Brood in this manner. Ultimately, while I may think more people know about the concept of "tentacle rape" in hentei than might admit to it, knowledge of the micro-niche genre is really unnecessary. These characters are shown in a position of fear and weakness because they're female characters and *that's* what's offensive about the picture. I actually wouldn't even be surprised if someone didn't recognize off the top of their head all of the standard rape iconography present in the image. What I do hope for, if not expect, is for people to be able to see them when they're pointed out, apologize, and then admit that this sort of depiction of women should be avoided in the future.

They would never have done this to the male Avengers, and that's that ballgame.

Got Me Thinking

So the H4H cover got me thinking again about Women In Refrigerators and how rape is sometimes used as a motivating factor for women to become heroes. That end, you should read this series on sexual assault in comics.

How Can There Be Any Question?

Another day, another wince inducing image that fanboys just don't get. Here's the cover for Heroes for Hire #13. What could possibly be wrong with that? Could it be that, despite a male arm in the background, we have a bunch of women bound, nearly bursting from their tops, and looking helpless as tentacles approach? Could it be that Black Cat, not so long ago retconned as a rape survivor, is shrinking in fear as not-semen drips on her breasts? Could it be the learing onlookers?

This cover is an obvious homage to the tentacle rape scenes found in manga and hentei. It takes a book that was supposed to be about strong women starting a business in kicking ass and makes them helpless victims. The worst part about it, as ever, is that most comic fans out there just don't see the problem. Like the Mary Jane statue, they just think it's a bit of sexy that has people overreacting. Or, as Gail Simone said about fanboys in response to this cover, "NO whining is too trivial if it's a character they like. But shoot spermsnot at the actual exposed cleavage of a favorite female character and it's, "Them silly dames is so hysterical!"" Actually, the thread that quote came from it far better than most on this topic, though if you don't have time to read over twenty pages of posts you can always just skim for Gail's bits of insight.

The award for the most absurd defense on this topic, however, goes out to those guys that think there's nothing wrong with the cover because the cover artist was *gasp* a woman! How could a woman ever act in a way that's offensive?!

Though certainly not the be all, end all of the argument, the simplest explaination of why this is offensive is: Would this cover *ever* be made with men substituted for the women, pose for pose, expression for expression? The answer is, of course, not in this man's comic's continuity.

Wherein We See That People Lack A Fundamental Understanding Of Sexism

So with Spiderman 3 being huge these last few weeks and Captain America's death not too long ago, plenty of attention has been brought to this little hobby of mine that isn't necessarily always this intense. While most people are plenty familiar with the nerdly love of toys representing their favorite characters, what's probably a bit less well known is the niche industry of sculpts/busts. While I often appreciate the craftmaship in these little sculptures of characters, I can't say I've ever really understood collecting them. Whatever, this sort of thing is out there, and while women may not always be portrayed in a flattering light in comics themselves, the sculpts are vastly worse. While a woman may be written well in a comic and merely portrayed in a sexist manner, scuplts usually go out of their way to reduce the woman to a sex object. Of course, the response is always that it's evoking "pinup" art of the 50s, that it's just fantasy anyway, that it fits the character's "personality", etc. BINGO! (explanation).

Stephen Frug reminds me

that I need to reread Watchmen.

The central technique of Watchmen -- one that Moore and Gibbons use over and over, in a plethora of ways -- is the ironic juxtaposition. They will interweave two scenes so that each comments upon the other, so that the text of one is given new meaning by the images of the other. They will cut from one moment to another which entirely rewrites its significance. And so on. A lot of this is the sort of thing that only comics can do -- a switching back and forth that would be so quick as to be sea-sickening in film, say. This is particularly true when Moore and Gibbons will interweave two scenes, which we don't see here; but we do see the first usage of the technique of the ironic juxtaposition, which allows to elements -- in this case, the opening visuals and the unrelated (at least in any overt sense) text that are put over them -- to comment upon each other, adding and changing the meaning we see in both.

Those of you who are more comic-literate might enjoy the rest of his series.

Spidey 4?

In a really terrible interview Avi Arad implies the Spiderman series will continue beyond the upcoming third movie. All of the principle actors' contracts as well as Sam Raimi's contract were for three movies. Who would star in or direct any further movies is unknown.

Speaking Of Watchmen

Evidently hidden in the internet trailer for 300 is a test image of Rorshach for the upcoming film adaptation of Alan Moore's masterpiece. Zach Snyder is directing both movies. It's hard to restrain the nerd inside me's excitement when stuff like this is acually being produced and released to the public. I know, I know, it's just a test image and this attempt at filming the comic could be just as doomed as every other verion talked about over the last several years. Still, awesome.

On Terminology

In the last post I mentioned picking up a trade paperback, which reminded me that I've been meaning to post something about comic book terminology for a while now. For the last several years "serious" comics have started to penetrate into a more mainstream audience and with that has a very slight annoyance on my part over the term "graphic novel". First, some straight up definitions. Traditionally comics are published in three primary forms, the strip, a short form booklet, and a longer form. Comic strips are referred to as such. The short form, usually taking the shape of an 8" by 11", 22 page booklet are usually called "comic books" and even though movies based on such books have made several billions of dollars are still considered the domain of children and to consist exclusively of men wearing their underwear on the outside of their pants and punching things a lot. This is, of course, not terribly accurate, but that's not really my concern.

The long form comic is where we run into a bit of confusion and my slight annoyance. Technically, a graphic novel is a comic story written and published in a long form. Companies also, however, bind together several issues of the shorter form "comic books" into a long form book and publish that as what is known as a trade paperback.

