tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post8886384879135172325..comments2023-03-28T04:32:18.124-04:00Comments on Witless Prattle: The Mort Weisinger Expansion PackKazekagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-2752918035147101692009-06-07T21:25:49.430-04:002009-06-07T21:25:49.430-04:00And that would be "in ever-smaller boxes, not...And that would be "in ever-smaller boxes, not unlike a Russian doll." :)Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-91034204250360095972009-06-07T15:55:51.366-04:002009-06-07T15:55:51.366-04:00And it's exactly that single-minded inability ...And it's exactly that single-minded inability to think outside the box that's led Marvel to where they are now, creatively speaking.Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-65144597605511831332009-05-23T23:55:36.750-04:002009-05-23T23:55:36.750-04:00That would have been one way to go about it, of co...That would have been one way to go about it, of course. But since Jemas pretty much ghetto-ized the book, I'm pretty sure it was all DeFalco's or it was all done.<br /><br />Exactly. ;)Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-48805610652546797462009-05-23T11:29:11.277-04:002009-05-23T11:29:11.277-04:00Ideally, DeFalco should've handed her off after a ...Ideally, DeFalco should've handed her off after a year or two, preferably to Brian Vaughan or someone on his level.<br /><br />Arana who? ;)Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-77688473511333750862009-05-17T01:37:00.000-04:002009-05-17T01:37:00.000-04:00And may God bless them for it. :)
Yeah . . .well,...And may God bless them for it. :)<br /><br />Yeah . . .well, DeFalco deserves credit on some level for creating her, but it's one of those things where it's a step forward, but it's one made whilst looking backward.<br /><br /> Still, better her than Arana, right?Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-10923602158207109912009-05-16T16:21:00.000-04:002009-05-16T16:21:00.000-04:00Fortunately, the Powers That Be seem to agree with...Fortunately, the Powers That Be seem to agree with me that There Is No Terminator 3. :)<br /><br />Marvel <I>had</I> produced a viable alternative in Spider-Girl - a legacy hero who was consistently shown to be <I>better</I> than The Original - but they let DeFalco hold onto her for far too long. I'm convinced the main reason that book never took off was the antiquated writing (plus the un-ironic use of the phrase "You go, girl!").Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-80468951514370105442009-05-03T13:30:00.000-04:002009-05-03T13:30:00.000-04:00Well, they undo it as much as it's possible and pr...Well, they undo it as much as it's possible and profitable to do so. When it comes to the future, whenever there's more money to be made, it's in no way set. Look at Terminator 3, for heaven's sake. :)<br /><br />Yeah, while I'm not certain of the efficacy of making every character a shrill neutering shrew, X-23 as a gender-neutral assembly of cliches doesn't strike me as a viable alternative.Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-90140197219332234102009-05-03T10:56:00.000-04:002009-05-03T10:56:00.000-04:00Except they've also done various stories that purp...Except they've <I>also</I> done various stories that purport to undo DoFP altogether, so I honestly don't know where they stand; besides, even taking only the most recent status quo changes into account, it'd be a <I>very</I> different story if they tried to do it today.<br /><br />Me neither. It's just... Superman, you know?<br /><br />Oh, how I'd love to forget DiDio. Here's hoping we'll have that pleasure someday. :)<br /><br />We may have to wait longer than usual for that, given the current state of sci-fi TV in the States...<br /><br />Mattie Franklin: poster child for EPIC FAIL WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE. :)<br /><br />And since that sort of stereotype <I>still</I> appeals to male readers more than female readers, the people in charge congratulate themselves on a job well-done, totally ignorant of the reality of the situation. I mean, X-23 <I>is</I> a popular character now, but not with her intended target audience.Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-44026045597175938972009-04-26T21:50:00.000-04:002009-04-26T21:50:00.000-04:00Yes, and like DoFP, one of the ways they've tried ...Yes, and like DoFP, one of the ways they've tried to have their cake and eat it too is to incrementally move towards it, without actually blowing up the world. It's a bit easier to do KC's brand of legacy-building because it doesn't take as dramatic a move to implement.