Cheesecake Factory: How the boys club is hurting comics

            While browsing through a gallery of cosplayers from New York Comic Con I found a particular picture of a woman dressed as Emma Frost, and while she most definitely pulls off the costume much better than I could, it drew my eye to a problem that comics have had for decades.

            How we portray women in most superhero comics could be, at best, described as juvenile. And while like most red-blooded, red-meat-eating American Men I enjoy looking at attractive ladies, I always get this weird feeling like the writer/artist/director is sitting next to me saying “Hey yo man check out that girl’s ass”.

            There’s been a rumor floating around for years that artists/writers would slowly increase the size of Power Girl’s breasts each issue to see if anyone noticed. Power Girl is a really good example of a woman drawn for men, by men, and the amount of creepy things found when Googling her is a reason to avoid doing so. It was hard to find a way to describe her without sounding creepy, so I’ll allow Wikipedia to do it whilst I clear my search history.

“The character is consistently depicted as a large breasted young woman, and her physique is one of her most recognizable attributes—-to the extent that various writers have acknowledged it in both serious and humorous ways.”

            There is a really good quote she has on her ridiculous “cleavage window” that goes like this. [the costume "shows what I am: female, healthy. If men want to degrade themselves by staring, that's their problem, I'm not going to apologize for it."

            That’s all well and good, and more power to her for her convictions, but the fact is that she’s a comic book character and the men staring at her aren’t feeling like they’re degrading themselves. The men who drew her weren’t thinking about sending a message of strength or something like that, but something more along the lines of what will sell to comics’ premier demographic.

           

            It seems like it’d be hard to be a girl and be a fan of superhero comics. If you’re a 10-13 year-old girl who likes superheroes, what are you reading? This is a legitimate question and if there is an answer I’d love to hear it.  If nothing is being written for you, then what are you going to read? If you’re not reading, then who will be writing in the future? Comics are already a boys club, and it might be nice to have more women writers on staff to explain why showing Batman and Catwoman in a thoroughly unpleasant sex scene or making Starfire a skank was a really bad idea.

            I’m a firm believer that comics are for everybody. I don’t mean that every comic should be for everyone, but I do believe that there should be a comic out there for anyone who wants to read them. When I look at mainstream titles I find myself wondering what isn’t being written for 14 year-old boys or people who are already ardent fans. The people reading comics now will be the ones writing them in a few years, and what they read will have a profound impact on what they create. If all we show them is this I can’t help but be a bit afraid for the future of the mainstream superhero comics.

            If you’re going to have women heroes and villains, get some female writers. It’s really that simple. There is one man who can write women well, his name is Joss Whedon, and he’s busy with Avengers stuff so find someone else. There are many talented female writers and artists out there who would love the opportunity to write one of their heroines, so maybe instead of giving Geoff Johns another book give one of them a chance.

            All I’m really saying in all this, and what I say in pretty much everything I write, is we need to stop writing for adolescent boys. We need to write for everyone if to grow our market and make something people will love. This doesn’t just apply to comics but to games as well. Look at almost any fighting game and how they portray women. You can say it’s supposed to be funny until it actually is, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly creepy.

            If we keep designing things for fourteen year-old boys then we’ll end up only having Rob Liefield, Michael Bay, and Call of Duty and that’s an incredibly bad thing. By adding in new creators and new perspectives we grow as a medium and as a culture rather than continuing to stagnate like I’d argue we are.  If we want to keep degrading ourselves further, then steady on.

War Stories: How do we handle war in entertainment?

            War comics used to be a big part of overall comics titles. Blackhawk, Sergeant Rock, and Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos (which should sound pretty familiar given Nick Fury’s resurgence and the Howling Commandos’ appearance in the Captain America movie) were all popular titles, yet they have fallen by the wayside in modern comics. Curious about this, I went on Marvel and DC’s websites but I couldn’t find any war comics. DC had brought back titles like Men of War, Blackhawk, and G.I. Combat but all of them have already been cancelled.