My annoyance is simply this, I feel like the term "graphic novel" has been appropriated by mainstream folks to represent "serious" comics which are suitable for adults to read. It's used as a term to justify participation in an activity and a medium which those people still deride as beneath them by removing any mention of "comics" from the name. This becomes all the more apparent when you consider that all of Alan Moore's major works, including the much vaunted V For Vendetta and Watchmen, were originally published as individual comic book issues. Preacher, soon to be made into an HBO Original Series, was published as comic books. I don't call Faulkner's stuff literature in fear that people will think I read Danielle Steel if I call them books.

Now, I said this was a minor annoyance and that's true. A world where people are discovering that comics are more than men-in-tights is better than a world where that 's not happening, even if they're being coy about it through the clever use of labels. There is a useful place in our terminology for graphic novel, but let's agree not to use it as a code word for "cool" or "serious".


Update: Here's an excerpt from Roeper's review of 300 that's exactly what I'm talking about.

"If you thought "Gladiator" was a bit too stingy with the bloodshed, if you
felt "Sin City" could have been more stylized, if you hate it when the masses
refer to graphic novels as "comic books," this is your day.

For today brings about the release of "300," and it is the "Citizen Kane"
of cinematic graphic novels."

Captain America

Spoilers ahead. This is mainly for Jamie, who may not have picked up or read his comics yet...







Captain America is dead! That's right, one of the most recognizable characters in comics was shot and killed in the recently released Captain America issue #25. For some background for those who might not have followed along, recently a super hero related disaster caused public sentiment to turn against super heroes in the Marvel Universe. The Government responded by passing the Super Hero Registration Act which required all persons possessing super powers to register their identities and the nature of their powers. Any such people wishing to use those powers in public would have to obtain a license after receiving training. These licensees would also be required to participate in missions for the government if the need arose, though the government also established and funded a full time super hero team in every state to deal with most such issues. Captain America and some others objected to the invasion of privacy and infringement on liberty the Act represented and refused to register. The pro and anti registration forces fought several battles which cause increasing amounts of collateral damage and casualties. In the final battle Cap realized the damage they were causing and that escalation had led to the groups losing focus of the argument. The Act was law and popular with Americans. Not willing to cause any more damage fighting for beliefs out-of-step with the American people, Cap surrendered and was arrested. On his way to trial an old enemy, forgotten in the fight between the heroes, arranged to have a sniper and an assassin on the ground fatally shoot Captain America three times.

This event has gotten all kinds of press, including some right wing nutjob ranting. It was last night's Word on The Colbert Report (which I can't seem to link to because it crashed my brower last time I tried, losing the previous version of this post).

The fan reaction has been mixed, as it always is. The cynical reaction is that this will be wiped away through some strained literary maneuver eventually. Superman died with much fanfare in the 90s only to be resurected a year later. Of course, this theory is totally correct. Steve Rogers will come back to life eventually. It's simply the nature of a medium where characters have had stories told about them for sometimes nearly seventy years, and that's fine. Writers keep thinking of stories to tell because the characters are compelling. A good story shouldn't be disregarded because of what some writer might do in the future, and by all accounts this is a *very* good story. I can't wait to pick up the trade paperback.

Update: Found this, which is awesome.

Update 2: Another media piece about Cap, and it's pretty good.

Thermopylae

Here's the first review of 300 that I've come across. Granted, this is a comic site, so it's not a review your your average film goer. Still, I expect to enjoy myself when I eventually see this.

Here's Rotten Tomatoes. 62%. Not great, but then again, I expect a certain percentage of reviewers to dismiss films based on comics out of hand.

Super Speed, And A Smooth Flavor Too!

A Grand Internet Debate has been raging for a while now about Marvel Comics' ban on smoking within their comics. I'm sure you can suss out the arguments without even reading the posts, but it's not a bad argument, as far as dumb internet arguments go.

That said, it did lead me to this link, which shows the shocking origin story of Jay Garrick, the first Flash!

I Was 100% Right

For all my faux salivating over Ghost Rider, it sounds like it's exactly what I thought it would be: a February movie. It's not great, not terrible, has decent special effects, and a plot that's serviceable. Sounds like a decent afternoon to me. I do quibble with the critic's evaluation of Hulk.

Update: Well, it might have been too early to declare victory. Then again, Harry Knowles is really hit and miss with me and the ranting sounds a lot like fanboy angst.

Update 2: Somebody in the comments to the original review posted this ranking of recent comic book movies. He's obviously wrong in a couple places, but why not post your version of the list?

1. Batman Begins
2. X-Men 2
3. X-Men
4. Fantastic Four
5. Spider-Man
6. Blade
7. The Punisher
8. The Hulk
8. Blade II
9. Spider-Man 2
10. Ghost Rider
11. V For Vendetta
12. Constantine
13. Daredevil
14. X-Men 3
15. Superman Returns
16. Blade Trinity
17. Elektra
18. Catwoman

Good news, bad news (Joss Whedon edition)

First, Bad News: Joss Whedon will not be making Wonder Woman. Now, I'll admit that Wonder Woman was never anywhere near my favourite character, or even my favourite DC character (some of you may remember my preference for Batman and Flash), but I really did think that Whedon was one of the few writers/directors around who could get Wonder Woman right.

Indeed, I've just realised that my list of favourite directors (Ang Lee, David Fincher, Gore Verbinski, David Cronenberg, Christopher Nolan, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillermo del Toro, Akira Kurosawa, David O. Russell, Stanley Kubrick, Tom Tykwer) has many a comic book fan, nary a woman. Have any women managed to escape the mainstream directorial ghetto of the `chick flick'? Sofia Coppola's the only one I can think of, and I've been less than thrilled by her films.

Anyways, Good News: Buffy is going to go up against the War on Terra.