<br /><br />Yep! Superman: Secret Identity. It got fairly good notices when it came out, though I've never had occasion to read it.<br /><br />It's good to have the company. :)<br /><br />And Didio thinking what comics need is more rape and misery. Musn't forget him!<br /><br />The question now is whether people will build on what BSG did or not . . .<br /><br />Well, we did because whatever the pre-Quesada guys did sucked and had to be stomped to the ground. Now Spider-Girl gets demoted to a anthology book and Arana has still failed to go the way of Mattie Frankln.<br /><br />Well, the thinking with X-23 was probably girls would like Wolverine more if he were a young girl and had been a hooker. Verily, a vast untapped market. Really, the ideal way to roll out female characters would be to posit them in such a way as to where they didn't seem to yell "I'm a strong/dark/conflicted female character!" every moment. However, because it's easier to play to the stereotype, that's what gets done, unfortunately.Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-60065152383707411282009-04-25T11:01:00.000-04:002009-04-25T11:01:00.000-04:00Ostensibly for the same reason "Days of Future Pas...Ostensibly for the same reason "Days of Future Past" never actually happened in the present-day: there'd be no feasible way to go back after that. It establishes a new status quo for the entire shared universe.<br /><br />Didn't Kurt Busiek do something with a "real-life" Clark Kent at some point?<br /><br />You're not alone, my friend. Not in the least...<br /><br />And then some. I mean, really, who do we have to choose from as figureheads for the industry? Alan Moore with his magical sock puppet? Quesada and his "Ain't I Cool, Kids?" shtick? Ellis and... ugh, I don't even want to complete that sentence.<br /><br />About damn time, too.<br /><br />The irony being that we already <I>had</I> a Spider-Girl who was just as interesting (if not moreso) than her father - nobody <I>needed</I> Arana around, or wanted her for that matter.<br /><br />There's also something kind of skeevy about the way they try to tailor books to female readers. I mean, was I supposed to embrace X-23 just because she's a distaff Wolverine? Am I supposed to get all weepy because Mary Jane spilled punch on her prom dress? It's... kind of insulting, you know? Having some strong female characters around is one thing, pandering to a demeaning stereotype is quite another.Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-34556552928937940762009-04-12T01:04:00.000-04:002009-04-12T01:04:00.000-04:00And KC has been beaten like a dead horse ever sinc...And KC has been beaten like a dead horse ever since. It puzzles me why people don't do more with it, as it does more to buttress the idea of a shared universe and reinforces the notion of a shared legacy.<BR/><BR/>It could be an interesting departure that might open up the character to people who might not initially go for Superman as he's commonly known. Of course, it's such a good idea it will never happen.<BR/><BR/>THIS IS WHAT COMIC FANS THINK IS IMPORTANT, Diana. In the face of this, I am a man without a country.<BR/><BR/>Well, the irony of the stereotype is that all these writers we hold us as proving that Comics are Valid do more to prove the point that people in comics are socially maladjusted men than anything.<BR/><BR/>Well, you had a couple of characters that were similar, but BSG finally pushed it to a kind of critical mass.<BR/><BR/>Well, Arana was Spider-Girl in low-rise pants that very helpfully spoke in a kind of cod-Hispanic so we'd never forget her racial makeup and Trouble, as all things from Mark Millar, was about as welcome as a backed-up toilet in a house full of people with Montezuma's Revenge. I'm sure they've made more earnest efforts (Spider-Man loves Mary Jane leaps to mind, and maybe Spider-Girl) but usually they get bowlderised somewhere along the way (like, say "Emma Frost.") Doesn't excuse the fact that it inevitably fails because they chased off every potential female reader with torches and Frankenstein rakes, but when did that ever stop them?Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-55722527859905789022009-04-11T09:33:00.000-04:002009-04-11T09:33:00.000-04:00But no one really does that kind of story with him...But no one really does that kind of story with him, at least not since "Kingdom Come" (which said all it needed to say about the generation gap between various superhero groups).