           

            Of course, most of these comics had already gone away around the same time in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Audiences weren’t engaged with them anymore. Blackhawk was revamped in possibly the worst reboot of all time. Most of these comics faded away with the new prevalence of TV reporting in Vietnam showing Americans the real face of war every night. War comics fell by the wayside.

Seriously. Look at this nonsense.

            That said, I’m not sure why DC brought back these titles in the New 52, but I have a pretty good idea why these comics were cancelled (again).When comics are cancelled it’s simply because they aren’t selling. Serious comics about war are hard to sell to comics target market. A serious and mature war comic like Blazing Combat that had “stories [that] were both gritty and realistic ... showing the true horror of war" isn’t going to sell to your average Call of Duty player, and a comic that attempts to ape the juvenile adolescence of most modern shooters to attract that market is going to be offensively simplistic.

            Comics and gaming are relatively easy to talk about together because they share a target market and as such thought of as juvenile, and given the vast majority of what is published by mainstream titles it’s easy to see why. When you treat war the way Call of Duty and Battlefield do, it really demeans the entire concept. Other games do it better, of course. Medal of Honor has always presented war in a more serious light. I still remember playing MoH: Frontline’s level set in Arnhem and being incredibly moved by it.

            An interesting thing to note is that the older war comics were usually about World War II, as were most shooters in the early 2000’s. Now, most shooters are set in the modern era, and maybe the fact that there isn’t as much of a set narrative in a hypothetical war with Russia. There isn’t a lot of pathos there. The War on Terror has its share of it. I’ve read some pretty great stuff with the War in Iraq. Joel Turnipseed’s (A name that may be familiar with some of you) Baghdad Express or Brian K. Vaughn’s Pride of Baghdad are both incredible works, but this kind of depth rarely makes it into war games.

            It’s hard to really write war without trivializing it if you fail to show the actual personal consequences of it. While researching this article, I was amazing to find this sentence on the Wikipedia page for Medal of Honor: Warfighter that said, “The game's plot reveals Tier 1 operator Preacher returning home to find his family torn apart from years of deployment.” That’s pretty impressive to include in a modern war game. Spec Ops: The Line is based on Heart of Darkness, which means it is a brutal exploration of the human psyche.

            Of course, this raises a pressing question. Can a realistic war game be entertaining while at the same time giving due decency to the subject matter? Should realistic war games be fun at all? Of course, even the idea of a realistic war game is a bit bizarre, given as if you get shot in Call of Duty you duck behind a bit of wall for 5 seconds and wait for the red to go away, and in real life you spend three months at Walter Reed adjusting to a C-Leg. I guess that wouldn’t be fun though.

            And I guess that’s the problem with war entertainment (if that concept enough doesn't strike a bad chord). If it’s fun it doesn’t give the subject the respect it deserves, and if it’s serious it isn’t fun. Comparatively few people will play a haunting game that forces them to plumb the depths of their very soul, and even fewer will buy a comic that makes them more and more depressed with every issue.

            I guess the only thing to do at this point is to accept that perhaps war comics from mainstream published are a thing of the past. Maybe that’s a good thing, considering how DC has been writing of late. I think it’s time we look at what we write and what we play a bit more seriously, and ask ourselves just how it portrays serious topics. If we want the mediums we care about to gain acceptance as art, we need to challenge mainstream publishers to produce content that challenges readers and presents itself as honest with actual depth.

________

            Something I’m going to start doing whenever I write something broad like this is to give some recommended reading for anyone who might be interested.

            Blazing Combat: A controversial but incredible anti-war graphic novel about Vietnam from the 70’s.

           

            Last Day in Vietnam: This is by Wil Eisner, who is an incredible writer and artist, presents his take on war. It’s pretty amazing to say the least. It’s probably available in your college library (I know it’s at UNCG, that’s where I read it).

            Pride of Baghdad: I’ve mentioned this a few times before, but it’s about lions and the Iraq war. It’s powerful and incredibly sad but offers a wonderful message. I read it at Edward McKay’s a while back, and I had to leave the store before anyone noticed I was about to openly weep.

           The Long Road Home and The War Within: Taken from Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury, these are two short books about a solider losing his leg in Iraq and readjusting to life in the States afterwards. 

Capes and Politics: Who Would Superman Vote For?

            Consider: Superman is the guardian of truth, justice, and the American way. He makes apple pie look like a traitor. However, while Superman represents everything good about the Red, White, and Blue, few writers have ever shown Superman’s politics. It’s easy to see Superman as a conservative, with his whole big blue Boy Scout thing. He’s a farm boy from small-town Kansas, which should put him in Republican demographics. However, he doesn’t say a lot with words, but can his actions help us determine his politics?

Many Superman stories end with him deciding that he can’t make choices for humanity. Red Son features a communist Superman who controls the entire world, except for a Lex Luthor run USA. Superman clearly believes in letting people make their own decisions and is not for big government.

            Now while one could use that to argue for a rather libertarian Man of Steel, keep in mind he also is constantly swooping in and saving people. Lets not forget that Lex Luthor is the ultra-wealthy CEO of a multinational conglomerate. Any fans of Ayn Rand are not fans of Supes, who repeatedly stops LexCorp from operating beyond the law.

            Don’t forget Superman’s strong anti-gun position. He does not tolerate gun violence, and is strongly against killing and the death penalty. Also, as an immigrant himself, he probably would have some strong things to say about it. Put some points in the progressive column.

            Lastly, lets look at foreign policy. Superman is strongly anti-war, an interventionist humanitarian, and a supporter of the UN. He even went so far as to renounce his American citizenship to announce his position as a citizen of the world that does not represent US Policy.

            

            Oh.

            So, like the political ideologies of Superheroes, this doesn’t matter in the slightest because Superman can’t even vote. I don't care to know if Superman even would vote, or any caped crusader for that matter. Superheroes are uniquely progressive, self-sacrificing, and incredibly apolitical. That doesn’t sound like politics to me. 

Diversity Hires: Are we doing well with race in comics?

            I read this this quote on why the old Legion of Superheroes comics had no black people from co-creator Mike Grell.

“Their explanation for why there were no black people [in the Legion] was that all the black people had gone to live on an island. It's possibly the most racist concept I've ever heard in my life."

            WHAT. THE. ASS.

            Granted, that’s was decades ago, but it’s always been interesting how comics handle race. Recently, DC has introduced an Arab-American Green Lantern, who seems to be their favorite character to diversify. It’s just sort of interesting that whenever they need to add someone with diversity they immediately use a GL.

            Green Lantern has always had some racially provocative storylines thanks to Neal Adams, who put the very 1950s conservative minded GL alongside ultra-hippie Green Arrow which allowed for a lot of political discussion and some pretty incredible issues, including the introduction of African-American Green Lantern John Stewart and this fantastic panel.

            Still, there is not a lot of diversity in comics. Part of the fact is that these characters have been around since the 30s. The first mainstream black superhero was Black Panther. Before him there were black supporting characters, like the Spirits woefully racist caricature of a sidekick, but no real black badasses like Black Panther. He fought the KKK, Apartheid, and Doctor Doom.

            Asians are no longer regulated to the mystic sorcerer role, or do something involving katanas (like that one Outsider, Katana). It’s a step up from the Fu Man Chu-esque Iron Man villain literally called the Mandarin. The Atom is chinese, and Grant Morrison introduced two Japanese superhero squads known as Big Science Action and Super Young Team in Final Crisis who were just awesome in general.

            Hispanics are sort of new to the scene, with a surprising few in the mainstream outside of Blue Beetle and the Question. In researching this (read: looking up lists of Hispanic superheroes on Wikipedia) I was rather surprised to find out the Kyle Rayner counts because he is Half-hispanic Half Irish. I imagine we will se a rise in both Middle Eastern and Hispanic superheroes soon as the demographics continue to change, but I think there is a bigger problem at play here than just having these characters on hand.