<BR/><BR/>I think I'd like to see that kind of take on Superman... have it be less about the feats of strength and more about the subtleties of his life (lives?). In Bizarro-World, that's probably what "Smallville" would've done right.<BR/><BR/>How sad is this: I totally believe there were people who were outraged that Lois Lane didn't know Klurkor. It doesn't surprise me <I>at all</I>.<BR/><BR/>And, you know, for all that Brian Hibbs got worked up over that bit with Claire in the comic book shop over at "Heroes", it's the writers currently hailed as the cream of the crop - Bendis, Millar, Johns - who perpetuate that particular stereotype of male comic book readers/writers just not being able to handle women on any level.<BR/><BR/>Going back to BSG yet again, that's part of what drew me to the show in the first place: you just didn't <I>have</I> women like Starbuck, Roslin or Cain in traditional SF.<BR/><BR/>I agree, though, that the problem isn't so much the gender of the writer as it is the perceived gender of the reader: let's not forget that travesties like Arana and Trouble were meant to appeal to what Marvel thought was a viable female readership, and it was so condescending, so completely off the mark from what I suspect most women want from <I>any</I> literature, including comics, that all you could do was shake your head in astonishment.Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-28751661376147950272009-03-22T16:04:00.000-04:002009-03-22T16:04:00.000-04:00Well, basically he's the Mitochondrial Adam of sup...Well, basically he's the Mitochondrial Adam of superhero comics, so he's always going to be around--he's a link to the shared past of the entire genre. There are some things you can do with Superman in relation to the genre--how does the elder statesman of superheroes interact and respond to the world around him, which is always evolving.<BR/><BR/> I think you can do it without having to tweak a bunch of things, it just takes going a bit deeper than the latest punch-up with Braniac or Luthor.<BR/><BR/> She learned it from Mort Weisenger, I think--as so many ill-advised bolt-ons to the mythology of Krypton did. I remember reading a <I>Who's Who</I> lettercol back in the day that people were <I>furious</I> that she didn't know Klurkor in the reboot era. Swear to God.<BR/><BR/> Yeah--given it's Millar we're talking about, you might as well be stacking marbles in a corner, for all the good it'll do. :)<BR/><BR/> I missed that and oh lord, you will never know how glad I am that I did. :)<BR/><BR/> They'd never admit it, but I figure it's informed quite a lot of their views--both on and off the page. Mind you, the whole Superdickery business makes <I>perfect sense</I> as a model for male/female relationships. If you're eight and still think girls are icky and need their pigtails pulled. If you still think this is viable from the ages 9 on, you have real problems. <BR/><BR/> Obviuously, this hearkens back to when comics were actually read by 8-year olds. The audience has changed and yet the apparatus used to serve those past still hangs on. How 'bout that?<BR/><BR/> (I'm treading lightly here--I try very hard to handle female characters properly in my writing and often fear I'm not, but am doing my best to make up for the perceived lack in what I read. Wow, what a long preamble) Well, I don't know if I agree with that assertion--I think the current state of women characters in comics says more about the writers and readers involved and what's needed is a change in thinking. After all--Devin Grayson and Gail Simone, being women, often write female characters even more embarrassingly than male writers do. Ultimately, the mission of every writer should be to portray the characters involved in consistent and plausible ways. The alternative is writing a female character in older, more hackneyed, styles or writing her as a token and thus erring too far the other way.Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-33318041722366301912009-03-22T02:19:00.000-04:002009-03-22T02:19:00.000-04:00But even then, any accessible traits he has have a...But even then, any accessible traits he has have already been translated into countless other characters who are arguably more compelling, simply by virtue of not being perfect. In that sense, I appreciate Superman's function in the overall genre - if he's held up as the ideal superhero, everyone else is allowed to have some cracks in their armor.<BR/><BR/>And she learned this from where, exactly? Never mind that I can't imagine Kryptonians doing martial arts in those ridiculous Science Gowns.<BR/><BR/>That assumes they have basic cognitive skills, and we <I>are</I> dealing with Mark Millar here...