            One of the reasons characters like John Stewart, Luke Cage, or Black Panther work is because they are badasses. A lot of times, comic companies will add “diversity hires” to the JLA or Avengers and then not really know what to do with them. To me, this is worse than not having anyone at all. Just sort of sticking someone in because the your super team wasn’t filling some sort of 501c3 requirement (I imagine the X-men do not pay taxes) is sort of missing the point.

            I really like Grant Morrison’s decision to use an Algerian immigrant for the Batman of Paris. There is still a general lack of Muslims in the multiverse, and this was a major step forward. The reason this works isn’t just because it’s a nice addition of diversity, but because the dude was awesome. It also worked well with the racial tensions currently plaguing France. It was a really solid call on their part, and that’s the kind of thing I applaud.

            When you look at the covers of most comics today, it does seem like they’re still sort of stuck in the Leave it to Beaver era of American entertainment where everyone is incredibly white. The problem is that is not what America looks like any more. We’re a pretty diverse country, and our heroes need to reflect that. I’m not saying we should up and make Superman and Wonder Woman black (besides, Grant Morrison did it in Final Crisis. They were supposed to be Barack and Michelle Obama.), but it wouldn’t hurt to consider bringing more diversity to the forefront in the interest of story rather than headlines. As fun as it is to make One Million Moms go crazy because Nova is going to marry his boyfriend, how about giving Nova a storyline that doesn’t just revolve around him being different. Batwoman has handled that really well, and I think a lot of other books that could take example from that idea of “yes, she’s a lesbian, now lets move on and watch as punches some dude in the teeth”.

            The best example of how diversity has been handled is with Jewish Characters. I think part of this has to do with half the people who write comics are Members of the Tribe, but the way they’re handled is really, really good. We get some big names, including Magneto, Shadowcat, Iceman, the everlovin’ blue-eyed thing, and the aforementioned Batwoman. These characters not only get storylines where their Judaism is the subject, but they also are allowed to develop far beyond that as actual characters who do things and are awesome in their own right.

            That’s what I’d really like to see. Lets have more ass-kicking as less trying to get articles in USA Today. Nobody reads it anyway, and having an Arab-American or homosexual Green Lantern doesn’t have any impact if you just do one story on how he is Arab-American or homosexual and then immediately go back to writing about Hal Jordan. Give them their own titles and see what you can do with them beyond sticking them in the background. If you want to really promote diversity and the American way (I think Superman would have something to say about that), let them actually do something.

             

Politics and Comics: Why activism in graphic novels is good.

I’d been wanting to read Grant Morrison’s WE3 for a while, and I finally got around to it today. It’s fairly incredible, to say the least, and it got me thinking. There are a lot of what I’ll call “issue comics” for lack of a better term out there. Books like DMZ and WE3 are fantastic works in their own right, but also have serious political messages in them.

I’d recommend WE3 to anyone who cares about animal rights, and DMZ to those more concerned with government. Lions of Baghdad is a phenomenal anti-war graphic novel from the perspective of lions that escaped from the Baghdad zoo during the bombing. Even Marvel’s Civil War presents a very interesting take on the Patriot Act set in-universe.

It’s really interesting to see how comics handle political issues. Comics are fairly progressive, and usually confront issues either directly or allegorically.  I mean, the X-men were meant to represent the racial struggle. The Superman radio show was used to go after the Klan. Neal Adams’ Green Lantern run had such an impact it helped jumpstart the Bronze Age.

            Comics serve as a good way to make a point because of the visual aspect. Seeing an image like a rabbit forced into a robot suit, or Speedy shooting up heroin has an incredible impact, much more than just reading or hearing about it. It’s hard to tell whether or not comics should be politicized at all.

           

            I’d say yes. After all, it shows the medium is maturing if it can handle serious subject matter like animal testing or failed states. I don’t think comics should straight tell people what to think, but there’s nothing wrong with bringing attention to a point. I mean, Superman stands for truth, justice, and the American way, and that means looking out for your fellow man.