<BR/><BR/>And lord, the depths it plumbed after that. Howie Mandel as Mxyzptlk trying to steal Christmas? Ugh.<BR/><BR/>I wonder how much of the current Simian (heh) views on women in comics flow directly from Superman's "Superdickery" era - if Lois Lane was the premiere female character in the most visible superhero comic of the time, and she came off as a complete idiot, maybe that seeped into the genre as a whole simply because there were no positive role models to counter it until the early '70s.<BR/><BR/>Well, the feminist line taken by activists like Ragnell and Kalinara would probably argue that the situation hasn't changed simply because men are still running the industry, and as long as they're telling the stories, the status quo remains intact. I never really subscribed to that theory, because I don't believe you have to be a woman to tell good stories about women, and being a woman doesn't automatically make you a good writer (as Gail Simone proves from time to time).Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-74726905140650622172009-03-09T00:13:00.000-04:002009-03-09T00:13:00.000-04:00I think you have a point there. Mind you, I think ...I think you have a point there. Mind you, I think that the problem with Superman sometimes is that the <I>wrong</I> traits gets emphasised to the point of excluding the more potentially accessible traits. <BR/><BR/>Lord knows, a new reader to Superman just shouldn't be expected to swallow that Lois Lane is a master of the Kryptonian marital art known as Klurkor, because it is so terribly stupid an idea.<BR/><BR/>Yeah, it's probably for the best the flaws in this proposal filtered out into movies and TV shows. Ideally, the people who pushed for these ideas would then have seen that they were bad ideas and discarded them. <BR/><BR/> Alas, all too often comic creators are the last people to learn invaluable lessons about their trade.<BR/><BR/> I think L & C's leaping over the shark in a single bound can be summed up thus: Frog. Eating Clones.<BR/><BR/> Yeah, that bothers the hell out of me, too. Not just because it says all the wrong things about gender politics in comics (and is one Female Void away from turning the whole thing into a Dave Sim Tract) but just for what it says about the way male comic characters view female characters. In Superman's case, you're either an complicating mechanism, a distaff version of a male character, or Maggie Sawyer, Token Lesbian.<BR/><BR/> It's kind of a more passive version of the whole women in refrigerators deal, I think, and far more disturbing a trend than WiR because it's been 80 years and <I>why haven't we grown the hell out of this?</I>Kazekagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07499536996058174109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8207237618509440496.post-91031238622124152892009-02-23T05:52:00.000-05:002009-02-23T05:52:00.000-05:00Superman is the single greatest challenge to my be...Superman is the single greatest challenge to my belief that any character can be redeemed with a proper writer at the helm. I think the problem is that so many of his idealized traits have been made iconic, canonized, that he's perhaps the superhero most resistant to reinterpretation.<BR/><BR/>Setting that aside, what's funny about this proposal is that all these things have already happened in one medium or another and were proven failures - you want to dwell on Clark's separation from humanity? That road leads straight to "Smallville" and eight seasons of Wangst. You want to make Clark a butt monkey? Perform a seance and ask Christopher Reeve how well that turned out. I mean, I understand the desire to introduce <I>some</I> kind of flaw to Superman's life, but that's not it.<BR/><BR/>(Although now I'm amused at the idea of Superman working at Dunder Mifflin...)<BR/><BR/>As for Lois and the "problem of marriage"... you know, the Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher "Lois and Clark" jumped the shark for a <I>lot</I> of reasons, but the marriage wasn't one of them. <BR/><BR/>And can I say I'm kind of revolted at how the S2000 bunch view Lois? Because they're advocating a return to the Superdickery era where Lois is a complete idiot and Clark/Superman gets off on <I>driving her insane</I>, and it's kind of sad but still perfectly symptomatic of the whole fanboy mentality that a bunch of grown men can't figure out how to write a female character as anything other than an <I>obstacle</I>...Diana Kingston-Gabaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06606122690934557406noreply@blogger.com